EFE I F I F

EFE:INVESTIGATING FOOD

AND FERTILITY

IN THE ITURI FOREST

Nadine R. Peacock and Robert C. Bailey

Portraits TOC

This ethnographic portrait is of the Efe people, who live in aregion of African tropical rain forest called the Ituri Forest,located in northeast Zaire. The information presented here

is derived from over thirteen years of research in collaborationwith numerous other anthropologists and research scientists. Webegin with excerpts from the journal of a graduate student justarriving in the field. Although fictitious, these journal entries aretypical of reactions expressed by students and other visitors upontheir first encounter with fieldwork in the Ituri Forest.

JOURNAL

Mambasa, Zaire; May 12, 1990; 4 P.M.

I arrived in Zaire three days ago. Spending time in Nairobiand the Kenya game parks was wonderful, but I was reallyhappy to get on that little plane at Wilson Airport and gethere to the Ituri after such a long wait for my first fieldworkexperience. Everything went quite smoothly getting to thetown of Bunia, where I arrived on schedule and cleared cus-toms without a hitch. For the next leg of my trip, I can eitherwait two days for the flight to Isiro (the plane is beingrepaired), or I can get on a little four-seater today toMambasa.

I decided on the Mambasa flight, even though I under-stand that the road to the field site from the south is in worserepair than the one from Isiro. I just want to feel like I’m get-ting there, however slowly. I was told that in Mambasa therewas a pretty good chance I could find someone drivingnorth who could at least get me closer to the Ituri Projectresearch station, if not all the way there. This way, I couldsave Jeanine and Joseph from having to make a long journeyto fetch me. I guess I’m a little nervous about being a bur-den, since I’m just here for a brief pilot study while they’rebusy trying to complete their dissertation research.

Somewhere north of Mambasa; May 13, 1990; 12:30 P.M.

I got lucky! A man at the Protestant Mission in Mambasatold me that Gaston, a driver from the Catholic Mission, was

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heading north to Nduye today, so I’ve caught a ride withhim in a Land Rover. If anyone had told me a year ago thatI’d be hitching a ride with a complete stranger across theAfrican rain forest, I’d have said, “No way!”, but there areno buses or taxis in this neck of the woods, and as my advi-sors told me, this is indeed how people get around. We’vepulled over to the side of the road for a rest break, and whileGaston checks over the car, I have a little time to write.

The roads here are bad, as I was warned, and the going isvery slow. When we’re not near a village there’s only theslightest twinkling of sunshine that gets through the trees tothe ground, which is very muddy and slippery. The driverhas to keep stopping to survey the ruts and trenches and fig-ure out how he’s going to negotiate them, and we’ve pro-gressed only about forty km (twenty-four miles) in about twohours. I don’t really mind the slowness; even though I’meager to get there, I’m also enjoying the opportunity to take inso many sights. After seeing so many of these images in myprofessors’ slides and photographs, I’m finally seeing them“live,” and now I’ve got sounds and smells to go along withthe images. One thing that surprises me is the quiet! I think ofthe rain forest as being so alive, and I expected that wouldmean noisy, but at least at this time of day—it’s so still! I don’tknow exactly what I expected to hear, maybe the exotic-sounding calls of tropical birds, or monkeys chattering, or thehum of insects.

I also thought I’d see more people! We’ve hardly seen asoul since we got out of Mambasa. Once in a while we passan elderly man sitting in a baraza (a kind of house withoutwalls that provides shelter from the rain and sun), and hepeers intently into the Land Rover as we go by, as if he’svery curious but also a little wary. Once we passed a groupof children sitting in a baraza, and I was told that this was aschool, although I saw no desks, blackboards, or books. Forthe most part, the villages are pretty empty. My guess is thatmost people are in their gardens; I’ll have to ask Gaston. I’mglad he’s so encouraging about my bumbling attempts tospeak KiSwahili with him. He hardly laughs at me at all, andI’m learning a lot about the local version of KiSwahili, whichhas a simpler grammar and a lot of words derived fromFrench.

4 PORTRAITS OF CULTURE

Nduye; May 13, 1990; 8 P.M.

After my journal entry this afternoon, we started to see moreand more people in the villages and walking along the road,apparently returning from their gardens. Many of thewomen we saw were carrying what looked like incrediblyheavy loads—sometimes bundles of firewood, sometimeslarge baskets; the men, in contrast—carried at most an axe ora hoe. I saw some people who I’m pretty sure were Efe,judging by their size, facial characteristics, and dress. Ididn’t want to make a big deal out of seeing “pygmies,” butI must admit to being pretty excited, since they’re the peopleI’m planning to spend a good year or two with when I comeback. I found it a bit frustrating knowing that in the forest—probably just a short walk beyond the villages—werenumerous Efe camps, and that I’d have to wait to see them.We arrived at Nduye (the Catholic mission) about two hoursago and will spend the night here. Gaston has agreed to takeme all the way to the research station tomorrow.

Siakobo; May 14, 1990; 8 P.M.

Gaston and I arrived at about 10:00 this morning at“Siakobo,” which is the name the anthropologists have giventhe research station. (It’s actually the local name of a littleoriole-like bird that is heard singing here in the mornings.)The set-up here is nice! There’s several earthen houses withthatched roofs, a baraza with comfortable chairs that I’mtold are made from palm wood, and another baraza-likestructure, called a mafika, that serves as a cooking area.Jeanine and Joseph seemed genuinely pleased that I hadarrived on my own, and made me feel very welcome. It cer-tainly helped that I had brought each of them mail and “carepackages” from families and friends at home, whom theyhadn’t heard from in weeks. I did a lot of handshaking andexchanging “salamu’s” with the Lese and Efe who quicklybegan arriving for a look at the newcomer. I enjoyed listen-ing to people speak the local language, called KiLese, whichlike their KiSwahili has a real musical quality to it that I findbeautiful. It’s frustrating not being able to understand, espe-

EFE 5

cially at the times I feel quite certain they are talking aboutme! There were a couple of Efe men among the visitors, andtheir speech to each other had a slightly different quality—musical like the Lese, but with more staccato sounds. All thevisiting Lese men congregated in the baraza and women inthe mafika, but I noted with interest that the two Efe men sat tothe side in the mafika with the women. I guess I’ve seen myfirst example of the status difference between Lese and Efe.

Sundown brought with it some of the exotic sounds I washoping to hear, some were from monkeys and big tropicalbirds called turacos, but the most remarkable by far were theindescribable screams of a tree hyrax. Over dinner, I filled mycolleagues in on news from the home front, and they clued mein to some of the local goings-on. Tomorrow we’ll go to visitsome nearby villages and one of the Efe groups that’s campednearby. I can’t wait! (End of journal entry.)

We have tried above to convey a feeling for the Ituri Forest asseen through the eyes of a student seeing Africa and experiencingfieldwork for the first time. As that student spends more timewith her study population, she will acquire more and more asense of how to answer the question. “Who are these people whocall themselves Efe?” Her answers are bound to differ in interest-ing ways from those that might be given by Efe themselves, aswell as by their neighbors or even by other anthropologists work-ing at the same field site. How she chooses to describe the Efe andwhat features of their culture and behavior she chooses to empha-size will be influenced by information she has absorbed beforearriving at the field site, the biases imposed by her own culturalbackground, the theoretical perspectives she brings to her investi-gations, her specific research questions, and the methodologiesshe employs to answer them.

ETHNOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND

The Efe (pronounced “ef-fay”) are one of approximately thirteendifferent populations of short-statured people commonly calledpygmies who live in the moist tropical forest areas of central


Africa. The Efe reside in northeastern Zaire, just north of theequator, in an area known as the Ituri Forest. In the Ituri, thereare three major populations of pygmies other than the Efe; theseothers are known as Aka, Mbuti, and Tswa (or Sua). Thesegroups, like the Efe, are generally classified as among the dwin-dling numbers of people who make their living by hunting andgathering of wild resources. Ituri pygmies are often collectivelyreferred to as Mbuti or BaMbuti, since for them the word“pygmy” has a strongly pejorative connotation. As the readerwill have noted, though, “Mbuti” is actually the name of one ofthe four major groups of Ituri pygmies, and therefore its dual usein referring to that group and to the collective can be a source ofconfusion. We have elected to follow the convention of using“BaMbuti” when referring to Ituri pygmies in general and“Mbuti” when referring to the specific group within the BaMbuti.Unfortunately, there is no equivalent term that applies to allAfrican pygmy groups including those outside the Ituri Forest.We will therefore reluctantly use the word “pygmy” when refer-ring to this larger group.

One of the most important things to know about African pyg-mies is that without exception they all live in close associationwith farmers. The farmers reside in villages and subsist by meansof swidden agriculture, which involves clearing and burningpatches of rain forest where they cultivate food crops. Relationsbetween pygmies and farmers include exchange of food andother material goods, but extend beyond reciprocity to includemany aspects of social, economic, ritual, and political life. Thebonds that exist between the Efe and farmers are particularlystrong. Efe are associated with the Sudanic-speaking Lese (pro-nounced “Les-say”). Those Efe who are the focus of our investiga-tions are linked with one subgrouping of Lese, the Lese Dese,whose “chiefdom” (French collectivité) is located in the northernIturi near the rain forest-savanna border.

The total number of Lese Dese is about 1,900, and there areapproximately 1,200 Efe living in association with them. Webegan our studies in the Ituri in 1980, and focused our attentionon the Lese and Efe living along a remote twelve kilometer (sevenmile) stretch of dirt track bounded on the north and south by twosmall rivers. This study area encompasses fourteen Lese villageswith a total of 550 people, with villages ranging in size fromtwelve to ninety people. The number of Efe within this area

EFE 7

varies tremendously due to the Efe’s nomadic lifestyle, but theirtotal population is around 450. Efe camps change in size andcomposition almost daily because residence is very flexible—peo-ple move from camp to camp frequently. We have seen camps assmall as just two people, but others consisting of as many as fifty;the average camp size is eighteen people.

The Efe and Lese speak mutually intelligible dialects of a sin-gle language called KiLese (“Ki-” is a Bantu prefix that in thiscontext means “language of”). The language is a tonal one, hencethe “musical” quality noted by the visitor in our opening passage.The fact that the Efe speak the language of their Lese neighbors isnot a unique situation; in fact there are no pygmies anywhere inAfrica who speak their own distinctive language; all speak adialect of a language borrowed from farmers. It is unknownwhether African pygmies ever had a distinctive common lan-guage. Some researchers say there are vestiges of a common orig-inal African pygmy language, while others are skeptical. Progressin investigating this question has been slow and it is an areawhere exciting research still remains to be done.

In addition to the Lese language, most Lese and Efe havesome facility in speaking KiSwahili, the lingua franca, or tradelanguage, in the area. Lese are more likely than Efe to speakKiSwahili fluently, and in both groups men tend to speak it betterthan women, largely because of their greater degree of contactwith outsiders. Virtually all of our communications with Efe andLese in the course of our research took place in KiSwahili, al-though we did learn to exchange common greetings and respondto simple inquiries in the local Lese language.

Subsistence

The particular way that a people make a living is often a key fac-tor in the anthropologist’s choice of study populations. In thecase of our research, a major reason for studying the Efe was thefact that they are traditionally categorized as foraging people(also called hunter-gatherers)—those for whom hunting of ani-mals for meat and foraging for wild plants and honey constitutethe predominant subsistence activities.

One of the things that is immediately clear to anyone who


spends even a short amount of time with BaMbuti groups is thatthey are not hunter-gatherers in the strict sense. It is true thatthey hunt and gather wild food resources and that they do notthemselves engage to any appreciable extent in cultivation oftheir own fields, animal husbandry, or wage labor. However,approximately two-thirds of the calories they consume comefrom cultivated foods grown in the Lese gardens. The mostimportant of cultivated foods in the Efe diet are cassava (alsocalled manioc), peanuts, rice, and plantains. The Lese grow thesefoods by means of swidden horticulture (also known as “slashand burn” farming), and Efe assist them in most of their agricul-tural tasks. Efe men help the Lese clear new areas of forest eachyear (their skill at felling trees is particularly valued) and theyassist in guarding Lese crops against destruction by baboons,bush pigs, and other forest animals. Efe women help with clear-ing, planting, weeding, and harvesting of Lese crops. In return fortheir labor, Efe receive a portion of the Lese harvest, as well asother material goods such as salt, soap, cloth, pots and pans, andmetal for making knives, axes, spears, and arrows.

Given their key role in production of Lese crops and theirsignificant reliance on agricultural produce for meeting their ownnutritional needs, it is actually surprising that the Efe lifestyleresembles that of other foraging populations as much as it does.This lifestyle can be described as semi-nomadic. In contrast to theLese who live in permanent villages, Efe live in temporaryencampments, and for shelter they erect small, igloo-shaped hutsconstructed by fixing broad, thick leaves onto a latticework ofsaplings. About half the year they locate their camps in the forestrelatively far (though never more than a long day’s walk) fromthe Lese villages, in order to concentrate their subsistence effortson hunting and collecting honey. During those times they arelikely to move camp about every two weeks in order to takeadvantage of the changing distribution of edible plants and ani-mals in the forest. At other times of the year they place theircamps near the Lese villages—sometimes right in a Lese gar-den—to take advantage of opportunities to trade their labor forcultivated foods and to participate in the social and ritual life ofthe village. Even during these times, however, Efe do not aban-don hunting and gathering; they still make regular forays into theforest from their village camps, especially the men who continueto hunt wild game and seek honey.

EFE 9

Remaining mobile is key to the Efe’s success in exploiting theforest and taking advantage of the opportunities available in theLese villages. An Efe group is capable of striking camp, transport-ing all their belongings to another location (with the women gen-erally carrying everything except weapons), and constructing anew camp, all in a matter of hours. As part of our studies, wetook an inventory of all the material items owned by thirty-fiveEfe men and women. The following is an example of everythingowned by a representative Efe couple: a basket, a spear, a bow,six metal-tipped arrows, nine poison-tipped arrows, one pair ofshorts, two blackened aluminum pots, a blue plastic cup, a smallaluminum dish with a hole in it, two threadbare shirts, onesarong, a handkerchief-sized piece of cloth, an old machete with-out a handle, a spoon, a thumb piano, a small knife, a crackedclay pipe, a rusted can containing two needles, a few strands ofthread, a safety pin, and a few beads wrapped in a page from anold magazine. We estimated the average value of all the materialpossessions of an Efe couple in 1982 to be approximately fifteendollars. While this puts Efe far below the poverty line by almostany standards, it is a crucial aspect of their successful subsistencestrategy. By remaining unencumbered by material possessionsand by being able to construct shelters in just a couple of hours,the Efe are free to move at a moment’s notice in response to shift-ing resources in the forest or to changing conditions around aLese village. In sharp contrast, the movements of farmers like theLese are restricted. They are compelled by their subsistence strat-egy to live a more sedentary existence in order to protect and cul-tivate their gardens. Thus they live in relatively permanent vil-lages and accumulate greater material wealth than the Efenomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle would ever allow.

Hunting

While Efe are distinguished from the Lese farmers by virtue oftheir nomadic residence patterns and their dependence on hunt-ing and gathering, their preferred hunting techniques are whatdistinguishes them from other African pygmy groups. OtherBaMbuti in the Ituri Forest use nets to hunt game, but Efe employ


bows and arrows tipped either with metal points or with poisonmade from forest plants. This is not merely a case of differenttools achieving the same end. Rather, this hunting technologystrongly influences other distinguishing features of Efe society,such as the size of their living groups, the subsistence activities ofwomen, patterns of child care, and relations with farmer neigh-bors. To understand why this is so, it is helpful to have somedetail about how Efe hunting differs from that of other BaMbutigroups.

