Overheated stomachs: notes on urban life and toxicity in Nakuru, Kenya

Abstract

In Nakuru, a secondary city in Kenya, herbal doctors argue that African bodies are infested by ‘dirt’. Gathering at crossroads, they teach about the dangerous effects of processed foods on African bodies. During public product demonstrations, they patch together urban gossip, kemikali (chemicals in Kiswahili) and consumer goods from abroad to demonstrate their overheating effects on stomachs. In this article, I think through metabolism and digestion to demonstrate how ‘navigating’ urban toxicity in Nakuru implies a bodily praxis that hinges on debates about the porosity of the nation's borders responding to the afflictions of globalization. I show how the occult character of kemikali pivots on the collapse between insides and outsides, leading to overheating stomachs, and consequently argue that herbal interventions coating the lining of the stomach and the gut do what national borders are unable to achieve: keeping out toxic intrusions. From this point of view, herbal practices in Nakuru demonstrate agency and resistance to worlds perceived as increasingly toxic and polluted.

Tasting ‘kienyeji’: gustatory explorations of city futures in Nakuru, Kenya

“…Eating an apple, Mol claims, is an everyday phenomenon that is radically situated and made possible through webs of relationships. The embodied experience of a bitter taste is equally radically situated; it is a deeply gustatory feeling of dislike towards the relationships implied in eating industrial foods, and it evokes a visceral understanding of blame towards the dominant food industry, which is perceived as negatively impacting body and mind (Rahier 2021b). For some Nakurians, the city elites operating these businesses want to 'eat money' (-kula shillingi) and do not care about the health of common citizens.…”

“…This may also demand that we move beyond conventional understandings of the five human senses, just as taste itself has been revealed as being a complex, entangled, and at once corporeal and imaginative process. Interoceptive senses, for instance, such as the stomach and gut, serve as metonymic frontiers through with the toxicity of urban life is experienced and metabolized (Rahier 2021b). Images of past and future relations between bodies, environments and substances are similarly given shape, texture and affect through the act of tasting; hence, they constitute a gustatory praxis evoking corporeal experiences that generates 'pictures' of what a future may look like or what a past may have been.…”

“…In my analysis of Nakuru's food scene, I similarly ask what kind of relationships kienyeji taste provokes among Nakurians who are concerned about the toxicity of imported and processed foods, and how the qualities of certain foodsand the consequent manipulation of these qualitieshelp to make tangible desired futures. These desired futures taste 'cooler' (poa)a quality that refers to less toxicity and less manipulation interfering in the lives of Nakurians (Rahier 2021b)and therefore afford more habitable bodies and environments.…”

“…This critique finds traction ethnographically as many Nakurians argue that the city’s ocular excess of billboards, advertisements and envisioned urban development projects is dominated by the influence of elite cartels who decide what the future of the city may look like. An analysis of how Nakuru’s moral geography and debates about socio-economic life are being steered by elites, who are often assumed to use occult forces to assert their power, is beyond the scope of this article and is dealt with elsewhere (see Rahier 2021a). It is nonetheless relevant to note that these concerns echo more general worries among Nakuru’s wananchi (common citizens) about authority and belonging, in particular regarding who the city of Nakuru will belong to in the future.…”

“…Healers and herbalists define this 'weakness' as a reduction in life flow (moyo) because of the consumption of heated kemikali (chemicals) in food. This makes urbanites less sexually potent and eventually leads to a complete depletion of a lineage's vitality(Rahier 2021b). …”