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The purpose of this site is to try and get the world to start dealing with the interaction between culture and success in a mature and intelligent manner. Poll: Do you believe culture influences success? Yes 67.5% No 17.3% Uncertain 15.1% - Newest Articles - Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. - Categories - - All Articles - Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. This 1920 work by Roger Babson is a classic with in its genre. It promotes the traditional, pre-1960s explanation for the connection between success and culture. Current events in Zimbabwe are giving us an unprecedented opportunity to measure and judge the effect of white settlement and colonization in Africa. Average US Incomes by Race, Ethnicity and Religion. Max Weber's claim that Protestantism is more conducive to success than Catholicism and that Calvinism is in particular more successful is widely repeated and rarely examined. We need to recognize that culture is the personality of a group or race and we must see culture and having seen it, make it a work of art. The moral justification for welfare is supposed to be that we are temporarily helping out our fellow man through a rough stretch of road or helping the disabled permanently. If it is to become a system for continually transferring wealth from one group to another the people behind this change owe us an explanation. The great taboo of our age is not speaking about race, but speaking about culture. Bourgeoisie is more than just a term of abuse used by the Left, it refers to a real people who led real lives. Selections from the Federal Outlook Selections from a 1960's Rhodesian newspaper. How Africa Underdeveloped Africa Africa is the poorest place in the world. Why? Will Famine Come to Zimbabwe? The end of commercial farming in Zimbabwe could plunge the country into famine. The Tragedy of the Zimbabwe Commons Communally owned property always has and always will suffer from the 'tragedy of the commons' problem. Band Aid Africa recieves $15 billion a year in aid. Is it helping? |
(A Study of the Institution of Eating Under One Phase of Culture Contact.)
H. HOWMAN, B.A.
Listen to conversations by farmers about Natives and their food. is it an exaggeration to say that most farmers seem able to contribute irritating incidents from their experience in feeding Natives? There seems to be a neverending search by the Natives to "put one over" his Boss as regards food; never is an opportunity missed to augment his ration, even in callous indifference to the wellmeaning intentions of that Boss.
Someone, who has promised a beast for Christmas and unexpectedly a beast dies, or even a big buck is shot at the festive time, is annoyed beyond words when his Natives, confronted by meat in quantities, still ask for the promised Christmas beast. Another kills a. beast. His Natives gorge themselves in one grand gesture, and a few days later complain that they have no meat. A farmer, taking to heart nutritional advice, puts an extensive vegetable garden under irrigation. What are his feelings when he finds his vegetables ignored and rotting in the beds? He insists on the women, whom he assumes are too lazy even to fetch the vegetables from the garden, taking delivery. The vegetables then lie about among the huts. A truck load of pumpkins is ordered: most of them go bad. A sheep is killed. Half the labour force refuse to have anything to do with it.
How many ask: "Why should the bachelors always be complaining about food when they get the same ration as the married men?" "Why should I include the wives in my rations? I used to, but they squabled over it, and when their help was urgently needed on the farm they refused to turn out." "Why should I give them meat? It is the one thing that makes them cheeky." "When I asked my boys how they were the other day, after they had finished their meal in the lands, they said they were dying of hunger. Why do anything for them ?"
* * * *
All these isolated little individual experiences, this multitude of minor irritations, annoyances and disillusions, are contributing to the building up of a general Farmer's Attitude towards the Native, an attitude springing from the stories that circulate, the experiences swapped in idle moments, the warnings and advice given by the "old hands." Little by little such an attitude will influence the form assumed by that Racial Attidue, that storehouse of tradtion, that picture we will build up of the other race, which will in time govern the interrelations of the two races. It is not too much to say that a race can be characterised by their tenacious food habitsthe roast beef of England, the sausages of Germany, the spaghetti of Naples, the fried chicken of the Southern States.
Perhaps enough has been said to show that our appetites, the appetites of all people, are shaped by culture within the wide mould provided by the biological constitution of the human species. There is no "natural food" to which any particular people or race are constitutionally limited; there is no racial inability to accept and to thrive on the foods of another race.
CULTURAL
But the absence of biological obstacles must not lead us to an easy view of dietetic change. Full recognition must be accorded to the extremely important and intricate powers of culture itself to resist changes in food.
The "food patterns" of the world are not just superficial patterns or arrangements into which people fit when they eat; they are inextricably rooted in the rest of the culture and related functionally with climate and a whole network of other activities and valuesskill, knowledge, belief, taboo, the division of labour, age grades, prestige, sex distinctions, ideals and status, plus a specific physiological state. At no time can we take an item of food, say Sadza, and, having condemned it, proceed to supplant it with another dish as if that was all there was to it. For those who take that view are overlooking the whole cultural context which alone gives Sadza its significance to the Native, and in trying to make such a change, they must set up other changes in the whole complex of which Sadza is a part.
In addition to a change of taste and physiological feeling the real resistance to change offered by food habits is to be found in their background. An Englishman on the Continent will, in fact he has to, adapt his eating habits and tastes to new conditions, and he may find, apart from novelty, a definite attraction in the new mode, but on his return home he will find it futile to hold out or protest against the overwhelming coercion of the English backgroundif he was disposed to admit that Continental food was better than English! In the same way the Native when at work will adapt himself, within limits, to the new food habits thrust upon him, but back in his reserve the traditional foodgetting, preparation and consumption enfold him.
Very rarely is food just something to eat. Culture cloaks it with infinite gradations of meaning, elaborates or adorns it in many ways. Culture prescribes when we should feel hungry, i.e., the proper mealtimes (1); it prescribes what foods are appropriate to which hour (porridge and marmalade do not belong to the dinner table) or to the occasion; the manner of serving them, the sequence in which they follow each other (soup first, sweets last). And the higher up the social structure the more delicate and discriminating is this cultural elaboration which we call manners, etiquette and good taste. These illustrations from our own culture are given to show more vividly the cultural context which surrounds and shapes the raw biological urge of hunger. Probably all societies have evolved some cultural control of this urge, have elaborated it in ritual, ceremonial and etiquette, and amongst the Natives the same phenomenonis present and must be reckoned with. Food habits do not change easily. Consider how our own habits resist, the propaganda power and resources of industry trying to sell new food habits. Medical authorities find an apparently trivial prejudice, like that against milk as being "baby food or effeminate,' an enormous obstacle in the way of an improved diet.
