October Happenings!

Zuri Medicine and barefoot homeopathy

I cant believe its almost the end of Oct and I haven’t put out a newsletter yet!! The days just seem to fly by!  

At home in the West, its cold and kids are preparing for Halloween and  here in Uganda, we have rainy season.

feet full of mud!

I was asked to do 2 homeopathy training in the villages.  The roads are nearly impassable by vehicle.  Normally I take a motorbike – called a boda – but because of the condition of the rd most days its impossible, you get stuck in the mud or the boda throws you down.  I’ve fallen off  in the mud before and it was no fun.One village, we are close to the main rd, where I’m staying with a host family it’s about a miles walk from the main rd to the house. When the rains come, which they do every day, it’s a muddy mess. The road is red clay  and it sticks to your shoes and feet, by the time I get home I’m dragging about a pound of mud on my shoes.   As such, most of the people we were expecting for the training have not been able to come consistently or at all because of weather conditions. We are suppose to go even further into the villages for the 2^nd training but I think we are going to have to reschedule this for dry season as its located about  10 miles in from any roads and  navigable only by boda. Although working in the villages is Zuri Medicines mission, we also have to be able to get there.

We see patients in the clinic as we train to give real world experience to the "barefoot homeopath" here is baby we saw in clinic that presented with an umbilical hernia, and one week after giving him Calceria Carbonica 1M one dose with 200c daily for  week.  The hernia seems to have shrunk a bit but my recommendation was to take the child to the hospital to have this operated on immediately.  The family is poor and cant do so without help.  If you would like to help this child to get an operation check out our link below and send a donation.

The students were so pleased with the classes that some even came after hours to discuss homeopathy. There is never a rest time when teaching and running clinics if the students/patients  know where you're staying :)

Here are some of our graduates from the 2 week training. Issac and Moonlight. 

On the other hand we made some contacts with Evelyn, a spunky little woman who runs Outreach to Africa and has 2 clinics of her own along with a school. She was able to arrange for Zuri Medicine and an optometrist to work in the villages along the Congo border.  New glasses and homeopathy what a win for the people in the area!!!

                                                                                                                                                                Agnes, Zuri Medicine "barefoot homeopathy" in Uganda and translator for me at the hospital.

There are our patients waiting to see us in the background.

Dr Clyde doing eye exams for people in the villages who need glasses.

Now off to treat the Ugandan army, what a great opportunity for Zuri Medicine!   We have promised to come back in January to do followups and see the officers we missed.  Agnes will be there to take care of them till I can get back to help her. 

After a long day working with the Ugandan Army, and working in a hospital we show up at a village with 120 people waiting for homeopathy.  It's 6 pm and soon I wont be able to see my keyboard, but that doesn't stop the demands for medicine. 

After a long day we are happy to go home, take a hot shower and crawl into bed. 

Uganda was certainly eventful and I cant wait to go back in January. 

Now we’re getting ready to go to Congo in the upcoming week! I’m excited to get back to the Congo clinic and to follow-up on the patients we saw, especially the classrooms of kids. 

Here is our paypal: zurimedicine@gmail.com

and for a tax deductible donation, make checks payable to: Bertha Mae Williams Foundation

                                                                                                    3811 Ave H

                                                                                                    Brooklyn N.Y. 11210

Don't forget to put Zuri Medicine in the memo line so it can be allocated properly. 

Till next time!!

Michelle

Habari Gani! We are in TANZANIA!

WE ARE IN AFRICA!!!!
Habari gani! Ian and I made it safely to Africa!
In case you had not heard the news, Ian joined me in Africa for the 2014-15 school year.
We are using this as a year to explore different cultures and as such Ian has been enrolled in the local school system, (more on this later).

On our way to Tanzania we spent a few days in Istanbul Turkey, or rather we ate our way thru Istanbul Turkey. This was my second time in Istanbul and I really loved it the first time and thought it was a great place for Ian and I to share in the culture together. Seeing the city thru the eyes of a teen was totally different than the way I saw it the first time. He first noticed all the cats around the city and that people went out of their way to feed them. Goggling this when we got back at the hotel we found out that Prophet Muhammad was kind to cats and so the Islamic people of Turkey are also kind to cats. Who knew!

Where I thought the cultural aspects of Turkey would hold the same attraction to him that it did for me he had a different spin on things. At the Grand Bazaar when I was interested in the rugs and how long it took to weave one rug and the clothing made from felting, he was more interested in the Sultan style knifes, swords and Marilyn Monroe lighter, (of all things).

On leaving Grand Bazaar, Ian and I spent hours wandering the streets looking for the Spice Market, we were completely turned around.

