Fulani Medicine in Northern Cameroon
Jean Paulin Mengue Me Ndongo*
Department of History Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences the University of Yaounde Cameroon, Cameroon
Submission: November 04, 2019; Published:November 19, 2019
*Corresponding author:Jean Paulin Mengue Me Ndongo, Department of History Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences the University of Yaounde 1 Cameroon
How to cite this article:Jean Paulin Mengue Me Ndongo. Fulani Medicine in Northern Cameroon.The Visualization through the thermoluminescence Dating Techniques. Glob J Arch & Anthropol . 2019; 11(2): 555806. DOI: 10.19080/GJAA.2019.11.555806
Abstract
This study is focusing on a new approach of some basic concepts mentioned down as keywords. The inquiry was made from November 2006 until April 2018 followed by analysis coming from the Fulani healers. Data and information were collected through direct interview, observation, fieldwork research and qualitative analysis by using the interdisciplinary approach. The analysis is full of significations and led us to a new understanding of the African history. Firstly, it is important to know that the African traditional medicine remains a popular medicine strongly linked to Africans despite the colonization process and the existence of the modern medicine. Secondly, a new problematic related to the conception and the understanding of the African traditional medicine and its practices can now be perceived in a particular aspect where the Fulani and their culture, the religious background, the socioeconomic dimension and its medical implications led us thoroughly to understand one of the most important community in Africa. Finally, the oral tradition as an important source used in this study is a rich and fundamental way to the development of the African history.
Keywords: Fulani; Medicine; Sickness; Remedy; Health
Introduction
This study aims to give a new approach to the key concepts mentioned below. The survey and analysis of the data was carried out among traditional health practitioners from the north of Cameroon from November 2006 to April 2018 according to a set of data collection methods ranging from direct interviews to observation, field surveys and surveys. to quantitative analysis. The preferred approach is that of interdisciplinarity. The resulting analyzes are significant and lead to a new understanding of African history. First of all, it is important to know that traditional African medicine remains a practice deeply linked to Africans despite the colonial imposition and the existence of modern medicine. Secondly, a new issue related to the conception and understanding of African traditional medicine and its practices can then be newly perceived among Fulani from the cultural, religious and socio-economic angle which can lead to a better knowledge of this important community of people from Africa. Thirdly, the oral tradition that has been used extensively in this study remains a rich and fundamental source that can serve as a basis for African historiography [1].
Introduction
This work leads us to discover one of the most complex communities of the black continent: the Fulani. The analysis of the surveys carried out leads anyone interested in understanding the African in general and the Fulani in particular to perceive his conception of his group, medical practice, illness, remedy and health. The conduct of such a reflection could not happen without first planting the theoretical framework to finally build the conceptual framework that is the backbone of this work. The facts observed in Africa and in particular in northern Cameroon make it possible to assert that the healing field is confirmed and broadened not only with traditional medicine but with religion, especially Islam on the basis of the Koran, which constitute effective respondents against diseases and suffering. Indeed, the experiences in the ministry of healing are increasingly known in Africa and we have seen all sorts of unimaginable miraculous cures including prevention, treatment of major diseases, pathologies and exorcism. In addition, the deep attachment of African populations to these types of therapies demonstrates that we should still and always relies on these practices that should be studied further. This is a logic advocated by famous African researchers like Elikia Mbokolo or Joseph Ki-Zerbo, which consists of a study of health and medical practices in Africa. It is now necessary to specify the theoretical framework of this study and to identify the quintessence of the key concepts.
The theoretical framework
This study is in the fields of medical anthropology and medical history, but we will insist on the first aspect.
