Gastritis medicine preparation babanki_gastritis-treatment Multimedia Documentation of Babanki Ritual Speech

A lady has gastritis and goes to a young man who prepares her medicine to cure it. This project documents the language of Babanki traditional ritual performances. Babanki is an endangered Grassfields language spoken in Babanki Tungo and Big Babanki, northwest of Cameroon. The language of rituals contains poetic forms, lexical items and grammatical structures not found in everyday Babanki speech. Unfortunately, these special speech forms are threatened by the strong influence of modernism and especially Christianity which have caused the number of people who still engage in ritual performances to drop drastically. Consequently, the Babanki cultural values inherent in the ritual performances are no longer cherished and transmitted to younger generations. When the lady consults and explains what is wrong with her the young man tells her that she is suffering from gastritis and he will prepare medicine for her. He asks her for a number of things which she brings and then he harvests some leaves and then cooks the medicine for her.