If we wish to change food habits in the Native we must be poured to change related modes of production, distribution, storage, preparation, housewifery and consumption as well as tastes and social values. We are confronted with the problem of reshaping the biological urge of hunger and any change in so fundamental an area as rood getting will entail a reconstruction of culture over a very wide area, in fact there is a school of thought which holds that all social change arises from a change in the economic base of society.
The contact of our culture with that of the Native's has itself disturbed and disrupted the traditional pattern and in the very change food habits are involved whether we wish them or not. For instance there has been a widespread shift from millet (rukweza) to mealie meal (2) as a result, among other reasons, of the labour saving effect of buying meal. This change was encouraged, if not necessitated, by the absence of men at work throwing added economic burdens on the women. This is not a violent change, itssignificance being the release of women from the arduous task of crushing grain. It finds a perfect parallel in the ousting of homemade bread by bakers' bread in our own culture, a change which began in the working class home of England and only spread to the afterovercoming a large measure of hostility, since its significance as a laboursaving device in that class was not so powerfull as the social status value it acquired from the working class.
Except in a completely isolated group food changes are always going on, thoug the change may not be apparent except over a long period of years. There is an infiltration of new foods and tastes. But under conditions of close culture contact and the sudden thrust of change in the food hapbits of the Native, much greater receptivity towards new foods. Whether or not such changes can be directed in disirable nutritional directions it is unwise to say, but certainly a great opportunity is open to the European to do so.
The whole institution of eating, the patterning of appetite and attitudes twoards food is laid down in childhood and absorbed as later years pass. It is at this time that the physiolocial base which can induce sinckness, vomiting and organic discomfort if disturbed, is laid down; there is in operaton in the family a process of cultural conditioning which underlies all subsequent conscouls andformal instruction as to how to eat and what to eat. It is because culture, in its nutritional aspect, is something carried not only in the minds, feelings and actinos of a group, but in their physical makeup that food changes must be initiated at an early age. If a Native's satisfaction is dependent on particluar physical sensations inhis stomach provided by particluar foods, if he adctually is sick if he eats an egg, as we may be on horseflesh, then those sensations must be modified if he is to accept the foods we suggest to him. National education and national health are inseparable. If the cultural tastes of a people are demonstrably harmful, then a school has to become a dietary if food changes are to be made and guided on the right lines.
We have tried to describe the wider frame within which we can now place the concrete situation we have before us in Southern Rhodesia. We are confronted with two main nutritional situations, fundamentally different in the problems they raise. On the one hand we have the Natives in the reserves dominated by traditional arrangements; on the other, the Natives at work who are more subject to European ideas concerning their welfare. This essay is concerned with the Native in employment and must leave on one side any consideration of the Reserve Native; but it must bring in the background from which the Native labourer comes.
THE TRADITIONAL SETTING
Basically a society must adapt itself to its environment and create a cultural system that will satisfy its living needs or perish. This process of adaptation and the emergence of a measure of control over environment finds expression in culture which might partially be defined as the answer man makes to the interaction between his needs and his surroundings.
Now the fact that the Native has lived in Africa for centuries justifies us in assuming that he had worked out some sort of adjustment; that the food he had learned to acquire and to identify and to grow was at least adequate to maintain life at the pitch or level of efficiency required by the working of the rest of his culture; that he had found answers to the calls made on him by his fellows and by Africa. In the absence of any means of evaluating the diet of old Native society we must assume that it was adapted to Native life. But this does not imply that it was adequate by any dietetic standard we might bring to bear. All that is meant is that it was adequate enough to maintain Native life over hundreds of years in their specific living conditions such as consumption of human energy, hours of work, recreation and rest, seasonal change, etc. Nutritive studies of recent times all over the world have emphasised the real inadequacy of "primitive diet" by our standards and for our cultural and economic demands.
The European came to Rhodesia and promptly began to disturb the old balance between Native life and Native food. The disturbance in the reserves we must ignore now. In employment the Native labourer found himself called upon, with everincreasing stress, to expend an amount of energy, to maintain a rhythm of labour under European supervision out of all proportion to the contribution of energy, vitality and health made by his food.
Medical authority is sufficiently emphatic in its claim that the Native is not dietetically equipped to meet the demands of European labour conditions, to give support to the anthropological theory that food, being a part of culture, is more or less adapted to that culture. If the cultural conditions be drastically altered a rearrangement of food must follow. A specific instance of this is given by the disease of scurvy where it has been said "Normally quite small amounts of this substance (Vitamin C) taken in the diet intermittently will prevent the onset of symptoms unless the individual is subjected to a greater physical strain than is usually experienced." From the placed life of the kraal with its unregulated, personal control of manual labour based on impulse and inclination, to the eight to twelvehour working periods under European supervision is a revolutionary loitary change demanding an equally revolutionary dietetic change.
NATIVE HOUSEWIFERY
Very briefly may we select from out of the complicated system or food production, conservation, preparation and consumption those salient features which bear on the feeding of Native labourers? Karanga custom in the Ndanga district is given.
Food consumption in the kraal is controlled and distributed through the months of the year by a woman wise in housewifery. Grain is stored in a bin called dura, and the aim of all preceding agricultural activity is to fill these bins. We find it accepted amongst Natives that only an old woman, not any woman, can properly control tile issue of food from a grain bin, the novice would issue too much, the bin would be emptied too soon and hunger would arise. Of course all wives have their bins; they learn from them, but from the main bin, the husband's bin which is the kraal's reservoir, no one but the the chief wife (wahosi) may draw grain. As the minor bins are exhausted in the course of the year so does each wife come to depend tot the chief wife and her control of the principal bin. On a woman's judgment and experience depends the food consumption of hit' kraal and if we remember that she budgets for the whole year while the European housewife is concerned with a weekly or monthly wage, we can appreciate the degree of skill required.
The Native man has as little share in this sphere of knowledge as his European counterpart, yet when he goes to work he is expected to know all about it. That is why the farmer who issues a week's rations on Monday finds his Natives complaining of hunger on Sunday. Until they learn to apportion out their meal this is always likely.
That the whole scheme of food activity is a very precarious and hazardous business in Native life is shown by the prevalence of magic. Some further safeguard to skill and care must be found if widespread and constant anxiety is not only to oppress the kraal hill to dull initiative and energy in food activity. Relief is sought in magic and that there is medicine called divisi in all grain bins may be taken for granted unless, as sometimes happens, a Native is so unfortunate as to be unable to acquire it and so runs a grave risk.
