Becoming "One Who Treats": A Case Study of a Luo Healer and Her Grandson in Western Kenya

Becoming "One Who Treats": A Case Study of aLuo Healer and Her Grandson in Western KenyaRUTH PRINCE

P. WENZEL GEISSLERCopenhagen University

Using a case study of a healer and her grandson, this article shows how learningto heal is embedded in the close relationship of reciprocity and care betweengrandmother and grandchild in Luo society. Through shared daily life with hisgrandmother, the child develops social sense, respect, and compassion for people,as well as practical skills. By showing that learning to heal is not only embeddedin everyday practice and in social relations, but is also a moral and emotionalprocess, this article contributes to sociocultural theories of learning and toethnographic accounts of childhood in Africa.

Introduction

This article describes the relationship between a Luo healer and hergrandson, and the processes of learning about healing and medicine thatoccur within this relationship. It uses this case study to examine aspectsof learning, knowledge, and intelligence, and the values surroundingthe practice of healing and use of medicines in Luo culture. The articledraws upon anthropological accounts of learning in African societies(Erny 1981; Fortes 1938,1949), as well as recent sociocultural approachesto learning (Lave 1993; Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff 1995). Theauthors view learning as a practical and holistic process that emergesfrom participation in daily life, in productive activities and in social rela-tions. However, the emotional and moral aspects of learning withinthese social relations, and the social relations themselves, have not beengiven much attention in more recent studies. As well as showing the em-beddedness of learning in practical and social situations, our case studymakes three interrelated points. It highlights the importance of the rela-tionship between grandmother and grandchild, this relation providing aspace for learning that is free from the constraints of the parent-child re-lationship and from those of formal schooling; it demonstrates the moraland emotional nature of learning how to heal in Luo society; and it un-derlines the interdependence between what is learned and the nature ofthe relationship within which learning takes place.

Our interest in learning to heal, and in the significance of the relation-ship between grandparent and grandchild for learning, grew out of a1997 study that explored primary school children's home-based "medical

Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32(4):447-471. Copyright © 2001, American AnthropologicalAssociation.

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knowledge" and practice. This study, which we conducted togetherwith educational psychologists and epidemiologists, was concernedwith the relationship of medical knowledge as a form of "practical intel-ligence/' to school performance and Luo conceptions of intelligence(Grigorenko et al. 2001). The study was conducted in a village on theshores of Lake Victoria, in Bondo District, 100 kilometers from Kisumuin western Kenya.1 The 86 children participating in the study were agedten to 15 years old. All of them attended school. We found that all thechildren knew a wide range of plants used for medicine and that manycould treat themselves for common ailments (stomach ache, fevers,headaches, colds, coughs, and injuries), which they experienced on aver-age every ten days (Geissler et al. 2000).

Of the 60 households in which the 86 children lived, 14 includedgrandmothers who were known outside their families for their skill attreating particular illnesses. In six of these households, the child was es-pecially close to the grandmother and learned about healing and medi-cines from her. These six children possessed a wider knowledge of medi-cines than many of their age-mates, and they told us they wanted to beable to treat people like their grandmothers. This article is based on therelationship between one of these children, Ochieng', and his grand-mother, Maria, who is well known as "one who treats" (jathieth) in thevillage.2 We decided to focus on this particular household becauseOchieng's position as a novice healer was recognized by most people,perhaps due to the importance of his grandmother's healing practicewithin the village.3

The case study was also chosen because it is illustrative of generalmedical practice and the acquisition of medicinal knowledge in ruralLuo families. As we will describe below, all practitioners of Luo medi-cine draw upon a widely shared body of practical skills concerning ill-ness and healing. There is no clear differentiation between the practicesof healers and those of lay people, and there is no clear boundary be-tween a novice's participation in a healer's practice, and the way manychildren participate in the normal medical activities of a Luo homestead.

The first part of the article introduces the reader to Luo society, to kin-ship relations (in particular the grandmother-grandchild relation) andto Luo medical culture. We then introduce and discuss the case study,describing the life situation and relationship of Ochieng' and his grand-mother, and their accounts of learning to heal and of choosing and beingchosen to learn about healing. To these verbal accounts we add our ob-servations of the grandmother-grandchild relation, everyday practiceand the process of learning medicines, gleaned from our visits to thehomestead of Maria and other homes in the vicinity. The last section dis-cusses aspects of the case in relation to anthropological studies of heal-ing in Africa and of learning in general.

Prince, Geissler Becoming "One Who Treats" 449

Luo Society

The Luo form the second largest ethnic group in present-day Kenyaand number more than two million (Cohen and Odhiambo 1989:7 n. 6).Their homeland is Nyanza Province, western Kenya, but at least a fifthof the Luo population live outside this province, mainly in Nairobi andother cities (Cohen and Odhiambo 1989:4-5). They speak a Nilotic lan-guage, Dholuo, and have a patrilineal segmentary lineage system basedon clans and lineages, which are agnatic groups and territorial units(Evans-Pritchard 1965a; Parkin 1978:315; Southall 1952). Clans areexogamous, marriage is virilocal, and polygamy is practiced. These cus-toms of social organization are still strong, because even those Luo liv-ing in towns retain binding connections to their rural homes and com-munities.

Precolonial Luo political organization was acephalous (Evans-Pritchard1965a), but between 1900 and 1914 Luoland was drawn into the Britishcolonial administration under the nominal leadership of a paramountchief (Ochieng' 1975). Early colonial rule was often coercive—youngmen were forced into labor gangs to work on the railways and roads andwere drafted as soldiers and carriers during the world wars (Hodges1986, Ochieng' 1975). Living standards declined, as hut tax forced mento look for cash incomes in other parts of Kenya, colonial authorities in-troduced maize, which supplanted the more nutritious and betteradapted millet, and new diseases and epidemics struck livestock andpeople (Cohen and Odhiambo 1989:68,71). Colonial rule also opened upLuoland to missionaries, who brought schools and medical dispensariesas well as Christianity (Whisson 1964). Before the 1950s, most of theschools and medical dispensaries in the province were run by missions,but later the government built schools and developed a rural health sys-tem of clinics, dispensaries and district hospitals (Kenya Annual Medi-cal Reports 1918-68).

In present-day Kenya, most children attend primary school, but thereis a high dropout rate. In many rural districts, primary schools are un-derfunded: there are not enough teachers, classrooms, chairs, tables orbooks. There are eight years of primary school. Children are taught intheir mother tongue during the first four years of schooling and in Eng-lish during the last four years. Because few rural children are exposed toEnglish outside the school environment, the failure rate is high.4 Manyrepeat years in primary school. Of those who do pass the last year of pri-mary school, few go on to secondary school, because most rural familiescan afford neither the loss of adolescents' labor nor the expenses ofschool uniforms, books, and fees. Although schooling is regarded byparents and children as a means of entering the national labor marketand reducing dependence on subsistence agriculture, there are few for-mal employment opportunities for secondary-school leavers.

