ABSTRACT
This chapter explores liminal space between the divergent ways of knowing bodily afflictions and cure in the context of the politics of knowledge production in Africa. The friendship has endured the vicissitudes of time, which is why Samson dedicatedly attends to the curative and miscellaneous needs of his friend, who has been weakened by old age and ill health. A major motif in Samson's narratives is the challenge posed by the invasion, appropriation, dislocation, and restructuring of the curative space through biomedical conceptions of illness and cure. The relationship between indigenous healers and the post-colonial Nyole community is marked by a sense of ambivalence and reservation regarding the position of the healers at a time when biomedical institutions have steadily encroached on the healing space. A similar teleology informs the biomedical policy that proscribes and places ethnomedics under strict surveillance.
