Primary source texts
There are two primary source texts here, the first a transcript of an interview I conducted in Tanzania, and the second a video of an interview/conversation between myself and Magdalyne Oguti, a graduate student at Michigan State University.
In July and August 2009, I interviewed people in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar Town about a legendary figure called Popobawa, a mythological creature who sodomizes people in their sleep. Later I wrote a book about my findings, Popobawa: Tanzanian Talk, Global Misreadings.[1] Because the form of Popobawa’s attacks is often sexual, topics related to gender and sexuality came up frequently in my interviews.
In the transcripts, I have simplified them to remove pauses and some errors, and substituted pseudonyms for my interlocuters or other names that could be used to identify them. The following table explains some symbols you may see in the transcripts.
| Symbol | Meaning |
| @ | a pulse of laughter |
| : | vowel lengthening |
| wor- | a cut off word, i.e. when the speaker starts to say one word and then restarts with a different word |
| — | a cut off phrase, i.e. when the speaker starts a sentence one way and then restarts another way |
| italics | code-switched words (not in Swahili) |
| #word | my best guess at a word that is hard to hear in the recording |
| # | unintelligible syllable |
| ALL CAPS | a syllable spoken with emphasis |
| <VOX>word</VOX> | words spoken in another’s voice |
- Thompson, Katrina Daly. 2017. Popobawa: Tanzanian Talk, Global Misreadings. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ↵
