"Sakanab": Greetings and Information among the Northern Beja

International African Institute

"Sakanab": Greetings and Information among the Northern BejaAuthor(s): John MortonSource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 58, No. 4 (1988), pp. 423-436Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1160350 .

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Africa 58 (4), 1988

SAKANAB: GREETINGS AND INFORMATION AMONG THE NORTHERN BEJA

John Morton

This article is an ethnographic account of the economic importance of information in a particular society, that of the Northern Beja of Red Sea Province, Sudan, and of one social institution, the greetings ritual, vital in the transmission of information. As such it is intended as a contribution to the anthropology of information and to economic anthropology, but also to the study of greetings rituals and ceremonies. It suggests that it may in many cases be useful to approach the study of greetings from the perspective of their connection with information.

Youssouf, Grimshaw and Bird, in their paper on Tuareg greetings (1976) discuss a case similar to the Beja in that the exchange of rhetorical (in their terms non-referential) questions leads into the exchange of referential information. Their paper, however, has a different central concern to the present one, and one important ethnographic difference. They describe Tuareg greetings in terms of Hymes's ethnography of speaking and then tentatively propose some universals on the form and functions of, conditions for and constraints on, encounters and greetings (Youssouf et al., 1976: 811). These universals are not highly specific (they list, for example, seven non-exhaustive functions of greetings) and it is not clear that the universalis- ing approach is the most enlightening one. The ethnographic difference is that the Tuareg encounters they concentrate on are those that take place between travellers in the desert, unknown and potentially hostile to each other, so that the greetings are used to find out about the other and his intentions and to disclaim one's own aggression. The Beja greetings I witnessed in Sufayya were mainly between men who knew each other already, and were not hostile to each other. Indeed it seems that pastoral Beja, of the Sufayya area at least, are not very likely to meet others they do not know, and that 'anxiety reduction' is not an important function of greetings.

Youssouf, Grimshaw and Bird see the exchange of referential information as indicating that the greeting has been successfully used to obtain 'interper- sonal access' (1976: 812). The Tuareg case does seem one in which greetings are used to transform a potentially hostile situation into a neutral one in which information can be sought. The present examination of the Beja case, without these overtones of hostility, shows how greetings can do more than just provide access to information; they can positively encourage its exchange, and one way they do so is by not distinguishing the categories of 'greetings' and 'news'.

The rest of the anthropological and sociolinguistic literature on greetings is sparse and concentrates on highly structured rituals which make manifest differences in status. Firth (1972) gives a general introduction to the subject. He sees greetings, both verbal and physical, as rituals in that they are patterned systems of signs conveying 'other than overt messages', morally



THE INFORMATION IN BEJA GREETINGS

sanctioned and adaptive to social relations (1972: 29). He notes that greetings behaviour, even when the participants consider it a spontaneous expression of emotion, is conventionalised and culture-specific. In its function of establishing new phases of social interaction he sees three themes-those of attention producing, identification and reduction of anxiety-and he argues that 'a basic function of greeting and parting ritual is in creating an occasion for establishment of relative status positions, or in providing a code ... in which status relations can be expressed' (1972: 31). Irvine (1974), in her study of Wolof greetings, gives some ethnographic content to these formula- tions. The basic structures of the lengthy Wolof greetings, including the possibility of repetition, are described formally in a generative grammar and then strategies for manipulating these structures are given. Through strategies concerned with the structure of the greetings (i.e. insistence on or avoidance of repetition) and stylistic strategies (i.e. volume and tempo of speech) participants can attempt to raise or lower their status and therefore alter their rights and obligations, including material ones. This is a particularly sophisticated example of a status perspective on greetings rituals and I would not deny the fruitfulness of this perspective in many ethnographic cases. However, I would disagree with the implication of Goody's paper (1972) that lengthy and elaborate greetings are characteristic of hierarchical and complex societies, less based on kinship. Beja society is a segmentary lineage-based one, with a strong ideology of equality between men, but its greetings are lengthy. I am suggesting that a view of greetings which sees them as facilitating the flow of useful and accurate information may be at least as fruitful as the status approach, without necessarily being exclusive of it or other approaches.

