Abstract EN:

The ethnological name "Balant" is not a Senegalese speciality. We also meet "balant" people in Guinea-Bissau. Therefore concerning the ground the research worker is in the presence of one vast social entirety which cultural disparity has incited without any doubt the authors of colonial documents to diverse types of approaches. On the map the "Casamance" region was a kind of southern annexed confined between Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. This spacious region of south Senegal has given birth to two new regions: Ziguinchor and Kolda. The motive of this study is consecutive to the circumstances of our father's disease, who has been down with a cerebral tumour, in 1972. The different modern and traditional courses of treatments he had to follow before to regain health have brought us to centre its interest on three principal axises: disease, health, therapy, among the "bi-jaa" an under-group of the "Balant" people. It draws a certain number of typical common points of the cure in traditional Africa at one and the same time situates the traditional medicine in indigenous or "animistic" circle to an impact point between the knowledge and the faith. It had try to encircle the interpretation of disease and therapeutic rites, the political and economic system, the rites and collective ceremonies, the certain sights of social life and of the power idea among the "bi-jaa" people of "Casamance".