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ABSTRACT
In this dissertation, I explore the topic of livestock development in The Gambia from
both an historical and anthropological perspective. Breed differences have figured prominently in
the attempts to promote economic growth with livestock in West Africa. The colonial archives
from The Gambia illustrate how incoming cattle from Senegal troubled the campaign against
rinderpest due to differences in disease resistance among the herds. With the Veterinary
Department gaining control of the viral outbreaks, concerns mounted about the increasing size of
the Gambian cattle population. The British response was to destock the countryside by building a
boat to ship the surplus to coastal markets. It did not work. Rationalization for this failure
focused on Africans’ unwillingness to do business with the government. Reflecting on this
interpretation, I show how colonial development projects in The Gambia, like elsewhere in
Africa, did not consider local economic practices when dealing with agricultural problems. In
this case, the marketing approach to livestock development failed because of the imperial refusal
to enter into the credit system. Doing so would have required offering and taking debt to
establish trade relationships within the cattle industry.
Just as the British livestock development scheme pegged its shortcoming to farmers’
aversion to selling cattle, the concept of “savings” figures prominently in ongoing efforts to
identify breeding priorities for livestock development. I examine flock histories from a village in
The Gambia, focusing on sheep and goats, to investigate what farmers do with the animals they
report to be saving and how this affects breed dynamics in the tsetse zone. An ethnogenetic
framework is proposed to analyze how farmers understand the process of biological change in
household flocks and relate this to the folk classification of breeds. I found that the way farmers
classify breed types appears to contradict how farmers trace trait dominance. This has important
implication for the in situ conservation of animal genetic resources.
Comparing flock histories from the village with prior reports on farmers’ objectives, I
argue that the category of “savings” is a translation that serves the interests of development
policy, but mistakes what farmers intend to do with their animals. Livestock research may
emphasize the material security of keeping goats, yet Gambians own behaviors and explanations
draw attention to the way goats help people keep the peace; Rather than stockpile small stock to
accrue wealth or prestige, farmers continually repurpose animals from their flocks to assist
others. From this I conclude that livestock development in The Gambia requires further attention
to the way farmers rely on animals to fulfill obligations and how these exchanges, both social
and genetic, influence breed make-up.
INDEX WORDS: livestock development, agricultural history, animal genetic resource conservation, ethnoecology, anthropology, The Gambia
PRAY PALMS SKYWARD: LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENTS IN THE GAMBIA
by
BA, University of Georgia, 2005
A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
by
TAD ELIOT BROWN
Major Professor: Theodore L. Gragson Committee: Elizabeth J. Reitz Donald R. Nelson Karen Marshall Electronic Version Approved: Julie Coffield Interim Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2015
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DEDICATION
To Betty Brown, she who encouraged the artist to draw with calm enthusiasm.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The nihilist within questions how and why I continued to pursue a doctorate, and all I can
conclude is that my mentors and my dharma insisted I try. Then there was Susannah. It was she
who introduced me to anthropology and deserves credit for my lasting hope for the discipline. If
I am no great scholar, I am in love with one, and that can have a profound effect on one’s
willingness to proceed. This dissertation is a showing of the stubborn hope I share as her
colleague. She is the head of my liver. The best writing I did can be attributed to her critical
green-eyed edits.
Dr. Robert Rhoades was a good man, an informal boss, and a big talker. He shared with
me the confidence to speak my mind and remain critical, all in the service of farmers. I can only
guess what our relationship would be today. Agricultural Anthropology is alive and well, and it
ain’t going away until something better comes along! If my career is to be as an anthropologist,
Rhoades is the reason I would consider it a worthwhile option.
In his place, Dr. Ted Gragson chaired my committee. He has inspired pragmatism in my
work and clarity of thought, which I needed to proceed with this dissertation. I express my
sincere gratitude for his duty and companionship. Dr. Betsy Reitz deserves no less recognition.
She, too, has been gracious in committing to seeing me through the program. I have learned what
it means to be a colleague from her example. Then there is Dr. Don Nelson, who has remained a
positive person in my academic world. He has proven to me what a young scholar can
accomplish and remain humane. I thank Don for being a good example.
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There is no member of my committee that has done more than Dr. Karen Marshall to help
me address the topic of study. Our conversations on breeds and breeding taught me the
equivalent of my years’ of coursework in graduate school. Her ongoing interest in my work is a
sign of her own excellence as a scientist and kindness as a person. Thank you Karen for your
superlative comments and suggestions.
There are many people in The Gambia who made my research possible. First, I wish to
praise the late Alkalo of Misira, Alhaji Keba Jabbi. His leadership was a blessing. Heather
Armstrong at the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust offered me a timely introduction to the
village. Her good works and reputation made my transition much easier. Thank you Heather for
your friendship. I also must acknowledge Dr. Max Murray, both for introducing me to Heather
and for his lifelong work on trypanotolerance. May we meet some day, preferably in Scotland!
My assistant for the research deserves special recognition. Saloum Jallow redefined in
my mind what it meant to work on behalf of farmers. He was unfailing in his service,
enlightening in conversation, and a true blessing for livestock owners in The Gambia.
Thank you Saloum for helping me do this project. If I could grant honorary degrees, you would
wear the robe alongside me.
Mamasalieu Jallow hosted me in his compound. I thank his entire family Fatou
Sambel, Ray, Cherno, Arum, and “Kukaru Ari.” The women at Jabbi Kunda deserve a big praise
for including me in their sinkiroo, and Nyamakuru at Camara Kunda for helping with my wash.
You all made me feel like kin.
If I had a key informant, it would be Lamin Jabbi. He did not own any animals, but he
was the greatest communicator I have ever met. Lamin taught me “too much” about the world
and Gambia’s place in it. May you have a long life, full of those blessings you seek.
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Thanks also go to the many friends I made in the village: Malike Jabbi, Alhaji Sincon,
Duwa Camara, Yaya Camara, Moro Jaiti, Sarah Sillah, Hasimouy Jallow, Omar Jallow, Sakoni
Sidibeh. Also Matt; it was great to spend some time together. I never met another tùbaabu quite
like you.
This list of gratitude would be incomplete without recognizing the family who first
hosted me in The Gambia. Jah Kunda is in my prayers. Fanta Dibba, I miss you. Sarjo Jah, thank
you for your constant kindness. Also, Allahbatu Jaju took good care of me, keeping me fed and
happy. Kajali Samara, Yusupha Trawally, Baba Jobe, you friendship meant the world to me. Big
thanks also go to Bala Saho and Asan Sarr for welcoming my wife and I as scholars to The
Gambia.
To the incredible staff at the National Archives in Banjul, including Director Elizabeth
Bathoum and the man responsible for finding my files for three months, Basiru Manneh. I have
the highest praise for your services. Also, Lamin Jobe at the National Agricultural Research
Institute approved the study and shared some great stories too, for which I am grateful. I extend
my appreciation to Bakari Touray at the Gambian Livestock Marketing Agency for his
reflections on the last fifty years of veterinary work.
I had a great cohort at the University of Georgia. I wish to especially express my
appreciation to Victor Iminjili, Mike Coughlin, Laura Tilghman, Madalena Monteban, and
Victoria Ramenzoni for being there for me when I needed to talk.
