I just received an email from an acquaintance I met over two years ago. She's now doing research at Harvard on complementary and alternative medicines. When we last met I told her about a series of little pamphlets given to me by traditional healers in the DR Congo. She would now like to come to Kansas City to see the little pamphlets herself and also suggested I consider co-authoring an article with her. Wouldn't that be great! These pamphlets are extremely interesting and contain information not found anywhere else. The preface in the first pamphlet states:
"When a traditional healer is using the herbs to heal the patients, people look at him as a devil and illiterate. He is not even accepted neither could he mix with members of certain congregations. The reason why these traditional healers are rejected is that they scare people with their type of dressing they put on. They even stop using Bemba, a language everybody understands, but speak something else people fail to understand. This makes it difficult for the patients to know the type of medicine the traditional healers use, it is their secret. That is why our committee is carrying out a research on the application and use of traditional medicines in order to teach others what our ancestors used to do and hope that even our children will benefit from the same."
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