As we are both big tea drinker we ended up spending wayyy too much money on different teas, as we kept smelling and wondering what the tea was gonna taste like. Ian’s favorite so far is the Jasmine tea that blooms into a flower and mine is the Turkish black tea with a dash of pomegranate tea thrown in. At Topeka Palace, I was happily showing him all the beautiful tile work while he was busy imaging what it would be like if he were Sultan and ruler of both the Asian and European sides of Turkey.
On our stop at the famous Blue Mosque, I was chatting him up about the significance of the

mosque while he was commenting on the washing areas and the smell of everybody’s feet. The one thing we did see eye to eye on was TURKISH DELIGHT!!

We enjoyed the taste of these sweet treats so much that we would stop in all the shops that we past that were giving samples of Turkish delight, and there were many! On the first night in Istanbul while our bodies were trying to adjust to the time difference we got up, went wandering the streets to buy Turkish delight to eat in the middle of the night. We were in Turkish delight heaven. We ended up bringing some to Tanzania to share with friends. As we walked along the streets we would stop to sample the foods from street vendors, drinking freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and eating bread that looked like pretzels but Ian said tasted like a bagel. We ate at outdoor café’s the whole time, I loved the lamb and Ian the falafel, and were even lucky enough to witness a wedding taking place with bottle rockets shooting off to celebrate the bride and groom cutting the cake. Totally AWESOME!!!

Time to say goodbye to Turkey and hello to Tanzania.
The first week here we were trying to settle into the house, unpack, adjust to the 7 hour time difference and our two little puppies Lala and Redz, get over jetlag, and start looking into schools.

A pretty big week for us. We did settle on the Kilimanjaro Secondary School. The school uses a Western curriculum approved by Cambridge University in England, and has a school year from August –June, a plus, instead of from Jan-Nov as we had been expecting. Ian unfortunately started school on test week, but it gave the teachers a chance to evaluate him and adjust the classes he needs to take. He has made a few friends so far, and even dropped our plans of Chinese on Friday night, to go hang out with friends.

As if school, making friends and puppies were not exciting enough, Ian has learned how to ride a motorcycle! But don’t worry, he wears a helmet.. I know, to the adult that’s very little consolation. He is actually very good at it and is very proud of himself and can’t wait to give me a ride on the back..which will not be happing any time soon.

Throughout all of this Ian’s biggest amazement about Tanzania are the ladies selling shoes, displaying one shoe on their heads, as they walk through town hands free.

This weekend we went to the village, and Ian got to see the inner workings of a subsistence farm. I think it’s changing his mind about farming which he has long held near and dear to his heart. We were helping the family to take the beans off the field, except the beans are wrapped around the corn stalks so you have to uproot the old stalks, unwrap the beans, throw them in a pile to be bagged and carried back home, where they are put in the sun to dry. The dried pods are beaten with a stick to unshell the beans which are sifted to separate them from the dried crumpled leaves. Ian’s thought was that we would have to buy beans at the market because this process was too much work.

Ian did, however, participate in the chasing of the chicken for dinner.
In our honor the family wanted to kill a chicken to cook for dinner. The catch; after choosing the unlucky chicken it had to be chased down and caught before killing. There were 3 boys running all over the yard and the nearby woods chasing the chicken who knew he was running for his life. Ian joined in the chase. It was something to see all the boys working up a sweat chasing their meal. In the end the chicken was very tasty and we said a prayer in gratitude of it given its life to nourish our bodies.

At the end of the day, tired from our time on the farm, Ian gets a chance to ride the motorcycle for a few miles on the way home. It was wonderful seeing him driving on the left, with the beautiful snow capped peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro on his right, him navigating the streets, the people and the cows and goats. We had a great day out, and to think, this is only our second week here.

Shoes, learning and school fees.

So what do shoes have to do with school you ask..... Answer, everything. We were told by the clinic coordinator there was a grandma and a mama we needed to do a home visit for, the mama was suffering from an ulcer and complaints of not being able to sleep at nights. We showed up at the house to find both women sitting outside, bibi (grandma) in her 90’s, shelling peas to sell to feed the family. (check out bibi's shelled peas right below the tin cup in the basket.)

