By Joseph Tumushabe

18^th June 2012: For the last two weeks, my colleague and friend has been out of office on field research.  The beauty of such fieldwork is that one does not only regain sanity from the maddening city crowds and the constant power cuts, but it is also the time to reconnect with rural folks.

Deep in every African village lies wisdom – wisdom which can solve the mysteries of life including the current power blues! So this colleague gets the chance of linking up with rural youths and a not so youthful 60 year old traditional healer. The main agenda for the field trip is identifying feasible strategies for delivering adolescent reproductive health services.

Clearly my friend is having fun with the adolescents, religious leaders, traditional birth attendants etc. But the most memorable lessons are the ones she gets from the traditional healer who, among others, administers fertility treatment via…yes you guessed it, his manhood!

I know you are about to say quack, crook, get him arrested etc.  But then you are not one of the women or men who have been searching for a baby for the last 10 years in vain.

According to the traditional healer, his medicine works – and those who know the healer agree that his medicine actually works. The guy even has a record of the cases treated who now have bouncing babies and who have come back for more doses with astounding success!

My colleague has found out an explanation that will require a lab and resources to finance this new research angle in the traditional herbal treatment for infertility. Her hypothesis is that the herbs work for couples where the man has the misfortune of having weak seeds that cannot swim fast enough, or easily to reach the island of life.

According to this hypothesis, the herbs give an extra leash of energy to the seeds and one of them is sure to land – give hope to the hopeless suffering a childless situation.  The only remaining challenge is the fact that it is only the “doctor” who administers the treatment – not the spouse of the client!

Unfortunately, we usually rush to condemn and find evidence to kill off the “quack healers”, sentencing them to the gallows without following up the possible positive elements, some of which may actually be scientific. And our modern science is usually well supported with religion, money and sophistication to butt.

We rarely gather the patience to ask which herb, what is its composition? What are the active ingredients?  We always solve the challenges of the childless couple with our copied science, modernity and knowledge which blocks out other forms of inquiry.

It seems to me, therefore, that we are often too eager to throw out the baby with the bath water.  END.  Login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories mid-week for our updates

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