Black Henna: Hazardous Allergies and Invisible Bodies

Abstract

a serious accident happened to me at the end of 2019, during the last two weeks of my dissertation field research on the global production of a Chinese medicine, ejiao (donkey-hide gelatin). By then, I had completed a year and a half of fieldwork in Kenya, but my daily activities were concentrated mainly in the capital, Nairobi, and several inland counties where the donkey slaughterhouses are located. I rarely went to the eastern coastal areas. at the end of the year, the annual Lamu Culture Festival was to be held on Lamu Island, including a donkey race that was related to my research. I finally had a good reason to travel to the east coast to visit the historic island famous for its swahili culture. On the night before the opening of the cultural festival, I rushed to Lamu.