7-3
HEALTH PROBLEMS THAT RESULT
WHEN OLD TRADITIONS ARE
REPLACED BY NEW ONES
Many health problems in poor communities
today have resulted partly because people have
abandoned old customs for new ones. The coming
of new habits, foods, religions, and laws from
the outside—begun during colonization and still
continuing today—has produced many cultural
conflicts. It has broken down the traditional ways
in which people used to meet their needs while
keeping a fairly healthy balance with each other and
with their natural surroundings. As a result, many
new problems in child care, nutrition, land tenure,
employment, family structure, and community
politics have arisen.
AN EXAMPLE FROM LIBERIA. AFRICA:
In villages of Liberia, Africa, there are many
more malnourished children today than in the past.
Mothers bear more children now, and more mothers
are anemic. Yet shortage of food and land does not
seem to be a problem for most families.
So the traditional society Mad a built-in process
of child spacing (family planning). It guaranteed
long breast feeding and allowed the mother to
regain her strength before she became pregnant
again.
What, then, is the cause of these recent health
problems?
A health educator from the outside would be
tempted to say. “The problem is ignorance. Mothers
do not know how to use the foods available to feed
their children adequately. Many prefer bottle feeding
to breast feeding. They are slow to accept family
planning. They are resistant to new ideas.”
With the coming of white men’s ideas and
religions, people were told that polygamy
was ‘bad’. Slowly, the new idea was accepted
(enforced?) and polygamy was replaced by
monogamy—which means a man can have only
one wife. But with monogamy, many of the old
health-protecting traditions began to break down.
Beliefs that had once been safeguards to health
turned into obstacles.
But it we look at these people’s history, we find
the opposite is true. The new health problems
have resulted not because people have resisted,
but because they have accepted new customs
introduced by outsiders.
Liberia used to have the tradition of polygamy-
which means it was the custom for each man to
have several wives. When a wife had a child, she
went to live in her parents’ compound for 3 or 4
years. During that time, she breast fed her baby.
While breast feeding, she did not have sex because
it was thought this would poison her milk. Vet she
was not afraid of losing her husband to another
woman. He already had other wives and it was
culturally expected for her to return to him after
weaning the child.
After giving birth, a mother was now unwilling
to move to her parents’ compound for fear that her
husband would abandon her for another wife (since
he was now allowed only one). So she stayed and
had sex with him. But since she feared sex would
poison her milk, she tried to protect her child
through another foreign custom: bottle feeding. She
was also afraid to feed her child nutritious local
foods because, traditionally, breast milk had been
enough. Therefore, giving babies many of the local
foods had been ‘taboo’ (against the old customs).
As a result of these changes in customs, women
became pregnant more quickly, and turned from
breast to bottle feeding. So today there are more
large families, anemic mothers, and malnourished
children than in the old days.
One thing seems clear in this example from Liberia: these villagers’ health
problems have, in some ways, increased because they have taken on ideas and
customs from the outside. Their problem is not primarily one of ignorance, but of
too much conflicting knowledge.