On Baganda
Traditional Spiritual Healers in Central Uganda
Public PhD Defence- Dr. Yahaya Sekagya Hills
Ancestral Healing and the process of becoming a Traditional Healthcare Practitioner, in Uganda, is illuminated and defined in Dr Yahaya Sekagya.
As I sit in Europe, I have a different way to access lineages lost wisdom, however learning about how Wisdom Keepers protect and how researchers make contact with the world of traditional Spirítual Healers enriches and deepens the ethics and perspectives of an earth centric vision and process.
In Uganda Spiritual Healers still work without any legal support nor recognition from the state. Regardless of this, the practice has survived and is the most in access healing system.
Some notes from this talk which resonated with me:
- During research we need to be initiated.
When the Ancestral Spirits accept you, your research flows very easily.
- Spirits do what they are sent to do. It is not that they are good or right, they do what they are sent to do.
- In Uganda, "Mwanga" refers to a specific ancestral spirit believed to be involved in healing practices, particularly within the Baganda traditional spiritual healing system. These healers, known as Balubaale, work with ancestral spirits, including Mwanga, and other spirits like Mizimu (spirits of the dead), Misambwa emizaale (mystical ancestral spirits), and Mayembe (worker/assistant spirits). They utilize rituals, sacred places, and spiritual materials, including living and non-living things, to address illnesses and maintain health.
- In the findings of this PHD the sacraficial killing of any beings, also the animals, is not used. Human Sacrafice is definetly not a part of the work.
- The Spirit rests in our companion animals. (This aligns with Reindeers kept by Northern Euro-Asian Indigenous Shamanic Cultures). A healer does not want the Spirit to rest on her all the time. She asks her familiars, her animals to co-carry this weight.
- Consent is most important in having the right to share information onwards. The world is not ready to reeceive the full information on all of the Traditionial Healing Plants of Uganda. Traditional Healers still say this is important to protect.
- Policy must include - issues to do with them are to be addressed by them. Composition of the council.
- Being mystical is an illusion, it is mystical because the system cannot be explained. We do not have the right yardstick to measure the system. The yard stick exists, but we do not have access to it. We have been indoctrinated in a system where the yardstick we have access to is only fitting the western medical system. Msyticism helps a Traditional Medicine to survive, by helping it to hide.
- Traditional Medicine Systems of Africa, birthed Ancient Chinese Medicine Systems, birthed all systems.
- We need the allowance to go at our own pace to return back to indigenous systems. Traditional Medicine has not been funded. Many people are against it, but it is surviving. The World Health Organisation states that this system is serving between 60-80% of the population of the World. Giving this a right to exist would help it. This system still remains as it is undercover. As soon as it is exposed adulteration will be behind it. We need Africa to be better oriented, for the people to come back to their roots, for this medicinal system to be able to be more openly documented without it being co-opted.
- Direct experience is the process, not a consensus on what people say.
- We are still at the level of setting standards and defining what health means.
- Tell us the positives of the practice, what are we missing?
- Whatever colonolialists did not understand they labelled as Witchcraft.
- For millions of years humans used a Traditional Healthcare System and we survived. How did I survive myself from this system? Qualitative anaylsis was a new system.
Trauma From An African Epistomology – Mays Imad (Host), Dr. Omavi Bailey, Dr. Sekagya Yahaya Hills