There are a few more senior students who deserve equal praise. Mainly, I owe a good
deal of my early developments in the department to Shiloh Moates. What a brilliant goofy dude.
Kristine Skarbo, Jim Veteto, Rich Owens, Geoff Kelley, Christine Beitl, Amber Huff, and Pat
Huff all helped me to understand what we do as anthropologists. There are a few more junior
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students who kept me from losing my wit with the passage of years. I give special credit to thank
Joe Lanning, Carla Hadden, and Russell Cutts.
The silos of academia limit certain communication, but they also enable us to define our
pursuits more clearly. My work has benefited from discussions with many historians, including
Dr. Paul Sutter, early in my studies, and Dr. Claire Strom more recently. I also wish to thank Dr.
Shane Hamilton and the Food, Power, History workshop for reviewing my work. Dr. Carl Jordan
in Ecology and his many students were formative in my agrarian vision. In the end, no one
fellow student at the University deserves a greater nod of conviviality than Levi Vansant: an all-
around top scholar and a good friend. I respect your word and look forward to your impact on
this world.
Special thanks go to Jennifer Bell from the Department of Geography for making maps,
and Dr. Kim Love-Meyers and her colleagues at the Statistics Department for helping me code
and analyze my quantitative data.
My teachers in anthropology are a busy bunch. I hold them in high regards. Special
thanks goes to Dr. Julie Velasquez Runk for her wit and warmth. I have learned a tremendous
amount from Dr. Mark Williams. You are the best at what we do. I also wish to thank Dr. Laurie
Reitsema for providing a boost of inspiration during my last few semesters as a graduate student.
Her approach to research and publication has remodeled my mind and given me faith in science.
Dr. Bram Tucker has kept Baldwin Hall filled with great spirited debate. Dr. Virginia Nazarea
and Dr. Brent Berlin both made big impressions on me, and in the end, I think ethnoscience
became my favorite topic to study.
A National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant funded
research for this project. What a great program. Also, The Agricultural History Society
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contributed funding to present papers at the annual conferences in Banff and Provo, and I gained
unthinkable benefits from those discussions.
To the staff, Margie, LaBau, Deb, Lisa, and Brenda: I will miss you all when I finally get
out of here.
I could not have completed this program without the help of my family. My father,
Michael Brown, enabled me to farm my way through school. This was the greatest gift of all:
Sanity. My mother, Lorri Sue Patience Goodman Brown, kept me informed, shared good wine,
and always welcomed my wife and I into her home when we needed a break. My sister, Erika
Wagner, showed me how to succeed by her brave example. My cousin, Eric Goodman, took me
on a bold business venture in the name of our grandfather, of which I am forever proud.
Any errors in my thinking are not mine alone; such is culture, though I take responsibility
for delivering them in kind. This dissertation has been my own reckoning with what it means to
learn, to journey deep into the bush, and even deeper into the library. A doctorate does not
change the fact that the future is uncertain, but at least I know that domandi domandi the
discipline of the scholar meets with a sense of peace. As if to say, I tried and I tried and this is
what I know for now.
.
3 AWAIT THE JARGA: COLONIALISM, LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT, AND
CATTLE DISEASE IN THE GAMBIA, 1929-1956 ................................................. 51
4 THE N’DAMA DILEMMA: ETHNOGENETICS, FARMER SELECTION, AND
SMALL RUMINANT BREED DYNAMICS IN THE TSETSE ZONE, THE
GAMBIA .................................................................................................................... 72
5 SAVING GRACE: FARMERS’ OBJECTIVES FOR KEEPING GOATS IN A
GAMBIAN VILLAGE ............................................................................................... 97
6 CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 120
B MORE ON JAHONKO ............................................................................................ 129
C MAP OF THE GAMBIA .......................................................................................... 131
1
INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW
When Duwa announced, “m be kulliyo bondi la Aramiso me ka na,” I thought he meant
the ceremony would occur in a week. The custom is for a baby naming, the kulliyo (“head
shaving”), to occur seven days after the birth. In this case, the following morning, three goats
stood tied in his yard. Three children had been born by three different wives to the same man,
Duwa, within a few days of each other. A neighbor rolled up the sleeve of his colorful kaftan and
slit each goat’s throat in accordance with Islamic law to honor the newborn children. The
religious leader, the imamo, shaved the newborns’ heads, smearing each with a bit of chewed
kola nut, and announced the given names. Griots on megaphones recalled lineage histories as
balls of pounded sweet rice were passed to the guests in attendance. Palms skyward, the people
prayed.
This dissertation explores how livestock owners in rural Gambia conceptualize the effects
of selection on the biological and social dimensions of the flock. Specifically, I look at how
farmers’ husbandry objectives and understanding of breed type influence the way farmers’ keep,
exchange, and cull animals. Given the epidemiological constraints on livestock production in the
tsetse belt of West Africa, the conservation of endemic breeds has gained considerable attention
from both science and development. In short, genetic introgression is a concern because it could
negatively affect the heritable disease tolerance in endemic breeds. The specter of losing
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adaptive traits presents a strong narrative for the need to counteract breed admixture in the humid
and sub-humid zone, but local interpretations of breed change remain understudied. I ask: How
do farmers understand this process of introgression? And how has this process affected livestock
developments in The Gambia?
The conservation of breed diversity and Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR) should not
occur at the expense of the smallholders who currently maintain endemic breeds. The data in this
dissertation shows that farmers recognize breed differences, state trait preferences, and
understand how to direct evolutionary change, and yet farmers also select for other reasons than
to realize biological changes in their flocks over time. Like this kulliyo, animal sacrifice is
compulsory on many occasions in The Gambia, so regardless of farmers’ knowledge of livestock
traits or selection, an animal must bleed the yard. Certainly, research on farmers’ knowledge
should not conflate behavior with competency, as “competency to do something is not the same
as willingness to do it” (Rosenberg 1990: 404). Only by asking what farmers intend to
accomplish with their flocks do the social facts of village husbandry come to bear on the
biological imperatives of AnGR conservation. From this, more questions emerge: Whose goals
and cognitive models are represented in discussions of the importance of AnGR for livestock
development? Do farmers’ equate the loss of breeds with the loss of traits?
Most research on farmers’ breed choice has approached the topic by disaggregating
breeds into traits and asking farmers to rank trait profiles. From this, economists derive the
relative utility of each trait as a contributing factor to farmers’ breed choice (Jabbar and Diedhou
2003; Scarpa et al. 2003; Bebe et al. 2003). The assumption is that differences in farmers’ trait
preferences signal how on-station breeding can improve breeds for a given production system.
For example, a choice experiment conducted with Ankole cattle keepers in Uganda tested
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whether their ranking of live animals based on phenotype alone changed with the addition of
hypothetical histories (Ndumu et al. 2008). The study found that selection criteria did change
with performance history, confirming a similarity between on-station methods and in situ
appraisals. However, if farmers consider biological trait transmission different than scientific
breeders then expected outcomes may differ when improved stock is introduced into the local
production system.
