Wives of chiefs attend a sensitization training session.
By Our Reporter
27th/11/2020
In Alur culture, food taboo is one of the cultural values that is still observed in some homes especially by women and girls.
Culturally it was an abomination for a woman to eat foods like, chicken, grasshoppers, pork, eggs, mutton, liver and fish without scales among others.
Although many believed that Alur men were just being greedy or it was a way of taming the women not to eat such things while preparing it, Jolly John Okumu, a cultural community engagement practitioner, said that food taboo was simply to delay the growth and development of girls.
“These are very nutritious food for body building and naturally girls develop faster than the boys and that is when the elders introduced food taboos to delay the growth of the girls” he said
In 2015, His Majesty Olarker Phillip III made a pronouncement allowing women to eat all types of foods. In his pronouncement he noted that given the consequences of poor nutrition on women’s health and the fact that having a well-balanced diet is human right, girls and women should be allowed to access all the nutritious foods which they were formally forbidden.
During a training recently Dr. Hilda Tradia the executive director MEMPROW said that the practice is still popular in the communities and this has greatly affected the pregnant mothers who become anemic because they are not eating well balanced diet food
“The reason why there is high maternal deaths and women delivery through caesarean is due to poor feeding and this is very common in the rural health facilities with Angal hospital registering the highest number of mothers delivering through cesarean section.” she said.
She said now the wives of the Chiefs have been trained to sensitize the people in the communities on the benefit of eating the forbidden foods.
Doreen Ayerango one of the Chief’s wives said that they really did not understand the value of eating such foods and they thought it was a way of disciplining the women but now they are going to lead in sensitizing the women on the dangers of food taboos.