Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-r4mrb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-11T02:27:19.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Kachinja are Coming!’: Encounters Around Medical Research Work in a Kenyan Village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

P. Wenzel Geissler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When conducting medical field research in a Luo village in western Kenya, my colleagues and I were occasionally suspected of being blood-thieves, locally called kachinja. The article contextualizes these blood-stealing accusations within the practices of medical research that prompted them, and within the local historical experiences which, I shall argue, they refer to. Further, it examines two social situations, in which blood-stealing accusations were raised against me and people who were in contact with me, in order to show how the kachinja idiom is used in social practice, as part of long-term social processes as well as of momentary situations, within local patterns of relatedness. These observations show how global structures and processes are articulated and moulded in a particular locality through idioms that carry memories of individual as well as collective, historical experiences, and how they are enacted by people within webs of contemporary local social relations.

Résumé

Lors de travaux de recherche médicale menés dans un village Luo situé dans l'ouest du Kenya, il est arrivé que l'auteur du papier et ses collègues soient soupçonnés d'être des voleurs de sang, localement appelés kachinja. L'article replace ces accusations de vol de sang dans le contexte des pratiques de recherchemédicale qui les ont suscitées et dans celui des expériences historiques locales auxquelles elles renvoient. De plus, il examine deux situations sociales dans lesquelles les accusations de vol de sang ont été portées à l'encontre de l'auteur de l'article et des personnes qui étaient en contact avec lui, afin de montrer le mode d'utilisation de l'idiome kachinja dans la pratique sociale, dans le cadre de processus sociaux à long terme et de situations momentanées, au sein des modèles locaux d'apparenté. Ces observations montrent comment les structures et processus globaux s'articulent et se façonnent dans une localité particulière à travers des idiomes porteurs de mémoires individuelles et d'expériences historiques collectives, et comment elles sont interprétées dans des écheveaux de relations sociales locales contemporaines.

Type
Articles
Information
Africa , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , May 2005 , pp. 173 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ardener, Edwin. 1970. ‘Witchcraft, economics, and the continuity of belief’, in Douglas, Mary (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Baker, E. C. 1946. ‘Mumiani’, Tanganyika Notes and Records 21: 108–109.Google Scholar
Beck, Ann. 1970. A History of the British Medical Administration of East Africa 1900–1950.Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ceyssens, Rik. 1975. ‘Mutumbula. Mythe de l'opprimé’, Culture et développement 8 (3–5): 483–550.Google Scholar
Cohen, David William, and Odhiambo, E. S. Atiendo. 1989. Siaya: the historical anthropology of an African landscape. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya.Google Scholar
Cohen, David William, and Odhiambo, E. S. Atiendo. 1992. Burying SM: the politics of knowledge and the sociology of power in Africa. London: James Currey; Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean. 1993. ‘The diseased heart of Africa: medicine, colonialism, and the black body’, in Lindenbaum, Shirley and Lock, Margaret (eds), Knowledge, Power, and Practice: the anthropology of medicine and everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John L.. 1999. ‘Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony’, American Ethnologist 26 (2): 279–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1970.‘Thirtyyears after witchcraft, oracles andmagic’, in Douglas, Mary (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Duthie-Nurse, G., and Nurse, G. T. 1992. ‘Some socio-cultural aspects of blood donation in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea’, Research in Melanesia 16 (1): 1–19.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1950. ‘Ghostly vengeance among the Luo of Kenya’, Man 50 (132): 86–87.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1960. ‘Zande cannibalism’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 90 (2): 238–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1996. Remembering the Present: painting and popular history in Zaire. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortes, Meyer. 