the challenges of modernity,indigenous habits in a changing world
Strictly speaking, until recently
the word “habitat” never struck a chord in me; it never
rung a bell. When it came to
understanding the concept of
human habitat, I was the goat
to whom the guitar was being
played. I imagined of habitat as a weird and remote place where
headless animals bump into each
other and where legless animals
crawl and where the fabled
Lochness monster once lived in
harmony with the mammoths and the dinosaurs, or something
like that. But sometime back, I
realized that my misconception
of habitat was not a personal
problem, many others perceived
of habitat as a noun, a place, a region or an indigenous forest
full of predators and preys and
the other uncanny characters in
the animal world. It dawned on me, late, that
“habitat” is a verb, a doing word. It is the way we live,
what we eat and drink, how we
cook and eat, or “not cook” what we eat. Habitat went
beyond housing and people, it
came to life and meant much
more. Habitat is all that
surrounds us and how we
contribute to our surrounding and also encompasses our
interaction with the
environment. For example; how
we treat the smallest animal in
the house might just have a
domino effect on the next meal we have, fumigation of beehives
might mean no food for the rest
of our lives. Habitat suddenly
had this whole new meaning to
it, and to attempt to fully
define habitat, is like trying to define life. We live it, we have it,
we lose it, we even conceive it,
but we cannot define it fully,
yet we know it is there and
everything that we do affects
it. While most of us come from an
addressed and specific
apartment or home within an
urban habitat, where mail boxes
line the manicured streets and
kids on bikes crisscross the neighborhood, several
communities in some of the
harshest habitats in the world
do not know of such “civilized” existence. They walk around in
medieval skin cloths and some
even walk bare-chested; in a
country where the breast and
bra business is brazen and raw,
such communities offer no business value and zero market.
Some still eat raw meats and
drink blood, fire is a luxurious
indulgence and is only used on
special occasions. But even with
such “backwardness”, these communities have been able to
conquer their harsh habitats
and excel where most of us
would definitely spend only a
few days before going six feet
under. The Bambuti People of the Ituri
Rainforest- The Democratic
Republic of Congo The average height for the
quintessential American male is
five eleven, I am not even close
to that, maybe with a Chinese
knee-job and heeled cowboy
boots I might come close. Apart from the vagaries of the short
man syndrome, does my height
bother me? No. Why not, you
may ask? Standing among the
Bambuti people, I am a giant. In
a community where the average height is between 50 and 70
inches, height is not an issue.
The Bambuti people inhabit the
Ituri forest in the Northeastern
region of Congo and are about
thirty thousand in number. With the war in Congo and everyone
rummaging through the lush
forest in search of lumber and
uranium, the Bambuti are quickly
losing their natural and only
habitat. The Bambuti are hunters and gatherers, in the
most elementary form of that
word. They hunt small animals in the
forest and also forage the
undergrowth for snails, bugs,
insects and other animals. Crabs,
shellfish, ants and larvae are
essential part of the Bambuti diet. Antelopes are not only a
big source of meat, but also
used in dowry payments.
However, despite living among a
whole variety of forest flora
and fauna, the Bambuti have so much food, they can afford to
be choosy. Hogs and rats are
considered un-kosher and as
such, are not eaten. Clearly,
everyone hates pigs. The Bambuti, also called the
Mbuti, do not keep livestock or
rear mammals, reasonably
because the forest is home to
the biggest, fattest and
deadliest tsetse flies which cause diseases in both cattle and
human beings. Tsetse flies cause
sleeping sickness in humans, but
for a people whose habitat is
almost self-sustaining, who
worries about taking sudden naps in the middle of a bug
gathering session? Too much
rainfall in the forest kills the
small animals or sends them
away and too much drought also
creates a famine, so for these tree-dwellers, life is one tough
balancing act between nature,
hunting and inevitable sleep.
Accompanying the meats in the
Bambuti diet is an array of
vegetables, flowers, roots and tubers, for example, yams,
amaranth, hibiscus, peanuts and
gourds. The Mbuti have an egalitarian
system of leadership where
there is no boss or chief, you
are your own (short) man and
when you offend others, they
simply smack your short body back into discipline and sense.
