Iris Publishers-Open Access Journal of Archaeology & Anthropology | Pre-Natal and Post-Natal Birth Among Bulu from South Cameroon: An Ethno-Anthropological Reading of the Birth in Negro-Culture

Authored by Paul Ulrich Otye Elom

 

As in all human communities, birth represents for socio culture Bulu a time when we e agree to the woman and newborn attention. This attention actually begins at the first moment of pregnancy and continues until complete weaning of the child who marks the entry of the latter and his mother into social normality. In this context, a real man is one who has children, the one who does not have to be relegated to a seat of jumping whatever his material wealth. The loss of a newborn or the birth of a stillbirth appears as a disease or better a crypto-disease. Taking as a field of study Bulu South-Cam eroun, this article watches that the birth in negro-culture is a social event whose specificity is apprehended taking into account the endosemia or sense of the inside. Whatever the cultural universe, maternity is a delicate period of life when the woman and even the man are subjected to the constraints required by the various specialists of the health and the social entourage. This shows that beyond the physiological, birth also involves the cultural body. In the Bulu of South Cameroon, prenatal and postnatal women are asked to follow a certain number of practices inculcated by the cultural ethos to ensure that the child will come into the world without any problem and that his evolution after birth will be harmonious until the time of weaning , the key moment when the eye on him is less increased and marks in a way his entry into the normal social world, because making him an individual whose development is not more very worrying. Pre-natal and neo-natal shows nt and the birth ensures the survival of the social continuum or simply the perpetuation of cultural life. The debate we are embarking on in this article challenges the cultural elements of the society under study, which show that birth is a social phenomenon that can bring a holistic understanding of the community. With research techniques such as direct observation, in-depth interviews and a method of analysis based on Harold Garfinkel’s ethno-methodological processes and Mbonji Edjenguèlè’s ethno-perspective [1], processes related to ethno-anthropology, our paper will give a talk on the feeding of the pregnant woman, woof breastfeeding and newborn. A presentation on dietary and sexual prohibitions whose transgression can lead to the death of the child and sometimes of the mother. And finally, a presentation on the different social and medical uses to be respected in order to avoid a disharmony of the child’s development. But before all that, let us establish a contextualization of certain concepts.

 

To read more... Journal of archaeology 

 

To view more Journals...Iris Publishers