Abstract
The indigenous community of Gash Barka region, Western Eritrea has vast knowledge of their biodiversity. They use plant medicine to treat and prevent ailments. Their traditional therapeutic practices reveal that treatment takes a holistic approach and diseases are preventable. Whenever a person is affected, all community members are treated, with children getting smaller portion of the medicine. Also the focus of treatment is not only biological but also social and psychological. Endowed with rich biodiversity, the community uses plant medicine to treat ailments. The same medicinal plants are used to treat different ailments; different ailments are treated by same plant medicine, thus, ‘it is the cause not the symptom that is treated’. This paper is an anthropological study of traditional medicine among two indigenous Eritrean groups. Using unstructured interview method, qualitative data has been gathered from knowledgeable men and women, the custodians of the knowledge. The community’s perception of health and illness and their knowledge of plant medicine’s application is then described in detail using a descriptive method. It is concluded that traditional medicine is a life-tested knowledge of affordable/available homemade medicine with multiple values including developmental, utilizing local resources, heritage and biodiversity conservation. The significance of documenting and upgrading this time-tested knowledge for a sustainable future should not be overlooked.
Highlights
Indicating the timeless value and culture-specific nature of traditional medicine research shows that, Traditional medicine, variously known as ethnomedicine, folk medicine, native healing or complementary and alternative medicine, is the oldest form of health care system that has stood the test of time
The communities under study, the Nara and the Kunama, who reside in the Gash Barka region, Western region of Eritrea have a long history of herbal medicine on which they still depend
Communities under study; Part III is a brief outlook of the communities’ perception of illness and health; and Part IV is a description of their traditional medicinal knowledge and therapeutic practices
Summary
The Kunama and the Nara communities are two indigenous groups in Eritrea They originally came from the Central Nile Valley region and today they live in the area between the Gash and Setit rivers in Southwestern Eritrea. They both speak Nilotic languages that belong to the Nilo Saharan Language family. A mixed population displaying characteristics of both cultures live at the head of the Barka tributaries. The Nara are followers of Islam and the Kunama follow three different religions – traditional ancestral worship, Islam and Christianity They are both agriculturalists with a mix of pastoralism, enjoying the abundance of their natural environment. They use an extensive farming method because the population density is low compared to that of the highland region in the country, who use intensive farming, which is typical of high populated regions
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