Two further accounts of greetings should be mentioned here. Riesman in Freedom in Fulani Social Life (1974; English edition 1977) explains Jelgobe greetings in terms of what could be called Jelgobe ethnosociology, that is, they conceive society as nothing but the sum of social actions, which must be constantly reproduced, and for which reproduction all are responsible. Greetings are part of 'keeping society going' (one of his chapter headings).' More importantly for a comparative study of greetings (and I am not criticising his distinctive material or method) Riesman discusses the nature of the knowledge used to perform a lengthy sequence of greetings. Whether or not an anthropologist can publish a correct and typical sequence is slightly beside the point; what matters is being able to use the greetings spontaneously and creatively, which Riesman could never entirely do in the field (and my own experience was similar). This ability, rather than anything said, is the most important message for the Jelgobe, as it 'signifies that one is a member of the group, not in a sense of a kinship group, but in the sense of wondiibe, people who share the same life and the same experience of the world' (Riesman, 1974: 172). He does not make the link between greetings and economically useful information, but we will see similarities between this formulation and the meaning of greetings to Beja.

Milton's paper on Kasigau greetings (1982) addresses a broader question of the analysis of meaning in anthropology. She argues for a view of meaning centred on what lies in the actors' minds, inferred from both the conceptual (cultural) and processual (situational) contexts. This is illustrated by exam-

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pies of greetings from a religiously divided society, which can only be interpreted by general rules as to which religious groups use which greetings, and by actors' knowledge of what religious status is claimed at that time by whom. Milton's paper suffers from a too ready dismissal of the view that actors may be unaware of the meaning of what they do, conflating this with the view that such meanings are in the analyst's mind (p. 261). There is surely room for an analysis of meaning which goes beyond that of which the actors are consciously aware, even if no adequate account of these meanings has yet been formulated. But the idea that meaning depends on a situational context, of the interactions of individuals, as well as a cultural one is a fruitful one. These ideas will be returned to.

THE BEJA

The Beja are a group of tribes, indigenous to the Red Sea coast and Red Sea Hills of the Republic of Sudan, numbering in total around half a million, Muslim and speaking their own Cushitic language known as Tu-Bedawie or Beja.2 Traditionally they are mobile pastoralists, of goats and sheep, with cattle in the south of the area and camels in the north. My own fieldwork was done in various settlements in the far north of the area among members of the Bisharin and the Atman, two of the three largest Beja tribes. This district, known as Halaib after its largest village and administrative centre, is one of the most isolated and least developed in all northern Sudan. Most of the population lived3 as pastoralists, but it should be stressed that the sale of livestock for cash, principally to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, was an integral part of the pastoral economy. Sorghum, the staple foodstuff, and some other goods were brought by lorry from Port Sudan and sold at small rural shops, almost all owned by Beja.

Northern Beja society is organised patrilineally with the most important unit being a lineage of around fifty households. Each lineage claims ownership of land (as a collectivity of its members' claims), so that the whole of the Beja area is divided between lineages. This ownership, however, is not any form of strict exclusion from economic resources. Beja pastoralists prefer to stay on their own lineage land, but when necessary can settle for long periods elsewhere with their herds and use the land more or less as their own. There are many families settled permanently on other lineages' land. Recognition of the host lineage's ownership at an ideological level is regarded as essential and the common disputes about land rights are more about recognition than about use.

Pastoral migration for Northern Beja takes place within this context of land allocation but in different forms depending on ecological and economic necessity. Some sections in the west of Halaib District or Atbai seem to make fairly predictable long-range movements to the coast for the grass that grows after the November rains. Sections themselves based on the coast are usually able to stay on or near it, particularly those living in permanent villages with non-pastoral incomes. The sections described in this article have their home territories geographically between these two groups, in the high hills around Sufayya.4

This area lies on the edges of the African and Arabian rain systems (see

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al-Tom, 1975) but cannot rely on regular rain from either. In practice rain is sparse, as low as 25 mm a year in some places, and although most likely around October, it is highly unpredictable and can be extremely localised in extent. The pastoralists of the hills move opportunistically over short distances at irregular intervals: broadly speaking, outward movements from November to April, with summer spent on the lineage territory close to the lineage wells. These movements are sometimes made by men leaving their families behind or by small groups of families, usually two or three tents, never more than about eight. Such groups are the main residential units of all pastoral Northern Beja, larger groupings occurring only in special environ- mental conditions or for specific historical reasons. They are based on common ownership of a lineage but do not necessarily represent one agnatic subdivision of it; they may include non-lineage cognates or other outsiders. One Bisharin group of around eight tents was centred on one man of the Salma Kurbab lineage, on whose territory it moved. The group consisted of the families of this man and his sons, a few more distantly related Salma Kurbab members and two Atman men (not brothers), related to the rest through female links, and their families. The leader's brother, the sheikh of the Salmab division (i.e. the Salma Kurbab and three other lineages), lived in another part of the territory. The group in question at one point made a complete move over a distance of less than 10 km between a well and a more advantageous grazing site within the same valley. Some members of the group then spent some time on Atman territory south of Sufayya. Other similar or smaller groups were moving, during my stay in Sufayya, over longer distances, but generally within the high hills area, starting in December and January and returning in March and April. Some men then made short journeys alone to see to camels which had been left with herders.