The issues of medical anthropology today address unprecedented dimensions ranging from ethnomedicine, ethnopharmacology to anthropologies of the body, disease or suffering. It is a landscape diversified by its objects as by its grounds. In short, an anthropology of the politics of life. It is the study of the representation of the disease, the itineraries of the sick, the role of therapists, therapeutic practices of all kinds, including the rituals of healing studied according to the sociocultural system in which they fit. Indeed, for some, the question of therapeutic efficacy is more important than the relationship to the social. However, it would be necessary to focus on the place of representations of the disease and the institutions associated with it. Because, in our African cultures, for example, the representations of the disease are often associated with those which concern, for example, the notion of person or beliefs in witchcraft. Medical anthropology is the study of medical phenomena as culture (disease, reaction to disease). Given that culture is the essential component of health. Health problems that originate in men’s lifestyle and work are communicated in a culturally determined manner. These health problems are lived and are categorized according to cultural contexts. Medical anthropology pays special attention to how to think about illness and to treat it, that is to say: “Popular and professional concepts, the causes of health problems, the nature of treatments ..., the therapists who apply these treatments, the processes by which individuals seek help and the institutions that govern the sociocultural space of health”. Raymond Masse [2] 1. The key concepts of medical anthropology reflect a desire to expand the analysis of health and illness, a privileged area of medical knowledge, to popular data. To do this, two major distinctions are used in the analysis of behaviors and conceptions relating to the disease: the emic/ethical distinction.
The emic approach respects “the principles and values specific to a given actor in a given culture” Raymond Masse [2], it reflects popular conceptions of illness and health in a given cultural context. The ethical approach respects the conditions of scientific research characterized by a rational, objective and independent knowledge of the observer; it refers to the universal dimension of medical knowledge. The Anglo-Saxons make a distinction between the term’s disease / illness / sickness. For Raymond Masse [2]. The term disease refers to abnormalities in the structure or functioning of organs ... This is the disease in its biological sense ... The term illness refers to the perceptions and experiences experienced by the individual in relation to health problems of a biomedical order (diseases) or any other socially stigmatized physical or psychological condition.
In other words, this term corresponds to the individual subjective experience of a state of pathological disturbance. The term sickness corresponds to the description of the socialized disease; because it is approached as social representation and symbolic burden by the whole of social group and that it underlies the etiological models and the preventive behaviors or the search for help. Raymond Masse [2]. In the literature we have on traditional and especially African societies, there is a plurality of representations and therapeutic systems of a disease. Anthropologists and sociologists have been able to identify in each social group a body specialized in medicine. This is highlighted by the studies of Alfred Adler & Andras Zempleni [3] on the Moundang and those of Andre Podlewski on Mafa 2. Ethnologists also noted the importance attached to the maintenance of health and disease prevention by African societies. The third important element of anthropologists in traditional African societies is the collective organization of the practice of care and care of the sick. The main theme of anthropologists and sociologists is the social dimension and not the efficiency and rationality of traditional medicine.
The study that we have undertaken considers the social and conceptual dimension, the manifestations and the consequences of the modes of treatment while integrating the moments of break, a rupture which reflects a dynamic in the evolution of the concept of medical system of the Fulani 3. This study favored a multidisciplinary approach. It uses the data of anthropology, sociology, orthopsychiatry, ethnomedicine or medical geography which are for us the raw material. Also, the present work gives a particular interest to a certain number of inductive words (Fulani, medicine, health, disease, remedy).
The conceptual framework and illustration
The Fulani
About the name Fulani: Fulani, Foulbe or Fulbe (singular Pullo) are known by various names. The most common name in English-speaking or English-speaking countries are Fulaani. This is how the Hausa of Nigeria call them. It is also one of the names by which the Arabs designate them. Research remains to be done to know if there is a relation between this name and the Arabic word fulaan (“such”). The French call them Peul or Peuhl, while the Germans refer to them as Full. Anthropologists and linguists have preferred Fula or Fulah. And the others call them Felita, Felled, Pulsar, Fila. At a seminar held at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria from 16 to 21 July 1979, sponsored by the African International Institute (IAI), it was decided that the name Foul be or Fulbe by which the people themselves are named was to be used. This seminar can be taken as authority since it brought together seventy-five scholars representing eight African countries. A third of the assistants were Foul be themselves. Thus, we will use the name Foul be, Fulbe or Paul (with the initial in capital letters and not granted in kind and in number) to designate the people or the culture. It will also be used as an adjective that is also not granted in gender and number. Thus, will we speak of medicine among Fulani, Foulbe or Fulbe? Where reference is made to one person, the name Pull can be used. The other decision of this seminar concerning the nomenclature was that the language of Fulbe, Fulani should be called Fulfulde and pulsar. The need for a double designation comes from the fact that Pulaar is the expression used in Senegambia and in some parts of Mali and Guinea. The rest and especially Cameroon call this Fulfulde language.
