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Barter Trade is Still Strong
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 03 July 2007 04:29
Those interested haggle and offer various measures of maize and finger millet in exchange for the organic salt (bala) and sisal ropes (ngori) for tethering livestock and hanging traditional cooking pots.This is one of ancient barter systems of trade still existing between the Luo and Gusii communities of Nyanza Province that has stood the test of time, including the cash economy.
Organic salt, known as bala in Dholuo, and corrupted to ebara in Ekegusii, is bartered for grain. Quantities are measured in two-kilo tins called gorogoro in Dholuo and omotoriro in Ekegusii.This is strictly a male business. Luo men trek long distances into the Kisii highlands driving donkeys loaded with gunny bags of the salt. The barter trade is conspicuous in times of food scarcity in the lakeside region while it is harvest time in Kisiiland.
What is remarkable about the Luo men's sojourns is that they have no particular abode to spend the nights once they set out with their commodity. However, their hosts cannot deny them accommodation at nightfall. The merchants sometimes part ways in the evening only to reunite at their homes.
Organic salt is used as a lick for livestock and as catalyst in the cooking of green maize, beans and a mixture of both.A suspension of the salt is prepared and a saturate poured into the cooking food to acquire a certain taste and a yellowish colour. The maize or beans are served while hot without any addition of industrial salt.
This is one of the oldest traditional methods of cooking food still practised by some members of the Gusii community, especially the elderly.The significance of the organic salt is that besides cementing inter-ethnic relation between the Luos and Abagusii, it is a substitute for industrial salt, which is expensive. The foodstuffs from Kisii have saved some areas of Luoland from starvation. The Luo men never accept cash in exchange of their products. The bartering of the salt also enables the Gusii to get sisal ropes, which are only made in Luoland and are in high demand.
In times gone by organic salt was valued for its trace elements of iron for human and livestock.However, livestock experts now discourage farmers from administering this kind of salt to their animals. They explain that it has a lot of contamination besides its low levels of iron and iodine. Lack of iodine in salt causes the inflammation of tonsils in the human body.Nyamira District Livestock Extension Officer Benjamin Angir discourages daily farmers from feeding their animals with organic salt.
Angir says the salt is not graded and its nutritional value is low.He says there is no scientific evidence that the salt is beneficial to dairy animals.He advises farmers to use the recommended commercial salts, which have been analysed and graded.The salt is obtained as an alluvial dust from the plains of Karachuonyo in Rachuonyo District during dry spells.
A veterinarian interviewed termed the feeding of animals by the organic salt retrogressive.Currently, the consumption of the salt seems to be going down due to emphasis on high quality livestock, which might contract worms and other diseases if given the organic salt.
