The practice of eating dirt
Geophagy is incredibly common, so why is it such a hidden practice?
My sophomore year of college I took my very first geography class. It was human geography and, in case you couldn’t tell by the PhD I now have in Geography, I loved that class. I don’t remember the name of the professor, but he was an older man who (in my mind) knew so much about the world. I do remember sitting in a large lecture hall listening about all the places in the world that were not Ohio and being amazed.
I have a particular memory of him talking about a practice called geophagy. Geophagy is the practice of eating the earth- literally to eat dirt. What I remember about that lecture is the professor talking about how in many parts of Africa people, often women, will collect particular types of dirt and will eat it. The practice was brought to the American south by enslaved people and in some parts of the rural south it is still practiced, although it is stigmatized so not widely discussed. The teaching assistant for the class was a graduate student from Kenya and she confirmed that yes indeed, this practice is fairly common in rural areas. I don’t know why I remembered so much about geophagy but if you were to ask me to name one thing I learned sophomore year of college, this would be the first thing I would tell you about. I remembered so many details of this lecture I can still picture myself sitting in the lecture hall listening to the professor discuss this practice. The seat I was in, the way I was taking notes, the teaching assistant standing off to the side and then coming up front to discuss what she knew about the practice, I remember it all.
About three and a half years after this lecture, I was in training for the Peace Corps, living in a small rural village in Mpumalanga, South Africa. I was staying with a host family with a mom, dad, two little girls and a baby boy. The family was generous and kind to me even though they had very little. I slept in the master bedroom while the parents shared the children’s room for the six weeks I stayed with them. Every day, as I came home from my training, my host mom would have a small snack sitting out for me, usually Marie biscuits (small cookie type snack) or fruit. But on one day, I walked into the kitchen to a small plate covered with what looked like small pieces of dried clay, about the size of peas.
The texture of dried clay, once it hits the moisture in your mouth and becomes wet clay, leaves something to be desired.
As I walked closer, my host mom told me this was for me. I asked what it was and she gave me a look like I was an idiot- clearly it was dirt. She told me she had collected it that day and this was the best type of dirt, and she had already cleaned it for me. I flashed back to sophomore year and realized I was going to be able to partake in some geophagy. I ate that dirt. Ate it all. It tasted like…dirt. Sort of like chalky clay. Not a bad taste at all, but the texture of dried clay, once it hits the moisture in your mouth and becomes wet clay, leaves something to be desired.
This wasn’t the last time I ate dirt. When I became a professor, I always worked in a lecture on geophagy and when I would go to South Africa I would buy a bag of ‘clean’ dirt from women who sold it on the side of the road. They would collect and sell a small bag for the equivalent of about fifty cents. They always laughed when I would buy my bag, I am sure they thought I had no idea exactly what it was for at first, until I would start to talk to them about the properties of each type of dirt and why one would eat one over the other. You see, some of the bags had reddish dirt, some more white, some more brown.
One theory as to why women (it is still most commonly practiced by women) eat this dirt is for the minerals. The theory is that they are mineral deprived and so crave the dirt which contains the minerals they lack. They most commonly eat it during pregnancy, and many women told me they start to crave it as soon as they get pregnant. I would have the women tell me about how this dirt was good for lower stomach pains and that one was good for upper stomach pains, this one was good for cleaning out your system, and that one was good for a “running tummy”. I was more than once warned though that eating too much was bad for your appendix, and when I told them I had my appendix removed several years before, they sighed some relief since that was not going to be an issue. So, each time I went I would buy some dirt and I would take that bag back to the States (which thinking about it now, may have broken a few customs rules) and would offer a taste to any student who was interested. Usually two or three brave souls took me up on it. I have no idea if any of those students still remember my lecture on geophagy the way I remember my sophomore year lecture, but I would like to think a few do. I would like to think that we have come full circle in a way- me now the professor telling students about a practice they had never heard of and being intrigued. I hope a few have traveled the world a bit and have been offered something as strange as dirt as a snack.
