Ethnobotanical knowledge acquisition during daily chores: the firewood collection of pastoral Maasai girls in Southern Kenya

This study took place in a Maasai village in southern Kenya on the eastern side of the Kuku Group Ranch (KGR) (Fig. 1). The area has a semi-arid climate with two rainy seasons: March to May and November to December [37]. Dominant vegetation of KGR includes grassland, bushland, and dense forests on lava flows [37, 38]. Acacia and Commiphora are the main tree species in KGR [39]. Local people living in the study area indicated that they could easily access wood species that have multiple uses, such as Acacia tortilis and Acacia mellifera. There are two lava flows on the village’s eastern and western sides descending from the Chyulu Hills. According to local people, important wood species such as Olea europaea ssp. cuspidata and Dombeya kirkii can be easily found inside the lava flows in this area.

A drought in 2009 led to the loss of more than 80% of the livestock in Kuku GR [40]. Local Maasai have a strong desire to replenish their livestock and this situation contributed to the increased involvement of local Maasai in various economic activities, both within and outside the area [39]. Children increasingly participate in formal education, and according to the two local chiefs, more than 80% of the village children of primary school age attended local school in 2015. Influenced by diversified economic activities, the diet of local Maasai has gradually shifted from being milk and meat centered to more dependence on agricultural products [39]. Along with these changes, firewood has become an increasingly critical resource to support local energy use.

Historically, local Maasai participate in subsistence related activities according to their gender and age [41]. Apart from adults, children play significant roles in daily subsistence [41, 42]. Children (inkera) in Maasai society, refer to newborn persons up until they receive circumcision. In recent decades, the act of circumcising girls has declined. Local Maasai treat females who are not yet married as girls. Boys (olaiyiok, pl. ilayiok) participate in daily livestock grazing from an early age. When they become more skilled, they are responsible for both short and long distance grazing. Girls (entoyie, pl. intoyie) are mostly involved in daily chores related to preparing and distributing food, cooking, cleaning, and gathering firewood. They also participate in daily livestock tending, mainly through milking and watching livestock in and around their homesteads. Although children gradually spend more time at school, they still actively help tending livestock, and perform other chores during free time [42].

Local Maasai build fences around their homesteads using thorn branches from acacia trees. Female stock and use firewood in different living spaces related to other daily activities such as livestock management. In a homestead, small houses built for human use surround livestock huts. The kitchen and sleeping area consist of one room inside the house. In the kitchen area, half of the big wooden shelves usually provide room for utensils; the rest is used to store firewood. A three-stone hearth in the center serves as a cooking area. In the backyard, women and girls build temporary square wooden stand to store firewood during the rainy season. It is built approximately 30 cm above the ground in order to keep the wood dry, and big crude sticks at each corner prevent the wood from collapsing. Sometimes more than one of these structures can be found in a single household. Older girls who can carry heavy loads of firewood make their own structures when competing with their mothers.

Females usually collect firewood from different places. Surrounding each homestead (enkang), an area of approximately 90,000 m², called the aulo, is set aside for grazing the homestead’s juvenile livestock. It is also an area that children under five usually perform their daily tasks such as firewood collection. Non-residential areas outside the aulo are generally called osero, the bush. Except for small children, who are not allowed to venture out into the osero alone due to dangerous wildlife, older children and adults go off in different directions to graze livestock, collect plants, and undertake other subsistence-related activities. At homestead K, people usually go to the eastern side of the village toward Chyulu Hills to herd and gather firewood.

In osero, numerous local words are used to describe the land and certain locations (Fig. 1). Some places were named after local wood species. For example, the place called Oiti is derived from the Acacia mellifera. Some place names refer to special events that either happened or are mentioned in mythical stories. Sontoi is a place name derived from a person who used to cook milk tea under the trees when returning from collecting medicinal plants in the Chyulu Hills. Names are also often mixed to describe a certain location. For instance, girls from homestead K said they went to Euas Oldonyo Wuarikon to gather firewood. It means they went to the plain area (euas) located near the mountain Oldonyo Wuarikon.

Girls start collecting firewood from an early age. At 3 years old, they collect small sticks from the fence around the homestead, or under trees in the aulo. They tie sticks together with rope ties and put the tiny load on their back. After taking the load home, older girls or mothers sometimes used these small sticks for real cooking. Girls become familiar with different species of wood initially in the aulo before they travel longer distances for gathering. They collect dried wood for cooking, and listen to mothers and older girls talking about firewood, the location for collecting, and fuel efficiency of different wood species. When they start to gather firewood from further places at approximately 6 years old, they can describe a considerable number of species’ names and the sites where these species can be found.

