Next time you are in an African village with a nasty cough, think again before you ask for any concoction to soothe your cough. Unless you live by the mantra that the end justify the means I would not advise. Forget about herbals, some African cures are so grotesque you can’t help doubting the sanity of the witchdoctor who came up with them in the first place. I have my own childhood experiences to vouch for this.
I hardly played truant in my schooldays, unless maybe I was sick or was up to some mischief that provided more fun than school would. Sickness of course troubled me in my early life and thus was a genuine cause of absence most of the time. The cures to some of my ailments were so bizarre it can render voodoo mere child play.
I contracted whooping cough in my childhood (it is christened ‘chebokitkit’ in my Kipsigis language meaning tickles from hell.) People, that cough was tough, I tell you. You coughed till you sweat, hold anything strong around you (my mom) for support and subsequently pass out coughing.( First Aid for fainting is rubbing onions on one’s nose and getting engulfed in smoke from burning grass and bingo you come to).
My mom blamed my ailment on the smoke from the tin lamp we used at home at the time. She raised the issue with my uncle and on his next visit home; he came clutching a hurricane lamp (encrypted Dietz 500. It is there to date. Maybe it is the reason why no one else contracted whooping cough again).
Though henceforth we used a smokeless lamp, my whooping cough could not be appeased and therefore needed a traditional cure (for the white man’s medicine had failed too). My grandma came in handy at that juncture (I don’t know why old people are the ones prescribing traditional medicines).
Early one morning, after witnessing one of my devastating coughing fits (every bout punctuated with a loud fart) she told my mom to milk our lactating donkey, Kuchur (meaning missing one ear) and send us boys hunting for a gecko in the hill nearby. There were many varieties of geckos in that hill but she told us to go for the green type. There was one green gecko that used to chase us from a certain tree that bore some sweet wild fruits. That gecko was fierce and dangerous but we decided it was its day.
Armed with bows, arrows and rocks, we made for the hill, the one that served as our Sunday School. We knew where the green gecko lived; always basking in the morning sun perched on a stone next to its hole. We feared it for it use to chase us whenever we get close by. We devised a strategy, the fastest boy to approach it (a lanky boy called Tilang), get chased by the gecko away from its lair and for the bravest boy, (me) to run and gag the entrance to its lair with a boulder.
We found it basking on the rock as it always did. Tilang went close and startled it. It chased Tilang downhill. Tilang was faster than a deer, (add the fact that he was a coward) and the gecko gave up after a 100 meters or so. Meanwhile, I was blocking its hole with a boulder. You should have seen the ensuing drama. Boys screaming in the hill as Tilang was being chased over rocks and me making catcalls as I gagged the hapless creature’s hole.
The green gecko tried entering its hole but I had blocked it. It ran round the tree in circles in a desperate attempt to locate an entrance but the screaming gang of boys pelted it with stones. We hit every part of its body it succumbed to its injuries. To make sure it was dead and harmless; I beat its head to pulp with a long stick. Next, I ordered our dog John Boss to pick it and carry it home. We sang hunting victory songs as we walked home, John Boss leading the pack while holding the green gecko on its mouth.
Dare an African village boy to a hunting expedition and you can’t ever get a better scene!
The next thing was to round our donkey into the crush to be milked. It was such an easy task for our donkey was friendly. We always rode it to and fro the watering dam with our cattle. Donkey milk is unheard of as food in that part of the world and you can imagine our curiosity. To our utter surprise, donkeys have such small quantity of milk no wonder it is not kept for it. The yellow thick stuff could not fill my small yellow cup!
That done, my grandma skinned the gecko, threw its meat to our dog John Boss to eat, but of course he declined. She then boiled its skin in a small earthenware pot. We were so curious we surrounded the hearth to watch it as it boiled (funny enough it smelled yummy!)
She poured the soup into the cup containing the yellow donkey milk and stirred it. Leaving it to cool for a while, I was ordered into a shade nearby. (All the while, I was not informed that the concoction was my treatment). I was handed my yellow cup and told to gulp down its content in one slug. Closing my eyes, I gulped the content. I remember the taste to date. It was sugary at first, then turned salty then adopted a nasty aftertaste that lingered in my mouth for a whole month.
Interestingly, I didn’t vomit though not surprising. My grandma was such a vixen she would have slapped me and made me drink it again, a hundred times if need be. I was fully aware of this fact and thus drank the gecko soup and donkey milk with inevitable relish.
The memory of that mixture from hell nauseates me to date. Afterwards, I secretly dug a hole and buried the yellow cup in the maize plantation and never saw it again. I don’t ever drink anything from a yellow cup or bowl to this day. Thanks to the gecko soup and donkey milk. But then, I never coughed since. What a sure cure! Gecko soup and donkey milk- a potent patent of my grandma!
Before it happened to me, us kids used to joke about these uncanny cures. Our mom used to threaten us that if we got ourselves rained on, she will procure gecko soup and donkey milk. It happened to me and since then, we respected the rain and took all other warnings seriously.