This divisi, this life insurance as we may call it, was once a human head. It is obtained from medicine men and, up North, from the Zambesi River monster Nyaminyami. It has two uses. Like a fetiliser it is put in the lands to ensure good crops and quick growth. It is also put in grain bins to ensure that the grain is not finished too soon and also that you get maximum satisfaction out of eating it, i.e., you feel full on a little. A Native who can be induced to speak about it will assure you that a supply of grain which would suffice perhaps for nine months will last the year if mixed with divisi. and also that you need only to eat a little to feel full. It would be an enterprising farmer who could Include divisi his rations!
Clearly a Native expects and is accustomed to a food shortage since it is only through magical protection that he can hope to meet and survive the vicissitudes of the year.
EATING
Sadza is, above all, the Native's food. No meal is complete or satisfying without it. But just as essential is a relish of some kind, called usavi, and in these is to be found the highest art of the housewife. Many and varied are the recipes for usavi, they disprove emphatically that the diet of the Native is monotonous and dull. In fact the wide fault that Natives find with their food when at work is its monotony. Some tribes, as for instance the Shangaans of Ndanga, are acknowledged by their neighbours for their skill in utilising their environment for the preparation of usavi.
The importance of usavi cannot be overestimated and it is stressed because of the popular view that all a Native requires is sadza. Many people issued meal as their only ration. "If our grain bins were full and we had no usavi we would be hungry," they say, and an observer has only to note the attention and effort given to the collection of material for usavi to appreciate its importance. There is the hurried collection of pig weed while weeding a farmer's lands, which the Boss may forbid as interfering with his work. There is the strenuous labour of cutting down trees to capture a locust swarm before the early sun warms their wings, an organised effort so strong as to denude hillsides of their trees. So essential is usavi that in a bad year Natives will be found gathering roots and herbs which are highly unpalatable, bitter, and, on chemical evidence, full of tanin.
An instructive sidelight on Karanga ideas about feeding is provided by their language terms. A good meal is one in which sadza and usavi just balance. Usually they eat till the usavi is finished The sadza that remains over is called nzuwa, and to eat this "sadzawithoutrelish" is not "to eat" (ku djga), but to ku temura. This nzuwa may be kept over during the day and is then called mushwedzgwa. If kept over to the following day it is called muradzgwa. It is for mushwedzgwa that visitors ask if they arrive at a kraal.
We note that sadza without usavi is hardly recognised as food and that a proper proportion between the two is essential if the Native is to be well fed, and, indeed, if he is to consider he has fed at all. Increased bags to the acre in the reserves, additional meal rations, may in fact be useless from a nutritional point of view if there is a shrinkage in the vegetable, animal and insect matter that goes towards usavi.
Finally it must be noted that a meal is comprised of sadza and usavi only. There are no separate dishes or additional courses such as form part of our nutritional arrangements. Natives actually dislike the idea. "We would vomit if we took a bit of potato, a bit of cabbage, a hit of meat, like you do," and there is a hint of scorn in the idea of nibbling at various little dishes. Native children are always nibbling and scrounging for food, but when they reach the ss about eight they will be lectured and scolded for such behaviour. A grownup does not eat between meals, it is childish. It is this attitude which lies behind the failure of Native labourers to justify a farmer in his efforts to provide large quantities of vegetables for them; they simply do not eat vegetable dishes except as an usavi. The same attitude irritates the Salisbury housewife when she finds some dish from her table, which she so kindly gave to the staff, thrown in the rubbish bin"the ungrateful munt! Why be considerate with him if he is so unappreciative?"
It is in the usavi dishes that the dietician must search for the source of all those food values which sadza does not provide. In general the mice hunts, the game net, the fish trap, the search for herbs and wild fruit, the ant trap and the pumpkin patch, each working in an intricate context of traditional experience, have but one end the augmentations and variation of the usavi dish.
This will make it clear that bachelors at work are liable to feed themselves indadequately unless usavi is issued to them and why they should be so full of complaints. The appetising quality and variety of thier food depends on the art of usavi cooking and without a wife to ensure this their enjoyment of food and their diet suffers. Also usavi takes some time to cook so that a farmer who rushes the midday meal or keeps his gang too late to allow time to gather stuff before dark Is liable to cause discontent. At least one farmer has found the value of having sadza and usavi cooked in bulk and issued to his gang in the lands when engaged on any special work necessitating it minimum break at midday. The copper mines up North found that " ... for for every married Native admitted to hospital there were two single Natives admitted," and that ". . . cooking the food for single men brought about very good results ... and an improvement In general physique" because "single Natives neglected to cook the food properly.''
To those who believe that the Native is a ravenous eater whose feeding is "primitive" and uncontrolled we offer the following outline of the cultural control, through which, as we have already suggested, the urge of hunger is satisfied.
The distribution and apportionment of food is governed by complex rules of etiquette which define the behaviour of different age grades, young and old, seniority, of the sexes, of different relatives, of strangers. Everyone knows his place. How very rare is there any trouble over the sharing of food, even when starvation is abroad and appetites might be expected to overrule manners! Men and women never sittogether, or only on special occasions such as in marriage rites. Nor do those between whom there is any illfeeling: "there was trouble between them and they were eating apart."between them and they were eating apart." The meal is essentially a communion and is ceremonially used as such when reconcilliation or new social bonds are to be proclaimed. If a farmer wishes to find out how kinship or friendship divisions run through his labour he cannot do better than note how they group themselves at. meal times. When hands have been washed and the food is ready a definite order takes charge. Young men await their elders and a youth would not start until told to do so by his father; if small and for some reason not feeding With the women, he would riot, among some tribes, even squat in the circle round the dish, but sit outside and reach in. A boy may only dip his lump of sadza (musuwa) into the gravy (muto) and not remove any lumps of meat that may be in the usavi. His father must do that for him. Different relatives have all kinds of special privileges over food: a wife must keep certain delicacies, such as a special rat, for her husband and not eat it herself.
