spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

The relevance of the healer’s practices hinges on the unknown and unmapped powers of healing,
but it is the healer’s ability to access those powers and to establish a connection between the
known and the unknown dimensions of life that enable him or her to mediate the powers of
healing to the patient. If the healer travels too far away from the border that he or she crossed,
and brings back insights and techniques that are too unfamiliar for the clients to relate to, then he
or she runs the risk of losing the clients altogether. Border-crossing is thus an intense operation
that requires skillful maneuvering between the eager expectations of the clientele and the
achievement of distant resources of healing.
Border-protection
The healers’ engagement with borders is two-fold: they need to cross frontiers in order to get
closer to the ideas, objects and spirits that sustain and reinvigorate their healing activities, and
they need to invest in boundaries, because in a sense the boundaries give access to the main
entities of the healers’ industry. It is in the interest of the healer to protect the physical and
conceptual confines of his or her dispensary. As gatekeepers (Somé 1998:75; cf. Sharp
1993:208) or ‘brokers’ (Rasmussen 1998:167), healers are in a position to exploit their healing
knowledge, techniques and instruments by facilitating their transportation from one side of the
border to the other; yet they are also in a position to interrupt this process when they feel the
need to do so (for example, when the novelty of a technique or the distinctiveness of a medicine
is at stake because it has been used too frequently or by too many other healers).
The healer’s extraordinary, in-between position is created by the fact that ordinary people are not
able to access the therapeutic resources themselves. They are bound by the borders and
regulations that serve the well-being of the community. By nature, boundaries contribute to the
maintenance of order in community life. They indicate the extent and the limits of human control
and activity. Beyond those limits of human power and control, there is spiritual power and
dominance which can be both constructive or destructive to human life. Border-crossing is
deemed a dangerous act for laypersons, for their inexperience can jeopardize the well-being of
the whole community. Precisely the notion of danger provides a niche for the healer: he or she is
in the ideal position to utilize sources of power that few others dare to access (Luedke & West
2006:6; cf. Pfeiffer 2006:97).
Although the act of border-crossing is a crucial part of the healer’s practices, even an
experienced healer can be in danger when traveling beyond familiar domains. In the healer’s
case, the issue is not so much about getting lost in the spiritual world, but rather about losing the
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