The rural economy of Nyanza is based on various activities. Womencultivate maize and millet, as well as vegetable gardens, while men fish

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and tend cattle. Both men and women may do some trading of fish andvegetables, and some set up roadside stalls. Increasing numbers ofyoung men and women live in semiurban and urban settlements aroundmarketplaces and fishing centers. Labor migration, which began in the1920s, continues to be a common experience of both genders. Many peo-ple spend at least part of their lives working in the towns and cities ofKenya, often moving back and forth, and their cash remittances are animportant source of income to relatives in Nyanza (Cohen andOdhiambo 1989; Shipton 1989). However, although formal employmentwas relatively easy to find in the 1960s and 1970s, it is now difficult, evenfor those with some secondary education. Despite this long history ofout-migration, Luo people working outside of Nyanza retain strongconnections with their rural homes and are expected to build and main-tain houses and relations there (Cohen and Odhiambo 1989,1992).

Although precolonial Luo lived in large, fortified villages (Cohen andOdhiambo 1989), most people in present-day Nyanza live in scatteredhomesteads (data, pi. mier) on the ancestral land that they own and culti-vate (Ocholla-Ayayo 1980). The homestead has a characteristic life cycle.It is founded by a young man who gets married and builds his wife ahouse outside the paternal homestead, but on his father's land. Initiallyhis new home consists of the house of his wife and a kitchen hut. If hemarries another wife, he builds a house for her beside the first wife'shouse. Eventually his adult sons will build their own houses within theirfather's homestead where they live until they get married and moveaway, either to another spot on their father's land, or to land they havebought. Only the last-born son remains on the father's land, and whenthe father dies the focus of the homestead turns toward the houses of thisson's wives. Houses are not permanent structures but are built for eachwife and abandoned after her death. Such is the ideal, but land is becom-ing scarce in many parts of Nyanza, and it is being sold in order to payfor school fees or for the treatment of sick relatives—thus the family'sland becomes too small to support them.

Kinship Relations and Socialization Practices

Most rural Luo children grow up on their father's land, among peopleof his lineage and affines. Up until the age of six or seven, they sleep intheir mother's house, but later they sleep either in their mother's kitchenhut or in the hut of their paternal grandmother, because they may notsleep under the same roof as their parents. From the same age, they areexpected to participate in household chores: to help in fetching waterand firewood, take care of livestock, and look after younger siblings. Asthey get older children take on more responsibility for these tasks, whichbecome increasingly gender specific: Girls work in the fields, fetch waterand firewood, and cook, while boys move outside the home, looking af-ter livestock or fishing on the lake. In order to pay school expenses, somechildren fish and gather firewood to sell at the roadside, or hire themselves


out as workers on neighbors' fields. Because many children attend pri-mary school, these tasks must be done outside of school hours.

Generation, and notions of "respect" (luor) between people of differ-ent generations are central factors in household and community rela-tions. The relationship between children and parents, as between allpeople of adjacent generations, is characterized by taboos and avoid-ance, particularly in relation to sexual matters. Communication on sub-jects relating to sexuality is taboo and children cannot enter their par-ents' bedroom or wash their bedclothes. It is thought that the breachingof such customs brings a serious illness, chira, to the offender or his closekin.5 Between adjacent generations, the value of "respect" thus takes themeaning of distance and obedience to authority.

In contrast, the relationship between children and their grandparents,and people of their grandparent's generation, is marked by opennessand equality. There is a stronger emphasis on reciprocal respect and lovethan on obedience and discipline. It is said of the relationship that "theirhearts are mingling [gin gi chuny gondalo]." Children are often named af-ter a grandparent or a previous ancestor, and this symbolic equation be-tween the two is reflected in the nicknames they use: A grandfather willcall his granddaughter "my wife," a grandmother calls her grandson"my husband" and her granddaughter "my cowife" (Geissler 1999;Ocholla-Ayayo 1976:182-184). This closeness between grandchildrenand grandparents is described by Radcliffe-Brown as a characteristicform of "joking relationship" (1979) and it exists in many African socie-ties (see, e.g., Erny 1981:51; Fortes 1938:17, 1949:236; Heald 1999;Reynolds 1996; Turner 1955:247; Whyte 1997). It is rooted partly in theirshared position outside the productive and reproductive sphere of theparental generation and partly in their closeness to life's boundarieswith the ancestral and spiritual world, children because of their recentbirth and grandparents because of their impending death. Betweenolder people and children, "respect" takes on a different meaning fromthe "respect" between parents and children: It means generalized reci-procity and care for one another.

Due to the age difference between husband and wives, polygamousmarriage, and the fact that men stay sexually active longer than womenin Luo society, the grandmother plays a greater role in the lives of grand-children than the grandfather. When a woman reaches menopause ordecides to stop having sex with her husband, she becomes an "oldwoman" and turns her attention to being a grandmother. But even be-fore this, she has close contact with her grandchildren, because many ofthem share the same homestead- From the age of eight, the grandchil-dren may go to sleep in their grandmother's house and help her by fetch-ing water and firewood. The elderly woman and the children live closelytogether and care for each other, both emotionally and practically. Shelooks after the young children who grow up and need her care, and thechildren care for their grandmother in her old age.


In precolonial Luo society and up to the 1950s, elderly women playedan important role in the education of children (Cohen and Odhiambo1989, 1965; Evans-Pritchard 1965a; Ocholla-Ayayo 1976, 1980; Odinga1992). Because a man's prestige depended upon the number of descen-dants and dependants he could attract, homesteads were larger than to-day, and were composed of several brothers and their families, as well asnonrelated guests. In large homesteads, there was a hut (siwindhe) of anelderly woman (pirn). Pirn could be a grandmother in the extended fam-ily, or a childless woman, or indeed any woman beyond reproductiveage belonging to the grandparental generation. In this hut, children overthe age of seven or eight slept. Boys stayed in the siwindhe until puberty,when they moved to the hut of the older boys. Girls remained with thepirn until they married and moved to their husband's home (Ocholla-Ayayo 1976).

According to elderly people who grew up in the siwindhe, the rela-tionship between children and the pirn was one of equality and open-ness (Cohen 1985). The children helped the elder woman, fetching woodand water, cultivating her fields and doing household tasks, while shetold them stories and riddles, taught them about kinship and genealogy,marriage and sexual matters, health and medicine, and cared for themwhen they were ill. When the girls reached puberty, it was the pirn whoinstructed them about sexual matters and taught them chodo, how tohave sex without penetration (Evans-Pritchard 1965b; Cohen andOdhiambo 1989).