The Native's insistence on the sharing of food is a remarkable element in his culture. From the earliest years a child is taught to share his food, that he must never eat alone, and, at the same time, learns to share in the food of others as a matter of course. To share in food is no occasion for gratitude for thanks (3), it is the natural thing to do. So wives automatically share in their husband's rations if they do not get an extra ration for themselves, and wages will not be spent to augment the ration; visitors, strangers, all share in the labourer's food. It is not hospitality in our sense of the word, it is just the natural and proper thing to do. So a farmer whose temper is tried when wives refuse to turn out to work and who "show no gratitude" for his extra ration need not despair of the Native. Nor should he think his rations are excessive when he finds "hosts of visitors sharing his rations," for his labourers will deny themselves food to allow visitors a share. If his labour is to be well fed, rations must provide for this sharing attitude. One trader remarked: "Parents visiting the store have to buy their children packets of biscuits to keep them quiet, and I often wish that white children were here to see the unselfish way they are handed round." To eat by oneself is very bad manners, and, when necessity demands it, a Native will always turn his back on those present while eating by himself. This sharing habit is intimately associated with their whole mode of life, but it is already being undermined by the cycling mobility of modern times. In the face of it, all such virtues as thrift, good husbandry, preparation for a rainy day, all those mental attitudes which mean a restriction on food sharing, are in direct opposition to their whole system of life; in fact, our virtues would be vices if transplanted without modifying their culture to receive them, it has been wisely asked wether the Natives will continue to be so generous when they can conceal their food supplies as effectively as we do ours? The privacy of the pantry is a very different influence from the publicity of kraal housekeeping.
THE GOOD MEAL
The Native's idea of the "good meal" or a "square meal" is a very important factor, for whatever new economic, educational and dietetic measures might be taken to ensure better food, if the Native does not feel he has had a square meal he will nullify the bestlaid schemes.
The sign of repletion, the end of a good meal, is a full stomach. They will indicate a distended stomach and their talk becomes animated at the thought of it: "If our stomach does not feel us we are still hungry." And the feeling of abdominal strain which is so necessary in their ideas would doubtless be a most uncomfortable and probably painful sensation to us. Unless there is this sensation at the end of a meal, a sensation of which the Native is acutely aware, hewill not feel he has eaten sufficiently, and to this end stodgy, heavy, sadza is the finest food. Weight of food is most important, and the writer found when, at different and unexpected times, he weighed the food of Native Messengers who could not be deemed to be manual labourers, that on an average their wives brought them 3 lbs weight of sadza (not dry meal) for the morning meal, and of this they eat 2 lbs. 5 ozs. plus whatever usavi was brought. Casual Natives at the office, who had eaten the previous day, consumed weights or sadza varying from 1 lb. 4 ozs. to 3 lbs. 6 ozs., and this was sadza only. With usavi they would have eaten more. We may prescribe a ration more consonant with our ideas, varied tastefull, dietically valuable, but unless it conveys that heavy lumpy feeling in the stomach which a Native expects of his food he will still feel hungry or consider he is not being properly fed. Consider the caustic comments of the farmer who, knowing his boys have been fed, is told, "We are hungry," or even "We are dying of hunger"; or if a manager who, conscientiously issuing nuts, beans, vegetables and only I0 lbs. of meal a week, finds that his Natives are dissatisfied with their food! Is the absence of stomach strain the explanation?
Our food to the Native arouses the same objections we raise at the thought of substituting concentrated extracts in cubes and pills for our wellrounded meals. They say: "Why the white man keeps so much food and cats so often is because he eats so littlewe would need all his food at one meal." (4) One might say that absence of stomach strain connotes hunger to the Native and when we consider actual foods we shall see that "foods which keep in the stomach" are favored for long journeys or special hard work.
The source of this stomachwhichfeels must be sought in earliest childhood, followed by years of habituation. (5) The potbellied piccanin is not only a common observation of the European, but the pride of his mother and the visible sign of her maternal care. Within a week his tiny stomach is tested by and accustomed to heavy food.
A further background to this idea of how good a square meal is must be noted, indeed it is a background to their whole attitude to food. In our culture food is a regular routine affair that never varies, so clocklike in its arrangements that it is taken for granted. To the Native, food has no such pleasant guarantee. His experience of It ranges from months of starvation, when every mouthful counts and every seed is swept up, to periods of profusion, to that happy times of Zhezha when "there is so much food you can refuse it" (February to March). The emotional values behind his food are high and varied, rising as they do out of such fluctuating experiences as we never know. Remember for a moment the significant remark occasionally made by those exceptional members of our own society "You do not know what it is to he without food, and with not a penny to get any." The experience of such a person is individual and abnormal; it Is not a part of cultural attitudes common to and instilled into all members of society as occurs amongst the Natives, who must even sink magic to help them bear it. The intensity of Native attitudes to food is often reflected in the assualt and culpable homicide cases which come before the courts. That a wife did not have food ready for her husband is regarded as a legitamate reason for beating her, and often a husband goes too far especially afteer beer and lands himself in crime.
Food, therefore, is intimately associated with most of his pleasures and sorrows, of his joys and tribulations In a manner we are unconscious of in our culture which has rendered food consumption so independent of the anxieties of life.
Perhaps we see now why the feeding or Natives by an employer is such a highly important part of their relationship. Also why, when food is such an anxious object of attention, the Native never misses an opportunity of increasing his foodsupply, and insists on that Christmas beast even when he already has ample meat on hand. This view, combining with his idea of "the good meal," explains why the Native will always eat all he can in one go; eat a big buck in one evening and never dream of spreading it out over several days, even with famine about him. Food is much too important inside the stomach to trifle with outside.
INFANT FEEDING
We have already pointed out the definition imposed on taste and appetite by culture. This definition is laid down in childhood and during the progressive moulding process that follows. I Here are the most striking features of infant feeding among the Natives.
The insistence that a child must be fed from the breast whenever it cries for it, at any time, anywherewhile working, while talking, even during a case in the office. The European child from birth is subjected to disciplinary influences; it feeds at regular intervals, receives prescribed amounts and learns to associate the pleasures of food with certain activities going on around it. This is not so with the Native babe. It learns no discipline, no routine, no denial. In the kraal its mother's breast is never withheld. (6) What fine material is presented here for views on the cruelty of European mothersif Natives were prone to generalise, as we are, on human nature.