Current general data on Fulani: The Fulani are close to forty million people in fifteen countries, from Senegal to Sudan, including Cameroon. They share the same mythical origins, the same historical references made of theocratic states like those of Machina, Fouta-Toro or Sokoto, and the same emblematic characters (Ousmane Dan Fodio, Sekou Amado, Amado Barry ...) The same reserve also, a subtly coded savoir-vivre (the palace) and a hierarchy of iron that urbanity and modernism are slowly eroding. In Cameroon, the Fulani occupy the North- West region and the three northern regions (Adamou, North and Far-North) with an area of more than two hundred thousand square kilometers. They are estimated at about eight million out of a population of more than twenty-two million inhabitants4. Fulani visited in North-Cameroon practice a sedentary life based on agriculture and others are nomads and practice breeding. The cow occupies a mythological place in their life. They are the ones who introduced zebus from India to Africa. One belief is that Guano, the supreme god of the Fulani, created the world from a drop of milk. As a base for the Fulani of pastoral tradition, the precious liquid (kadam) is sacred. The Paul identifies with Pulaski, which is an art of living, a way of being woven with subtitle codes found in all latitudes: self-control, a certain reserve, courage, sense of purpose, honor and sharing. The Fulani society is very hierarchical. It is subdivided into noble castes (warrior aristocracy, courtiers, and marabouts) and non-noble ones (griots, craftsmen, captives). The answers that Fulani bring to sickness and suffering are specific. They reflect the vitality and dynamics of medical approaches. Medicine among the Fulani of North-Cameroon is a synthesis of many experiences accumulated both by the Fulani in their migration from North Nigeria to Adamawa than by the allied peoples (Hausa and Kanuri) and indigenous groups. The medicinal compositions may vary from one medium to another, but the substrate of the active ingredient remains the same. In the same way, conjugal formulas can take on contextual and even conjectural ritual variations. Here, the encounter between local medical practices and the Islamic religion has contributed to a substantial enrichment of so-called traditional medicine, to the point where it is difficult for an uninitiated to be able to distinguish and draw the dividing line between the recommendations. Islamic and medical traditions of Muslims, fauna, flora, water and minerals are regularly used as important sites for the emergence and revitalization of medicine over time. But the environmental issues remain a great concern for the conservation of medicinal plants which are destroyed by people and the problem related to the climate changes. It should be noted that descent, companionship, competence and professionalism are at the center of the concerns of medical practitioners in the Fulani. The control of skills is usually done by peers, within the corporation, by the population and, recently, by decentralized state structures. The scourges such as fraud, marabouts or quackery that distort the image of health actors are regularly fought on all sides, without disappearing completely from the social environment in North- Cameroon. Public authorities trying to organize and regulate the unconventional medicine sector encourage the visibility of this medicine in the public space, recognizing it an important role in the supervision of populations.
The medicine
According to the Universal Dictionary 5, medicine is the science of diseases and the art of curing diseases. Medicine as “art” is the ability to provide care to restore balance in the body or restore health. Since Hippocrates, medicine has become a science and an art, but it is no longer a religion, nor a religious fact. The strangest thing is to find always in Hippocrates the first bases of natural medicine, the oldest scientific medical principles, to which the highest medical and scientific authorities are still obliged to recognize the merits and to specify the contours semantic. Thus, over time, a new light appears on the concept of medicine, which, according to Mbonji Edjenguèlè [4,5], can be perceived as: “The art of providing care that can be words, energy or ingredients to put the individual back in a condition that is socially accepted as normal and in keeping with the harmony of the individual and group organism. Art or science, medicine is a body of knowledge and therapeutic procedures relating to the human body and its correlation to a vision of life, nature, and well-being. As a social practice, an institution inherent to biological and social life, medicine is present in every society and depends on the group’s conception of disease and health. Intercultural confrontation thus implies a contrasting of conceptions and different visions of disease, health and medicine; and it is not uncommon for perspective to be difficult to free oneself from the temptation to see the other only through the carnations of one’s own culture”6.
