The Kalahari Desert (shown in red) and the surrounding Kalahari Basin (in orange).

In African cultures, the act of healing is considered a religious act. Therefore, the healing process often attempts to appeal to God because it is ultimately God who can not only inflict sickness, but provide a cure. Africans have a religious world view which makes them aware of the feasibility of divine or spirit intervention in healing with many healers referring to the supreme god as the source of their medical power. For example, the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert believe that the great God Hishe created all things and, therefore, controls all sickness and death. Hishe, however, bestows mystical powers for curing sickness on certain men. Hishe presents himself to these medicine men in dreams and hallucinations, giving them curative power. Because this god is generous enough to give this power to the medicine men, they are expected to practice healing freely. The !Kung medicine men effect a cure by performing a tribal dance. Loma Marshall, who took expeditions to South West Africa with her family to study the !Kung people, writing two books on their findings, describes the ceremonial curing dance as follows:

At the dances not only may the sick be cured, but pending evil and misfortune averted. The !Kung believe that the great god may send Gauwa or the gauwas at any time with ill for someone and that these beings may be lurking awaiting their chance to inflict it. The medicine men in the dances combat them, drive them away, and protect the people.c Usually there are several medicine men performing at the same time. To cure they go into trance, which varies in depth as the ceremony proceeds... When a man begins, he leaves the line of dancing men, and still singing, leans over the person he is going to cure, going eventually to every person present, even the infants. He places one hand on the person's chest, one on his or her back, and flutters his hands. The !Kung believe that in this way he draws the sickness, real or potential, out of the person through his own arms into himself... Finally, the medicine man throws up his arms to cast the sickness out, hurling it into the darkness back to Gauwa or the gauwasi, who are there beyond the firelight, with a harp, yelping cry of "Kai Kai Kai.

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