Here is a most interesting situation. In its earliest years the food supply of the Native child is so unfailing, so certain, that it rarely ever experiences a food shortage, never knows the heightened feeling of tension, of expectancy, and the intensity of satisfaction after denial, that the disciplined European infant experiences. Yet in later life the whole position is reversed. The Native plumbs the depths of scarcity and abundance, while the European knows only a sober and habitual mealtime. In this contrast in early experience, in these two modes of education of so profound an impulse as hunger, there must be most valuable material for the psychiatrist in any study of adult psychology.
Is milk food? The Native is very doubtful. Milk is recognised as being necessary for young children, that "it helps them to live," but that they could live on milk alone is an impossible suggestion.
The mother gives her child the breast more to sooth it than with the idea of feeding it. As one put it, "Small boys drink milk from the cattle but grownups never, unless it is sour, and then it becomes food. Otherwise it is only milk.'' This notion of the breast as a soothing device to be given at any whimper actually results in the mother adding to an overfull tummy whose pain draws out the infant cry.
(I learn from a nurse with great experience of Native Clinics that this excessive and irregular feeding leads to indigestion, with fermentation, diarrhoea and acute enteritis; that in neglected cases vomiting ensues, the child becomes rapidly dehydrated, and fatal results often follow. Only the strongest constitutions can survive these conditions, yet treatment in the early stages needs only to be a dose of mixed oil (castor and sweet oil), followed later by a dose or two of milk of magnesia.)
Because of this conception of milk, mothers force their weekold babes to eata thin porridge of meal mixed with water or gruel called bota. A special method of feeding called ku kikia occurs whereby the bota is held in the cup of the left hand under the infant's mouth while the fingers of the right hand push, smear and rub the gruel into the mouth in spite of spluttering protest and apparent danger of choking. It seems to be cruelty to children, but to the mother it is essential, and as the tiny stomach swells and grows so too does her maternal pride. Bota is for her the real source of infant growth and health, not milk. But what of infantile mortality rates and, for those who survive, what bodily constitution and vitality? (7) Place this view of infant feeding against that of a biologist"The infant is not born with any ripe faculty even for the digestion of food. The child must be taken through every step in digestion with as much care as it is necessary to bestow on the education of the mind. Food is fundamentally poison . . . . the child is fed by its mother in order to immunise it against such poisons."
FOOD TASTES AND DIETETIC IDEAS
These vary from tribe to tribe and even by localities. An enormous amount of research would be required to identify and to localise their variety. Even close proximity of tribes with different principal crops, different relishes and modes of cooking has not meant much diffusion from one to the other, but rather attitudes of scorn, contempt and repulsion typical of tribes in Europe. Only those foods are dealt with here that concern employers.
Sadza.Even so universal a dish as sadza is made according to taste in consistency, heaviness and fineness of grain. Badly cooked sadza is called mbodza. Upfu ya ka mwazhika is gritty meal and is very much disliked. Natives will prefer an employer to buy nativeground meal, and even where a farmer has a mill on the farm they will walk great distances to a miller whose mill is famed for its fine milling. A trader whose mill is wider than 24 mesh will attract very few customers, though it is interesting to find that such a mill sometimes does quite well because the Native thinks he is getting more meal, since such a coarse meal does not pack so closely in his basket. At the same time such a miller finds a ready sale for sieves, as his customers will sieve the meal and use the coarse portion for beer. While the average trader's mill is a 24 mesh the Native is increasingly tending to buy from the big milling companies where he can get the fine No. 1 or 30/32 mesh meal and even the refined Pearl meal. He does this, not to ape the European, but because these refined meals are the closest approach to the old original fineness of grain which a pair of stones (guyo and huyo) once ground out in the kraal. This insistence on fineness of grain has most serious consequences, for it means that the staple food of the Native population is being deprived of its dietetic values. (8)
There are two kinds of sadza
(1) The proper sadza which is carefully prepared by first adding a cupful of thin paste called mususu (a handful of meal mixed in cold water) to the pot of boiling water. 'When this mixture bubbles it is said to ku kwata, and it is then, if the men be near, that the woman puts the twirling stick with prongs (musika) into the pot and, turning to the men, asks, "May I stir my pot?" The answer to this little ceremony of politeness is, "Please stir, Mother," and she slowly proceeds to add meal by the handfull, rotating the musika all the time until the sadza is too thick and she has to use a stirring stick (mugate). Meal is added until she judges the sadza is just right; it must not be too thick nor too watery. Care is taken by a woman to serve this to her husband in a becoming way. Nicely rounded, shiny lumps are made with a wooden spoon (ywaku) and piled on top of each other (zwitina) on a plate (ndiro).
(2) The other kind of sadza, usually made by men or when in a hurry, and certainly not a proper dish to be set before a husband by his wife, is known as sadza ro ku bvuwa. The meal is added to boiling water without first adding the thin paste. Only a mugate is used to stir it. This, they say, causes the sadza to be lumpy, the small lumps containing a kernel of uncooked or improperly cooked meal. This sadza is made when hard work or a long journey is about to be started; it can be felt in the stomach for a long time afterwards; a man then does not feel hungry, can go without food, and has plenty of strength.
When coarse meal is prepared in this hurried way it usually results in the meal merely being scalded, and consequently it continues to swell and expand in the stomach. If the Native has filled himself to capacity, this further unforeseen expansion inevitably causes stomach trouble. Hence the "alleged stomach trouble" caused by coarse or husky meal is usually quite genuine.
The writer has found that 1 lb. of dry mealie meal becomes 2 lbs. 5 ozs. of sadza ro ku bvuwa, and varies round 2 lbs. 8 ozs. of proper sadza. Of Natives who had eaten the previous day, he found, at different times, that 1 lb. 4 ozs. and 1 lb. 10 ozs. of sadza ro kit bvuwa were eaten, while of proper sadza one ate 3 lbs., another 3 lbs. 2 ozs., and another 3 lbs. 6 ozs. at a sitting. This is significant, for Natives admit that they are unable to eat as much of .sadza ro ku bvuwa as of the proper sadza, and the tests show that more than twice the quantity of the latter as compared with the former can be eaten. This means that labourers who habitually eat sadza ro ku bvuwa are not consuming the same amount of food as those with wives. Men dislike cooking, specially after working all day, so they will skimp the business of preparing proper sadza, and the acquisition of a temporary wife is a useful way out.
