It would be a great honor to have the opportunity to go to Africa and
study in different countries within the continent. The material that
was reviewed about the country of Angola and it indigenous forms of
health care has shown me that yet again in the face of great hard
ship, the wellbeing of the people can to some extent be maintained
through the usage of indigenous methods of health care maintenance.
What is so vital about indigenous healing methods, is that provide the
peoples of the existing generations with a direct link to the ways of
living the existed before the advent of colonialism speaking with the
country of Angola. The colonial power of Portugal did not
publically “desolve” it's imperial grip on the country of Angola
until 1961 although the country did not gain it's autonomy until
1975.
So what are people to do when about half of the population in Angola
were children around the year of 1995. The struggle towards political
sovereignty for the country of Angola had to involve a great portion
of the adult population to bring about social change. This social
change in some ways had to affect the children of this set amount of
would be parents. If the parents perished in the pursuit of freedom,
the children would be cast into a world were there may not have been a
great deal of instability of the public health care system for
example. This is a great example of why rural medicine; if you will,
will continue to flourish when the standard procedures of allopathic
medicine may fall short in the attempt of to reach the portion of it's
populous that lived in sparsely inhabited portions of the country.
What makes the indigenous methods of health care so viable and
relevant is it's appeal to the people that use it. When the people
who utilize these methods believe in it's ability to bring about a
cure there is little doubt as to whether or not the condition of the
patient will be altered. The value of what has been cultivated
over the span of time is precious, the value is seen in the trust
that a person gives to the doctor and the “prescription” as it were.
One aspect of the people of Angola, specifically the Bantu tribes
where the biological heritage of family plays a fundamental role in
the perceptions of what can cause illness and misfortune. What seems
to be the root of the view of existence, is that idea that the spirits
of the deceased without proper identification as being dead and
recognized as a contributor to the making of what is modern day life
in the Bantu tribes assert their “will” on the physical world and
cause havoc. The recognition of the dead's presence in the world to
me makes sense, if for no other reason than observe what has been
built by the past generations that still stands in the present
time. The present time is rooted in the past, where else would
life have come from. It is obvious that the past is what has
fostered the growth of present, but the subtlety in which the past
influences the present is easily seen in the lack of questioning as to
whether a medical system is capable of being applicable to the
variations of how an illness is created by the will of the dead or
the perceptions of the living.
What this seems to bring up is the idea that the mind is something
much more than just the brain or just the object that dwells within
the skull. Seeing that the dead are observing the present and can
choose to affect the activities of the living tells me that the
“mind” is something that has been able to pass through the gate of
death. Maybe the mind is the accumulation of the experiences that
have occurred during life. When the body has passed away back into
the earth , what is left? The perceptions of the living have had a
profound affect on the future: to those who had yet to take their turn
among the living on earth. Speaking in term of how the influence of
the dead affect the living and how the living affect the dead make
“conversations” about the relationship between the two creates a
situation where the definition of “time” become much more relative. We
can begin to explore the past by understanding that those who were
living in the past have much to offer when we underdstand that their
views of the dead were similar to those of the present: how are we
affected by the ancestor and how are we affecting the future. The
present, past, future are tools to be used to navigate the sea of
existence where death and life produce the waves that generate the
generations which all life was a part of at one time or another.
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