I No Be Fine

As a Nutritionist I talk often with Cameroonian friends and health professionals about sickness, disease, and wellness.  Last week I had a particularly interesting conversation with my friend Peter:

“Sister Kate, I was really down.  I no be fine.  For five weeks I couldn’t eat a-n-y-thing.  My figure was like this” (pinky finger pops up to demonstrate his thinness) “I went and consulted at the hospital and they told me it was malaria and gave me drugs.  I took the drugs, but didn’t get better.  I went me back to the house.  My stomach was worrying me! I was just down.  I finally had to go see a traditional doctor.  The doctor told me I had food poisoning.”

“But Peter,” I said, “If it was food poisoning that wouldn’t last for five weeks.  Usually that passes in 24-48 hours.”

“No, Kate, someone poisoned my food.”

I quickly learned about the existence of traditional doctors and medicine in Cameroon when I first arrived in Cameroon in 2005.  They are omnipresent and exist in parallel to the biomedical system of hospitals and clinics with nurses and doctors trained in the germ theory of disease.  I still remember years ago as a Peace Corps Volunteer seeing a child admitted into the hospital because of severe anemia.  She had an enlarged spleen and her parents thought this was because of an evil spirit and brought her to a traditional doctor for exhortation.  The traditional doctor tried to rid her of the evil spirit by cutting her spleen with a razorblade.  After this didn’t work, her parents brought her to the hospital. I’ve observed that there are a number of factors that determine whether Cameroonians will consult traditional doctors, Western doctors, or use both when they are sick.  Generally, I’ve seen that they use both. However, if they believe that their illness is the result of spiritual forces, only a traditional doctor can cure them. 

Peter believes that someone was jealous of him and so this person tried to harm him by poisoning his food.  I asked Peter if he knew whom this person could be and he said that the traditional doctor told him that the person would appear to him in a vision.  Shortly thereafter he had a dream about a co-worker with whom he had a disagreement a few weeks prior to his sickness.  Peter went on to tell me about how the traditional doctor treated him by having sit on top of a clay pot with traditional medicine burning inside while the doctor laid his hands upon him and called out names of ancestors, hitting his stomach with a pouch full of powder, and then using a razor blade to make small cuts throughout his body and rubbing powder inside the cuts.   The traditional doctor gave Peter rubbing oil with traditional medicine to be rubbing on himself and Lord, Babila, and Kate to protect them from future attacks.

The day after Peter told me all of this I woke up sick.  The sudden onset of headache, lower back pain, nausea, cyclical fever 14 days after being bit by a mosquito could only indicate one thing—malaria.  I’ve had malaria before and keep treatment with me so I can start taking the drugs immediately.  I went to the hospital the next day for a confirmatory malaria test and see a doctor.  Three days later, I’m feeling fine and almost back to normal.  However, after the long discussion with Peter it crossed my mind that what if my sickness was the result of an evil curse on me?  I asked an anthropologist friend this question and she told me, “Your malaria is only a result of a curse if you believe that is the cause.”