Much historical and anthropological literature about livestock development draws
attention to failed projects, and the need to include local readings of the landscape to correct for
top-down blunders (Ferguson 1994; Beusekom 2000; Hodgson 2000; Mustapha 2003; Hodge
2007; Wiemers 2015). As I examine in chapter three, British imperial efforts to develop the
domestic economy of The Gambia with livestock marketing fits within this larger body of work
about agricultural development in the late colonial era. The state capitalist approach to livestock
development limits the concept of economic growth to market exchange, especially export
markets. I argue that the relational implications of livestock exchange must be included in any
agricultural development agenda. This necessarily reframes what I mean when referring to
“livestock development,” as animals tend to improve one’s situation in The Gambia without
always involving monetized trade. Deciding what should be done to improve livelihoods with
livestock is not as simple as repeating what worked elsewhere.
In chapter four, I explore farmers’ classifications of livestock in the village of Misira,
Central River Region, The Gambia. Farmers in the village under study approach the
classification of livestock types in relation to their understandings of environmental differences,
largely by situating their own animals in a nationalist typology, where “Gambian” livestock are
those that inhabit The Gambia. This cognitive model differs from many breed reports from
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Africa that reference ethnic groups as the organizing principle (FAO 2009, Kohler-Rollefson
1997). I find that while identification of an animal’s breed membership depends on a folk
systematic for grouping domestic animals, the process of determining if a specific animal serves
as an example of a generalizable class is not always obvious. Farmers decide on breed
membership with criteria that can differ from biological data, compensating for the unknown
history of animals with a presumed confluence between physiological and geographic typing.
This is important because farmers’ breed identification has implications for the in situ
conservation of AnGR in the region.
Research conducted by agricultural scientist, with a mind towards livestock development
in The Gambia, have repeatedly identified “savings” as farmers’ top prerogative for animal
production. What farmers’ intend to accomplish with husbandry in The Gambia differs between
species, but not much (Ejlertsen et al. 2013). To further examine how keeping livestock in the
village relates to such statements of purpose, I review farmers’ flock histories. In the fifth
chapter, I ask: For what purpose, exactly, are farmers saving animals? What needs
contextualization is not only farmers’ systems of production, but also how local rationale is
exported and compared with Western models of motivation (Piot 1992). I try to consider how the
substantive approach to economic analysis intersects with the politics of translation. As such, I
consider how Gambian farmers understand what is “saved” in terms of what is expected to come
from it.
As an anthropologist, I find that talking with farmers in West Africa about their views on
selection helps to think about links with the past, not because Africans are a closer
approximation of early Holocene people, but because food production contains certain structural
relationship, regardless of the passage of time (Meillassoux 1972). There are situational realities
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that apply to all farmers, just as there are cognitive processes that apply to all humans.
Throughout my dissertation, I consider this question: How does what was saved relate to what is
reproduced? The relationship between anticipations and actions is as cultural as it is economic.
Industrial methods have changed food production dramatically in the past one hundred fifty
years, in West Africa as everywhere else, even if rural impoverishment has limited the
widespread adoption of certain technologies. Life in the bush does not produce some rare
aversion to modernization; yet the material circumstances do put demands on husbandry that
make the topic of selection worthy of situated social analysis. This research agenda could as
readily consider breeders’ knowledge and practices in any location, as the recent work by
Holloway and colleagues demonstrates (2011, 2012). The facts of genetics should make the
study of heritability all the more interesting to consider from other cultural and economic
perspectives.
Framework for the Literature Review
The most important topic within anthropology that bonds social theory to livestock
development is the topic of domestication itself. For this review I will briefly discuss how
selection has served as an organizing principle in defining anthropological studies of agriculture.
First thing first: The contrast between the “primitive mind” and “scientific thought” is the subject
of immense history and imagination, a theme I will avoid. The modern reformulation of
“indigenous knowledge” is equally subject to colonizing projections (Gupta 1998). So in this
dissertation, I dismiss outright the methodological and substantive distinction between
“indigenous” and “scientific” ways of knowing (Agrawal 1995), leaving the mythico-magical
debates to more argumentative logicians. Instead, I find it sufficient to acknowledge how all
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people observe, experiment, and theorize, only “under different circumstances and using
different principles” (Gragson and Blount 1999: x). As such, the charge of social science
research remains trying to explain this interplay between structures, contingencies, and
relationships.
The reality of domestication as a social phenomenon is almost treated as outdated
guesswork because ancient DNA has little to say about why people manipulated gene flow.
Research in molecular genetics continues to provide new data clarifying the timing and
geography of domestication (Bruford et al. 2003; Larson et al. 2014). What we have today is a
deluge of publications about the specific histories of known allelic changes in various domestic
populations. This historical positivism of “who, what, how, and where” has overwhelmed the
speculative humanism of “why” (Zeder 2006). We are left to presume an agreement between the
earliest objectives of food producers and the observable outcomes of food production.
The dates for the “first farmer” will continue to be pushed back in time as the
archaeological record expands. My position holds that theories about the onset of domestication
remain mistaken by assuming that domestication has a completion, marked by passage to full
domestic status. Biological changes only mark the after-effects of the changing dependency
between humans and progenitors. The circularity of knowing the process of domestication by its
resultant outcomes only confuses outcomes with rationale, making inferences about historic
process through what remains from it (Saña Seguí 2005). Perhaps it makes more sense to
consider how other people consider the relationship between selection and its anticipated
outcomes, rather than attributing an economic logic to the various modes of production.
Here, I return to the philosophy of Malinowski to reconsider how the process of
domestication might have a discoverable onset in the relationships between selection and how
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people understand phenotypic change. Malinowski wrote, “The concept of origins does not
imply priority in time or causal effectiveness, but merely indicates the universal presence of
certain active forces at all stages of development, hence also at the beginning (Malinowski 2007:
145). Not to downplay the enormity of research conducted by biologists, archaeologists,
geographers, and geneticists on the topic domestication, and the important findings of those
studies, the relevant question for me about domestication is the cognitive question. If the
question, “How do people think about categorical distinctions of the natural world?” was the
basis of classic ethnoscience (Berlin 1992), my curiosity is slightly different. I want to know,
“How do people think about the reproduction of breed types?” All I hope to contribute by
bridging this discussion to literature on the Neolithic is a reminder that pegging the act of
selection to the origins of domestication suggests a dogmatic biological theory about the
relationship between mating and offspring that is anthropologically problematic.
I will consider the field of ethnoecology as a way to address how humans, now and then,
understand the make-up other species’ phenotypes, specifically livestock breeds. Livestock as
property with properties forces the discussion about theories of inheritance to include dynamics
beyond the biological. Building on philosophy about domestication, I will proceed to analyze the
concept of livestock improvement and, in so doing, enjoin literature about the mental models of
ancient agriculture with recent political economic critiques about development in Africa.
The Role of Forward-Thinking in Agricultural Developments
Thirty years ago, David Rindos (1984) authored an evolutionary treatise on The Origins
of Agriculture denying the utility of forethought in explaining the emergence of food production.
