The Mechanic and the Mission

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gregoire is an ex garage mechanic whose mission in life is to help people in Benin, West Africa, with mental health problems who may otherwise be chained up in the spare room. With family approval he takes patients to his treatment centres, he cuts off their chains allowing them space and giving them help.

Gregoire's story and the attitudes that coalesce around it unfold against a backdrop of traditional healers, Western trained psychiatrists, ethnopsychiatry, Evangelical missionary work, Western attitudes to Africa and African attitudes to the West, and government ministries for whom mental health is a low and cash strapped priority.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:04.0	For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to BBCWorldServis.com slash podcasts. Hello, Emm. How are you? Is everything okay? I've come to say hello and you've gone to hide in your
0:28.3	room. Come and say hello. I've come a long way.
0:34.0	The patient has come out.
0:36.0	He's only making small steps and at first I don't understand why.
0:40.0	But he has chains holding his feet.
0:45.0	It's the first time Amy has met Felix, a social worker.
0:57.0	I'm Lila Jovi of BBC Africa.
1:01.0	Here in a small house in the city of Karavi on the outskirts of Kutum, the capital of Benin.
1:08.0	In May 24, has a mental disorder.
1:14.0	With his parents away, his big brother, Rosinous, has been trying very hard to take care of him.
1:20.0	We have had to lock him up because he's not to de rangel the agent of Cartier.
1:24.0	We have had to lock him up because he disturbs people
1:28.0	and they come to our house to complain.
1:31.0	Sometimes he attacks people in the street saying they have taken something of his.
1:37.8	I'm just overwhelmed by all these.
1:40.2	The modern new he is aggressive. Sometimes he becomes aggressive. He can't stop screaming at night and day. He can't sleep, so neither do I.
1:52.0	I mean, we are not scared of him but when he becomes aggressive we can't even approach him.
1:59.0	And what did you do yesterday?
2:04.0	I ate macaroni.
2:05.0	Really?
2:06.0	You ate macaroni.
	...

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