In the context of this study, it is reasonable not to depart from this perception and emphasize that medicine resorts to the means offered by religion, nature and culture. In other words, medicine as well as religion (Islam) has been constantly adapting and infiltrating certain African communities’ victim of human suffering. Thus, particular medical practices stemming from “prophetic medicine”, “Islamic medicine” or “Arab-Muslim medicine” are observed in North-Cameroon. This “prophetic medicine”, “Islamic medicine” or “Arab-Muslim medicine” coupled with traditional African medicine is the fabric of medicine that is observed and practiced among the Fulani.
The health, the disease and the remedy
In addition to the concept of “medicine”, the present work also puts a lot of emphasis on the African conception of “disease”, “health” and “cure”. This conception, which is intended to be “anthropo-socio-cosmos-biological” according to the words of Mbonji Edjenguèlè [4,5], refers to an eminently same universe, to a world saturated with meaning. Hence the important place of diagnosis and prognosis in African medicine. Belief in African cosmogonies and Abrahamic religions leads to the evidence that evil, misfortune and disease are disruption, disharmony, failure of the order of things inherent to creation, to the existence of the world; they are therefore of divine, meta-human and sociohuman origin. At the dawn of things, from the very genesis of the existence of reality and humanity, evil or misfortune has appeared. According to the cosmogonist texts of the Dogon of Mali, God-Amma in his process of creation was exposed to the caprices of the divinity of the Earth which he had to excise to take it by force; this union was unfortunately born of the Jackal instead of the expected twins. Symbol of divine difficulties, the Jackal has also become the vector of disorder in the world of humans. Without dwelling more on this account of Marcel Griaule [6]7, it is not difficult to observe that God-Amma himself is the victim of an annoyance which he overcomes by proving his power, and subsequently, disturbs the order things by provoking the advent of Thos Aureus, the Jackal whose birth surprises and then detonates. In the final analysis, Mbonji Edjenguèlè [4,5] 8 emphasizes that evil is here “divine”, “meta-human” since it expresses itself in the unexpected “limit” of God-Amma, the excision of the Earth, the rape and the birth of a singleton. Evil is in the occurrence of what was not planned, which is there and that it is now important to think and live; it is socio-human from the moment when man becomes the vector, where he is seized to give it body, to allow it to materialize.
By health, one can generally hear the absence of the disease. In 1946, the WHO Constitution defined it as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity”. The Universal Dictionary 9 states that health is the “state of the living being, and particularly of the human being, in which the functioning of all the organs is harmonious and regular”. Health, in the broadest possible sense of the French word, better known as “well-being”, or more simply the “present life”, is according to Eric de Rosny an aspiration so common and primordial in Africa, that the characters in charge of control it holds an eminent place. This article, which attempts to understand health, leads us to analyze the disease under the African approach. Indeed, this approach privileges the symbolic dimension of the man explaining his nature and his environment. It is no longer a question of absorbing health problems only in medical terms because the efforts in this area will always be disappointing as long as health is not seen as an integral part of social, economic and cultural development. In a caricatured way, we can define the disease as the absence of health. This lack of health can be expressed physically or biologically and even psychologically.
To define the disease on the physical plan, let us readily accept Pierre Daco’s [7] 10 following meaning: “the disease is defined as the failure of the natural self-management of the organism; the reactions of this organism are only useless and harmful pathological signs which translate this failure and that the traditional therapy must suppress to cure the patient “. This is a definition that is limited to the physical and biological aspects of the individual. It can then apply indifferently to human beings, animals and even plants. In any case, the purpose of the therapy here is to suppress the disease, to allow the sick individual to recover the cure. This one can be true, total and complete. It can also be done for the purpose of suppressing the expression of the disease. This is the case of palliative therapy where one does not obtain a true cure but a survival without protection. Now, we have known since the most remote times that man is distinguished from other animals by the fact that he is a psychosomatic being made of both a body and a soul. We can see from this point the inadequacies of this first definition, which retains of disease only its physical dimension. One could even say this definition is fishing for excess biology. The disease psychologically: these are several kinds of attacks on human psychology. The term psyche must be known in this perspective as the set of functions that allow both to maintain the constancy of the ego and to establish with the outside world meaningful exchanges on the emotional and behavioral level. Multiple and subtle mechanisms of adaptation and defense allow the mentally healthy subject to invent the thousand ways to become what he is, to remain himself while responding with behavior adapted to frustrations and constraints. And his frustrations can be a degrading cause of personality if not. Subjects suffering from this category of disease are affected not in their intelligence but suffer from the integration of their personality which is in opposition to the demands of the surrounding world.