These figures, when reduced to weights of dry meal, show that for ro ku bvuwa feeders one pound of dry meal is too much, but when made into proper sadza a pound is not enough. It must also be remembered that these were meals without usavi, and many Natives refused the offer of such a meal because no usavi was provided. All the weights would go up if usavi was available. Of course these figures are very meagre and ignore variations among individuals and the influence of climate, but they do tend to support the experience of farmers who have found that 2 to 2 lbs. of meal a day is a ration of contentment, and the wisdom of messengers' wives at Zaka who provide just over a pound of dry meal for their husbands' principal meal. The legal minimum of 1 lbs. a day is a danger line no matter what weight of supplementary food is supplied, for it is the sadza which must evoke a sense of stomach strainat least until changes in infant feeding have been brought about.
Maize meal sadza is said not to be so satisfying as millet meal. The latter gives more strength. So the shift from millet to maize has meant a deterioration in their food, for those people who hold that view. Many still keep to millet sadza, and when a Shangaan woman said that kaffir corn meal was better than millet her Karanga husband indignantly argued against her.
Eggs.This dietetically valuable food is not eaten amongst most tribes. One informant in Darwin admitted that he was tabooed eggs, but generally the answer is, "Eggs do not like to stay in the stomach; we would vomit." Only persons possessed by a Shave spiritthe Shavi ro muzunguwill eat eggs; the spirit calls for them and eats them raw. That a spirit should call for eggs is a sign that the eating of eggs is abnormal. Some will say that eggs cause impotency and that women avoid eggs for fear of childlessness.
Vegetables.Natives have a definite prejudice against eating raw vegetables, and even during the rainy season of green vegetables they tend to be held over and dried. So lettuce is ignored.
Cooked vegetables (murivo) are eaten with discrimination. The Northern Rhodesian copper mines found that carrots, turnips and leeks had to be put in a previously prepared stew before their labourers could be made to eat them; the Rand mines had to go further and chop up vegetables very finely in a stew to prevent their removal. Enquiries indicate that pumpkins, spinach, pumpkin leaves, brinjal, marrowkale and turnip tops have been found by farmers to require no persuasion, but that cabbage sometimes requires a little time "to put over." Tomatoes, though they prefer to sell them to Europeans nowadays, are appreciated.
Potatoes, beans and monkey nuts are, of course, wellknown Native foods, though baffling preferences appear at various times for one or the other of beans and nuts. It may be that the high fat content of nuts meets a varying dietetic need, for though generally preferred to beans, occasions occur when Natives object to nuts because 'there is so much fat in them." (9) Beans must be free of weevil or borer, for Natives believe that such infected beans cause diseases of the stomach.
Mention might be made here, as an instance of ingenuity in the acquisition of food, of the lower Lundi Shangaans who live in a starvation area. The potato tops of the normal crop are cut and planted out as "cuttings" in the sandy bed of the river. There they remain, throwing down roots to the water below, and by October these have swelled out to form finger like potatoes that provide those extra mouthfuls which are so necessary it that tune of the year. The sight of potato tops growing on the white river sand is a surprising one till the secret is revealed.
The Natives have an expression, "Murivo u no gura mavi," meaning "the vegetable cuts the knees." A man will use this after having eaten a lot of vegetable usavi because nothing else was available. It is a laziness from the knees; he just wants to do nothing lie has no energy. The vegetable is net an energyproducing food, in their opinion. They could never agree with "PopEye"!
There is a very large number of different vegetable growths, and fruits and nuts, which are collected from the veld. (10) Some varieties are very attractive dishes, but the collection of others is a sure sign of a bad year, of a time when the Native is hard pressed to find anything for the usavi dish.
It is not as a food, not because of any recognition of the food value of vegetable matter, that the Natives collect and eat it; but simply as an ingredient of usavi. So too many vegetables upset the balance between sadza and usavi; the usavi dish is too small to take too large a quantity of vegetables. If there are plenty of rats on the farm or similar meat delicacies obtainable, it will be the vegetable ration that is ignored. All these elements, and probably many more, contribute to those vexatious experiences which farmers know so well, particularly the progressive ones who try to balance the diet with green stuff.
The writer does not feel that he has got to the bottom of the food tastes outlined above. Generally, a Native will account for an aversion by saying it makes him vomit, in much the same way as a European would say he feels ill at the idea of eating locusts or snake, but there are deeper taboos and beliefs which are difficult to reach and are often found only by accident. Much too easily does the Native offer an explanation that is only camouflage. Mr. Blake Thompson tells me that "green vegetables are often looked on as women's food and likely to make a man sterile, also onions and leeks."
A dish that might be mentioned here is called umtakura, and is recognised as the most strengthening and lasting food the Natives have. It is a mixture of beans and whole mealies boiled together. Any very hard work, any anticipated delay till the next time food is obtainable, a long journey, are all occasions best prepared for on umtakura.
MeetThe native will do anything for meat, and draws on unheardof springs of energy when meat is the inducement.
As a general rule, it might be said that meat, under old cultural usages, was only available on ceremonial or ritual occasionsa sacrifice to the spirits, the sacrifice of a beast at burial or inheritance ceremonies, theceremonial feasts at marriage, the fine of a beast paid to a chief, the ceremonious reconciliationof opponents In a case, the honour accorded to a visitor. There were innumerable occasions whose significance depended on a feast of some kind; Native society was shot through and through with ceremony in which the consumption of meat was the keynote.
To what extent this ceremonial atmosphere around meat guaranteed a regular or spasmodic supply of food it is difficult to say; still more difficult would it be to say what average quantity of meat was provided per individual. Because of the custom of making a killing a feast, the largest number of kinsfolk would share in it so that at no time would a large quantity per person be available; but again there were certain feasts restricted to very special relations. This question is also complicated by the rules of apportionmentthere being well recognised parts of a beast which are reserved for special people, the chief's portion, the spirits' portion, the deceased's sister's portion, and so on for various relatives according to social status.
To this exploitation of domestic resources must be added the more uncertain meat supply of the veld. That this was a most important activity is certain. Tribal hunts took place on a grand scale. There were and are hunting spirits, magical guarantees of success, the forecasts of the "bones," many traps, and a large body of traditional lore and skill in the acquisition of game, birds, rats and fish.