1936. ‘Culture contact as a dynamic process: an investigation in the northern territories of the Gold Coast’, Africa 9 (1): 24–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friis, H., Mwaniki, D., Omondi, B., Muniu, E., Magnussen, P., Geissler, P. Wenzel, Thiong'o, F., and Michaelsen, K. F.. 1997. ‘Serum retinol concentrations and Schistosoma mansoni, intestinal helminths, and malarial parasitemia: a cross-sectional study in Kenyan preschool and primary school children’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 66 (3): 665–671.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geissler, P. Wenzel. 1998. ‘Geophagy among School Children in Western Kenya: nutritional, parasitological and social anthropological perspectives’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Geissler, P. Wenzel. 2000. ‘The significance of earth-eating: social and cultural aspects of geophagy among Luo children’, Africa 70 (4): 653–682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geissler, P. Wenzel, Harris, Stephen A., Prince, Ruth J., Olsen, Anja, Odhiambo, R. Achieng', Oketch-Rabah, Helen, Madiega, Philister A., Andersen, Anne, and Molgaard, Per. 2002. ‘Medicinal plants used by Luo mothers and children in Bondo District, Kenya’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 83 (1–2): 39–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geissler, P. Wenzel, and Prince, Ruth J.. forthcoming. Shared Lives: exploring the practice of amity between grandmothers and grandchildren in western Kenya.Google Scholar
Grigorenko, Elena L., Geissler, P. Wenzel, Prince, Ruth, Okatcha, Frederick, Nokes, Catherine, Kenny, David A., Bundy, Donald A., and Sternberg, Robert J.. 2001. ‘The organization of Luo conceptions of intelligence: a study of implicit theories in a Kenyan village’, International Journal of Behavioral Development 25 (4): 367–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauge, Hans-Egil. 1974. Luo Religion and Folklore. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Google Scholar
Hodges, Geoffrey W. T. 1986. The Carrier Corps: military labor in the East African campaign, 1914–1918. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Hoppe, Kirk Arden. 1997. ‘Lords of the fly: colonial visions and revisions of African sleeping-sickness environments on Ugandan Lake Victoria, 1906–1961’, Africa 67 (1): 86–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iliffe, John. 1998. East African Doctors: a history of the modern profession. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jarosz, Lucy A. 1994. ‘Agents of power, landscapes of fear: the vampires and heart thieves of Madagascar’, Society and Space 12 (4): 421–436.Google Scholar
Jones, Timothy, Kokwaro, John O., and Kimanani, Ebi K.. 1990. ‘Herbal remedies of the Luo of Siaya District, Kenya: establishing quantitative criteria for consensus’, Economic Botany 44 (3): 369–381.Google Scholar
Kapferer, Bruce. 1983. A Celebration of Demons: exorcism and the aesthetics of healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
KEDAHR (Kenyan-Danish Health Research Project). 1994. The Kenyan–Danish Health Research Project. Project proposal. Copenhagen: Danish Bilharziasis Laboratory.Google Scholar
Lewis, G. 1993. ‘Some studies of social causes and cultural response to disease’, in Mascie-Taylor, C. G. N. (ed.), The Anthropology of Disease.Oxfordand New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, Maryinez. 1992. The Colonial Disease: a social history of sleeping sickness in northern Zaire, 1900–1940. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mboya, Paul. (1938) 1983. Luo: kitgi gi timbegi. A hand book of Luo customs. Kisumu: Anyange Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1999. ‘Reflections on the Comaroff lecture’, American Ethnologist 26 (2): 304–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musambachime, Mwelma C. 1988. ‘The impact of rumor: the case of the Banyama (vampire men) scare in Northern Rhodesia, 1930–1964’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 21 (2): 201–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nokes, Catherine. 1996. ‘A healthy body and a healthy mind? The relationship between ill-health and cognitive function in school-age children’, Journal of Biosocial Science 28: 453–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochieng', William Robert. 1975. A History of the Kadimo Chiefdom of Yimbo in Western Kenya. Kampala, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Ocholla-Ayayo, Andrew B. C. 1976. Traditional Ideology and Ethics among the Southern Luo. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.Google Scholar
Odhiambo, E. S. A. 1974. ‘The movement of ideas: a case study of intellectual responses to colonialism among the Liganua peasants’, in Ogot, Bethwell A. (ed.), Hadith 6: history and social change in East Africa. Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Ogot, Bethwell A. 1968. ‘Kenya under the British, 1895 to 1963’, in Ogot, Bethwell A. and Kieran, John A. (eds), Zamani: a survey of East African history. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.Google Scholar
