The significance of earth-eating: Social and cultural aspects of geophagy among Luo children

Earth-eating is common among primary school children in Luoland, western Ke nya. This article describes the social significance and meanings attributed to it. Earth-eating is practised among children before puberty, irrespecti ve of their sex, and among women of reproductive age, but not usually among adult men or old women. To eat earth signifies belonging to the female sph ere within the household, which includes children up to adolescence. Throug h eating earth, or abandoning it, the children express their emerging gende r identity. Discourses about earth-eating, describing the practice as unhea lthy and bad, draw on 'modern' notions of hygiene, which are imparted, for example, in school. They form part of the discursive strategies with which men especially maintain a dominant position in the community. Beyond the si gnificance of earth-eating in relation to age, gender and power, it relates to several larger cultural themes, namely fertility, belonging to a place, and the continuity of the lineage. Earth symbolises female, life-bringing forces. Termite hills, earth from which is eaten by most of the children an d women, can symbolise fertility, and represent the house and the home, and the graves of ancestors. Earth-eating is a form of 'communion' with life-g iving forces and with the people with whom one shares land and origin. Eart h-eating is a social practice produced in complex interactions of body, min d and other people, through which children incorporate and embody social re lations and cultural values.