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.

Zuri Medicine's Summer Happenings!

Summer happenings!!

This summer was not only hot outside but things were heating up for Zuri Medicine as well. Coming home after nine months working in Africa, I was looking forward to down time. Lazing around, spending time with family, hanging out and catching up with friends, but instead I felt like I hit the ground running as soon as I got here. There were things to do that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do once I got back.

Great news!! We have collaborated with an organization and we can now offer you a tax deduction on your donations! The Bertha Mae Williams Foundation Inc. has stepped up to the plate for us so we can accept donations while filing for our own 501(C ) 3 status thus giving donors a TAX WRITEOFF. Now your generous donations to help the projects that are in place continue and start-up of new ones are TAX DEDUCTABLE! A win/win for us.
You can send your tax deductible checks to:
Bertha Mae Williams Foundation Inc.
3811 Ave H
Brooklyn N. Y. 11210
Or you can send a donation through PAYPAL: bmwfoundation@yahoo.com
Don’t forget to add Zuri Medicine in the memo line so it can be directed accordingly.

Our next order of business was to find a mentor at the Small Business Association to help with the business plan. Moving all thoughts from my head to paper was NOT an easy task, but it had to be done. (Why do things sound good in your head till they get to paper?) Dennis proved the right person for the job. He was able to draw these ideas out and make sure they were on paper in a cohesive way. He was awesome and his daughters experience working in rural Rwanda in the medical field gave him invaluable information and insight on how we needed to structure our plan. So Zuri Medicine now has a business plan, on paper!

We have hired a grant writer!! After many months of looking we found Staci Smith. Stacie has been to Tanzania as a volunteer so I felt she knew firsthand the work of healing we were doing. This was the clincher in her proposal that made me know she was right for our mission; “ I have conducted several projects in East Africa and just returned from a remote project in Tanzania near Lake Tanganyika in the Kigoma region, so I understand well the challenges with medicine and clean water.” Staci has jumped in with both feet and has been researching our most likely sources of funding. In order for us to move forward in our vision of helping communities to heal with homeopathy we have to be funded!
One of Zuri’s vision in the near future is to expand, adding two full time employees one to oversee our full operation and the other to be the boots on the ground popping in to oversee the clinics, for this we need funding.

Treating kids for ringwrom/scabies of the head in D.R. Congo

We have been invited back to rural Uganda to teach in September. (Starting to notice our theme of “rural”?) People there are anxious to continue their homeopathic education. The first half of our course was good but it left people hungering for more, so we will go in-depth on topics that matters most in Africa; malaria, HIV care, and childhood diseases. We teach for only two (2) weeks at a time so we pack a punch into our courses and leave them wanting more. KAPOW! Here is an excerpt of an email from one of the students who did the first two weeks of the course in February taught in conjunction with Homeopathy for Heath in Africa. “I therefore would like to go for further homeopathic study to expand more knowledges. I like homeopathy very much. I also thank MICHELLE for teaching well, she is talented friendly teacher.”

And finally Congo awaits, our most needy and heartrending clinic. There we start work at 7 am and finish when the last rays of the sun dips behind the horizon. We have an endless stream of people all day long. We have recently opened up communications with the local hospital to train staff, adding homeopathy to their repertoire of services provided to their patients. The goal is to bring an understanding of homeopathy to the staff while setting up a referral service so people suffering from acute ailments can be sent to our homeopathic clinic, already in place. This will help the already overcrowded hospital, (1 doctor to 22,868 patients), to better serve the needs of its community.

Although there was a lot of talk of going to South Sudan to train community leaders in homeopathy, sadly because of the state of unrest, we have had to put those plans on hold. Zuri Medicine hopes to be able to reopen negotiations at a later date when things settle down. It’s unfortunate as many people are suffering without access to ANY health care.

We have been offered a pharmacy by the late Dr. Mital’s wife, Shamaji. She learned of Zuri Medicines work in Africa through Yashasvi Jhangiani . As remedies are hard to come by for our lay homeopaths in rural Africa, having a kit to hand to them at the end of training with the remedies they have studied, is an invaluable tool. It’s the difference between going out and helping members of their communities, (on acute care of course), and being stuck with knowledge they can’t put to good use. We are asking for sponsorship to buy bullet cases to use as pouches to hold the remedies. Well done Yashasvi Jhangiani for helping us put Dr. Mital’s pharmacy to good use.

And finally a big thank you to Sheree LaNora who got tired of hearing about all Zuri Medicines adventures but only seeing it in photos, she has donated a VIDEO CAMERA to us. YEA SHEREE!!! As soon as I learn how to use it there will be videos of the work being done.

Our summer has been fun, but also a lot of work taking place behind the scenes. Zuri Medicine can’t thank all those who are helping to move us along enough. As I start to pack my bags for another long stay in Africa I am overwhelmed by the work ahead of me but pleased with the work done over the summer to ensure we build a solid foundation on which to move forward. We are grateful to all our friends and supporters as your kind words and donations help us to achieve unimaginable goals in rural communities that are medically underserved.
Please consider making a donation to our PAYPAL to help us continue projects already started while implementing new one.
Thank you,
Michelle