I officially have 4 days left in Polokwane and in Eltasha.
How did this happen!?
Right now we are finishing our group projects and writing a
reflection paper for the entire experience. We all just realized how little
time we have left to complete our assignments and I think some of us are
starting to get stressed out. I know I am. I also know that as it comes nearer
for us to go home, making arrangements regarding things in the United States is
also a problem. I’m starting to organize my work schedule, decide when I’m
going to babysit, and plan trips to visit friends in NYC. On that note, if
you’re in NYC, let me know because I’m hopefully going to make a mass visit
sometime in July or August.
This past week held a lot of really valuable experiences. We
visited two different Traditional Healers. The first that we visited seemed to
really believe in her form of medicine, was very willing to work with western
medical facilities, and was an accomplished professor at the University of
Limpopo. While I didn’t fully understand or, frankly, believe in her style of
medicine, she did full heartedly. The man pictured below was a traditional
healer in a village located just off the main road, but felt like it was hours
away from anything. We refer to this man as “the fortune teller.” Despite
having talked about so frequently in our global health classes about making
peace between traditional and western medicine, I had a very hard time
garnering up much respect for him. The things he told Morgan about herself were
a) not true or b) applied to almost every woman on the planet.
According to the fortune-teller, here is how you cure HIV
positive patients.
- Take a very hot steam bath and sweat out all of your toxins.
- Take a special laxative he gives you to excrete the rest of the toxins.
- Take the medicine he gives you to replace everything that you lost during the de-tox.
- Take the next medicine, which lasts for one week, to cure you of HIV.
And wah-lah! In just one week, you will be cured! To me, it
sounds like a bad American fad diet, except for that it promotes the spread of an absolutely deadly disease.
Another blog post on my weekend is coming up. It
was…interesting.
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