EL CURRÍCULO

Mtumishi Patrick Barasa (MB) is a well-known ritual healer who conducts his practice in

Kamukuywa location (an administrative term) in Western Kenya (see map on page 25). His ritual theory, practice and paraphernalia exemplify a complex hybridisation of traditional healing practices and cosmologies, incorporating Christian teachings as well as ritual use of the bible for healing purposes. His title, Mtumishi, is normally reserved for Christian preachers and translates as ‘Servant.’ Although Mtumishi Barasa depends mostly on a traditional African cosmological repertoire to explain illnesses and misfortunes faced by his clientele, his reconstruction of disrupted human relationships, incorporates Christian practices of prayer and exorcism. The Christian Bible is a central feature of his divining and healing practice, and ideas of disrupted relationships among humans, and between humans and the Supreme Being (including the Christian God) are central to his practice. He uses the bible to divine and cleanse, and applies the concept of fire to signify the destruction of evil, and of cleansing oil to signify new beginnings after the powers of evil have been exorcised.

Although Mtumishi Barasa’s practice is altered from the strictly traditional healing practice his healing techniques identify him with the diviners of the traditional system. He claims to come from a family with a divining tradition, as his grandfather was a diviner. However, his grand father used a buffalo’s switch to divine while MB uses the bible. He consistently explained that the main reason why he used the bible was because he is the ‘servant of God – Mtumishi’ and quite different from his grandfather. Ethnically, MB is a member of the Luyia ethnic group who mainly inhabit the Western province of Kenya. Luyia traditional healing practices have been documented by Wandibba (1995), Maithya (1992), Nyamwaya (1987) and Wagner (1970). Amongst the Luyia, there is clear distinction between an

omuliuli (plural abaliuli) and other traditional healers, known as omusirishi (plural abasirishi). Omuliuli means "diviner" while Omusirishi means something like "traditional

healer". The presence of a separate term for "diviner" along with the more general category of "traditional healer" is consistent with African cosmologies as already explained which ascribe affliction to multiple causes. Many of these are supernatural causes, and they require the services of a diviner (Comaroff 1980, Wandibba 1995, Maithya 1992, Sindiga 1995, Nyamwaya 1987, Wagner 1970). Although such diviners or ritual healers are still referred to as abaliuli, the more common term in use today is omusali (one who prays) or the Swahili term mtumishi or ‘servant’. The introduction of these terms attests to the influence of Christianity on ritual healing.

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Many of Mtumishi Barasa’s practices also show a response to the critique of ritual healing by biomedicine. Mtumishi Barasa has modelled his healing practices on the biomedical system by incorporating apparently "modern" medical procedures and hospital-like spaces. These include a reception room, fully equipped and staffed by a secretary, appointment cards, and payment of registration fees before consultations, record books and an intercom telephone line between the secretary and the healer. There are different rooms for consultations, exorcisms, divinations and church rituals, as well as boarding facilities for clients who require nocturnal rituals or those who cannot travel back to their homes after a consultation. The most important room of his practice is referred to by him and his clients as the ‘X-ray room’ or simply the `court room` It is in this room that he conducts his divination sessions. Since the different stages of the rituals are conducted on different days, the secretary schedules appointments, which she writes on the registration card that the clients carry with them. Record keeping is done meticulously, with the secretary taking notes regarding the healing rituals as they unfold.

Mtumishi Barasa’s brief Life History.

MB’s history is a prototypical diviner story where as Behrend states, most ‘healers and prophets suffer severe illnesses, die, and go to heaven but are sent back to earth’ before becoming healers (2003:137). Good (1987) rightly observed that ritual healers are often ‘called’ to practice divining and healing magic by an act of God. Writing about the healing practices of the Akamba in Kenya, Good observed that, ‘typically, the sign of the professional calling materializes in later childhood, or adult life and is manifested in a lengthy illness syndrome whose symptoms may include dreams, hallucinations, socially aberrant behaviour, vision problems, and inability to concentrate or a series of misfortunes that affect the individuals entire family’ (1987:138-139).