Efe men employ primarily three different techniques forhunting forest animals. One technique is used in hunting arborealmonkeys as they forage through the canopy for fruits, leaves, andinsects. This monkey hunting technique is a solitary endeavor;men walk through the forest quietly, searching for groups ofmonkeys and using poison-tipped arrows to paralyze their prey.The other two common techniques are used in hunting terrestrialmammals, with the most common prey being duikers, small for-est antelopes. One hunting method the Efe use takes advantage ofthe duikers’ fruit-eating habits. An Efe man finds an area withmany fallen fruits, and he perches in a fruiting tree, about ten feetabove the ground. When a duiker comes along to feed on the fruit(usually in the early morning or late afternoon), the hunter shootsa metal tipped arrow into the duiker and then chases after hisprey, often with the help of a dog, until the animal is run downand finally killed. Although this is the least successful of all themethods employed by Efe hunters, it is favored by many menbecause the solitary hunter gets to keep the entire prey item forhimself, which does not happen when men hunt in groups.1

The group hunting method, called mota, entails a high degreeof cooperation among anywhere from four to twenty-five menworking with one or several dogs. One or two men, along withthe dogs, act as beaters to flush the game from their hiding placesin the forest undergrowth, while the other men wait ahead,standing stationary and hidden among the trees, until a fleeinganimal passes close enough to take a shot. If a hunter shoots aduiker, the dogs and men chase the wounded animal until iteither drops from exhaustion, is caught by a dog, or is shot andkilled by a second hunter. The prey is then butchered and sharedamong all the hunters according to a system which rewards eachhunter according to his contribution to the hunt.2

EFE 11

The Size and Composition of Living Groups

The unique hunting technologies employed by the Efe influencethe size of their living groups. Efe live in substantially smallergroups than the Mbuti net hunters living to the south. For exam-ple, the Mbuti studied by Colin Turnbull lived in camps of overone hundred people3 and three bands of Mbuti studied by JohnHart ranged in size from twenty-six to forty-eight.4 In contrast,Efe groups average just eighteen people and most camps havebetween three and fifty residents. Among the Mbuti, the lowerlimit on camp size seems to be set by the minimum number ofnets necessary for a successful hunt. For example, Hart found thatthe greater the number of nets used in the hunt, the more kilo-grams of meat were killed per hour of hunting.5 Since a minimumof seven nets is required for a successful hunt and each net isowned by one to four men, Mbuti camps are rarely composed offewer than ten men, and their wives, children, and other depen-dents.

The Efe, on the other hand, are not as dependent upon a criti-cal number of hunters. We found that group hunts with four menwere no more or less successful per man than hunts with largernumbers of men. Hence hunting group size does not set any lim-its on hunting success as in the case of the Mbuti. In addition, Efemen spend considerable time hunting alone, either for monkeysor for duikers using the ambush method. Another factor thatprobably contributes to the smaller Efe camp size is the Efe’sgreat reliance on honey. Extracting honey from a beehive requiresthe efforts of at most three men, and in many cases it can beaccomplished by one man alone. Since hives yield an average ofonly about seven pounds of honey and are dispersed rather wide-ly across the forest, it is advantageous for Efe to split up intosmaller groups to exploit this highly prized resource most effi-ciently.

The structure of an Efe encampment in its simplest form is acircle of igloo-shaped huts all opening onto a common centralarea. In reality, many Efe camps, particularly the larger ones,have irregular, multi-lobed shapes that permit some degree ofvisual isolation of smaller groupings of huts. Each hut generally


has an exterior hearth near the doorway, and another inside thehut where a fire is lit at night for warmth. Most activities in camptake place around the exterior fires, including cooking, eating,making and maintaining implements, relaxing, and socializing.Beside and behind every hut is generally a trash heap, on whichare tossed old sleeping leaves, ashes from the hearth, bones, andother refuse. For ethnoarchaeologists, who examine abandonedEfe camps for clues about how to interpret archaeologicalremains of foraging peoples who lived in the distant past, theseheaps of discarded refuse are of special interest.6

The Efe household, if that term can accurately be used to referto the individuals who sleep in a single hut, is typically com-posed of a man, his wife, and their young children, if any. Anolder relative, such as the man’s widowed father or uncle, mayalso sleep in a family’s hut. People who are closely related to oneanother, such as two brothers and their parents, generally occupyadjacent huts, and children may in fact sleep with grandparentsor aunts and uncles rather than with their parents. Adolescentsand unmarried men usually sleep in a hut with other same-sexage mates, but generally they share meals with their parents orother close kin in the group.

Exactly who resides in an Efe camp is often, but not always,determined by kinship and clan affiliation. Each person identifieshim- or herself as a member of a particular clan, which is the clanof his or her father. Men tend to reside in the same camp as theirfather and other male relatives, so they live with their fellowclansmen. A woman ideally stays in her parents’ camp until sheis married, at which time she moves to the camp of her husband’sclan. She continues, however, to be identified as a member of herfather’s clan. While these are the ideal rules of residence, they arenot always precisely followed. For example, at any one time,about thirteen percent of Efe couples live somewhere other thanwith the husband’s clan.

Thus, while marriage and clan affiliation are important deter-minants of who lives together in the same camp, the compositionof camps is very flexible. As we have seen, this flexibility allowsEfe to adjust to changing distributions of resources and to suc-cessfully pursue their preferred methods of hunting. Flexibility ofresidence is just as important, however, for mollifying social con-flict. Disputes between individuals and households are common,yet physical fights between members of different households are

EFE 13

rare, in great part due to the ease with which an individual orfamily can pick up and move to a different camp. Disputes areoften minor and easily dissipated, but can at times escalate intovery heated arguments or even, on rare occasions, physical fights.Most often, however, one side or the other of the dispute, aftershouting their indignant protests to the assembled, collects theirfew belongings and stomps off to take up residence with otherrelatives somewhere else in the forest. After a time of healing—some weeks or months—the disputants will most likely residetogether again in the same camp, either amicably settling theirdispute or simply putting it behind them without further discus-sion. This process of “fission and fusion” makes Efe group sizeand composition flexible and variable.

Sexual Division of Labor

As in virtually all human societies, Efe men and Efe women en-gage in different work activities. As with group size and compo-sition, the sexual division of labor is closely linked to the subsis-tence technologies the Efe pursue. As we have seen, Efe men do aconsiderable amount of hunting, whereas women rarely if everparticipate in hunts. This is in contrast to the Mbuti net-huntersto the south. In net hunting groups, women have a crucial role inthe hunts. They act as the beaters to flush animals into the netstended by the men. Thus men and women among the net huntingBaMbuti and other African pygmy groups engage in similar sub-sistence tasks, and may spend much of their working day togeth-er. Efe men and women, on the other hand, spend most of theirday engaging in very separate subsistence tasks and seekingquite different resources. While men concentrate most of theirsubsistence activities in the forest, primarily hunting game andforaging for honey, women’s efforts are much more orientedtoward the Lese villages and gardens, where they exchange theirlabor primarily for agricultural produce.

As part of our studies of Efe subsistence, we followed indi-vidual Efe men and women (with their permission) at randomlyselected times over the course of a year. During each hour-longsession, at one-minute intervals we noted the activities they were


engaged in, who they were associating with, what if anythingthey were eating, and various other aspects of their lives relatingto their subsistence and social behavior. By summing the datafrom these “follows,” as we called them, we could estimate theamount of time men and women spent in various categories ofactivity. In addition, we wanted to learn how much Efe ate andwho contributed what foods to their diet, so we also weighedevery food item that Efe brought into their camp during thirty-three randomly selected days over the course of a year.