Generally we can say that meat was a sufficient rarity to make any occasion a most significant one, and to this must be added ceremonial and ritual values. The feelings and emotions behind meat are deep ones. Its consumption marked an occasion of special joy or special gravity, so it attains to and provokes a cluster of emotions far beyond its significance as an item of food.
Anyone who has stayed to watch the scene round a big kill, particularly an elephant, will never forget the complete enthusiasm and frenzy, when knife and axe cuts on legs and hands pass unnoticed, and the Native literally throws himself into the meat. Here is the highest pitch of excitement, the unexpected gift of enormous quantities of meat; but all the way down the scale to a ration of one pound per week these culturally formed attitudes towards meat are present and are ready to find expression in terms of the quantity and the significance of the occasion. Such "kills" remain redletter days in the history of the tribe, never ceasing to provoke animated memories. Such is the meaning of meat.
Perhaps we can see now why the farmer who makes an occasion of his meat issuethe Christmas beast, the "end of the season kill," the quarterly slaughterfinds an enthusiasm that a diminutive regular ration can never arouse, no matter how much more commendable the latter be on nutritional grounds. And it is because of the same reason that so many farmers have found that "meat is bad for them," that ''It makes them impudent," "gets them out of hand," "causes hark chat," and 'the only time 1 have trouble with my labour is when I give them meat.'' All the milder forms of stimulation and social excitement induced by meat.
Within this general attitude to meat farmers may come across many specific taboos characteristic of various tribes. There l the wellknown one of the Mohammedan Native and such people as the WaRemba which forbids them to touch meat they have not themselves killed by cutting the throat; there are people, mainly differentiated by totems, who may not eat sheep, goats, pigs, different species of buck, various portions such as the heart, the marrow, the brains, and the legs of the animals. Not only dotradtional taboos operate, but new ones sweep into power such am the prohibition against pigs among the Zionists and the "Apostles" who will refer you to the Bible and the evil spirits which entered into swine There are numerous such "superstitions" which are liable to upset tile farmer's meat ration, but not of very great importance as it general rule. Of course, in the Reserves the "Cattle Complex," which is a real psychological complex buttressed by religious, social, ceremonial and social status motives, is an enormous barrier between the Native and an ample source of meat. It is a fine example of how culture can restrict a people's food supply; the urge of hunger, even in a famine area, is not strong enough to overrule the cultural attitudes towards cattle and the place they hold in Native hearts and minds and daily life.
MiscellaneousLocusts, flying ants, ants and caterpillars are regarded as great delicacies, worthy of hard work and great patience. No farmer should hinder his Natives in collecting these; their food value is higher, caterpillars particularly having a higher protein content than meat.
A Native is always on the alert for honey; he has his hives and his magical medicines to protect them. In stores he will buy sugar and eat it as we do sweets, and those farmers who have tried issuing sugar or molasses as part of their rations have found it most appreciated. (11)
A shortage of salt expresses itself in a deep craving and varies considerably in different parts of the country. In the Zambesi Valley salt will carry a traveller anywhere and assist him from any difficulty. Not a grain will be ignored if it falls on the ground, and a handful" of it will be eaten ravenously. Salt pans are a source of tribute and of prestige to the controlling tribe. Certain plants are burned and the ashes provide a salt. Most farmers have found it pays to be liberal with the salt ration, but to guard against a surplus being put to trading purposes. (12)
Fruits such as oranges are such a completely new taste that it is difficult to generalise, but such incidents as that of the farmer who found that orange extract had to be administered compulsorily by the spoonful and later had to guard the bottle to prevent it being drunk straight off, and another who suddenly found his orchard, which had stood unmolested for years, requiring protection since he started to educate his labour up to vitamin C, are indicative of how quickly this taste can be acquired. A Native suffering from bad gums and teeth was startled by the simple prescription of "eat an orange a day for a week," and later astonished by the sudden cure. News such as this spreads widely. (13)
Mr. Blake Thompson also tells me that orange and lemon juices are believed to have aphrodisiacal properties.
CONCLUSION
The most important foods that the Native not only lacks but culturally avoids are milk, eggs and green vegetables. Medical opinion is emphatic that meat and fruit are inadequate, not only in the Reserves but particularly outside, where hard manual labour makes meat essential for health and energy. His basic food is being deprived of its nutritive content as the purchase of refined meal spreads. Fundamentally, the most serious problem centres in infant feeding, and medical comment here suggests not only the heavy loss of life but the repercussions of weakness, disease and loss of bodily and mental vigour to which Native ideas give rise. Interference with a mother's dearest sentiments is a perilous proceeding, and even if possible would be far too slow. Schooltime offers the most strategic period for any dietetic moves.
We see, then, that if "man is first of all a nutritive process," as one authority put it, that the Native's selection of the chemical substances that are available or should be made available is dietetically unsound and inevitable an eroding influence on his physical and mental makeup. His traditional or "natural" food is not the fine thing so many hold it to be, and in the new environment in which we expect him to work it is so out of place as to cause serious malnutrition and disease.
It may be that it is this failure to find a balance between a new mode of life and the chemical activity of the body that accounts for the depopulation of so many simple peoples when Western civilisation enfolds them, and which investigators have been content to attribute to some mystical notion of "a mixture of blood" or a dramatic "clash of cultures" or the "loss of the will to live." Certainly it would be unwise to transplant these theories to Africa.
The failure of so many employers to provide adequate rations is not the only point at issue. Discontented labour and the ability to move elsewhere should normally remedy this position. The crucial issue, for which the employer cannot be blamed, is the Native's own appetite, tastes and attitudes. It is the line of least resistance, and practical policy, for an employer to adapt his rations to his Natives' eating habits; but that is no answer to the dietetic problem aroused by the intermingling of two such dissimilar cultures. When the progressive employers set out to do what the doctor ordered they find themselves up against this traditional culture and lapse into disillusionment. For the future health of the Native population they have got to put up a constant pressure against existing food habits, though they cannot do so alone. The most telling blow is struck by the medical authorities in the Reserves when they demonstrate against and forbid bota among the babes, though it is true that the mothers generally sidestep the rule as soon as they leave the clinic. Agricultural development work in the Reserves, when not distorted by the money urge, plays its part and much could be done in the boarding schools for Natives. Little by little food changes can and will take place. Enthusiastic farmers must visualise changes in terms of a host of other changes, and must appreciate that, like changes in the models of cars too the styles in dress, change is cumulative, slow and must never he too abruptly different to the previous style.