During day trips for firewood collection, the girls in homestead K collected a total of 24 different wood species for firewood use (Table 1). In this section, I explain females’ perceptions of these wood species for fuel use. Women also use other wood species as firewood in daily life, however, in order to compare girls and women, I only focus on these 24 types in this study.

Local females choose different species considering various factors related to collecting and cooking. These features include accessibility of different species, heaviness of the wood, wood condition (such as dryness and weathering), and performance of the wood while burning (such as fuel efficiency, the amount of smoke, and the ashes and charcoal it produces after burning). Every wood species has been mentioned by local females as good in some respects for use as firewood in regard to its performance, and personal preferences when cooking different foods (Table 2). For instance, some women described Solanum incanum as not suitable for firewood because it burns out quickly; however, other women recommended using it to prepare milk tea for guests that suddenly drop by for a visit.

Regarding some species, local females voiced different opinions on fuel efficiency and the amount of smoke. They said that aside from differences among species, various natural features of wood (such as the availability of bark, dryness and weathering) vary a lot from one piece to another, even within the same species. They said that completely dry wood from a preferred wood species is suitable for use as firewood. Girls also explained: “Choosing pieces of wood to take from a tree [for use] as firewood is like gathering fruit. You take the ripe pieces and leave the unripe ones.” Before cutting a branch, they usually cut a small piece of skin from it to check whether it still has a green color and moisture under the bark. This way of choosing possibly contributes to the long-term survival of the trees as well as long-term availability of firewood.

Local females indicated that the more weathered parts the wood has, the more smoke it produces. They mentioned a tree’s bark and roots as causes of smoke. However, the smoke’s properties (which the bark and roots produce during burning) differ depending on the species. For instance, the women said that wood from Acacia mellifera has no smoke and no smell, whereas Acacia tortilis produces a lot of smoke especially when the piece of wood has bark. The fragrance comes from the smoke can sometimes be favorable. Compared with smoke from Acacia tortilis, described as being able to make people’s eyes sting until they cry, Olea europaea ssp. cuspidata is highly valued as the smoke from this species has a sweet aroma. It is commonly used to clean milk containers in the local area. Similar to Olea europaea ssp. cuspidata, Pappea capensis also has a pleasant odor, and its bark is commonly used for tea.

Females use different tools to gather firewood in the study area. Two tools are used for cutting: the machete and the axe. According to the number of older girls and women in each household, more than one machete can be found in a household. When girls collect firewood, they are allowed to carry a machete, but never use an axe. Women only use axes when they cut a big trunk into smaller pieces.

Females use a belt to pack up wood, and a handmade cushion (oltukus) to put between their backbone and load in order to reduce the physical burden. The belt is usually made of cattle skin about 4.5 m long and 3 cm wide. There are shorter belts made from other materials, such as rubber, for small girls only. Girls usually take a coat or old, worn sweater with which to make the cushion (oltukus) on the way. Small girls who prefer to put the load on their head usually put oltukus between their head and the load. Mothers sometimes remind girls to take oltukus with them and to be careful of their backbone. Female Maasai also use these tools for other chores. For instance, the same belt is used to carry water. Women also use the belt along with a machete to collect grass and wood for house construction, as well as for amassing fodder for young and sick livestock at home.

When collecting and cutting, local females usually perform five different actions to convert wood into firewood:

It is worth noting that there are no standard ways of practicing these five actions when females collect the firewood. Rather, these actions are practiced in different ways among individuals with regard to personal habits and physical body features (e.g., height, strength and the preferred gestures of using the tools). The following section focuses on detailed descriptions of the girls’ personal contribution and participation in this chore.

I identified how the girls participate in day trips, including information about the time required for this chore and the girls’ contribution to their households’ subsistence. Girls never go on day trips alone but as part of groups of two to nine girls, either family members or friends. I rarely saw women join girls’ groups during these excursions. During the survey, only two married women joined two different outings. According to local women, this is due to different walking speeds, and the fact that both children’s and adults’ different cutting and collecting skills would influence the work efficiency of each group. From the girls’ perspective, they prefer to go with other girls, with whom they share much in common. On the way, they also meet other groups of girls and women. Sometimes they change their route and continue the journey together.

Girls use a considerable amount of time during a day trip for firewood collection. Going, collecting, cutting, packing, and returning require about 3.5 h. Generally, girls spend about one hour travelling, and another 2.5 h collecting and cutting. Within the 2.5 h, there is also time spent on resting (approximately 10 to 20 min) and packing up the wood (approximately 20 to 50 min). It is very rare to observe the girls take a rest on the way.

