Qi flows from Beijing to Gaborone (Part 2)
Baboki Kayawe | Friday February 19, 2016 15:41
She studied the level of harmony between modern and traditional health practices in Africa, lessons for Botswana and what particularly the country can learn as it develops its own Traditional Medicine Practice Bill.
Beijing University of Chinese Medicine has been in existence for many decades now. It is here, and thousands of other places, where the baton is handed over to the younger generation to continue the well preserved legacy of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Professor Zhao Yansong, 45, was educated in this very university. Initially, she was not keen on learning TCM, but her parents insisted. Today the educator who is based in the Unit of Seasonal Feveral Diseases, has spent 20 years of her life passing knowledge to young men and women, who in most instances take this route only to appease their parents. “Most people prefer using TCM because it is something that has been passed on from one generation to the next,” she says.
“And it is very holistic. This is to say, the philosophy of our indigenous medicine is such that even Chinese food is medicine as it is very safe and has plenty of medicinal benefits,” the youthful professor says.
Depending on the ailment, Zhao put both Eastern and Western health methods together and found that they actually complement each other. Though modern medicine is good in terms of surgical procedures, Zhao believes it is not that efficient in terms of quickening the recovery process after the operation.
Therefore, she says, indigenous Chinese medicine has to be brought in under such instances. Moreover, operations, she says, are foreign to Chinese medicine.
“We have also discovered that it is quite challenging for Western medicine to address issues of reproduction. For instance, when someone is having a hard time conceiving, modern medicine usually cannot produce the much-needed results. When couples finally resort to Chinese medicine they are often able to conceive within six months,” she adds.
The university opened its doors shortly after liberty in 1949. A mixture of learners have since taken to understand and master the heart of TCM, though others like Zhao were forced by their parents to take this route. “What I can tell you today is that I don’t regret having gone this way. I am happy to be a professor in Chinese medicine,” she says.
She has invaluable suggestions for Botswana and Africa to revive and find a place for indigenous medicine in the mainstream health sector. Zhao emphasises the need to research as the knowledge of what plants are good for which ailments has not been passed on to the next generations for years.
“If you have lost most of the indigenous traditional medicinal knowledge then research is a good starting point to look at which kind of diseases can be addressed by which plant. This process will also entail finding and testing alternative plants as climate change has had an effect on plant species and some could be extinct,” she advises.
Moreover, Zhao says, indigenous medicine practitioners must be trained just as China has set up learning institutions as a way to professionalise the craft, which instills the skills to combine traditional medicine and scientific methodologies. This is essential in order for Batswana to have confidence in the system.
“That is how you can save your culture. In that way you will be able to benefit from traditional medicine and also borrow the best from Western medicine to optimise the former’s efficiency,” she says.
For 31-year-old Gaborone professional, Chenamani Phetsogang, it has been ages since he used traditional medicine, though he believes it is still relevant today.
He strongly feels indigenous medicine must not be done away with as rural dwellers who often find themselves far from modern facilities continue to rely on it.
“Travelling along Orapa/Serowe road [in Central Botswana], there are medicinal herbs and readily made drinks sold and are said to contain healing powers. Traditional medicine shouldn’t just be left to just die,” appeals Phetsogang.
He joins Zhao and Ma Wei (a perennial TCM user) in imploring relevant authorities within health and indigenous knowledge preservation departments to research and do an interrogation of what herbs are available and their appropriate use. “Those that are proven to have healing powers must be processed and integrated within the modern society. They have always been our first call in times of poor health.
“Prior to modernisation, ailments were cured using traditional medicine, and I believe integration of modern and traditional systems could be another way of opening a new industry of controlled dispensation of traditional herbs. It could also open opportunities for economic diversification,” he says.
Botswana could look to China, he adds, which epitomises good practice regarding harmony between the two health regimes. He suggests that for optimum synergy and value addition to benefit integrated health care and users, health authorities and traditional practitioners should collaborate.
“One of the main reasons indigenous medicine has been relegated to the backseat in the health spectrum is that everyone believes they can be a practitioner and as a result, some people have ended up being sold the wrong medicines. This has lead to lack of public trust, and it is critical to restore that,” Phetsogang says.
Kemoneemang Mosimenyane is a 68-year-old traditional healer who resides in the Kgalagadi district. Born in Kolonkwaneng, he has observed a reduction in the number of people who use traditional medicine compared to the early 1970s (and a decade afterwards).
In those days, there was no clinic in his village and the only health system available was of the traditional variety. With the coming in of Western health care, the uptake of indigenous medicine has been on the slide.
His practice started in 1997, after he heeded the ‘calling’ and underwent training back in 1995 and Mosimenyane believes there are certain ailments that can be treated by traditional medicine while others need modern health care.
“Traditional medicine is still vital because some diseases can be better treated using indigenous herbs while others do require scientific and modern medicine,” he says.
