After completing family therapy training at the Ackerman Family Institute, I returned to Kisii, Kenya for a few months after becoming a Peace Corps volunteer ten years earlier. From my visit to this village, I learned that the traditional approach to medical and psychological treatments is complex, consisting of herbalists who prescribe concoctions from local plants, good and bad witches, and surgeons who remove part of the skull from fully awake patients, as well as perform goat-to-human rib transplants. in a.d previous blog postI wrote about observing an hour-long head surgery under a tree; the patient was without anesthesia or antisepsis.
Visiting a fortune teller in Kenya
On my second visit to western Kenya, I witnessed yet another part of the traditional approach to the treatment of disease—this time not as an observer, but as a client. I went to a fortune teller who diagnoses personal problems and offers prescriptions.
As anthropologist Sarah LeVine writes, in Kisiida the task of fortune-telling “It is to identify (the cause of) the sorrows and to restore the appropriate rituals or counterattack.” A friend of mine, who worked as a translator, arranged for me to meet a middle-aged woman who practiced fortune-telling. We waited outside Kemunto’s hut as he prepared for my visit. I heard strange sounds from inside. It was a fortune teller, my friend said. He speaks in a different voice when he prophesies.
After we had waited for a while, he invited us into a windowless, lightless room filled with smoke from a three-stone fire in the middle of the dirt. He sat on the bed with a beaded cap and started asking me questions.
Kemunto misunderstood my intention, so instead of talking to him, he asked me questions. He would often throw millet straw into the three-stone hearth set on the ground between us and spread the fire. I didn’t see more smoke filling the room without the light. He continued to use his strange voice, speaking not when he was breathing, but when he was breathing.
Through his constant questioning, he learned that I have children, that they occasionally have nightmares, that my wife once had a bicycle accident, that I sometimes feel sick to my stomach, and that we have thunderstorms and lightning storms around my house on Long Island. After about half an hour, he analyzed the cause of my various sufferings: living among those who were not my clan. It was foolish because I was immune to the witchcraft of strangers. His solution was to gather my extended family and bring a black goat for a sacrificial feast. (When I told him that I was not in the habit of making sacrifices to my ancestors, he looked at me with pity, as if that explained it all).
The placebo effect
Did Kemunto’s prediction work? He made me point out some, admittedly minor issues. Maybe someone who believes in this process will immediately tell his problem. I didn’t know. Nevertheless, divination must have some effect; otherwise, its appeal is lost. Perhaps it has survived as a cultural practice because of its supposed efficacy. the placebo effect. As noted in a in the article Michigan Medicine, “Research shows that the placebo effect resulting from positive expectations, provider-patient relationships, and rituals associated with receiving care.
Fortune-tellers have positive hopes for the visit and believe in the person doing the fortune-telling. They aim to participate in a healing ritual that brings the community together. This is consistent with the family systems approach, which focuses on the individual’s feelings and perceptions rather than strengthening relationships. In this case, getting people around food without any guilt or blame is key.
I am not aware of any research that looks at the efficacy of divination in Kisii. But the approach is consistent with factors that contribute to placebo effectiveness. Of course, I don’t know how many people followed his instructions, but I suspect that many did.
If so, how does this compare to its effectiveness? psychotherapy? One meta-analysis Randomized controlled trials of psychotherapy have concluded that their overall effectiveness is relatively small. My experience in Kenya shows that if one believes in the power of diviners, prescribed remedies are as successful as Western psychotherapies in solving clients’ problems.
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