Why Yaya and I Did the Garifuna Midwife and Traditional Healer Project? WRIHC Poster Explanation

This explains in further detail a poster at the Western Region International Health Conference (WRIHC 2014) in Seattle, WA.

Why Yaya and I Did the Garifuna Midwife and Traditional Healer Project? (1993-2013)

Prepared by Wendy Griffin (2014)

It’s the Law—ILO Convention I69 Requires Teaching Traditional Technologies in Intercultural Education Among the Honduran ethnic groups. It also requires the protection of land that the Garifunas use even if they do not live on that land if it is used by them traditionally, such as to traditionally gather medicinal plants, so it was necessary to identify the hábitat of each plant and document its use.

Public health Concerns for Garifunas

         Are all Garifuna Midwife Techniques Safe for the Baby and Mother?

         Are Garifuna Midwife Techniques Safe for the Midwife in a place of over 5%  confirmed HIV positive rate and probably a higher unconfirmed HIV rate?

Public health Concerns Related to Miskito Women

         Very high Infant Mortality and Mother Mortality Rate Among Miskito Women. If Garifunas live in an eco-system similar to the Miskitos could practices of Garifuna midwives help lower the Morality of  Miskito Women and children?

Problems with Previous Study Done by Biologists of the UNAH

         Biopiracy-Take the data and never return it, but sent overseas, also not make it available. Similar results with IHAH study of Garifuna midwives.

         Refusal to include typical Honduran diseases as identified by the Garifunas, but not by Western doctors

Problems with National Intercultural Education Program

         Not interested in the topic if given the research. No research component of their program whatsoever,even though there is paid staff in the same town.

Some Problem With Intergenerational Transmission Among the Garifunas.

The Garifuna young people, both men and women, are not learning what the old people know. Yaya says,  “I have tons of grandchildren.  I delivered them all. Where are they?”

Race against Time

         Yaya, the last Garifuna midwife in Trujillo, was 89 years old when we did the  main part of the study, published in Los Garifunas de Honduras, 91 years old when it was published. 95 years old now. If we did not record the information now, we were going to lose the chance.

She and Her Immediate Family Unable to do the Recordinging of the Information Themselves.

 Her own family had either immigrated or not been able to learn to read and write or  were not interested, and she had never learned to read and write and has been blind for at least the last 5 years.

ANALYSIS of  Results

No public health risk to the mother or children.  Better results than Honduran hospitals in many kinds of complicated births, prenatal care, and after care of mother and infant. In the whole department of Colon (similar in size to Rhode island where  there is no public gynecologist, only two university trained male doctors—one a surgeon and one a general doctor, the second a Garifuna)

The Techniques of Garifuna midwives did show the Possibility of Midwives Dying of HIV. They had been trained in the issue of HIV and told to wear gloves (not available locally) but they found they could not work well with them. At least one Garifuna midwife that Geraldina Ferrero worked with on the issue of HIV probably got sick and died due to HIV issues during delivery.

The Comparison of  Garifuna Midwife success Rates with mothers and with newborns  were superior to the Honduran hospitals, and thus significantly superior to US hospitals relating to African American expectant mothers and children, such as in Pittsburgh or Washington, DC, which have lower rates of success with african Americans than Honduras does in general according to Katherine Hall Trujillo’s TED Talk. Also significantly better results than Miskito mother and child results in the Honduran Mosquitia.

Benefits of the Techniques Used  by the Garifuna Midwives

The plants and other techniques that Garifuna midwives used prenatally resolved problems like was the woman pregnant or had a tumor (this is a common problema in Honduras at least once a year Honduran newspapers report Ladino women with 22 pound tumors when they thoght they were pregant), controlling anemia during pregnancy (which seemed to control folic acid problems, too, as no babies without brains were reported among several hundred births among Garifunas, but commonly reported amongthe poor  Ladina women outside of Trujillo), recommending what the mother should and should not take while pregnant (most of which had valid reasons for prohibition), “control de embarazo” (identifying if there are problems in the pregnancy),  reducing pain of the mother while pregnant, and identifying women who would need to have babies by Cesarians due to some complication like too narrow to deliver the baby.

Control of many problems during and immediately following delivery such as infections, baby being born with the caul, hemorraging and bleeding, baby in a bad position, the placenta not coming down, the baby not breathing, the umbilical cord around the neck, pain, using a belt afterwards which seems to avoid pro-lapsed uteruses which are more common among Ladino women. Treat babies to prevent asthma at birth.

US medical students and Mexican anthropologists thought that postbirth techniques were missing in the US and that people may have been sick or dying for their lack. Garifunas who go to the Honduran hospitals to have their children can die of problems midwives know how to cure. Ladina women who have had children with a midwife and in a hospital in Honduras report that with the midwife alltheir children lived but in a hospital the experience was terrible and the children they bore died.

There is a high rate of interethnic use of midwives in Trujillo. One Ladina woman who delivered with Yaya three times after the doctor sent her away after being inlabor for three say, when yaya said have your baby in the hospital, she said, “Ni si quiera Dios.” (Not even if God wants it.)  Having a baby with a midwife is also cheaper, as well as safer for the mother’s and baby’s health. The recent President of Honduras Pepe Lobo was delivered by Garifuna midwives Yaya and her cousin.

