NAKAWAKUKA: Fertility-related concerns may be among the reasons people seek the services of traditional healer Nsambu Micheal, popularly known as Owomugo Kenge, but he says his practice extends far beyond helping women seeking to conceive.
Based at his shrine in Nakawakuka, Nsambu says people from different backgrounds visit him with a variety of personal, family and economic challenges for which they seek traditional solutions and guidance.
Among the issues he says he encounters are family problems, broken relationships and what some visitors describe as bad luck.
Nsambu says some people approach him when they feel their lives have taken an unfortunate turn and believe they need traditional intervention.
Family-related challenges, he adds, form another significant part of the concerns brought to his shrine.
According to the traditional healer, some visitors seek his assistance when relationships between spouses or other family members have deteriorated and they are looking for ways to restore harmony.
WHEN JOB SEEKERS COME KNOCKING
Employment difficulties are another area Nsambu says brings people to his shrine.
He claims that some individuals who have struggled to secure jobs or feel economically stranded seek his assistance, hoping for traditional solutions to what they consider obstacles in their lives.
Nsambu has practised traditional healing for more than 20 years and says his visitors include people of different ages and social backgrounds.
He prefers to describe those who seek his services as patients, saying some have returned to share testimonies about their experiences.
His practice is based at his shrine in Nakawakuka, where he says he receives patients on most days of the week except Wednesday.
TRADITIONAL HEALING MEETS TIKTOK
Nsambu has also embraced social media as part of his outreach.
He says he turned to platforms such as TikTok after noticing that digital communication was increasingly being embraced across different professions.
For Nsambu, traditional healing should not be excluded from the digital space.
He says his online presence has enabled some people to discover his practice and later seek him out at his shrine.
The shift to social media, he argues, provides traditional practitioners with another avenue to communicate with communities and explain their work.
WHY HE DOES NOT FOLLOW OTHER HEALERS
Interestingly, Nsambu says he does not closely follow the work of other traditional healers.
Asked about prominent practitioners such as Mama Fina, he said he does not know much about other traditional healers because he does not follow their activities closely.
Instead, he says his attention remains on his own practice and the people who visit his shrine seeking assistance.
For Nsambu, the work involves listening to people who arrive with different challenges—from fertility concerns and family problems to employment difficulties and what they believe to be bad luck—and providing the traditional services they seek.
As traditional healing continues to maintain a presence in Ugandan communities, practitioners such as Nsambu are increasingly turning to social media to reach audiences beyond their immediate surroundings.