Things of the Ground: Children's Medicine, Motherhood and Memory in the Cameroon Grassfields

Abstract

Soon after birth, infants in the Cameroon Grassfields chiefdom of Oku are submitted by their parents to rites known generically as ‘children's medicine’ (k∂fu ∂bwan). Ostensibly performed to protect infants from harm and illness, the rites are in fact fraught with tension: they embrace contradictory perspectives regarding the social role of the mother and belie the normative ideal extolling her as a figure of nurture and protection. The article argues that, beyond their overt purpose and symbolism as rites of passage, the rites evoke collective memories of child abductions and contemporary anxieties regarding the anticipated departure of older children and adolescents into foster care or migrant labour. Going beyond a classic tripartite model, the article takes a long-term view that sees life-crisis rituals as a form of collective memory that bears witness to social tensions that cannot be resolved – in this case the contradictions inherent within the hallowed image of the mother and the compromised nature of parental love.

Local perceptions of cholera and anticipated vaccine acceptance in Katanga province, Democratic Republic of Congo

“…First, information about vaccines and the disease it seeks to prevent may be insufficient at the population level, and science-based concepts of prevention may not be well understood [3,16-20]. In this situation the perceived need for prevention will be shaped by local perceptions of risk and illness [21-23]. Second, access problems linked to transport costs and time constraints on the user side, and operational shortcomings of vaccination campaigns on the health system side limit uptake [24-28].…”

‘Children are the food sent by God’: culinary imagery and the making of persons in the Cameroon Grassfields

“…Warnier and Argenti, for example, both stress the power of material culture in shaping the self/subject. The former stresses the process of subjectivation in relation to bodily conducts‐cum‐material culture (Warnier ; ; ; ), while the latter underscores performance and embodied social memory (Argenti ; ; ; ; ). Both authors alike privilege the non‐discursive aspects of social life and suggest that there is a continuity, as far as the ‘structural’ position of subaltern categories (women, children, and social cadets) is concerned, between the precolonial, the colonial, and the postcolonial eras (Warnier ; ).…”

“…Third, like in Oku, the Batié speak of the world/‘ground’, nyε , of the day and the world/ground of the night as two aspects of the same place. The night/day or light/dark opposition is equally expressed in terms of above/below ground (Argenti : 289 n. 13; see also Diduk : 32 for the Kedjom). All these characteristics reflect the permeable nature of otherwise differentiated spaces in Grassfields cosmology/topography.…”

“…Besides being otherworldly, neonates in the Grassfields are, as one would expect, also androgynous (Argenti ; ; Diduk ). Since the present study focuses on gendering processes, I will elaborate on the second aspect.…”