Experiences of Cassava and Development in a Coastal Tanzanian Village

Among the Makonde of southeastern coastal Tanzania, cassava is a staple of their diet and widely recognized as their traditional food. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sinde village, this paper examines the seeming paradox of cassava as the traditional food in a fishing village by exploring local taxonomies of food and what being ‘traditional’ means in local contexts. The paper briefly traces the social history of cassava’s remarkable journey from its domestication in the Amazon basin to its presence simmering in a pot of coconut milk over a three stone fire in a backyard kitchen in Sinde. Local meanings around cassava reflect issues of poverty, development and being Swahili.