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The Significance of Earth-Eating: Social and Cultural Aspects of Geophagy Among Luo Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

P. Wenzel Geissler
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Abstract

Earth‐eating is common among primary school children in Luoland, western Kenya. This article describes the social significance and meanings attributed to it. Earth‐eating is practised among children before puberty, irrespective of their sex, and among women of reproductive age, but not usually among adult men or old women. To eat earth signifies belonging to the female sphere within the household, which includes children up to adolescence. Through eating earth, or abandoning it, the children express their emerging gender identity. Discourses about earth‐eating, describing the practice as unhealthy and bad, draw on ‘modern’ notions of hygiene, which are imparted, for example, in school. They form part of the discursive strategies with which men especially maintain a dominant position in the community. Beyond the significance of earth‐eating in relation to age, gender and power, it relates to several larger cultural themes, namely fertility, belonging to a place, and the continuity of the lineage. Earth symbolises female, life‐bringing forces. Termite hills, earth from which is eaten by most of the children and women, can symbolise fertility, and represent the house and the home, and the graves of ancestors. Earth‐eating is a form of ‘communion’ with life‐giving forces and with the people with whom one shares land and origin. Earth‐eating is a social practice produced in complex interactions of body, mind and other people, through which children incorporate and embody social relations and cultural values.

Résumé

Manger de la terre est une pratique courante parmi les élèves de l'enseignement primaire de Luoland, dans l'ouest du Kenya. Cet article décrit la valeur sociale et les significations qu'on lui attribue. Cette pratique a été observée chez les enfants prépubères des deux sexes et chez les femmes nubiles mais pas, habituellement, chez les hommes adultes ni chez les femmes âgées. Le fait de manger de la terre est un signe d'appartenance au cercle féminin du foyer, qui comprend les enfants prépubères. A travers cette pratique, ou son abandon, les enfants expriment leur identité sexuelle naissante. Les discours sur la pratique de manger de la terre, la décrivant comme malsaine et mauvaise, s'inspirent de notions «modernes» de l'hygiène transmises, par exemple, à l'école. Ils font partie des stratégies discursives grâces auxquelles les hommes notamment maintiennent une position dominante dans la communauté. Outre sa signification par rapport à l'âge, au sexe et au pouvoir, cette pratique renvoie à plusieurs grands thèmes culturels qui sont la fécondité, l'appartenance à un lieu et la continuité du lignage. La terre symbolise les forces féminines génératrices de vie. Les termitières, dont la plupart des femmes et des enfants mangent la terre, peuvent symboliser la fécondité et représenter la maison, le foyer et les tombes des ancêtres. Manger de la terre est une forme de «communion» avec les forces vitales et avec les personnes dont on partage la terre et l'origine. C'est une pratique sociale qui s'inscrit dans des interactions complexes du corps, de l'esprit et d'autrui, à travers laquelle les enfants intègrent et incarnent les relations sociales et les valeurs culturelles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , November 2000 , pp. 653 - 682
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2000

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