Africa-Press – South-Africa. Nature is renewable provided we are able to curb our greed and use it consciously, with ubuntu, writes traditional healer
Amanda Gcabashe.
Being a healer for the past 22 years, one of my many sadnesses is the way in which we have had to adapt to a world disconnected from nature and the natural world. I have trained young people who have inherited the gift of sight and healing, who have lived their whole lives in treeless environments without any access to anything living.
Unfortunately, they haven’t had any sight in life of the beautiful symbols of our ancestors which every gifted person will see as the first signs of their budding gift – the sight of the big five and the sight of the sacred python. When young eyes see izingwenyama (to you lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards) in their dreams, we the elders know it means our ancestors are around.
Listen to our clan names – all of them in one way or another, recalling izingwenyama, our genesis from these great and mighty beasts of Africa. And yet, how many of us have ever seen izingwenyama alive, well and thriving beyond our dreams?
Importance of being nature
My life requires me to go to rivers, oceans, mountains and caves. Throughout the life of a healer, we renew and continue growing through touching and being in nature. Ensconced in the damp, cool warmth of a healing forest, with the sun on your back – nothing makes me feel as fully in my power as when I’m in nature.
Sadly, these spaces are becoming smaller and smaller. Izingwenyama are now farmed like common cattle. Confined to spaces that deny them their natural freedoms, and we, we have been raised to fear these most honourable beasts.
We are raised in a paradigm that says humans are above, superior and in fact, every other species would like to be us. But that’s not so, is it? We are nature as nature is us. We are IN nature as nature is IN us. Not separate, not other. But we are all parts of the same whole. Isn’t it time we recalled our origins and our umbilical connections to life?
Muthi markets
The “modern” healer doesn’t harvest but “purchases” its medicinal plants from the muthi markets in all the major cities of South Africa. If you’ve never been to one, you just can’t fathom the volume of wild-harvested plants on display in these markets.
Because of the disconnect with nature, the current practice resembles mining where every conceivable plant – irrespective of their maturity or readiness for use plant – gets used. Furthermore, because of the economic situation and lack of employment, more and more of these “traders” are just selling a commodity to make a living. There is no connection or understanding of the real value of these plants and the fact if this volume is being harvested at the rate that it is, soon we will be out of wild-crafted medicinal plants.
We need to reconnect. Nature is renewable provided we are able to curb our greed and use it consciously, with ubuntu. When you see you are using a part of yourself, our use will be so much more conscious, so much kinder – so much more reverential. Yes, reverential. As a healer, umelaphi, I bow humbly before izingwenyama and at the same time, in the same vein, I am able to use the power of izingwenyama in my healing and my rituals.
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