The Secret Garden and Herbal Remedies

Day 3:

Today our group visited the Aburi Botanical Gardens and a Holistic Medicine Research Center located just an hour outside of Accra. The Botanical gardens were like an African version of the Secret Garden. There were plants there that were hundreds of years old and there were several baby animals wondering around. In fact, the oldest tree in the gardens is over 300 years old. In this garden, there are many medicinal plants such as camphor and also spice plants such as cinnamon and bay leaf trees. The highlight of the trip for me was the tree with the hollow trunk; you could actually stand inside of this tree! Once inside, you could look up at the top of the tree and see the hole where the sunlight comes through. In the pictures, it just looks like you are inside of a cave, and does not do justice to the experience. It was absolutely fabulous! I think that for me it was something unique- how many people can say that they stood inside of a tree?

After a traditional lunch in the beautiful gardens, we headed to the Herbal Research Center. On the way we passed some very old buildings and churches, and Awuku informed us that these were original British missionary homes. The presence of Christianity is very strong here, its presence can be felt everywhere. On our tour bus, for example, there are two pictures of Jesus by the driver’s seat. His son, Francis, often hands out literature on Jesus and the Bible, and he loves to engage in conversations with a couple of our students who are religious. These students also engaged our guide, Awuku, in a lengthy conversation later on in the day as we headed home. I do not pretend to know what they were talking about; I was not really interested in the subject and did not feel the need to listen. Cheri and I both agreed that a belief in God is a beautiful thing, but in my own view, organized religion is something to be wary of. This does not mean that it is always a bad thing, nor do I condemn anyone who is very devoted to their church- my brother is a very devout Christian and gives much of his earnings to the church specifically to support mission work. But, it just seems like so much pain has come at the hand of religion, and for this reason, I cannot embrace it fully. Religion just so often seems like a dividing line. But, perhaps I have just been watching too many Bill Maher episodes! Here, there are many signs that read "God Saves" and "God is good". One thing I can say is that there are some very beautiful old churches, with the most exquisite stonework.

The churches may be very old, but the idea of Christianity is very much alive and well in Ghana today. In fact, most of the country identifies as Christian, with only a small proportion identifying as Muslim, and less than 5% identifying with a traditional African religion. Even though traditional religion is not prevalent throughout the country anymore, traditional medicine very much is! I leaned today that more than 70% of Ghanaians use traditional medicine for their primary care, while 90% of Ethiopians still rely on traditional practices over modern medicine. A shocking fact is that even in the US and Canada, 40% of the population uses traditional medicine quite actively, in addition to Western-style medicine. Here at the dispensary, they have a potion for many things: asthma, nervous disorders including stress, sexual "weakness", malaria, sickle-cell disease, and HIV. I bought at the dispensary an herbal remedy for stress, and two small jars of an herbal remedy for "women’s" pains. All of this cost me less than 1 US dollar. I have not tried it out yet, but thought with the low price tag, it was worth picking up a few things to experiment with. These herbal remedies are meant to address symptoms, and do not cure diseases such as HIV and Sickle-Cell disease. It costs a person only $1 for a consultation with an herbalist, and the herbalist will write prescriptions for what the patient needs. According to the researcher who took us around the Center, there is only one doctor for every 10,000 residents in Ghana, but there is one herbalist for every 1,000 residents. The herbal remedies, which will cost an HIV patient less than $4 a month, are supposedly just as effective as the HIV cocktail that we use in the US, which is less widely available here, and prohibitively costly for many patients.

The Research Center is called formally, The Center for Scientific Research of Plant Medicine, and the name is quite fitting as it is in fact, a research center. Many local universities, including the University of Ghana, Legon (which by way Legon means "hill of knowledge") collaborate with the Center. While visiting there, we met a student from the University of Michigan, who was doing an internship at the Center for this summer. She is interested in using these herbal medicines in the US, especially in low-income minority communities that often do not have access to health care because they are uninsured. There are also foreign researchers there from Denmark, Germany, and the UK that work with the Ghanaian researchers that are on appointments at the Center from every major university in the country. There is a bio-chemistry department where the plants are examined on a molecular and structural basis, and a pharmacology research area, where the findings from the bio-chemistry department are then utilized to make the healing compounds. The compounds are actually tested on mice and rats that are infected with the diseases, and then their symptoms are monitored. We went into this big room with very old English-style bookshelves and cabinets, where files are kept. On the tables surrounding the room, there were many bags of herbs piled on top of one another. I couldn’t help but think that this looks like a drug seizure at the US-Mexico border! And, it made me think, if marijuana can alter your mind (BTW- Anderson Cooper has been doing a special all week about whether not it should be legalized in the US and under what conditions), then surely these herbs can also alter our physical or mental state. It was a very enlightening experience, and I must say that I enjoyed today thoroughly!

After dinner, I was thinking about going to bed, but decided that I would see what was going on outside before I headed upstairs. There is a small bar there and a beautiful patio area where many of the students congregate after hours and socialize. I went to say good night, and they convinced me to stay and chat with them for a bit so I did. I have to say that overall I am impressed with this group; a few of the students seem very mature, but they all seem very eager to learn and no one has had "culture" shock or expressed being homesick at this point. I suppose it would be a self-selecting group that would travel to Ghana, but I still think that it is quite impressive how well they get along with each other (they are all sharing stories about their IBS symptoms, which I find hilarious!), and how much they seem to appreciate being abroad. They seem genuinely interested in my research, and several of them want to accompany me to the refugee camp. As this is not part of their program, it may be difficult to arrange; I am not really part of their group. Also, I really do not want people to feel like they are on display, and I conveyed this to them and said that we will have to see what happens. I have not even been to the Camp myself yet, and do not know how receptive the residents will be to having a large group of students "tour" the Camp. I did, however, manage to recruit Kelsey, a student who just took my politics and film class, to help me with research in the fall. So, it is likely that I will have two students working with me in the fall on this project and they will receive one hour of course credit. We also managed to meet Airlyn, a Ghanaian whose uncle manages the hotel that we are currently staying at, and Chris and Duncan, Ghanaian brothers who have invited us to a reggae party at the beach tomorrow night! Some of the students relayed a story about a woman who had come by earlier in the evening, who was pregnant, smoking, and encouraging the girls to give blow jobs. Supposedly, she also told them that African men are amazing in bed, and they took it from her condition that she might have some experience with this:) Obviously, she is a bit off-balance, but was able to provide them with so funny drinking stories. In fact, Airlyn told me that in Ghana it is taboo to smoke, and particularly for women, smoking in public is associated with prostitution. She says that drinking is not taboo, however. So, we all stayed up a drank for a couple of hours, and then everyone finally headed off to bed. They have classes in the morning, but I am looking forward to sleeping all day!