The small one bedroom house was being shared by bibi, the mama, an adult child with a baby of her own, 1 child in school and 2 small children that were left in the mama’s care after their parents died of AIDS. We start the consult and she tells me she’s suffering from anxiety because of thoughts. “What’s worrying you mama?” “My daughter can’t go to school because she has no shoes, and I don’t have money to pay the school fees.” “No shoes?” The school fees I could understand because education wasn’t free, but no shoes? This shouldn’t stop a child from learning. I knew there were certain dress codes the schools held the children to. I’d see them after school in their identifying uniforms headed home playing together in the streets, but I never thought that not being able to meet the dress code by not having a pair of shoes could actually stop them going to school. What difference does it make what you wear as long as the child has an interest in learning? (Kids headed home in their uniforms)

This was one of those times I was silenced by the complexity yet simplicity of my African experience. In the end I wound up buying the shoes, they were second hand and cost me about 5 bucks, and giving the mama the money for the school fees worked out to be about $18. It was hard to know that for such a small expense a child was being deprived of an education. Now that I’m back home, I get up in the morning and start my day with the thought of what to wear, go to my closet overflowing with shoes and choose the one that best matches my outfit. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder about the little girl who had no shoes while my closet overflows with the many I haven’t worn in years, something I take for granted. I often think of her mama too, shelling peas, the only source of income for the family. It’s pushed me to try to do something to help while home. I’m challenging you to help me make this difference by donating your unwanted shoes no matter the condition or the era. Let’s get them outta the closets and to a 3rd world country where mama’s like this one can use them to start micro businesses to feed their families and send their kids to schools. It also gets some feet covered in things other than old tires and smashed down plastic bottles. My ship date is August 1st 2013. Please contact me if you’d like to donate your shoes. Camrhyian1@yahoo.com

Successes and Failures

Most of us, no matter what we do for a living, want to talk only about our successes.  Failures make us seem like we have no idea what the hell we’re doing and frankly, you just feel like a fool. For me the more I’ve fallen flat on my face the more I’ve learned about homeopathy and ultimately myself in the process.

In my 1^st months of volunteering with HHA, I went out to a clinic that we only visit once a month.  While there I saw a patient who had been deaf but had gotten a homeopathic medicine that had restored her hearing except she was still complaining that it felt like she had a scab in her ear and if she could just get it out her hearing would be 100%. She also had ringworm on her joints,( knees, elbows, shoulder wrist..etc.)  I took a look at the list of homeopathic medicines she’d had so far, plugged in all her symptoms in my computer program and decided to give her Psorinum as it looked like the right medicine that covered all her symptoms.  I was so confident in my prescription I KNEW nothing could go wrong.

We get back to clinic the following month and she comes marching in, giving me the stare down, eyes  on death ray beam.  She has gone DEAF! I FREAKED!

She’s in the clinic and she’s screaming at me because she cant hear. I’m trying to calm her down and calm myself down in the process.   My translator asks her a question, she turns to her grandson who had come to clinic with her, and he yells it in her ear and she yells back.  The whole clinic is in chaos.  She keeps yelling she wants her hearing back and that her hearing was good before I came there. In the meantime I’m in a total panic and scrambling to find something to give her that will restore her hearing, all the while contemplating whether or not to call the directors of the program.  The whole time I’m under the death ray stare down.  And I can’t think.

Finally, I’m able to get the whole story of whats happening with her ears and I find out its been draining goop for the past month. I decide to let the prescription stand as it means her body is discharging whatever is in her ear and hope the following month her hearing  comes back.  She never came back to my clinic, and in a way I was glad because I was having anxiety attacks just thinking about her.  I don’t know whatever happened with her hearing but I questioned myself for days after that. What did I do wrong, should I have given her a different medicine, and should I have stuck to my prescription?   

This experience taught me that when we fail at the things we feel we are good at, it doesn’t mean you’re a total dumbass, it just means there is still a lot to learn. >

sitting with Maasai AIDS Widows on World AIDS Day

December 1st is World AIDS Day and one of the missions of Homeopathy for Health in Africa, the organization I was volunteering with at the time is; “To relieve the suffering of HIV/AIDS patients using classical homeopathy” so there was no way I was going to say no when we were invited to be a part of the Maasai World AIDS Day celebration. The plan was to wake early on the morning of December 1st, drive the 2 hours to Arusha where the celebration was to be held, treat only HIV positive patients (keeping with the theme of the day) and then drive home that night. Our team consisted of me, Roger our Swahili translator and Popo a local homeopath. As soon as we got to the field where the festivities were to be held we set up our clinic under a tree and got to work treating the line of patients that were already waiting. I swear I still don’t know how there is always so many people to treat! Clinic under the tree. Old Bibi. My most memorable patient that day was a 93 year old bibi (grandma) who came to see us. She had been previously treated by another homeopath and I was doing follow up care for her. Bibi told me she had been blind for 5 years before receiving homeopathic care! Her 1 complaint, when she looked at far away objects with her right eye they tended to be a bit shimmery. Bibi, you can see! Never mind that things are a bit shimmery!! We had a laugh and soon she was on her way with another bottle of homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy still amazes me with results like these that are so unexpected. In September 2013 while volunteering with the Maun Homeopathy Project I hope to see results that are this amazing. Help in giving others results as good as this by making a donation. >

mid life crisis...maybe not just yet!