How cool? They also practice
arbitrary barter trade, usually
exchanging meats with other
bands of Mbuti in the forest. Have you ever had a crush on
your friend’ s sister and simply killed the thought since you
could not imagine lusting after
your friend’ s own blood? Blame your ancestors for your woes,
and broken heart! Among the
Mbuti, marriage is by sister
exchange between acquainted
bands in the forest. See how
easy it is to obtain your friend’ s short sister in the forest, signed, sealed and
delivered? Dowry is uncommon among these
people, but killing an antelope
for your parents in law is
usually a welcome method of
showing gratitude to your in-
laws. Despite their short lifespan, people of the Congo still
consider the pygmies a sub-
human species and there have
been reports of cannibalism
where people short of food look
for short people and in a short while render humans food. It’ s usually a short trip from the
forest to the pot for a short
species of humans. The Maasai of Kenya The Maasai are much more in
number than the Bambuti
pygmies, about a million of them
traverse the plains of Kenya, as
keepers of livestock and they
also practice small scale subsistence agriculture. The
Maasai are a semi-nomadic
pastoral community who wander
from place to place in search of
greener pasture and fresh grass
for their thousands of cattle. However, with recent trends in
urbanization and the emergence
of a middle class in Kenya, land
that initially belonged to Maasai
pastoralists is now being taken
and used in a “more appropriate way”, a classic tragedy of the commons. Wealth in the Maasai community
is pegged on the number of
cattle one owns, and also chiefly
on the number of kids one has.
Possession of either one without
the much needed complement of the other is considered a sure
recipe for poverty. Physically,
the Maasai are much taller and
lankier than the Mbuti pygmies.
In a society where adolescent
males, mythically, had to kill male lions, using a spear, in order to
be inducted into the realms of
manhood, physical fitness is a
must have quality. Despite the
Maasai being one of the main
tourist attractions in Kenya, the government’ s ban on lion hunt has led to the culture
abandoning the spectacle and
resorting to other modes of
proving masculinity. The Maasai live in small one
roomed units called Manyattas
which are made from twigs and
leather and cow dung. The
recipe for the “concrete” includes human urine and ash.
Gross? Not really, when you
consider the high efficacy of
urine and ash as a pesticide,
fungicide, herbicide, and the list
goes on. And the cow dung? It ensures that the roof is water
proof and air tight. The house,
called an enkaji is about one and
a half meters tall and in area,
three by five meters. Due to
the highly nomadic lifestyle of these plain dwellers, housing is
but a temporary venture. Marriage in the Maasai
community is not as easy as it
gets in the Mbuti community;
however, it has its own
idiosyncrasies. When a man gets
a visit from another man, he is to relinquish his bed to the
visitor, and it is then up to the
lady in red to decide whether to
sleep with the visitor, or not. It
is a custom which gives equal
opportunity to both men and women, since neither polygamy
nor instances of polyandry are
frowned upon. Weird or plain
interesting? Competition among the Maasai
warriors, called the morans is
intense, as with all other normal
males. During dances, the
morans, jump high as they sing
and dance in order to find who jumps the highest without
having his heels touch the
ground. What makes the morans
have so much energy as to be
considered “to be of Olympic athleticism”? A diet consisting of milk, blood and meat provides
the much needed protein for
muscle growth and development,
while maize meal provides the
energy. An occasional drink made
from the bitter leaves of the Acacia also provides a much
needed cleansing for their
systems and reduces their
cholesterol, according to web
sources. Having been born and
raised in Kenya, I am yet to see a fat Maasai. Either I have not
looked carefully, or they simply
do not exist. The Maasai clothing consists of
bright red and black clothing.
Usually pieces of red clothing are
wrapped around the body and
adorned with beaded ornaments
and a few metallic jewels. A beautiful face, the Maasai say,
needs no jewels. Mutilation of
the ear is often seen as a
measure of beauty, as is
removal of canine teeth. The
larger the stretch in the earlobe, the more jealousy you
inspire. When it comes to hair
braiding, no Kenyan communities
are more adept at this skill than
the Maasai. The morans braid
their hair with finesse and then color it with red ochre. The Maasai circumcise their boys,
and “dump” them in one hut with no protection from the wild
animals, in order to show their
transition from boyhood to
manhood. Prior to being locked
in a hut, the boys are not
expected to show any motion or emotion during the cutting of
the foreskin, ostensibly to
prevent any extra pieces of
meat from being chopped off
accidentally. A Maasai tradition
that has obviously raised one big pandemonium among Kenyan
activists is female genital
mutilation (FGM). Despite the
traditional Maasai terming it as
a measure “against the pleasure principle”, FGM has been known to cause infertility,
excessive loss of blood, lack of
sexual stimulation and in some
unfortunate cases, untimely
death. While some Maasai have
heeded the noble call to abandon this medieval act of
evil, quite a considerable number
of the older Maasai generation
is still embroiled in this act. Also,
in a community that is largely
parochial, patronage against education of the girl child is still
common. All in all, the Maasai are
a colorful community with a
capability to harness all the
resources in a habitat where
few are available. There is a thin line between
truth and fiction. This is that
line.
