On Wednesday the group and I went to go see one of the local
herbal medicine men, Moses. Moses’ land is at the trail head of the Victoria
Falls Trail. He has a little restaurant for the hikers to eat and drink at if they
need something cool after the hike. Two of his sons, Moses Jr. and Israel, live
on the same land and Moses Jr. is building a house there as well.
Aubrey already spoke some about Moses and his family being a
part of the Rastafarian movement. She describes it in great detail below, but to sum it up the movement consists of people living off the earth and using the surrounding
plants and resources to live. Moses also talked about the importance of the
moon cycle for doing certain activities and how the cycle of the moon (month
you were born) affects your personality. He said that the stars (Gemini signs)
help shape each of us.
Moses said that he learned much of what he knows about
herbal therapies from his parents and grandparents. It also seems that he is
trying to pass his knowledge down to his children. He showed us a book
that he wrote and had published, that looked like a very informative and
interesting read. We talked some throughout our time with Moses about how to
use the different parts of the plants in teas. It was amazing to hear him
describe how many leaves or how many handfuls were needed to be put with water
to make each herbal infusion. It seemed like for most of the herbal infusions
he told us about, they required a handful or so of the leaves and then around a
pint of boiling water. I am very interested in trying some of these infusions
for myself to see how well they work, hopefully giving me another option to
tell my patients back in the States.
The best part of the day for me was walking around in his
gardens and making the sugarcane juice. Moses took us first on a tour of his
gardens, some of which were down closer to the White River .
As I said before, he was very informative on the many different plants that he
had growing and about what each of the different plants were used for. I was
also very happy to see one of the plants, Comfrey, I will describe why later.
After the tour of his gardens, he took us back to the
restaurant and taught us how to squeeze sugarcane to get the juice out. He had
a wooden machine that had two rollers with metal rods on the ends to help turn them.
These rollers were turned and the sugarcane was inserted and squeezed as it was
pulled through. We had a kettle underneath the rollers to collect the juice. It
was amazing to see how much juice each of the sugarcane stalks contained. After
about a half hour of switching the roles of turning the rollers, pushing the
sugarcane through, and then pulling the sugarcane, we were able to enjoy our
work. As Aubrey commented, the juice was very sweet and one could only drink a
little bit.
As I mentioned a little earlier, I was very excited to see
the plant called Comfrey. On Monday, each of the students were given two plants
to identify, take a picture with, and then interview someone about the
different uses and if they have ever used it. I was able to find my other
plant, Noni, fairly easily, but had yet to find or even determine what my
second plant was. I found out this morning that my second plant was not in the Plants of Southeast Dominica book that we have
and that was called Comfrey. So seeing the plant in person in Moses’ gardens allowed me
to see what it actually looks like. All I need to do now is spend some more time
looking around Jungle
Bay
I am looking forward to the rest of the time here and
hopefully we have wonderful weather.
Eric
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