These studies revealed just how different Efe men andwomen are in the activities they perform and the foods theyacquire (see Table 1). For example, women spent just 6.7 percentof their time foraging for foods in the forest, but 15.4 percent oftheir time working in Lese gardens and villages, whereas men

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Table 1Time Allocation of Efe Men and Women

Percent TimeSubsistence and Maintenance Activities Men Women

Subsistence Work Hunting 21.1 0Food Gathering .6 6.7Honey Gathering 11.1 0Village and Garden Work 5.6 15.4

MaintenanceMake and Repair Implements 7.1 .8Food Preparation 3.2 13.2Collect Wood and Water .5 5.0Camp Maintenance 1.6 1.5Move Camp 1.5 1.5

Other ActivitiesChild Care .7 13.1Self Care 1.0 2.0Leisure 44.1 36.0All Other 1.9 2.0

devoted nearly 40 percent of their time hunting or collectinghoney in the forest and maintaining their equipment necessaryfor those forest-related tasks, only 5.6 percent of their time work-ing for villagers. Women spent a large proportion of their timepreparing and cooking food, caring for children, and buildingand repairing the huts, while men contributed very little time tothese tasks.

Despite the fact that women devote less time than men to thequest for food, they contribute nearly twice as many calories tothe Efe diet as men do (66.1 percent versus 31.1 percent duringthe period of our study). This has been found to be true of someother foraging populations like the !Kung San of the Kalaharidesert. However, the foods obtained by !Kung women are for-aged, whereas for Efe they are primarily agricultural producefrom Lese gardens.

Our studies of Efe subsistence practices show that womenconcentrate their food procurement activities around the village,acquiring mostly cultivated foods by supplying Lese farmerswith labor. Men, on the other hand, specialize in forest subsis-tence activities. They do little work in the villages; rather theyconcentrate on garnering forest resources, some of which the Efeconsume themselves while others are traded to Lese for food andmaterial goods. These differences between men and womensometimes bring the two sexes into conflict: women are drawntoward the villages, while men are drawn deeper into the forest.A woman’s life is in many ways easier when she is closer to thevillage world. When she works or trades in the village for agricul-tural food, she must carry the fruits of her labors (sometimesweighing two-thirds of her own body weight) back to campbefore preparing and cooking it; a short distance between campand village is therefore advantageous for her. A man’s subsis-tence efforts are more likely to be fruitful far from the village,where there are more animals, where hunting and foraging arebetter, and where social conflicts with Lese are few. Such differ-ent interests on the part of men and women sometimes result inheated conflict. More than once, we witnessed long and intensearguments about when and where camp should be moved, mostmen usually arguing for moving further into the forest andwomen presenting a united front in favor of staying closer to theLese villages and gardens.


Child Care

As in most societies, there is a significant difference between theamount of time Efe men and women spend in caring for children,and as with other aspects of Efe life, this difference is stronglyinfluenced by subsistence technology. As we have seen, men andwomen pursue essentially different subsistence strategies and soare apart for much of the day. Efe infants, who rely on breastmilkfor their nourishment, are required to be close to mother through-out the day. (Bottle feeding is unknown to the Efe.) Similarly,weaned children under the age of about twelve generally remainwith their mother or other adult female for most of the daybecause their father’s hunting and foraging activities require dis-tant travel, and are inherently more dangerous than women’sactivities. Consequently, as our time allocation studies show, Efemothers spend 13.1 percent of their time caring for their children,but men on average less than 1 percent. Even childless womenspent over eight times as much time caring for children as didmen, there being a high degree of cooperation among women incaring for children. Gilda Morelli and Steven Winn, two develop-mental psychologists who studied Efe care-taking practices,found that Efe infants are passed from one woman to anotherwith high frequency throughout the day—an average of 8.3 timesper hour—and infants are in contact with an average of fourteendifferent people during an eight-hour period.7 Thus Efe childrenare brought up in a highly cooperative extended family atmos-phere with much love and affection focused on them by manydifferent people—especially older girls and women.

Net hunters show much less pronounced differences betweenmen and women in the amount of time they spend with children.Barry Hewlett, studying the Aka net-hunters in the CentralAfrican Republic found that, because men and women worktogether during hunts, children are in contact with their fathermuch more often than among the Efe bow-and-arrow hunters.For example, Aka fathers hold four-month-old infants about eigh-teen percent of the day and they are within visual range of theirinfants, even in the forest, over half the time.8 While Aka children,like Efe children, are the focus of much attention by a wide vari-ety of relatives and friends in the camp, fathers are much more

EFE 17

often a source of this contact and attention among the Aka thanamong the Efe. This is yet another example of how differences inthe subsistence technologies of societies—in this case, net huntingversus bow hunting—can have profound consequences for manyother aspects of culture.

Egalitarianism and Sharing

Relations between people in foraging societies are commonlymore egalitarian than among farmers and other societies that relyon more complex technologies. This is in great part because, aswe have seen, foragers do not accumulate many material posses-sions, so great differences in wealth or other conventional mea-sures of status are unlikely to exist. This means there is lessopportunity to pass wealth and status on to others than there is inmore sedentary societies. So, for example, there is little differencebetween one Efe and another in the value of goods they possess,and they have no rules of inheritance concerning wealth or posi-tions of authority. Indeed, they have no formal positions ofauthority at all. This is not to say, however, that there are no dif-ferences between individuals or that there are no leaders amongthe Efe. Each clan has men and women who are recognized asleaders of the group, but such positions are earned not throughinheritance or appointment by some higher authority, butthrough years of taking responsibility and having exceptionalwisdom or strength of character. Sometimes such leadership rolesmay give the appearance of being hereditary since leaders tend tolearn skills from their parents, but such positions of respect areearned, not dictated by law or custom.

Another sense in which most foraging peoples, including theEfe, are egalitarian is in the tendency for all to share the knowl-edge and abilities necessary to perform crucial tasks. In culturessuch as ours, one person cannot hope to be skilled at all the dif-ferent tasks required of our complex economy and political struc-ture. No matter how talented, the same person cannot be anaccomplished heart surgeon, a structural engineer, a computerprogrammer, a rock music composer, and a firefighter all in thesame lifetime. Among the Efe, however, the technologiesrequired for survival in their rain forest environment are not so


varied or complex that each person is not capable of performingall of them with sufficient skill to function. Thus there are fewdifferences between people in the jobs they perform from day today. That is not to say, however, that everyone performs everytask with equal skill. Some individuals are widely recognized ashaving a particular talent or as being specially skilled at certaintasks. For example, one man was known throughout the area as asuperb storyteller, while two others were renowned as greatdrummers at dances. Two others who had physical afflictions—one had been stricken with polio as a child and the other had losta leg due to snakebite—were specialists in iron working and theirmetal arrow points were widely sought after. One woman wasfamous for the clay cooking pots she made. Every Efe was capa-ble of performing every one of these activities; however, differ-ences in talents and proclivities are bound to emerge and suchindividual differences were widespread and obvious.

As with other endeavors, differences in hunting skills existamong Efe men. However, regardless of one’s level of skill, forag-ing in the tropical rain forest is a boom-and-bust proposition. Oneday a person may have the good fortune of killing a large animalor catching many fish, but on other days may come up emptyhanded. There is no refrigeration or other means of long-termfood storage to buffer one against such vagaries, and to becomeseriously ill or infirm puts someone at risk of going without. Thusthe life of the hunter-gatherer is full of risks.

The Efe have several ways of reducing the risks of life in theforest. One way, as we have seen, is to maintain mobility in orderto take advantage of the movements of animals and the changinglocation of edible fruits, nuts, and other resources. Another veryimportant way Efe buffer themselves against fluctuations in thefood supply is to observe a very strong ethic of sharing and coop-eration. Through sharing the Efe reduce the day-to-day differ-ences between people in the foods they acquire so that no onegoes hungry on a given day.

