Booke (1982)

Excerpt from draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story”

During the second week of December, I went to visit the dispensaries in several villages. The last dispensary, which was the newest, was in Booke, a community deep in the equatorial rain forest. To reach the place, we first walked two hours to Boyele and then walked two miles to a river where we boarded dug-out canoes. The scenery was stunningly beautiful as we walked along the winding creek for the next two hours.

After arriving at the landing site for Booke, we still had a one and a half-hour walk through manioc fields and banana groves to get to the village. The villagers gave us a rousing welcome, as this was the first time that we had a well-stocked dispensary. About the time the dancing was to begin, towering storm clouds gathered. The chief and the elders tried to drive the rain away to no avail. A torrential downpour postponed the festivities until the next day.

Late the next afternoon, we took a walk through Ekonda and Batwa villages. There was a very famous nganga nkisi (traditional healer, or what some called a witch doctor) at Booke that we went to see. She was a Batwa woman, as all traditional healers in the area were. There were two rows of huts, one for the Batwa and one for the Ekonda.

She would make her diagnosis of the disease in her “sun laboratory,” which was a ten-foot dirt mound that she stood on. She would stand on the hill, stare into the sun, and then go into a trance to come up with the diagnosis. For medicine, she used various roots and herbs. The villagers said that she helped people who had psychological illnesses. I did not get to meet her, as she had gone to another village for two weeks.