INFORMATION AND GREETINGS

Pastoral migrations in the Sufayya area, then, are generally over short distances without a predictable geographical itinerary and only broadly predictable in time. This lack of pattern is determined by the irregularity of rain in the area. In such conditions effective exploitation of the environment depends not only on the laxity of lineage rights to resources, but also on the flow of information about rain and grazing. Sakanab ('news') is a category of Beja culture which, like land ownership, forces itself upon the observer.

The role of information in pastoral economies has rarely been discussed or theorised. The present ethnographic account of sakanab is based on two premises. First, that in economies based on the exploitation of the natural environment information on the current state of that environment is a prerequisite to production, but that its importance varies according to the distribution and regularity of natural resources and the level of techniques for exploiting them. Secondly, that information about economic resources is distributed by social practices, in specific social situations, affected by the status of the participants (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.) and by conventions surrounding the discourse. Definitions of what information is 'relevant' and who is 'interested' in it are based on the division of labour and the structure of decision making in each society, and even within them societies do not

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achieve an optimum distribution of information to all 'interested parties'. The spread of information is a social phenomenon to be explained at least as much as the limitations upon it.

I am concentrating here on information that assists exploitation of the natural environment. Obviously information (or 'language' or 'discourse') has many other uses, one of them being control over people. Also, some of the following discussion will seem to assume that in socially acceptable situations language can give an objective picture of the world; in other words, I am ignoring the arbitrariness of linguistic signs and classifications. Both approaches are extreme simplifications but seem necessary if the role of language as a tool for exploiting the environment, something necessary for biological survival (particularly in mobile societies) is to be suitably stressed.

Among Northern Beja information is much in demand and is closely linked with what might be called a 'greetings ritual' or 'ceremony'. This link between news and greetings is by no means unique to Beja; it can be heard among Arabic-speaking Sudanese (not only pastoralists) and many other populations. The news ceremony is comparatively long and sakanab is something of which Beja are very much aware, but the link suggested in this paper between information and greetings might, I am sure, provide a fruitful way of looking at many other societies.

Greetings are exchanged by Beja at any meeting, so the same two individuals may exchange them perfunctorily several times a day. The fullest version of the greetings ritual is heard when two individuals or groups from some geographical distance meet after prolonged separation. One circum- stance under which this is likely to occur is on a grain-purchasing expedition. Sufayya, the main site of my fieldwork, is a small trading centre with three small shops. Men would ride in on camels from up to 50 km away, stock up with grain and other goods, such as coffee, sugar and cloth, and return to their families. Often the men would come in small groups and sometimes stay the night. Two of the shopkeepers had dekabs in the village, rough but sturdy shelters of unhewn timber for giving hospitality and holding councils. A dekab is quite different from a dwelling house of palm matting, and its possession indicates high standing in the community and the ability to mobilise the labour of other men. When men settle in a dekab the owner is obliged to look after them, to provide food and to assist them in making coffee. Coffee is drunk in great quantities by Beja and is an important part of the rituals of arrival and hospitality. Glowing embers are provided by the host-e.g. a sheikh or shopkeeper-while the travellers will always provide their own bunni d'a-coffee things: a roasting pan, pestle, mortar, pot, coffee, sugar, spices and cups.

The greetings ritual The usual first greeting used among Beja is the standard Muslim exchange of salaamu alekum-alekum as salaam (Arabic: 'peace be with you-with you be peace') initiated by the new arrivals. This is performed at any meeting, so the same two individuals may exchange it several times a day. If, however, one has come some distance or it is a long time since they have met, they will shake hands with the expression sop-sop (or even a playful SOP-sop-sop-sop- sop-sop-sop-sop). Beja men generally avoid physical contact, apart from

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hand-shaking, with other men. However, the ritualised shoulder slap and even the real embrace of Arabic-speaking men are spreading in the coastal villages among the more educated and outward-looking. On especially important occasions or if there has been a recent death, the fatah may be performed by all present, a quiet recitation of the first sura of the Koran with the hands held as an open book, also used as a gesture of reconcilation. Alternative initial salutations include dehani eta ('you have come alive', i.e. 'well'), with the reply dehani tisiniena ('you have stayed well for us'); the Arabic marhaba ('welcome') and sibo meha ('be well in the morning') with the reply herib meha of similar meaning. A more specialised salutation is 'id hoi Siboba-hoi bamaga ('be well in the 'Id-do not go lacking in it') used during or after either of the two great Muslim festivals.