“The two systems should collaborate. Traditional doctors must refer patients to modern health care facilities when they see that cases are beyond their control.”
Mosimenyane envisages a harmonised health care system, in which modern doctors also refer patients to traditional doctors as well.
He says while traditional medicine is a calling, there are others who aspire to be healers and go for training in it. The problem with the latter, he says, is that many tend to be profit-driven. As a result problems of mis-diagnosis and others tend to happen under their watch.
“As Africans, I think we can learn from China on how to preserve our indigenous medicine. This has to start with policymakers since on our own as traditional doctors we can’t foster that collaboration,” he says.
Gladys Malebo is a Palapye-based herbalist who became a household name about three years ago after patients testified that they had been healed of HIV/AIDS with her concoctions. The herbalist, who is in her late 50s, says most people miss out on the benefits of alternative medicine due to the misconception that herbalists and witchcraft are one and the same thing. “That is what we are often misconstrued for,” Malebo says.
“With colonialism and the advent of Western religion, traditional medicine as a way of life and an intrinsic component of our culture, was relegated to the backdoor. It is now regarded as barbarism and witchcraft.
“But these herbs we harvest from the wilderness are natural products from which modern medicine is also extracted.”
As alluded to earlier, Setswana traditional medicine and TCM are deeply rooted on wholism. However, an outstanding distinction between the two dispensations is that while the latter has been institutionalised – and the practice widely taught in universities throughout the country – for Botswana it is still widely held that traditional medicinal practice is a calling that must not be passed to just ‘anyone’.
The healing process and the therapeutic knowledge are protected through keeping them secretive. “My grandfather who died in 1945 is the one who taught me traditional medicine,” the cheerful herbalist says of her grandfather who died close to two decades before her birth. This passage of skills did not happen in a classroom or in the bush while harvesting herbs, she explains. It happened through a dream. In fact, put in the proper Setswana traditional medicine context, it was not just an education taking place – it was a calling, an initiation.
Malebo says: ”I don’t vividly remember when he first appeared in my dreams, but I know that it was a long time ago. I knew it was my grandfather and after having had the same dream repeatedly I told my mother. When I described what the man in my dreams looked like and the way he spoke, my mother told me that it was her father, my grandfather who was a great herbalist of his times”.
In 2003, the old man re-appeared in her sleep revealing the concoction that has since had microbiologists and University of Botswana (UB) lecturers busy and caused government and almost the entire nation to wonder who Gladys Malebo and ‘Seromabadimo’ - (as her cocktail of herbs is called) really are.
“I didn’t act immediately. I just didn’t go out in the bush to harvest the herbs that appeared in that revelation. However, after some time, my unappeased grandfather rebuked me for keeping a deep secret while the nation was being wiped away being HIV/AIDS,” she says.
It was only around 2007-2008 when her remedy caught medical attention after a woman who had been HIV positive later tested negative at Palapye’s Extention 3 Clinic, she claims.
Thereafter people started flocking her place demanding ‘Seromabadimo’ - but that was just a handful compared to the multitudes that descended to the small town in 2013, after she started working with Professor Kerstin Andrea-Marobela of the University of Botswana.
Despite this, Malebo says government still does not recognise her mixture as a solution to the world’s problematic disease.
This, she says, is a major stumbling block, especially when weighed together with the attitude herbalists receive from modern medicine practitioners.
This is the same prevailing attitude that leads to traditional doctors being asked to refer Western medical facilities while on the other hand modern practitioners are reluctant to do the same. Moreover, the competencies of traditional doctors have come under challenge, especially from health authorities resulting in mistrust.
“We are always told that we should leave functions such as replenishing water and blood into the system. However, traditional Setswana medicine has been doing that since time immemorial. There are certain foods and herbs we recommend for both blood supply and bodily water standards to be at their normal and optimal level,” emphasises the herbalist.
Though she is not certain who her successor would be, Malebo contemplates breaking the rule of succession by teaching all her four children how to mine the ground and cure ailments. She keeps a record of herbs and what diseases they are best at curing, as well as new discoveries in the craft. However, she maintains that the decision to nominate a predecessor is highly spiritual. Only those with a good heart, are of completely sober habits, are not greedy and are devoid of unpredictable emotional behaviours, get the call from the ancestors.
“I don’t think integrating both traditional and modern medicine here will be achievable. Yes, we can do research and documentation, but the fact that not just anyone is called means we are not supposed to teach random people. Some people are driven by the love of money, and could overprice herbs for personal gains, which is against the doctrine,” she adds.
*This article was produced through funding from China-Africa Reporting Project, coordinated by University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Special thanks to China University of Communication Masters students Ma Xinhu and Hu Xiufang who did Chinese-to-English translations. This is the second part of a series and the third will be published in next Friday’s edition.