Demystifying Culture, Herbal medicine for better health

By Valerian Kkonde 

PEARL NEWS SERVICE   

       Reverend Brother Father Anatoli Wasswa is a household name in Uganda and beyond.  This popularity is due to his expertise in herbal medicine, an area many strongly believe is a preserve of divination and supernatural agents.  More so, his determination to demystify misconceptions about culture and cultural practices, has won him admirers and enemies alike.

   “In the culture of Baganda, all sickness and disease have a supernatural cause.  Hence, ideas like ‘bulwadde buganda’ meaning it is caused by supernatural agents, or ‘bulwadde buzungu’ caused by agents of disease as proposed by Western medicine”, Brother Anatoli explains.

   People, Fr. Anatoli goes on, consider the supernatural causes of disease to be: the offended family spirits-lubaale and mizimu- which have to be appeased by offering them sacrifices and building them shrines-masabo.  At other times it can be the soldier spirits-amayembe.  Soldier spirits are of two types: those for defending the family or clan, and those for offence.

   Soldier spirits for defence are thought to be inherited in the family and clan.  But those for offence are thought to be literary bought from witchdoctors and are the ones used for bewitching people.

   The other supernatural cause of disease is thought to be failure to observe a custom or religious practice.  Most notable are those to do with in-laws and twins.  People believe, thus fear, that contact with an in-law of the opposite sex causes tremors for the victim.

   It is worse with the twins; twins are so revered that their birth is supposed to be honoured with an elaborate ceremony, failure of which results in the death of one or both twins, with detrimental effects on the family.

   “The native doctor’s explanation of disease evolves around these causes.  Everything happening to a person, including influenza, will be explained as witchcraft.

   And the major reason why native doctors give such explanation is to convince the patient that witchdoctors have supernatural powers so that the patient submits to the treatment and all demands they may make.”

  With their secrets revealed, native doctors have labelled Br. Fr. Anatoli an enemy out to destroy culture.  He rubbishes such mentality saying that it is impossible to destroy culture while he is aware that culture is the foundation of the diversity that gives a people an identity.  He further says that our traditional ceremonies, rites, taboos, medicine … had deeply religious meaning, and that some had very positive elements of social cohesion.  But that the antics of the native doctor are in most cases, irrelevant to the curative powers of the medicine they administer.

     “Provided that the proper diagnosis has been reached these medicines will work very effectively, freed from the fetters of superstition or witchcraft which is a profane of culture.”

   “Every one of us is convinced that together with positive qualities, negative spots are also present in our character.  The same applies to our culture, indeed to all cultures.  We all, without exception, need to meet the Supreme and Powerful Healer Jesus Christ to purify us and make our characters and cultures more precious and shining for the good of all.  WITCHCRAFT is certainly most in need of the healing power of Christ”.

   Native doctors insist that administration of herbal medicine has to be done inside the shrines. These have become notorious for criminal acts: human sacrifice, ritual murders, rape and outright robbery.

   Shrines are given undue respect which has nothing to do with administration of medicine but instil fear in the patient who goes there.  A woman in her menstrual will not be allowed in, you enter bare footed, and the place where the native doctor sits is a source of fear and not hope: it is decorated with skins of all sorts of rare animals, claws, rare bird feathers, shiny spears, roots and stems twisted artistically by nature.

   Native doctors bedeck themselves with beads, bark cloth, teeth of dead animals and all sorts of things that can cause an aura of omnipotence.

   Brother Anatoli says that his extensive research in herbal medicine and its practice has helped him establish that the shrines are not essential for one to effectively practice herbal medicine.

   Confessions of the converted witchdoctors confirm all this:  “You have come to me with confidence and fear, sure that I was in direct contact with one or more strong spirits.  Now I disclose to you the truth: No, I never had any contact with any spirit at all.  No supernatural power therefore.  I have been INITIATED, not possessed.  The tricks I was taught were my real and only strength.  Yes, I have been deceiving ...  I am so sorry now and ask for the pardon of God and yours.

   “My commitment in confessing the truth and demonstrating what and how I was doing it, to convince you, will now help many to leave witchcraft and its fear; and trust God, His medicines, His teachings and His love.  I assure you,” confesses Jane Nakafeero.

   Jane Nakafeero, 69, is one of the many reformed native medicine people moving countrywide in a bid to convince people to denounce quack medicine people. Nakafeero abandoned the non-essential strings used by witchdoctors, after listening to Br. Fr. Anatoli preach against those practices.  She says that she found herself in this snare as a result of her father wanting to rescue his suffering children.  Nakafeero’s elder sister was barren and her younger brother a thief. Whenever her sister sought a remedy from herbal doctors, they would tell her that she could only bear children after appeasing the clan spirits.  This explanation was later extended to the thieving brother.