After these salutations, usually denoted by the Arabic salaam, the main part of the greetings ceremony may be delayed while the new arrivals unload and tether their camels, if they have come a long way, and while guests and hosts make themselves comfortable in a dekab or under some other form of shade, if there is likely to be many greetings and much news. Among those in frequent contact it will immediately follow the salutation, and also be shorter, though still drawn out. This core of the greetings ceremony is a rapid sequence of short stereotyped questions exchanged between the parties. These questions require no answer except the occasional hamdu lilla (Ar. 'praise God') and have little or no question inflection. These rhetorical questions are known collectively as sakanab, which also denotes the news that will eventually follow them, but not any greetings which are not syntactically questions (such as salaamu alekum). A typical exchange of sakanab might begin as follows:

dabaiwa kwatiwa mabsutwa sikerawa afimawa lebabiwa afietawa natka heru hamdu lilla gurha kihain layifkitbaru regat kitbaru hamdu lilla dabai no eta dabai no ean udhei lebabi udhei lebabi awajat kithai hamdu lilla

are you guarded (by God)? are you happy? are you happy? are you strong? are you happy? are you fortunate? are you happy? is all goodness? praise God. there are no troubles? you have no troubles? you have no troubles? praise God. is it guarded from where you have come? it is guarded from where I have come. are the people fortunate? the people are fortunate. there is no harm? praise God.

The sequence may be a great deal longer, especially if more than two speakers are involved. It is as much a game as a ritual. There is often an element of competition as the speakers attempt to prolong the exchange

A: B: A: B: A: B: A: B: A: B: A: B: A: B: A: B: A: B: A:

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without direct repetition or hesitation, but equally the speakers can play in a different sense through repetition and the creative use of rhythm and intonation. In general, Beja conversation, which is not distinct from greetings and in which many of the characteristics of the greetings ceremony are found in attenuated form, makes great use of stereotyped phrases and repetition to create musical effects.

The questions 'asked' vary somewhat over the Beja area, but remain within the same framework of rapid alternation: layif kitbaru is likely to be found more around Sufayya, sikeratakwa ('are you a strong man?') and similar around Halaib. I was also told that greetings are long among the Bisharin, longest among the Atman, but short among the Hadendowa or Southern Beja. Another variation is the use of plurals either to greet more than one person or for politeness. Plurals of politeness are found frequently in Beja, though not as a rigid rule. Plurals can be used after singulars in one greetings sequence. Women may be greeted by masculine plurals, by non-predicative forms or, rarely, by the correct feminine singular predicative. The exchange above would be transformed in each case as follows:

Plural Non-predicative Feminine

dabaiyana dabai dabaitu kwatibana kwati kwatitu mabsutabana mabsut mabsuttu sikerabana sikera sikeratu afimabana afima afimatu

A further variation is one of times of day. This is used among those in frequent contact, not to greet travellers, but has the same alternating form. The adverbs lebabi ('fortunate'), sikera ('strong') and kwati ('happy') plus herib ('well'), inserama ('victorious'), gurhab anu ('lacking troubles') or rehiama ('refreshed') are used followed by mehata or mehawa ('you have risen') in the morning or t'ayima ('you have passed the noon') or appropriate feminine or plural forms.

If one of the speakers has come from far off and there is an enhanced possibility of news a particular formal exchange is eventually introduced after the short questions. This exchange, which is not referred to as sakanab, distinguishes formal greetings from the casual ones of neighbours. It is not normally used among the residents of or frequent visitors to one village. In its normal form it runs as follows, the new arrival speaking second:

A: lotanena you have appeared to us B: baguda do not go astray A: dehani lotanena you have appeared alive to us B: bagiga do not go

The whole sequence may then be reversed. There are variations to this, partly on geographical/tribal lines, but much

less improvisation is permissible than with the sakanab questions. The lotanena sequence is followed by more of the latter.

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Eventually one speaker will ask the other to give the news, the new arrival usually being asked first. If either party includes more than one speaker the exchanges so far will have been carried out by all present, with only some degree of unison (though perhaps with one speaker on each side speaking loudest and setting the pace). For the news each party will arrange, usually tacitly, for one member to speak. If there is a clear leader, for example, if a council leader is travelling with an entourage, he will speak, but occasionally a younger or less important man will speak if he is exceptionally eloquent or has important news to impart (I once saw three sheikhs of lineages defer to a younger policeman while they were travelling together to a dispute). The invitation to tell the news comes in a limited number of forms:

na sakana what news? sakanab tegubia have you uncovered news? sakanab timriwa have you found news? gubia uncover! fifa pour out!