Sharing of food is something dictated by Efe custom and ittakes place at virtually all levels of the society. Kinship dictates aparticularly strong obligation to share, but there is a generalresponsibility to share with almost anyone who asks for some-thing. Meat, a highly prized food item, is in general more widelyshared than other foods and this occurs according to fairly strictconvention. Butchering of animals takes place during group

EFE 19

hunts and each hunter generally gets a share of each animal, butnot on an equal basis. The part of the animal and quantity of meatto which a man can lay claim depends on his role in the hunt. Themost highly prized portions (the liver, flanks and legs) go to thehunter who first shot the animal; the head, and one front leg andshoulder go to the owner of the dog that ran down the prey, andthe man who finally killed the animal gets the other shoulder andfront leg. The rest of the animal (the offal, ribs and mid section)are divided more or less evenly among the remaining hunters.This method of partitioning the kill gives incentive to everyhunter to work hard toward killing the animal, but at the sametime rewards all those who participate in the hunt. It turns outthat group (mota) hunting is actually less productive per personthan monkey hunting in terms of weight of meat returned perhour of hunting, but men prefer to hunt in groups because itreduces the chances of a hunter returning to camp with no meatat all.9 In other words, cooperation and sharing on hunts reducesignificantly the risk of going hungry on any given day.

Once a man procures his rightful share of the kill, he carries itback to camp, and then other obligations come into play. Forexample, he will always share with his immediate family mem-bers, but he may also have an obligation to repay a debt, and itwould be inappropriate to refuse almost anyone who directlyasks for a portion, especially if they are sick or disabled. Theresult is usually that, if meat is being eaten in the camp, everyoneis eating at least a little.

Women, too, cooperate and share on the occasions when theygo on foraging trips in the forest. On fishing trips, groups ofwomen and girls work together to dam small forest streams fromwhich they extract small fish and crabs with their bare hands.Each woman has a small leaf basket for carrying her catch, and ifshe is the one pulling fish from the stream, she throws some ofthem into her own basket and some into the baskets of otherwomen. There are no rationing rules that are as clear as those formeat-rationing on hunts, and research remains to be done on howwomen make decisions about how much and with whom toshare. Efe women sometimes go on cooperative fishing trips withvillager women who own fishing nets. These efforts are similar ina way to group hunts, in that a group of women walk through thewater, beating the surface with sticks in order to drive fish to-ward the nets of women waiting downstream. Fruits, nuts, mush-


rooms, caterpillars, and termites are also collected cooperativelyand shared by women. In addition, as we have seen, women helpeach other with child care, thereby freeing mothers for a period oftime to collect forest resources or work in the Lese gardens unen-cumbered. Cooperation and sharing, then, are ways in which theEfe reduce the day-to-day variations in the food supply and workload that are inherent to the hunting and gathering lifestyle.

Conflict: Avoidance and Resolution

While it is true that the Efe are a relatively cooperative, sharing,and egalitarian society, it would be incorrect to think of them as apeople without conflict. Disputes between individuals, families,clans, and larger groups all occur and are a source of much con-cern for all. One great source of conflict within families andacross clans arises from the preferred marriage system. The mar-riage system of the Efe in its ideal form is “sister exchange,”meaning that when a man and woman marry, there is the under-standing that the groom’s clan has incurred a “debt,” and thatthey will either immediately or at some time in the future recipro-cate by providing a female relative as a marriage partner for oneof the bride’s male relatives. Thus the groom’s clan promises toexchange a “sister” for a “sister” of the bride’s clan. While sisterexchange is the ideal to which all aspire, it is achieved in onlythirty percent of marriages. The reasons are as many and variedas the number of couples involved. Very often, there simply is noappropriately aged unmarried female relative available to ex-change for the bride and so a debt by one clan to another remainsin effect, sometimes for generations. Frequently, a young womanwho is promised to another clan is not enamored of her chosenspouse, and simply refuses to have anything to do with him. Thisis a source of great conflict, with the woman’s brother and par-ents usually trying to coerce her to marry against her will. Inthese circumstances, the would-be groom’s clan threatens to takeback their “sister” unless reparations between clans are made.Interclan disputes over marriage partners may escalate fromvociferous arguments to (in rare cases) armed conflict. On severaloccasions disputes were settled through forced kidnapping ofwomen.

EFE 21

Another common source of conflict between individuals andclans is access to food. Within camps, occasional disputes ariseover reciprocal relations—one individual complains that anotheris not contributing his or her share of food, or a person is accusedof demanding too much. Sometimes there are accusations of foodtheft, either from the accuser him or herself, or from the accuser’sLese trading partner. When conflict arises within the camp, thereare a variety of informal ways of dealing with it. An influentialgroup member may act as mediator, but in many cases the dis-agreeing parties simply avoid one another until things cooldown. This avoidance itself is generally a kind of public state-ment, as when a woman reconstructs her hut so that her doorwayis facing away from that of the person with whom she has had anargument. Sometimes, as indicated earlier, a serious disputeresults in group fissioning; the group divides, usually along kinlines, and the parties remain apart for some period of time.

While the Efe have no formal system of land tenure, each clanis identified with one area of the forest. In this way, the entireIturi Forest is carved in the people’s minds into territories, eachidentified with a particular clan. There is some overlap of the ter-ritories along their edges, and there is some flexibility as to forestuse; however, it is understood that one clan should not enter theterritory of another without at least their tacit consent. If menfrom one clan hunt and kill an animal without permission in theterritory of another, a portion of the animal may be demanded bythe resident clan. In addition, honey may not be extracted from abeehive found in another clan’s territory. If it is, reparations aredemanded by the resident clan. Most such disputes are settledamicably because they most often occur between neighboringclans who engage frequently in communal hunts and gatheringtrips. The most heated disputes occur when a clan attempts tomove into a new area from some distant part of the forest.Although they almost never come to blows, members of the clansmay threaten each other with death or injury.

Especially serious disputes between Efe may be taken to theLese villagers for arbitration. Indeed, both Lese and Efe attest thatmany more disputes would escalate to violence with weapons ifit were not for Lese intervention. The Lese, who have a morestratified social and political system than the Efe, have a chief towhom all persons, including Efe, are accountable. The chief of theLese and his lesser officials, including police, may be called upon


to adjudicate disputes between Efe individuals, families, or clans.All parties to the conflict generally express the belief that they canpersuade the Lese of the justice of their position, and are thuswilling to involve Lese in their conflicts. Ironically, more oftenthan not, both sides end up having to pay the Lese in the form ofmeat or labor as a result of involving them in the dispute.

Lese-Efe Relations

The lives of Efe and Lese are intricately bound by a complex webof economic, political, social, and kin networks. Historical andlinguistic evidence indicates that the Efe and Lese have beeninteracting for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Virtuallyevery aspect of Efe existence is affected by and has effects on Lesevillager life. In many cases, individual Efe have such close rela-tionships with individual Lese that they are considered as part ofa Lese family. They have fictive kinship ties whereby an Efe mayrefer to a Lese as “father,” “mother” or “cousin.” Especially closerelationships exist between Efe and Lese men, and most Efe menhave special relationships with a Lese man whom he has knownmost or all of his life. The wives of these men may also adopt aclose relationship, and their sons often become especially close. Infact, the Efe-muto relationship, as it is called, is generally formallypassed down within the same two lineages for many generations.

Lese look to the Efe for goods and services that complementmany aspects of their lives; these include meat and honey, laborfor their gardens, natural medicines from the forest, expertise inwarding off witches and sorcerers, and music and song essentialfor ceremonies and rituals. Despite reliance on the Efe for somany skills, Lese consider Efe inferior. Lese see Efe as dirty (cit-ing the fact that they sleep on the ground rather than on beds),ignorant (because they seldom can read or write and they do notknow cultivation techniques as well as Lese), and childlike (dueto their supposed volatile personalities and tendency to breakpromises).

Despite their feelings of superiority over the Efe, some Leseand Efe do marry, but marriages are of only one kind: Lese menmarry Efe women, but the reverse is never true. Although thereare sometimes rumors and accusations of Lese women having Efe

EFE 23

lovers, such liaisons are never publicly acknowledged and to suf-fer such an accusation is a source of great shame for a Lesewoman. The Efe women who do marry Lese men are often sec-ond or third wives, or they are married monogamously to thepoorest Lese. (About eighteen percent of Lese men have morethan one wife, in contrast to three percent of Efe men.) Efe wivesare often considered subordinate to Lese wives and they oftenhave to work harder than their Lese co-wives. The children ofLese men and Efe women are raised as villagers, even if the Efemother leaves the village to return to her Efe relatives in the for-est. This of course means that many Lese have Efe ancestry invarying degrees, and therefore some Efe and Lese are biologicallyrelated and bound through kinship. At the same time, no Lesegenes are introduced into the Efe population, since all offspringof Efe-Lese unions are raised as villagers.