His position was that domestication was an incidental effect of human behavior. Simply stated,
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“Domestication was and is evolution” (Rindos 1984:1). The debate, I think, got off on the wrong
footing. Rindos began his critique of the “paradigm of consciousness” with a reiteration of the
distinction made by Darwin (1859) between two types of selection: methodological and
unconscious. To Darwin, it was unconscious selection that “probably led to far more important
results than methodological selection, and is likewise more important under a theoretical point of
view for closely resembling natural selection” (Darwin 1887: 420). Rindos took the point
verbatim and proceeded to model the entire origins of agriculture based on evolution by
unconscious selection.
unconscious selection with one wordintention. Intent was selection working towards a set
objective, “the recognition of long-term effects of behavior” (Rindos 1984). The scientific
premise of Rindos’ coevolutionary argument was that intention must be presumed inoperative in
the transition to food production, since forethought cannot be known retrospectively: If either
type of selection can result in the same outcomes, parsimony demands that intent is excessive
and probably misleading. After all, “When we claim that an intentional act is different from other
acts we claim that the intentionality and not the act is what is significant” (Rindos 1985:85,
italics in original).
As I see it, the operative distinction between the two types of selection is not intention.
This is even alluded to by Rindos himself, when he wrote, “To deny intentionality, of course, is
not to deny consciousness” (1984: 98). The justification for this seemingly self-defeating
statement is found in the terms’ orientation in time. According to Rindos, intention is towards
future outcomes; consciousness, on the other hand, is “reflective, not predictive” (ibid). If the
recognition of the long-term effects of past action is consciousness, the recognition of future
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long-term effects must likewise indicate an attentive state, as opposed to an orientation of action.
John Bennett (1996) proposed anticipation as the critical variable of human cultural adaptation,
and I think it applies here. A change in behavior may be necessary to achieve premeditated
objectives, but this depends on the anticipated outcomes of current trends. From this, the
question to pursue is how the anticipated goals of selection relate to understandings about
ongoing changes in time.
To claim that agricultural behavior began without causal intent because the overhaul of
subsistence that followed was utterly unthinkable is only to repeat the conviction that humans are
not collectively psychic. Moreover, when Blumler and Byrne (1991) tried to theorize the role of
human cognition on the genetic processes underpinning domestication, Redding (1991) defended
Rindos by replying:
For Blumler and Byrne unconscious selection occurs when "people unintentionally
induce the genetic changes." By default, conscious selection must be defined as change
intentionally induced. This is quite different from the definition of "intent" used by
Rindos and Darwin and, I might add, by most evolutionary biologists.
Semantics aside, Redding missed the most important detail in the parallel structure of his
argument. If unconscious selection is unintended genetic changes then conscious selection must
likewise be intended genetic changes.
The degree to which humans attain a working model of heritability that reinforces the act
of selecting to produce directional responses over generations should be a topic of great interest
to anthropologists. Cleveland and Soleri (2007) made this argument by showing how plant
breeders assume that methodological selection is only intended to produce heritable changes; the
assumption is largely based on breeders’ prior interest in applying the principles of evolution to
crop improvement. On the contrary, Cleveland and Soleri (2007) showed that farmers may
10
intentionally select to modify target species in ways that are not heritable. Farmers can select to
offset directional changes, keeping populations the same by counteracting gene flow, and
farmers knowingly favor traits that do not persist across generations, such as those resulting from
environmental influences. So, contrary to Rindos’ thesis: Domestication is not and has never
been limited to evolution. Methodological selection can and does occur while consciously
intending not to produce heritable changes.
The fundamental problem with Rindos’ attempt to reverse Darwin’s analogy is a
temporal discontinuity in his argument. Here, I am referring to the overlooked fact that
“intention” in the long-term can only be predicated on recognizing the additive relationship
between activity and its cumulative effects in the short-term. Darwin, a student of domestication
and pigeon fancier, did not couch the effective goals of intentional action only in evolutionary
time. Breeders were aware of changes within a pedigree: This is exactly how they directed slight
variations with selection towards self-determined ideals. Achieving trait changes with selection
requires, not an instantiation of intent, but an anticipation of generational changes and the
capability to do something about itif one is willing to try.
This point, I think, draws debates about the origins of domestication into a framework
that can be studied ethnographically. If the transition to agriculture is not something that
“happened” ten thousand years ago, but an annual recurrence predicated on the guessing what
becomes of the previous cycle if reproduced, the “unthinkable” rupture of prehistory can be
dismissed (see Schmidt 2013). As Cauvin (2000) made evident, the “chronological order of the
‘causes’ and ‘effects’” around the emergence of agriculture have probably been inverted by
privileging economic evidence over the signs of imagination. For this reason, the origins of
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domestication remain as likely related to intellectual models and social structures, as climatic
changes and resource dynamics. Despite the ongoing need to amass more empirical data about
the environmental context of Neolithic food producers, I question any research agenda that
limits the origins of domestication to “a moment” in history (Ducos 1989, emphasis in original)
or a change in biology (Ingold 1980). Then again, to call the transition to agriculture “a
transformation of the mind” is intriguing, yet it does require a bit more grounding in the facts of
life, namely sex.
Theories of Inheritance
Hidden within the first chapter of “Rethinking Anthropology” is an anecdote, told by
Leach (1961) himself about his time in Burma. He recalled,
The Government, at enormous expense, had imported a prize Berkshire boar all the way
from England. The villagers were instructed to castrate their own male pigs and have all
their sows served by the boar. The boar was a sensation, no one would talk about
anything else—a regular nine days’ wonder; but active co-operation in the scheme was
virtually nil. It was then that I learnt that Kachin pigs derive all their physical
characteristics from the sow, that being so, what on earth is the use of a prize boar?
As it turns out, the Kachin applied their own theory of heredity to the breeding of livestock.
Leach investigated the structural patterns around native theories of parentage and argued
that there was “no reason why primitive people in general should associate ideas of genetic
inheritance with ideas about physical resemblance” (Leach 1961: 8). Sociologically, a principle
of parity applies to any theory of descent. The possibility exists that offspring derive from the
“substance” of one, both, or neither of the biological parents. Today, this distinction between
genealogical descent and physical make-up figures prominently in kinship studies (Bamford and
12
Leach 2009), as human cultural capacity allows any medium, regardless of biology, the
prerogative to confer what Sahlins (2013) has aptly summarized as “mutuality of being.” This
reconsideration of biology in emic ideas of relatedness is a necessary rejoinder to the “hegemony
of the gene” and the vulgar materialism it demands of consanguinity (Finkler 2005).
Descent is the central organizing concept in the study of heredity, as it is of kinship, but
the two are not necessarily related. Whereas the social construction of kinship may be subject to
a wide diversity of patterns, DNA is not. DNA relies on particular views about how physical
likeness comes about, who can share what with whom, and what traits persist over time. Yet to
limit the study of heredity to the domain of biology overlooks this distinction. How might emic
ideologies about lineage relate to the goals of intentional selection? Here, it is worthwhile to
recall that the mechanisms of biological heredity were unknown to Darwin (an Englishman who
married his cousin.) Darwin wrote copious letters to breeders of his day, asking them to provide
examples from their own on-farm mating experiments to understand generational change (Barnes
1960; Bartley 1992). What he learned continues to be of interest today because of what it
inspired.
