Sena people

The Sena people's total population is around 2 million. It is estimated to be about 1.4 million in Mozambique, and about 0.5 million in Malawi. The Sena people in Malawi and Zimbabwe arrived from Mozambique and settled there in early 20th century as migrant laborers. also called Chisena or Cisena, which is part of the Bantu language family. The Sena language has many dialects. ==History==

Historically the autocephalous Sena people were those between the two large cultures of Shona people – a major ethnic group of Zimbabwe, and the Nyanja-Chewa people – a major ethnic group of Malawi and Mozambique. The Sena people have lived mainly in the Zambezi River valley. According to Isaacman, the Sena represent an admix of people, exhibiting "most, though not all, of the characteristics of Shona cultural groups". After the arrival in 1498 of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on an Mozambique island in his search of a sea route to India, the colonial influence began on Sena and other ethnic groups in this part of Africa. In 1514, Antonio Fernandez confirmed there were rich goldfields in middle Zambezi valley, the traditional home of Sena people, and the Portuguese interest in colonizing this region grew. Starting with the 16th century, Portuguese traders, farmers and missionaries arrived in the Zambezi valley (stations in Sena, Tete, Zumbo, Quelimane). The Portuguese settlers built farm estates in the river valleys, working them with African labor which included the Sena people. The interaction with the Portuguese settlers since the 1500s through the contemporary times have led to the Sena people absorbing many Portuguese customs. The gold trade was lucrative, and of interest to both Arab traders and the Portuguese. By 1542, the Arabs who were established in northeast Africa, the Horn of Africa and along the Swahili coast regions of Africa had established alternate routes for the gold, bypassing the Portuguese towns in Mozambique coast and the Island of Mozambique. In the 17th and 18th century, conflicts grew as did new causes for it. For example, the ivory demand and the ivory exports from Mozambique grew, followed by the demand for slaves outside Africa ravaging the Zambesi valley people as well as all others in the rivers of Sena region. ;Slavery The violence and capture of human beings to be sold as slaves grew in late 18th century, and both Islamic and Portuguese official documents of that era refer to slaves as Kafirs. This volume of slave capture and trading increased to a point where it caused major social disorder, when the governor of Mozambique issued an order to stop this abuse, curtail the movement of captured human beings, and end the slave trading that was supplying people across the Atlantic Ocean. In August 1792, states Capela, the Mozambique governor issued an order that, "no more Kafirs will be exported from the Rivers of Sena". These developments stabilized the lives and family units of the Sena people and other ethnic groups in the Zambesi valley as well as the rest of Africa. During the scramble for Africa the weakened Portuguese crown leased this region to British companies, which built the railway connections between the Indian Ocean and their colonies, in this case the TZR, Trans-Zambezi-Railway, between Beira and Njassaland/Malawi via Sena. Once Portugal under Salazar during the 1940s had gained control over the region, then it introduced forced cotton growing and forced labor "contracts" with British colonies. ==Colonial and civil wars==

According to Kevin Shillington, Portuguese colonisation of the region developed from about 1505 through the 19th century, but it was never accepted by Sena people and other Africans. They resisted it, often with disruptions and sometimes with wars. Portuguese attempted various methods to subjugate, such as by sending religious missions in the 16th century to convert the people into cooperative Catholics, but the members of such missions were suspected of bad intentions and killed. ==Society and culture==

Sena people have been geographically distributed in a hot humid region. The heat means they traditionally wore few clothes, the women were bare-breasted and wore nsalu or chitenje cloth, which is a wrap around. Sena people converted to Catholicism in bulk during the colonial era under the influence of Portuguese Christian missionaries, but some of the Sena people of Mozambique have held on to traditional beliefs in polygamy, child marriage and tribal religious practices. Their occupations have included farming, fishing and migrant labor. Traditionally, death rituals have been burials. Similar to neighboring ethnic groups in Mozambique, wedding among Sena people of river valley regions required a brideprice called lobolo which was a payment made to the family of the bride to compensate them for the loss of her work output in her birth home. ==See also==