ABSTRACT
The author's neighbour’s compound consisted of three buildings, constructed from sun-dried mud bricks. There were two small houses with corrugated zinc roofs and windows with pieces of cardboard for panes, and a separate, windowless kitchen with a high, pointed thatch roof. In 1978 a national nutrition survey had shown that the highest percentage of chronically malnourished children in Cameroon were to be found in the western Grassfields, and that the area also had a relatively high degree of acute protein-energy malnutrition. Local health workers considered kwashiorkor to be a major health problem and the Catholic Mission had established a special health centre in Tabenken village for treating kwashiorkor. It was thought that ‘cultural factors’, and in particular people’s ideas about food and the etiology of disease, were responsible.
