LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE PART 2

From the moment we are born, we all begin changing. Each of us live through different life

events, we constantly make choices, decisions and receive advices that affect our lives in one

way or another. The life course approach or perspectives are the ways that people live and

adapt to changes by making various choices as how food choices are influenced by different

factors including culture, history, time and place. Various people make decisions regarding the

food they eat in everyday life. The life course theories are widely applied in the choices and

preferences of foods that children grow with to their adulthood or adults’ healthy conditions

that arose due to their youth histories; and this is explained in various approaches.

For this assignment, since it required me to interview someone whose food choices and types I

am familiar about, I decided to interview my land lady, Maajabu (which means Wonders) who

comes from Zanzibar Islands in the eastern part of Africa. She has been a US citizen for 34

years, but she still carries along most of her cultural perspectives towards food. The 34 years in

the US has barely changed her perception and food choices which she grew up with for 25 years

in her home country in the Zanzibar islands (or the spice islands as they call it). She was once

married but they divorced, and she was left with her only child who called Manel whom she

lives with in the Bronx.

Maajabu had an old girlfriend called Wendy who lives next door. Wendy was a drug addict who

passed through a lot of challenges with her drug dealer husband, her drug influenced

pregnancy and her five children whom she takes care alone after her husband was

incarcerated. More of the story shall is in the perceptive below;

Trajectories- These are the general believes, ideas and norms of people in a day to day life as

one lives from birth to the current age. The trajectories can be either influenced by the social

status of the people ie their race ie Latino communities have demonstrated higher rates of

heart diseases, and color has proven to carry its own trajectories ie black communities have

more cases of diabetic people than their counterpart the white community. Trajectories can

also be influenced by the economy of the people in the community. This can be from an

individual level, to the community level (the general economy of the community), to the

state/country level. I.e. we can see that dis-advantaged communities like Harlem, public schools

are not well supplied with fruits and vegetables as compared to the schools that are present in

districts like China town. The trajectories influence people’s choice of food and the main

characteristic is that they are developed over a long period of time. Because of the extensive

amount of time that these believes are built it becomes very difficult for the public and

community health workers to change these perceptions towards certain eating behaviors and

food choices.

As I asked my land lady why she kept cooking Nsima everyday (a type of food which is cooked

by whole grains boiled with water to make a very stiff porridge like dough), even after she had

lived in the US for almost 34 years, she said that it is just a food that she would always eat no

matter what. She said that even after eating a pizza for lunch, the moment she gets home, she

would immediately boil nsima and eat with a sauce because she normally does not feel as if she

is satisfied if she only eats other junk foods. Maajabu eats Nsima and sardines almost every day,

because on the other hand, she grew up in a village which is a walking distance to the Indian

Ocean so she basically ate fish in the morning, fish in the afternoon and fish in the evening. This
is one of the examples of trajectories that we see and how it affects the choice of certain types

of foods over another. It is also observed in greater numbers of adult’s people as they refuse to

change their meals so as to tailor their healthy conditions. To change this, it is important for

public health workers to learn the various trajectories of different kind of populations so as they

can be able to change their perceptions towards certain food and eating behaviors.

Transition- This is the step where by a person’s experiences major changes in his or her life that

forces them to change the way they eat or perceive certain kinds of foods, and their eating

behaviors and patterns. This can be due to change of occupation, marriage status, drop of

economic status or travelling to another country. Transitions can be changes that are not

willingly caused by the person, but that person is forced to adopt to the changes that have

taken place in their lives.

“Can you tell me how you experienced culture shock when you came in America, especially in a

food point of view?” I asked Maajabu. She sighed and said, “Boy, it was terrific!” “first of all, I

was living with a German family here, and they banned me from cooking any food which had

spices. They said my food was smelling. So I didn’t know what food to cook because I do not

know of any foods in my country that we cook without the spices.” “you put spices in

everything you cook?” I interfered. “Oh yes my dear, everything! Tea, porridge, juice, milk even

the bathing water, we put spices in it!, so when the owner of the house had banned me from

putting spices, it was indeed a hard time for me. I couldn’t cook for a while and so I was eating

junk foods outside”

Maajabu faced a lot of challenges while she moved from Zanzibar to the US, apart from being

banned to cook the food from her home country, she found that some spices here like saffron

and vanilla were very expensive, and so she resorted into eating junk unhealthy foods for a

while before she could settle and sort things out. Maajabu’s case is just one among the many

examples of how major transitions in life can affect our eating habits and even our appetite, as

Maajabu reported that she lost appetite when she was made not to cook her food without the

spices.

