Pots and Pottery of Maragoli

You need ridoshi rie kibungu, gaandi mamwamu and marova gu muyeke to make alloy for pottery. This kibungu is found on river banks, also used in house plastering and children love making toys with it. The second dark soil is also found by the valleys and valley bottoms. The sandy soil is found in iRuyega, Bunyore. The woman who I talked to said she has to fetch it from there.

Thoroughly is the mixture made on a bare kraal or ku viju, bottoms of spoilt pots. Hard stones are removed. It should be soft to the hands.

Imbasa and Rusitiru are the only tools for the process. Imbasa is a hard coat fruit you have eaten before. Its coating acts as a shovel, smoothening the inner surface of a pot. On the outside, Rusitiru, a manilla knit spiked cable do roughen the outside in decoration, that pots are 'ugly' inside and beautiful outside. Markings by the mouth of a pot are the effects of Imbasa coat. You would observe half moons, crosses, waggy lines and zigs.

Soil alloy is rolled and a perfect marksman can do a metre long, finishing a pot quickly by the turns. Left hand is for harmonising the outside surface that a coil does not create a ridge with another. A process called kusingitira.

The hardest and tricky most part is not in finishing the mouth collar but in making a kiln for them. Masagati are laid down, wood added on top in order and pots put, some topping others by licking their bottoms. They must have been left to dry a while. Reeds (rise) is covered on top to prevent smoke exit.

With firewood all round (I was concerned about much firewood) fire is lit and would spread to all other parts beneath the pots. Down where the pots rests fire will consume the woods allowing the pots lower down slowly without tampering.

Come sometime later, the pots would need to be out of the kiln when they are still hot, not like bricks where a fire is left to go cold. Inserting a fiddle, the pots are removed by lifting. Musengeri water, reddish, is sprinkled on top of them and insides. The purpose is to lighten the pots from the dark black colour they get from kilns. Look at a pot by the collar and you will see it is reddish.

Pottery is a sunny leisure/economical activity when farms do not require much inputs. If you moulded pots during rainy season they would not dry well and if you set a kiln, the wet ground would be heated to produce a fume unfavourable to baking. Pots would end up braking anyhow. And breaking of a pot does not come as a good sign. 

Pots that would never see fire again are Isiongo and Kibanji because they are for water fetching and storing respectively. One is advised to let them hold in much water before use. You would find a wet kedovorio where the pot was insinuating leakage. 

It saves wood to use pots in cooking. She said that most of the time the family starts by cooking Ugali. The charcoal gained from firewood is used to boil up vegetables. Once a pot is boiled, less fuel is needed (encouraging now). Food cooked in pots is free from contamination because the heat kills many germs. A child who once stole from a pot feared the act because a pot would be warm outside and very hot inside. 

If we adopted pots we would save a lot of energy, keep our foods away from contamination and support the local long time tradition of pottery.

Find the different pot sizes and uses by clicking here

Different pots types for different uses - pic source; newtimes.co.rw