Plant Calling
Diverse human-plant relations are maintained amidst the practices of the Cameroonian Association of Research in Anthropology of Traditional Medicine (ARAM). An anthropology of becomings in phenomenological and cosmological orientations is designed to address these lively modalities of entering in relation with the vegetal. The text explores these modes through three spatiotemporal figurations enabling to comprehend the phenomena of fluctuating intensities in human-plant relations. In the first space-time in the operational site of ARAM in the district of Etoa of the periphery of Yaoundé, in Cameroon, useful live and dried plants take part in everyday healing practices. The second and third spatiotemporalities correspond respectively with the replanted forest and the ancestral forest at the proximity of ARAM’s Antenna (base) Lamal-Pouguè situated at some 100 km north of the city, in the direction towards Douala. There, plants call the healer, or he calls upon them in search of remedies. Even more reverential relations with the vegetal are established with ancestral trees, from which we can seek potency and joy.