Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya by Elliot Fratkin (review)

Elliot Fratkin has written an insightful, enjoyable, and very readable book about his fieldwork and life-long friendship with a family of diviners (laibon) in northern Kenya. The work is strongly autobiographical, recounting how a young, rebellious American anthropologist in the 1970s found himself conducting dissertation research among Ariaal, a Samburu-related nomadic community of northern Kenya. His original goal was to study Turkana pastoralists of northwestern Kenya, but he abandoned that idea after finding them not particularly hospitable to the notion of being studied by an anthropologist. As the author makes clear, Turkana are not known to be a “warm and fuzzy” people or to welcome outsiders. Fratkin’s alternative was to study another Nilotic group just north of Turkana in southwestern Ethiopia. However, he only made it as far as Marsabit town, a dusty Kenyan outpost about 150 kilometers south of the Ethiopian border, when he learned of a military coup in the country that forced him to abandon this option. Fortuitously, in Marsabit he almost immediately met up with a young man who introduced him to the nearby Ariaal pastoralists and their laibon (diviner). Unmarried and youthful, Fratkin was adopted by the laibon’s family and quickly struck up a series of friendships with young men around his same age who made up the so-called warrior (il murran) age set of the community. What emerges from these relationships is an anthropological story of the trials and tribulations of fieldwork, the creativeness and practices of a people coping with a difficult physical environment, and the humanity of a community characterized by similar emotions of love, anger, and compassion that define human nature.

In order to study a mobile group, Fratkin himself adopted a nomadic existence. He often went on foot to herding camps for days at a time, living among young herders and consuming plenty of fresh milk and meat. His narrations of these encounters, including his first experiences with raw cow blood and an angry lion, are both humorous and informative. In his fieldwork he also followed around the laibon as he performed rituals and aided individuals seeking either medical or spiritual advice, and we learn much about local belief systems among Ariaal and Samburu. With an old Land Rover, Fratkin also assisted the laibon and other community members with their transportation needs, including visits to health clinics and relatives both within and outside the district. These are normal requests for an anthropologist in the field, but in Fratkin’s case they often entailed long journeys over sandy camel tracks.

It is through these daily routines that Fratkin shows the real value of the participant-observation method. By participating in community life and witnessing and questioning the laibon about his different divination techniques, medicines, and knowledge, the author strikes a deep and meaningful friendship with the laibon and his family. Fratkin truly liked these people, although the diviner’s occasional encounters with excessive liquor consumption and bouts of anger tested both his friendship and patience. And what is equally clear is that the laibon and his son, who remains a good friend of the author’s, also liked him.

More than an autobiography, the book is loaded with seasoned insights into a range of topics, such as the role of missionaries and development agencies in the region, local social organization and age set structures, and the disastrous effects of drought (and development programs!) especially since the 1970s. By following the same family and community over thirty-plus years of study, the author shows with considerable detail and personal concern the social and environmental changes that have occurred over this period, many of which, as the book makes clear, have not been very positive for Ariaal. The book will be a great teaching asset for undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology, African studies, research methods, and environmental studies. On a personal note, I currently am using Laibon as a required text in an...