Talking the illness: Swahili for medical aid and cooperation in Turin

Graziella Acquaviva; Mauro Tosco

doi:10.13135/1825-263X/2933

Graziella Acquaviva University of Turin
Mauro Tosco University of Turin

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/2933

Keywords: Swahili, global health, African traditional medicine, medical aid, cooperation

Abstract

The article presents and discusses the results of a pilot course aiming at teaching Swahili grammar and lexicon as well as cultural awareness in the field of health to a group of medical personnel doing voluntary work in medical cooperation in East Africa. The different conceptions of illness and cure in traditional African and allopathic (Western) medicine are analyzed and discussed (sections 2 and 3). Notwithstanding the government policies advocating a better integration between African traditional medicine and biomedicine, the communicative problems on the field keep being a real challenge, and special attention was therefore given to the communication between doctor and patient. The use of Swahili in patient reports (section 4) and a modicum of language knowledge on the part of the volunteers can make a difference if coupled with some awareness of local cultures. As an output to the course (section 5), four bilingual English-Swahili patient reports were produced (personal and family’s physiological and patient’s pathological report, as well as a specialized patient report for language and communication disorders). They have, albeit partially, been tested on the field (section 6).

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Author Biographies

Graziella Acquaviva, University of Turin

Graziella Acquaviva holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and is currently a fixed-term (Senior) Researcher in Swahili Language and Literature at the University of Turin. She has done extensive field research in Tanzania and Kenya on Swahili popular literature and has many publications in the field of African literature. She further translated Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino (1883) and Carofiglio’s Testimone inconsapevole (2002) from Italian into Swahili (Hekaya za Pinokio and Shahidi asiyekusudiwa). She teaches Swahili Language, Culture and Literature at the University of Turin.

Mauro Tosco, University of Turin

Mauro Tosco is Professor of African Linguistics at the University of Turin. His main area of research is the Horn of Africa, where he has been working on the analysis and description of underdescribed Cushitic languages in an areal and typological perspective. He further works on the expansion and revitalization of minority languages, language policy and ideology. Pidgins, creoles and language contact are his third main domain of research.

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