Professor Robert Wicks tells the following story about how one of his African students discovered the healing power of an entire community:

When the student was ten years old, he got trapped in a burning hut that he had accidentally set on fire. The fire had started at the only entrance to the hut, and the flames were too much for him to go through. He felt this was his end and let out a wild scream. Fortunately for him, his father braved the inferno and got him out. He had lost consciousness due to the heat, smoke, and possibly fear.

When he finally regained consciousness, he was lying in a room surrounded by the women of his village, who were nursing his burns and offering him food. He could also hear the voices of the men outside and knew that the whole village had come to the support of him and his family.

Two weeks later, he told me, the village elders came to his home to perform a ritual partially intended to prevent similar accidents, but also—and of even more importance to him as he looks back on it—to help him deal normally with fire.

To accomplish this, they built a model hut in the open field and instructed him to go in the hut and set it on fire in the same way as in the accident. They had him reenact the accident three times, and each time one of the villagers would rush in to rescue him. In addition, they had him tell his story again and again to village members who came to see him and his family.

From this he learned as a child something that people in rural areas seem to teach each other instinctively: namely, that the tragedy of one individual or one family is a tragedy for the whole community …. In the words of South African poet Mzwakhe Mbuli in his Zulu poem:

An injury to the head,
Is an injury to the whole person,
Is an injury to the whole family,
Is an injury to the compound,
Is an injury to the village,
Is an injury to the kingdom,
Is an injury to the world.