In his volumes of Variation, Darwin (1887) repeated a basic argument that captures his
own views on methodological selection: “He who preserves a useful or perfect animal will
generally breed from it with the hopes of getting offspring of the same character” (171). It is
tempting to assume that people save what they want to multiply, but in that assumption there
exists a host of etic impositions about the correspondence between cognitive models and the
biological world. The anecdote by Leach illustrates how a preferential standard is not readily
deducible from the act of selection without a sense for how breeders’ understand the nature of
intergenerational change. Furthermore, the ethnographic record shows that the range of human
13
behaviors are motivated by wildly diverse ideas about intended outcomes. While this
discrepancy between cognized models and empirical data has the potential to bestow “a positive
advantage upon a population” (Rappaport 1968: 239), there is the question of which population,
and the nature and duration of the advantage. In this dissertation, I speculate that what people
theorize about the workings of selection and its relationship to the cultural constructs of heredity
probably determines something about whether anticipated outcomes are continually realized or
not.
The Ethnogenetic Critique
Franz Boas (1887) first challenged the idea that differences in human culture arose from
genetic factors, arguing that the study of humankind should be treated different than a natural
science. Human life depends on the country inhabited and, as organisms, humans must adjust
themselves to the conditions they encounter, but geographic explanations of behavioral
differences are no substitute for historical data (Speth 1975). The rise of the ecosystem school
under Julian Steward (1955) revoked this allegiance to history and sought to understand the
causal relationship governing the occurrence of similar types of cultural patterns within and
between similar ecological settings. The comparative approach of cultural ecology limited the
causality of recurring patterns to a “core” set of productive variables (Netting 1993). By
investigating those features most directly concerned with the utilization of the environment,
cultural ecology offered an explanation for cultural diversity that also did not require genetic
differences: Food procurement strategies patterned the way people related to each other and
thought about the world.
14
The framework of cultural ecology proved rather subjective in identifying what core
features determined the success of behavioral adjustments to the local environment (Netting
1974). Ultimately, it suffered from an insistence on “cultures” as the unit of analysis, adhering to
a version of technological determinism (Vayda and Rappaport 1968: 487). Those non-ecological
considerations that impact the environment over time were neglected. The consequence of this
theoretical bias was eventually to split the study of humans as biological organisms from the
study of culture as superstructures. In effect, the impact of culture on ecology was redirected to
the study ethnoecology.
Broadly, ethnoecology is an ethnographic approach to the study of ecology, or the biotic
and geophysical relationships from the perspective of the people living in an ecosystem (Brosius
et al. 1986; Gragson and Blount 1999). Unlike prior orientations in the ecosystem school, the
field of ethnoecology set out to compare cognitive studies with adaptive material behavior (Hunn
1989). To do this, its proponents took a lexicographical approach to the study of culture,
assuming language enables the investigation of cognition (Goodenough 1956). Not only could
indigenous knowledge “systems” be understood systematically through the study of language,
human behavior could, in theory, be derived from native categories. For example, in his
landmark study of Hanunoo swidden farmers, Conklin (1954, 1957) illustrated the primary role
of botanical knowledge in swidden land clearing and crop rotation. Frake (1962) reinforced the
application of an ethnoecological approach by modeling settlement patterns among Subanun.
The theoretical assumption of these scholars was that classification encodes principles for
determining what is practicable in a certain cultural context.
Within any society, however, variation in behavior can result from differences in
ecological constraints, productive capabilities, and individual opinions. Harris (1974) argued
15
against the assumption that rules for behavior can tell you how people will act by showing that
all rules have an alternative, none go unchallenged. Rules can fail to code for novel situations,
and rules can endorse testing what remains uncontested (Johnson 1972; Rhoades and Bebbington
1995). Conformity to rules must be appropriate to the setting in which the action takes place, for
“the rules themselves specify which form of action is considered appropriate towards each
category of object in each category of situation” (Basso 1972: 33). The interest in cultural
“grammars” and uncoding the rules or norms of human ecological behavior relied on a discursive
reflection that turned what Bourdieu (1977:17) called “dispositions of the habitus” into
predetermined datum. If human society is the object of study then replacing actual relationships
with abstract formulations can be quite misleading.
The link between cognition and behavior requires that research attend to the situational
and social production of believable options (Gragson and Blount 1999; Nazarea 1999). A small
body of work within ethnoecology holds key insights into achieving the field’s original
aspirations by moving away from placing objects into groups and, instead, examining the
relationship between schema and praxis. This focus in ethnoecology was limited to swidden
farming in Brazil (Johnson 1974), ice travel in Canada (Basso 1972), blacksmithing (Dougherty
and Keller 1982), and crop choice in the Philippines (Nazarea-Sandoval 1995). What is practical
may be limited to key environmental constraints (Kroeber 1952), yet what is thought possible
depends on ideas about action and its effects.
The Social and The Cultural Dimensions of Livestock Selection
In an inspired essay on evolutionary dynamics, Ingold (1979) identified two pairs of
oppositions that define the working of the human species. One is the ecological and the social;
16
the other is the genetic and the cultural. Ingold summarized the oppositional pairs in this way:
“Human beings participate simultaneously in systems of ecological and social relations of
production, each as a bearer of a particular constellation of genetically and culturally transmitted
traits” (1979: 271). By social, Ingold refers to our mammalian group living. The social is
relational. Social life predates the cultural aspect of our humanity. The ability to learn and share
semiotics required humans living together, but group life does not require it. Social habits are
separable from the “repertoire of technological and ideological models” which make-up our
cultural capacity (Ingold 1979: 271). In other words, the social is “noncultural.”
The social and ecological are paired together because they both concern the problem of
production. The socioecological system defines those conditions to which organisms adapt.
Opposition ensues in that social labor can overwhelm the productive limits of ecological output
(Ingold 1980). Ingold (1979) argued that organic evolution stresses the thresholds of
socioecological systems, leading to Malthusian feedbacks that check population growth and
restore equilibrium. The disequilibrium paradigm in ecological research (Ellis and Swift 1988),
as well as niche construction theory, have overturned older models founded on the inelasticity of
carrying capacity, but Ingold’s bigger point remains valid: A growing population invariably
meets with new forces of selection (Levins and Lewontin 1985).
With humans, all our traits are not automatically linked to biological reproduction.
Genetic and cultural responses occur alongside each other in dialectic tension. Genetics issue the
variants from which selection limits genitors. The “genetic” dimension of adaptation is not goal-
oriented; it is selection that circumstantially favors variants with advantageous traits (Rindos
1986). Humanity differs qualitatively from other populations, for culture allows selection for the
perpetuation of traits. The temporality of selection differs with humans because of the ability to
17
both set and project standards of preference. Culture is instrumental in enabling humans to
achieve predetermined outcomes with “anticipatory objectives” (Bennett 1996).