Cultural and Contextual Influence- Norms and history of different places influence the choice

of food people make. The way that people are raised, grow up and become adults, plays a big

role in the decision making of various foods that people do make in their entire lives.

When Maajabu gave birth to her first child, she went back to home country, as it is their norms

that whenever a woman delivers her first child, she should go back home (or more specifically

deliver the child in her mother’s house)That is considered a blessing and that a child belongs to

that land because during delivery its blood was spilled in the soil of the place.

As I listened to how Maajabu was talking of how she misses the cultural dances and rituals in

her country, I asked her “so what foods did you and your son eat when you went in the

Zanzibar islands?” She answered “We ate a lot of eggs and drank a lot of milk, in general we ate

really good and exotic foods, the only problem is that my son was always suffering from

diarrhea every week or so, but apart from that it was so amazing” I noticed this unusual thing

and asked her, “did you take him to the hospital?” “no, not at all, my mother and aunties told

me it’s part of a child growth especially when it starts to grow teeth so I should just let it be.
Besides, he used to craw and eat dusts every time, so It was not a big deal” I nodded, while

having second thoughts. “You said you eat a lot of eggs and drank a lot of milk?”, I asked. “yes”,

she answered, especially the yogurt, my mother makes tasty yogurt at home”. After a long chat,

I came to realize that the yogurt they prepared from curdling milk, they never used to boil the

milk. They just milked the cow and started storing the milk in a closed container because she

claimed that yogurt made from un-boiled milk is tastier and doesn’t go bad easily because the

bacteria that are used in fermentation are living. “But if the milk is boiled then all the bacteria

are dead” she added. This was why the son was suffering from diarrhea throughout her entire

visit until she returned to the US. I shared with her my opinions and she promised to advise her

family back home that they should be boiling milk to prevent Brucella and diarrhea. But as

previously discussed It is very difficult to change the trajectories of people that they have grown

with for years, and that is why this knowledge of life course perspective is very important in the

field of public health.

Turning points- These are the major changes that take place in life. Turning points can be

brought merely by an event, or a disease, or attending a certain nutrition class. The transitions

happen throughout in life and that is one among the many reasons that our food choices

change, the perception of various eating practices and how people prepare and store their

foods.

Maajabu has a girlfriend whom she met when she came from Zanzibar. She is an African

American woman, but she comes from Jamaica. This woman, whom was tall and slim and

looked like a teenager, surprisingly she has 5 children. Two of which were twins. On her last
pregnancy, she was a drug addict and she used to do crack and other dangerous drugs. As she

leaves just next door, I asked Maajabu to take me to her. I was shocked by how loud she talked

despite her tiny body! She said so you are a nurse student, I answered, “No a public health

student”, she laughed, “all the same”.

Although she told me that she was out of drugs, I still saw the aftermath of what the drugs had

left into her body both physically and mentally. I asked her if she was influenced by someone,

she said yes, her husband who is now incarcerated in Alabama was helping a drug dealer to

supply drugs, so she used to be a ‘tester’ or a certain word that she used that I couldn’t

remember because I was afraid to note down anything. She said that before she met Dan, she

never had used marijuana only once in her life. And she wasn’t addicted at the time. But when

she got married in what she called a “crazy marriage”, she became involved with drugs. And

while Dan could control himself, her on the other side, it was difficult for her. She binged on

cocaine every day, and she never cared for her nutrition at all. She hardly ate, and she was so

wasted for two long years. She said marriage was a major turning point of her life. “even

though I knew what I was getting myself into, I did not know that I could waste my entire life

land put my health into jeopardy like that”

As we have seen, various events in life can be major turning points that can either improve or

degrade the health of a person to their next stage of life. We will shortly discuss on Wendy’s

condition as a drug addict while pregnant with the twins.

Timing- timing is the interaction of age and events in life. In the topic of health and nutrition,

timing is very important especially in the early stages of life. In the early years of life, it’s where

the children develop food preferences and a crucial time for development of body features.

As I went on listening to, Wendy, for almost 3 hours, she finally talked something that was

worth noting. She said that during the whole period, she was doing just fine. “crack is nothing

when you are tough as a rock” “but when I became pregnant, it was the hardest time of my life.

