Kristin Hedges of Anthropology knows better than most that work like that of Albert B. Lord (of Singer of Tales fame) which captures in a written form what had been orally transmitted knowledge has the effect of inhibiting its oral transmission afterward. 

 

And yet, the situation is rather different when that oral transmission has all but stopped in the face of change, and the anthropologist is asked to please help the traditional knowledge from being lost altogether. 

 

Kristin was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya and lived with the Maasai tribe from 2000 to 2003.  She has been returning to work with them since and discovered a recurrent theme among the elders of the tribe—the use of traditional plant medicine was being lost because the young had busy lives and little interest in learning it.  Meanwhile, the young did indeed have busy lives, but were more open to learning about traditional medicine than their elders suspected.  The old and the young saw that the familiarity with medicinal plants was falling away as fencing and other factors constrained the Maasai from seeing and talking about these plants in the environment.

 

Thus was born a collaboration with contributors on two continents, some of them Maasai even in their late nineties and some Grand Valley students and faculty.

Summer work of collecting data through interviews, photographs, and videos led to work at Grand Valley to transcribe, cross check, and collate the identification, preparation, and indications of many medicinal plants. 

 

Anthropology major Zoe Zaroff took photographs of Maasai beadwork that eventually provided a beautiful cover for a spiral bound book and decorative borders for a laminated poster, both featuring medicinal plants.  Meanwhile, Anthea Mitchell, a biochemistry major used her illustration skills to make botanical drawings of the plants.  Three more students were hired through CLAS and OURS supplemental startup funds of $1,000 for first or second year tenure-track faculty. The fund encourages new tenure-track faculty to actively engage undergraduate students in their research and scholarship. This funding allowed the students to work on the transcriptions of interviews that contained the medicinal plant knowledge that would become the text of the book and poster.

 

“So five students in all have their work in the book even though they didn’t travel to Kenya.  One, Roberto Carriedo Ostos then applied for S3 and did travel to Kenya with me,” Kristin notes.  Roberto then wrote an article about his fieldwork experience which was published in Anthropology News.

 

The collaborative process also included other Grand Valley faculty.

At the March 2017 CLAS Faculty Research Colloquium, Kristin became aware of Vinicius Lima and his work on art catalog production (“When exhibitions become books: the design process of a catalog”).  Kristin was also a presenter, so he heard about her work with the Maasai.  They talked afterward, and soon the product of her work that Kristin had imagined as staple-bound printer paper, suddenly was transformed by Vinicius’ graphic design vision, which did indeed result in a highly useful pocket-size field manual of attractive design.

A CSCE mini-grant with help from the Anthropology Department paid for the 30 printed copies (by Allegra).

To say the book is a hit would be an understatement.  The Maasai coordinator for the project, Mr. Joseph Ole Kipila, carried the book all summer long and talked it up with locals who would beg to be given his copy.  The delight of a 97-year-old Maasai woman known as “Grandmother” is clear (see header picture above), even though this may be the first book she had ever handled.  She told Kristin she intended to keep it safe under her bed to save it for her grandchildren. The young man (pictured at the top of this article) in his garden was proudly able to identify one of his plants in the book.

 

“In the future, as we expand the book, we’ll add the scientific names, and register it with the Library of Congress,” Kristin explains. 

Now a collaborative grant is in the works with Tim Evans of Biology to help establish an herbarium in Kenya in the Summer of 2019.   Kristin explains that this new collaboration started when she googled “Herbarium” on the GVSU website and reached out to Tim to meet for a cup of coffee.

Kristin has been very grateful for the receptivity of both Vinicius and Tim to her passionate project.  Tim explained to Kristin that this project expands his access to plants which helps in his teaching. 

Though this is a story at one level of collaboration in research, at a deeper level this is a teaching collaboration.  The Maasai conceived it that way, the students brought a cross-section of their individual talents together in a way that taught them new ways to contribute to a project, Vinicius enhanced learning through graphic design, and Tim immediately saw the expanded possibilities for his own teaching.  The whole team is helping the Maasai teach a new generation about their own medicinal heritage.