Do Veddas Suffer From CKDu?

By Amarasiri de Silva –NOVEMBER 14, 2017

When I was collecting field data on Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Aetiology (CKDu) in Medawachchiya in 2013, I wondered why healthcare providers believed that the Veddas (pronounced as Vädda) were less affected by the deadly disease. I knew that urinary tract infections had been reported among Vedda people in Hennanigala and Dambana in Mahaweli areas through Premakumara de Silva and Asitha G. Punchihewa’s study on a Socio-Anthropological Research Project on the Vedda Community in Sri Lanka, but there were no reports of the Veddas in Medawachchiya and Wilachchiya in Anuradhapura District suffering from urinary tract infections or CKDu. Some believe that the Veddas, particularly those in Anuradhapura district, are immune to CKDu. As Wiveca Stegeborn has carried out extensive anthropological research since 1977 and has lived among the Veddas as a participant observer, speaking both their language and Sinhalese (Wiveca prefers Singhalese, which is phonetically correct), I contacted her through LinkedIn to get her views on CKDu and the Veddas.  Although she had sporadically visited the Anuradhapura Veddas, she acknowledged that she never conducted fieldwork among them. Her focus was on Veddas in Dambana, Hennanigala, Pollebedda and Ratugala areas in Ampara and Badulla districts in the east. The facts that she has produced are relevant for the Veddas who live east of the Central Mountain massif.  

I exchanged several emails with Wiveca, and she has willingly responded to my queries amidst editing conference presentations, articles and a contribution to an encyclopedia. I present in this article some of her reflections on the Vedda people and CKDu among them in the form of direct quotations form emails. The early part of this article although not directly related to CKDu, but I present them as they provide valuable information on the Veddas, their names etc. I asked her whether she had come across any CKDu patients among the Veddas that she had been working with. Her first reaction to my question was that the reality of CKDu among Veddas is not publicly known, meaning that the Veddas who suffer from the disease are not in the national statistics.

Wiveca Stegeborn is a Cultural Anthropologist from Sweden with an MA in Anthropology from Washington State University. She completed her PhD coursework at Syracuse University, New York and taught Cultural Anthropology and conducted research at Michigan State University in the USA. At the time we were exchanging emails, she was finalising her dissertation work on Wanniyala-Aetto or Veddas (pronounced Wanniyala-Ätto; Wiveca prefers ‘Wanniyala-Aetto’ to ‘Vedda’.  In this article both terms are used interchangeably) to defend her contribution at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Wiveca has worked with Veddas for many years and her extensive publications on the Veddas’ traditional subsistence economy and society include contributions to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers and the Berg Encyclopedia. She is currently compiling an article for Brill’s Encyclopaedia about the Wanniyala-Aetto’s religion.  She is a human rights defender who has organised human rights work among the Vedda people since 1977.

To begin with, Wiveca explained to me the meaning of Wanniyala-Aetto. Wanni, a Sinhalese word, refers to a small jungle, particularly in the dry zone districts in Sri Lanka. Ätto or Aetto is both an animate noun and a way of addressing a person respectfully. Due to the derogatory nature of the term, the Wanniyala-Aetto do not like to call themselves Veddas. The Wanniyala-Aetto have been living in Sri Lanka long before the country was populated by the Sinhalese (believed to have migrated from Bengal) and Tamil people. As Gananath Obeyesekere, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University puts it, Vedda people then lived in virtually every part of the island. After the Sinhalese had occupied many parts of Sri Lanka, the Wanniyala-Aetto were confined to the Vedi rata or Maha Vedi rata, the area that extends from the Hunnasgiriya hills and lowlands to the east coast. The fact that they live between the Tamil-speaking people on one side and the Sinhalese on the other has given rise to the notion of a buffer zone. While they are distinct from present-day Tamils and Sinhalese, they speak the majority language in the areas where they reside. Vedda villages in Anuradhapura District comprise about sixty communities, practising agriculture, just like their Sinhalese neighbours. The Vedda population in Anuradhapura, Wilachchiya, Muthur and Panama was assessed by Premakumara and Punchihewa at approximately 7350 – 7500 in 2012.

Wiveca told me that ‘Wanniyala-Aetto parents sometimes name their sons Wanniya. The suffix “–a” denotes masculine gender. The Wanniya or Uru Warige Wanniya, I referred to in my text is the son of late Uru Warige Tissahamy and Uru Warige Heenmenika.  Tissahamy was a well-known spokesperson for the Wanniyala-Aetto in their area and even more so, his son Wanniya.’  Wiveca explains, ‘we formed a great team of Wanniyala-Aetto comprising about 2,000 persons of all ages and settlements and collected ethnographic information and knowledge on Human Rights. We concentrated for many years on their, and other indigenous people’s struggle to survive. After Tissahamy’s death, my work continued with Wanniya, and now he is bringing up his son, Punchi Banda, who has shown interest in taking over the yoke.’

‘Wanniya is married to Morane Warige Heenmenika. She changed her warige name to the same as Wanniya when the government registered them for identity cards. Traditionally the warige name goes from the mother to her children, but the government has changed this [practice], causing insecurity for the offspring in case the father dies.’ Wiveca’s observation is interesting as the Muslims in the east coast name their children after their mother’s kudi (a system of exogamous matrilineal clan membership shared by both men and women and transmitted through women, usually mother). Kudi among the east coast Muslims, like Warige for the Veddas, refers to the clan of the mother. This common practice between the two ethnic groups on the east coast illustrates a culturally valid coincidence, more than an assimilation.    

I asked Wiveca whether she had collected any health-related data on the Wanniyala-Aetto, and she said she had conducted various health surveys. ‘I also worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in order to eliminate leprosy and Tuberculosis. I have many binders for health records. Since I am medically trained to some extent, I also had a small health clinic where I took care of minor ailment. My most important task was to teach where they could find natural ingredients in the forest to stay healthy. That way they did not need to buy pink, blue and yellow pills from the pharmacy’. Interestingly, she said ‘many [Veddas] used them [pills] as [beads in] necklaces and bangles instead because I told them the places they could find iron, C-vitamin, minerals, etc. I worked with the village herbalist/shaman. Also, my “mother” Morane Warige (M.W.) Sudumenica taught me a lot’.

When I asked her whether there were health problems other than CKDu among the Veddas, she said, ‘Yes, with time diabetes started to spread. It came with junk food, and with Cokes, Seven-Ups and Fantas. They also received welfare coupons for sugar and white flour among other things. The tea was no longer taken with honey or hackuru [Kithul jaggery], it was with refined sugar.  This is a common ailment among all indigenous people introduced to a “western” excessive food culture. Because people were uprooted from their natural environment to become confined inside compact villages with people of other places, maybe with latent diseases unknown to the Wanniyala-Aetto, epidemics spread easily, among that tuberculosis [is prominent]. Last, but indeed not the least, we have the introduction of alcohol, not only arrack, beer and casippo [illegal brews] but also whiskey and rum. The Wanniyala-Aetto were taken to perform on stage for the government and tourists on the west coast. In those occasions they were invited, with the best of intentions, to have drinks with the tourists who wanted to share a drink with them.  Also, it became an exchange of goods and services for the national park guards; they gave a bottle of alcohol for a blind eye on specific dates, a shot deer, honey or other delicacies from the jungle.’

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