Traditional Healers in Tanzania

Bagamoyo is kind of a centre for traditional healing in Tanzania. Usually, becoming and being a traditional healer is inherited. That is also why the Swahili expression for traditional healer – “mganga wa jadi” – reads approximately "a doctor of the ancestors".
The ancestor, a grandmother or grandfather, or a mother or father, has chosen him or her to keep up with the tradition. Passing over the responsibility is quite a challenge. In the case of the traditional healer we met, the ancestor had to find the left over reed of an elephant's meal, tie seven knots into the reed and fix it to the tongue of his successor, before boiling a strong tea from the reed for the new healer to drink. Then, he had to swear an oath on an axe, a knife or a gun that he would use his abilities only for the good or otherwise kill himself with the respective tool.
The healers are split into two groups. The ones where knowledge is passed orally only, and the ones that work from books. Becoming a traditional healer goes along with a lot of cleansing and several years of apprenticeship. The healer keeps instruments – inherited from their ancestors - and ingredients in baskets, among else, a mirror to show the problem to patients. The analogy to modern psychotherapy could not have been more obvious! His claim, that he could not only heal cramps, headache, impotency, hernias but also epilepsies and cancer challenged us to ask about HIV/AIDS. He said indeed, on the treatment of HIV/AIDS they would still be working…
The borders between fortune telling, witch craft and traditional healing are blurred. Politicians would consult a traditional healer to get enlightened on their election campaign strategy. Our colleagues left no doubt, that candidate Kikwete – then most probably to become the new president of Tanzania (and so he did in December 2005) - himself originating from Bagamoyo, had been consulting traditional healers. Our traditional healer claimed to also have returned a lost child of a Swiss couple from the US, and he could keep a house safe of thieves.
Healers deal a lot with good and bad spirits. Spirits come by themselves, or they are given to you, or you simply have them. To comfort a bad spirit, it has to be given blood, whereas animal blood can work as a substitute. Due to this, many healers have infected themselves with HIV/AIDs, and more and more campaigns target specifically on healers. Also, there are plans to include traditional healers into the retro virus treatment programme.
There is a saying that traditional healers cannot cure themselves. Tragically, the healer we met was an example of confirmation. On one foot he had already lost four toes to leprosies, and on the other foot, open wounds and a steady stream of aunts having their feast were proof of infection, too. While his handy was ringing, he obviously refuses conventional leprosies treatment.