Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa

7. The healer and his phone: Medicinal dynamics among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon

7 The healer and his phone: Medicinal dynamics among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon Wouter van Beek What influence is the mobile phone having on indigenous medicine? This contribution presents the case of a tradi-praticien (an indigenous healer) and discusses the way he uses his mobile phone and the continuities and discontinuities of such use in the practice of traditional medicine among the Kapsiki/Higi1 in the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. Fieldwork was done in January 2009 and reflects the current state of medicinal development and care in the area. The new doctor Haman Tizhé is his name and he is an important man among healers. His present position came about from a complicated life history. Growing up in Roufta, one of the outlying Kapsiki villages, he was a personal friend of the ´princé, the son of Djoda, who was the Lamido (Fulbe chief of the district) at the time. When he was about twelve, he became involved in a brawl and threw a stone at a certain Bereme 1 The Kapsiki of northern Cameroon and the Higi in northeastern Nigeria who live in the Mandara Mountains along the border between the two countries form one ethnic group. I use the term Kapsiki for both groups. I have been carrying out field research in the area since 1972/73, with regular return visits every three to five years, the latest being in 2008/2009. 126 WOUTER VAN BEEK from Mogodé who was hit in the groin and subsequently died. Haman was arrested by the Lamido, a distant kinsman of Bereme’s, who then put himself in loco parentis to collect the kelehu (the blood price). This is not a fixed price and the victim’s party can take anything they can lay their hands on that belongs to the culprit’s kinsmen. The young Haman and his father were chased by the people of Roufta and went to Teki in the northeast of the Kapsiki area. After some time, his father went to Guili among the Hina in the south and Haman himself was taken to the house of his friend, the Lamido’s son. After a few years he left for Nigeria where he became an apprentice to the Lamido’s servants in Michika, the Nigerian counterpart of Djoda, and learnt to fix machinery. From there he ventured out into the bush where he made the acquaintance of the healers in the area, usually blacksmiths or hunters. Investing much time, money and energy in those relations, he was gradually introduced to the secrets of Kapsiki medicine. What was important, he said, was to look carefully at what animals ate and in particular what food they spurned. Then one took that plant and showed it to someone who knew about them in order to gain extra medicinal knowledge. He still spends a lot of time in the bush with old hunters and healers but has also met them in Sokoto, Aba, Gaitan (all in Nigeria) and in Niger, even communicating with grand marabouts from Mali when he was in Sokoto. One needs to travel a lot as a healer and Haman was, therefore, frequently away, though more so in the past than today because now that he is established, people come to him. Photo 7.1 The sign of the practice THE HEALER AND HIS PHONE 127 After twenty years, he returned to Cameroon and settled in Mogodé, the central village of the Cameroonian Kapsiki, and set himself up as a tradi-praticien. Particularly adept at networking (and at wooing officials), he initiated the Association pour les tradipraticiens de Mayo Tsanaga, and realized its membership of the national umbrella organization of traditional healers in Cameroon, and also received recognition from the OISA, the Organisation Internationale pour la Santé en Afrique (see Photo 7.5, p. 132). Once installed in Mogodé, he also initiated a tontine (a classic kind of rotating savings association) for all the women in Mogodé who were from the Kama, a subgroup of villages around Roufta, to help them promote their own interests in Mogodé. Using his organizational skills, he made this tontine into a thriving business and at the same time benefiting himself, as a healer, from the many contacts he made through these women. Haman has also built up a practice in Mokolo, the regional capital of the préfecture. He divides his week between the two places – three days a...