Cohen (1985) writes that pirn and siwindhe no longer exist among theLuo. However, many of the characteristics of pirn are observable in therelationship between Luo grandmothers and their grandchildren. If thegrandmother is present in the homestead, children will often choose tostay with her rather than sleep in the kitchen hut. Due to labor migration,changes in family structure and residential patterns, grandmothers andgrandchildren do not always stay in the same homestead, but Luo par-ents living in towns often send their children back to the village to visitthe paternal or maternal grandmother, or even to live permanently withher and attend a rural school. Children of all ages have close relation-ships with their grandparents, and adults remember their grandmotherwith special love and affection.

It has been suggested that the introduction of schooling has under-mined the educational role of pirn and grandmothers (Cohen andOdhiambo 1989). Again, our impression is that the grandmother'sknowledge remains highly valued, perhaps because she provides a dif-ferent kind of education than that received in schools. Her knowledge ofLuo culture and traditions comes from her old age, her experience of life,and her links to the past. Although the traditional role of grandparentsin bringing up children may be challenged, there is also remarkable per-sistence in this relation. This persistence is perhaps linked to the strongrural rooting of Luo society and the desire of many urban Luo to retain


ties to land and home, to kinship and family. The grandmother and hermemory may be seen as a moral and spiritual anchor in an increasinglyuprooted world.

In addition to possessing much cultural, social, and historical wis-dom, grandmothers are respected for their knowledge of Luo medicine(yadh nyaluo) and Luo healing traditions (Cohen and Odhiambo 1989;Parkin 1972:287), which have been passed down to them from their owngrandmothers. The subject of Luo medical knowledge and practice is de-scribed in the next section.

Luo Medical Culture

In western Kenya today, the "landscape of therapy" (Cohen andOdhiambo 1989:89) includes government and private clinics, dispensa-ries and shops selling pharmaceuticals, various kinds of "traditional"healers, herbalists, injectionists, and drug sellers (Geissler et al. 2000), aswell as several Christian churches that claim to heal with the Holy Spirit(Hoehler-Fatton 1996; Prince 1999; Schwartz 1994). In this section, wedeal only with the practice of herbal medicine, "Luo medicine," in thecommunity.

"Luo medicine" is usually called yadh nyaluo, which is often translatedas "herbal medicine," because yadh means plant, herb tree, and medicineand most of the Luo pharmacopoeia is plant based.6 Knowledge and useof Luo herbal medicine is widespread in Luo society, and is not the ex-clusive domain of recognized healers (jathieth, pi. jothieth, lit. "one whotreats"). It is primarily a female practice, because use of herbs is consid-ered essential for the proper care of children, for their health and growthas well as for treating their ailments. People say that women know moreabout illness than men "because they give birth" (i.e., they have to carefor children), and most Luo women know some herbal treatments forthe ailments suffered by their children. Women often discuss their chil-dren's illnesses and share treatments, and children are often presentduring these discussions. From the age of seven or eight, children of bothsexes are sent to pick plants (as well as to buy pharmaceuticals fromshops) and told to boil them for medicine. This common knowledge ofherbal medicine is easily shared between people.

Although knowledge of common herbs for common ailments is wide-spread and shared, there are remedies that belong to particular people,and this knowledge is not easily shared. Some women within the ex-tended family may know a few special remedies for particular illnesses.They may ask each other to treat an ill child with these medicines, butthey do not reveal the ingredients. Their knowledge is kept secret evenwithin the family. This special knowledge may come from personal ex-perience of an illness in the family, and is usually inherited from an olderkinswoman.

If a woman's treatment is successful, and if she has the personal cha-risma and inclination to heal, she may establish a reputation for treating


a particular illness, and people outside the extended family may seekher help. In such cases, she will be paid for this treatment with food or achicken. Although she does not share her knowledge with her contem-poraries, she will "show" a favorite grandchild. The movement toward aspecialized practice is partly a function of increasing age. Competence intreatment and knowledge of medicines grows with age and experience,and women who reach old age are regarded as particularly knowledge-able about Luo medicine.7

A woman who knows how to treat a particular illness maybe referredto as jathieth, "one who treats/' This term is also used for a more "profes-sional" herbalist-healer: a person who treats a range of difficult and seri-ous illnesses, who has a reputation beyond the confines of the village,and who receives direct remuneration for her treatments. Such an herb-alist-healer may be the same woman who started out treating her ownchildren's illnesses, then became known for her treatments for a particu-lar illness, and then, with increasing age and experience, began to treatother problems too. But she may also be someone who was "chosen"earlier in life, and who learned her grandmother's treatments.

There is thus a continuum in the practice of Luo herbal medicine, fromthe generalized knowledge of common medicines shared by the wholecommunity, to the medical practices of women around childcare, thespecialized knowledge about medicines of some older people, and thepractices of known herbalist-healers. In this continuum, the movementis from generalized to specialized practice: the treatment of many prob-lems instead of just one, the treatment of increasingly difficult problems,and the use of increasingly specific and personal therapies. There also isa closer association between the person's medical practice and her guid-ance by spirits, both ancestral and other. Many of those who treat claim arelationship with ancestral spirits (for example, the spirit of their grand-mother) who show them medicines and give them insights into prob-lems. However, all practitioners of Luo medicine, children and adoles-cents, mothers, grandmothers, and well-known herbalist-healers, sharea common body of skills concerning illness and herbal treatments. Thisis learned as part of growing up in rural homes, where mothers andgrandmothers use herbal medicines in dealing with children's illnesses.It also is learned through relationships with grandmothers. What a"healer" knows and does is therefore rooted in communal ideas andpractices.

From our observations, it appears that most jothieth are women. Thepractices of jothieth are extremely variable.8 Some treat only a few ill-nesses; others are known for their competence in dealing with a range ofproblems that can include acute or persistent abdominal problems,headache, and various complicated illnesses, women's problems such assevere menstrual pain, backache, miscarriage and infant illnesses, aswell as misfortunes brought by ritual transgression, life crises, witch-craft or "evil eye." What they share as the basis of their practice is the use


of herbs, but they may also use a range of other therapies too—ritual,spirititual, and biomedical (yadh ospital, "hospital medicine"; seeGeissler 1998). All healers are thought to have a close relation to the spir-its of their grandparents who passed down their knowledge.