Olsen, Annette, Thiong'o, Fred W., Ouma, John H., Mwaniki, David, Magnussen, Pascal, Michaelsen, Kim Fleischer, Friis, Henrik, and Geissler, P. Wenzel. 2003. ‘Effects of multimicronutrient supplementation on helminth reinfection: a randomized, controlled trial in Kenyan schoolchildren’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 97 (1): 109–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ombongi, Kenneth Samson. 2000. ‘A History of Malaria Control Policy in Colonial Kenya, 1897–1963’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Pels, Peter. 1992. ‘Mumiani: the white vampire. A neo-diffusionist analysis of rumour’, Etnofoor 5 (1/2): 165–187.Google Scholar
Pels, Peter. 1999. A Politics of Presence: contacts between missionaries and Waluguru in late colonial Tanganyika. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Prince, Ruth J. 1999. ‘The Legio Maria Church in Western Kenya: healing with the Holy Spirit’. MSc dissertation. University College London.Google Scholar
Prince, Ruth J., and Geissler, P. Wenzel. 2001. ‘Becoming “one who treats”: a case study of a Luo healer and her grandson in western Kenya’, Anthropology and Education Quarterly 32 (4): 447–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, Ruth J., Geissler, P. Wenzel, Nokes, Kate, Maende, James Ochieng, Okatcha, Frederick, Grigorenko, Elena, and Sternberg, Robert. 2001. ‘Knowledge of herbal and pharmaceutical medicines among Luo schoolchildren in western Kenya’, Anthropology and Medicine 8 (2/3): 211–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, P. G., and Morrow, Richard H. (eds). 1993. Methods for Field Trials of Interventions against Tropical Diseases: a ‘toolbox’. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stichter, Sharon. 1982. MigrantLabourinKenya: capitalism and Africanresponse, 1895–1975. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael T. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Trant, Hope. 1970. Not Merrion Square: anecdotes from a woman's medical career in Africa. East London, Toronto and Welshpool: The Thornhill Press.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 1993. ‘Government headhunters’, in Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (ed.), In The Realm of the Diamond Queen: marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Megan. 1991. Curing Their Ills: colonial power and African illness. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Wachtel, Nathan. 1994. Gods and Vampires: return to Chipaya Trans.by Volk, Carol. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. (1992. Dieux et vampires. Retour à Chipaya. Paris: Editions du Seuil.)Google Scholar
Weiss, Brad. 1998. ‘Electric vampires: Haya rumors of the commodified body’, in Lambek, Michael and Strathern, Andrew (eds), Bodies and Persons: comparative perspectives from Africa and Melanesia. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chumo, D.A., Waema, D., Reardon, M.J., and Smith, D. H.. 1989. ‘The history of sleeping sickness in Kenya’, Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology 83 (suppl. 1): 1–11.Google Scholar
White, Luise. 1990. ‘Bodily fluids and usufruct: controlling property in Nairobi 1917–1939’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 24 (3): 418–438.Google Scholar
White, Luise. 1993a. ‘Vampire priests of Central Africa: African debates about labor and religion in colonial northern Zambia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (4): 746–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise. 1993b. ‘Cars out of place: vampires, technology, and labor in East and Central Africa’, Representations 43: 27–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise. 1995a. ‘“They could make their victims dull”: genders and genres, fantasies and cures in colonial southern Uganda’, American Historical Review 100 (5): 1379–1402.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, Luise. 1995b. ‘Tsetse visions: narratives of blood and bugs in colonial Northern Rhodesia’, Journal of African History 36 (2): 219–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise. 2000. Speaking with Vampires: rumor and history in colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whyte, Susan Reynolds. 1997. Questioning Misfortune: the pragmatics of uncertainty in Eastern Uganda. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wijers, D. J. 1969. ‘The history of sleeping sickness in Yimbo location (Central Nyanza, Kenya) as told by the oldest inhabitants of the location’, Tropical and Geographical Medicine 21 (3): 323–337.Google ScholarPubMed