Getting started

18.11.08

Today I met Margot Diskin. Margot is a French/Irish homoeopath, and she is the passion powerhouse behind the homoeopathy school in Tanzania http://tiamproject.com/school.html
She has come out here to help me on the first steps of this journey, which I really appreciate. She has a lot of experience of Tanzania, having lived here for quite a few years, and she speaks fluent Swahili. Over lunch we discussed the school and some of the difficulties that must be overcome, but mainly Margot tells me the story of her good friend and my former student, who became very sick when they were out here working on the school. She had gotten malaria and on top of that typhoid and she was literally at deaths door. Her parasite count was 1000, where 200 is considered very high. Her kidneys and liver stopped functioning. Over two months they moved through five hospitals, and many times the doctors gave her up for dead. Margot took care of her like a mother, bathing her down at night and doing everything that could be done and more, but it took over a year for our friend to heal. If it had not been for Margot and homoeopathy she would not be here today. It was a life changing trauma for both of them, one that lasted for over a year. But it seems that they both gained strength, insight, wisdom and friendship through this ordeal. The remarkable thing is that they all want to come back again! They love Africa.

Margot gave me some of the tips re avoiding malaria; eating garlic and mozzing up after 5 pm with repellant etc. And of course watching out for typhus through clean drinking water.

There is one sentence that Margot said that hits me quite strongly: 'Africa is the graveyard of idealists". Wow, punch to the stomach. Hope that's not me. But I can see why! Africa has it’s own pace and interests.

We discussed AIDS. Margot sees it as a disease of victims, or those that see themselves as victims, Africa being a prime example. If they loose the disease they will loose the financial support, therefore at some level they are committed to it. I like to believe that it is these things that will change when the true remedies are given. I explain once again my thoughts on epidemics, approaching it the way Hahnemann dictated in classical homoeopathy. I believe that while many prescribe 'epidemic' remedies, they do not always use this philosophy, and though they achieve results, the remedies may not go to the core of the issue. Later on, together with Sigs we discuss AIDS, Africa and the school, and plan the initial stages of the project.

As I said before, Dar is a bit of a dump. Severe poverty and shanty buildings everywhere, holes in the street etc, but I am beginning to warm to it, because the people are so nice and friendly, and the pace is relaxed. What strikes me is that even the poorest people dress with a sense of pride, always in good taste and neatly.

I have already eaten in the three restaurants that are possible in town, and I guess I will be recycling them from now on. There are no other options. Mostly it is starchy food, which I try to avoid at home. Salads are difficult to come by, and you have to be careful with fruit.

I’m beginning to feel little itches everywhere and thinking that I have been bitten by the dreaded mosquito. It is emotional Malaria for sure. I am now officially mosquito paranoid. But I am also perceiving a change of perception; Africa is getting under my skin.