Establishing a reputation as a healer in a Luo community is not aneasy task. The healer must demonstrate her power, and she must gainpeople's trust. Much of the healer's power derives from her status aspossessor of medicine. As in other African societies (see Reynolds 1996;Turner 1967; Whyte 1997), and indeed most cultures, medicines are con-sidered to be powerful substances. Luo people consider yadh nyaluo tobe particularly powerful and effective, because, they say, "It has comefrom our grandmothers from long ago." Foreign medicines also arepopular among Luo people, and this is partly due to their unknown ori-gins, exotic nature, and association with powerful groups (see also Co-maroff and Comaroff 1997:345; Whyte 1988). This fascination with his-torical roots and tradition on the one side, and novelty and foreignnesson the other, can be discerned in the practice of Luo healers. Many heal-ers working within Luoland combine medicines and practices from vari-ous medical traditions in innovative ways (Cohen and Odhiambo 1989:89; Geissler 1998).

The quality of being from outside that infuses foreign medicines withpower, contributes in some cases to the power of healers themselves.Some respected healers come from outside of Luoland, and others, al-though they are Luo, live outside their home village, as "guests" onother lineages' land—for example, among affinal relatives. Their socialmarginality gives them special access to the spirit world, and it permitsthem to deal with social conflicts and transgressions from an outsider'sposition. Moreover, as Turner (1967) pointed out in his perceptive por-trayal of Muchona, the Ndembu healer, the marginal position of healersmay give them particular empathy with afflicted patients, to care for andrespect them and to inspire their trust. These qualities—of care, respectand love—are important in Luo sociality, and in Luo ideas of healing.

However, through their contact with medicines and with the spiritworld and their marginal positions outside of normal kinship relations,healers often are held in ambiguous regard by other people in the com-munity. They are both more vulnerable and more powerful than others,they inspire suspicion and well as trust, and their power is believed to beboth dangerous and a positive resource. To be popular and successful, aLuo healer must gain trust and respect by showing that she respects andcares for her patients and is not using her knowledge for selfish ends. Wenow turn to the case study, of a Luo jathieth and her grandson, and ex-plore how these concepts of healing inform the choice of novice, thelearning process and the healer's practice, as well as her life course.


A Healer and Her Grandson

Maria is about 70 years of age, and is a well-known jathieth in thestudy village—if one asks for a jathieth there, it is she to whom one is di-rected. She treats a range of difficult illnesses, including chira (a wastingillness caused by transgression of ritual taboos; see above), evil eye (si-hoho), infertility (lur), and madness (tuo neko).9 However, she is not well-known outside of the village, there are no queues of patients waiting inher homestead, and she has not become wealthy from her healing activi-ties. She is simply nearer to the specialist end of the continuum in thepractice of Luo medicine in the community. Maria's grandson, Ochieng',is 13 years old and has been living with his grandmother for about twoyears, having come from his father's home, 40 kilometers away.

Maria and Ochieng' live in the homestead of an elderly blind woman,who is a distant relative of Maria's mother. She lives alone since her re-maining sons live in town. She invited Maria to build a hut beside hersand to farm her land, and in return Maria and Ochieng' provide her withfood from the garden and take care of her. As a "guest" (jadak) of theolder woman, Maria's position is insecure. Although a jadak has usu-fruct rights in Luo customary law, he or she cannot pass on the land todescendants, and can be ejected from the land, although Luo notions ofhospitality discourage this (Ocholla-Ayayo 1976:127). As a jadak, Mariais also an "outsider" (jaoko). She came to the village many years ago,some time after her husband died, at a time when the lake flooded hishome and she had nowhere to live. She has no kin in the village from herhusband's or her father's lineage. Of her three sons who survived child-hood, two are dead, and the third, Ochieng's father, is, she says, "adrunkard." Maria is thus dependent for her security on the elderlywoman and her sons who own the land.

Maria keeps a well maintained garden in the homestead, planted witha variety of vegetables and herbs. She also works on her host's fields,which surround the homestead. But despite her reputation as a healerand her hard work cultivating, Maria is very poor. She and Ochieng'have a small hut, which is almost falling apart. Half of the thatched roofwas destroyed in the last long rains, and the floor was reduced to mudduring the time we visited her. When it rains, they have to sleep in thehut of their host.

Maria seems to have turned her insecure position in the village into astrength. Through retelling her dreams, in which her grandmother andother ancestors show her powerful medicines in the bush, she empha-sizes her close relations with the spirit world, and the world of the bushoutside the settlement where powerful medicines are found. It is signifi-cant that the illnesses that Maria treats are those often suffered by mar-ginal and vulnerable groups in society, or those who are rendered vul-nerable by some event or crisis. Her patients include those who have(either themselves or their families) transgressed ritual customs and are


thus considered unclean, infants who are vulnerable to evil eye, infertilewomen, and those considered mad.

Maria is a strong and tough person. She has an intense personality, isoutspoken and proud, and is known in the village for her hot temper.This brings her into conflict with people. However, she enjoys a reputa-tion as a powerful healer, and she is known in the village to be a hard-working and good woman. She herself points out that being caring,compassionate, and selfless is a vital part of the healer's task, and sheemphasizes that it is not enough to have knowledge, power, and wis-dom (rieko) without respect (luoro), and in fact it would be dangerous forone's patients and oneself. Maria's emphasis on her own goodness re-flects her need to maintain her popularity in the community. The prac-tice of healing is not exempt from people's scrutiny and suspicion—building and maintaining trust is vital.

The Learning Process

Both Ochieng' and Maria gave two practical reasons for his coming tolive with her: that she could teach (puonj) him how to treat and that hecould help (kony) her. Ochieng' also says that he loves his grandmotherand likes to stay with her, and Maria says that living with her grandsonmakes her happy (omora).

Ochieng is in level five in the village primary school. He is regardedby his teachers as a bright child. Outside of school, he helps his grand-mother; fetching water from the lake and firewood from the surround-ing bush; sweeping the compound and the hut; and helping her to dig,weed, and harvest the fields. They own one cow, which Ochieng' takesto the lake to drink and graze.