The disorder that is taking hold of the victim here can be translated on several levels. It may be a change in the meaning of the world as it is in the delusion that characterizes psychosis. It can be a structuring of the personality as it is the case of schizophrenia. It can be a pain related to the difficulty of integration. This is the case of neurotic anxiety. The least that can be said is that the various pathological modes mentioned above often coexist in combination or may vary in the same individual. In view of these first two definitions, we can say in a general way that they involve Cartesian rationality and are more or less esoteric science. It is quite different from the African conception which nevertheless does not ignore the first two. The African interpretation of the disease can be related to parapsychology. This is defined as the study of the hypothetical faculties of the psyche such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis. Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, retransition is grouped into the category of extrasensory perception since these phenomena would allow the body to inform itself about the surrounding world through unknown ways independent of normal sensory channels.
The disease is perceived as a loss of identity by the African11. Indeed, more than anywhere else, in Africa, physical and mental illnesses are experienced as an aggression, an insurmountable insult to the human. They raise three essential questions in the opinion of Berthe Lolo [8]12:
a) The question of vulnerability, and thus of the nonomnipotence of the individual: “One can reach me. »
b) The question of the persecutory and / or destructive desire of the other, and therefore of the rejection by the other: “One does not love me, I am not indispensable. »
c) The question of the manifestations of the destructive act of the other: “My body does not belong only to me. »
When the patient confesses his complaint, he intends to solve the equation of these questions raised and recalled by Berthe Lolo [8]13:
“Heal me of my problems; above all, tell me who does not love me and wishes me dead; made me become invincible. To whom will he seek answers? Is it the traditional trader? The spiritual career? Western doctor chemotherapist? 14 In reality, it will be a combination of the three practices, all in interactive exchanges. The African conception of the disease in the presence of the tough cases largely participates in parapsychology (seeing in the future and the past). It generally sees behind all the morbid sufferings the invisible hand of a sorcerer who has precisely the faculty to act at a distance on the other.
The disease is interpreted here in the term of a foreign pathogenic element which has been sent to the patient by a third person casting the spell from which one must get rid. The health care practitioner who plays the intermediary role between the patient and his executioner must provide his client with a model of identification and power considered as the only one capable of overcoming the unfortunate episode he is going through. He must extirpate the spell cast to his client, reduce it to its simplest expression, put it out of harm’s way, and even return it to the sender. Whatever the reference frame chosen, the illness ultimately appears as the expression of a disharmony, an imbalance or a breach of law to which a remedy or an appropriate drug should be found. What is the cure? What is the medicine? 15
The remedy according to Larousse is “a medicine; a means, a measure to combat a moral suffering, to overcome a disadvantage, to solve a difficulty. For Quillet [9], the remedy is a “substance or preparation, used to fight a disease [...] What serves to prevent, to overcome, to stop some misfortune, some inconvenience, some disgrace [...]” 16 By contrast, the drug is, according to the Universal Dictionary [10] 17, “a substance or composition with curative or preventive properties with regard to human or animal diseases. Preparation, amulet intended to cure or protect against diseases, bad luck, etc. What emerges from the Great Encyclopedic Larousse 18, it is held that the drug is a substance intended, by its physicochemical qualities to fight a disorder or lesion, to bring healing. It is therefore necessary that the drug has properties antagonistic to those of the morbid state 19. These two terms which have almost the same root (mederi) are synonymous and valid for overcoming the disease but it is reasonable to remember that in the African context, the disease does not only have biological causes.
It also has supernatural causes beyond our comprehension. Therefore, it is necessary to use the remedy or the “appropriate” medicine in order to fight a physical or moral suffering, to overcome a disadvantage, to solve a difficulty. It should be remembered that there is a big difference between Africans, Americans, Asians, Europeans and Westerners in the approach, the definition, the conception and the representation of the drug because the medicine intervenes before the cure is to say that he is asked to obtain healing. The European or Western drug is essentially clinical and chemical whereas the African drug is rather natural because this drug is recognized and judged as having undeniable therapeutic value. This is the basis of the evidence that the cure is the medicine that heals.