There was one joke about a millipede bite. It was said that if a millipede bites one, he/she will be fed on dog meat and soup for 50 days. One dog a day to keep the millipede poison away for 50 days! After the gecko-soup-donkey-milk episode, no child ever got close to a millipede. For no one was ever sure whether the dog cure was just a threat or a real cure.
Fortunately or unfortunately, no one got bitten by a millipede for us to know whether it was a mere joke or it was the only cure. You never know with African cures. I am putting my money that it is a cure. What after the strange concoction cured me!
There were still some bizarre cures that combined superstitions and myths. Take the cure for mumps as an example. Mumps in our venerable village is not regarded as an affliction for its cure is known to all and sundry. In fact, kids would wish that they contract mumps so they can perform the ritual that cured mumps. The cure is a 100% effective that to date people still practice it.
If you contract mumps, you simply collect a bundle of wood, carry it on your head , look for a tree called Kipisorwet , walk round it five times singing entreaties to the tree to take back its disease. After the fifth round, you throw the bundle of wood on the tree and ran home without looking back. By the time you get home your mumps is cured! I did try it once and it worked. How? I don’t have the slightest of idea.
If you think that astounding, what about this: when we were young with my elder brother, we often fainted. For two years we were taken to all the hospitals in the province till my grandpa decided to visit a soothsayer called Arap Mwaita ( he lived in a place called Rongena, near Sotik town). While we were still hospitalized without a cure on sight, the soothsayer told my grandpa that us kids were not sick but we were just under some spell that arose from a conflict over the ownership of a cow with his brother. He was advised to take us home from hospital, summon his brother whom he was not in talking terms, share a pot of traditional beer (busaa) and drink milk together.
The following day, we were brought home from Kaplong Mission Hospital, we sat with our two grandpas as they shared their beer and drank milk, shook hands and that was it. We never saw the inside of a hospital over the same problem again. Africa is full of mystery if you ask me. I am a living example of some.
There are yet other cures we use to practice that I honestly don’t know whether they worked or not. Take for example swollen lymph nodes when you have a wound. To cure, you simply pick a clod from a house wall, heat it on the fire and rub it over the swollen glands and throw it hard on the wall and it is cured. I can’t honestly vouch for this. Don’t remember whether it worked or it is a myth. Some claim it works. Maybe it does.
Now, this one worked for us kids then. Whenever there was green maize in the farm, we often over-ate roasted maize. Fearing constipation the following day, my mom would advise us to collect some ash from the hearth and write anything on our stomachs. I would collect some ash and write figures on my stomach and woke up the following day with a clear stomach. No flatulence, no rumblings, nothing!
And what about if something enters your eye and makes it painful? Simply go to a breastfeeding mother and she pours some tit milk into your eye and it is cured. Simple. If it is a serious one like some cactus sap accidentally getting into your eye, as it was wont to happen with us boys, you cut a sheep’s ear and drip its blood into your eye and it is cured instantly.
In case it is your ear troubling you, like it happened to my brother Leonard, the cure was equally simple. You slaughter a hen, get out the yellow fat, boil it and pour it into your ear. It works for it worked for my bro. There are a million cures in that part of the world I would need a million days to document, I am not equal to that task at the moment.
What if a baby gets some fungal infections in the mouth? (Fungal infections are common with babies and it is fatal in that part of Africa.) Can I tell you what cured my little sis Zeddy? My grandmas send us looking for the droppings of an aardvark. She roasted them and put on her mouth. After two days, she was cured. Droppings are medicinal!
Again, if your little baby’s navel fails to heal after cutting, look for the white droppings of a house lizard and apply! And if the same navel heals but is elongated and bulging, get the baby’s uncle to touch it with his right leg toe. My cousin Bonzi, was ‘step on’ by our uncle and her navel just shrunk to normal size!
I almost forget the most respected cures in our village to date: soup from boiled entrails of a goat! Whatever ailment you suffer from, known or unknown, this soup will obviously fix it. Take my case for instance. My auntie chewed tobacco. I envied her so much for this. The way she put it in her mouth, tuck it inside one cheek and sit spitting the whole time as she bantered with mom and other village women so enamored me. She always hid some chewed leftovers beneath our whetstone for the next helping in case she missed a fresh one.
One day, I decided to partake of her little secret. Unseen by anybody, I took the stale tobacco from under the whetstone and put it in my mouth , tucked it in a corner, folded my legs like she used to do and started spitting like her. It was bitter and instead of spitting I vomited my stomach’s content plus the tobacco. I was still retching when my mom found me. I was giddy and the distant hills of Abosi were moving round and round. Our house was floating in the air and the trees in the nearby bush were upside down. I must have fainted for I came to sipping goat’s soup from a gourd. I got well before long. Thanks to soup made from a goat’s entrails. Have seen so many sick people get cured by this soup. It is our kind of elixir!
(I am compelled to write about the many superstitions and myths we observed as kids next. Even at a tender age, your life is steeped in mystique for this is mystical Africa.)
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