The Hidden Power of the Laibon

Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya, is a brilliant ethnographic review by Elliot Fratkin, which intricately details the emic and etic observations essential to an anthropologist’s study. Elliot begins with a rather gleam outlook, however, this soon turns into an extraordinarily serendipitous event that fits perfectly into the African proverb that gilds the preface for the book: Foolishness first, then wisdom. In this essay I will begin by describing the ethnographic review, then analyze many aspects, evaluate and critique strengths and weaknesses, and finally consider the many contributions of this book to understanding Anthropology of Religion.

The book takes place in northern Kenya, in the Lukumai community of the Samburu people. The people of Lukumai are pastoralists that move their community based on the need of herding their cattle, camels, goats, and sheep in a desert environment. Elliot keeps the attention on his adopted father, Linyoki, who is a laibon, while also writing on the “nomadic camel-keeping community” (2). Elliot, who was a graduate student, originally wanted to write about the East-African Maasai, which were also pastoralists (3). His intentions were not to write about one “tribe,” and he, like many anthropologists, wanted to “go to places that hadn’t been written about,” and live in isolated areas (3). Ironically, he did what he had set out not to do, but in doing so, formed relationships that molded him into the man he is today. Elliot mentions in the preface that “the book is both a memoir of [his] own experiences as an anthropologist and an ethnography, an anthropological description, of laibons, who are a special family of diviners, prophets, medicine men, and sorcerers amon...

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...r away when you are alive” (33). This resembles much of my life because I have traveled so much; however, when I am with certain people and environments, that place becomes my “home”. Fiona Bowie wrote that “[t]he task for an ethnographer remains to interpret the views of the other in as honest and responsible a manner as possible and to place these views and practices within a broader theoretical framework (Bowie, 12). Elliot does just this, but in a way that cannot be reproduced without a lifetime of fieldwork. This book intimately contributes to Anthropology of Religion, in such a way that contextualizes most of what the class covers, but leaves an everlasting impression on me. I demandingly suggest that this must be read by any student studying anthropology, so that the student may understand the implications of the “journey” he may take while doing fieldwork.