THE GODS, DISEASES, AND AILMENTS IN AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA

This research paper looks into the multi-layered relationship that exists between the traditional African belief system, particularly with regard to understanding and perception of gods and spirits, and how disease and health-related concerns are perceived, interpreted, and dealt with both on the vast African continent and throughout the African diaspora dispersed around the world. What follows, therefore, is an attempt to really look deeply into the complex ways in which indigenous religious beliefs and spiritual frameworks throughout history have influenced and shaped popular perceptions related to health and illness and the methodologies employed in the same. This calls for an extensive study that seeks to understand multiple perceptions of diseases, which are hardly ever literally observed in isolation to be biological but complex conditions invariably entwined with spiritual beliefs and moral and communal experiences. Such multifaceted health conditions require combined interventions of both medical practices and spiritual approaches if effective healing is to be accomplished. For the diaspora, these beliefs have undergone a series of major transitions or adaptations-changes with the demands of new environments while managing to preserve key foundational elements of African spirituality that are considered important to their understanding and practices. This postulates that understanding these various insights and their integration into health systems become one of the bases or springboards from which meaningful, inclusive, and efficacious health systems need to emanate. This perspective marks a profound respect for the rich diversity along the continuum of African and diasporic experiences with reference to health and healing practices.