Ingold organized the socioecological system around production, but he did not identify
the oppositional tension within the coupled system of culture and genetics. I propose that the
opposition can be found in the relations of reproduction. The differential success of shared
cultural preferences can run antithetical to the intergenerational transmission of adaptive
biological traits. To say this some other way: The human capacity for symbolic learning can
cause biological variants to be favored that otherwise would not be favored. While the
socioecological system may have “never been adaptive” (Friedman 1974), the ethnogenetic
system has been very much so. Our “particular constellation” of genetic and cultural traits
contains the potential to change the circumstance within which humanity and other organisms
must adapt. With its reflexivity, the ethnogenetic system can produce “qualitative
transformations” that redefine the limits of the socioecological system (Ingold 1979). Agriculture
is the iconic example of manipulating the means of reproduction to determine anew the
productive constraints of earthly existence.
The heritability of traits under selection and the cultural representations of that
heritability both affect how the process of selection determines what persists over time. This is
noted with breeding, the origins of which eludes most archaeological discussions. Comparing his
own findings with those of Barth (1961), Ingold (1980) put forth a novel theory of livestock
breeding, arguing that livestock owners with no other form of durable good in which to store
surplus wealth, and no responsibility to public lands, would not willingly withhold livestock
from reproduction. When land can be owned and rented, herders will begin to control
reproduction in order to direct the evolution of the herd towards sellable traits. The accumulation
18
of wealth from the marketing of livestock products allows herders to purchase the more secure
investment of having tenants. Ingold’s thesis can be restated: Land markets are responsible for
livestock breeding.
Ingold’s theory of breeding is founded on an economic theory of investment, where the
storage of wealth is limited to the number of animals owned. The rationale of pastoral
accumulation is opposed to controlled breeding. Pastoralists will not interfere with the
reproduction of animals for fear of jeopardizing the total headcount of their holdings; this is seen
in herders’ tendency to cull males and keep females animals. Livelihood security is based on the
ability to maintain a certain size herd in the face of catastrophic losses, such as drought and
disease outbreak (Mace and Houston 1989). Because Ingold defines breeding in terms of
contracting the reproductive potential of domesticates in order to advance specific traits, he sees
no reason why humans would selectively mate their animals at the risk of reducing the potential
to own more animals. This theory by Ingold is one of the most clearly articulated attempts to
explain why humans begin to methodically breed. And it is dead wrong.
Where the theory falters is in presuming a basic biological framework for relating beliefs
about selection to the intended effects of storage. How people conceptualize what is stored in
relation to what is reproduced is not nomothetic. Geneticist might knowfor a facthow
the retention of stock relates to subsequent populations. Then again, so might the Kachin, but for
very different reasons. “The problem [of storage] becomes much more complicated, and perhaps
more interesting too, if we take into account the categories of the people themselves”(Ingold
1983: 56).
Ingold’s thesis on animal breeding relies on a few basic, structural assumptions. The first,
which was shared by Hardin (1968) in the asocial theory undergirding the tragedy of the
19
commons, was that livestock owners will hoard as many animals as is humanly possible until
natural resources exert a check on the limitless growth. Husbandry, accordingly, has been
described as a form of “prey conservation” (Alvard and Kuznar 2001). Such a depiction, at least
with carnivorous relations, interprets the goal of husbandry as the sustained ability to “destroy
property” without a terminal drawdown (Ingold 1980). The second presupposition by Ingold
and the one of most interest to meis the notion that selective breeding compromises
reproductive potential. The argument commits the etic error of linking reproduction to a basic
biological understanding of sex and then postulating necessary sex ratios according to it. Do
pastoralists, now and prehistorically, cull males because of their knowledge of reproduction, or
for some other reason? Either way, the manipulation of social relations in a herd can achieve the
spatial separation needed to control mating options without requiring the loss of life.
What is missing is a comparative human perspective that explores how farmers’
understandings of selection are related to the behaviors taken to achieve causal outcomes
(Cleveland and Soleri 2007). At this point, different perspectives on the origins of variation and
similarity might make prehistory more thinkable. Anthropology must continue to investigate
what people theorize about the contribution of parentage to the subsequent generation of
offspring. Ethnographic data reveals that people understand shared physical resemblance not
only as the result of biological reproduction but also as a consequence of shared essences, social
identity, and experiences (Gelman and Hirschfeld 1999). To question the explanatory triumph of
genetics is not to question its empiricism. We have to be willing to accept that mathematical
models emerging from the Modern Synthesis provide unprecedented powers of prediction, but
that other ways of conceiving of biology may be instructive.
20
There is a very practical application for collecting data on theories of selection. If the aim
of genetic improvement programs in agricultural development is to breed livestock that conform
to the complex demands of farmers’ production systems, how long the heritable gains persist
depends partly on what farmers’ think about trait heritability.
Developments and Livestock
The term “development” won prominence with American diplomacy in the post-World
War II era as a catchall for poverty alleviation in the Third World context, itself an artifact of the
new world order. As Hodge (2001) has illustrated, the concept of “development” originates from
an earlier legacy of colonial doctrine in the British Empire, where industrial decline at home
reframed discussions about economic growth in the colonies. Critical social theorists tend to
describe the Rostowian vision of economic take-off in terms of routine failure, yet as Ferguson
(1994) suggested, the discourse of development and the outlays of foreign aid it achieves can be
interpreted by what it does do, even if these doings are not the intended outcomes. What
development does is restructure forms of governance. Because policymakers tend to rely on
aggregate data to know if development programs succeed or not, the lived experiences of its
targeted recipients should not be readily overlookedespecially those of farmers living in the
bush (Weimers 2015).
While remaining critical of capitalism and its alienating tendencies, the discipline of
anthropology has been complicit in framing cultural change in terms of the inevitability of
economic growth (Ferguson 1997). Recourse to a temporal lag has haunted discussions of rural
development in Africa, drawing on the discursive trope of “tradition” as an absence of
development (Gupta 1998; Ferguson 2006). Similarly, theories of agricultural development
21
consider how farmers in developing countries can gain access to greater capital and redefine the
parameters of production (Schultz 1964; Ellis 1993). The shift away from subsistence production
remains a major point of controversy in discussion about global environmental change (Hunn
1999), but improved yields and greater capital assets continue to define approaches to poverty
alleviation in agricultural development.
The prospect of genetic improvement holds promise for resource-poor livestock owners
because breeding could deliver gains in productivity without further inputs or the displacement
of local breeds (Rege et al. 2011). Significant gains in the milk industry of East and Southern
Africa have resulted from crossbreeding, yet the science of livestock breeding in tropical Africa
has a troubled history due to problems of breed choice. Breeding to improve endemic livestock is
now gaining traction in literature on endogenous development. This is particularly true for West
Africa, where visions of livestock development have long been predicated on the eradication of
tsetse flies, which remains an ever-pending prospect. The approach of genetic improvements for
endemic breeds requires that standards of improvement match farmers’ criteria of improvement.
Despite the lively interest anthropology has with the topic of development (Mosse 2013), a
certain disconnect remains between the appeal of in situ agrobiodiversity conservation and local
people’s own pursuit of economic profits (Shepherd 2010). Research on local knowledge has
long provided an alternative to top-down interventionist projects, but the agenda of
empowerment has proven difficult to deliver (Sillitoe 1999; Nazarea 2006).
