Rwandan Traditional Religion and medicine

The first missionaries build churches, schools and hospitals, in each mission there was a hospital.

Until today many hospitals in Rwanda remain in the hands of churches and are managed by them. The government is not yet ready to finance and to manage all conventional hospitals.

Hospitals and modern medicine has made a great contribution to the cause of healthcare for people in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. But an important number of Rwandans believes in traditional medicines and healers.

Traditional Religion and healing are linked and they can‟t be separated because “many traditional healers are also religious leaders and vice versa. Traditional medicine is an integral part of the African culture, and a major African socio-cultural heritage”⁴⁰⁰ Further, the practitioners of African traditional medicine are quite numerous and live among the people, in such a way that the sick persons have easy access to them.⁴⁰¹

The World Health Organization observes that it is difficult to assign one definition to the broad range of characteristics and elements of traditional medicine. ⁴⁰² It is mixed with “diverse health practices, approaches, knowledge and beliefs, incorporating plants, animals, spirituals therapies, manual techniques and exercises applied singularly or in combination to maintain well-being, as well as to treat, diagnose or prevent illness.”⁴⁰³ The World Health Organisation estimates that up

04th June 2014.

399 Lorenzo Calanderia, Interpreting religion through music,< http://diverseeducation.com/article/6859/>, 25th January 2012.

400 A.A. Elujoba, Traditional medicine development, < http://www.bioline.org.br/request?tc05007>, 10th December 2011.

401 < http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22724>, 05th December 2011.

402 Traditional medecine, <http://www. tac.org.za/Documents/…/Traditional_Medicine_briefing.pdf- >, 10th December 2011.

403 Shahzad Hussein and Farnaz Malik, Integration of complementary and traditional medecines in public health

to 80% of the population in Africa makes use of traditional medicine, and it recognizing the importance of collaborating with traditional healers in 1977.⁴⁰⁴

In Africa and in Rwanda in particular, “traditional healers are generally divided into two categories: Healers who serve the role of diviner, they are diagnostician through spiritual means, and herbalist healers.”⁴⁰⁵ Christianity and colonial powers in Rwanda discouraged the practices of both systems of traditional healers. Consulting them was prohibited. In traditional Islam there is proximity between traditional healers and some Muslim preachers and teacher of Qur‟an, named mwalimu in solicitation of Muslim magic. “To heal a complicated illness, for example the case of sterility, a Muslim will consult a traditional healer if the Muslim mwalimu is incompetent to heal it.”⁴⁰⁶

The tension between traditional medicine and Western medicine is first focused on the material causation, and “based on the dualistic Cartesian axiom”⁴⁰⁷ for understanding and curing an illness. The traditional medicine “looks often towards the spiritual origin such as witchcraft and displeasure by ancestors in order to cure an ailment.”⁴⁰⁸ The second element which causes tension is the fact that most traditional healers believe that they can treat all kinds of diseases.

“There has been an array of media reports of traditional healers claiming to have a cure for HIV AIDS and some of them had submitted their patients to dangerous or ineffective treatments.”⁴⁰⁹

Curiously enough, even some who have easy access to modern medicine and can afford it, prefer to put themselves in the hands of traditional doctors. The number of patients who abandon conventional hospitals where they are hospitalized in search of help among traditional healers is constantly growing. It is not rare to see the luxurious cars of important persons – including ministers – approaching the humble “clinics” of local specialists. Those visits are often surrounded by an

care system,< http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/JMPR/article-full-text-pdf/5C0340241431>, 27th July 2016.

404 Traditional medicine, Ibid.

405 Ibid.

406 José H. Kagabo, Ibid, p.90.

407 Africa files, <http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22724>, 05th December 2011.

408 Traditional medicine, Ibid.

409 Ibid.

atmosphere of secrecy because the official position, inherited from colonial times, still maintains an attitude of mistrust and contempt towards the traditional practices, which the western mentality stigmatized as superstitions.⁴¹⁰

Many researchers are still working on the efficacy and safety of herbal medicine: to set up processing protocols and methods of standardization of herbal medicines.⁴¹¹ That is why the Rwandan Institute of Scientific Research and Technology restored a forum of traditional medicine. It is demonstrated that some traditional practitioners can heal some illness in using herbal medicine. Before this forum there was “CURPHAMETRA (Centre de Recherche sur la Pharmacopée et la Médecine Traditionnelle) created by the Faculty of medicine in 1980 and it disposed a dispensary of traditional medicine”⁴¹². Later it became a Centre for Research on Pharmacopoeia and Traditional Medicine in Rwanda. An increasing number of Rwandans are still consulting traditional healers, and using traditional medicine for treating illness.

Many of the traditional doctors frequently mention “a calling from the spirits of the ancestors as the origin of their dedication to the healing activities. They developed their activities on two complementary levels, derived from the African concept of sickness: the supernatural or spiritual, and the corporal or physical level.” ⁴¹³ Believing in traditional healers is deeply rooted in the culture in the mind of many Africans.

It is the mysterious aspect of the activities of the traditional healers which made Western missionaries to dismiss them as „witchcraft‟ and superstition. However, Hippocrates himself had already warned that one could not be a good doctor without being a good priest at the same time. African traditional medicine maintains a strong connection between healing and spirituality because the

410 Francisco Carrera, African Traditional Medecine: Healing of body and spirit,<http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22724 >, 27th July 2016.

411 Ibid.

412 Actahort, < http://www.actahort.org/books/331/331_30.htm>, 10th December 2011.

413 Francisco Carrera, African Traditional Medecine: Healing of body and spirit,<http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22724 >, 27th July 2016.

population of the continent lives deeply the psycho-religious values of the human person.⁴¹⁴