Control of problems of the baby and of the mother after delivery and giving advice to Young mothers who due to lack of experience sometimes did things that made their babies sick, including  what to do if bleeding or milk did not come down. Many of the problems of  very Young  babies  which often have as symptomsthe baby does not nurse and cries a lot have names of illnesses which the US does not recognize as illnesses. 

The Garifunas and the Pech midwives both thought maybe US babies were dying of these problems, but maybe US doctors were not aware of them, and that is why they just use names like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, because they did not recognize these diseases or know how to treat them.  The same illnesses were reported by Garifunas, and Pech, and Ladinos and are probably known to Miskito women. Hondurans who go to the Hospital with these diseases can die from the treatment in the hospital like operating for empacho or not treating the illness, like dying of paletillas.

Garifuna midwives also treat pain during menustration and treat infertility.  An American woman who was 39 years old and told in the US that she could not get pregnant because she needed an operation and two years of hormone treatment (blah, blah,blah), tried  the treatment of a different Garifuna midwife.  Not only did she get pregnant and have a boy, and then get pregnant and have another boy, but because it never occurred to her she was pregnant she spent the first four months of her pregnancy travelling up and down India and Sri Lanka by bus and by truck after the tsunami doing work with GROOTS with grassroots women rebuilding after a disaster, at age 39, for the first child, after having been told she could not conceive, so what in the US would have been a high risk pregnancy, she was lifting luggage and travelling over washed out roads in India after a disaster. The child and his brother are now in primary school in Boston. Not being able to have children is a reason for a man to leave a woman in Honduras and so many of the poor Ladina women who looked for Yaya’s help did so so that their husband did not leave them, as men are the chief source of cash income for women in Honduras. Not having children in old age in a country with no social security system is a disaster.

 

Garifuna Midwives are Not Witches and Do Not Practice Witchcraft

Although there are Witches in the Garifuna culture, usually midwives and traditional female healers among the Garifunas do not practice witchcraft  (brujueria, mal, hechizos) which has numerous forms in Honduras, although some of the things the Garifuna midwives/healers do like baths of good luck, recommending of plants that bring good luck like in sales, or keep away bad things from happening to you like being assaulted or witchcraft or  amulets or baths or smoke with special herbs to keep evil nature spirits or the vapor of dead people, the way US people divide health and magic fit into the magic category.

In the case of Doña Clara, she was also a buyei, a shaman, who divined causes of illnesses and treated some illnesses with plants like intestinal worms, amoebas, fevers, and other illnesses were identified as cause by unhappy ancestor spirits, which had to cured by offering certain ceremonies which she and other Garifuna shaman did. 

Midwives often also Female Shaman in Ancestor based Religions

It is not unusual in cultures that believe in ancestors, that female shaman are midwives and bring the new souls into this world, she maintains contact with the ancestors during that soul’s life to see why the person is sick and what to do about it, and she anoits them and sings special songs to them when they die to tell them what is the path to go to where the ancestors are and what is expecting them there. Like many shaman, Doña Clara almost died of an illness, and also saw where the ancestor spirits live in dreams. Being a midwife was a part time job and she was also a farmer and a cook.

Midwives, healers, Musicians, Singers, and Shaman are all called to Serve

If she had her choice, she would not have been a shaman, but the ancestors called and would have killed her if she did not accept, something other Garifuna shaman say, too, and is also an aspect of chinese spirit mediums. The call to be a midwife (around age 15), the call to be a healer with plants (when her children were around 10 years old) and the call to be a Garifuna shaman or buyei (when her children were almost grown, and  her call to learn to play maracas was only part of this)  were separate calls.  Her nephew who is a massage therapist was also called by ancestors to that job.

How Are Garifuna Shaman/Healers Trained and why no one learning with Her?

Among the Garifunas, when a Garifuna buyei is iniated, they spend a week in seclusion with another buyei and the ancestor spirits, and there is a ceremony, but in general buyeis do not study with other buyeis their plants, but rather the ancestors reveal plants to people, including to people who are not buyeis. Some of the plants recommended by the ancestors like those to treat people with AIDS have been tested and they did help with problems like people with AIDS getting thin due to poor absorbtion, people getting thrush (manchas blancas), kidney problems, and avoiding getting sick from low level infections, so that they have a better quality of life.

The Garifuna Young People like Pech Young People often Do not Know what Word goes with which plant or with which food or which dance.

If you tell them, if you have an infection or open cut on your leg, treat it with chichipinse, they do not know which plant is chichipinse or how to prepare it to use it.

Garifuna Young People and Ladinos for not recognizing the Plants are Killing them, because they are taught to leave an área “clean” in school (no plants).

The Garifunas are threatened with the loss of their hábitat, and We will Miss Their Knowledge about Plants and Medicine.

Although other male  Garifuna buyeis who lead songs for ceremonies learned the songs from another male buyei, the ancestors  taught Yaya the healing songs for ceremonies that they wanted sung. One common use of Garifuna healing songs is to treat Sting ray bites, and one White American girl was bitten on the beach in Trujillo where her mother and father owned a bar, and the Garifuna women sang for her and in 20 minutes she was able to walk home. Sometimes Ladinos who do not know any treatments for stingrays go to the hospital to be treated after they do not get better for weeks and the people in the hospital tell them, “Don’t stay here. We do not treat that kind of illness. Go look for Yaya in Trujillo.” 

The Garifunas are currently threatened with being displayed from the beaches of Honduras due to mega-tourism projects. Then what will the people do if they get sick or bitten by a Sting ray?