Only by considering what farmers seek to accomplish with their animals can livestock
development become meaningful to those it intends to assist. Investing in social relationships is a
key strategy for resource access in Africa (Berry 1993), and livestock are one medium through
which this negotiation occurs. Livestock can function as an asset that generates wealth for the
22
poor, but livestock can also impose liabilities on resource-poor households (Sumberg and
Lankoandé 2014). Given the demand-driven “livestock revolution” in developing countries,
where so many people depend on agriculture for a livelihood, how will farmers’ own approaches
to selection structure the impacts of scientific breeding? I will argue that answering this question
requires gaining a clear understanding of what farmers use livestock to accomplish and how
breed type relates to realizing these outcomes.
To Conclude
Invoking a debate about the origins of agriculture to introduce a dissertation unrelated to
archaeology may strike the reader as misguided. But a larger philosophical problem is at stake.
While intent is unknowable in the past, the argument about intention deserves to be assessed
relative to what stated effects are anticipated in the present. For this reason, Rindos was partially
correct in his clarification that “’directed’ in an evolutionary sense is not the same as ‘directed’
in a psychological sense”(1985: 85, emphasis in original). The misstep, however, is found in a
necessary discrepancy between the two qualities. Heritable biological change can be directed
over generations, or not, with the psychological understanding that the material changes
anticipated are also desired, or not. The relationship of the cognitive to the biological requires
much more study before dismissing its importance to domestication in prehistory.
The problematic of selection is how people conceptualize what is stored in relation to
what is reproduced. It is not only emic intent that distinguishes the types of selection, but etic
assumptions about what standards are deemed indicative of purposive behavior. Thus, the
relationship between beliefs about selection and the intended effects of storage are, in practical
terms, inseparable (Ingold 1983). The British prize boar attests to the sociological basis of this
23
argument. It remains important to continue to ask: What do farmers want from the selection of
livestock, and how do they go about achieving their objectives?
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Clifton, ed. Pp. 477-497. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Wiemers, Alice 2015 A “Time of Agric”” Rethinking the “Failure” of Agricultural Programs in 1970s Ghana.
World Development 66: 104-117. Zeder, Melinda A. 2006 Central Questions in the Domestication of Plants and Animals. Evolutionary
Anthropology 15: 105-117.
SITE DESCRIPTION AND METHODS
The founding family of the village Misira identify as Jahonko, a group of Soninke
originating in what is now Mali around the 13th century (Sanneh 1979). Jahonko literally means
“the people of Dia.” Like their clerical Muslim predecessors who migrated to the Senegambian
region between 1250 to 1650 AD (Sanneh 1979), the families who settled the village of Misira
came from elsewhere: The north bank of the River Gambia. In fact, the word “Jahonko” shows
the influence of the Mandinka language in The Gambia, as Jahanko do not possess their own
language, adopting whatever is spoken wherever they go.
One of the reasons I chose to conduct my research in Misira was that I had heard the
village was a Mandinka village. When I first came to visit The Gambia in 2008, my wife and I
found our way to a government agricultural camp in the Lower River Region. Next to the camp
was the village Jenoi, populated mostly by self-identified Mandinka (Chapman 2014). I returned
to Jenoi for six months in 2010, during which time I gained some basic command over the
Mandinka language.
By the end of my stay in Jenoi, I had decided to return to conduct research on farmers’
understanding of breed dynamics, including how Gambians understood the movement and
mixture of different breeds within the tsetse zone. The tsetse fly, genus Glossina, serves as the
vector of a parasitic livestock disease known as trypanosomosis. The disease compromises
livestock fitness, resulting in weight loss, abortion, and death, however Gambia’s endemic
32
breeds are tolerant to the blood-borne protozoa. For this reason, livestock production in the tsetse
zone has been limited to either those breeds capable of surviving amidst the vector, or those
animals receiving veterinary drugs to combat the symptoms of trypanosomosis. A few
publications by the International Trypanotolerance Center (ITC), located in The Gambia,
identified the Central River Region (CRR) as both the epicenter of tsetse fly density and a
hotspot of livestock crossbreeding (Snow et al. 1996; ITC 2004). This situation attracted my
interest, and I chose to study among farmers in CRR to question how breed knowledge affects
animal genetic resource conservation.
When I returned in 2011, I spent the first three months commuting to Banjul from the
nearby neighborhood Latrikunda, studying the history of veterinary services in The Gambia prior
to independence in 1965 (see Chapter 2). This portion of my research consisted of paging
through the National Archives, local newspapers, and the libraries at ITC and the National
Agricultural Research Institute. Meanwhile, I networked to find a field site on the south bank of
CRR. I needed a jiyaati (“host”) in a Mandinka-speaking village. A government official told me
to try Misira because the other villages in this tsetse hotspot were all “Fula” villages (see Wright
1999). Through my networking, I met a British woman with a veterinary NGO in The Gambia
who was very friendly with the alkalo of Misira. She trucked me upriver.
With a gift of kola nuts, I went to the alkalo to explain why I wanted to relocate to “his”
village. As it turned out, Misira was not a Mandinka village. The Jabbi family held the position
of alkalo in the village (see Appendix 1), and Jabbi is a Jahonko surname. Regardless, the village
fit the criteria I sought, due to its location, in the tsetse zone of CRR. It is a smallish village of
twenty-one compounds, and in this sense, replicates many of the nearby villages. Misira
represents a typical village for the area, a horse-cart ride away from the main paved road. Most
33
of the people farm crops for a living, raise small stock, and live in mud block homes.
Conspicuous wealth disparities were limited to concrete fences and an occasional metal roof or
motorcycle, often a product of money sent from town or abroad.
The alkalo of Misira did speak Mandinka, as well as Fula, yet I struggled a bit to
comprehend his words. There were a few grammatical and phonological differences in the
Mandinka between the regions. The first difference was that Jahonko in Central River Region
resorted to a different set of greetings than were common in the Lower River Region. With some
kind-hearted witticism to shame me and certify my place as his luntao (“stranger”), I was
welcomed by my new jiyaati to stay in Misira (see Photo 1), where I lived from September 2011
through March 2012.
Figure 1: Author on left with alkalo Alhaji Keba Jabbi (Photo belongs to author)
34
Anywhere in The Gambia, a luntao is quickly enmeshed in a network of host relations, a
situation that allows outsiders to be placed in society. The affiliation comes with obligations of
course, especially in the case of “strange farmers” who migrate to The Gambia for the cropping
season, exchanging their labor in return for access to land (Swindell 1978), yet the arrangement
grants the luntao a necessary social position, making normal daily life and polite interaction
doable. The stranger literally becomes “the stranger of so-and-so,” marking who is responsible
for this person. As a tùbaabu (“white person”) living upriver, I had many jiyaatilu (plural of
jiyaati), including those who received me in The Gambia, those who introduced me to the
village, the leader of the village, and the head of the compound where I resided.
