The Experiment Must Continue. Melissa Graboyes

Чтение книги онлайн.

      In a simple sense, the sets of words describe increasingly intensive forms of searching as you read down, in addition to having a more negative connotation. Kutafuta is the least value-laden, and is used widely to describe looking for objects, people, or more esoteric ideas, such as a better life.³¹ Kuchungua implies that the person has used an element of prying in order to gather information. Both kutafuta and kuchungua connote that the search for information is overt and even public, even if it is not appreciated. Kupeleleza, however, invokes a sense of criticism, almost always implying that this form of investigation involves a degree of furtiveness and covertness. For example, a Tanzanian assistant involved in medical work reported how “It was this spying on houses [kupeleleza vyumba] that upset” the public.³²

      Moving back up the table, mtafiti continues to be a word of choice when talking about researchers. Still, although relatively benign, it too hints that an acceptable activity has been carried out on the wrong scale: searching is fine, but searching too insistently is frowned upon. One man explained, “A researcher [mtafiti] is an important person because he indeed is the one who discovers everything [anayegundua kila kitu].”³³ This supports the dictionary definitions of who a mtafiti is, yet there is a hint of excess since a researcher knows not just about disease, or bugs, but about “everything.” Even when one of the most neutral words, mtafiti, is used, the subtext of prying and invasiveness remains. There is one other word I heard used to describe researchers, and it is the only term that was positive: mtaalam, which can be translated as “expert” or “specialist.” Mtaalam (or mtaalamu) is connected to the term elimu, which is “knowledge or learning.” Someone who is referred to as mtaalam is educated, learned, and well-informed; he is a scholar or sage.³⁴ When researchers were referred to in this way, it was less of a direct description of their work and more of a general commentary on their education and expert knowledge.

      Healers and Harmers

      There were two competing narratives about researchers that emerged, each focusing on very different aspects of their work. In the stories told by Mama Nzito and others, the focus was on blood theft and the murder of innocent Africans. Researchers were powerful experts who were sanctioned by the government and feared by locals. They were unsavory characters bent on making money, even if it meant sacrificing human life. In contrast, another set of stories—which appeared in nearly every interview, frequently alongside or intertwined with the first, malignant narrative—described benevolent researchers.³⁵ In their positive descriptions of researchers, East Africans noted the similarity between researchers and doctors: they both gave out medicine and helped the sick recover.³⁶ These behaviors meant research was described as kitu kizuri—a good thing.³⁷ These starkly different characterizations of medical researchers were put forth by most of my interviewees, who saw no inherent contradiction between researchers as potential murderers and researchers as benevolent distributors of drugs. Researchers could be involved with both curing and killing. This willingness to maintain two contrasting impressions of researchers is likely tied to the fact that one of the figures a researcher might be compared with—a mganga—is commonly thought of as a powerful individual who can both harm and heal. As a variety of ethnographies from across East Africa have shown: “In the eyes of ordinary people both good and bad aspects of the doctor can be found in the same person. The mganga has power to protect and harm. . . . The common epitaph is ‘How can s/he cure witchcraft, if s/he is not an expert in it!’”³⁸

      The Zaramo of coastal Tanzania recognized that, “in practice, a mchawi [witch] may also be a mganga,” and, on the coast, both uchawi (black magic) and uganga (white magic) “may be practiced by the same individual.”³⁹ Thus, the very ability to heal requires knowledge of how to harm. In some cases, a mganga is considered an actual witch, since “although he seems to be using his powers to help others, one cannot be sure about all his activities.”⁴⁰ Only by understanding what causes illness (or, how to cause illness) can cures be discovered. And while a good mganga should always use his power in a positive way, there is always the potential for that ability to be abused. The mganga is treated, therefore, with a mixture of respect, caution, and fear—not so different from the way researchers were viewed.

      For most of East Africa, the Swahili word mganga (or its analogue in other Bantu languages) is a broad term that can reference the healing performed through magic, the СКАЧАТЬ