Paper short abstract:

This paper examines bathing practices in Oku Cameroon as strategies against uncertainty. Personal bathing and traditional medicine 'washing' treatments serve to remove dangerous dust and harmful substances from the body.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines bathing practices in Oku Cameroon as strategies against uncertainty. Bathing hygiene attends more to removing dirt and dust substances that have accumulated on the surface of the body than on removal of the body's own secretions. Dirt comes from without, not from within. For this reason, bathing is often carried out in the evenings to remove the day's accrued dirt. Much like this concept of bodily 'dirtiness', illness is understood to come primarily from exogenous sources.

Some illnesses blow in with the dust of the dry season or the fog of the rainy season; others are bestowed on individuals by human agents using dangerous substances. Personal bathing and post-bathing oiling of the skin mirror the removal of and fortification against harmful (witchcraft) substances carried out in traditional medicine treatments called 'washings' ('kensuuse').

As with personal bathing, medicine washings, carried out in actual or symbolic streams, focus on the removal of harmful substances (placed there by witches) from the surface of the skin. Often this occurs through the use of agents, materials, and substances considered more powerful than those held responsible for having caused the illness. Like surfacing a stain during laundering, harmful substances are located, weakened, and drawn to the surface where they are washed away.

Illnesses that inexplicably endure, resist treatment or are otherwise atypical appear common today and are the cause of bodily, treatment-outcome and social uncertainties. In response to such, bathing, through personal cleansing and traditional washings offer a sense of control and resistance against otherwise uncontrollable contact with dangerous substances known to cause affliction.