Phenomenology and Illness in Steve Chimombo's Hyena Wears Darkness.

Literature has discussed Steve Chimombo’s Hyena Wears Darkness as a narrative that challenges cultural practices that exacerbate the spread of HIV and AIDS. This paper argues that apart from challenging cultural practices that aggravate the spread of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) as it is the primary objective of the novel, Hyena Wears Darkness encourages a phenomenological view of illness foregrounding social and psychological wellbeing amidst illnesses. This study is qualitative in nature and uses an interdisciplinary approach to text analysis as phenomenology, a concept from the field of philosophy, is used to analyse the literary text. Theoretically the paper references insights by Havi Carel’s Illness; The Cry of the Fresh (2014). Carel’s Illness; The Cry of the Flesh is a theoretical book focusing on phenomenological perspective of illness which views illness from the perspective of the ill person. The study analyses Hyena Wears Darkness through the lens of phenomenology and its implications as depicted in the narrative. It also analyses the text’s depiction of psychological and social changes as parts of the illness. The study has found out that some characters in the text do not view illness from the ill person’s perspective thereby ending up ill-treating them. On the other hand those that are ill have psychological and social changes comprising the illness apart from the biological dysfunction.