Social anthropologists working in Sub-Saharan Africa have paid little attention tothe evil-eye belief compared to witchcraft or the spirits of the dead, and its descriptionis fragmentary. This is related to the peripheral or minor part played by the evil eye aswell as the primacy of other causes of misfortune in social life. This article highlightsseveral aspects of the belief and the practices of the evil eye among the Gusii ofsouthwestern Kenya, such as: methods of the evil eye, their effects, their treatments, symbolic features of the belief, and social relationships between evil-eyed persons andtheir victims.
Ethnic groups referred to here for comparative analysis include the Teso, the Luo, the Kipsigis, and the Logoli in Kenya, and the Nuer in Sudan. Despite manydivergences, the evil-eye belief in these societies is shown to have several significantfeatures in common. Evil-eyed people are not held personally responsible for anydamage caused by their evil eye. Damage caused by the evil eye is generally much lessserious and infrequent compared to other supernatural causes of misfortune. Evil-eyed people and their victims are, in most cases, not related in terms of kinship, residence or economic interest. These features are compared and contrasted withthose of witchcraft belief.

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The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between a language and aculture in the light of the borrowing from the Kara language observed in the Koegulanguage. The main cultural characteristics of Koegu lie in hunting and gathering, and Kara people introduced new cultivating methods in the downstream area of theOmo river.
The Koegu language has borrowed extensively from the Kara language with regardto vocabulary and grammar. There are some tendencies in borrowing.
(1) Regarding the vocabulary not related to the main cultural characteristics, thatis, the whole vocabulary except for that of hunting and gathering, words withrestricted semantic fields tend to be replaced by borrowed words, and words withgeneral and wide semantic fields are not likely to be replaced. (2) In the case of thevocabulary related to the main cultural characteristics, that is, the vocabulary of hun-ting and gathering, words with general and wide semantic fields tend to be replaced byborrowed words, while words with restricted semantic fields are not likely to be replac-ed. Thus it can be concluded that a culture influences exchange of speech forms.

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The Konso of southern Ethiopia are agricultural people, skilled at cultivating fieldson stone terraces. They also have excellent techniques of cotton weaving, metalwork, pottery and other handicrafts. This paper focuses on Konso pots in an attempt toclarify their meaning, not simply in their important everyday role as utensils for cook-ing, storage or alcohol-making, or as commercial items to be traded on the market, but as symbolic objects that demonstrate the structure of society.
The Konso place the pots on the roofs of their houses. There are several socialnorms concerning pots, and the rank of each family in Konso society is shown by thepresence or absence of a pot on the roof and by the type of pot. By understanding whatsort of norms govern the use of pots in Konso society, I was able to deduce four normswhich demonstrate the relation between the pot on the roof and their social structure.

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