   Nakafeero observes that although she was initiated, after her father spending hefty sums of money, her father was operated upon, her sister bore no child, and her thieving brother was killed while trying to steal a bicycle.

   At initiation, she was told a secret “which would cause death if revealed to someone else”.  She was told that she was the spirit and had to keep changing her voice to announce the arrival of a different spirit.  She was cautioned not to embark on any ceremony before all the requirements had been presented to her. But the most important thing was to learn herbal medicine and its proper diagnosis.

   “I have been revealing this secret over and over for the last 27 years but I am still alive,” Nakafeero narrated.

   Dismissing the popular belief that herbal medicine practice is a result of the revelation by the spirits of dead relatives, Brother Anatoli says that he just picked interest in herbal medicine the way we all pick interest in this or that.

   “I embarked on the exercise of educating myself on medicinal herbs. I have received much assistance from native practitioners who have abandoned divination and other non-essentials. To-date we are busy improving on methods of preparation, storage and administration”.

    Brother Anatoli’s early encounter with the healing powers of herbal medicine left an indelible mark on him, thus the respect and desire to streamline its practice and administration.

Born February 15, 1927 Brother Anatoli had a severe heart problem which greatly bothered his parents: the late Thanasius Ssalongo Mivule and Juliana Nnalongo Nambwayo. Efforts to treat it with scientific drugs yielded nothing.

   It was Brother Joseph Balikuddembe (RIP) who gave him the herbal medicine which cured him and changed his life fundamentally.

   His efforts to demystify herbal medicine were rewarded with getting in touch with a great herbalist Sr. Rosalina of Bwanda religious Sisters, and a priest of the White Fathers’ congregation, Fr. Pelinet.

   Fr. Pelinet had done a lot of research on herbal medicine.  He later handed all his findings to Brother Anatoli, which he has strengthened with more research, improved administering and storage.

   In 1981, the Masaka Diocesan Synod, after reading the “signs of the times”, set up a Committee to do research, make recommendations and educate the faithful on, among other things, traditional cultural beliefs as well as traditional medicine.  To Brother Anatoli, this was sending lizard to thatch.

    “We established that people go to traditional shrines to look for life.  We decided to put the medicine within easy reach of the people.”

    Among the many problems Brother Anatoli has encountered, is the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Welfare’s failure to do enough research so as to identify the helpful cultural practices and those detrimental to society. 

   “We still have to convince Government that witchcraft is not a cultural practice.  It is thus wrong to issue certificates to witchdoctors to practice herbal medicine,” regrets Brother Anatoli.

   But as a member of the Committee, charged with finding better means of preserving and promoting herbal medicine, in His Majesty King Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II’s Buganda Government, hopes of doing away with deceitful and undignified herbal medicine practices are real.

   From time to time there are claims of soldier spirits terrorising and displacing residents in different parts of the country. Then some native doctor comes and restores order after being paid the money demanded for. This reinforces Brother Anatoli’s argument.                                                                                                                                                                              

   Witchcraft is not only backward, but an insult to human intelligence. Witchdoctors confuse people’s intelligence reducing it to the limits of a small child.  It has also caused

a lot of suffering by sowing hatred among people at their places of work and among family members. 

   Although people continue to lose their lives for being suspected witches, others are killed for being wrongly accused by witchdoctors, and the press is full with reports of en lightly referred to as human sacrifice- rape and outright robbery all in the name of herbal medicine administration and cultural practice, government continues to issue licences to native doctors!

   Even the confessions of reformed native doctors have failed to move government officials into action. What extent of catastrophe will move them?  For how long are                                                                                                                   

people going to suffer at the hands of witchcraft, witches and witchdoctors who thrive on people’s fear of spirits?                                                                               

                                                                                                      

   To Brother Anatoli, the root cause of all these problems is the trend of forgetting God’s role in our lives, and put trust in witchcraft.  People have taken to wrong methods of self-sustaining, politically and economically.

   Families and schools, he goes on, have long seized to be nurseries of good morals.  Moral decadence is so intense that it does not discriminate between the literate and non-literate.

   “Schools are after money, awarding certificates, and attracting more pupils while morals are left to who it may concern.  While virginity was a virtue some years back, today it is a shame.

“We need a fundamental turn-about to plants.  We have succeeded in treating cases that have failed with Western drugs like diabetes, ulcers, impotence, sickle cells, high blood pressure, asthma and alcoholism,” Br. Anatoli explains.