Lese attempt to dominate Efe in many ways and they have acertain amount of success at doing so because they have institu-tionalized laws and the means to enforce them through the chiefand his police. When conflicts occur between Efe and Lese, theLese can always call on the chief and his police to adjudicate, usu-ally in favor of the Lese. For example, Efe are sometimes caughtin the act of taking food from Lese gardens without permission;the accused Efe usually claims to have taken only food owed himor her by the villager. If “charges” are filed, the Efe may be forcedto work for the Lese for some period of time, or may be sentencedto labor for the chief. Conflicts between entire clans of Efe andentire villages of Lese sometimes occur, again usually over food.The Lese accuse the Efe of demanding too much food and notbringing enough meat or honey into the village, while the Efeaccuse the Lese of not cultivating large enough gardens and beingstingy. Such insults, which may also be accompanied by accusa-tions of sorcery, threaten the reputations of both sides, and pro-tracted acrimonious arguments may ensue, especially duringperiods of food shortage. It is not unusual in such cases for theEfe to take advantage of their mobility. The entire clan simplymoves camp away from their traditional Lese village and theystrike up an affiliation with a different village on the other side ofthe forest. Over the years, each Efe clan develops and maintainsaffiliations with multiple Lese villages, thus maintaining flexibili-ty in the face of disputes or food shortage in any one area.


FOOD PRODUCTION, SEASONAL

HUNGER, AND REPRODUCTION

Very early in our studies we learned through conversations withEfe and Lese that the people in the Ituri recognize an annual“time of hunger.” This hunger season was said to vary in severityfrom year to year but to occur around the same time every year—in April, May and June. We witnessed a very severe hunger sea-son in the first year of our studies. The signs of hunger were obvi-ous; we saw loss of weight, dullness of hair and skin, frequentcomplaints of hunger, intense conflicts over food, an increase infrequency of food theft accusations by Lese against Efe, increasedvigilance by Lese over the Efe, and movement of Efe out of thearea to establish relations with other villages.

These reports and observations led us to formulate severalhypotheses about the causes of seasonal hunger in the Ituri and todesign investigations of their effects on the health and reproduc-tive performance of Efe and Lese women. First, we recognizedthat weight loss can be the result of either a decrease in caloricfood consumption or an increase in physical exertion, or a combi-nation of both reduced intake and increased energy expenditure.In the case of the Efe and Lese, it would not be possible to detectwhich of these causes, exclusive of the other, was responsible forweight changes. All we could say was that if weight changed, thiswas a reflection of a change in total energy balance, whether dueto change in food consumption, energy output or some combina-tion of the two. We hypothesized that, since both the Efe and Lesedepended on the foods produced in the Lese gardens, changes inEfe and Lese energy balance should be associated with changes inthe food production cycle of the Lese. A corollary of this predic-tion was that Efe should undergo less dramatic changes in energybalance since they rely less on garden food production than Lese.We also hypothesized that, since food production depends to agreat extent on rainfall in many areas of the world, changes infood production would be affected by changes in levels of rainfallin the Ituri Forest.

In order to test these hypotheses and to further investigate

EFE 25

the consequences of weight changes for reproductive functionamong the Efe and Lese, we needed information over the courseof several years about rainfall, food production, and weightchange. Because of the amount of work and the long time com-mitment, this could not be done by just one or two investigators,but required the collaborative efforts of several people all com-mitted to achieving the long term goals of the research plans.Fortunately such was the case: over the course of ten years sometwenty different researchers contributed to the collection of thelongitudinal data necessary to answer the questions raised at thebeginning of the Ituri Project back in 1980. The researchersincluded anthropologists, biologists, physicians, psychologists,and musicologists, but all, regardless of their area of interest,made significant contributions to this long term effort. This is agood example of the value of collaborative research.

While the popular perception is that tropical rain forests areconsistently humid and devoid of seasons, most tropical forestsactually undergo quite dramatic seasonal fluctuations in rainfall.The Ituri Forest is no exception. Normally a dry season occurs inthe Ituri from early December to the middle of March. This peri-od sees just one to three inches of rainfall per month. Monthlyrainfall during the rest of the year is fairly uniform, averagingbetween eight and ten inches. Perhaps more significant than theseasonal pattern of rainfall is the variation from year to yeararound the average pattern. Deviations from the average patterncan in some years be very significant, particularly the timing andduration of the dry season. For example, in 1981–1982 there weremuch heavier rains than usual in January and February. Earlyresumption of rains also occurred in 1986. Such deviations fromthe normal dry season rainfall pattern can, as we shall see, haveprofound consequences for food production in the Lese gardens.

The annual agricultural cycle followed by the Lese with theassistance of Efe is closely tied to the seasonality of rainfall. Everyyear, the Lese clear a patch of forest for a new garden. In a usualyear, they clear their new gardens in December, wait for thefelled vegetation to dry during January and February, and burnthe vegetation in late February and March. In late March, just asthe first heavy rains begin, they start to plant crops, whichbecome ready for harvest and consumption in late June. Plantingof some crops may continue through August, thus becomingavailable in February. Peanuts and rice are stored in huts and, if


sufficient stores are available, consumed throughout the year.Cassava, the principle staple crop, is left in the ground until it isharvested and consumed. This annual cycle can be disrupted insome years by the early onset of the rains. In such years, thefelled vegetation does not burn, and considerable labor must beput into clearing vegetation by hand. Consequently gardens aresignificantly smaller, leading to food shortages in April, May,June, and early July of the following year.

The differences from year to year in the pattern of rainfallresult in large changes in Lese garden size. In the years whenrains commenced early, the effect on Lese garden size was dra-matic. In 1986, one such year, the average Lese garden size wasjust .156 hectares, only about half the average size of gardens in1984 and 1987, when rainfall followed the normal pattern of com-mencing in mid-March. We also found that garden sizes weremuch reduced in 1982 when the rains came early. Thus when theseasonal pattern of rainfall was disrupted, there was a profoundeffect on the size of gardens and thus a dramatic decrease in theamount of food available to both the Lese and Efe.

In order to see if changes in food production influenced thenutritional status of the Lese and Efe, we measured their heightand weight every December, when they were likely to be theirmost healthy, and every June, just before the first harvest, whenthey were likely to be their leanest. We found that both the Leseand Efe were lean throughout the year, even during times of rela-tive plenty, compared to other populations. A way to comparethe nutritional status of different people who are not the sameheight is to calculate their Body Mass Index (BMI), which is ameasure of weight in proportion to height. The formula we usefor BMI is weight/height2. We found that compared to U.S.adults, the average Lese has a BMI that is lower than 80% of allAmericans, and the average Efe BMI is lower than 90% of allAmericans. In other words, both the Lese and Efe were lean evenduring the good times and they had very little fat to lose duringthe hunger seasons.

Nevertheless, as Figures 1 and 2 show, Lese and Efe adultsdid undergo seasonal weight changes between June andDecember. Men and women in both groups experienced theirgreatest weight losses during the December 1982 to June 1983period, which was a very severe hunger season that followed theearly 1982 rains. During that period, the mean weight loss of Lese

EFE 27

women was 8.1 percent and of Efe women, 6.8 percent. Duringother hunger periods, loss of weight by Lese women was less dra-matic than in 1983, but significant nevertheless. Both Efe and Leserebounded during the following six-month period, regainingeven more weight than they had lost. Fortunately, this was a gen-eral trend throughout the period we weighed people—theyalways regained weight after a period of significant weight loss.

