Much of today day was spent going to the market with one of the teenage girls in the compound where I live, to buy food for dinner, which was a traditional fish and okra soup with Banku, a gruel style mix of cassava and maise, which is allowed to ferment. We took about 2 hours to cook it and then we sat outside, with one big bowl of soup, another bowl with the banku in and we ate with all the young kids, about 7 of them, all of us plowing into the banku plate, then dipping it into the soup and chowing down. It was mayhem, but fun, all of us huddling over the food and diving in. It tasted wonderful.

I just came back from the volta region, about 100 miles from the capital Accra where there is a homeopathic clinic as part of a medical clinic and water project. The villages in the area still don’t have electricity and we went to one village and held an impromptu clinic under a tree, with about 20 people coming to see us. One mother brought her child who has malaria and has a hemoglobin of only 3.8. He has already had a blood transfusion and yet his blood level is again very low. He was given conventional malaria treatment but we took the case. He had signs of jaundice, with great weakness (but which can also be due to the drug used), has thirst for sips, taken frequently, has a slightly low temperature, but a fast pulse. His spleen seemed OK and the liver area wasn’t tender. I wanted to give China arsenicosum, but we didn’t have it, so I mixed China with Arsenicum album, in a 30c potency, in liquid. We also gave the mother a referral to go to the hospital again for another transfusion. That low hemoglobin is dangerous and can lead to heart failiure. I felt the remedy had to cover the liver signs, the obvious malaria symptoms and also the thirst. Both China and Ars alb are major malaria remedies and so it makes sense that China ars will be an important malaria remedy. One other interesting case that the Indian doctors took was a young man with bloody stools, with looked like ulcerative colitis, as apposed to dysentery as it had become quite chronic, and the main symptom was bloody stools after drinking and eating. Trombidium apparently helped this client very quickly as the symptoms cleared up right away and have not returned.

I had a call last night from the clinic as one of the people there had excruciating pain in the rectum, forcing him to bend double. It came on when he strained for stool and since then has been unable to go. The pain is stitching and is felt in the rectum. At its worst he was rolling in pain on the ground. I gave Colocynth 1m. After taking the remedy he had a slightly bloody stool and some relief. We suspected he had piles but there was no sign of that. He had a feeling as if his anus was becoming prolapsed with the pain. In the morning, I spoke to him again. He slept OK in the night but now is still in pain, which is worse when he feels the need to defecate. He still can’t go again. The pain is still there, but not so bad. I felt that the remedy may have taken the edge of the case, but not gone all the way. All I know of the person is that he is a soft spoken, quite gentle young man. He had apparently been beaten a lot as a youngster by his teachers and hence is quite nervous at times if challenged. So I gave him Staphysagria in 200c. Soon after he began to feel much better and he had a normal stool later that day.

I saw some more patients the next day at the clinic area. One man in his 60’s came to see us. He complained of an intention tremor in his hand, which means that when he does things or holds objects he gets trembling in his hand (extrem, trembling, holding objects on) and he gets jerking in his legs and arms when walking. This all started after he had a stroke which caused him to have paralysis of his legs (extrem, paralysis legs, apoplexy after). I gave him Nux vomica LM 1, based on the paralysis and the jerking. This was all there was to the case. At times it’s possible to get more constitutional symptoms and at other times, there is little more to be gleaned. Also, if there are many people to see, one has to be able to prescribe quite quickly. Every now and then, a case demands much more attention and a more nuanced case taking has to happen but at other times, it is not possible.

The water project is amazing. They damned a small river, built a water treatment plant and then a pump house to pump the water to a tower built on top of a hill which then gravitationally feeds around 30 villages. There are plans at the site to build more accommodation and a specialized homeopathic clinic building. There is another area, about one hour away where a pastor who is interested in homeopathy has many, many patients that can be treated homeopathically. When the Indian doctors went there, they were swamped by people for 2 days. I will be going there soon to follow up on the patients seen.

The clinic also has foreign nurse midwife volunteers from various countries and there are plans for a family planning clinic. Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant here, although HIV is fortunately not that common, yet. People still tend to have many children here and of course infant mortality is quite high. Sometimes there is serious nutritional issues in babies but the majority of adults seem quite strong. But their lives are hard, mostly farming, and many have arthritis issues. High blood pressure also seems very high in Ghana but the diet is not that high in animal protein and fats, so it might be partly a genetic thing.

I have just been reading a book called the China Study by T. Colin Campbell, which makes the very strong case that high doses of animal protein (including dairy) in ones diet, greatly increasing the tendency to heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc. in one study, rats were fed a carcinogen (aflatoxin – found in peanuts) and one group were given a diet with 20% protein, while the other were fed 5% diet. All rats fed 20% diet while only a few on the 5% diet died. He also did this huge study of diet in china and the corresponding incidence of diseases which verified these conclusions. So, all this low carb, high protein business seems even more dubious, not to mention some of the Weston Price philosophy – which I know is popular in the homeopathic community.

Tonight, as I try and work on writing a curriculum for the course we hope to get going here, I am interrupted by my neighbors, knocking on my door, calling me. “Uncle Rich” as they call me. My young neighbor’s mother is not well so I go and see her. She hasn’t been able to go to market for 2 out of 3 days. She is just sitting there, saying she is having a headache, some pains in the body and fever. It is hard to know if fever here is malaria or not. Often fevers are treated as malaria, even if not, which is not such a good thing to do. But one doesn’t want to leave the fever if it is malaria. All I can get out of her is that she has a pounding headache and she had a salty taste in the mouth. She had pain in the back, neck and chest. No cough, no apparent fever when I felt her head. The main thing is that she just seemed so sad, just sitting there. I had nothing else to go on so I gave her natrum mur 30c. Another neighbour is hobbling around, saying that her ankle is hurting her. She has been like that for 3 months and the only thing she can tell me is that she jumped off something and injured her ankle in 1983 and her injury has “come back to visit me,” as she said. I gave her Arnica 200c (couldn’t find the 1m) and we’ll see what happens. I will follow with Rhus tox if it doesn’t work. Another day in Ghana.