Benjamin Bihabwa Mahano
University Paris Descartes, France
Title: SUFFERING AT THE BORDERS OF CUSTOM AND SCIENCE: psycho-trauma in a caregiver, son of a king in the DR Congo.
Biography
Biography: Benjamin Bihabwa Mahano
Abstract
Introduction
To have studied, worked and earned his salary constituted a transgression against the will of the deceased father. To be purified, a special course was necessary: healers-exorcists-hospital.
The individual experience of illness exhumed, in B, conflicts between transmissions, filiations and affiliations.
It is the relation to knowledge in a universe where it draws from two sources, made heterogeneous.
Results
M'B grew up in the royal court, emblematic symbol of the pure tradition. Graduated as nurse, he was hired by the Congolese organization of emergency management, Croix-Rouge du Congo. As head of an aid worker team, M Bami is led to deal with disasters, especially those produced by the exactions of armed groups given the current state of the security context in eastern DRC.
In the middle of a mission, to intervene in a slaughter in which was killed thirty-eight people, a psychic trauma was triggered in him.
Alongside the literary descriptions ―learned in school and used every day for his patients― the reading of his own suffering is traditional first. M Bami has managed to subtly carry his illness within an area where mix Western type treatment and traditional type. This disease was, in addition, an opportunity for rereading family ties, relationships between his ―very demanding― work and his father’s will. The king's witch doctor, the same who treated his father, provided the key, by his ritual to soothe family disputes. He also updated the meaning of symbols in order to establish individual and collective narrative identity, so that M B's work is no longer in conflict with his deceased father's will.
Conclusion
The value of this case lies in the reflection on modernity in the health system to provide mediation between two intentionally made heterogeneous universes: the theories of some against realities of living of others. Caregiver training, while remaining scientist would benefit from being closer to cultural practices to finally aspire to its note of nobility: become more Humans.