spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

carefully balance their practices around the distinctions and borders between the patient’s old life
and their new life, between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Luedke & West (2006) contend that
healers in contemporary southeast Africa derive their healing power from the way they relate to
borders: they cross boundaries in order to access new healing resources, and at the same time
they need to protect these boundaries, or else their assets will be exhausted by other people,
healers and patients alike.
Border-crossing
The treatment of illness and affliction requires the continuous development of new therapies, the
acquisition of appropriate medicine, and updated communication with spiritual beings, and
therefore healers cross borders constantly. If they don’t, their healing activities will soon lose
(divine) power and become less attractive to the health-seeking audience. In the traditional
healing environment, healers receive knowledge for healing purposes from the spiritual world, so
they need to regularly adjust to the sources of their healing power. Also, with regard to the
interpersonal domain, healers need to be creative and innovative in extending their sources of
healing power (cf. Whyte 1988:226; Last 1992:404; Rekdal 1999:472). Reliance on knowledge
and techniques that have worked in the past may not be sufficient for current needs, because the
nature of affliction and illness can change under the influence of social and economic pressures.
So, if healers want to sustain their practices then they depend on their creativity and originality to
add foreign elements, methods, medicines and insights to their treatment 21 .
The need to cross borders in order to re-invent appropriate healing techniques has not only to do
with the changing nature of affliction, but also with the changing expectations of the clientele.
When people become too familiar with the existing practices of a healer, they might turn to
another expert whose techniques conserve the mystery of healing. In this light, West mentions
the people in Mueda (northern Mozambique) who say that “one’s medicine has grown stale”
(Luedke & West 2006:10). It seems that, in the perspective of the clients, the healer has become
less powerful if the dimension of the unfamiliar and the unknown has disappeared in the healing
therapy: the evaporation of the notion of mystery in healing refers to the impotence of a healer.
21. There are many examples of healers who implement elements of the biomedicine discourse to their practices.
Healers, who are specialized in mediating the communication of particular spirits, might start to introduce the
communication of Christian spirits or saints to his or her repertoire (cf. Wilkens 2009). The exploitation of foreign
elements is a crucial part of the African traditional healing discourse.
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