History
Methods of Ensuring Food Sufficiency
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- Published on Saturday, 30 June 2007 23:05
The first and most important method was through cultivation of food. This was done at four levels. First every woman had a small garden near the homestead for the production of vegetables. This was called egeticha. Secondly, every woman had a larger plot near the homestead for the production of mainly wimbi and other crops. This was called enyomba. Thirdly far away in the field men cleared the forest and subdivided their field(s) among their wives for wimbi production; such fields were called endemero. And lastly out in the forest, men had their own plots, called embonga, whose produce was stored separately.
We have already seen how the Gusii selected special seeds for cultivation and various methods of crop production that ensured high yields: we need not repeat that. Food storage forms one of the critical steps in ensuring food sufficiency. Abundant food can be spoilt or wasted at the storage level; hence the need for efficient methods of storage. Among the Gusii, wimbi was stored in round granaries, made of intertwined long thin sticks (well-aerated) placed about a foot from the ground and supported by stones. The granary was amply suited for keeping grain even up to ten years. Later harvests could be stored together with the earlier year’s harvest taking the lowest layer without fear of the grain being spoilt. This long storage changed the wimbi colour to dark but its taste was preferred to the other grains, especially for the preparation of porridge and ugali. For immediate consumption however, some grain was threshed and stored in pots, baskets and emenyoncho- a big round-basket-like for wimbi storage devise with a narrow mouth/opening, smeared with cow-dung, and kept on the ceiling of houses – a warm area free of any insects or pests.
Except for immediate consumption or exchange purposes, sorghum heads were never threshed. The heads were often cut off and packed in the inner part of the lower roof of both houses and granaries. Equally, pest infestation and attack by animals were minimal in such places. The storage of maize was exactly the same as for sorghum. As in the Luo Kowe community, it had very limited use and was grown in small amounts. It was eaten off the cob, either boiled or roasted (Hay, 1978:96). Sweat potatoes, on the other hand, presented no storage problem as they were dug up only when required for immediate cooking.
Protection of crops from bowling insects and animals, both in the farm and in the granary, appears to have been negligible. No form of medicinal plants or ash were used against them. Rats, on the other hand, were not much of a menace and, as one informant put it, there was abundant food both inside and outside the granary so that the damage to stored food was negligible ( Ondonga, O.I. 1989). The basis of continued food supplies lay in the manner of storage and continued cultivation of surplus food.
Other methods of ensuring food sufficiency included the planting of more sweet potatoes and pumpkins during periods of locust’s invasion. As already mentioned, there used to be a field for the husband, the harvest of which was stored separately in a granary called emonga yo'mogaka. This literary means the father's bank or security. The produce in the man's granary, unlike the woman's which was used in feeding the household, was never used except in periods of food shortage. When there was no food shortage the man exchanged his produce for livestock or for his sons' bride-wealth. It appears that the Gusii did not received food from their neighbours except in times of ecological disaster. The exception to this was milk, which was acquired from the Luo as part of the perennial exchange between the two communities. The Gusii proudly claim that they, unlike the Luo, Maasai or Kipsigis, never sold or pawned their children to neighboring ethnic groups in exchange for food. However, Ochieng' (1975b: 67) has tried to refute this, saying that the Gusii do no give such information due to 'ethnic pride'. According to our oral sources however, most of the Gusii community is said to have been unaware of such transactions. Mwanzi (1977:85) attests to the limited exchange of children from Gusii to the Kipsigis
Within Gusiiland, food shortages were common in individual households, and so complex kinship relations developed to alleviate food shortages in such household. First, such affected household sold their animals for wimbi to those who had a surplus; secondly, they could beg for food; thirdly, if the affected household had an eligible marriageable daughter, they requested bride price inform of wimbi calculated at the exchange rate of heifers. Fourthly, the affected family could be given a long term loan in food, equivalent to a heifer and payable when a particular girl in the family got married and dowry was paid. Equally, the affected family could be given a heifer to be exchanged for wimbi elsewhere, payable when the same girl got married (Machani, O.I., 1989).
Lastly, all members of a household could move from a hunger - stricken area to join relatives who would give them food and a piece of land to cultivate. In such circumstances they sometimes ended up staying there permanently on their own will. The affected families sometimes received a lot of help from those with surplus food. Other than giving donations the latter could exchange food for animals from the affected homes, or give food loans in from of wimbi or livestock.
While it is therefore evident that the pre-colonial Gusii experienced food shortages due to weather as well as warfare and other forms of social disruption, it is also evident that, as Zeleza (1986:159) puts it in a wider context, there existed a variety of social mechanisms and ecological reserves to reduce the impact of food shortages in any one family. The organization of the extended homestead both as a production and consumption unit, reduced the vulnerability of individuals and component nuclear family units. Patterns of re-distributive and reciprocal gifts between households in turn reinforced the society's ability to withstand a crisis of food shortage. This was coupled with elaborate techniques of storage that permitted grain to be stored for relatively long periods. Against this background, it is worth examining the famine of 1891 among the Gusii.
