‘The Art of Love’: The Interconnectedness of African Healing Practices

In building from Nyasha’s first piece, ‘Who Am I in the Presence of the Elderflower? A Doctor's Reflections’, this article features the first stone art piece crafted by Amai’s grandson. Amai was a breast cancer patient from Guruve, Zimbabwe. The title of the stone piece is ‘The Art of Love’, which is a most fitting homage to the shared guiding north star of all healers.

"Silence… Sigh…

In the frozen embrace of an Oxford sunrise, I find my mind weaving together the memories of discussions I shared with patients in Zimbabwe. The narrative account of patient journeys often begins with the early and overwhelming sensation of illness, the effects of which ripple through families as a shared and burdensome experience.

The revered n’anga (traditional healer) is visited. 

Amai’s children bring herds of cattle to the n’anga and sell everything they own, and yet still, the silhouetted features of death, enhancing in depth and breadth, continue to march forward. N’anga, the mystic anointed as the bridge between the spiritual ancestral realm and the present physical reality, serves as the first counsellor to the clan in times of ailment.

Your faint and distant voice informs the gathered and frantic relatives who sit with their heads bowed in the smoky hut: ‘The bad spirits are after her very soul. They ingest the chest to reach her heart and bathe in the refreshing pools of her life force. No one can save her; this is the decree of the ancestral realm.’

Countless battles you have waged against this cancerous being - day and night are spent at war in mediation with the great ones. This ceaseless battle drives you, n’anga, mad, as it does me. 

Yet, the evolving cultural perceptions of healing has driven a divide between the white-coat medic and the bead-adorned traditionalist.

I have struggled with tension between my own role as both a Zimbabwean medical doctor taught in the framings of western practices and as a daughter of the soil with her own inherent connections to the present, past, and future.

Silence… Sigh…

Am I not ordained to heal too? Is my calling any less real than yours, n’anga? We are both here, amongst the sick and suffering; we both aim to bring relief, restoration and renewal. This melanin binds me to this land and to the history of our ancestors. 

You are a Shona, so am I. The mermaids witnessed your anointing: you were trained under a river and have become master of the green curative methods. You are a bridge to the world beyond, but you cannot see the talent of healing in another. 

Have you not become a mad man with the loudest voice? Superstition and fear are where you reside.

Dearest reader, let us ponder the future of the African healing practice.

 Cure this scourge of breast cancer then! Save Amai! This, n’anga, is your silent shame, as it is mine. These women, they come to you, broken and desperate. Their husbands abandoned them, leaving families despondent. To these women you say, ‘There is a bad spirit after her. It will not rest nor relent. I can fight it.” And as your hand twirls feathers and casts rabbit bones onto a polished clay floor, you warningly instruct, “Bring me one heifer and I will begin.’

Why are your diagnostic answers more heard than mine? 

It is time that a shared narrative was crafted between healers, not one of conflicting ideologies always competing for dominance, but one that champions a complimentary existence.