Places that girls in homestead K visited the most frequently include Oiti, Euas Oldonyo Wuarikon, and Embilbil Oldonyo Sampu (Fig. 1). Nk’s group went to Embilbil Oldonyo Sampu more frequently, where hardwood species with good quality, such as Dombeya kirkii and Olea europaea ssp. cuspidata, can be found. In contrast, Ln’s group preferred to go to places relatively near the homestead, where various wood species exist. For instance, in Euas Oldonyo Wuarikon, dried Ormocarpum kirkii, Acacia senegal, Dalbergia melanoxylon, and many other species can be easily found during the dry season within a 3 km distance from homestead K.

Over the 21 day trips, the girls amassed a substantial amount of firewood (5 kg to 29 kg per day per girl), and seven girls from homestead K gathered a total of 1083 kg (Table 2). According to the quantity of firewood collected by each girl of a different age, I found a clear difference between girls younger than 11 years old and above. Girls at age 11 or older collected a comparable amount and quality of firewood similar to women.

Although the amount of firewood consumed differs based on household size, the total wood collected by girls in Ln’s household for example, was more than enough to supply their own household needs. In Ln’s household, there are eight family members. In 9 days, they consumed a total weight of 62.1 kg firewood for cooking and 25.5 kg for giving to others as gifts. Firewood that Ln and Sk collected during the 21 days (a total of 563.5 kg) could supply approximately 80 days of fuel in their household (Ln and Sk live in the same household, mean consumption of their household were recorded as 7 kg of firewood per day).

When I asked girls why they frequently fetched firewood and stocked a considerable amount at home, they said they wanted to prepare for the rainy season. There were also girls who told that they wanted to reduce their mothers’ burdens after they started school, and they expressed: “I feel better going and doing something, rather than staying at home doing nothing.”

When collecting firewood together, girls shared their personal preferences with each other. Chl told that she didn’t like Ormocarpum kirkii, because its branches never become straight and are difficult to cut and pack. When Mg left some wood pieces of Ormocarpum kirkii for sharing with her friends, Chl and other girls took some each of them and helped her lift the heavy load onto her back; they appreciated Mg’s work. When collecting firewood together, those girls informed Sk immediately when they found dried Rhus natalensis, because they know she likes this wood species.

It was very rare to observe women join the girls’ groups for collecting firewood, however, girls and women share certain degrees of consensus on the perceptions of plant species usage as firewood. Table 4 shows the times and frequency with which girls gathered different wood species during the 21 days of trips listed in Table 2. The most common species collected by all the girls include Acacia mellifera, Ormocarpum kirkii, and Acacia tortilis. Local women have deemed these three species as “good firewood” with regard to their hardness and performance when burning (Table 1). In terms of hardness, the girls made comments similar to those of the women. For instance, Sk explained that Acacia tortilis is not as hard as Ormocarpum kirkii, and that Acacia mellifera is one of the most difficult to cut. She said: “The heavier and harder the wood is, the better it performs as fuel. I want the best [pieces] for my cooking.” Acacia mellifera and Acacia tortilis are easy to access and abundant in this area year round. During dry season, dry Ormocarpum kirkii can be also easily found in areas such as Oldonyo Wuarikon. These plant species were observed as being collected by girls of different ages the most frequently (see Table 4). They also received good reports from women. Above all, consensus among girls and women can be observed when individuals choose wood species for firewood. This probably relate to the accessibility and abundance of these species in study area.

On very few occasions the women participated in the girls’ groups, they indirectly involved themselves in girls’ firewood collection through watching attentively. In contrast with local women, teachers in the local school and tourists from other countries expressed negative comments toward firewood collection by girls as opposed to school study. For instance, some of them treat this activity as a waste of time comparing it with the time girls spend in school. In reaction, the girls wrote, “the hardest work at home is firewood collection” inside their homework. At the same time, they independently went out for firewood collection and brought back home a considerable amount of wood during the weekend. School-age girls regularly brought the firewood they collected to school for preparing school lunches. They also contributed their firewood to the teachers’ daily cooking during school days.

Local women’s positive evaluation and attention, together with interactions among peers encouraged individual girls to continue this chore. In addition, these interpersonal aspects may also have encouraged the girls to actively respond to negative comments from external sources and independently contribute to the continuation of school education through their chore participation.

