Abstract:
Abstract:
In contemporary times, one might well say that the traditional public spaces are
irreversibly shrinking and collapsing. Even more so, they argue that the loss of traditional
‘form’ secular engagement, are a consequence of globalisation. However, many Africans
are increasingly invoking indigenous constructions of illness to offer explanatory models
of ill health as opposed to dominant biomedical paradigms. In the wake of COVID-19
pandemic, an upsurge numerous deaths happens to be linked directly to witchcraft.
COVID-19 has once again exposed the shortcoming of Western medical practices in
African cosmology. In this paper, we examine the concept of disease, health, and healing
in the context of changing economic, cultural, and political relations in Kenya. We will
pay attention to social/public responses to disease, questions of power, agency, and
controversies surrounding COVID-19. We examine how both the sacred and secular
spaces as sites of conflict: conflicting memories, conflicting values, conflicting interests,
conflicting narratives of place and so on.
Keywords: epidemic, COVID-19, witchcraft, religion, medicine, healing, public life
