The white man did a good and deliberate job in making some Africans especially Zimbabweans shun their culture, religion and all their customs including their traditional healers and herbs in preference for what is termed modern medicine.
What we tend to forget is that most modern medicines are procured and made from traditional herbs harvested from indigenous trees and grasses hence the need to embrace them in the HIV/AIDs response. We are living in a very unpredictable world where those we think are there to help us are busy using us as guinea pigs for medical experimental purposes. If we don’t stand up and start promoting our own traditional medicines and traditional ways of life we shall have nobody except ourselves to blame .We are black Africans inside out and no matter how hard we try to copy the white man and his ways we will remain black Africans.
Ways should be found to incorporate traditional medicines in the treatment of all diseases and of course this should be done responsibly with the government through the Ministry of Health in full control of the management and distribution of traditional herbs. The need for traditional herbs in the current disruptive environment by the donor community we are experiencing can never be over emphasized because the countries from where these medicines are manufactured can change goal posts whenever they want and this at the expense of the hapless HIV positive African.
Cases of people who have been referred to traditional healers by modern doctors are many. We have also heard of very highly educated and prominent people among them modern Doctors who have gone to seek treatment at Traditional Healers’ shrines with a few even embarrassingly dying there.
When God created men and placed them in their various locations across the world He made sure that all their basic needs were readily available within their locations. Let’s never be lied to that Africans didn’t know how to deal with infectious diseases or any other ailments.
There were and still are lots of medicine men who knew and still know how to deal with any type of health condition all over the place. These medicine men knew when a disease was too infectious to warrant quarantine especially small pox, measles, TB, leprosy among others.
There were some traditional Healers who specialized in treating broken bones and veneral diseases and many other complicated diseases long before the white man came and demonised traditional medicine and traditional beliefs for profit.
Where I live here in Gokwe there are Tonga people who are very good in the use of traditional herbs and only visit clinics or hospitals as a last resort. Among these Tonga people are people living with HIV for many years without using ARVs but they’re still going on strong many years later. I am challenging modern Doctors to come and do some research on these people maybe they can learn a thing or two.
Violent fights are very common among the Tonga and the use of axes and knobkerries and other dangerous weapons is very widespread and broken bones and other fractures are the order of the day but most of these are treated at home with home remedies and healing is very effective and fast.
God is very kind to the ordinary folk including those living with HIV. He provides them with the right food because they can’t afford modern day junk food so their food is the simple traditional stuff like millet and, rapoko sadza with bush vegetables, ants etc which are prepared most times without toxic cooking oils and this is medicine. Actually, ordinary life is very healthy. The hectic schedule of work in other people’s fields, farms or homes with very little or no remuneration without complaining keeps the ordinary folk very fit, contented and well exercised. It’s very rare to hear that an ordinary man has been affected by a disease that requires surgery in India or China yet those wealthy people are always flying to faraway countries for medication with a few dying mid flight. Most ordinary people let diseases mature and heal on their own without disturbing them by going to hospitals and once healed in this way the disease never returns.
A lot of people living with HIV are still alive many years later just by using traditional herbs and this calls for a closer analysis of how traditional medicine can be incorporated into the HIV/AIDs response. A day will come when those countries who manufacture both HIV and ARVs will just wake up and say very sorry guys we can no longer supply you with our ARVs like was done by USAID last year then we will be left with HIV and no ARVs. We need to have our own option B plan in place in the event that our source of ARVs suddenly closes up.
I know that what I am saying here may not be agreeable with some people here but I have seen it working and I am a beneficiary of traditional herbs especially during the period early 2000s when ARVs were not as readily and freely available as now so listen to a man with scars because he talks from experience.
Piason Maringwa
+263774322043