The appointed speaker will then respond with a short version of his news, from where he has come, when he set out and where he stopped on the way, why he has come, whether he has seen any rain or grass, whether the people he has seen are well. At this point a frank exchange of news is not held; the news is given briefly, with a preponderance of short stereotyped phrases and glossing over any real problems. The news recitation may not be interrupted with questions. Going through the greetings ritual does not guarantee that a man will hear the truth if the speaker wishes otherwise; the ritual assists the flow of information in general, and on grass and rain in particular, and tends to guarantee its truth, but can also be used to close off areas of questioning with assurances that all is well. Some of those assurances, mainly used at the end of the news recitation and often in sequences, are:

wena lowat kitke nothing else has appeared nat akat kitke nothing has occurred natka heru all is goodness magenait kinmasiw we hear no evil

The news will almost invariably be ended with hamdu lilla medhanok ('praise God, your life!'), to which the replies are:

gudab dehana live long! rabakab dehana live more ably! medhan miria find life!

This will be followed by more greetings questions and then the same procedure reversed, with the arrivals hearing the outline of the news, always ending with hamdu lilla medhanok and one of the appropriate replies. Yet more greetings questions follow, and if the parties are large, this is the time for exchange of questions-not of news-between individuals within them. Each man will try to greet everyone in the other party well known to him.

Now the conversation will drift into the exchange of real news. The ritual has created a context of trust and sociability for the exchange of information and also a framework, an indication of what information is available for

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exchange. Gradually the speakers begin seriously to explore this framework. Up to now questions have been general to the point of meaninglessness. Individuals are not named, families are not referred to. After each party has sketched its news and wished the other life, individuals may be asked after and news of their health given. If rain has not been mentioned questions are now sure to be asked about it. Exceptionally if news is desired privately one speaker may say to another sakanaiatok ('I would take news of you') and they go beyond earshot of the others. From the individuals who used this strategy I would judge that the main subject of these private exchanges was political rather than economic. Otherwise sakanab is very much a public performance. Generally the ritual will merge into a public discussion of the news, lubricated by coffee.

The exchange of information The most important form of news is that of rain and grazing, information which is essential to the biological survival of the Beja pastoralists and their herds. Such information can be treated as a 'factor of production' in Beja society and the greetings ritual is the main institution for its exchange. My own fieldwork leaves many questions about this 'economics of information' among the Beja unanswered,' but some general comments can be made. There are normative values of complete honesty attached to the sakanab ritual, and it would seem at a conscious level that these are observed. As far as I observed and was told, such news is never consciously suppressed and accurate knowledge of recent rain spreads through the district in a matter of days. However, it is not only 'honesty' which is at stake here. Information must be selected for passing on and one form of selection, as previously mentioned, is by culturally determined definitions of whether an individual is 'interested'. So the safest generalisation would be that among male Beja heads of pastoral households information about rain and grazing is exchanged without any conscious suppression. This should not seem surprising, given the flexible nature of Beja land use. On the other hand, it is not true that information received through sakanab is always totally believed: I was told that unwillingness to believe sakanab is one reason for households failing to take advantage of rains, though there are many other factors, such as labour supply, restricting mobility.

It is not only in the sphere of pastoralism that the flow of information enhanced by the greetings ritual assists the Beja economy. The form of wage labour that has been most important within Halaib District has been mining. Demand for mining labour has been subject to many fluctuations. Besides swings in world prices for metals, Red Sea Hills mining has been notoriously unpredictable, owing to logistical and other difficulties. Prospects of exploration and production have come and gone throughout the district. Each project may pass through various stages-for example, prospecting, con- struction, production and loading onto ships-with different labour demands. During certain phases labour demand may outstrip the supply from any one village. So the chance of wage labour can be as unpredictable as rain, and information about it is passed on in the same way. Knowledge in Sufayya of the demand for labour in Gebeit, 50 km away, was remarkably accurate and up to date, though few men made direct journeys between the two. A

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wage rise in Gebeit was known about within days in Sufayya. I was told that during Russo-Sudanese exploration around Sufayya itself during the 1970s, men from Wadi Dib, also 50 km away, would arrive for work less than two days after the geologists had announced they would hire. A startling example of the efficiency of the information network comes from the Gebeit mine file for 1914.6 A party of Ababda from Aswan had walked 500km through mountain and desert on the accurate information that work was available. The network has its limits: accurate information on the Port Sudan labour market was not available in Sufayya, though a few Sufayya men go there for casual work and there is contact by lorry.

