The Magic of the Milky Way

-->

There are many little things that make living here at Macha feel like a special treat. There is ‘magically’ food on the table for us every day at breakfast lunch and dinner (yes, we do know the women who make the food for us, but for the first time in a long time, I am not making the majority of the food I am consuming) – AND at our tea time break from class. We can easily find friends to play with by walking down to the fires and playing a ‘pick-up’ game of Duck Duck Goose. Lost luggage magically arrives on the bus from Livingstone, everyone is friendly, and every night the Milky Way smiles at us from above.  ** I had written this before dinner, and after dinner Dan and Caleb came with the picture below! 

Thanks Dan and Caleb for the Milky Way picture!

 

Don't be fooled- tea time is serious business! They were all smiling once they had the rolls in their mouths!

Class today (day three) was a discussion of effectors of public health. We discussed education, income, economics, and equity. It is especially clear to all of us visiting here that healthcare and education are not equitably distributed across the world- or even within a country. I guess there are different ways to look at equity. Is it ‘fair and just’ to give education and healthcare only to those who can pay for it? It is easier to say so or work it out in an accounting book than it is to turn away a set of children from the school because they are simply too poor to afford to buy the books or the uniform. And yet, we are forced sometimes to make such hard decisions because both healthcare and education require some input of funds to function appropriately. So- our class discussion moved on to talking about some strategies that have worked to improve overall education and healthcare in different settings, hoping to pull some insights for successful strategies that might be applied in other locations. Again, it has been very valuable to have the perspective of Dr. Thuma who has considered and worked through these issues for many years.

Dr. Thuma (red shirt) our tireless instructor, ready leader, and translator for all things cultural or lingual.

The local primary school

This afternoon we visited one of the local traditional healers, Dr. Lomuno. Dr. Lomuno learned the arts of traditional healing from his father and grandfather, and has been practicing since 1961. Dr. Mylin asked when he is planning to retire, and Dr. Lomuno just laughed at the idea! Dr. Lomuno actually serves as one of the local chairmen of the traditional healers society (or cooperative or association, I forget what they called it). It was interesting to hear about how he goes to meetings to discuss practices and that they talk about regulating certain practices. He explained to us that the methods of traditional medicine can be used to hurt other people, and if they find that someone has done that, they label that person a witch doctor and remove his or her license to practice for 14 years. If they are found to practice during that time, he said that they could serve a prison term for breaking the probation period. He also had a logbook where he would record the people who came to visit him, and what treatment they received.

The tools of a traditional healer. The bottles contain crushed herbs from the bush, there is his logbook for patients, and his 'X-ray' that he uses to diagnose patients.

 

Dr. Lomuno has been practicing traditional medicine since 1961.

He then told us about the herbs that he has to treat a variety of illnesses and about which kinds of people he will refer directly to the hospital at Macha. The hospital staff (and Dr. Thuma) have talked with him over the years about how to identify patients who are dehydrated, have anemia or cancer and need to get to the hospital right away. Based on cases they have seen at the hospital where patients who had used traditional herbal remedies and overdosed, there has also been a good amount of conversation about the appropriate dose for patients so that adults and small babies won’t be given the same amount of the remedy. The students had many questions for Dr. Lomuno: how he diagnoses patients, his success rate, what he thinks of the hospital etc. Dr. Lomuno’s only complaint about the hospital was that although he refers patients to them, they never refer patients back to the traditional healers. 

This is the small grove of trees where Dr. Lomuno says many people are cured. This is where he talked with us about his practice.