"Traveling pains": embodied metaphors of suffering among Southern Sudanese refugees in Cairo

• Published in: Culture, medicine and psychiatry medicine and psychiatry, 2004-03, Vol.28 (1), p.15-39
• Main Author: Coker, Elizabeth Marie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African Cultural Groups; Attitude to Health; Biographies; Cairo; Cairo, Egypt; Communication; Cultural factors; Culture; Depression - psychology; Egypt; Embodiment; Health care; Human Body; Humans; Illness; Illness Behavior; Illnesses; Medical anthropology; Medicine; Mental health; Metaphor; Metaphors; Narratives; Pain; Pain - etiology; Physicians; Psychiatry; Psychology; Refugees; Refugees - psychology; Self concept; Social change; Sociocultural factors; Sudan; Sudan - ethnology; Trauma; Travel
• ISSN: 0165-005X; 1573-076X
• DOI: 10.1023/B:MEDI.0000018096.95218.f4

This paper presents the results of a larger study conducted among Southern Sudanese refugees in Cairo, Egypt. "Illness talk" and body metaphors are the focus of the present work, which is based mainly on an analysis of the illness narratives of people attending a church-run medical clinic. The findings suggest that refugees use certain narrative styles in discussing their illnesses that highlight the interconnection of bodily ills and refugee-related trauma. The refugees narrated the histories of their illnesses in terms consistent and coterminous with their refugee histories, and articulated illness causes in terms of threatening assaults on their sense of self as human beings and as part of a distinct community and culture. The use of embodied metaphors to understand and cope with their current and past traumatic experiences was echoed in narratives that were nonillness related. Metaphors such as "the heart," "blood," and "body constriction" were consistently used to discuss social and cultural losses. Understanding the role that the body plays in experience and communication within a given cultural context is crucial for physicians and others assisting refugees.