She said that she would vomit whenever she ate any descent food. Most of the times that was

her regimen, eating and vomiting the same moment. While she couldn’t eat well, and her

health was not in good shape either, her cravings for cocaine had doubled. “I couldn’t stop

myself from craving more cocaine no matter how much I tried. The moment I went around

without having a sniff of crack, I literally could fill the babies kicking in the stomach, and my

stomach would feel upset until I took a bit of crack. Then it would be all okay”

“Sheila, my mother in law said I was a horrible mother, but I loved my kids, you know. I didn’t

want anything bad for them, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t eat anything, and as

days went on my health was getting worse. Doctors worrying that I would experience an

abortion, they stitched me, and before my time was due, I got a C-section because I was in no

position to go to labor trust me. So, when I went for delivery the doctors told me that my

children were also junkies! It was the weirdest thing I have ever heard. They said they needed

to hospitalize the twins for detoxing and withdrawal process.

She said her twins had a hard time growing up. They had to get supplementary milk because

she couldn’t breastfeed well due to her poor nutrition. We see how timing of the pregnancy
while the mother was an addict and hardly fade on any nutritious foods had affected the

children. Although the children are now healthy, they had a pretty rough time while growing

up. Whether pregnancy, lactation or adolescent, timing has a big effect on the health of people.

Adaptive strategies-this is an approach taken when a person or family needs to accommodate

certain circumstances. People reach to this when they are coping up with various positive or

negative circumstances in their course of lives. As Maajabu had moved to the US from Zanzibar

islands she had to start adapting to the food systems of the United States. As explained in the

previous trajectories, Maajabu is a US citizen from Zanzibar Islands, and she tells her stories of

how she has had a hard time to adapt to the foods that were being cooked here. As a result,

she ended up eating unhealthy and junk foods for the first year of her life in the US. She was

later diagnosed as pre-diabetic and given some drugs take and that’s when she resorted to start

eating healthier.

Adaptive strategies are important part in intervening because most people are made to adapt

to the lives and healthy situations of their family members, the community and the country in

general.

Linked lives- All lives are connected, and no life is lived alone. Either be a family, community or

nation. Linked lives is described as the approach that is affected when people are jointly

brought together and made to change some of their choices in food. When one person has

issues that are supposed to be taken care by changing food menu, or when living with someone

who is vegetarian, kosher, halal, vegan etc, affects you, then that is the role of what linked lives

play in the role of our food choices.

As Maajabu was telling me her story of “coming to America” she hinted on her ex-husband,

whom she used to live with. The ex-husband was a strict vegan. He did not eat meat, eggs or

drink milk from any animal. He didn’t even eat honey! This was very disturbing to Maajabu as

she grew up in a nomadic community and meat has always been part of her meals. But now she

was not supposed to even use the same oil that she fried meat with in her husband’s food. She

says this affected both her and her son. Her son started being picky and imitating his father’s

behavior of asking questions on the food that had prepared as “did you cook this sauce with

coconut milk or yogurt?” “was the plate served well washed?” and a lot of other questions.

Maajabu called them cocky questions. And she says that her sons poor eating habits were

developed from his childhood by her husband.

Even though I could not get the whole the truth behind this, whether it was just Maajabu’s lack

of understanding of a vegan meal, or her husband’s stubbornness as she describes it, we still

can see the role that the behavior of the father towards the food played to the child. And this

has made Manel, the son to grow up disliking certain foods in his early age even though he is

not a vegetarian or vegan.

Conclusively, as previously discussed that one’s currently health is usually a result of their past

health experience, we take it from here that it is very important to consider these life course

perspectives in the programs and policy making. Life course perspectives means much in policy

making to the needs of people in the community in different stages of their lives. Through these

perspectives, people can either promote or destroy their health and thus it is very crucial for

public health workers to understand these and work closely with the community. The
government, the community and different public health experts should act together and create

the best condition to generate health and well-being of the community. The sooner we start

the better, but it is never too late to begin.

REFERENCES

1. Wethington, E. and Johnson-Askew, W. (2009). Contributions of the Life Course

Perspective to Research on Food Decision Making. Annals of Behavioral Medicine,

38(S1), pp.74-80.

2. Devine, C. (2005). A Life Course Perspective: Understanding Food Choices in Time, Social

Location, and History. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 37(3), pp.121-128.

WINGILA MPAMILA