IK Monitor Networks (8-3)

Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, November 2000

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Videos

Healers of Ghana. Film made by J. Scott Dodds, Thomas Wallace, and David D. Ohl. Dialogues in Twi and English. Commentary in English. 58 min., USA (1993) 1996. Price and ordering information: USA only: USD 129 plus USD 10 for postage. International distribution through White Pine Films, P.O. Box 75, Lone Rock, Iowa 50559 USA, E-mail: Scottdodds@earthlink.net. Price: USD 75 for NTSC copies, USD 100 in PAL, postage included. Produced by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, P.O. Box 2053, New Jersey 08543-2053, USA.
Toll-free tel.: +1-800-257-5126.
Fax: +1-609-275-3767.

Old spirits, new persons: Rose, healer and diviner in Western Kenya. Film made by Professor of Anthropology Carla Risseeuw and Metje Postma. Dialogues in Kiswahili, Kiluyia, Kibukusu and English. Commentary and sub-titling in English. 43 min., NL (1976, 1992) 1998. NLG 125 excluding fee for postage. To order, contact: Carla Risseeuw, De Meij van Streefkerkstraat 50, 2313 JP Leiden, the Netherlands.
Tel. / fax: +31-71-5146 506.
E-mail: Risseeuw@FSW.LeidenUniv.nl.

If you order a film, please indicate which colour system is used in your country: PAL, SECAM or NTSC.

These are two video films about traditional healers in Africa: namely in Ghana and Kenya.

The Ghana film claims to depict the unique relationship between traditional Bono tribal priests and practitioners of Western medicine. It was made mainly in the town of Techiman, and would show the efforts on both sides to understand, respect, cooperate with, and learn from the other's healing methods. 'Learning' should be the key word.

The film relates the success story of an initiative taken by the staff of Holy Family Hospital in Techiman, Central Ghana, north of Kumasi, where the Bono people live. The hospital staff invited local traditional healers - including herbal doctors, shrine mediators, mediating priestesses, Muslim healers and broken bone setters - to integrate the fundamentals of hygiene and other modern rules of primary health care into their activities. The traditional healers were also taught to diagnose certain illnesses on the basis of symptoms. As a result of this initiative, the hospital has been relieved of some routine work and thus has more time to perform more complex medical tasks.

The film offers glimpses of sessions conducted by traditional healers. Respect is shown for the holistic aproach of these healers, but only one example is thoroughly illustrated. A bone setter treats a man for a broken bone in his hand with the help of wooden sticks as splints and a modern bandage. A doctor trained in the Netherlands speaks sympathetically about cooperation with traditional healers, especially in psychosomatic situations, but the film nevertheless has a Western bias.

Statements seem to have been accepted without question. It is not convincing, for example, when a university-trained Ghanian declares that he started to believe in witchcraft after 15 years of medical anthropological research in the field. And the claim is made in the film that the market in Techiman draws people from 70 different ethnic groups who speak 90 different languages. No one would deny that the town is a melting pot, but the numbers could well be exaggerated. And if the town is such a melting pot, one wonders whether the healers in the film are all Bono or whether some of them belong to other ethnic groups, and if they do, one wonders if and how the knowledge of the various healers is combined.

This is a general film that makes pleasurable viewing because it is nice to watch people doing things, but I cannot imagine an educational situation in which this film could be useful.

The Kenya film portrays Rose, who became a healer when she was in her twenties, after a long period of illness. The film begins in 1976, and we see Rose treating a young woman. The patient is a neglected fourth wife possessed by the angry spirit of a dead man. The treatment Rose gives her is long and looks painful and exhausting. I, as a Western spectator, cannot follow either the diagnosis or the treatment. But Rose herself is convincing and impressive as she works for days and days to solve the problem. We also see the activities between treatments. The longest part of the film was shot in 1992. Here we see Rose healing a young woman during several sessions at the compound of the patient's family. The woman is suffering from bad spirits and after she is freed of them she is trained to become a healer herself. Rose and her assistant engage in long sessions to try to evoke in her the ancestral spirits.

This film about Rose is a more personal and a better introduction to the world of traditional African healing. But again, there is nothing we can learn from it from a technical point of view. It does not show us how traditional healing works in daily practice except to show that the healer's dedication and the personal attention the healer pays to the patient are often curative.

Viewing and reviewing these two films confirmed my observation that it seems to be difficult to make a good, coherent film about science and other systems of knowledge. Bits of knowledge are shown, but the medium of film does not seem suited to the real transmission of knowledge. Yet, especially in the field of traditional knowledge systems and practices, it would be so useful to be able to learn by watching. But neither of the films reviewed here have achieved this goal. It is not clear to me how they could be used for educational purposes. We have to respect the work of the filmmakers and the amount of energy they have put into the products, but it remains unsatisfactory merely to watch people doing things without really learning what they are doing or why they are doing it. It would be nice if knowledge could be transferred through this popular medium, but these two films in any case have not shown this to be possible.

(Paul E. Bijvoet, Leiden, the Netherlands.)