Cultural Complexity
Posted by Social Matters , Wednesday, April 13, 2011 5:54 AM
Complexity of Culture
They say ‘one man’s meat…well that old saying seems to apply to culture in the very same. Anthropologically speaking cultures are so similar yet different in equal measure.
Culture is best described as that ‘complex whole…’ complex I suppose because it varies from one society to the next. All societies in the world have culture; culture is universal, shared and very specific, making it all the more attractive to an anthropologist. For instance the raging debate among some Christians about female and male dressing, if they were to study the bible in its cultural context they would realize that both sexes wore long flowing robes cut differently to suit each. One of my lecturers in campus told an interesting story of how the British forced the Zulu men to construct the railway to their annoyance, owing to the fact such hard tasks in their society was actually done by women. Yet the British must have been thinking such hard should only be done by men, in Western societies gender roles varied the ones in Traditional African Societies, different kinds if thinking thanks to the socialization process.
• The Mohawk is style that most Kenyans think originate from Northern Africa, forgetting that it might be authentic Kenyan, more typical of the pastoralists’ society. Among the Turkana it’s a special reserve for the women, young and old. Asking around some say it’s for aesthetic purposes, other say that some styles are a marker for young girls who have been betrothed or as they put it ‘booked’ by other parents for their sons, some styles they said were a sign of witchcraft and touching a child’s head would result in sickness. A young white male we were with in Turkana had a Mohawk, whenever the Turkana saw him they would start giggling and at times laughing. I bet you can guess why.
A typical Turkana Mohawk.
• Now that’s the Turkana, the Maasai who are the better known pastoralist society have the Mohawk as well but only the young men adorn the hairstyle, this I have observed in Tanzania as well, among the Maasai living there.
• Its funny how in Nairobi and some parts of the Rift Valley women in the past have been stripped naked for dressing ‘immorally.’ The word ‘immoral’ is not black and white as is defined in the dictionary. The Turkana women can easily get away with walking around bare-chested. But if you try and lift a little Turkana girl up, they hold on to their skirts tightly to avoid showing what they consider private. After staying in Turkana for a while you realize that what’s sexual in one community is not for the other. While people in other parts of Kenya protest women showing just a little cleavage, in Turkana showing both is natural, but just a little bit of thigh and you may be easily branded an ‘immoral person.’
• Funny enough the City Council of Nairobi outlaws the selling of donkey and camel meat, in Turkana these are delicacies. One of the local Turkana people asked if I wanted to see the butchery so as to verify their claims, I didn’t. But my fellow field school students and I did see a butchered camel at a wedding ceremony. Some say that donkeys are kept for dowry purposes, camels and donkeys do not carry heavy loads around, leaving women to carry fifty kilogram sacks of charcoal at times for over twenty kilometers to town centers such as Kalokol among others. The only time the two animals carry heavy loads is when the family is moving from their Manyatta in search of new lands. On a normal day the donkeys and camels are busy moving around grazing and at times for the camels browsing am sure the donkeys from Limuru would be envious.
• ‘Mutumia’ if you are a Kikuyu basically means wife, at times it used to refer to women in general. But if you are a Kamba it means ‘Husband’ or ‘man’. Funnily enough in Kikuyu the word means one who is quiet, as opposed to ‘Muthuri’ which means ‘one who chooses.’
• ‘Tata’ in the kikuyu language means aunt, yet in Kisii it means ‘father.’
• In the Maasai and Turkana communities it is the women who build houses, in other societies in Kenya it is men who build. It’s not that men have abandoned their duties or they have nothing to do but carry their Ekichoro’s (traditional stool) and sleep under trees in the village centre, they had duties such as herding which have been lost with time. Though in times of need these men do sell their livestock so that they feed their families.
A Turkana Manyatta homestead
So at times when two cultures fight, more so in a modern society like Kenya, they are fighting over what they don’t understand. Ultimately one’s man meat should NEVER be another man’s poison, culturally speaking anyway.
Pictures courtesy of Turkana Basin Institute Students class of 2011