Lese experienced significant weight loss more often than Efe,and both the absolute and relative magnitude of their loss wasalways greater. Average weight loss between December and Juneby Lese men and women was statistically significant in 1981,1983, and 1985. Efe men experienced significant weight loss onlyin 1983, and 1985, and Efe women only in 1983. This confirmedour prediction that Lese are more susceptible to fluctuations inthe agricultural food supply than Efe. It is possible that the differ-ence in frequency and level of Efe and Lese weight loss may be


Figure 1The mean percent of weight lost or gained by Lese adult men and

women between December and June and June and December eachyear 1980–1985. Both men and women lost significant amounts of

weight between December and June in 1981, 1983, and 1985.

due to the Efe’s ability to supplement their intake of agriculturalfoods with wild meat, nuts, tubers, and honey from the forestduring times of food shortage in the Lese gardens. However, weactually found little evidence that Efe were making up for the lossin food by spending more time foraging.10 Instead, it appears thatEfe are buffered from seasonal fluctuations in the agriculturalfood supply by their mobile lifestyle. Because they are not tied toone village or one garden, they move to areas where food is moreplentiful. When food became scarce in our study area, a large pro-portion of Efe walked two to three days to areas where otherfarmers had more productive gardens. By switching their affilia-tion from one village to another, Efe were able to avoid thehunger that Lese cannot avoid by virtue of their more sedentaryexistence.

We know from many previous studies that changes in energybalance can have a profound influence on women’s reproductive

EFE 29

Figure 2The mean percent of weight lost or gained by Efe adult men and

women between December and June and June and December eachyear 1980–1985. Efe women lost a significant percentage of weightonly in 1983. Compared to the Lese, Efe did not undergo as large

weight changes from one season to the next.

function. While pregnancy in a woman can occur under a widevariety of circumstances, there are certain conditions that have tobe met. There must be sufficient hormonal activity to trigger ovu-lation, which is the release of an egg from the ovary. That eggmust be fertilized by sperm deposited in the woman’s reproduc-tive tract within an appropriate window of time around the timeof ovulation. Finally, the appropriate hormonal environmentmust exist that will support the implantation of the fertilized eggin the woman’s uterus.

There is much evidence that reduction in energy balance canupset the female reproductive system in ways that make success-ful pregnancy less likely or impossible. In the United States, eliteathletes such as long distance runners and ballerinas tend to bevery lean and often cease menstruating. (This extreme response iscalled amenorrhea.) Even when they do menstruate these womenfrequently fail to ovulate, or fail to produce reproductive hor-mones in sufficient quantity to support pregnancy. Womenundergoing voluntary weight loss have also been shown to expe-rience such disruptions, whether or not the weight loss is accom-panied by changes in energy expenditure. Finally, there is evi-dence that even moderate physical activity such as recreationalrunning can cause measurable suppression in reproductive func-tion. These effects on reproductive function are usually transito-ry, and can generally be reversed simply by restoring energy bal-ance to its previous level. Clearly, a woman who does not ovulateis incapable of becoming pregnant without modern technologicalintervention. However, it is not clear the extent to which repro-ductive suppression short of anovulation (failure to ovulate)results in reduced fecundity, which can be thought of as the physi-ological capability of reproducing. There is substantial evidence,however, that infertility is often associated with the insufficientproduction of reproductive hormones following ovulation.

As mentioned above, we are interested in whether the sea-sonal fluctuations in energy balance experienced by both the Efeand Lese are severe enough to cause detectable alteration inreproductive function. To answer this question, we needed a reli-able measure of reproductive function. Amenorrhea, the absenceof menstruation, is the most extreme response to changes in ener-gy balance and can be detected simply by interviewing womenabout their menstrual histories. Other phenomena, however, suchas failure to ovulate or reduced hormone production are best


assessed through measurement of reproductive hormones inbody fluids. Hormonal evaluation of women’s reproductivecycles is commonly done by measuring a hormone called proges-terone, which is a steroid produced by a woman’s ovary afterovulation. The lack of a rise in progesterone in the second half ofa woman’s menstrual cycle indicates that ovulation has not takenplace. A relatively low rise in progesterone indicates that ovula-tion may have occurred but that there is a reduced probability ofsuccessful pregnancy. In a clinical setting progesterone is general-ly measured in blood or in urine. However, it can also be mea-sured in saliva, and this method proves to be a very useful onefor addressing research questions like ours because collection ofsaliva is not very “invasive”—depositing a small amount of sali-va in a small test tube does not hurt, nor does it cause significant

EFE 31

Figure 3Changes in average weight and ovulatory frequency in Lese women

between February and July 1989. From a study by G. Bentley, A. Harrigan and P. Ellison.

embarrassment for most people. Samples can therefore be collect-ed frequently, allowing long-term monitoring of ovarian activity.Furthermore, samples can be kept without refrigeration for longperiods of time, as long as a preservative is added to inhibit bac-terial growth.

We and other members of our research team collected salivasamples from both Efe and Lese women. Unfortunately, themobility of Efe women and the unpredictability of their locationat any given time made it virtually impossible to collect enoughsamples from enough women to permit assessment of their ovari-an function. Lese women, however, were easier to monitor, andproject members were able to collect samples from Lese womenthat spanned both hunger and non-hunger season months.

Saliva samples have been collected by Ituri Project membersduring several years to investigate the relationship between ener-gy balance and ovarian function. Figure 3 is adapted from theresults of one such study done by Drs. Gillian Bentley, AlisaHarrigan, and Peter Ellison in 1989. The figure shows how Lesewomen progressively lost weight between February and June, thetypical hunger season, and then began a recovery of weight inJuly, when the harvest began. The weight change was paralleledby changes in the percentage of women experiencing ovulatorycycles: About eighty percent of women were ovulating in April,but only sixty-five percent in June. Just as weight began to recov-er in July, so did ovarian function, with the percentage of ovula-tory cycles rising to seventy-two percent.11

These findings provide good evidence that reduction in ener-gy balance directly affects reproductive function by suppressingovarian activity. As the Lese women lose weight during thehunger season, they tend to cease ovulating, and when they beginto gain weight back by eating foods available during the harvest,their reproductive function begins to return.

Having shown that seasonal weight change in Lese is associ-ated with ovarian function, we hypothesized that Lese shouldexhibit seasonality of births.12 Specifically, we predicted that,since Lese ovarian function is impaired by weight loss duringApril, May, and June (the preharvest hunger season), thereshould be few conceptions during those months and thus areduction in the number of births nine months later (January,February, and March). Having recorded every birth in our studyarea over an eight-year period, we were able to test this hypothe-


sis. As predicted, the average number of Lese births in January-March were significantly fewer than during the rest of the year.We also found that during years when severe hunger seasons didnot occur, births were not significantly reduced, just as we shouldexpect if it is weight reduction and not some other seasonal factor(for example, temperature or the frequency with which couplessleep together) that accounts for lower birth frequency.

Consistent with our finding for the Lese is information wecollected on Efe births. Since, as we have shown, Efe experienceless weight loss during hunger seasons than do Lese, Efe womenshould experience less disruption of ovulatory function and thusfewer fluctuations in rates of conception. It logically follows thatEfe should not exhibit seasonal births, and that is precisely whatour data show. Unlike the Lese, Efe do not experience significantbirth seasonality.13

Using the information assembled here, we can arrive at amodel of how environmental seasonality influences human fertil-ity patterns. Variability in the seasonal pattern of rainfall in theIturi Forest results in variability in the size of Lese gardens,which in turn produces changes in nutritional status. A decline inwomen’s nutritional status (energy balance) leads to suppressionof ovarian function, and this then leads to seasonality in numbersof successful conceptions and implantation, and therefore births.The relationship between environmental changes and reproduc-tive performance can be modified by cultural and behavioral fac-tors, such as the Efe’s greater ability to avoid prolonged energyimbalance by temporarily changing their residence and affilia-tions with farmers. This greater flexibility of Efe coping strategiesis related to key aspects of their culture, including subsistencestrategies, mobility and social organization.

