ABSTRACT
The Azande are a farming and hunting population living at the Nile-Congo watershed in the corner between the boundaries of Sudan, Central African Republic and Zaire (See Map, Figure 1). They resisted European conquest as late as the beginning of this century. They have an exogamic clan organisation, with the exception of the chiefs and noblemen, who are members of the endogamic Avungara clan. Since about 1920 European influence, especially the work of Christian missionaries, has changed the tribal situation completely. Not only have traditional beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery, which had played an important role in stabilizing the society (Evans-Pritchard, 1937), been opposed, the whole social structure also has been nearly completely destroyed. One serious problem lies in the fact that the young people, educated in mission schools, are unwilling to take part in the necessary farm work. Influenced by their European training and education, they are drawn towards “modern” jobs and a “civilised” way of life. Many of them believe that such opportunities are only to be found in the cities, and thus, a great number of young people leave the tribal areas in order to look for work (usually unsuccessfully) away from home. In this way, they only strengthen the ranks of the uprooted and the unemployed urban proletariat and fall easy victims to alcoholism and crime. Yet, even those young people who remain in the tribal area after leaving school are frequently unwilling to take up “lowly” farm work to an adequate degree and prefer to be supported by their older relatives, who, however, are unable to produce sufficient food for everybody (Prinz, 1986). For this investigation I used an open-ended questionnaire. The answers were recorded on a tape recorder and translated later by native speakers into French. Altogether 43 men and 39 women were interviewed on their opinions on obesity. Map of south central Africa showing the location of the Azande people. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315075853/2de201fe-80c4-4b69-ae40-26e812a48aca/content/fig15_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
