An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure. Fang Homegarden Organization as Means to Prevent from Health Risks~!2010-01-05~!2010-01-20~!2010-06-22~!

Abstract

The ethnobiological analysis of Fang homegardens in Southern Cameroon reveals striking contrasts between the frontyard and the backyard. Plants and their uses, as well as attitudes of villagers, clearly reflect opposite functions. The frontyard is a public space that is regularly maintained in a clean state. This is a pleasing and freely accessible space, where plants are mainly ornamental or provide only slight shade, as this space must remain well illuminated and offer a bright view. By contrast, the backyard is a dark private space. Access is restricted and protected by magic. In this space, people communicate with the supernatural world, discretely experiment with new magical, medicinal, and food plants. Like the two sides of a coin, the frontyard and the backyard have complementary values that can be understood only in the light of the turbulent history of the Fang. They constitute powerful physical, spatial and cultural poles that fulfill a series of embedded functions that mark out the life history of the Fang, the social relationships within different members of the communities, and the symbolically rich settings for everyday life and rituals. Ultimately, they form an assemblage that efficiently reduces exposure to diseases. The cultural control of risks on health does not only concern the physical and functional layouts of the landscape-that efficiently reduce the incidence of vector-borne and transmissible diseases-but it also concerns the symbolic control of supernatural forces, which are much less immediately tangible causes of sickness, pain, trouble, conflict and even death.

From Subsistence to Commercial Hunting: Technical Shift in Cynegetic Practices Among Southern Cameroon Forest Dwellers During the 20th Century

“…To summarize, large mammals, which form the cohort of most endangered forest species, are those that pay the heaviest price for the trivialized use of firearms in the context of increasing commercial hunting. These results are congruent with data collected among other Fang communities , Keylock 2002, Kümpel et al 2008, 2010, and most recent studies throughout the Congo Basin confirm that a greater fraction of local hunters now commonly have access to shotguns.…”

“…Other studies on local bushmeat procurement were carried out more recently in the subregion. Nevertheless they considered nonFang ethnic groups (Trenning 1998), they addressed Fang communities that are geographically too distant from the site documented by Tessmann, such as on Bioko island (Fa et al , 2002, in continental Equatorial Guinea (Keylock 2002, Kümpel et al 2008, 2010 or in Central Cameroon (Sakanashi 2011), or they do not document the technical aspects of hunting procedures (Wolfe et al 2004). Their relevance in support of our diachronic comparison is accordingly limited.…”

“…This pacification and the imposed permanent settlement encouraged the preference for a poison that befits human consumption and that can be processed in rather high quantities. The vines of Strophanthus began being commonly "proto-cultivated" in backyard homegardens (Dounias 2010). Nevertheless, crossbows were rapidly superseded by firearms and forsaken to Pygmy hunter-gatherers.…”