Two young academics reflect upon their experience at the MedHums conference

We had the pleasure of attending the first ever medical humanities conference in Malawi. This conference explored the hybrid space of humanities and medicine.   We learnt so much and met a lot of people who are doing interesting work in medical humanities. The wide array of interdisciplinary papers presented tackled historic and contemporary issues in medicine from a humanities perspective. They also tried to pave a way forward in the African medical humanities scene.

The presentation panels were grouped according to common themes and disciplines. This grouping was not well-thought which resulted in papers clumped together according to superficial similarities; had the programming been based on scrutinisation of the abstracts, they would have been grouped using deeper similarities that transcended discipline. If we were all attending the same session, this would have been appropriate but because we were spread out in two panels this hindered interdisciplinary discussion because attendants went to panels grouped according to their discipline. For instance, they were three papers on mental health; one was in History, the other in Literature and one in Theology. These papers could have been grouped together instead being put in panels according to their discipline.

The casual vibe of the conference made it a good environment to foster ideas. The keynote speakers were masters in their fields and good orators which made their long presentations interesting and thought provoking. We, two recent graduates, rubbed shoulders with professors and academic masters in their field but we were able to speak as and ask questions though they were our equals. The audience was attentive during our presentations and gave us criticism that we could use to improve our papers. The opportunity to present our papers at an international conference was amazing and we would love for such opportunities to be found more often. However, as fledglings still finding our footing in the world of academia, it would be nice to have more rewards for our efforts. Young people in other ventures such as entrepreneurship and those starting NGOs are given more rewards and incentives as opposed to young researchers.

In the recent years, there has been an exponential growth of artists, NGOs, academics using humanities to solve problems in health. If the conference had been well-advertised we would have had more papers from Africans, and more Malawian attendees (who were not presenting) who were interested in the discussions because it connects to work they are already doing.

Writing the papers was hard because both of us have studied close to nothing about medical humanities in our degree programmes. There is little knowledge of medical humanities in a Malawian context so it felt like we were groping in the dark. But also, individual unsupervised research is something new to us.  As a recent graduate, to present in front of professors, doctors and other highly success people and get such a positive feedback was amazing. We are grateful for this opportunity.

Bongani Khoswe (right) presents her paper on the role of the church in mental health in Malawi

The papers we presented, one looked into how the church in Malawi has dealt with depression amongst its members and the other on how women with disability are portrayed in Malawian folklore; both fit into current debates in medical humanities. For some time now, NGOs and government have tried to explore the role existing structures, such as the church and community leaders, can play in solving problems in medical practice; this was reflected in the paper on depression. Though within this debate, this paper went in an unexplored direction which was the Church’s role in mental health.

Wongile Mbano (left) presents her paper on the disabled women in traditional folklore on the literature panel.

Due to the recent increase in attacks on people with albinism, NGOs and the government have tried to change the societies mind-set on people with disability by trying to get it to see them as people instead of “the other”. This paper scrutinises society’s attitudes on disability by dissecting their oral literature on disability.  We hope that in future there will be more training opportunities in medical humanities in Malawi, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

 

– Bongani Khoswe (Chanco graduate, theology) and Wongile Mbano (Chanco graduate, English literature)

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