A certain amount of information on markets is also available through sakanab. Drivers of lorries coming to Sufayya would report prices of the main staples there if asked. Lorries were the main link with Port Sudan and any drivers passing through Sufayya from Port Sudan were expected to stop, take coffee and pass on news even if they were not making a delivery. News of conditions in Sufayya market itself would quickly spread throughout the area, causing pastoralists in surrounding areas to postpone visits or go to other markets. Oddly, considering its importance in the local economy, information on the camel markets in Darau and Aswan was not available in Sufayya, except when Sufayya men had themselves returned from the area. Presumably the illegal trade in small livestock to Saudi Arabia operated by an oral information network, but I cannot confirm this.

The exchange of news in a ritualised and lucid context thus concerns many aspects of Beja economic life, as well as politics and other social intercourse. The connection between news and greetings is by no means unique to the Beja, but because of the length of the ceremony (greetings could still be exchanged twenty minutes or more after first meeting), the lexical identity as sakanab of news and the most important form of greetings, and the consciousness of sakanab as a Beja custom, we can see this as an extreme case especially worthy of attention, and one which can shed light on many other societies. As far as I know, no ethnographer (apart from Youssouf, Grimshaw and Bird) has emphasised the link between greetings and economically useful information. Information is of course mentioned in many anthropological works, but the precise social and discursive context in which it is exchanged is not fully described. Abner Cohen in his studies of immigrant Hausa in the Ibadan cattle market (particularly 1965) places great emphasis on the importance of information, on prices and creditworthiness. He describes the different strata in the market-the landlords, the clerks and the boys-each of which forms an information network. Information can be passed up vertically also, from boy to clerk to landlord. He notes the collective worship of the clerks and the 'joking' (his quotation marks) among the landlords, but does not discuss further how these ease the flow of information.7

For pastoral societies both Stenning (1966) and Dahl (1979) stress how information gathering is a time-consuming activity and thus affects the minimum viable size (in people) of a herding unit, together with the labour demands of herding itself, which may vary according to the conditions and the species herded. In the Beja case, like the Fulani but unlike the Boran, young boys and (sometimes) women can do much of the work necessary, leaving many men 'at leisure' for information gathering. A similar point is

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made by Paine (1970), who mentions for Lapps that some wealthy herd owners are able to employ hired herdboys and are thus freer to travel and gather information. The nature of the information exchanged by Lapps is rather different, as Paine emphasises, news about where a particular man's herds are, in a society where supervision of herds is not close and animal theft apparently not uncommon. Neither of these facts holds for the contemporary Beja. Paine also discusses the encounters of hosts and visitors but there are no ritualised forms used, except the host's obligation to offer coffee and his prerogative of opening the discussion by asking, 'From where do you come?' After this we see a situation very unlike that of the Beja: the visitor must first offer information of interest to his hosts, consciously hoping that they will reply in kind. Unless the visitor takes the initiative, the two may sit in silence. Information is more actively sought from the other than in the Beja case, and evasion and indirection are not uncommon. Clearly a different 'economy of information' operates among the Lapps from among the Beja. The exchange of information in the two societies might be placed on Sahlins's (1965) continuum of types of exchange, with Lapps engaging in 'balanced' or even 'negative reciprocity' and the Beja approaching, under certain conditions, 'generalised reciprocity'.

What then is the relation between the particular form of Beja greetings and the need of Beja for information with which to exploit their environment? One can reintroduce at this point Milton's distinction between processual and conceptual contexts. The processual context of an exchange of sakanab depends on the individuals participating. Their relations with each other will greatly affect the greetings in terms of length (the closer they are to each other the longer the greetings) and intonation (close friends will greet each other with more obvious question inflection). By giving an occasion for the display of personal warmth to friends, the ceremony allows men to make an implicit claim on the information they have."

The personal warmth displayed is not the only meaning of sakanab. It can also be viewed as a ritual which may have meanings or effects of which the participants are less than consciously aware. I would argue, first and speculatively, that certain aspects of the ceremony, the lucid element so little mentioned in the literature and the blurring of distinctions between rhetorical questions and requests for information, have a direct psychological effect in creating an atmosphere in which there are fewer inhibitions on giving out information. More importantly, though, other aspects of the ceremony refer to general themes of Beja society and culture which separately and together add their force to that atmosphere. The ceremony does not, after all, act as a form of brainwashing in producing absolute frankness, but rather reminds participants of their obligations to each other, as fellow Beja and fellow pastoralists, while creating a context in which to fulfil them. In comparison with the Lapp case of absence of greetings ritual, its elaboration among the Beja should be seen not as a determinant of a different 'economy of information', but as an expressive and facilitating aspect of it.

