A Baptist Missionary Nurse and Her Symbiotic Relationship with Ndyuka Medicine
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ISSN 1653-2244 INSTITUTIONEN FÖR KULTURANTROPOLOGI OCH ETNOLOGI DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY “It’s two things mixed together!” A Baptist missionary nurse and her symbiotic relationship with Ndyuka medicine By Maarten van der Bent 2017 MASTERUPPSATSER I KULTURANTROPOLOGI Nr 68 “It’s two things mixed together!” A Baptist missionary nurse and her symbiotic relationship with Ndyuka medicine A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts December 2016 A master’s thesis by Maarten van der Bent Uppsala University Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology Supervisor: Jan-Åke Alvarsson — i — Abstract This thesis analyses the interaction between missionary medicine and Ndyuka medicine from the perspective of a Baptist missionary nurse operating a clinic in the village of Lantiwei in Suriname. Based on two months of anthropological fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2014, this thesis argues that in her everyday practice of medicine, the Baptist nurse is dependent on the cooperation of a local Ndyuka healer and his family to such an extent that their working together can be regarded as a social form of symbiosis. This thesis furthermore demonstrates that the Baptist nurse has incorporated Ndyuka ideas to her understanding of illness and death, and that even though she continues to abhor and reject the practice of Ndyuka medicine as a form of devil worship, she recognizes its spiritual powers. Taken together, these findings show that an opposition between missionary medicine as a—perhaps unwitting—agent of modernity and local Ndyuka medicine as a ‘traditional’ form of medicine increasingly superseded by ‘modern’ medicine, is fictitious, and that the lack of scholarly attention to the interaction of missionary medicine with local practices of medicine demontrates anthropology’s obsession with the ‘traditional’ ‘Other’. Keywords: missionary medicine, Ndyuka medicine, interaction, symbiosis, ‘othering’ — ii — Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. iv 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Research objective ......................................................................................................................... 1 Relevance ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Outline of the thesis ...................................................................................................................... 2 2. Theory and method ............................................................................................................................... 4 Theory ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Method ............................................................................................................................................ 8 3. Setting the scene: Suriname, slavery and the Ndyuka Maroons ................................................... 14 Ndyuka social organisation ....................................................................................................... 16 Ndyuka religion .......................................................................................................................... 18 Lantiwei, Pinatyaimi and the Cottica river villages ............................................................... 20 4. Ndyuka and missionary medicine—an epistemology ................................................................... 23 Ndyuka medicine: two modes of interpretation .................................................................... 23 Obiya ............................................................................................................................................. 25 Anatomy of body and soul ........................................................................................................ 26 Missionary medicine ................................................................................................................... 27 Medicine and morality ............................................................................................................... 29 The medical offering of missionaries ....................................................................................... 30 — iii — 5. The Catholic mission in Tamarin ....................................................................................................... 34 The mission station in Tamarin ................................................................................................. 35 The Catholicism of the Cottica Ndyuka from an emic and an etic perspective ................. 38 Syncretism and dualism ............................................................................................................. 40 Catholic missiology and original monotheism ....................................................................... 41 6. The Baptist mission in Rikanau Mofu ............................................................................................... 45 The founding of the mission ...................................................................................................... 46 Baptist theology and missiology ............................................................................................... 47 Preaching Baptism among the Cottica Ndyuka ...................................................................... 50 7. The arrival of Sister Anne and her practice to Lantiwei ................................................................. 56 Becoming a missionary nurse .................................................................................................... 58 Sister Anne’s practice .................................................................................................................. 59 8. Healthcare consumption by the Cottica Ndyuka—an impression ............................................... 60 Ndyuka medicine ........................................................................................................................ 61 Going to Sister Anne ................................................................................................................... 62 Socio-cosmic disturbances: the decline of kunu and the rise of Bakuu ............................... 63 Three examples ............................................................................................................................ 67 9. Sister Anne ............................................................................................................................................ 75 Sister Anne as a missionary nurse ............................................................................................ 75 Sister Anne and the obiyaman .................................................................................................. 76 Sister Anne and the demonic ..................................................................................................... 80 10. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 88 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................. 92 — iv — Acknowledgements First and foremost, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Thomas Polimé, without whose generous offer of conducting research in the village of his brother this thesis would have never come about. Naturally, I am also deeply grateful to his brother Herman, Herman’s wife Agnes and Herman’s son Gio for warmly welcoming me in their village, and for being my hosts for the entire period of my fieldwork. I am forever thankful to all residents of Pinatyaimi and Lantiwei, many of whom have become my informants, for their support and friendship during my stay in their villages. I wish to thank my supervisor Jan-Åke Alvarsson for believing in me at critical moments, for his comments on drafts, and for his patience and guidance during the writing process. I wish to thank Diane Vernon for her interest in my research project and for her assistance and encouragement for the entire duration of the project. I wish to thank Wim Hoogbergen for helping me set up this research project, Marieke Heemskerk for her practical assistance in Suriname, and Bonno Thoden van Velzen for his comments on an early draft. I hope this thesis does justice to the devotion of the people named. Haarlem, 21 December 2016 Maarten van der Bent — 1 — 1. Introduction Two healthcare practices dominate the village of Lantiwei on the Cottica river in Suriname. The visitor who arrives by boat can, upon landing at the jetty, choose to take a bush path to the left, which leads to the clinic of Baptist nurse Anne Dreisbach, or walk to the right in the direction of the practice of the Ndyuka healer Ba Adam. Both the nurse and the Ndyuka healer have quite a reputation in the region, with the former even having been