Ochieng' also helps his grandmother in her healing activities. He sitsdown with her and the patients when they come to the house and pre-pares and serves them food if there is some. He also helps her preparemedicines, give medicines to patients, and sometimes wash patientswith medicine. He accompanies her to the bush around the homesteadto look for plants, watches while she prepares medicine, and listens toher talking with her patients. Thus he participates in caring for patients.He is not excluded from any activity, although if the illness concernssexuality, he may be sent away during the consultation between Mariaand her patient. During these activities, Maria gives little explicit in-struction to Ochieng', but she gives advice to patients. Ochieng' listens,observes, and helps. Here is an account from our field notes in 1998:

It is Saturday. A mother, her sick infant and another child aged about eight,have come to Maria's home. They are sitting on the swept ground under thebig tree in the middle of the compound when we arrive. Maria is nowhere tobe seen, she is in her fields. Ochieng' has been sent to go and fetch her. We sitdown with the mother, and she tells us that her child is sick, it has stomachache. After some time, both Ochieng' and Maria return, Maria with her hoe.Maria comes and sits down on the ground under the tree and sends Ochieng'


to fetch some stools from the hut. It is close to midday and very hot. Ochieng'returns and sits down with us. Maria and the mother talk about the rains andabout funerals in the village. The mother (whom we shall call Akello) starts todescribe her infant's sickness—he has stomach ache and diarrhea, she gavehim a common herb for stomach ache, it got better, then got worse. Her hus-band advised taking the child to the clinic but she is convinced the child has si-hoho, caught from a neighboring woman (who is often suspected by villagersof having "evil eye"). Although Maria and Akello do not talk about it duringthis interaction, Maria later tells us that Akello has some conflicts with the ac-cused woman. Maria then tells Ochieng' to go and dig a particular root that,she says, will be good for the child. Ochieng' takes the digging trough andleaves, taking us with him, followed by the eight year old. He tells us that thisis a common root, which many people know, therefore he can show us too.Ochieng' knows where to find this root and we don't have to walk far beforehe finds the bush and starts digging the ground. We return to the homesteadto find Maria and Akello still sitting under the tree. Maria cuts the root up andgives some to Akello, telling her she should first try that for her child. Sheshould boil it and then give the child the water to drink. She should comebackafter she has done this.

This account shows the everyday nature of Ochieng's participation inMaria's healing activities. He is simply present during interactions be-tween Maria and patients, and he is drawn into participation, being toldto fetch and prepare medicines. This episode was only the beginning of aprocess of treatment by Maria of the sick child, a process that eventuallyinvolved hoso, a ritual of food consumption that takes place between themother of the child and the woman accused of "evil eye." Ochieng' didnot participate in this later treatment, but he continued to dig roots andpick plants for Maria's yadh agulu, her "pot medicine" that she gave tothe child.

Ochieng' told us that he has started to search for and prepare medi-cines for simple ailments by himself. As he explained: "I pick the medi-cines that are mixed for that illness [a kind of stomach ache], the leaves ofogaka and akado and other parts of plants. I mix them, then I boil themand measure them with a cup. It runs to the stomach and washes it, andyou diarrhea the illness out. Then you take another medicine to stop thediarrhea." Ochieng' proudly recalled an incident when he had been paidwith three school exercise books for helping to treat a patient.10

Although Ochieng's participation in caring for patients and givingthem medicines is part of everyday life, the learning of specific newmedicines is more ritualized. Ochieng' described the way he learnsmedicines from his grandmother:

If a sick person comes to the home, she meets my grandmother in the hut. If itis chira she sends me away. If she wants to, she calls me, and we go into thebush. She plucks a plant, spits on it, and gives it to me [mimes the action ofgiving an object with both hands]. She tells me its name. She says, "This planttreats this illness, and you have to mix it with this other plant." I say nothing. Ido not say, "I understand." Then she prepares the medicine at home and gives


it to the sick person. Sometimes she sends me to go and pick the plant. I bringit and she boils it. Then she measures it into a cup, and that is how it is taken.We bring it to the sick person and tell her how she can use the medicine. If Iforget the herb, she will not tell me its name again, but she will show me nexttime someone is sick and wants that treatment.

In this account we can discern some of the patterns concerning thepassing on of knowledge about medicines. The medicine is named, theillness it treats is named, it is spat upon, handled using both hands as fora gift, and passed from the hands of the healer to those of the novice. Theonly words spoken are the names of the medicine and the illness. Thenovice is not supposed to ask any questions, nor should he repeat whathe has been told. In Maria's words:

When you are shown a medicine, you cannot say "I accept/' You just keepquiet. You just look at it and master it. If you say, "Yes, I accept it/' then youcannot master that medicine.

Ochieng' also told us about other customs surrounding the collectionand use of medicines:

You cannot look behind you after picking a herb. If you do, the herb will notwork and you will forget that herb. You cannot show other people. You canonly tell them if you have tried that herb and it works. You must first treatsomeone in the family, you cannot just try it out on anyone.

Although we were not present when Maria showed Ochieng' newmedicines, inquiries among other elderly women in the village gavesupport to his account. Mama Phebe (who is the second wife and agrandmother in a homestead ten minutes' walk from Maria's home)took us out with her hoe and a trail of her children and grandchildren toshow us where she finds herbs. Whenever she picked a plant, she spat onit before she showed it to us and put it in her bag to take home. She toldus there are certain customs one should follow when picking medicinesand showing them to other people—one should spit on them, keep si-lent, and not look back. Because the plants she was showing us were nother personal medicines, but common plants known to everyone, suchpractices were not so important. When we asked children about this,they confirmed that there are certain customs one should follow whenpicking certain plants, but one can show a common plant to anyone. Thedegree of ritual surrounding the collection of medicines thus dependsupon the kind of medicine and its personal connection to the knower.

Choosing and Being Chosen

When asked why his grandmother chose to teach him among hergrandchildren, Ochieng' replied: "Because she loves me a lot." He added:"I was old enough. One starts to teach [a child] when he can master the


medicines well. He has to remember well/' Maria said that Ochieng' hasrespect (luoro) paired with understanding (paro or winjo), hence he is agood child. She began showing him medicines, she says, when he be-came intelligent (obedo gi rieko) and could understand (winjo), aroundthe age of nine. A child you can teach, she says, must not be stubborn. Hemust be willing to listen to others and to learn. Moreover, he must have apure heart (chuny maler) so that he can love people. She added that ittakes someone who will suffer, meaning someone who is selfless andwilling to suffer for others.

When asked why she preferred to teach a young child like Ochieng'rather than an older child, Maria said that, "People who have been toschool think they are clever, but they can still fail in life." She added thatto learn medicine, one must not be proud, a quality often associated withformal education or wealth. Thus she contrasted her own skills to thekind of knowledge that schooling imparts. Maria also said that Ochieng'will always be grateful for the care she gave him and for the gift of herknowledge, and hence will be generous with her in later life. In otherwords, he will reciprocate her care later when she will be old and frailand dependent- Finally, both Ochieng' and Maria stressed the impor-tance of the child's interest in learning medicines. As Maria put it, "Youcan't teach a child who does not want to sit and listen" (bedo gi winjo). It isthe child's choice as much as his grandmother's to be her helper and tolearn.

