La souffrance aux confins de la coutume et de la science : le psycho-traumatisme chez un soignant, fils du roi en République Démocratique du Congo

Abstract

IntroductionCulture is produced by a field of data transmitted by custom, which set themselves up among those of scientific backgrounds, from scholar education. In Africa, due to historical reasons, academic and traditional educations are two different, parallel paths of learning taken by children. They are respectively secreted by two different sources: the tradition is locally produced whereas school education comes from the West. The process of understanding sickness requires attribution of meaning, the case of Mr B. exposes us the how and the why the African draws, strategically, in both production sources of his culture to attribute meaning to sickness. ResultsMr B. grew up in the royal court, emblematic symbol of the pure tradition. Child in a village in the forest, he braved all difficult to access education. After high school, he worked as a teacher in his village before the insecurity forced him to leave and settle in a city, considered relatively secure and trading hub, 20 kilometers from his village. Having no access to the school where he taught, Mr B. decided to complete his studies downtown, in nursing. Finally graduated, he was hired by the Congolese organization of emergency management, Croix-Rouge du Congo, the Congolese national branch of the Red Cross International. As head of an aid worker team, Mr B. 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. Mr B. 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 Mr B.’s work is no longer in conflict with his deceased father's will. ConclusionThe value of this case lies in the reflection on modernity in the African health system to provide mediation between two intentionally made heterogeneous universes: the theories of some against realities of living of others. Caregiver training in DRC and Africa, while remaining scientist, would benefit from being closer to cultural practices to finally aspire to its note of nobility: producing caregivers for Africans.