One of the themes referred to is religion. It is difficult to know how many of the questions have religious connotations, but dabaiwa, the commonest, certainly does. God is praised in response to these questions and at the end of the first, formal news, when the listener's life is also solemnly invoked. This

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mixing of 'sacred' and 'profane' is not peculiar to sakanab or to the Beja: Arabic phrases such as bismillahi, insha'allah and hamdu lilla are spread throughout the everyday conversation of Beja and many Arabic-speaking groups, and a rigid distinction between the 'sacred' and the 'profane' would be alien to them. The greetings ceremony does have a greater than usual element of religious phrases and we can see this as raising the solemnity of the occasion and reminding participants of the general religious injunctions against lying.

Secondly, the greetings ceremony in its fullest form most often takes place in the context of a relationship of hospitality; sheikh/follower or shopkeeper/ regular customer. Fulfilment of the obligations of hospitality and material generosity enhances status for Beja men, though not all hospitality is from richer to poorer or from the more to the less influential; for instance the leader of Halaib Council accepted the hospitality of minor shopkeepers and sheikhs on his tours, and status derived from hospitality does not contradict the ideology of equality among Beja men. In the dekab, with the host providing embers to make coffee, and sometimes food, the ceremony is associated with the obligations of host to guest and vice versa: political cooperation, regular trading relations, friendship.

Thirdly, sakanab is a quintessentially Beja ritual, not only performed in the Beja language but demanding mastery of its vocabulary and rhythms, and seen as peculiarly Beja, as a mark of Beja culture the obviousness of which is almost a joke. The form of the ceremony, Beja as opposed to another language, the rhythmic nature of the conversation, the references to religion and hospitality, its egalitarian nature and the content-information about rain and grazing-are virtually an inventory of the major features of Beja self-perception. I would suggest that the true force of the greetings ceremony lies here; that the primary reason why information flows so freely is the feeling of shared culture and experience among the participants.

Cohen's work, referred to earlier, sees Hausa 'ethnicity' in a non-Hausa context as promoting an advantageous trust and flow of information. For the Beja the native concept we can call 'ethnicity' is not so much one of linguistic and perceived racial differences from other ethnic groups, as an identity based on a common mode of livelihood, a common environment and a common acceptance of certain values. Here we should recall Riesman on the Fulani wondiibe: 'people who share the same life and the same experience of the world'. This is summed up in the use of the term 'arab ('hillmen', 'tribesmen') as a Beja self-ascription. One informant said, 'Where there are 'arab there is sakanab.' Sakanab is a continuing reminder to the Beja of their shared calture, identity and environment, an environment which they agree to see as divided among lineages and for the exploitation of which information must be freely shared.

NOTES

Fieldwork in 1982-83 was financed by the Social Science Research Council. Earlier versions of this paper were given in seminars in the universities of Hull and Manchester, and I am grateful to all who have commented on it, particularly Talal Asad and Lewis Hill. Responsibility for the final version remains mine alone. Though not specifically cited, the work of Roper (1928) has

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been invaluable in understanding the Beja language and a simplified version of his orthography has been used.

A paper by Paul Baxter applies these ideas, discussed in greater detail, to the blessings and greetings of the Boran.

2 For a history of the Beja see Paul (1954). For information on the Hadanduwa or Southern Beja see Salih (1980).

3 The paper refers to the period of fieldwork, 1982-83. This was a time in which the pastoral economy was under severe strain from drought. Since then the pastoral economy of Halaib, like other parts of Red Sea Province, has been severely affected by famine and regular deliveries of food aid.

4 They rise to over 2,000 m in Halaib District, but valley floor altitude in the Sufayya is around 400-500 m.

5 More could be asked about the definitions of 'interest' by which recipients of information are selected. Is the cumulative effect of selection the building up of information networks? Other topics insufficiently explored here are women's greetings, the relationship of sakanab to everyday conversation and to the very different greetings used for regional or national politicians, and whether second-hand information is passed on and, if so, if the source is attributed. Unfortunately fieldwork was unable to cover all these questions fully.

