MEDICINAL HERBS:
Ever since I was in Paraguay in the late 1980’s, I have been fascinated by medicinal plants, and all nontraditional (in the modern American perception) uses of plants. The fact that all the way from Paraguay, to Central America, to Haiti, to Morocco, to Madagascar, to the Congo, there are plants that, if they are not the same species, are the same genus and they are used for the same ailments in every country that I have seen them. I always wonder how many people died or were severely harmed in the discovery of a plant’s healing powers. The local doctor says, “Try this one!” The patient falls over dead, and the doctor adjusts his notes on the page “What not to treat with this plant.”

I have noticed some “similarities” between the people in my travels; some of these are far-fetched, but some seem possible. For example, the Malagasy people are descended from Africans, Middle-Easterners, and Polynesians, primarily. I has been proposed that the people of the Americas came from the Polynesian area, crossed the Bering Strait, and headed south, all the way to the Tierra del Fuego. There are traces of facial features throughout the region that could be construed to be of Polynesian origin. One colleague in Honduras once remarked that the little Chinese guy sure spoke great Spanish, without realizing he was a native Honduran. Some linguistic “ties” can be drawn, too. In Malagasy, “tembo” refers to a man’s ejaculate or semen. In the Guaraní language of Paraguay, “tembo” means penis. I’ll remember others as I reflect more on this. I’m sure you’ll stay tuned. 

It has also been proposed that extraterrestrials helped build the temples of the Petén in northern Guatemala, as well as the pyramids of Egypt. Were they the same ET’s? The name of the people in the Petén, where it rains a lot, is Maya. In Egypt, where it hardly rains, water is called “maya.” So, maybe they did the pyramids first, knew what water was called, then stopped off for some (relatively) light construction in the Petén, and said, “Shit, there sure is a lot of Maya here!” and the name stuck. A long shot, but who knows? It’s hard to keep tabs on the pesky little aliens. Just ask the Men in Black.

Getting back to the human condition, I have often seen staff in this NGO insist that the project had to give things away in order to gain the beneficiaries’ trust, and I insist the opposite: that the beneficiaries don’t appreciate anything that they have not worked for or invested significantly in. Here in the eastern Congo, for example, the staff think it’s just great that the villagers throw a party (that the project paid for) to “express their gratitude” for whatever the project just deposited in their village. Of course! Who wouldn’t be full of joy at a free party with a new school? And when it fall apart, who will feel responsible for its maintenance? They’ll just wait for the next donor or project to come along and build another. The problem often comes from the fact that the project is design unilaterally without the participation of the beneficiaries or “target population” (a term I hesitate to use in a conflict zone, YIKES).

Once in Egypt, we were running a project that facilitated the flow of production and marketing information for farmers along the Nile, from Cairo to Qena. The project conducted participatory needs appraisals with the farmers, located professional sources of information (researchers, accomplished farmers and businessmen) that responded to the stated needs, and then arranged a visit to the experts. At first, the project paid all related costs, but in seeking a way to ensure that access to information would continue once the project ended, I suggested that we incrementally shift the costs to the farmer groups, so they would not develop a dependence on the project. The staff was aghast. How could we expect these “poor” farmers to pay? My reasoning was that they stood to profit from the information, so they should consider it an investment. One afternoon, in a field office in Sohag, one of the more vocal opponents returned to the office with a wad of money in her hand, calling out, “They did it! They paid!” I immediately instructed her to go back to the women’s group and return the money. They should handle their own costs, get receipts for all expenditures, and treat this as a market transaction. The idea was that once they paid for a service, they were authorized to demand the service, overcoming the traditional fear that a humble farmer experiences when he faces a university-educated researcher. And, when money gets involved, those Egyptians can get pretty demanding. The problem we soon experienced was that farmers started making trips on their own, and we were unaware of it and, thus, could not report it to the donor about the impact (change in the farmers’ behavior and the information system, defined earlier) of the project.

There was a woman who worked with me in Madagascar…Malagasy but of Chinese descent...with whom I had one of the best rapports that I have had with national staff in years. There was, at least from my side, though she admits to it too, an attraction between us, but we both recognized the implication of our work relationship (I supervised her), and how the organization frowned on this type of relationship in the office. We respected it, but in little Antalaha, I was starved for some intellectual stimulation, and our conversations were a little bright spot in an otherwise “dull” environment. My wife, whom I just married last September, wants me to have absolutely nothing to do or say with any other woman, regardless of past experiences. In general, she is right when it comes to most local women in this small town. If a Malagasy woman hooks up with a “vazaha” (as the Malagasy call foreigners), then other women will try to undercut her status with rumors or try to directly tempt the man to stray in their direction to “share the wealth” so to speak. In Madagascar, prostitution is a way of life for many women, but this widespread practice is rooted more in the tradition that a man usually gives “something” to the woman after a date or sex early in the relationship, maybe money, maybe a small piece of jewelry. But as it happens, vazahas often carry a lot more than your average Malagasy on the street. In some bars, especially in Diego Suarez and certain discos in the capital, the women can get downright violent if you don’t pay attention to them. I had to get over an old habit that I used to occasionally buy a drink for a woman to chat a bit. If I was not interested, I would not think twice about going off to chat with another or to go home alone. There, if you buy her a Coke, she is going home with you, no questions asked. Well, unless you’re rude enough to get out of it. That part I have down pat.