TABOOS TO BLAME FOR POOR HEALTH
By Pamela Omwodo (1993)
Women in developing countries are often in poor health and
over burdened with pressure of work.
Many suffer from malnutrition, a state that is partly due to age old
practices that hamper their health. Up to
date food taboos that have defied health education still deny women and
especially pregnant ones the protein rich foods which are a necessity in their
nutrition.
Among the Miji Kenda group – a Swahili word meaning nine
villages – along the coastal region of Kenya food taboos are still
prevalent.
“Women are not allowed to eat fish and eggs throughout the
period of pregnancy”, says Josephine Kalama, a mother of three. Josephine is from
Chonyi, one of the nine Miji Kenda groups.
Among the Miji Kenda it is believed that a child whose
mother ate fish or eggs during pregnancy will have eyes like that of a fish and
that his head will be round and hairless like an egg. They also believe the child will be born
with jaundice, because of the yellow colour of the egg yolk.
The prevailing belief has been handed down from generation
to generation. “These are beliefs that
have been there ever since I was born and so I have to adhere to them”,
justifies Josephine. Mothers adhere to these prescriptions mostly because they believe;
the unborn child’s life can be harmed if they violate the taboo.
Many other tribes in Kenya also still have one or so
such beliefs that affect the female gender.
In Yambo County situated in South Sudan,
pregnant women are deprived of chicken, eggs and red meat from certain
animals. The taboo persist among the
Yambios two largest tribes – the Zande, estimated to have 80,000 in the county
alone and the Balanda. The believe that
a pregnant woman who eats chicken or eggs during pregnancy is bound to
have a baby who will be slow in grasping
languages and may stammer in his speech.
A pregnant woman is also banned from eating giraffe and
elephant meat for fear that her baby will be born with a spotty skin or a long
nose respectively. They also believe eating meat from the spotted antelope may
lead to breach birth.
Despite the repeated messages on the harmful practice to
traditional birth attendants and mothers at ante-natal clinics, the taboos have
persisted except among the wives of the well to do who are a minority in the
developing countries. In Kilifi and
Kwale district where the Miji Kenda and the majority, it is estimated has 61 to
71 per cent of all the women are illiterate according to the Kenya Rural
Literacy Survey of 1988.
Because of the wide spread observance of the taboos among
the Miji Kenda, the Yambios and many other women in developing countries, many
women are anaemic, a situation that is worsened by repeated attacks of
malaria. As a result maternal mortality is
very high. Estimates from rural
hospitals in the Coast
Province show that for
every 100,000 live births in 1984, 350 women died from pregnancy related
complications. Dr. Katini Nzau-Ombaka,
an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Kenyatta National Hospital, stressed that
” a pregnant mother’s highest needs amongst all the food stuffs is proteins
which she can only get from eating eggs,
fish, meats, liver, milk, beans among other legumes.
The World Health Organization recommends 2535 calories a day
for pregnant women yet between 20 – 45 per cent of women of child bearing age
do not eat the WHO recommended calories a day under normal circumstances.
In a study on maternal mortality in Kenya carried out between 1991 and 1992, Dr.
Shanyisa Khasiani a senior consultant with the Population Council of Kenya
found out that among the Miji Kenda and most other tribes of Kenya, men still
believe it is the women’s duty to do all the household work even when pregnant
and vulnerable. If she acts lazy and
sickly, then she is not a desirable woman. The saddest bit of this she
says, is that the work load will
certainly not be reduced even if she is malnourished.
Among the Miji Kenda a woman must look strong at all
times. She must work out her house
chores without help. She must bear as
many as eight to sixteen children among them must be several boys. She is also
expected to be brave and persevere the pains of child birth and if possible
give birth with as minimal help as possible. Women who are operated on during
child birth are perceived by the culture as weak. For this reason most of the women do not seek
medical help lest they get a caesarean section
Anne Ouma, a 36- year old expectant mother of five from
Busia district admits. She says pregnancy is not a disease. “Even now that am pregnant I still have to
collect firewood, fetch water three Kilometers away, look for food and cook for
my family! That’s my duty, I don’t have a choice”.
The house chores plus garden work may just take an expectant
woman a longer time to do because of the state of her health, but it is still
expected of her. Like Anne Ouma many
millions of women in the developing countries accept this as normal and one of
the most disturbing things is that they bring up their daughters
Poverty, combined with other factors that undermine women’s
nutritional status like heavy work, repeated pregnancies, low social status and
discrimination in food distribution within the family make it very difficult to
educate women about their nutritional needs.
The customs reflect the relative status or value assigned ages ago to
different members of the family.
In Africa where women are
responsible for 60- 80 percent of all food production, one would expect
malnutrition not to be a problem, but it has persisted on. Tanzanian women use
up to 20 per cent of their daily calories intake fetching water. All these a
woman does with no credit even when she deserves it. “Looking at some of the
cultural practices, women were restricted from doing certain things when the
resources were limited. May be the
restrictions were a means of helping the family allocate resources”, observes
Dr. Khasiani. She challenges researchers
and nutritionists to study the taboos deeply and find out if the cultural
beliefs were for vulnerability purposes hence protecting the women. For example women are known to have food
cravings when they are pregnant. To date
people are being discouraged from eating too many eggs which may cause
cholesterol. Could traditional
communities have recognized this? She wonders. One thing is clear, any effort
to improve child survival must include improvement of literacy and other forms
of basic education for women.
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