The independent contribution of children to the household according to external social changes can be observed in many other regions in Africa [43‐45]. Children’s participation in local society through daily chores has been highly evaluated for its function in children’s identity acquisition [46]. Maasai girls independently participated in firewood collections within local gender-age roles. They intensively performed this chore during the long-term vacation before the rainy season. The load of an 11-year-old girl can be as heavy as that of adult Maasai women in Tanzania, as described by Biran and his research team [36]. Through the processes of collection, each girl developed her own sensory perceptions and preferences for different plant species with regard to the shape, smell, hardness, and weathering conditions of the wood. The evidence of difference in sensory perceptions and preferences among individual girls and women show, there are embodied personal and imparticipable aspects of EK, which can only be comprehended by individuals through independent performance of this chore along with their physical development. The personal bodily features in turn influence individual girls accessibility to different types and conditions of wood. Recent studies concerning knowledge acquisition emphasized individual’s ways of knowing as the process of acquiring knowledge within the complex, indissoluble connections among the mind, body, and environment [47, 48]. Findings of this study show, individual girls developed personal skills, perceptions and preferences for using local vegetation as firewood in different physical developmental stages, which accompany differences in individual level.

Kiringe [13] argued the differences of EK on an individual level might be a reflection of the ways that community members gradually acquire this kind of knowledge throughout their lives. Similar to Kiringe, the findings of this study shows that personal perspective itself is not enough to capture the lifelong EK acquisition of younger generations. Rather, from the autonomous and constant participation of girls in firewood collection, and their gradual acquisition of competent skills in this chore, it is clear that Maasai girls still continually acquire EK within current sociocultural and natural contexts.

Only on a few occasion did local women participate in girls’ firewood collection. However, they positively supported the girls’ independent participation in this chore. For instance, the girls were allowed to go and access different types of plant species and use local tools freely. Mothers considered the health of girls rather than teach them directly about this chore. This indirect involvement of women in girls’ firewood collection enabled and encouraged the girls to independently access and practice the EK during this chore. Local adults’ positive recognition as one vital interpersonal factor constantly encouraged girls to positively evaluate their chore participation and respond to different opinions in the current social context.

From the perspective of EK acquisition, through daily interaction among girls, and between girls and adults, girls learned the diverse evaluations and perceptions of firewood collection and related plant species from other people both in and outside local community. From daily interpersonal communications, girls acquired the interpersonal aspects of EK that cannot be perceived only through individuals’ sensory experience of firewood collection. And the bodily-acquired personal EK in turn contributed to mutual understanding among peers and other members of the local community, making the EK, perceived through sensory experience during firewood collection, no longer personal but imbued with significant interpersonal and sociocultural meanings.

Compared with previous studies, cultural-institutional change can be observed in girls’ participation in firewood collection. Grandin conducted a survey of local labor input in a Maasai village in Kenya in the 1980s. He found that girls were mostly involved in small livestock herding, and the mean time they spent on gathering wood was less than 0.2 h per day; but women collected wood for an average of 1.3 h per day [36]. Compared with his findings, girls’ firewood gathering in this study is much more time-consuming with high frequency (21 trips during 55 days) during the long-term school vacation prior to the rainy season, and this participation reduced notably during school days [42].

Several reasons for this should be considered. Firstly, local diet changes from a milk and meat centered diet to market and agriculture products dominant diet [35] had induced changes in cooking processes, which require more fuel consumption. Secondly, girls showed their motivation for guaranteeing the fuel supply in their household during school days followed local gender-age roles, but without compromising their school attendance. Girls’ EK acquisition from this point also includes the comprehension of their household strategies for coping with concurrent external social and natural environment changes.

The above discussion shows that EK acquisition of individual girls is still continuing in concurrent social and natural contexts. At the same time, this continuation also accompanied several changes concerning concurrent personal, interpersonal and cultural-institutional factors during firewood collection. These factors are correlated to and influenced by each other, and endowed with EK concurrent multi-dimensional meanings. For instance, the EK that girls acquired through firewood collection is not only about acquiring the biological meanings of wood species, but also includes the diverse social meanings concerning peer relations, children-adult interactions during this activity, and subsistence conditions in the current social context of Maasai. It is also about girls’ active and autonomous reactions to these natural and social conditions during their participation in this chore. Ingold [28] argued that “knowing is not a matter of being in possession of information handed down from the past, but is rather indistinguishable from the life-activity of the organism-person in an environment that has itself been, and continues to be, fashioned through the activities of predecessors and contemporaries.” (pg. 302) The results of this study emphasize that Maasai girls actively perceive EK with dimensional meanings during firewood collection, and as they acquire this knowledge through daily chores, they also continuously create new meanings for the EK embedded in it.