A Drummer's Testament
<Home page>
<PDF file>
Dagbamba ideas about medicine and health problems; major health problems of Dagbon; major diseases and how they are treated; other problems: guinea worms and parasites
<top of page>
Contents outline and links by paragraph
Transition: medicines of belief versus real medicine
- 1. medicines that treat people who are not well; compared to doctor
- 2. sickness and death are fearful topics
- 3. Dagbamba ways of treating sickness is different from developed countries
- 4. bad medicines can give people sickness; good medicine treats same sickness; example: anthrax
- 5. example: leprosy; medicine can give someone leprosy; medicines treat it
- 6. poisoning; can give such medicine in food
- 7. witchcraft can be countered by medicine
- 8. “woman coughing” and its medicine
- 9. people who are killed by sickness from medicine or witchcraft; typical Dagbamba give different type of funeral
- 10. people pray for protection against sickness; medicine also can protect against bad medicine
- 11. someone with real medicine is important; all go to someone with medicine
How people get medicine
- 12. sickness has many types; every sickness has medicine
- 13. in olden days, Dagbamba learned to use medicine from trees and herbs
- 14. can go to medicine man to learn; need to know trees
- 15. protocols of getting medicine man to teach about medicines
- 16. medicine is secretive; not bought with money; not kept; some people deny they have it
- 17. sick person is directed to the medicine man who has necessary medicine
- 18. sick person does not ask the medicine man about his medicine
- 19. sick person directed to get the tree that will provide the medicine
- 20. ways of preparing and taking medicine
Medicine's limits
- 21. medicine does not treat every sickness successfully; the role of fate or destiny
- 22. example: not giving an intended gift; medicine may or may not work
- 23. can treat sicknesses like leprosy; other conditions resemble it; cannot know all diseases
- 24. leprosy a contact disease, but many stories about what can cause it
Pain and swelling: kpaɣa
- 25. kpaɣa: the root of sickness
- 26. kpaɣa medicine from plant roots; how it is administered
- 27. kpaɣa in different parts of the body: pain; medicine can help
- 28. kpaɣa as a lump; hernia; can change and grow
- 29. kpaɣa can be dangerous and fatal; firkpi
Other sicknesses
- 30. sompuɣli: stomach sickness in women; prevents conception
- 31. kpaɣaʒɛgu: malaria
- 32. gonorrhea
- 33. yoɣu: swelling; boil
- 34. dirgu: many different sicknesses; sores, blindness, headaches, impotence
- 35. jaɣa: yaws
- 36. treatment of yaws
- 37. anthrax: can kill
- 38. kpilimpihi: epilepsy; has types
- 39. kɔhim piɛlli: tuberculosis
- 40. tira ka nyɛra: cholera
- 41. dɔɣu: convulsions
- 42. kpante
- 43. muliŋmee
Parasites
- 44. worms: inside the stomach or body
- 45. ʒigora
- 46. schistosomiasis
- 47. elephantiasis
- 48. napompuli: swelling in legs, another type of worm
Guinea worm
- 49. guinea worm
- 50. guinea worm in water; can be seen
- 51. guinea worm can spoil parts of the body
- 52. tie the guinea worm so that it won't go back into the body
Snakebite
- 53. snakes: kill people; Dagbamba treatment
- 54. snakebite: Mossi treatment; different Mossi medicines
Conclusion: modern medicine
- 55. some sicknesses are new to Dagbon; hepatitis
- 56. many sicknesses have strength in Dagbon; need for people with medicine to come and help
<top of page>
Proverbs and Sayings
Maalams say that if you are sitting in a town and there is no medicine man in that town, you should leave that town.
The medicine that frees people is what we call “medicine.” But the one that gives trouble, it's not true medicine.
Every type of sickness has its medicine, and every medicine has the one who owns it.
In Dagbon here, a medicine man has more strength than a tindana or a soothsayer.
They have eaten him.
She fought and died.
“Don't hold my hand” is better than “Let go of my hand.”
Sickness has no end.
As a human being has different parts, that is how sicknesses also are.
There is no sickness that they don't know its medicine. If they say that this sickness has no medicine, then it is not a sickness, and the sickness is not there.
I have seen that every sickness has its medicine in Dagbon.
It is not that medicine can treat every sickness.
Somebody will become sick, and the medicine is there, and that person will die.
If death were not there, then this world would not have been good.
Those who have medicine, they treat people who have life.
Where you enter the river, that is where the crocodile catches you.
Everybody and what his medicine is, and everybody with his end of sickness, and everybody with the medicine that will take him back to his house.
If there is no kpaɣa in a person's body, that fellow too is not there.
If they are going to make a human being, they make him and the kpaɣa the same day.
Some types of sense can be more than medicine.
As people have gathered, that is why many sickness have come.
<top of page>
Dagbani words and other search terms
- Names and persons
- Abdul-Rahaman (Abdulai)
- Afa Simaa
- Fuseini Jeblin (Fuseini Jɛblin) (Alhassan)
- Maachendi (Maachɛndi)
- Mangulana (Alhaji Adam Alhassan)
- Mumuni (Abdulai)
- Diseases and sickness terms
- bilipi
- dirgu
- dogu (dɔɣu)
- firkpi
- gbani
- gingalanyugu (giŋgalanyuɣu)
- guinea worm
- zhigora (ʒigora)
- jaga (jaɣa)
- kohim pielli (kɔhim piɛlli)
- kona (koŋa)
- kpaga (kpaɣa)
- kpagazhegu (kpaɣaʒɛɣu)
- kpante
- kpante kuunga (kpante kuuŋa)
- kpante mahili
- kpagapielga (kpaɣapiɛlga)
- kpariwawu, kpariyuri
- kpilimpihi
- mulingmee (muliŋmee)
- nantoo
- napompuli
- napongtimtimli (napoŋtimtimli)
- nyerfu (nyɛrfu)
- pag' kohinga (paɣ' kohinga)
- poli
- saranyuwa
- sompugli (sompuɣli)
- tahanyelga (tahanyɛlga)
- tim
- tira ka nyera (tira ka nyɛra)
- wobnapong (wobnapoŋ)
- yomuni
- yogu (yoɣu)
- zombolikparba
- Miscellaneous terms
- barkpandaa (four-leaved senna) [Cassia absus L.]
- bira [Hibiscus surattensis L.]
- bluestone, brustrom (copper sulfate)
- Dagbani
- gungon (guŋgɔŋ)
- gurum
- Holy Qur'an
- housepeople
- kapawu [exclamation]
- kasigirba (kasiɣirba)
- maalam, maalams
- muhili
- taanga (taaŋa) (shea tree) [Vitellaria paradoxa]
- threepence
- tindana
- tukari (leaves of baobab tree) [Adansonia digitata]
- yilgu
- Towns and places
- Dagbon
- Moglaa
- Nanton
- Savelugu
- Yendi
- Cultural groups
- Ashantis
- Dagbamba
- Konkombas
- Mossi, Mossis