Because this paper has focussed on the situation as it concerns the employer in the rural areas it has necessarily ignored those other nutritional situations which arise in towns, in the Reserves and in those cases where a Native, receiving no ration, feeds himself according to his ideas on money and how it should be spentideas which are not the same as ours. All these situations mutually influence and react on each other, and the efforts of the farmer are by no means the only influences that are changing Native diet for good or ill. Certainly no group shows a livelier interest in Native food than certain farmers, and this paper is mainly designed to try and help them, as well as recording an aspect of Native life.
It is hoped that this "cultural point of view" will throw some light on their difficulties and problems. It is only one of many possible views, of various interpretations of the idiosyncracies and, at times, annoying behaviour of Natives over their food; hut it' it serves to show just how two cultural systems do conflict, why the farmer's good intentions are callously rejected or twisted to other ends, and that it is not something warped and primitive in Native Nature, not just downright perversity, then the purpose of this paper will have been achieved. It is realised that farmers employ more alien than indigenous Natives so that the details of custom given are not necessarily applicable, but it is thought that the general principles apply throughout.
Finally, while it is not for the cultural point of view to prescribe what foods should be aimed at, it can certainly point out that Europeans set out to change the Native with many different ideas and supported by an even greater number of good reasons for doing so. That cultural egoism, which sees in one's own way and view of life the only admissible, true, moral and valid standard by which other cultures must be judged and, having been condemned, reformed, can at least be claimed to be absent when Native food is the issue. Here the unbiassed voice of scientific fact, in the form of medical and dietetic authority, urges change and makes the position of the reformer in food perhaps the most unassailable of all those who interfere with Native life.
The writer is indebted to the medical officers named for the dietetic comments which appear in this paper, and since Dr. Baker Jones was good enough to expand on the subject, his full comments appear as a separate article. If this paper be viewed as a description of what does happen when the Native eats, there naturally follows the problem of what ought to happen, and with this Dr. Baker Jones' article is concerned.
NOTES AND COMMENTS
Note (l): Certain farmers were persuaded to give their Natives a breakfast to ensure better labour. Medical opinion supported them. The result was disastrous. No Native wants to eat at such an hour, nor so often as three times a day. The main meal of the Native's day is about 11 am, to midday (ku susura), and another, not so important, at dusk (ku rayira).
Note (2): So much so that many people believe the mealie to be the old traditional crop of the Native in S. Rhodesia.
Note (3): Remember that Natives originally had no real word for 'Thanks." They express that feeling by clapping the hands, a gesture they would not make to the white man who does not know.
Note (4)Dr. H. M. Strover: 'The linings of the gastric organ are the same as those of the European, and his capacity to digest the foods is probably the same, therefore his overtaxed digestive juices are quite incapable of coping with the enormous amount of food he can get under his skin, with the result that he gets far less value out of one enormous meal than he would out of three meals comprising the same volume and taken at fourhourly intervals."
Note (5)In towns, where there is a tendency, which has developed considerably in the Union, for bakers' bread to supplant sadza, and at Mission stations, there are no doubt occasional Natives who have escaped this process of habituation. They cannot therefore eat sadza in the traditional way, they have not got the traditional stomach. This suggestion is offered to account for those cases which crop up from time to time when a Native refuses to eat Native food and which provoke strong comment on being "too big for his boots," "overeducated," "too dignified to eat like the rest." There is no place for such Natives in the existing scheme of things; they are cultural hybrids, and it is to be expected that they will increase in numbers. Dr. H. M. Strover: "All Natives have undoubtedly an enormous gastric capacity produced by the habitual stretching of that organ."
Note (6).As Native women take to European clothes, and the cultural feelings as to modesty which accompany them, the feeding of babes has to conform to a new and strong cultural influence, a source of change far more potent than a generation of lecturing and welfare demonstrations as to how to feed children.
Note (7).Dr. H. M. Strover: "Apart from the fact that the newborn Native infant cannot digest bota, the capacity of its stomach is too limited to hold the amount of meal forced into it, with the result that all Native children suffer from mechanical dilation of that organ. A fluid like milk can easily pass through the stomach anti enter the upper bowel, so that a dilated stomach on a pure milk diet seldom, if ever, occurs. It is easy enough to guess at the infant mortality rate ask any Native woman how many children she has reared, anti you will find that a proportion of roughly 2 in 5 live. A large number or these deaths are caused by enteritis direct whereas a great number are caused by diseases such as pneumonia, which would either not have occurred at all, or would have been far less severe if the child had had a good start and the advantage of proper feeding. Scurvy and rickets, of course, appear when the child is a little older and has been taken off the breast. and thus lost its vitamin diet. In actual fact, it is probable that a Native child hardly gets any food value from the bota feeds in early infancy as it is quite incapable of digesting them and it thus lives entirely on the breast milk. Cases are seen when the child dies from marasmus (wasting) because mother's mIlk rails too early and its only diet is bota. Breast milk is, of course, Nature's complete and balanced diet, whereas bota merely acts as a dilator of the infant stomach and a gastrointestinal irritant."
Note (8).Dr. Baker Jones: "From the energyproducing point of view there is nothing to choose between the various grades of maize meal. Straightrun, 30 mesh meal is richer in protein, fat, minerals and vitamins than roller meal or ordinary 30 mesh."
Note (9).Dr. Baker Jones: "Ground nuts contain much fat but not much minerals; therefore not more than about 2 ozs. a day are indicated."
Note (10).Dr. Baker Jones: "It is a pity that we have not sufficient knowledge of the preparation of usavi dishes to provide the Native labourer with the extra proteins, minerals and vitamins in a form which he would appreciate, rather than as meat, ground nuts, beans and vegetables as we do. Research along these lines is indicated urgently." The writer would welcome any information from farmers who have come across such dishes in their compounds which had been collected from the bush.
Note (11).Dr. Baker Jones: "Molasses, a useful source of energy, highly appreciated by the Native, but should be given in limited quantities up to 2 ozs. a day"; also
Note (12)."Salt must be added to any diet, more being necessary in hot weather than in cold"; and
Note (13)."When fresh vegetables are unobtainable it is essential to provide some antiscorbutic substitute, and to personally supervise its consumption. Mazoe Orange Concentrate is good, and it is cheaper to provide this than lose labour on account of scurvy."