Maria told us that she learns about herbs from her paternal grand-mother, who still appears to her in dreams and shows her where to findmedicines. However, a formative experience was Maria's meeting withan elderly woman by the lake, of which she gave us the following ac-count:

I started treating when I was young, and the person who gave me those herbswas not just an ordinary woman. One day, I went down to the lake to fetchwater. There was an old woman there, she was leaning on a stick. She askedtwo girls there to help her wash herself, but they refused. I did not refuse. Iwashed her. She was so dirty, and she wore only pants! I scrubbed her,scrubbed her legs, washed the red soil off her. I even washed her pot and herwalking stick, and I filled her pot with water. After I had dressed her, I toldher, now I am going, but she clung onto me, so that I wished I had refused likethe other girls. This woman was strange! We walked far into the bush, andthen she led me to a plant. She plucked a leaf, and then another, and then sheled me to another plant and plucked that one too, and another, and another.She gave them to me, and said, "Maria, Maria, you have done good, you havea good heart, my grandchild. I have nothing to give to you but take these. Youknow! I know!", and she spat on them like this, to bless them. She said, "Saynothing and go to your home. Don't look back. Tell yourmother and your fa-ther that a woman has given you these things that treat illness!" That is when Istarted treating so much with herbs.


Asked why the old woman chose her, Maria said, "She chose myheart. She was very dirty, and no one wanted to be near her. But I did notcare, I washed her. If you treat people you must have a strong heart, agood heart! Sometimes people you treat are vomiting and have diarrhea.They sleep in your home and you must take care of them. You must lovepeople."

Through telling this narrative, Maria underlines her credentials as ahealer: her altruistic motivation, good heart, caring, and compassion.She emphasizes the strong emotional and social component of a healer'stask, the difficulty and suffering that healing entails. Her story alsoshows us the ritual and spiritual aspect of learning medicines. The medi-cine is brought to her by an unknown elderly woman, a weak and poorperson who emerges as powerful, possessing secret knowledge. Thismotif, and the moral of humility and sympathy bringing rich rewards,bears some resemblance to traditional Luo oral narratives (Onyango-Ogutu and Roscoe 1974:138-143).n In Maria's story, the passing on ofthe old woman's knowledge is ritualized: It is first spat upon, thusblessed, and then passed on as a gift. In precolonial Luo ritual, spittingwas used to evoke the powers of the ancestors (Ochalla-Ayayo 1976),and it is still employed to either bless or curse. Spitting on the medicinethus evokes its connection with the ancestors, and its links with the past.Spitting also underlines the connection between the medicine and itsowner—it is a gift and as such it is part of the person of the giver. Thepassing on of medicine and medical knowledge establishes a lastingbond between the giver and the recipient. The gift of medicine fromgrandmother to grandchild thus contributes to the closeness of their re-lationship, which will last beyond the grandmother's death.

Discussion

There are five aspects of this case of learning to heal that we highlighthere, because they are relevant to wider discussions about the signifi-cance of participation in learning contexts. First, much of what the childlearns about healing emerges from his participation in the daily activi-ties of the healer's homestead. These activities include daily householdchores, caring for patients, and searching for and preparing medicines.The child's own practice develops through observing, listening and par-ticipating in medical practices, and through taking the initiative and re-sponsibility for minor tasks. The practical nature of the knowledgelearned and its embeddedness in daily life means that it is not usuallyverbalized.

Second, the fact that learning occurs in practical situations, when facedwith suffering, suggests a holistic context for the child's growing knowl-edge. He does not learn about illnesses or treatments as fragmentedpieces of knowledge, but rather through lived experience. The novice'sgrowing medical knowledge is part of life in the healer's household, and


it is enriched by the social relations, emotions, and experiences that con-stitute this life.

Third, learning to heal is embedded in the relationship betweengrandmother and grandchild, a relationship in which love, respect, andgeneralized long-term reciprocity are emphasized. The closeness be-tween the two contributes to Ochieng's interest and motivation to learnand to the depth of the knowledge he gains about healing. Medicalknowledge gained in this way is not abstracted from social relation-ships, suffering, love, and care.

Fourth, the healer does not show her medicines to any child she liveswith. Often it is a grandchild who feels particularly close to his or hergrandmother, who loves her especially, and who wants to live with herand learn about her medicines. Thus it is the child's choice as much as hisgrandmother's to live with her and to learn to heal. Maria emphasizedthat one who wants to learn must have a "good" character: a pure heart,respect, understanding, and love for people. The child should be inter-ested in learning, and able to listen to advice and understand others. In-telligence or knowledge and being able to think are important, but it isthe qualities of respect, understanding, and compassion that are empha-sized.

This balance between knowledge and respect is characteristic of Luoideas of knowledge and power: They should be controlled by social re-sponsibility and moral values. The Dholuo term rieko can be translatedas knowledge and wisdom as well as intelligence and cleverness. WhenLuo people say that someone is an "intelligent person" (jariek), they giveexamples of concrete achievements that show ability not just to think,but to carry thought into action, to be productive and creative. However,rieko is an ambiguous quality that should be balanced by respect(luoro). The term luoro connotes being open to advice, having a goodheart and compassion for others, as well as obedience and under-standing. People point out that rieko without luoro is dangerous, that aperson can be too self-willed. Having respect for others is considered theessential quality for leading a good life (dak maber).

Having a pure heart, respect, and compassion for people are moralqualities that are necessary for healing. In order to heal others, one musthave no hidden anger or evil intentions—one's heart must be pure orclean. The healer has great responsibility for her patients because theytrust her and place themselves in her care. Moreover, the medicines thatshe owns are powerful and potentially dangerous substances, and shecould use them for selfish ends. In order to gain people's trust, her ownmoral character should be pure and her actions responsible.

Finally, there exist certain rituals concerning the passing of knowl-edge of medicines from the healer to the novice. The owner of the medi-cine plucks the part of the plant used for treatment, spits on it, and handsit to the novice with both hands. These are gestures of respect for themedicine and its owners. Spitting blesses the medicine. Spitting also


makes reference to the past and to the ancestor who is the original ownerof the knowledge. Handling the medicine with both hands indicates re-spect for the medicine, for its present and past owners, and it underlinesthat the medicine is a gift. The rule of silence and the prohibition againstlooking backward after plucking a herb demonstrate reverence for theancestral spirits, and express the novice's humility and willingness tolearn.12 These practices ensure that the spirits of the bush are not of-fended and follow the person who plucks the plant back to the home-stead where they may cause harm.

