Coping with Illness in Turkana:A Preliminary Report

Abstract

The characteristics of illness-coping in Turkana are outstanding. The Turkana do not show enthusiasm in the exploration for the causes and meanings of illness. This is even more true of popular healing rituals; a healer just divines the color of livestock to be slaughtered and in many cases, do not tell any explanation, whatever it may be a ethnomedical one or a whichcraft. They perform it as if it were no more than an affair to do, without emotional involvement. There is not a feedback loop equivalent for diagnose-treatment, only practise exists. The illness-coping Turkana is not oriented to detect and solve troubles in thir social relationships. It does not claim idiosyncratic interpretation of illness on the assumption of shared knowledge. It treats illness as what should be finished by regular procedures. It works to prevent the patient and his family from falling into the unlimited exploration of cause-and-reason and distance them form authoritative intervention.