In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

seven Flows of Medicine, Healers, Health Professionals, and Patients between Home and Host Countries Abdoulaye Kane This chapter examines the flows of medicine and health care services both biomedical and traditional between the villages of the Senegal River Valley and the Haalpulaar1 immigrant communities in France. Haalpulaar migrants in France are intervening in their home communities to help ensure that people at home have access to health care. Both individual and collective forms of agency grow in the process of medicine transfers between the two places. on the one hand, individuals abroad send biomedical medicine to their rural homes, and family members send traditional medicine to France. on the other hand, Haalpulaar migrants’ associations like Thilogne Association Developpement (TAD) and Fouta Santé are improving access to health care in the Senegal River Valley through remittances of biomedicine and medical equipment as well as the organization of annual health caravans with the participation of French health professionals and local partners. In the first section, I will look at the circulation of medicine between France and the Senegal River Valley villages. Medicine is part of the flows that characterize African transnational practices. The circulation of biomedicine and traditional medicine between the two spaces indicates that migrants want to take advantage of both systems. I will also examine the ambivalent attitude of Haalpulaar migrants toward utilizing biomedicine by exploring the various conspiracy theories around suspicious death. I next examine the role of village associations in meeting the challenges of providing access to health care to their communities of origin. I will look at the case of Thilogne Association Developpement, in particular, by reviewing their interventions from the early 1980s up to 2006. The last section of the chapter will highlight the achievement of Fouta Santé in mobilizing resources and expertise for the local hospitals and health facilities in the Senegal River Valley towns and villages. The Circulation of Medicine, Experts, and Patients Appadurai’s (2001) influential argument characterizes life in the contemporary world as one of flows shaped by objects in motion. “These objects FLoWS oF MEDICINE 191 include ideas and ideologies, people and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques” (Appadurai 2001: 5). The circulation of money, electronics objects, images, goods, and material culture has attracted the most attention because of the economic bias in the study of migration. Some researchers have analyzed the circulation of such things as food and clothes, or music and videos, conveyed from sending areas to global cities as indicators of migrants’ willingness to maintain their cultural identity (MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga 2000). other researchers are interested in the changing meaning of such commodities when they cross ethnic and national boundaries . Material goods from host countries brought back home enhance migrants’ social status in their community of origin, while objects taken from home countries become part of the re-creation of a home away from home in host countries (Copeland-Carson 2004; Kane 2005; Geschiere and Meyer 1999). This growing literature on the circulation of objects between Europe and Africa has so far overlooked the medicine traveling between diasporic communities and their places of origin. Sending biomedicine home has become as common as sending money home. I came to realize the importance of medicine remittances through my personal experiences traveling between France and Senegal. During my frequent trips between these two countries, I was often used as a carrier for all kinds of objects, including medicine being remitted by migrants to people at home. In 2004, when leaving Paris for Senegal, my mother-in-law gave me leftovers of her prescription and overthe -counter medicines for her 85-year-old mother in Thilogne. Although she has no professional background related to health, she explained to me, as if she were an expert, how her mother should use the medicine. Puzzled, I ask her whether it was safe for her mother to take these medicines. She replied that it was not the first time she had sent medicine to her. She continued: “she is used to most of these medicines. She asks me on the phone to send her more every year.” The medicines she gave me included painkillers, anti-inflammatory ointments , cold and cough syrups, anti-diarrheal medicines, etc. Besides occasionally sending these medicines with others such as myself, she goes back home every two years with a bag half-full of medicine that she distributes to her family and in her neighborhood. She explains that whenever she goes back, people come to see her to ask...

Share