Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ChaPtEr
4
healing and the african Culture
INtrODUCtION
An African indigenous system of medicine is composed of three essential parts: the active
medicinal substance, which may be plants, soil, insects, or animal parts; the spiritual forces, the
gods and God; and the human spirit, which includes the healer and the patient. Although plants
form the main active ingredients of the remedies dispensed by the medicine men and women, plants
perform other very important functions in the healing processes. In this latter role, plants are con-
sidered as sources of vital energy, and in some sense a participatory entity, rather than a lifeless
object used in healing. Traditional African medicine therefore presents an enigma to most Western-
trained minds. Although modern science has validated many of the remedies used in traditional
medical practice in Africa, the fundamental concept of this system of healing is far from properly
understood. Our perception of the African worldview, as Sylvia Williams once remarked, is “like
fragments of a mirrored glass held to the light, tracing history and its connections in a process that
can shimmer. With a slight turn away from the light, however, the glass becomes, cloudy and no
longer sh ines.”
1
This chapter presents this underexplored aspect of African traditional medicine.
It is generally accepted that any attempt to understand the fundamental conceptions of health
and disease among any people must deal with the broader attitudes that they have regarding life
itself. To most African communities, every object or form reflects in its existence the dualism of
life: a recognition and translation of reality into its composite parts, the physical and the psychic,
not as two separate entities but sections of an indivisible whole. Living is a religious act; heal-
ing, therefore, includes rituals, incantations, and medicines that will remedy both the diseased
body and the sick spirit. In this arrangement, all three groups are participatory elements in the
healing process. One increasingly important aspect of the African worldview is the belief that
human beings cannot be separated from nature. There is, therefore, no overwhelming desire to
conquer the natural world or dominate it. It is the healer's duty to ensure a symmetrical relation-
ship between his or her patient and the natural world. Regarding medicinal plants, as Ogbu Kalu
correctly stated in a paper on this subject:
2
Crucial to indigenous traditions is a religious cosmology with an awareness of the integral and whole
relationship of symbolical and material life. Ritual practices of the cosmological ideas which under-
pins society cannot be separated from daily round of subsistence practices. … By sacralizing nature,
indigenous worldviews purvey an ideology which is at once more eco-sensitive, eco-musical and
devoid of the harsh flutes of those who see nature as a challenge to be conquered, exploited and ruled.
They view the environment not in terms of competing interests but as the playing field on which all
other interests intersect.
Perhaps the overriding belief in African cosmology is that everything animate or inanimate has
a sort of spirit or power within it—a life force that can only be properly harnessed and utilized by
