Garifuna medicine-Modern and Traditional, healers, doctors and medicinal plants

Garifuna medicine-Modern and Traditional, healers, doctors and medicinal plants

In health there are over 34 Garifuna doctors and dozens of Garifuna nurses working in Honduras.  One Garifuna doctor gained fame in the US because he had worked hard to open the first Garifuna hospital in the remote area of Iriona, Colon where there are thousands of traditional Garifunas as well as a number of Ladino communities. This hospital was open during Manuel Zelaya’s presidency, but after the coup was threatened to be shut down. There is a link to the hospital on BeingGarifuna.com.  Garifunas also work in various roles in projects related to the problem of AIDS in the Garifuna community, from the Radionovelas in Garifuna like “The Ancestors Don’t Die”, to fundraising, to training traditional health practioners and buyeis how to recognize AIDS, and many other aspects in both Honduras and the US.  There is a Garifuna organization “Hondurans Against AIDS” in New York. Concerned that Garifuna traditional practices were not being incorporated into the Honduran medical system in the Garifuna area, OFRAHEH sponsored a training program for Garifuna nurses that included traditional Garifuna medecine and Western medecine. The Garifuna nurse in charge of the government clinic at Puerto Castilla and the Garifuna doctor in Trujillo both attend medecine plant seminars and conferences.  

Traditional Medicine and healers among the Garifunas

Many of the people working in Garifuna health are not university trained, but rather are traditional herbalists, midwives, massage therapists (sobadoras), and “buyeis”.  These healers treat many illnesses, and deliver babies.  Medicinal plant studies among the Garifunas have shown the old people know over 300 medicinal plants, but the young people are not learning them.  The Garifunas believe in several different causes of illnesses including common causes such as intestinal pin worms or fevers, illnesses caused by witchcrafts, illnesses caused by ancestor spirits, and illnesses caused by nature spirits. In my book Los Garifunas de Honduras (Griffin and CEGAH,2005)  there is a section on Garifuna traditional medicine including over 100 medicinal plant recipes and how to care for pregnant women and young children among the Garifunas, according to 92 year old Garifuna healer, midwife, sobadora, and buyei, Tomasa Clara Garcia, known as “Yaya”.  She has been an informant for several  studies of medicinal plants and the Garifuna religion.  Her biography will soon be published by Negritud in English and Spanish (Griffin and Garcia, 2013).

Hondurans, including the Garifunas, believe in several illnesses that Honduran doctors do not think exist, like haito, empacho, aire, paletilla, etc.  These are generally treated with a combination of herbs and massage.  Evangelical Christians have taught Miskito Indians that going to traditional healers whom they consider diabolic, as bad.  So when 2 Miskito students studying in Tegucigalpa got sick of “empacho”, which causes the stomach to bloat up and get hard, sounds like a drum if you touch it, and causes problems going to the bathroom, and little balls form in the blood,  among other things, the modern Christian Miskito man who was taking care of them refused to take them to a “sobadora” or “curandera” (massage therapist or healer).  He took them to the teaching  Hospital in Teguicgalpa and they cut them open and the two young men died of the operation. The Miskito parents were furious when they got the dead bodies of their sons sent home, especially when they heard all they had was “empacho”, an easily cured traditional illness. When I have asked Hondurans about the fact that Western doctors do not recognize these diseases, they made maybe they should recognize them, that maybe US children are dying of these illnesses because they do not recognize them.  Yaya treats many children after they have been to the hospital and the doctors could not find out what was wrong, and they were dying.  She treats them with herbs and massages and they get better and live to grow up and have their own children. 

I partly began working with Yaya because I heard that many Miskito Indian women were dying in childbirth, yet only one of Yaya's hundreds of patients had died in childbirth, so I wanted to know what she did.  For example, she told me if a woman is hemoraging, she gives her strong coffee, and that usually stops the hemorraging (Griffin and CEGAH,2005). A Garifuna friend of mine lost his wife in childbirth at a hospital from hemoraging, leaving him alone with 6 young kids.  I am sad to think he may have lost his wife for the lack of a cup of coffee.  A US medical student from Massachusettes who was doing volunteer work with CEGAH, read Yaya's care of pregnant women, and said modern medecine does not do these things, but maybe they should. Garifunas midwives provide prenatal care from 2 or 3 months of being pregnant and also provide after pregnancy care, as well as care of newborns.  The statistics for prenatal care, maternal death, and problems with newborns among the African Americans in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania who all are treated with Western medecine in hospitals are worse than those treated by Garifuna midwives. Unfortunately the modern generation of Garifuna youth are not learning these skills.