Signs of MB’s calling into the healing profession started early in his childhood. MB had a very eventful early childhood in which he discovered that he had unique capabilities. He was always able to have visions of confiscated things any time anyone hid them. ‘My mother would hide foodstuff like a bunch of bananas for them to ripen, and I would definitely get to know about it and inform her when the bananas ripened’ he explained. In his early years of primary school education, MB was expelled from many schools because he had special capabilities to perform tricks and simple magical acts that attracted many

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students to him. His teachers considered this behaviour disruptive of normal learning and he was expelled from at least three different schools.

The year 1972 was quite important in MB’s transition into the healing practice. During one afternoon, MB fell asleep while tending his parents’ cattle. While deep asleep, he dreamt about a tall man attacking him. He suddenly woke up, and actually saw a very tall naked man standing next to him, ready to strike him. He stood up and sprinted away from this man. The man followed him and he continued running till he collapsed. In his collapsed state, he had a vision where he walked on a winding footpath inside a thick forest. At the end of the footpath, he found a neatly fenced homestead, inside of which were men drinking a local brew from a huge pot using straws. As he peeped through the fence, a man appeared to him dressed in a white robe and ordered him to go back to the village immediately using the very same path. MB took the same winding path back to the village and regained his consciousness at the end of the path. It was late in the evening when he regained his consciousness and his parents decided to take him to hospital, as he exhibited symptoms of malaria fever. His parents brought him to Misikhu Mission hospital,20 where he collapsed while undergoing treatment. He had yet another vision. In this one, he found himself staring at a large water mass, which had a thin rail (metal bar) connecting the landmass to the other side. The same old man with white robes who advised him to go back to the village in the first vision appeared a second time. This time round, he advised him to cross the water mass, using the thin rail ensuring that he did not slip and fall into the water. This he did and he regained his consciousness as soon as he was on the other side. He had been unconscious for close to six hours and in his own estimation, he literally walked on the bridge for an equivalent duration of time.

When MB regained his consciousness, he heard some noise, which he later came to realise, was from a generator that was used to supply power to the hospital. He had never heard this type of noise before and it really terrified him. Next, he saw was a very bright light from an electric bulb over his head. This too terrified him, as he had never encountered electricity light in his life. In this terrified state, he sprang to his feet and ran out of the hospital. The nurses and other hospital attendants however noticed him trying to escape and restrained him by holding him tightly on his bed. He explained that in the course of this struggle, he

20 _{Mission hospitals exist in many parts of rural Kenya to supplement the care provided by government}

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lost his consciousness a third time, and ‘was transported to the next world’. After he collapsed the third time, the health care workers assumed that he was dead and took his body to the morgue for preservation21.

Mtumishi Barasa claims that he learnt quite a lot from the ‘other world’ and it often took

him a minimum of seven hours to preach about this to his congregation. He, for instance, advised people never to commit suicide. This was because people who committed suicide by hanging themselves or by taking poison never completely died, but remained hanging on their ropes and in pain till the day of their final judgement as per the Christian religion. Those who took poison had stomach pains every day until their judgment day. Victims of murder remain in pain too and that was why some of them haunted the people who killed them. MB claims that he also discovered that dead bodies do communicate to each other while in the morgue. He explains that he was able to follow the discussions from two other bodies that had been preserved in the mortuary at the time he was brought into the mortuary, and learnt the cause of their deaths. One had died during childbirth while the other had been ill for over seven years before he succumbed to death.

MB claims to have been in the mortuary for three days before he regained his consciousness on the 3rd day like Christ who rose on the third day. This event caused a huge stir in the entire hospital as mourners and mortuary attendants who had come to collect one of the bodies scampered in panic when they noticed him sitting inside the mortuary. It was only the hospital administrators, two Europeans, who summoned sufficient courage to approach the mortuary and get him out. He was taken back to the hospital ward, and caused even more pandemonium as other patients scampered away. Due to the confusion brought about by his ‘resurrection’ the hospital storeroom was converted into a ward where he was admitted. Three days later he was transferred to yet another Mission hospital, known as Mukumu Hospital22 from where he was discharged a week later.

