How do African women balance and carry such heavy loads on their heads?

Question

Jennifer S Sempala · Accepted Answer

Carrying weights on the head is common in many parts of the world. People have carried burdens balanced on their head since ancient times, usually to do daily work.

Women practice head carrying out of necessity, they need their arms to help on other roles.

Carrying weights on the head start young, with small weights that proportionally increase over time. Meanwhile, their neck muscles get groomed in the process.

Research on women of the Luo and Kikuyu tribes of East Africa found that an African woman could carry a load equal to 70% of her body weight at 3.5 km/hr for 50% less energy that an American army recruit with the same load in a backpack. The carried these loads without expending any extra energy beyond what they’d use by walking around unencumbered.

Energetic cost of carrying loads: have African women discovered an economic way? [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3951538/ ]

In Africa, there are several religious ceremonies and traditional dances through which balancing an object on the head is a skillful feat.

Of course, everyone including African women would prefer mechanised methods of carrying loads if they were given a chance.

It begins with you. If you can, do something about it.

There are some benefits to head carrying below:

* You use your eyes more thus strengthening your peripheral vision
 * It has tremendous effects on your spinal posture, balance and organ function.
 * Your head is more stabilised, which causes less wear and tear on the cervical spine

Osazua Iruedo · Answer

They wear a soft cloth or towel on top of the head to protect the skull. It's simply the best way they know how to carry heavy loads.

You can't just wake up and say you want to place or carry heavy load on your head. They have learnt to carry things on the head since childhood.

It means the neck muscles have been strengtened from childhood. They have a tremendous posture balance and control. With time, they develop the ability to carry without using their hands.

The strength African women have is something amazing.

Lydia Namubiru · Answer

Necessity plus a lifetime of continual practice. When you (a female, or female presenting child) are born in a rural African setting, the assumption that you will do much of the fetching and load carrying required to run the family life, is built into your upbringing from start. So, you are trained for it. First you carry small loads, older women teach you to balance them on your head, you mimic them (as all kids do their elders) and you keep graduating upwards.

You can however lose the skill when you stop practicing. I used to be able to balance ‘age appropriate’ loads (e.g a 10 litre can of w

You can however lose the skill when you stop practicing. I used to be able to balance ‘age appropriate’ loads (e.g a 10 litre can of water) on my head when I was pre-teen but I haven’t needed to do it since then, so I now can’t.

Machiek Machiek Akuocpiir · Answer

The African women are taught the skill of carrying loads on their heads at the early ages. In some communities in Africa, girls, learns this around the ages of 6 to 8 and beyond. But, when they passes the ages of 15 without knowing how to carry something on their heads; they would never learn it again.

There’s also a simple trick; they use a piece of cloth which is rolled to avoid the load from hurting their heads when carrying it. That means, there’s no way one would carry a heavy load on the head without something protecting the head.

It’s a difficult thing, only for women to manage. A man would carry a load on the shoulder but not the head; this is also taught at a younger age. Men would do it better than women, if they were subjected to such training earlier.

I realized at the time I was younger; that the reason women carry heavy loads on their heads, is to avoid being tired. In that, if one is going to walk for a long distant; it’s far better to use your head than your shoulders to carry the load, in order to create a balance when moving.

Sagecreek Witt · Answer

They are a more advanced society than the west. If you look at African culture, it's tens of thousands of years figuring out what works best. The neck muscles, skin quality and many other things your average African woman has is far superior to their western counterparts. Instead of looking down at a computer screen developing a neck hump, they're out maintaining perfect posture, strengthening communal bonds and burning calories. Ever notice why they're often smiling? Google Greater Zimbabwe and you'll also see which culture developed superior architecture and stonework. Oh yeah and look at the wrinkles and crows feet around the eyes of 50–60 year old black Africans… oh wait, they don't have those either. Maybe the Western news ought to report these things.

Leda Ianic · Answer

My mother isn’t black or African, but she always says that when she was very young she did the same thing, as she had no water at home and had to carry heavy water jars on her head. She says that with practice you learn balance and therefore it’s very simple and not heavy at all.

Anonymous · Answer

Hey not only the women, some of us boys when still small on learning that it was easier, adopted the idea despite the scolding by women or girls laughing at me.

In actual sense I would do it once in a while because I am uncomfortable with the sweat on my back and armpits from the weight

Anonymous · Answer

This is, of course, a bit of ignorance merged with cultural relativity. Long story short, carrying heavy objects on one’s head is efficient in its use of muscles provided one is used to the balancing required (Africans often use a coil of cloth to help with this, BTW). It’s not just Africa though:

Another common method using the head and strong trapezius muscles of the neck, shoulders, and back is to fashion a tump line that transfers weight from the back and hips to the neck and shoulders. This is found all over the globe as well:

All images found using Quora’s search function for photos, no ownership implied. And for what it is worth the local tribe living where Abuja was built, the Bwari people, do not carry objects on their head, but rather on their shoulders, just like Europeans.

Anonymous · Answer

Men and women from all over the world, from the beginning of time, have found it useful to carry things on their heads.There’s no technique involved. If it’s heavy, you need to build up your strength and practice, a little.