Some Garifuna midwives like Yaya also know plants that help women who have trouble getting pregnant to have children.  CEGAH's Trinidadian American advisor tried for several year to get pregnant. Finally she had health tests done in the States, and they said there was something physically wrong.  That she would need hormone treatment and surgury, and it would be expensive, etc.  Discouraged she went back to Trujillo and tried the medicinal plants of a Garifuna healer there.  She went off to India and was going up and down buses, hauling heavy luggage on terrible roads.  She came back to Honduras and went to the doctor's and he told her she was about 4 months pregnant, even though she was over 35, doing all this heavy lifting and hard travelling, etc. and did not lose the baby.  Shortly after the first baby was born, she was pregant again and also had that baby fine although she was almost 40.  Many women in Trujillo have gone to Yaya with this problem, and she treats them with a different plant recipe and a year later they are back to show off the baby.  "Here is your granddaughter," they say.  One woman complained because eventually she had a lot of children after being treated.  "I am not at fault," says Yaya, "You asked for the medecine and it worked." Many people in the US spend thousands of dollars on infertility treatments, which are often uncomfortable,  and sometimes even then do not have children.

Although the Catholic Church in Honduras used to be against medicinal plant use, now some of the leaders of medicinal plant usein Honduras are priests and nuns.  Padre Fausto Milla runs a medicinal plant clinic in Santa Rosa de Copan, and also a special "Casa de Salud" (House of health) for serious, hard to treat cases.  My friend anthropologist Adalid Martinez was diagnosed with lung cancer, and even after chemothearpy they said they would have to take out his lung.  He went to Father Fausto Milla's clinic and "Casa de Salud" for 7 months.  In addition to herbs, he followed a special diet and did "geotheraphy" with special medicinal mud which supposedly  sucks out the illness. He recovered completely and 10 years later he is still fine and very active.  He wrote a book about his experience and other people who Father Milla cured.  Father Milla has had a newspaper column in a Honduran Spanish language newspaper about medecinal plants and a radio show.  In Trujillo, one of the Spanish nuns was trained as a naturalist doctor and presecribed plant medecine for people. Although she had to retire due to old age, the medicinal plant store of the Catholic Church is still open and frequently used in Trujillo. Part of the reason they do this is because many Hondurans are sick and can not afford chemical medecines. Another reason is because the plant medecine usually works.

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If people have heard of medicinal plants, now a multibillion business in the US, they usually think of rainforest Indians, especially Amazonian rainforest Indians. In fact, Blacks both in the Americas and in Africa also had a wide knowledge of medicinal plants.  In South Africa, it is estimated that traditional African healers use between 2,000 and 3,000 different species of medicinal plants (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/traditional-healers-of-South-Africa).  According to  UNAH ethnobiologist Paul House, medicinal plant researchers interviewed one “bush doctor” in Belize who knew 1,000 medicinal plants, which is more than all the medicinal plant lore for all of Europe in one head. The current interest in saving the rainforest by World Bank and similar organizations is motivated primarily by finding 2 effective treatments for leukemia based on periwinkles from Madagascar in Africa, now a multimillion dollar business for a US pharmaceutical company. Some Latin American Indians have raise a cry against "biopiracy", the stealing of traditional knowledge about medicinal plants for the purpose of making rich American pharmaceutical companies. One reason to worry that the Garifunas are losing their land is that they are losing their medicinal plants which could help a lot of people.  While pharmacuetical companies "in gringolandia" are mainly interested in herbal remedies that will bring them a lot of money, like the cure for cancer, the poor people of Honduras are also thankful for medicinal plants that treat every day diseases like urinary tract and kidney infections, ear infections, sinus infections, intestinal worms, amoebas, etc.  Since many rural people live far from government health centers and are poor and can not afford Western medecines, herbal medicines are an important alternative source of medical care. Hondurans also note medicinal plant use is safer.  My sister in the US was recently prescribed a medecine for a sinus infection that said, "Warning causes death in children under 10".  The Honduran cures for sinus infections like drinking water with hot chiles in it or inhaling "ipasina", a root, hot lemonaid or ginger tea with lemon, or inhaling the steam of camomile tea, definately do not cause death and are safe even for newborns.

