Traditional
Medicine
It seems like one of the main topics of
breakfast conversation among visiting faculty to the
Doctors, clinics, and hospitals here
leave much to be desired. As my friend,
Nancy Manahan, a long time foreign service doctor who was
stationed in
We have a doctor who holds clinic hours
for our students. Nancy Senghor is
Senegalese and trained here. She is very
pleasant, but seems to be rather cavalier with her general diagnosis of malaria
for almost everything, without any lab tests.
One American student clearly had a bad cold, but the diagnosis was
malaria, even though he had only been in
There is a Canadian-trained Lebanese
doctor, Djaneidi, who treats most of the Americans in
For my part, in the past year I have also experienced periodic stomach problems. I am probably not as careful about what I eat and drink as I should be, I’ll admit. Occasionally I will eat a salad of raw vegetables (so excited about any vegetables at all!), drink something with ice cubes (potentially from non-bottled water), or share from the communal bowl with a welcoming family (rude to refuse!). I eat yogurt daily to get all the acidophilus and other bacteria necessary for good digestion and drink lots of ginger juice to help settle my stomach.
Well, beginning last summer, I started
experiencing severe symptoms – intermittent pain in my stomach, a severe
bloated feeling, and intermittent diarrhea.
It was quite painful and I felt weak and tired most of the time. In my usual fashion, I chose to ignore and override, a tactic that has served me well in the past. This time it really didn’t work as well. So when I came home for a visit in October, I
made an appointment with my doctor at Harvard Vanguard. After describing my symptoms, he was
convinced that I had picked up Guardia while on a backpacking trip in
However test results revealed an amoeba - Endolimax nana – which generally doesn’t cause symptoms. I was prescribed a heavy duty antibiotic, which I reluctantly took. It really didn’t help, and probably made me feel worse. My theory is that it also killed off good bacteria, necessary for digestion and dealing with local bugs. Concurrently I went to a colon therapy clinician and had two high colonic treatments, lots of fun. The practitioner, who was very knowledgeable and understanding, also gave me some acidophilus pills, green powder to mix with water, and a book to read. It was her contention that I suffered from some sort of worms, which tend to cause upper intestinal symptoms such as mine. In fact I think I actually saw them more than once! I got Nancy Manahan to write me a prescription for de-worming medicine, just like that given to dogs. Well, that did something. I was sufficiently cleaned out of something that was living in there.
But I still didn’t feel 100%. It is common for these things to be difficult
to fully diagnose, and there is a tendency for them to return and remain for
long periods. I wasn’t enthusiastic
about that thought, and
Well, I had been hearing more and more
about “traditional medicine”. Many
locals throughout
I asked my driver, Manga, if he had heard of the place. He had and he telephoned to find out a bit about it. Sounded mysterious, but I was indeed curious and open to seeing what it involved. I resolved to go their last week. After mentioning my plan to some friends, I suddenly had three other people asking to come along – Serigne Ndiaye, director of CIEE, who had back pain, Eric Berg, a CIEE student studying traditional medicine, and an elderly Senegalese friend of Eric’s, who looked quite ill. We made the 2 ˝ hour drive to Fatick last Tuesday.
The center is down a dirt road beyond
the sleepy town of
One by one, my friends were also interviewed. Then I was taken by Fatou to another hut for my meeting with a traditional medicine practitioner. I brought Serigne Ndiaye along with me to translate from Wolof. We pulled back a curtain and entered a very small room with two beds and a chair. On the bed sat an elderly man in traditional attire. All around the room were various fetishes and ceremonial objects. I sat of the chair and through Serigne described my symptoms and what the doctors had prescribed. He reached under the bed for a couple of big sacks of stuff and mixed me up four small bags of assorted wood chips (from seven different trees). I was told to take one bag of chips and put it in a liter of water and let it sit for an hour. I was to then drink it exclusively, replenishing the water as I drank the brew. Each bag of chips would last eight days. After finishing all four bags (32 days), I should come back for a follow-up consultation. He also gave me a small bag of some powder, also looking like it came from wood. I was to sprinkle a bit on each meal, like salt, and eat it that way. If I were to get diarrhea. I was to put a teaspoon (he showed me how to measure) in a glass of water and drink it. It would stop the diarrhea within 15 minutes, he assured me. He asked for 3,000 CFA ($6) and I thanked him and left. My friends were also ushered to other huts for similar consultations.
I was told by Fatou that the center was
started in 2001 and involves brief residencies by over 450 traditional medicine
practitioners from all over
The whole thing took very little time
and we departed from the center around
I have done a bit of inquiring
concerning traditional medicine practices here.
Many people rely exclusively on this treatment, rather than medical
doctors. Western pharmaceutical
companies have been examining traditional remedies, some of which may be
reliable treatments for illnesses, patentable and marketable. Probably this would once again result in
exploitation of African ideas with little profit returning to the
originators. I heard that in
At a social event, I mentioned my visit to Dr. Djaneidi. He was enthusiastic, telling me that he had been studying traditional treatments for several years. He asked me to inquire on my next visit which trees were in my mix. He is compiling a directory of traditional medicines.
As an aside, one of our employees, Yves Banco, a cleaner, has been very ill for several months. He came to see me two weeks ago asking for a loan to pay for traditional medical treatment. He said he had been to the hospital, but they could not diagnose him or improve his condition. He hadn’t had the strength to work for several weeks. He looked close to death to me – gaunt with a deathly cough (my guess, either tuberculosis or AIDS). He was insistent on relying only on traditional medicine. Out of pity, I gave him some money. We haven’t seen or heard from him since and I can only assume the worst.
To
return to the main Stories from