Two further practices underline the use of knowledge and the medi-cine itself. The first rule is secrecy: One should not tell others what onehas been shown. This may serve to increase the mystery surroundingboth the knowledge and the knower, and the respect accorded to both.As a personal asset, knowledge of medicine also has economic value.However, the emphasis on secrecy is more than a strategy to protectone's knowledge. Medicine is considered an ambiguous substance, po-tentially dangerous to both patient and healer (Cohen and Odhiambo1989:89; see also Janzen 1992:14). Those who "know" or "own" the medi-cine have a responsibility to ensure its proper use, which entails passingit on to a trusted person. A second rule concerns the responsible use ofthe medicine: A novice may not try medicines he or she has recentlylearned on anyone, but should use them first among family members.This emphasis on caution reflects the ambiguous nature of medicine.Both powerful and dangerous, it should be treated with respect and cau-tion.

Relation to Anthropological Studies of Learning and Healing

There are parallels between our case study and Reynolds's descrip-tion of traditional healers and childhood among the Zezeru of Zim-babwe (Reynolds 1996). Like the Luo, the Zezuru have no formal ap-prenticeship in indigenous medicine. Learning about medicines occursas part of everyday domestic life in the healer's household. From the ageof 13, children start to gather and prepare medicines and treat minor ail-ments on their own, and they may give a patient treatment under thewatchful eye of the healer. Divining the patient's problem and identify-ing an appropriate treatment are learned at a later stage, usually inadulthood, after the novice healer has established his or her possessionby an ancestral spirit, and thus his or her calling to heal (Reynolds1996:7-8). Integrity, purity, and respect for others are valued qualities ofhealers, and in being chosen as a novice, the child's "purity" is oftenstressed. Zezeru healing is practiced by men and women equally, and islearned by both boys and girls.

Reynolds stresses the importance of the relationship between healerand novice, who are usually grandparent and grandchild, for the proc-ess of learning to heal. Being closer to the spirit world from where theyhave recently emerged, children are considered to be natural companions


of older people, who will soon return to the spirit world. It is said amongZezuru that children inherit healing powers from the grandparentalgeneration, and not from parents:

Special ties are established between a child and a healer, often between grand-parent and grandchild. As is customary, the child may have been sent to livewith the grandparent. Sometimes the child insists on living with a grandpar-ent who is a healer, even against parental wishes. The child may spend muchof her time in the healer's company, participating in trips to collect herbs andin treatment sessions. [Reynolds 1996:7]

Although the two cases are obviously similar, Reynolds's account ofthe Zezuru suggests they have a stronger idea of the professional aspectsof being a healer than we observed among the Luo. However, Reynoldsalso explains that the knowledge of healers is not qualitatively differentfrom communal medical knowledge—it is the extreme end of a continuum.The important parallels between the two cases are the embeddedness oflearning in everyday life, the communal nature of knowledge and prac-tice about medicine, and the central importance of (kin) relatedness formedical learning, with its implication of shared everyday life and emo-tional closeness.

Outside the context of healing and medicine, the role of family rela-tions and everyday practice has been emphasized by students of learn-ing in rural Africa. In his classic study of the Tallensi, Fortes (1938:28)shows how Tale children learn how to do household tasks and agricul-tural work in "real situations.'' Productive activities are not broken upinto fragments and taught, but emerge in an "embryonic" way out of on-going practice (1938:42). Tale children, Fortes says, are given "freedomand responsibility" to participate using their level of skill (1938:31-32):Cooperation, reciprocity, and respect for others are essential to commu-nity life. Fortes notes that the relationship between grandparents andgrandchildren is central to learning, a relationship marked by "equality,compatibility, partisanship—and joking" (1938:17), where learning is fa-cilitated by "affection, indulgence, confidence, security and liberty"(1981:51). These observations of emotional and practical relatedness andits significance for learning and knowledge in rural African societiesresonate well with the case explored here.

Fortes's insights into how learnable skills are produced in social rela-tions and in productive practice within West African domestic groupsprovides a starting point for recent sociocultural theories of learning, asproposed by Lave and Wenger (1991), and Rogoff (1990). Although Fortesdeparts from a focus on family relations and domestic practice andshows how learning is a byproduct of the social activities of a group,both Lave and Rogoff begin from a critique of schooling and academictheories of cognition and show the importance of "social practice" in allkinds of learning situations. In order to study learning processes outsideof school, they focus on craft apprenticeship through which professional


qualifications are conveyed to individual apprentices. Based on studiessuch as Lave's (1977) work among apprentice tailors in West Africa,Lave and Rogoff reject the conventional Western notion of knowledge asan individual cognitive property. Instead they emphasize the social con-struction of knowledge and propose a universal theory of learning as aprocess of participation in "social activity" (Rogoff 1990) or "social prac-tice" (Lave 1977; Lave and Wenger 1991).

Rogoff argues that as children learn through guided participation insociocultural activity with more experienced practitioners, they gradu-ally move toward greater responsibility and hence appropriation of theactivity (Rogoff 1990,1995). Lave finds that learning is not a discrete ac-tivity that produces practice; it is itself part of practice, "a way of being inthe world, not a way of knowing about it" (Lave and Wenger1991:12-28). Lave further suggests that knowledge is relational: It existsbetween people rather than inside them, and is constructed in socialpractice, not the mind. She stresses that practice is always situated in a"community of practice/' Learning is part of participation in the activi-ties of this community, and it contributes to the formation of communitymembership and identity (Lave 1993:63). Participation in socioculturalactivity begins from a more peripheral position, and, as participants be-come more competent and take more responsibility, they become coremembers of the community of practice.

This sociocultural emphasis in the understanding of learning andknowledge fits well with the case of Ochieng' and Maria described here.However, we argue that Lave's (1993) concept of peripheral participa-tion could be qualified. When we look at the case of Ochieng' and Maria,we see that the relation between healer and child is a dynamic one. Atthe moment, Maria certainly is the knowledgeable healer, and Ochieng'the helper who is building up his knowledge and skills. However, theydepend on each other. Ochieng's work is essential for productive activi-ties: He fetches firewood and water, helps in the fields, cares for patients,and looks for medicinal plants. As Maria becomes more frail, she maystill know more, but she could hardly practice without his help. There isnot one skill to becoming a healer, but a range of practical, social, andemotional abilities. Healer and grandchild have different levels of com-petence that complement each other. Thus, their common practice isbased on their cooperation and the reciprocal nature of their relationship.