Probably, women do it more because of female anatomy. Men have stronger upper bodies and can carry things in other ways.

Anonymous · Answer

I do think you can learn it is just that maybe you did not foillow the basics.

I being a boy learned to carry water containers on my head when I used to collect water from the spring. Many of the other children fawned on me due to that, but personally it solved my problem in that I did not tireout my hands.

In order to do that one of my cousins made sometghing which i would place on the head and then put the container on top, first days I would hold the container with two hands and as day went on used one hand and later no hnads spent about 10 days in all (making 2 trips in the morning and 2–3 trips in the evening of each day). Now being more than 50 I am sure I can no longer do it though I know that I need a period of adaptaction in order to get to do it.

It is just practice and using the right tools/methods

Doug White · Answer

The spinal column is actually quite strong, against compression. Perhaps you remember as a child, being able to perform a head stand, forming a tripod of the top of your head and the tips of your fingers and raising your legs toward the ceiling or sky. With a little practice, this position can be held for a long time. The only energy expended is the twitch of a muscle or two to steady and balance.

Your neck muscles are one exception, but they are just doing what they normally do. Their job, for all the days of your life, is maintaining a roundish mass of bone, blood and brain balanced upright a

Your neck muscles are one exception, but they are just doing what they normally do. Their job, for all the days of your life, is maintaining a roundish mass of bone, blood and brain balanced upright above the torso. If the head does not tilt, it requires little strain.

As a child, I had an afternoon newspaper delivery route. The press truck would deliver my customers’ bundles to a drop-off site a block away from home, but centrally located for several kids’ routes in the area. I had to bring my bundles home, to count, before completing my route, to give the paper notice to correct a shortage.

The easiest way to bring the bundles home, at times three of them, 8 to 10 inches thick, was to lift them in a stack and balance them on my head. The weight of the bundles becomes barely noticeable, as the back and the long muscles of the legs did all the work.

Carrying them in my arms would require exertion of my arm muscles to the limit, all the way home. If I tried tension, hooking the strings of the bundles with my fingers, my hands would have rope burns before reaching home.

A yoke is sometimes used to carry two buckets of water or other bundles. This also transfers the weight to the spine, through the shoulders. But the yoke has its own weight that reduces the productive load. The yoke has to be carried both ways. And it is a capital asset that may be beyond the means of the laborer.

Anonymous · Answer

I’m not sure why you are seeing this as an uniquely African women phenomenon. Perhaps you have seen pictures?

Throughout history, men and women of all cultures have carried stuff on their heads. I have done this as an American. Maybe women do it more often because of where we have the most power and strength: in our lower bodies. Men have broader and stronger upper bodies and a different body balance.

How? It just needs practice. When things are heavy, the weight is balanced straight down and fatigues muscles, less. Try it!

Daniel Poissant · Answer

It requires skill, it is hard on the neck after a while but it is very energy efficient.

If you carry things in a backpack the load will exert a pull backward that you have to counteract. This requires an effort and hence an energy expenditure on top of that needed to carry the load.

If you can carry the same load on your head the force is the load exerts is straight downward so you don’t have to also counteract a pull.

Iredia Uyi · Answer

Because loads on heads are much easy to manuever with through crowds with than loads on wheelbarrows or carts. My Dad had stroke and I once found it better to carry him on my back than use the available wheelchair. Wheelchairs need space. Too cumbersome asking people to excuse us.

David Blyth · Answer

Training and practice
It’s healthier as the spinal stress is better distributed than carrying by hand

Arpit Dubey · Answer

Maintaining balance depends on information received by the brain from the eyes, muscles and joints, and vestibular organs in the inner ear. When this system is disrupted by damage to one or more components through injury, disease, or the aging process you may experience impaired balance accompanied by other symptoms such as dizziness, vertigo, vision problems, nausea, fatigue, and concentration difficulties.Balance is the ability to maintain the body’s center of mass over its base of support. A properly functioning balance system allows humans to see clearly while moving, identify orientation with respect to gravity, determine direction and speed of movement, and make automatic postural adjustments to maintain posture and stability in various conditions and activities.

Maintaining balance depends on information received by the brain from three peripheral sources: eyes, muscles and joints, and vestibular organs .

Roop Kaur · Answer

In the standing on one leg with eyes closed test, men and women were able to hold the position for less than two seconds were three times more likely to die before the age of 66 than those who could hold it for 10 seconds or more. Those unable to do the test at all were more likely to die in the following 13 years.

Alan Feldman · Answer

Need some more details here, but physics is singular in construction, and therefore you should write: “How does the physics work?”

Shel · Answer

😂🤣😂🤣🤦‍♂ Thank the center of gravity. the feet doesnt really do anything. try standing on 1 foot.. 🤣😂🤣😂.Center of gravity will change automatically. unless your initiating face drops 🤦‍♂.

Gerardo Aguirre · Answer

Our arches and triangular foot structure spreads out the weight of our bodies evenly, allowing the body to correct for the inevitable swaying of the legs during stance.