the word “habitat” never struck a chord in me; it never
rung a bell. When it came to
understanding the concept of
human habitat, I was the goat
to whom the guitar was being
played. I imagined of habitat as a weird and remote place where
headless animals bump into each
other and where legless animals
crawl and where the fabled
Lochness monster once lived in
harmony with the mammoths and the dinosaurs, or something
like that. But sometime back, I
realized that my misconception
of habitat was not a personal
problem, many others perceived
of habitat as a noun, a place, a region or an indigenous forest
full of predators and preys and
the other uncanny characters in
the animal world. It dawned on me, late, that
“habitat” is a verb, a doing word. It is the way we live,
what we eat and drink, how we
cook and eat, or “not cook” what we eat. Habitat went
beyond housing and people, it
came to life and meant much
more. Habitat is all that
surrounds us and how we
contribute to our surrounding and also encompasses our
interaction with the
environment. For example; how
we treat the smallest animal in
the house might just have a
domino effect on the next meal we have, fumigation of beehives
might mean no food for the rest
of our lives. Habitat suddenly
had this whole new meaning to
it, and to attempt to fully
define habitat, is like trying to define life. We live it, we have it,
we lose it, we even conceive it,
but we cannot define it fully,
yet we know it is there and
everything that we do affects
it. While most of us come from an
addressed and specific
apartment or home within an
urban habitat, where mail boxes
line the manicured streets and
kids on bikes crisscross the neighborhood, several
communities in some of the
harshest habitats in the world
do not know of such “civilized” existence. They walk around in
medieval skin cloths and some
even walk bare-chested; in a
country where the breast and
bra business is brazen and raw,
such communities offer no business value and zero market.
Some still eat raw meats and
drink blood, fire is a luxurious
indulgence and is only used on
special occasions. But even with
such “backwardness”, these communities have been able to
conquer their harsh habitats
and excel where most of us
would definitely spend only a
few days before going six feet
under. The Bambuti People of the Ituri
Rainforest- The Democratic
Republic of Congo The average height for the
quintessential American male is
five eleven, I am not even close
to that, maybe with a Chinese
knee-job and heeled cowboy
boots I might come close. Apart from the vagaries of the short
man syndrome, does my height
bother me? No. Why not, you
may ask? Standing among the
Bambuti people, I am a giant. In
a community where the average height is between 50 and 70
inches, height is not an issue.
The Bambuti people inhabit the
Ituri forest in the Northeastern
region of Congo and are about
thirty thousand in number. With the war in Congo and everyone
rummaging through the lush
forest in search of lumber and
uranium, the Bambuti are quickly
losing their natural and only
habitat. The Bambuti are hunters and gatherers, in the
most elementary form of that
word. They hunt small animals in the
forest and also forage the
undergrowth for snails, bugs,
insects and other animals. Crabs,
shellfish, ants and larvae are
essential part of the Bambuti diet. Antelopes are not only a
big source of meat, but also
used in dowry payments.
However, despite living among a
whole variety of forest flora
and fauna, the Bambuti have so much food, they can afford to
be choosy. Hogs and rats are
considered un-kosher and as
such, are not eaten. Clearly,
everyone hates pigs. The Bambuti, also called the
Mbuti, do not keep livestock or
rear mammals, reasonably
because the forest is home to
the biggest, fattest and
deadliest tsetse flies which cause diseases in both cattle and
human beings. Tsetse flies cause
sleeping sickness in humans, but
for a people whose habitat is
almost self-sustaining, who
worries about taking sudden naps in the middle of a bug
gathering session? Too much
rainfall in the forest kills the
small animals or sends them
away and too much drought also
creates a famine, so for these tree-dwellers, life is one tough
balancing act between nature,
hunting and inevitable sleep.
Accompanying the meats in the
Bambuti diet is an array of
vegetables, flowers, roots and tubers, for example, yams,
amaranth, hibiscus, peanuts and
gourds. The Mbuti have an egalitarian
system of leadership where
there is no boss or chief, you
are your own (short) man and
when you offend others, they
simply smack your short body back into discipline and sense.
