WHEN WE SEEK TREATMENT FROM ABROAD, AREN'T WE ACTING LIKE THE FORGETFUL FARMER LOOKING FOR THE AXE RESTING COMFORTABLY ON HIS SHOULDER?

There is this sad but almost comical situation that happens in the villages all the time. Am sure you have witnessed it too. It’s time to go the garden. A farmer picks his axe, promptly balances it on his shoulders. Because this simple action has been repeated so many times before, the action is now thoughtless. He forgets about the axe almost immediately. He goes on to pick the panga, some other tools and feels he is almost ready to go to the garden. He ‘remembers’ he hasn’t picked just one more tool. The axe.

He might consume a good 15 or 20 minutes looking for the axe. Then finally the wife might ask him. ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘The axe. Have you seen it somewhere?’ The wife might laugh and ask. ‘What’s that on your shoulder?

This is the problem that afflicts us and our African leaders. Africa suffers from ‘seeking solutions from afar syndrome’. When our African presidents are hit by some serious malady, the president’s men will automatically swing into action. ‘Take mze outside the continent for ‘better’ treatment’.

One brilliant Africa leader (am not telling you his name or where he is from) was hit by asthma. His men of course knew that there are simple solutions for asthma in that country and in their usual false sense of sophistication and modernity, ignored the African medicine (which president would want to be caught dead using African medicine?). Sadly, our leader died just like that, from the easily treatable asthma.

I don’t want to enter deep into the absurdity of that but surface to say that in many of the cases there are better medical solutions here in Africa. At the risk of sounding braggart, African herbal medicine is more effective than any type of medicine practiced in any part of the word.

African herbs cure asthma. The more potent ones cure it within six weeks but the patient starts to experience relief within one week. I am speaking from experience.

Africa must refrain from seeking for readymade solutions from outside. Let’s look within. Like the farmer looking the axe which has balanced on his shoulder for so long he has promptly forgotten about it and starts asking others where it is, we have lived with African medicine for so long we have forgotten that we have used western medicine for less than two hundred years yet we have been using African medicine for thousands and thousands of years.

Now the locusts are threatening our livelihoods. Has anyone in authority ever stopped to ask what solutions are available with our own people? Has it occurred to the them that somewhere some herbalist could be having a herbal, non-environmental destructive solution?