Majang people

Majangir
Total population
32,822 (2007)
Regions with significant populations
Ethiopia
Languages
Majang
Religion
Christianity, Traditional religion

The Majang people, or Majangir, live in southwestern Ethiopia and speak a Nilo-Saharan language of the Surmic cluster. The 2007 Ethiopian census reported 32,822 Majangir people, though split between two spelling variants of their name, "Mejenger" and "Messengo". They live around cities of Tepi, Mett'i, and scattered southwest of Mizan Teferi and towards Gambela.

Traditional toom instrument

Distribution

The largest Majangir area is located on the border of the Gambela and Oromia regions, including the Majang Zone, with the Anuak as their neighbors to their west, Shekkacho and Shabo to their east, and Sheko to their south, and reaching the town of Bure in the north. Smaller nearby areas of settlement are found east, just north of the town of Tepi. An area further south, at the border of Ethiopia and South Sudan, falls within the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region, between the Anuak and the Me'en. A northern area is found in Oromia in the woreda of Anfillo, west of the town of Dembidolo and north of the city of Gambela.

Culture

They traditionally lived in small groups, farming for three to five years, then moving on as the fertility of the soil diminished (Stauder 1971). They were active bee keepers, collecting honey from hives consisting of hollowed logs placed in trees. They did some hunting and snaring of game and trapping of fish. They raised the bulk of their own food by farming, animals providing only a small part of their diet.

Food production has changed since Stauder's time. The single most obvious change is that people are now living in permanent settlements. Livestock was not traditionally raised, but many Majangir have begun small scale livestock raising since about 1980. In addition, they have begun planting fruit and coffee trees, plants that take a number of years to produce a crop.

The Majangir traditionally had a very egalitarian society, with no standing political leaders (Stauder 1971, 1972). The only people in official positions were people in the role of tapaɗ (the final consonant is implosive), who served as ritual leaders. These were from the Meelanir clan, a group has links with similar-named privileged clans in other Surmic groups (Unseth and Abbink 1998). In case of a serious disagreement, one party would simply move away. There was no standard social reconciliation mechanism as is found in highland Ethiopian cultures.

The Majangir have over 70 clans, with clan identity passed down through the male line. A person cannot marry a person from the same clan (exogamy), nor should they marry a person from their mother's clan (Stauder 1971, Unseth 1998a).

Title page of the New Testament in the Majang language, 2018

The Majangir traditionally made two kinds of alcoholic drink: tááján, made from grain (cf. tella) and ògòòl, made from honey (cf. tej; Teramoto et al., 2005).

Traditional powaz mallet and wedge made of Baphia abyssinica wood.

The Majangir have traditionally used a number of musical instruments, sometimes to accompany singing and sometimes played without. Their instruments include a five-string lyre, thumb piano, drum, rattles, panflute. In addition, they play a vertically suspended marimba with as few as three wooden bars, but this is seen as a way of passing time, especially when guarding fields, rather than an instrument for music.

Their vocal music includes singing of both harmonies and antiphonal parts. Often, this results in two parts being sung by women and two parts by men.

Changes are happening rapidly to their traditional way of life. Since about 1971, many Majangir have become Christians (Hoekstra 2003 and Sato 2002). Further, since the end of the Ethiopian Civil War in 1991, with its subsequent remapping of Ethiopia by ethnic lines, the Majangir have felt very marginalized politically, their territory now divided among three kalil or administrative Regions (Sato 2000 and 2002). This frustration has led to some armed fighting with the government (Vaughan 2003:268).

Currently, many outsiders are buying or leasing land from the Majang area. "This has led to the pauperization of the Majang and the looming environmental disaster of the massive deforestation of the Majang forest, part of south-west Ethiopia’s dwindling tropical rain-forest."

Language

The Majangir language is part of the Surmic cluster, however it is the most isolated language in that cluster (Harold C. Fleming 1983). A language survey has shown that dialect variation from north to south is minor and does not seriously impede communication

The language has implosive consonants (bilabial and retroflex), but no ejective consonants (Bender 1983). There are seven vowels, and length of duration of the vowel is also distinctive, such as goopan 'punishment' and gopan 'road'. In addition, two tones also distinguish meaning, on both the word level and the grammatical level: táŋ (higher tone) 'cow', tàŋ (lower tone) 'abscess'.

References

  1. ↑ Joswig 2019, p. 35.
  2. ↑ Joswig 2019, pp. 35–37.
  3. ↑ p. 49. Ficquet, Éloi, and Dereje Feyissa. 2015. Ethiopians in the twenty-first century: the structure and transformation of the population. Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi., pp. 15-62. Hurst Publications.

Bibliography