6 File Dakhla 12/1/14, Central Records Office, Khartoum. 7 Here it might also be interesting to consider whether one effect of the ceremonial

protestations that have so interested anthropologists in various parts of the world might be to facilitate the flow of information.

8 I am grateful to Talal Asad for this point.

REFERENCES

Baxter, P. T. W. In press. 'Oromo blessings and greetings', in A. Jacobson-Widding (ed.). Proceedings of the Conference on African Folk Models and Their Application. Uppsala: University of Uppsala.

Cohen, A. 1965. 'The social organization of credit in a West African cattle market', Africa, 35 (1): 8-20.

Dahl, G. 1979. 'Ecology and equality: the Boran case', in Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologies des Societes Pastorales (eds.), Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 261-82. Paris and Cambridge: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press.

Firth, R. 1972. 'Verbal and bodily rituals of greeting and parting', in J. S. La Fontaine (ed.), The Interpretation of Ritual, pp. 1-38. London: Tavistock.

Goody, E. N. 1972. '"Greeting", "begging" and the presentation of respect', in J. S. La Fontaine (ed.), The Interpretation of Ritual, pp. 39-71. London: Tavistock.

Hymes, D. H. 1972. 'Models of the interaction of language and social life', in J. J. Gumperz and D. H. Hymes (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication, pp. 35-71. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Irvine, J. T. 1974. 'Strategies of status manipulation in the Wolof greeting', in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer (eds.), Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, pp. 167-91. London and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Milton, K. 1982. 'Meaning and context: the interpretation of greetings in Kasigau', in D. Parkin (ed.), Semantic Anthropology, pp. 261-77. London: Academic Press.

Paine, R. 1970. 'Lappish decisions, partnerships, information management and sanctions-a nomadic pastoral adaptation', Ethnology, 9 (1): 52-67.

Paul, A. M. 1954. A History of the Beja Tribes of the Sudan. London: Cass. Riesman, P. 1974. Societe et liberte chez les Peuls djelg6be de Haute-Volta, English

translation published as Freedom in Fulani Social Life. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977.

Roper, E. M. 1928. Tu Bedawiie. Hertford: Stephen Austin.

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Sahlins, M. 1965. 'On the sociology of primitive exchange', reprinted in Stone Age Economics. London: Tavistock, 1974.

Salih, H. M. 1980. 'Hadanduwa traditional territorial rights and inter-population relations within the context of the Nature Administration system (1927-1970)', Sudan Notes and Records, 61: 118-33.

Stenning, D. J. 1966. 'Household viability among the pastoral Fulani', in J. R. Goody (ed.), The Development Cycle in Domestic Groups, pp. 92-119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

al-Tom, Mahdi Amin. 1975. The Rains of the Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press.

Youssouf, I. A., Grimshaw, A. D., and Bird, C. S. 1976. 'Greetings in the desert', American Ethnologist, 3 (3): 797-824.

Resume

Sakanab: Salutations et informations parmi la population du Beja du nord

L'article decrit le rituel des salutations des Beja des Collines de la Mer Rouge au Soudan. II suggere que la transmission d'informations economiquement utiles pourrait etre une fonction plus importante des salutations dans les diverses societes qu'on ne l'aurait auparavant pense. Les Beja sont un peuple de bergers, mais les groupes decrits ne sont pas excessivement mobiles, tendant a rester sur le territoire de lignage jusqu'a ce qu'ils apprennent qu'il y a des pluies, qui sont non seulement rares mais aussi fortement impr6visibles et souvent extremement localisees. Ces nouvelles sont transmises au cours des salutations qui sont un trait particulierement predomi- nant de la vie des Beja, et qui ont typiquement lieu lorsque les bergers vont acheter des produits dans les petits centres commerciaux. Les salutations sont basees sur une alternance rapide de breves questions rhetoriques et les demandes ulterieures de nouvelles ou la donnee de nouvelles. Les salutations et les nouvelles ne sont pas considerees comme deux choses separees, mais entremelees dans la ceremonie et identifiees terminologiquement. II en resulte une transmission de nouvelles remar- quablement rapide, fiable et ouverte, une 'reciprocite generalisee' d'informations. Les salutations sont en premier leiu regardees comme une representation dramatique des traits predominants de la societe et de la culture Beja: la religion musulmane, les obligations de l'hospitalite, les rythmes de la langue Beja elle-meme et les difficultes communes des bergers dans un environnement peu sur. En invoquant ces themes, les Beja se rappellent leurs mutuelles obligations de s'aider les uns les autres pour survivre.

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"Sakanab": Greetings and Information among the Northern Beja

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