Talking the illness: Swahili for medical aid and cooperation in Turin

The article presents and discusses the results of a pilot course aiming at teaching Swahili grammar and lexicon as well as cultural awareness in the field of health to a group of medical personnel doing voluntary work in medical cooperation in East Africa. The different conceptions of illness and cure in traditional African and allopathic (Western) medicine are analyzed and discussed (sections 2 and 3). Notwithstanding the government policies advocating a better integration between African traditional medicine and biomedicine, the communicative problems on the field keep being a real challenge, and special attention was therefore given to the communication between doctor and patient. The use of Swahili in patient reports (section 4) and a modicum of language knowledge on the part of the volunteers can make a difference if coupled with some awareness of local cultures. As an output to the course (section 5), four bilingual English-Swahili patient reports were produced (personal and family’s physiological and patient’s pathological report, as well as a specialized patient report for language and communication disorders). They have, albeit partially, been tested on the field (section 6).