In the context of traditional African medicine, medications or remedies espouse certain cultural and environmental realities then take the following forms:
a) Rituals. These are procedures or sacrifices necessary to appease the gods in a particular form of treatment or situation. They can understand the sacrifices of a beast, the performance of certain dances, the ingestion of certain foods or parts of food. These rituals create the appropriate atmosphere for the traditional treatment of individuals, and no traditional healer would give up. Rituals can therefore be used for preventive or curative purposes;
b) The incantations. It is a form of word play written or transmitted orally in poetic form, apparently to concentrate the forces in a remedy;
c) The medicinal plants. These are all plants that contain one or more substances that can be used for therapeutic purposes or that are precursors in the synthesis of useful drugs; synthesis of useful drugs;
d) The concoctions. This term refers to a preparation (soup, drink, etc.) made with many ingredients. The term “concoction” is sometimes confused with that of “decoction”. A large number of preparations used in traditional medicine are decoctions in the pharmaceutical sense;
e) Macerations. They are prepared by placing the plant material with all the extraction liquid in a closed container for a few days. The content is after filtered and pressed. The liquid extracts are thus consumed by assay.
Still in the context of traditional medicine, remedies can also be presented in various forms:
a. Infusions and herbal teas. According to James A Duke [11]: There are two kinds of herbal teas: infusions and decoctions. An infusion is similar to most people’s idea of what tea is. There is, however, a big difference between the tea we drink and the infusions of medicinal plants. When you make tea, you probably dip a tea bag in the hot water, stir it a little, and drink the beverage. If you are preparing an herbal infusion, however, it should be allowed to infuse for ten to twenty minutes so that the therapeutic phytochemicals can pass from the plant to the water20.
b. The amulets. These are objects that are worn on oneself by superstition and to which one attribute a magical power of protection, of lucky charm, to protect oneself from attacks, dangers, diseases, etc. This term may also mean “gray-gray” or “talisman” whose port is common in North Cameroon.
If we are trying to sketch out the guidelines for the experiences of traditional African medicine, it is possible to say that the latter conveys a holistic and holistic conception of the disease, of health and therefore of medicine. The image of the African philosophy of life stipulating an ontological continuity between the components of the universe, a structured, hierarchical universe. Because everything is linked and interdependent, health is order and disorder of the game playing on the set, and vice versa; the disease is transgression of human, social and cosmic laws, witch aggression, message of election by a spirit like the Megni-nsi of West-Cameroon. The requirement of harmony induces cautious behaviors that, in terms of health, translate into hygiene and care preventive; that is, traditional African medicine places a special emphasis on prevention, considering the many “shielding” processes deployed here and there. Because in reality, what is shielding? Mbonji Edjenguèlè [4,5] responds by saying that the shielding is: The prevention of witchcraft attacks, prevention of eventualities of poisoning, accidents caused, and spells cast. This is not to say that prevention in the ordinary sense did not exist in African societies; the mothers of the newborns who try to taste a tiny part of the baby’s stool to prevent him from getting sick, those who purge their baby with water in which they have washed the towel used for their first lovemaking after childbirth, know that they do so as a preventive behavior of childhood diseases.
Prevention is also present in the cleanliness of the environment, the body hygiene: old combs, toothbrushes with lianas and roots, shoes in animal skins, brooms in branches, soaps and palm kernel oils, sports activities, are there to show concern for keeping the human body healthy and in good shape 21. In case of sickness, it is possible to note that the patient’s entourage is engaged in questioning about the nature and origin of the disease. With past experiences, loved ones have the opportunity to speculate on the state of one of their own before bringing the case to a specialist. From the Greek diagnosis, (-gnosis: knowledge, dia: through), the diagnosis is the process of arriving at the knowledge of the state of health through the symptoms and signs that an individual present.
Among the many opportunities given to the environment … to subdue the nature of the evil ruining the health is prominently the observation of which we have extensively discussed the ways or the implications in a book specialized on medicine among the Fulani 22. Obviously, the individual in Africa is between mystics and mystifies. It is essential to convene for this purpose Ismaïla Diagne to review the appropriate caregivers in the African environment. The first difficulty here, and not the least, is for the layman, the skeptic, to lay the groundwork for moving cautiously in an area where both invoke hidden forces invariably and delight in a relative irrationality, which makes uncomfortable the one who wants to analyze, understand, and classify. On bases that are not scientific and for good reason, from the observation by a layman of a certain specialization, Ismaïla Diagne manages to establish two groups, the first including the healers, the soothsayers and charlatans, the second, the Tartuffe, the marabouts, and the priests.
