IN DEFENSE OF TRADITIONAL MEDICINE

Our ancestors are turning in their graves

Each profession, intellectual or manual, deserves consideration, whether it requires painful physical effort or manual dexterity, wide knowledge or the patience of an ant. Ours, like that of a doctor, does not allow for any mistake. You don't joke with life, and life is both body and mind. To warp a soul is as much a sacrilege as murder. (Mariam Ba so long a letter)

 Amoi Petelina with one of her grand children 

Our ancestors are turning in their grave.

At least I know mine is

Down at the compound still stands the grand fenne tree

Slightly bent over the now deserted birth house

I still remember running   up and down as we gathered Chasmanthera dependes (lubowa)  to  make a  decoction   for the birthing mother   that  was just  brought in , 

she had  had a retained  placenta and  the  following  day she was   able to  go home  with her  baby .

And yet  you  say it is primitive, utterly harmful,

 Our rituals are mortally sinful, they are ignorant and diseased.

  My ancestors are  turning in their graves

Don’t get me wrong, everything good can be bad too

Plants are powerful but they can be harmful too

The witch doctor that gives you the evil potion is different from the medicine man that provides the antidote.

When Zehneria minutiflora (kifo) is placed on someone’s footsteps,

 They may not be able to think clearly.

And yet, the leaves of the same plant, when infused can be used as a bath to treat Bad breath and odor. 

You should have seen the  elders 

 Many  joined the ancestors at 110 years or more 

 Not   a single strain of grey in their  hair

 They  walked with grace and vigor

  To this day, stories are told about how the spirits taught them the language of the plants

   And yet with spite,we  call it barbaric and backward

 Our  ancestors are turning in their grave

            But you should see the sophisticated one

The sight of her invokes sympathy

Her lips are red hot like that of a wild cat that has just dipped its mouth in blood

The skin so pale with the feet so swollen when   she walks,

 You can hear the sound of her foot steps from a mile away

   When She sighs, you hear the horn of the train approaching

 She sweats medication; the sophisticated one is a living dead.

   I don’t understand her chosen way of treatment; they are way too complex for me

Just like I don’t understand the need for surgery to reconstruct the   hymen

Or to do a breast reduction, when everywhere I turn

 I can see  Oxalis corniculata growing everywhere.

And yet ,she swears her lungs out not trust her life with plants

Our ancestors are surely turning in their graves

Don’t get me wrong

I have worked in the hospital

  I still remember so well running to the third floor

  And he was on floor and there was blood everywhere

 Quickly we had our   gloves on and on the count of three

  Lifted him up   back to his bed  

  My hand was full of flesh, his skin was peeling off

 More like a snake moulting, the pain through his body is only second

 To the eternal hell fire

An infusion of kazaana would have helped or even a ritual.

But you see that is not the way for the sophisticated

 The hospital is a place for repressed emotions

Every morning we mobbed around like robots parting our lips to reveal the teeth

 As the protocol so demanded,

 In the eyes of the young you could the fatigue of old age

 And in the eyes of the old, the desperate cry of a child

 There was misery everywhere.

 I saw it all, broken ribs during resuscitation, blood, needles

The moaning in the waiting room

The patients came in sick and left looking like zombies

 If they didn’t die

    And yet she says the rituals, chanting and smoking is primitive

My ancestors are truly turning in their grave

Don’t think I despise her ways at all

The complexity surrounding her decision is mind blowing

 The amount of medication she has to take just to survive is beyond disbelief

 That she is even alive, is a miracle

As  said by the ancestors , “death comes from death and life from life”

 How can the sterile medication she takes restore life? I wonder

The complexity of her chosen ways has left me with profound respect

For conventional medicine

 And while it is true that many of us are most likely alive because of it

Herbal medicine deserves its place too

Show me any hospital that distributes good luck in bottles

 And I will show ten plants, you can chew smoke, steam or infuse

 Nothing is perfect and is not without flaws

All I’m asking for is a fair ground to play

 Because how can a system designed to prepare people for death

 Determine the fate of one that actually believes in life?
 A poem by  herbalist Anna Athieno  (BSC)

Takecharge of your health . health is wealth 

www.miraclehealingherbs1.com.