These dramatic incidents passed and MB went back to school. He was however enrolled to a different school. The teachers in this new primary school were not opposed to the tricks and

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Many clients that I spoke to stated that they knew MB had died and resurrected and that was how he obtained his healing powers.

22 _{Mukumu hospital is one of the earliest mission hospital in western province and it still ranks as one of the}

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the seemingly magical acts that he performed. He completed his primary and secondary schooling uneventfully and joined a local polytechnic where he trained as a mason.

The defining moment of MB’s transition to the healing profession came in his adult life as he worked as a mason. He explained that he would visualize things that nobody else saw and exhibited strange behaviour as a result. He would, for instance, see numerous snakes, tortoises or people stacking dogs on top of him. This made him scream and run away to hide in the bushes. He also saw many caterpillars or chameleons in his food and threw away the chunks of food that contained them. It was at this point that his parents decided to take him to traditional healers. He explains that his parents did not bother taking him to a biomedical health facility as they recognised this to be an affliction treatable best by traditional healing methods. Such diseases are often referred to by the local name, Misambwa, which literally translates to something like ‘spirits’ or ‘spirit possession’. MB’s parents took him to a total of 26 traditional healers (abaliuli) and another 12 ‘healers who prayed for people’ (abasali). MB observes that the abaliuli were not able to treat him and it took the last of the 12 abasali to have him healed. This last healer informed him that he was destined to be a healer and that was why he was afflicted. After the healer prayed for him, he opened up his (Mtumishi Barasa) healing potential. Once he acquired the healing powers, it was now MB’s turn to pray for this healer who also got more healing powers. From this very moment, MB realised that he had obtained ‘powers’ that enabled him to pray for people and ‘if the people believed they would be healed, then they got healed in the name of Jesus’.

I attempted to bring MB to discuss the ‘nature’ of his healing powers but he often took this as an opportunity to engage in discourse on the Christian teaching on faith and healing. He preferred to discuss and provide bible citations of instances where the power of the Christian God through Jesus Christ and other prophets was able to heal people. He himself claimed to be incapable of understanding ‘these powers’. In some cases, he actually claimed not to have any powers at all: ‘Jesus Christ hires my body and uses it to heal people’ - I am just like a pipe that delivers water, but if you ask me to tell you how that water is, where it comes from or how it does its wonders, I cannot tell you’. Everything according to him emanated from the Christian understanding of healing powers even where certain of his procedures appear to be from his creativity.

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MB hailed from a family with a ritual healing tradition. He inherited his healing capabilities from his maternal grandfather who was a diviner. The afflictions he suffered before becoming a healer were understood to be his dead grandfather’s spirits (Misambwa) that wished to be inherited. He however distances himself from his grandfather who he claims was a traditional healer who used traditional powers while he (Mtumishi) used the power from the Christian God. MB explained the concept of healing powers especially the way they transited from his predominantly traditional African grandfather to him in this manner:

God has since time immemorial provided human kind with special abilities to heal. The powers that I have to heal are the very same powers that my grandfather had. The only difference here is that while I acknowledge that these powers come from God, my grandfather attributed the powers to his ancestors. And that is why instead of using the bible, he used a buffalo’s switch to divine. The powers are however the very same. I have however cleaned my fathers healing tradition from its Misambwa origins, from its traditional outlook and given it a Christian outlook, which is guided by the Holy Spirit.

This philosophy would however appear to contradict his initial position that he actually had no powers. Mtumishi Barasa explains that although his grandfather did not acknowledge the Christian God, he struck him at times as possibly having powers that exceeded his own. His grandfather had for instance powers to produce people’s images in a basin of water and make them speak. MB stated that he could not do this but then clarified that this was not a necessary condition for his healing work.

Mtumishi Barasa dates the onset of his healing work to 1983. Although he was initially an adherent of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship Africa (PEFA) churches, he later started his own church known as the ‘King Jesus all Ministries’. This church has since grown in membership and is currently headed by another pastor. The church had branches all over the country and even in neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania. In chapter two, I give a detailed account of his healing techniques, which illustrate his Christian orientation.