Healers, diviners and charlatans. In Xala 23 Sembene Ousmane clearly establishes the difference between seet-kat, diviner and faj-kat: healer. N’goné War Thiandum prototype of healer or faj-kat, according to Sembène [12], leads an ordinary life, without particular relief. She is neither feared nor feared, but if necessary, she can go to the niaye, use the plants wisely. She appears as a practitioner, without a halo. His knowledge of medicinal plants is based on a rich experience accumulated by several generations. No form of witchcraft, magic intervenes; no doubt we note certain empiricism, but we are close to modern medical methods with all that that implies rigor, detachment, without any intervention of the marvelous.
The diviner or set-to. He presents himself as a conjurer like a man of science: “The set-to spread out ... a square of bright red cloth, came out of a reticle of cowries. Before an officer, he made incantations; with a dry movement he threw away the cowries. He picked them up with one hand. Stiff, the right bust, he looked at his customers. Abruptly, he held out his arm, his fist clenched. This thin member, finished with that hand curled like an anemone, opened slowly 24”. The effect on the psychic plane is immediate. The mythical heavens do the rest: “Like a spurt of sparks in the darkness, emerged on the surface the buried world, immaterial, early childhood. El Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye was seized: a world populated by evil spirits, gnomes, jinn slipped into his subconscious” 25.
The quack. It is: “The one who exploits public credulity or who seeks notoriety by claiming himself by great speeches according to the definition of the Dictionary alphabetical and analog of the French language, in the sense that “it is a healer who claims to have wonderful secrets 26. The second group of caregivers established by Ismaïla Diagne is composed of lay priests and missionaries. In fact, the Christians, although a minority in North Cameroon, still exert considerable influence through grassroots men who are active lay priests in the three dioceses of this part of Cameroon.
In the light of the scientific discoveries and the consequent progress made by mankind during the last centuries, in terms of science, technology and medicine, one would be tempted to believe that the magico-religious therapies of the medical staff Above mentioned, very popular in the past, have had their day and are destined to disappear to make way for a scientific and religiously neutral therapy. It is clear with Richard Filakota 27 that in this changing world, African health care workers and more specifically traditional healers and marabouts have not yet said their last word. Despite the progress made in various fields essential to human development, situations of precariousness and social misery, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, are far from being eradicated; the diseases have not yet delivered all their secret; operational health facilities in North Cameroon are a feat, while modern private clinics, better equipped, are accessible only to high net worth individuals.
Faced with these social disparities and the complex nature of certain diseases, many people rely on God by turning to churches, mosques or to prophetic or evangelical religious movements for therapeutic purposes; in the same vein and as recognized by Richard Lakota, traditional medicine is returning to its nobility, while marabouts are on the rise. Against all odds, these traditional or magico-religious therapeutic practices are today inventive, sometimes using a “tinkering” between several diagnostic and therapeutic systems, to meet the increasing expectations of local populations. Marabouts, like traditional medicine, certainly has a future as long as the disease affecting the individual or the group is generating practices that go beyond the strictly medical field.
Conclusion
The 18th Congress of IUAES BRAZIL 2018 “World of meetings: the Past, the Present and the Future of Anthropological Knowledge” and the Global Journal of Archaeology/ Anthropology offer us the opportunity to deepen the study and knowledge of African culture given the scale of the phenomenon of traditional medicine and its impact on the African soul. By its Sodano-Sahelian geography, the diversity of its peoples and centuries-old traditions, and the variety of approaches and its healing routes, Africa, particularly North-Cameroon as Hamadou Adama [13] argues are regions that attract, intrigue, passionate and seduce at the same time. The art, the culture, the knowledge and the techniques resulting from this fascinating set, developed and reproduced by the ingenuity of the man, convey a very particular imprint which is interesting to apprehend [14-16]. In this respect, the Fulani medical experience is illustrative and worthy of interest. This essay of analysis is a reflection that aims, not to inventory the completeness of the African conception of medicine and its practices, but to understand that the mental representations are, among others, avenues of reflection in the writing of history and the basis of Anthropological Knowledge.
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