March 2025 African Proverb of the Month Close the bedroom door. Bena (Tanzania) Proverb

Dindage umlyango gwa mugati. (Bena)
Funga mlango wa chumbani. (Swahili)
Ferme la porte de la chambre. (French)
Close the bedroom door. (English)

Bena(Tanzania) Proverb

Background, Meaning and Everyday Use

This Bena Proverb talks about a person who had the habit of leaving the inner door open and causing trouble to the community. This proverb belongs to the Wabena Ethnic Group who live in Njombe, Makete, Ludewa, Makambako and Morogoro in Tanzania. They are estimated as 1,322,000 people. At first they lived in the coast region and they worked together with the Wazaramo Ethnic Group in making iron. Later they did fishing, farming and breeding activities. They are generous people and they work hard. The Bena Ethnic Group use proverbs, stories, sayings, music, songs, dances and so on to educate the community and their descendants.

One of the proverbs they used is dindage umlyango gwa mugati that means close the bedroom door. This proverb can be traced back to a man from the village of Kwavisu who left his village and went to live in another distant village. Fortunately, the village that he went to had a big river and the locals, especially the young people, had fishing jobs. He had a wife and three children. The upbringing of his family did not conform to the traditions and customs of the village. The parents did not know how to keep the secrets of their marriage and their family. They were talking freely regardless of the presence of their children. So the children knew everything that was going on. When the children were at school, they told their classmates what was happening at home.

The news spread in the street. The locals were shocked and asked the village elders to go and talk to the family. They advised them to close the bedroom door that means that they should take care of the secrets of the house and of their marriage in order to prevent any harm and bad morals that is a lack of family discipline and bad behaviour. The parents agreed and did so.

The Bena people use this proverb to inspire morals in children and young people, especially when the young people are preparing for married life. They were taught to take care of their family and to be people who keep the secrets of marriage without complaining or talking here and there. They did it so that the children continue to grow. They do not give up or fear to get married after knowing the difficulties and problems. The proverb is likened to people who behave like this family who cannot keep secrets and thus become people who talk openly and complain here and there and destroy the society.

Biblical Parallels

Judges 16:15,17: “Then she said to him, “How can you say ‘I love you’ when your heart is not mine? Three times already you have mocked me, and not told me where you get your great strength!” She pressed him continually and pestered him till he was deathly weary of it. That he told her all his heart, and said unto her, “there has not come a razor upon my head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb: if it be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”

Genesis 37:5: “And Joseph dreamed a dream and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.”

Mark 1:45: “But he went out and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city.”

1 Corinthians 4:1: “Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.”

Contemporary Use And Religious Application

This proverb teaches us to be people who keep secrets especially when it is necessary to do so. Be it family, office, work and elsewhere, secrets are things or plans that are inside a person. It is not easy for others to understand what someone else has said to others. Many people these days have destroyed their marriages, families, jobs, some have been demoted, some have been fired and others have been killed and so on because of the failure to keep secrets.

In our church such as in our various Small Christian Communities there are also conflicts here and there. Some have stopped praying, others are separated from their churches and many others have problems because someone fails to keep a secret. We are reminded by this Bena proverb that we should be people who keep our secrets and those of our colleagues.

This proverb helps us to put into practice this Jubilee Year 2025 message that calls Christians to increase their hope in God on their way to the Heavenly Kingdom. They are pilgrims of hope on this earth.

Text by:

Sister Felisia Mbifile, SCSF

Rome, Italy

Phone No: +254792229035

Email: felisiambifile@gmail.com

Photographs by:

Rev. Zakaria Kashinje, OSA
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Cellphones:
+255-756-887787 Vodacom
+255-717-3337787 Tigo
+255-786-337787 Airtel
Email: zkashinje@gmail.com
zkashinje@yahoo.co.uk