Furthermore, the emotional bond between older and younger partici-pants in practice, which is crucial in Tallensi productive practice, in Zez-eru healing, and in our case study of Ochieng' and Maria, seems some-what secondary in Lave's theory. For example, Lave draws upon a studyof Maya midwives and their daughters and granddaughters (Jordan1989; Lave 1993:70). Here, learning occurs as part of daily life in the fami-lies of midwives; a girl observes her female kin's practice, gradually as-sumes more responsibility, and gains knowledge and identity as a mid-wife. Lave sees the formation of Maya midwives as an apprenticeship,


akin to a tailor's or sailor's education. One could as well argue that Mayagirls learn about pregnancy, delivery, and infant care as part of their do-mestic life and becoming a woman. The advantage of such a "Fortesian"view of learning is that the affective aspects of relatedness, and their im-portant role for learning, are in greater focus.

We argue that there are two ways in which close ethnographic exami-nations of learning from a cross-cultural perspective can enrich currentsociocultural theories of learning. One concerns the relations throughwhich learning occurs, and that are constituted by learning social prac-tices. Current sociocultural theory emphasizes that a community ofpractice is the crucial context in which learning occurs. But one couldalso turn this around and ask how social relations and even relatedness,as well as knowledge and skills, develop through participation in com-munities of practice. The other concerns the emotional and moral con-text of learning: What other personal qualities and social skills, besidespractical skills, are learned within a particular social context?

The case of Ochieng' and Maria shows that learning is not only em-bedded in practice and social relations, but that social relations in whichreciprocity and respect for the other is encouraged are crucial. First, theequal and reciprocal nature of this type of kinship relationship is ena-bling: It motivates the child to learn and encourages him or her to actcreatively and responsibly. Second, because it is situated in a relation-ship in which love and respect are stressed, learning becomes a moraland emotional process. The child does not simply develop practicalskills, he or she learns social sense, responsibility, and compassion, andan understanding of and for others.

We suggest that a great deal of important education, that of social andmoral values and of character development, takes place in everyday set-tings such as Maria's homestead—places that allow for a freer interac-tion between adult and child than those of the school and nuclear family.The anthropology of education could benefit from further research intowhat is and what can be learned in such situations.

Ruth Prince is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Anthropology, CopenhagenUniversity ([email protected]). P. Wenzel Geissler is attached to theInstitute of Anthropology, Copenhagen University.

Notes

Acknowledgments. Many thanks to Maria and Ochieng', to the children andteachers of Bar-Awendo and Majengo schools, and to the people of Uhero village.We are grateful to Ms. Philister Adhiambo, Mr. Omondi and Mrs. Reenish Achieng,to Rev. and Mrs. Wasonga, and to the staff of the Kenyan-Danish Health ResearchProject (KEDAHR) and the Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, Kisumu. The studywas carried out within the framework of KEDAHR, and was jointly funded by theDanish Bilharziasis Laboratory (through the Danish International Development


Agency) and a James S. McDonnell grant from the Partnership for Child Devel-opment, Wellcome Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, Univer-sity of Oxford.

1. The village consists of scattered homesteads, each surrounded by culti-vated land, belonging to the home, and by bush. Since 1998, we have spent sev-eral months every year in this community in order to follow up our research inmedical anthropology; we are currently (2000-01) staying for one year. We stayin the homestead of an Anglican priest and his wife, a nurse, their children andgrandchildren.

2. All personal names and place names have been changed.3. Although we view the learning relationship between Ochieng' and his

grandmother as a kind of apprenticeship, we use the term novice or helper ratherthan apprentice, because the latter has formal connotations linked to professionsthat do not fit well into the learning relationships in the kin-group throughwhich medical knowledge is produced. There is no specific word in Dholuo for anovice healer; the general term, japuonjore, meaning "one who learns/' is some-times used.

4. In the two primary schools of the study village, few children achievedabove 30 percent in end-of-year examinations.

5. Chira is an illness that is related to inappropriate sex. According to Parkin(1978), it expresses relations of seniority. In contemporary Luo society, there ismuch debate over the importance of following such customs, and the relationbetween transgression and illness.

6. The other common term, yadh agulu or "medicine from the pot'' refers to themain mode of preparation (boiling), and underlines the link between medicalpractice and other (female) domestic forms of production.

7. Susan Whyte (1997:25) finds a similar distribution of specialized knowl-edge of illness and medicines among Bunyole people of Eastern Uganda:

"In every neighbourhood, there are people who know herbal medicine forparticular symptoms. They are sometimes called abangani, people who treat,but they are not healers, or even herbalists Some may know medicine forone or two kinds of symptoms; one treats diarrhea, another menstrual prob-lems. The knowledge is often secret and the owner is paid a small fee "for go-ing in the bush" to find the plant medicine.

8. In this article, we deal only with the herbalist-healer. Another kind of Luohealer is the ajuoga or jasepe (pi. ajuoge, josepe), meaning "one of the spirits," a di-viner-healer who has a close relationship with spirits and who uses ritual heal-ing as well as herbalism in his or her practice. The ajuoga is described in olderethnographies of the Luo as the archetypal African "medicine man" or "witchdoctor" who deals with witchcraft and social crises (Abe 1978; Evans-Pritchard1950; Ochalla-Ayayo 1976; Whisson 1964). In contemporary Luoland, the ajuogais regarded ambivalently, as one who can do evil as well as good, and few wouldadmit to using his or her services. Perhaps as a consequence of this, another kindof healer has become popular in Luoland. This is the Christian healer, who tack-les illness and misfortune through possession by Christian saints and biblicalfigures rather than ancestral spirits.

9. Chira affects both children and adults, and is caused by transgression oftraditional rules (hveche) concerning sexuality and kinship relations (Abe 1981;Parkin 1978). Treatment involves manyasi, ritualized taking of special medicineconsisting of plants and earth. Some people say that HIV-AIDS is a new form of


chira. Sihoho (evil eye) affects mainly small children, and is manifested in severstomach pains. It is caused by the (hereditary) evil eye of a woman who has noblood relationship with the child. Treatment is either hoso: the ritual retractionof the evil eye through shared food between the evil-eye woman and the victimand the restoration of relations between the mother of the child and the accusedwoman; or tako: sucking out the affected food from an incision in the child's bellywith a cow's horn.

10. All conversations took place in Dholuo. They were tape-recorded, noted,and later transcribed and translated into English with the help of Ms. PhilisterAdhiambo.

11. The story of Min Omolo Kanyonja concerns an elderly woman whocauses a great flood because she is refused hospitality. She saves only the familywho helped her. In the tale of Nyamgondho, a young man marries an uglywoman, who brings him great herds of cattle, but he loses both the bride and allhis possessions when he behaves arrogantly toward her.

12. These practices also apply to the collection of particularly potent medi-cines (such as manyasi against the illness called chira), in which the link betweenthe ancestors and the potency of the medicine is explicitly made.

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Becoming "One Who Treats": A Case Study of a Luo Healer and Her Grandson in Western Kenya

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