We're already in the middle of Jan, and officially if I'm gonna have a mid life cisis, now would be a good time to do it.
I recently turned 40, a big number by many's standards, but secretly I kinda like it.
The month leading up to my 40th birthday was a bit hectic. Amid an already busy December of 4 bithdays and Christmas, a month long guest that my family hosted from Tanzania whose daily prayer was for snow, (WTH! we have to shovel that stuff!), and fund raising for an extended volunteer period back in Tanzania, I ended up in the hospital, TWICE, once with a pulmonary embulus... a blood clot to the lung for us non medical folks, and shortly after, with a nasty case of hives.
WTH?!?!
This was NOT scheduled in my planner!
As I told my GP, I only had between the hours of 4-5pm to fit the pulmonary embulus into my schedule, I'm a mom I have kids to pick up and drop off, and the hives, not at all, as it happend on my birthday of all day!
Needless to say a few days in hospital HAD to be scheduled in once I got to the emergency room, I was held hostage and no amount of negotiation would have the Dr's release me.
The whole experience has left me feeling tired most days as I still have a hectic schedule to keep up, and dare I say... a little depressed.
For the 1st time in a long time I'm on conventional meds, Warfarin, a blood thinner with a recommendation of daily antihistamines to be sure the hives, (from the meds), doesn't break out again. For the hives I've taken a dose of homeopathic Ledum and Mercurius and that helped the swelling and itching to go away as a shot from the epi pen made absolutly no diference to the situation.
The kids are back to school, my guest is gone and life is starting to settle down as much as it ever does for me - a single taxi...oops ...I meant mom, of 4.
For the next few months I will continue my meds, but I'm consoled that my Dr. at least understands that as an alternative practitioner, I've also chosen to use herbals and homeopathics to help in the healing of MY body, and thankfully she is willing to work with me and adjust the medication accordingly.
Recently, my thoughts have turned back to my goals of volunteering.
I wonder when I'll be ready to get back on a plane for 19hrs, to fly half way around the world to continue volunteering.
I hope I won't dissapoint the people whom I promised I would come back to help. I hope I don't dissapoint my funder, but mostly, I hope I won't dissapoint myself.
I pray I'll be healthy enough to be up for the challenge soon and that I'll know the right time to proceed.
Of all the things I am uncertain of, there is one constant surity.
Everytime I think of my time spent volunteering in Tanzania and helping others, it brings a smile to my face and I feel the urgency to get back to Tanzania to continue.

May this year bring a sense of urgency to that one thing you can't live without doing.
Peace and Blessings.

December already?

This December has been a whirlwind of activities and we're not even at Christmas yet!
We have been thru 5 birthdays thus far since the end of November (My brother Miguel, my Mum, sister Jessica, daughter Camela and brother Tom), and we will finish off the year with my son Ian's birthday and begin the new year with mine.

Unfortunately, December saw me laid up in the hospital for a few days with a pulmonary embolism which was treated conventionally, with about a million test and medication for the next several months, as well as homeopathically and I'm on the upswing now, but this does mean I'll have to postpone my trip back to Tanzania till May when I'm finally given a clean bill of health, (which really means taken off conventional medication), by the doctors.
On a lighter note, we have a visitor from Tanzania who is spending the holidays with us and the kids are happily learning a few words of Swahili. My youngest daughter is learning a Swahili song at school and told me "Dont worry mom, if he doesn't speak any English, I got this, I know Swahili!" glad to have a translator among us. :)
It's been pretty interesting to see our visitor struggle with the concept of Santa Clause, as this part of the Christmas tradition seems to be foreign to his culture. How to explain Santa to someone who has no concept of him....why, you sit him down to watch the movie The Santa Claus with Tim Allen of course! It was a priceless moment when I saw the dawning of the magic of Christmas wash across his face.

Although I am sad I won't be headed back to Tanzania in February as originally planned, I am grateful for the extra time it gives me to continue raising funds and awareness about homeopathy and the volunteer work I'm involved in with Homeopathy for Health in Africa.

Don't forget there is still time to give a end of year donation, and the best part is you can claim it on your taxes!
Have a very Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year!