The recent collective use of herbal therapy to treat symptoms of COVID-19 reminded me of my own exposure to traditional therapy, including spiritualism.
You see, when I left Makerere University, I found myself a modest place of abode in Nakulabye to be close to the University. That is the place I had called home and school for the past three years. I had made memories I was not ready to abandon yet. Completely anyway. So, I would sometimes casually walk through the university as if to get a sense of belonging. Leaving school without immediate employment makes you rudderless. Not a student and not an employee either. It is an undefined state coated with confusion, on can smell it off you. I had decided that I would be starting my own life at that point, and I was not planning to go back home. The choice of accommodation then meant I could stay close to friends, some of whom were finishing up their degrees, Kampala City was a walking distance away on a broke day, and the affordable kikumi kikumi food kiosks would serve as provision for many lunches and suppers during that time.There was another important reason why I did not want to go so far away from the university. The library and the internet. During that time the internet was not as affordable or as accessible as it is now. The university however had a series of internet centers which were free to students, and if one’s identification still showed a few months left even after the final exam, they were still students, no? I intended to use that opportunity to check my yahoo email regularly, not expecting many jobs to come through there, but who knows, some scholarships may. I was positive.
None came.
But the library delivered. I would walk by once a week or so to read newspapers and specifically look through the job section. One day, at the School of Education library, I came across a job that I thought I qualified for, from an NGO which incidentally had programs in my home area, village inclusive. Concern Worldwide was running an HIV/AID capacity building project in Butambala and Gomba counties. In my interview sitting, I told the panel, that they would be paying me for work I would ideally have done for free, because I would be working among my people.There were five a field area each fitted with an office. Maddu was the farthest and because I was the newest field officer, it is where I was placed. I was handed the keys to a big Suzuki TX motorbike, a few reports, office keys and it is to those that I added a few of my personal effects and rode the 94 kms from Mpigi to Maddu. I would stay for about two and half years from that day. On top of supporting community-based organizations in my area, I would also take point on a key stakeholder group in fighting HIV/AIDs; traditional healers.
You see, in a rural setting, health services are far between and transportation is either by foot, or by bicycle. By the time I was in Maddu, there were about two taxis that would leave Kyaayi near Sembabule through Maddu towards Kampala quite early in morning and back in the evening. If you missed any of those two vans, you would have to postpone your journey to the next day. For people who needed any treatment of any sort therefore, it was either a lengthy walk to the health center or just don’t let that taxi leave you.
Traditional healers then became a trusted and reliable resource for consultation and treatment for our target groups, people living with HIV/AIDS. They were the reliable confidants and held family and medical history. If a patient, say, a pregnant mother who had been in his care developed complications it was he who organized to refer the mother to Maddu health Centre for example. But modern health practioners did not recognize their practice and therefore were neither welcoming nor supportive. The patients suffered in the process.
Our project decided to bring them into the same room. To talk. Maybe even share how each approached medicine. The drama that followed was quite memorable. The modern health practioners felt like they had been slapped in the face. How dare we, they questioned, instead of preaching against witchcraft instead put it on a pedestal! The traditional healers spat at the idea! Are you insinuating, they queried rather angrily, that we don’t know how to do our jobs? That our bajajja-the spirits are incompetent so as to need training from those basawo abazungu! They also had another fear, that by bringing them into the same space we would be asking them about their practice which knowledge we would then take and use. All valid concerns.
Our identified trainer has an interesting profile, he was a medical doctor who also practiced as a traditional healer. Dr Sekaggya was the head of Prometra Uganda, an outfit that was interested in traditional therapy and research. He spoke both languages in this instance.
We identified four categories of traditional healers. There were traditional birth attendants, mostly women who served to deliver many mothers who would otherwise have no access to any support during this life-giving time. We had herbalists who held the knowledge of healing through plants and would overlap the other three categories. Some of these didn’t even identify as healers, just knowledgeable people in the community who were consulted whenever one needed treatment and they knew a tree leaf, bark or root. There were traditional bone setters whose unique knowledge or repairing broken bones placed them in a rare stead. Then were the spiritualists whose work comes to life when fully possessed by spirits. It is this group that created most challenges. Many of them did not even sign up immediately to the training even though they agreed that more knowledge is important. They needed permission from the ones they serve, bajjaja. When, during training, we asked how they determined which medicine cured what, we were met with more blank stares.
“I don’t know”, many answered. “I am just a mukongozzi, a medium”, they explained. “I am not the healer, am just the chosen one to be used by the spirits!
In order to win them over, we approached their leader in that area, to sell the idea and also seek his permission.
The moment you enter a traditional healer’s shrine, all your senses arise to alert. Your nose will pick up the smell of moldy bark cloth and drying tree bark. You will notice several leaves on branches hung in the rafters under the thatch roof. You have to leave your shoes at the door. The spirits don’t entertain kajanja. Your feet will pick out the comfortable feel of aged mats and grass, sometimes the fluff of goatskin. There are no chairs in the shrine. All must seat, properly as if at a communal meal. A drum was seated on the side near the healer, a couple of curvy handled gourds fashioned into shakers lay on top.
Our business was to consult the chief healer. Not for health reasons, but rather his thoughts on creating linkages between traditional and modern health practioners.
He studied us with deep set eyes, listening calmly as if to a child with a silly idea, his facial structure not betraying his thoughts. He sat unmoving, in the same cross-legged position the entire time, as if transfixed. Towards the end of our proposition, he turned a little.
“Who will you be training then, me or bajjaja?” “Just you”. We answered.
“But I am useless to you without them,” he persisted.
“We believe that they deliver through you. And you are the representative where they are not.”
He would later join us. It was then agreed that the interactions would be minimal between both groups. And they would only be meetings not trainings. While the modern health practioners would eventually learn home based case, counselling and the like, the traditional healers received training on hygiene, record keeping, transmission of HIV and protection of the environment. Meanwhile in the community, I had earned the moniker, officer wabalogo.
Not even in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined that social work would turn out this exciting. I sat into that herbal training classes in with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Here’s a traditional healer’s class moderated by a medical doctor and self-confessed traditional healer. I skipped the spiritual sessions.
In the end, we managed to get the two types of healers talking, to the betterment of their mutual patients, we hope.
And with the current pandemic, related concoctions, and steaming, we have all in some way turned into traditional healers, at least of ourselves.