kibarua

Swahili

Etymology

From ki- +‎ barua (“letter”).[1][2]

Pronunciation

  • Audio (Kenya):(file)

Noun

kibarua class VII (plural vibarua class VIII)

  1. slip (of paper)
  2. temporary work, day labour

Noun

kibarua class I (plural vibarua class II)

  1. temporary worker, day labourer

References

  1. ^ Cooper, Frederick (1987), On The African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa, New Haven: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 26:
    In the nineteenth century, shippers hired slaves to load and unload vessels, and the slaves in turn paid their owners half their daily earnings. This kind of work–day labor–was then known as kibarua labor, from the word for the chit or letter which slaves were supposed to take from their employer to their owner to indicate what they had earned. "Kazi ya kibarua" became the Swahili term for casual labor in the twentieth century.
  2. ^ Cooper, Frederick (2000), “Colonial History”, in Jan Hoorweg, Dick Foeken, R. A. Obudho, editors, Kenya Coast Handbook: Culture, Resources and Development in East African Littoral‎[1], Leiden: African Studies Centre, →ISBN, pages 115-128:
    In Mombasa, Mijikenda and ex-slaves did work in the port, but they gravitated to jobs that could be combined with access to land, particularly day labour – termed ‘casual labour’ by British officials and in Swahili ‘kazi ya kibarua’ (the work of the letter, after the chit once given to slaves when hired out to another person so that their owner would know what was owed to him for the slave's daily labour).
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