When Illness is more than just a Sick Body: Probing how isiZulu- Speaking Nurses’ Construct Illnesses and Healing

Abstract

Particular communities and groups of people develop particular prevailing points of view, including how health and illness is understood. Our prevailing points of view, ‘worldviews’ or positioning, are a result of the ‘dialogue’ between us and our wider society (see Creswell 2009:8) and is a process of “active construction” (Fox 2001: 23). As such, we approach reality from our particular point of view which has been constructed and developed over time (see Rosaldo 2003:583). Different societies have in turn, their specific practices and beliefs, as well as their approach to health and illness (see Naidu 2013: 257; Naidu 2014: 147; Vaughn, Jacquez, and Baker 2009: 65). As Whyte, van der Geest and Hordon (2002: 118) assert, many factors “influence people's response to ill-health, including entrenched beliefs”. As such, the understanding and approach to illnesses vary from one society to another, one setting to another, and one belief system to another. This paper looked at what isiZulu-speaking nurses understand by illness and healing. It explored what sickness means to the Ama Zulu African nurses. In exploring this understanding of nurses, the paper explored the wider cultural belief system of the isiZulu-speaking nurses within which their understandings are deeply embedded.