Remembering in a Field of Enquiry
This is a story from the field. It is a cairn along the path of my journey of enquiry: a high point marked to make visible a shift in perception, a lengthening of my line of sight. The fieldwork is ethnobotanical, the projects were in Zambia.
Since my return to Scotland a decade ago, I have been writing reflexive narratives based on my experiences, making short pieces that have come together in a small book, Yarn of Remembering. With regards to my approach to research, the experience of being a student of Holistic Science at Schumacher College strengthened my ability to ‘think ecologically’, while membership of the Research-in-Action Community has developed my skills of reflexivity.
Throughout this article, I consider not only the ‘results’ of my fieldwork, but more finely and carefully the inward effects of my actions and perceptions – my rememberings – which I weave into the narrative as I go along. This is my understanding of reflexive practice, which has shaped my experience as a practitioner in the field of ethnobotany.
In this sense, there is much more to the practice of ethnobotany than recording facts from the field and writing up findings. But, that is how I began. Where I began was on the northern side of the River Zambezi.
I conducted most of my fieldwork in Western Province – also known as Barotseland – while my home was some 200 kilometres downstream towards the Victoria Falls, on a small island where my friend Brett had built a rustic camp as a haven for weary travellers – and curious researchers! From there, I would set off several times a year with my field equipment and sufficient supplies to see me through 10 days ‘in the bush’, along with Mr John as herbalist and camp hand, and Boyd as translator and project manager. On occasion, Brett would join me as a wildlife guide and fellow adventurer.
The focus of the early trips was to assess the sustainability of harvesting oil-rich Mongongo nuts on behalf of a small, Lusaka-based, organic products company, Kalahari Biocare. Mongongo grows in a discontinuous belt across southern Africa, where the sandy soil and climate suit these thick-boled, pale-barked trees. They are often cut down to clear land for new fields, but in Barotseland there remain extensive areas of woodland. The trees are still valued for their fruits and seeds as a subsidiary food source, and people collect sackfuls of fallen fruits on their way home from the maize and sorghum fields, carrying them back to the village in ox-carts.
I based my camp in Mongongo woodland near the village of Mwinga, where the headman and his family welcomed me and gave me permission to stay a while. I employed local youths to help me with the survey work, and learned of their worries about finding regular paid employment. I felt deeply at home camping under the canopy of palmate leaves, and was at my happiest at the end of a hot day’s fieldwork, sitting on my faded canvas stool with a tin mug of black tea, the kettle steaming away on the smoky fire which Mr John would rekindle when I returned from the sampling plots.
Headman Mwinga and his wife would visit me occasionally, strolling up from the village with gifts of freshly harvested vegetables, such as green leaves of Bondwe, an amaranth that grows wild at the edges of cultivated fields, or boiled cobs of maize. These additions to my diet of tinned fish and beans were a treat – but I was unsure how to show my gratitude, finding it difficult to know ‘the right thing’ to offer in return.
Each Mongongo fruit contains a hard nut resembling an almond, with a shell that requires a sharp and skilful blow to crack open and release the kernel. The woman who first showed me the technique was sitting on a reed mat on well-swept sand by her house, surrounded by chipped, white-enamelled bowls piled high with nuts. She used the stem of a bicycle pedal as her hammer. I was unable to master the technique.
Traditionally, the kernels are boiled in water to yield a rich, nutritious oil which is skimmed off and used for cooking, whereas Kalahari Biocare workers cold-press the kernels and export the oil to Europe for testing and subsequent manufacture of organic skincare products. Collecting methods were defined and monitored, as requirements of EU organic certification, which followed from my reports.
Harvesting Mongongo provided a valuable source of income for members of the local marketing associations, which were established in villages where people were willing to undergo training and adhere to good practice. So far, so good. The research project was funded by UK and French humanitarian organisations which supported rural livelihoods, especially for women, and the Mongongo woodland was being looked after as a valued resource.
Things became somewhat spikier, however, as Kalahari Biocare began to explore the export potential of devil’s claw, a creeping plant which grows from swollen underground roots proven to have anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties. Known locally as Seto, the botanical name is Harpagophytum, with the species H. zeyheri found in Zambia. The name ‘devil’s claw’ refers to the grapple-like hooks extending out from its woody seed capsules, which are dispersed on animals’ hooves and legs.
The plan was to harvest the roots sustainably, training local monitors as before, and then apply for EU organic certification for the supply of sliced and dried devil’s claw, traceable to a specific harvester or family and village. Sacks of this lightly processed material would then be exported, and manufactured in other countries into regulated medications – pills, capsules, tinctures, creams – for the treatment of arthritis in humans and animals.
This was in contrast with the unregulated business that was creeping into Barotseland from neighbouring Namibia, with traders arriving at nighttime to transport sacks of devil’s claw by river in dugout canoes or by road in large trucks. The Namibians were ‘paying’ the local farmers with only maize meal and sugar in exchange for a commodity whose value would increase at each stage of its journey from Zambia to the deep-sea port of Walvis Bay, and overseas.
There is a well-established export chain connecting these medicinal plants of Kalahari Sands vegetation with Europe and the USA, but many areas in Namibia have become exhausted over decades of unsustainable harvesting. Zambia had not been part of the supply chain until there was pressure from exporting companies to look for fresh territory.
Year by year, the mother root of Seto produces strings of secondary roots which radiate out through the sandy soil, expanding the plant’s reach and building up stores of food during the wet summer to support future growth and for sustenance in the dry winter months. Each of these secondary roots grows longer and bulkier over the years, if left to develop without disturbance.
As pressure comes to dig up more Seto for export, even the skinny and short secondary roots are now being harvested and – disastrously – the mother roots are being extracted. Subsistence farmers in the communities I visited for my fieldwork knew that, to sustain their sources of Seto, the mother plant should be left to grow and produce more side roots which, season by season, would provide traditional healers with their source of medicines.