A Garifuna friend of mine, Profesor Batiz, a modern believer in Western medicine was sick.  He went to doctors in Trujillo, even San Pedro Sula, a big city of a million people. In the San Pedro hospital, they said you have hepatitis.  You can be admitted to the hospital if you want, but we have no medicine for hepatitis.  A cousin of his from the traditional Garifuna area of Iriona, Colon came to visit him and heard his story.  He said do not worry.  I will make some medicine and you will feel better. He made a drink of Caña santa, a wild plant, and “rapadura” unrefined brown sugar and let it ferment for three days with a little viscoyol, a fruit, and gave it to Profesor Batiz.  Within a week he was fine and back to work. The use of Caña Santa for liver or urinary problems have been widely documented in Honduras including among the Ladinos(House et al., 1995), the Pech Indians (Griffin et al. 2009) and the Garifunas (Griffin and CEGAH,2005). Paul House says when a plant remedy is found among several different ethnic groups for the same thing, it is pretty sure that it is actually quite effective for that illness.  Unfortunately Western medecine, modern schools, and Christian churches have made traditional people lose faith in traditional medecine.  In Honduras since I have lived there, there have been campaigns  against "witchcraft" (brujeria) and the only thing they do is get rid of the medicinal plants from the center of towns like Tegucigalpa, confusing traditional medecine with "witchcraft".  The Garifuna young people are not  learning the plants, how to do massage therapy, or be midwives. 

Not only plants are used but also parts of animals.  Lard from chickens, “manteca de pollo” or “fowl fat” is used by Bay Islanders, Ladinos from Tegucigalpa and Garifunas to give to babies when they are very young to treat and prevent problems like bronchitis and asthma. Yaya says that babies when they are born drink some of the amiotic fluid  and if you don’t treat them they will have asthma and other illnesses one after the other. She gives the newborn baby garlic well cooked, and rue, and honey in its mouth so that it will vomit all the dirty water (Griffin and Garcia, 2013).  None of the children she has treated this way, which includes hundreds of babies, have ever had asthma. Bay Islanders, people in Tegucigalpa and Garifunas live very far apart from each other.  If so many people so far apart say these treatments are effective, maybe US researchers should be looking into it, as childhood asthma among African American kids is a huge problem in the US.

If people have heard of the land problems of rainforest Indians, usually they think of Amazonian rainforest Indians.  I was surprised to read that there are only an estimated 200,000 Amazonian rainforest Indians.  In Central America between the Garifunas, the Miskitos, the Pech, the Tawahkas, and other Central American rainforest Indians, the population is much greater, and the area is much smaller.  The problems of the Central American rainforest are acute.  The largest Honduras protected area with rainforest, "The Rio Platano Biosphere" in the Honduran Mosquitia is a UNESCO World Heritage site and includes 5 traditional Garifuna communities.  The destruction of the rainforest there is so severe that some estimate in 25 years it will all be gone.  Most people who see the Garifuna villages on the coast do not think of them as rainforest Indians, but their hunting included almost all the same animals the other Honduran rainforest Indians eat like white collared peccary (quequeo), deer, "tepescuinte", and armadillo.  The skin of the white collar peccary and the deer is what is used to make Garifuna drums  and is currently hard to get due to the near extinction of these animals.  While some Garifuna medicinal plants come from the lower areas near their field, houses, lagoons, and the beach,  Yaya also used to go into the rainforest part of the Calentura mountain, now a National Park,  to bring down special Garifuna medicinal plants. The Garifuna crafts also depend on rainforest plants like the drums are made of wild avocado tree wood, canoes from silkwood (ceiba), the graters for grating yuca to make cassava bread are made of Honduran mahoghany. Garifuna basketry crafts also depend on a vine "belaire" in Spanish and "gomerei" in Garifuna that grews on the rainforest part of the mountains near water up behind the Garifuna villages. Several Garifuna NGO's have tried to offer to seminars on how to make Garifuna basket crafts, because for some crafts there are just one or two older artisans in all of Honduras. With one small seminar of one craft in the Tela region, almost the entire existence of the plant was wiped out in the large Punta Sal National Park, reported the staff of the environmental NGO PROLANSATE, and in Trujillo there was not enough of the plant to offer the seminar. Craftsmen who know how to make Garifuna basket crafts, like Tomas Guity of Santa Rosa de Aguan, report there are no belarie plants near their village, because the forest are of the Garifuna villages was given either to Agrian Reform cooperatives of Ladinos or to Honduran businessmen who cut down the forest and plant African palm or raise cattle there. Garifuna basket crafts like the basket strainer (ruguma) and the basket sifter (hibise) are essential for making the Garifuna's traditional bread, cassava bread in English, casabe in Spanish and ereba in Garifuna. The sale of cassava bread is an important source of income for many Garifuna women in traditional Garifuna villages. Garifunas are an Afro-Indigenous people who are severely affected by the loss of the Central American Rainforest (Griffin and CEGAH,2006).     .