I thought Thursday’s class with Dr. Mthobeli Guma, a
traditional healer with a doctorate in public health, was very
interesting. Before I came here I did a
project on traditional healers of South Africa.
The big questions I had before I came here were 1) what exactly do they
do to “heal” someone and how does it work? 2) how is traditional healing
different within South Africa and other African countries? 3) the status of
integration into main stream medicine (because there was supposed to be a
council set up by the end of 2012 to accredit healers).
I still need to have my first question answered, which I
hope to do when I meet Dr. Guma at his house.
I learned that much of the healing is similar, but the variation has to
do with who trained you and what your “ancestors” you speak with when giving a
treatment suggest. For my third
question, I learned that Dr. Guma is part of that group trying to set up a council
but it’s still a work in progress.
One interesting fact that I learned was that male
circumcision in the Xhosa community became mainstream in response to the
growing HIV / AIDS epidemic, a public health issue. Dr. Guma said (and I would assume other Xhosa
people think this also) that circumcision helps prevent the spread of HIV /
AIDS to a man’s wife / girlfriend when which means that the lineage of someone
(an important part of African tradition?) will have a better chance of
surviving.
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