Summary

As biological anthropologists, we seek insights into how wehumans came to be what we are today. Our interest in humanevolution leads us to focus on variables that are correlated withor contribute to differences in reproductive function and repro-ductive success. To do this, we concentrate on variation—differ-ences between individuals or changes in the behavior or physiol-

EFE 33

ogy of the same individual as he or she goes through different lifecircumstances. A large part of our studies has been concernedwith the factors that contribute to variation in fertility. By payingattention to a wide variety of types of information—on culture,ecology, nutrition, and physiology—we have arrived at a modelthat we think helps to explain how human fertility patternschange by means of both physiological and cultural responses toenvironmental variation. Since fluctuations in the food supplyhave probably been a feature of most environments throughouthuman evolution, it is likely that this model is widely applicableto many populations around the world and throughout much ofhuman history.

THE FUTURE

FOR THE FOREST

AND ITS PEOPLE

The future of the Efe way of life is inextricably tied to the contin-ued integrity of the rain forest as a productive environment.Without the forest and its plant and animal resources, the Efe cannot maintain their nomadic foraging lifestyle, and their relation-ships with surrounding peoples will be altered fundamentally.

There are many forces converging to threaten the long-termviability of the Ituri Forest as an environment capable of support-ing the Efe way of life. Logging companies seeking the attractivehardwoods coveted by Europeans and Americans are cuttingancient trees and constructing new roads into the forest. Africansresiding in towns and cities are turning to the forest for theirsource of fuel and destroying trees to make charcoal. Large areasof forest are being cut to grow food—mainly cassava andbananas—for export to growing urban populations, and stillmore forest is being cleared for the cultivation of palms for theproduction of cooking oil and soap. While these commercial ven-tures are eroding the forest at its edges, the most serious threat byfar comes from the rapidly growing populations to the east.These highland areas adjacent to the Ituri Forest are among the


most densely populated in Africa, and arable land is scarce. Overthe last few decades, the Ituri has become a settlement frontier forthese land-starved people, and they have cleared vast new areasof forest to build villages and grow crops. These immigrants havebrought with them farming techniques that, while well suited tothe fertile volcanic soils of the eastern highlands, are less compat-ible with the sustained exploitation of the forest. At the sametime, ever increasing population densities have provided grow-ing markets for forest resources, and forest animals are beingincreasingly depleted in many areas.14

As these developments continue to threaten the traditionalEfe way of life, the Efe themselves are nearly powerless to effectchange to their advantage. Like many indigenous peoples, the Efeare not assimilated into regional or national political processes,and thus are rarely involved in important decisions that can havelarge and long term impacts on their lives and their access to theforest on which they depend. For example, in 1992 the Zaire gov-ernment working with international conservation agencies estab-lished the Okapi Nature Reserve consisting of 3,390,408 protectedacres of forest in the Ituri. While this monumental effort towardhabitat preservation has been widely applauded, it must be keptin mind that the Efe and other indigenous people who occupy theforest were not consulted in any meaningful way in the planningprocess, and the effect of the reserve on the Efe’s ability to contin-ue their traditional subsistence practices remains to be seen. Asnomadic people they have no formal legal rights to the forest andcan theoretically be denied access. If so, the Efe will be forced toturn to permanent agriculture and will likely become an impover-ished peasant underclass with neither recognition nor rights tothe resources they consider their own. At that point a unique cul-ture will cease to exist and will be lost forever.15

NOTES

1. Robert C. Bailey, The Behavioral Ecology of Efe Pygmy Men in theIturi Forest, Zaire (Museum of Anthropology, University ofMichigan, 1991), pp. 77–101.

2. Ibid., p. 90.

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3. Colin M. Turnbull, “Demography of Small-Scale Societies,” in G.A. Harrison and A. J. Boyce, eds., The Structure of HumanPopulations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 283–312.

4. John A. Hart, Nomadic Hunters and Village Cultivators: A Study ofSubsistence Independence in the Ituri Forest, Zaire (Ann Arbor, MI:University Microfilms International, 1979), p. 23.

5. John A. Hart, “From Subsistence to Market: A Case Study of theMbuti Net Hunters,” Human Ecology 6 (1978): 325–353.

6. John W. Fisher, “Shadows in the Forest: Ethnoarchaeologyamong the Efe Pygmies” (Ph.D. diss., University of California,Berkeley, 1986).

7. Edward Z. Tronick, Steve Winn, and Gilda Morelli, “MultipleCaretaking in the Context of Human Evolution: Why Don’t theEfe Know the Western Prescription for Child Care?” in M. Raiteand T. Field, eds., Psychobiology of Attachment (New York:Academic Press, 1985).

8. Barry S. Hewlett, “Intimate Fathers: Paternal Patterns of Holdingamong Aka Pygmies,” in Michael E. Lamb, ed., Father’s Role inCross-Cultural Perspective (New York: Erlbaum 1987).

9. Ibid.; Bailey, The Behavioral Ecology of Efe Pygmy Men, pp. 77–101.

10. Robert C. Bailey and Nadine R. Peacock, “Efe Pygmies ofNortheast Zaire: Subsistence Strategies in the Ituri Forest,” in I.deGarine and G. A. Harrison, eds., Coping with Uncertainty inFood Supply (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 88–117.

11. Robert C. Bailey, Mark R. Jenike, Peter T. Ellison, Gillian R.Bentley, Alisa M. Harrigan, and Nadine R. Peacock, “TheEcology of Birth Seasonality among Agriculturalists in CentralAfrica,” Journal of Biosocial Science 24 (1992): 393–412.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. David S. Wilkie, “Hunters and Farmers of the African Forest,” inJ. S. Sloan and C. Padoch, eds., People of the Tropical Rain Forest(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 111–126.

15. In recognition of the many forces that threaten the health andwelfare of both the Efe and Lese, a group of concerned anthro-pologists and others have established the non-profit Ituri Fund.The primary goals of the Ituri Fund are to facilitate Efe and Leseliteracy and to ensure availability of at least minimal health care.For more information write to the authors, c/o Department ofAnthropology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are truly grateful to the many members of the Ituri Projectwho contributed much of the information contained in this por-trait. We are especially grateful to Peter Ellison, Mark Jenike,Gillian Bentley, Alisa Harrigan, and David Wilkie for sharingtheir data and expertise. Our research has been supported by theNational Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, L.S.B.Leakey Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Swan Fund, and theWomen’s Studies Program and the International Studies andOverseas Programs at UCLA. Our special thanks go out to thehundreds of Efe and Lese who have participated in our studiesand taught us so much over the years.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Bailey, Robert C. The Behavioral Ecology of Efe Pygmy Men in the IturiForest, Zaire. Ann Arbor, MI: Museum of Anthropology,University of Michigan, 1991. Provides general background anddetailed analysis of hunting and other activities by Efe men.

Bailey, Robert C., and Nadine R. Peacock. Cross-Cultural Studies inTime Allocation, Volume III: Time Allocation of Efe Pygmy Men andWomen of the Ituri Forest, Zaire. New Haven, CT: HumanRelations Area Files, 1988. A two-year study of Efe time alloca-tion with a detailed summary of cultural context and originaldata files on two diskettes (DOS format) for student use.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., ed. African Pygmies. New York: Academic Press,1986. A collection of studies concerning the biology, health,physiology, demography, and genetics of African pygmies.

Hewlett, Barry. Intimate Fathers: the Nature and Context of Aka PygmyPaternal Infant Care. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,1991. A rich description of Aka father-infant relationships,placed in an evolutionary context.

Schebesta, Paul. My Pygmy and Negro Hosts. London: Hutchinson &Sons, 1936. A valuable historical account of the Efe by the firstanthropologist to visit the Ituri Forest.

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Turnbull, Colin M. Wayward Servants: Two Worlds of the AfricanPygmies. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1965. The clas-sic ethnography of the Mbuti net hunters of the Ituri Forest.


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