‘Worms are our life’, part I: Understandings of worms and the body among the Luo of western Kenya

Abstract

Perceptions of worms and their role in the body were studied among the people in a Luo village in western Kenya. Worms were found to be prominent in people's body‐image and ideas about illness. Two models applied to worms were distinguished analytically as ‘traditional’ and ‘biomedical’, referring to their sources, modes of transmission and relation to wider understandings of life. The first acknowledged worms as positive agents of both digestion and illness and aimed at maintaining a balanced relationship with them. The latter saw worms as dangerous intruders into bodily order and demanded their expulsion. Both models were used side by side or alternately by most people in the village, according to their individual preferences or to the specific context. The different attitudes to worms—one inclusive, the other exclusive—were related to wider concepts of dirt, pollution, affliction and evil, and shed light on people's understandings of the body and life.