Using indigenous proverbs to understand social knowledge and attitudes to leprosy among the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria

Abstract

Following a systematic analysis of 23 proverbs obtained from ethnographic research and from literature searches, this article presents the cultural knowledge and attitudes about leprosy in Yorubaland, southwest Nigeria. Our analysis indicates that contrary to fragmentary evidence portraying Yoruba attitudes to leprosy as entirely negative, there is a mixed pattern of social responses to leprosy which range from drastic exclusion to empathy and acceptance of people affected by leprosy. We show that there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that leprosy related proverbs are used both as channels of social control and as mediums of knowledge production about leprosy. The fact that social interactions are saturated with metaphorical language in Yoruba culture makes the analysis of proverbs a valuable tool for identifying aspects of social discourse that influence stigmatization of disabled people. An interesting discovery of this research is that modern technology and social networking sites such as Facebook provide a new forum for the dissemination and preservation of proverbs and this article shows that proverbs are not part of an unchanging past but instead part of contemporary understandings of the world.

Keywords:

• leprosy
• proverbs
• social networks
• ethnography
• Yoruba
• Nigeria

Acknowledgements

The ethnographic research resulting in this article was approved by the University of Leeds Research Ethic Committee (Ethics Reference No: AREA 08-053) and National Health Research Ethics Committee of Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria (Protocol Approval No: NHREC/01/01/2007-31/07/2009b). The research was funded through the Overseas Research Students Awards (ORSAS) and International Research Scholarships from the University of Leeds, and a fieldwork grant from The Leprosy Mission. We are grateful to individuals and organizations who contributed proverbs to make this article possible, including the Facebook groups ‘Yoruba Keyboard’ and ‘Yoruba Proverbs’. We thank persons affected by leprosy in southwest Nigeria for their help with deciphering most of the proverbs. We also acknowledge the perspectives of the editor and comments of two anonymous reviewers which significantly improved this article.

Notes

From 1954, WHO and UNICEF donated transport and dapsone tablets (for the treatment of leprosy) to the Nigerian Leprosy Service, thus freeing government resources at the time for developing capital programmes, such as rural health clinics to support out-patient treatment of people affected by leprosy (Shiloh 1965, 144). With UNICEF's support, the Nigerian Leprosy Service decentralized services, taking treatment directly into the villages, where weekly out-patient clinics were held (on village market days), to attract local and visiting people.