Traditional healers and childhood in Zimbabwe
By: Pamela Reynolds.
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 183
Subjects: Zezuru (African people) -- Medicine; Shona (African people) -- Medicine; Children, Shona; Healers -- Zimbabwe
Description: Based on the author's fieldwork among the people of Zezuru, this study focuses on children as clients and as healers in training. In Reynolds's ethnographic investigation of possession and healing, she pays particular attention to the way healers are identified and authenticated in communities, and how they are socialized in the use of medicinal plants, dreams and ritual healing practices.

Reynolds examines spiritual interpretation and remediation of children's problems, including women's roles in these activities, and the Zezuru concepts of trauma, evil, illness, and death. Because this study was undertaken just after the War of Liberation in Zimbabwe, it also documents the devastating effects of the war.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-183).