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.