As many scholars have come to argue, all knowledge is situated (Basso 1988; Haraway
1988; Nazarea 2006). My perspective in The Gambia was, in many ways, somewhat situated for
me. This is not to deny my own assumptions about the worldmy upbringing, education, or
beliefswhich necessarily amount to a partial point-of-view or subjectivity; I had come, after
all, to do research. Still, as a tùbaabu I was everywhere a luntao. The turn toward agency in
social science has been a necessary check on the reified, disembodied structures of earlier
writing, but Durkheim cannot be discarded in the process, as the institutions of society do
impress upon us. This is nowhere more evident than as a luntao, crossing a landscape of place-
names that mean something to everyone but you.
My wife and I had first come to The Gambia with one contact in the country. Within a
matter of weeks, a soldier in a taxi granted me with a new name, Alhaji. Arriving at Jenoi, we
were told to stay at Jah Kunda, and suddenly I acquired a Fula surname, Jah. Throughout the six-
months I spent in Jenoi, my foremost jiyaati was a woman: Fanta Dibba. Due to patrilocal
residency, Fanta had relocated to Jah Kunda in Jenoi upon marriage, departing from her natal
35
village on the north bank in Baddibu (She was a Baddibunko, or “one who comes from
Baddibu). She was her husband’s second wife and his last.
Mbaa Fanta (“my mother Fanta”) had a good deal of standing in the village. Her
husband’s lineagelast name Jaharrived rather early in the settlement history, and the
compound was located at the center of the village. Fanta’s husband died prior to the time my
wife and I moved into Jah Kunda (“the place of Jah”). As is customary, after her husband’s
passing, Fanta was married to another man at the arrangement of her brother, who lived in her
hometown of Farafenni. In Mandinka, this practice is sometimes referred to as ku dan doo,
which literally translates as “head stop other,” i.e. another resting place. Since Muslims can
marry up to four wives, and most Gambians are Muslims, it is not uncommon for a man to marry
an older woman. This was the case with Fanta. Her new husband, Dembo, was a Qu’ranic
teacher in the Farafenni. Their natal families were long-time acquaintances. Because many
Qur’anic students lived and studied underneath Baa Dembo (“father Dembo”), he would
occasionally send one of these taliboo to help maintain Jah Kunda or do magic to protect Fanta
and us from ill doings.
When Dembo visited Jah Kunda, Fanta would prepare his room and buy a yardbird to
cook for her husband. He would spend two days, sometimes three, all the while reading the
Qur’an and greeting visitors. Sometimes, I would sit with him. A thin yellow curtain hung over
the door to let a breeze into the concrete-block room where we sat. Fanta’s friends in the village
would visit to pay him their respect, the women curtsying as they entered his presence. These
exchanges involved extensive greetings, inquiries about kin, and parting prayers. If Dembo did
not come to Jenoi for a few months, Fanta would say it was not good. Perhaps the greater
function of ku dan doo was, as people would often remark, ka kiidoo bayi, or “to drive-off
36
loneliness.” He was a decade younger than she, and there was an air of hilarity about calling him
her “husband,” but the relationship entailed certain rights and obligations, and visiting was surely
one. Fanta would call him on her cellphone, asking one of us to find his number due to her
failing eyesight, and with an unmistakable combination of respect and guilt, use his inexcusable
absence to seek rightful favors (see Cliggett 2005). A few days after one such phone call, Baa
Dembo and a few taliboo crossed the River Gambia with a gift. It was a red female sheep on a
rope.
This was the rainy season, which meant that crops were in the field and gardens grew
inside the walled compound. Villages in The Gambia have a few different ways of dealing with
small stock during the rainy season. In Jenoi, the owner is responsible for ensuring their animal
does not destroy others’ crops. Each morning a tangle of ropes and bleats is seen headed to the
outskirts of the village, as women and children go to peg their household flocks in a patch of
grass. This practice of penpendao is hard work, and Fanta, an older and distinguished woman,
did not intend to do it. Soon after receiving the sheep, which subsequently was not staked, it
went loose in the village and got into someone’s garden.
This infraction was punishable by village custom, as any animal caught eating your crops
can be taken to the village leader, the alkalo. If that happens, the owner must pay a fine to
retrieve their animal. Nonetheless, such a series of events is rare: Most people simply hurl
exclamations and stones at sheep and goats that try to enter their compound. On this occasion,
the victim sent word to Mbaa Fanta, who apologized for her lack of oversight, appealed for
amnesty, and made the most of the moment by entrusting her sheep to the very person who had
discovered it in their garden. To entrust (“karafa”) an animal grants the caretaker the right to
every so-many kiddings, depending on the arrangement. The movement of people and the
37
movement of animals between people, back and forth across the River Gambia, proved to be a
relevant aspect of my research to come in Misira.
As mentioned, sometime last century Jahonko had settled the village of Misira, crossing
in a canoe from the north bank. The alkalo’s own father was included in the original party who
cleared the site. He had come to establish the village along with his own jiyaati (see Appendix
1). All the early inhabitants of the village were reportedly Jahonko. More recently, a wave of
first- and second-generation emigrants has come from Fouta Djallon in Guinea. These Fula tend
to refer to themselves with the Mandinkinized term Foutanko, i.e. “people from Fouta.” As it
turns out, the Jahonko and Foutanko share a joking relationship, or sanawuyaa (see Appendix 2),
acting as cross cousins, a bond prone to jesting and peacekeeping.
During my residency in Misira, I lived in Jallow Kunda, a Foutanko compound. The head
of the household, Mamasalieu Jallow, became my next jiyaati. He and his wife Fatou both
descended from families that had migrated from Fouta Djallon last generation. He did not speak
much Mandinka, but she knew enough to accomplish most any task. Their children, raised in this
Jahonko village, communicated in both languages, and having gone to school in English could
converse sparingly with me in my mother tongue too. That first month I spent in Jallow Kunda,
we visited each night with neighbors, hunkering beside the smudgy fire each to repel mosquitoes.
These conversations took place largely in Fula, unless Jahonko decided to speak Mandinka with
each other or me. I was overwhelmed by the prospect of acquiring another language, but the
cadence and enunciations of Fula were thrilling to hear. Greetings and everyday phrases in Fula
became part of my skill-set over time“Boi hewi tep” (Mosquitoes are too plentiful)yet I
knew I would need assistance in conducting interviews in Fula, and clarifying any Mandinka that
I may not fully comprehend.
38
Two villages to the West of Misira stood Sambeli Kunda. It was a Fula village and the
home place of my jiyaati in Jallow Kunda. There, the British woman who introduced me to the
alkalo had established a headquarters for her NGO, the Gambia Horse and Donkey Association.
(She came of age in The Gambia, daughter of a colonial officer, the first Director of the
Department of Wildlife.) On her staff at Sambel was a veterinary assistant who would serve as
my right-hand man throughout the duration of my project, Saloum Jallow. Saloum was college
trained in The Gambia and served the Department of Livestock Services, until its closure, when
he took a post in the Department of Agriculture and was seconded to work for “Horse and
Donkey.” Saloum was Fula, yet, he also spoke Mandinka, Wolof, and English without hesitation.
I was blessed with his company, good reputation, and knowledge of livestock.
Saloum accompanied me on my early exchanges with the alkalo of Misira as I finalized
the arrangements for my stay there. He was well known in the village and throughout the region.
Saloum toured on his motorcycle to inspect the equines gifted