How cool? They also practice
arbitrary barter trade, usually
exchanging meats with other
bands of Mbuti in the forest. Have you ever had a crush on
your friend’ s sister and simply killed the thought since you
could not imagine lusting after
your friend’ s own blood? Blame your ancestors for your woes,
and broken heart! Among the
Mbuti, marriage is by sister
exchange between acquainted
bands in the forest. See how
easy it is to obtain your friend’ s short sister in the forest, signed, sealed and
delivered? Dowry is uncommon among these
people, but killing an antelope
for your parents in law is
usually a welcome method of
showing gratitude to your in-
laws. Despite their short lifespan, people of the Congo still
consider the pygmies a sub-
human species and there have
been reports of cannibalism
where people short of food look
for short people and in a short while render humans food. It’ s usually a short trip from the
forest to the pot for a short
species of humans. The Maasai of Kenya The Maasai are much more in
number than the Bambuti
pygmies, about a million of them
traverse the plains of Kenya, as
keepers of livestock and they
also practice small scale subsistence agriculture. The
Maasai are a semi-nomadic
pastoral community who wander
from place to place in search of
greener pasture and fresh grass
for their thousands of cattle. However, with recent trends in
urbanization and the emergence
of a middle class in Kenya, land
that initially belonged to Maasai
pastoralists is now being taken
and used in a “more appropriate way”, a classic tragedy of the commons. Wealth in the Maasai community
is pegged on the number of
cattle one owns, and also chiefly
on the number of kids one has.
Possession of either one without
the much needed complement of the other is considered a sure
recipe for poverty. Physically,
the Maasai are much taller and
lankier than the Mbuti pygmies.
In a society where adolescent
males, mythically, had to kill male lions, using a spear, in order to
be inducted into the realms of
manhood, physical fitness is a
must have quality. Despite the
Maasai being one of the main
tourist attractions in Kenya, the government’ s ban on lion hunt has led to the culture
abandoning the spectacle and
resorting to other modes of
proving masculinity. The Maasai live in small one
roomed units called Manyattas
which are made from twigs and
leather and cow dung. The
recipe for the “concrete” includes human urine and ash.
Gross? Not really, when you
consider the high efficacy of
urine and ash as a pesticide,
fungicide, herbicide, and the list
goes on. And the cow dung? It ensures that the roof is water
proof and air tight. The house,
called an enkaji is about one and
a half meters tall and in area,
three by five meters. Due to
the highly nomadic lifestyle of these plain dwellers, housing is
but a temporary venture. Marriage in the Maasai
community is not as easy as it
gets in the Mbuti community;
however, it has its own
idiosyncrasies. When a man gets
a visit from another man, he is to relinquish his bed to the
visitor, and it is then up to the
lady in red to decide whether to
sleep with the visitor, or not. It
is a custom which gives equal
opportunity to both men and women, since neither polygamy
nor instances of polyandry are
frowned upon. Weird or plain
interesting? Competition among the Maasai
warriors, called the morans is
intense, as with all other normal
males. During dances, the
morans, jump high as they sing
and dance in order to find who jumps the highest without
having his heels touch the
ground. What makes the morans
have so much energy as to be
considered “to be of Olympic athleticism”? A diet consisting of milk, blood and meat provides
the much needed protein for
muscle growth and development,
while maize meal provides the
energy. An occasional drink made
from the bitter leaves of the Acacia also provides a much
needed cleansing for their
systems and reduces their
cholesterol, according to web
sources. Having been born and
raised in Kenya, I am yet to see a fat Maasai. Either I have not
looked carefully, or they simply
do not exist. The Maasai clothing consists of
bright red and black clothing.
Usually pieces of red clothing are
wrapped around the body and
adorned with beaded ornaments
and a few metallic jewels. A beautiful face, the Maasai say,
needs no jewels. Mutilation of
the ear is often seen as a
measure of beauty, as is
removal of canine teeth. The
larger the stretch in the earlobe, the more jealousy you
inspire. When it comes to hair
braiding, no Kenyan communities
are more adept at this skill than
the Maasai. The morans braid
their hair with finesse and then color it with red ochre. The Maasai circumcise their boys,
and “dump” them in one hut with no protection from the wild
animals, in order to show their
transition from boyhood to
manhood. Prior to being locked
in a hut, the boys are not
expected to show any motion or emotion during the cutting of
the foreskin, ostensibly to
prevent any extra pieces of
meat from being chopped off
accidentally. A Maasai tradition
that has obviously raised one big pandemonium among Kenyan
activists is female genital
mutilation (FGM). Despite the
traditional Maasai terming it as
a measure “against the pleasure principle”, FGM has been known to cause infertility,
excessive loss of blood, lack of
sexual stimulation and in some
unfortunate cases, untimely
death. While some Maasai have
heeded the noble call to abandon this medieval act of
evil, quite a considerable number
of the older Maasai generation
is still embroiled in this act. Also,
in a community that is largely
parochial, patronage against education of the girl child is still
common. All in all, the Maasai are
a colorful community with a
capability to harness all the
resources in a habitat where
few are available. There is a thin line between
truth and fiction. This is that
line.
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