This ethnographic study was conducted among the Raya community of southern Tigray in northern Ethiopia. It employed interviews, observations, and case studies as primary data collection methods. The aim was to explore how cultural beliefs and practices shape the community’s perspective of well-being and ill-being, as well as influence their health-seeking behaviors. The findings reveal that cultural knowledge and practices—rooted in the community’s lived experiences—shape perspectives on the causes of sickness, the treatment options deemed appropriate based on context-specific explanations, and the community’s understanding of what constitutes well-being and ill-being. Various religious, mystical, and traditional perspectives influence the community’s understanding of the causes of health disorders and shape their treatment choices. These belief systems play a central role in interpreting health and sickness, often guiding both diagnosis and therapeutic approaches within the cultural context, and giving rise to practices grounded in lived experience. The study finds that health-seeking behaviour is shaped primarily by cultural knowledge and perspectives. This study suggests for further study on how cultural health beliefs evolve over time and how traditional knowledge systems are transmitted and sustained, especially in the face of modernization and biomedical influence.
Keywords: community perspectives, cultural beliefs & practices, raya community, well-being & ill-being
