In each of these cases, the officials made distinctions between the different departments conducting research in the areas. But, for rural East Africans, there was likely no such distinction, as more and more researchers entered their villages and homes with questionnaires, needles, and tubes to collect all sorts of samples and information. Just as researchers were conflated into a generic set of expeRTS,So were their tools. Rubber tubes often appear as a “formulaic element” in many of the previously documented stories of blood theft—long, flexible tubes used to suck the blood of a person.54 Older women who lived in Nairobi reported that, in the 1920s, men would enter their houses as they slept, “carrying ‘a sort of sucking rubber tube.’”55 But rubber tubes were rarely—if ever—used for blood taking. For most medical research projects, only a tiny bit of blood for a slide is needed, and that drop of blood is taken by pricking the finger. (See figure 2.1 of a child being finger pricked and tubes sitting in the foreground.) For a more substantial blood draw, a needle was inserted directly into the vein of the arm, and blood was collected in a vial.
FIGURE 2.1. “Collecting blood in capillary tube for the C.M.R.” Source: East African Institute for Medical Research Report, 1958–59. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.
Although medical researchers didn’t use tubes, entomologists did. More than likely, the rubber tubes appearing in many of these stories are the aspiration tubes used by entomologists for mosquito collection. During human landing catches (when a person waits for a mosquito to land on him so it can be collected and analyzed—ideally, before it bites), scientists use these long rubber tubes to suck the mosquito into a holding chamber before blowing it back into a netted trap to carry back to the laboratory for analysis. Thus, it is often entomologists who are seen creeping around at night in the “bush” (porini) to observe or destroy mosquito breeding sites, moving in and out of houses to set up and collect mosquito traps, and carrying around tubes that they suck on—all behaviors often attributed to blood-stealing medical researchers.
Researchers Are Government
In the same way that researchers were indistinguishable from each other, they were also considered an indistinguishable part of the larger government. Researchers appeared the same as other government officials in many important ways: they arrived in places bearing stamped and sealed letters of permission from government agencies, they received the chief’s assistance, and behaved like other state employees. The perceived link between researchers and the government was captured with the phrase ajili ya serikali—because of, or on account of, the government. When people used that phrase, it implied that research happened because the government made it happen, allowed it to happen, or forced it to happen—which is a relatively accurate statement. A majority of research projects were funded with government money. Any big project in East Africa had to have government permission, and researchers relied heavily on local chiefs in order to complete their research. Starting in the late 1940s, when the East African Council for Medical Research was established, even projects undertaken by private individuals came to be entwined with government.
These government-affiliated medical researchers were burdened with the negative views many people associated with the larger government. Citizens’ impression of the government was explained using a play on words in Swahili. Serikali means “government,” but it sounds and looks remarkably similar to the phrase siri kali, which means a potent/dangerous secret. The very word to denote government implied to people that it was made up of dangerous secrets. The work of researchers was often referred to as just one of the many “secrets of the government” (siri ya serikali). The theft and sale of African blood by researchers was assumed to be part of these secrets. When I asked Mzee Thomas about whether the modern Tanzanian government was aware of the blood stealing, he responded, “This now, is a secret of the government [siri ya serikali].” When I asked whether this was “only the government of Tanzania, or all governments,” he laughed and explained, “All! Every government in the world, even yours.”56
When it came to describing the government and its relation to residents, kali (fierce) was closely related to another word—nguvu (strength or authority). Typically, anyone who was kali also had nguvu to back them up, or it was the nguvu that allowed them to be kali. Nguvu bred fear, or at least suspicion, and references to nguvu typically involved feeling the negative weight of government.57 Because of the nguvu of the government, orders didn’t always have to be made explicit. The perceived close connections between researchers and the government often led to a sense that villagers felt compelled to participate in medical research projects. While no one claimed government control was so complete as for every act of defiance to be punished, interviewees did emphasize the strength of the government (nguvu ya serikali). One woman claimed that during the colonial period even babies sucking at the breast would stop to pay attention when the government spoke.58
Another dimension to the public’s understanding of researchers comes through the use of the phrase amri sio ombi—“orders, not requests.” The district commissioner, the chief, and the researchers did not request people to participate in research trials, they ordered it. Communities’ responses to those amri (orders) varied from cheerful participation to outright refusal. Smallpox vaccination campaigns in the late 1960s elicited both types of reactions. When I asked one woman (a mother of thirteen, of whom seven had died) if anyone had refused to be vaccinated, she stared at me with disbelief and clearly stated, “In the face of illness, a mother can’t refuse.”59 Yet sometimes such willingness came in the wake of amri. One man was emphatic that no one had any doubts about getting the vaccine, since smallpox was so dangerous, but the government gave the amri just in case.60
When I pressed interviewees about whether anyone could openly disagree with the government or chief’s orders, I was repeatedly told that no one would.61 Still, although they claimed no one could disagree, there was plenty of discussion of the tactics used to discipline dissenters. Those who would not follow amri would be grabbed and gathered together, forced to participate. Punishment included fines and confiscation of property such as cattle.62 Two men finally admitted there was one person who would disagree with orders: “a madman.”63 Because of the nguvu of the government, orders didn’t always have to be made explicit and only madmen would question them. While this was certainly a characteristic of East Africans’ relationship with the British colonial government, it was one that continued into the independence era. When I would ask for clarification about which “government” was being referenced, interviewees would shake off the question: serikali ni serikali—government is government—no matter who is in charge.
One of the major areas of disagreement between medical researchers and East Africans was about whether the researchers were actually doing government work, and whether science ought to be considered in relation to everything else around it. The researchers may have acknowledged that they were technically employees of the state, but they maintained that their work was apolitical and ahistorical—not shaped by or a result of anything other than the practice of science and objective scientific data. The researchers maintained that key questions such as the form science took, which projects were funded, what were considered viable research questions, or where projects were sited were answered entirely on the basis of objective, unquestionable data. Science was not affected or shaped by the larger social and political world that affected everyone and everything else. As the previous discussion indicates, however, East Africans saw medical research