PSYCHOLOGISTS AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS TO COMBAT GLOBAL AND CHRONIC ILLNESSES

DO WE NEED OR SHALL I SAY WHY DO WE NEED, PSYCHOLOGISTS AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS CONFRONTING GLOBAL AND CHRONIC ILLNESSES.

Alexander Kollie's story:  From BBC 

Saturday 21 September is a day I will never forget: I was out working with MSF as a health promotion officer, visiting villages and telling people about Ebola.

Then I got a call from my wife's number. I answered the phone but nobody spoke.

She was staying in the capital, Monrovia, with three of our children while I was working in Foya, in the north of Liberia.

At that time, Ebola had come to Liberia so I tried to talk to my family about the virus and to educate them, but my wife did not believe in it.

I [had] called my wife begging her to leave Monrovia and bring the children north; she did not listen; she denied Ebola.

 Alexander Kollie phoned the Ebola hotline when his son, who is known as Kollie, seemed lethargic

Later that night, my brother called me: "Your wife has died."

I said: "What?" He said: "Bendu is dead."

I dropped the phone; I threw it away and it broke apart.

We were together for 23 years. She was the only one who understood me well.

I felt like I'd lost my whole memory. My eyes were open, but I didn't know what I was looking at; I had no vision.

Later that same week, I received another call from Monrovia.

My brother, who was working as a nurse, had been taking care of my wife.

But he became infected, and died, too.

Then my two youngest children were taken to the medical centre in Monrovia, but my girls were very sick and they died.

I felt even more helpless; I was breaking in my mind; I couldn't make sense of anything.

Anger

My eldest son, James Kollie - also known as Kollie - was still in Monrovia in the house where our family had been sick, though he was showing no signs of illness.

He called me and said: "Everyone got sick, I don't know what to do."

I told him to come here to Foya to be with me.

When my son arrived, people in the village would not accept us.

They told us that our family had all died and to take Kollie away.

I was angered by their reaction. I knew he wasn't showing any symptoms and was not a threat to them but because of the stigma, they wouldn't let us stay. We had to move on.

The next morning, though I noticed my son looking more tired than usual; I was worried about him.

Alexander Kollie was able to visit his son at the Ebola treatment centre

He didn't have any symptoms like vomiting or diarrhoea, but he just looked tired.

I called the Ebola hotline and MSF brought him to their Ebola care centre here in Foya to be tested.

When the test came back positive, it was a night of agony for me. I spent the whole night just crying and thinking about what would happen now to my son.

The next day the psychosocial counsellors at MSF calmed me down. They told me to wait. To hold my peace. I sat with them, and we talked and talked.

I was able to see my son in the care centre from across the fence, so I called out to him: "Son, you're the only hope I got. You have to take courage. Any medicine they give to you, you have to take it."

He told me: "Papa, I understand. I will do it. Stop crying Papa… My sisters are gone, but I am going to survive and I will make you proud."

Every day, the counsellors made sure they saw me, and they sat with me so I could talk.

After some time, my son started doing much better. He was moving around… but I was worried that his eyes were still red.

Then something amazing happened, something I could not actually believe until I saw it.

I've seen people with Ebola start to look strong and then the next day, they're just gone.

So I was also thinking, maybe my son will be one of those who will be gone the next day.

'Smiling face'

When finally I saw him come out, I felt so very, very happy. I looked at him and he said to me: "Pa, I am well."

I hugged him. Lots of people came to see him when he came outside. Everybody was so happy to see him outside.

Then MSF told me, that he is the charity's 1,000th survivor of Ebola.

This is a great thing, but I was wondering, how many more people have we lost?

Of course I am so happy to have Kollie still, but it's hard not to think of all those who are no longer with us.

When I took him home with me, he actually had a smiling face. And me too, I had a big smile on my face.

I decided to have a little party for him.

Since then, we do everything together. We sleep together, we eat together and we have been conversing a lot.

I asked him: "What's your ambition after you graduate from high school?"

He's a 10th grade student. He told me that he wants to study biology and become a medical doctor.

So now I'm going to try every way I can to meet his needs and succeed in life, so that he should not feel so bad about the pain he has suffered losing his mother.

I told him: "Now I am your mother and your father. I am serving as both for you now."

He is 18 now, so I will make him my friend… because he's the only one I have to talk to.

I cannot replace my wife, but I can make a new life with our son.

 James Kollie, 18, wants to study biology and become a doctor

FROM

Ebola in Sierra Leone: battling sadness, fear and disgust on the frontline

An MSF psychologist reveals the trauma of dealing with the Ebola outbreak for medics, cleaners and the families of the dead

Last week, a girl came out of the isolation ward. Her name was Bintu and she was almost two. Both her parents had tested positive for Ebola, but she tested negative, so we had to take her out of the ward because the risk of contamination was too high. That was a horrible day.

Psychologist Ane Bjøru Fjeldsæter welcomes Tamba James, who has been tested negative for Ebola. Photograph: Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos for MSF

The nurses told me she didn't know how to speak. For the two days she'd been in the ward, she'd been so shocked that she hadn't uttered a word. This can happen to children – it's called elective mutism. When she came out, she was in shock: she didn't make eye contact; she didn't speak to anyone. We put her in a chair and she turned around, with her back to the world.

It must have been a terribly disturbing experience for a child: to see someone come into the ward in a spacesuit; to hear them speaking to her mother in words she didn't understand; to see her mother start crying; and then to be handed over to the stranger in the spacesuit and carried off.

I sat with her for four hours, trying to talk to her in a calm and normal voice and singing her songs, to see if the shock would pass. By the end of the four hours she had turned around and was facing me. She made eye contact, she put her hand out for me to touch her, she tried to start a conversation with me. You could see that she was starting to warm up to me, and that she wasn't in the same condition.

Bintu became an orphan that day. She is in the care of our child protection partner and they will locate other family members who can take care of her. She will need to be monitored for 21 days to see that she does not develop the disease herself.

I AM FULL OF ADMIRATION FOR THE VOLUNTEER DOCTORS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FROM NORWAY AND CUBA AND MANY OTHER COUNTRIES INCLUDING THE 60 AFRICAN DOCTORS WHO HAVE GONE THERE SO FAR. CUBA HAS SENT SO FAR 300 VOLUNTEER HEALTH WORKERS TO FIGHT EBOLA IN WEST AFRICA. INCLUDING PSYCHOLOGISTS.

CUBA , EBOLA, PSYCHOLOGISTS, MEDICINS SANS FRONTIERES

Ebola in Sierra Leone: battling sadness, fear and disgust on the frontline

An MSF psychologist reveals the trauma of dealing with the Ebola outbreak for medics, cleaners and the families of the dead

MSF Medecins Sans Frontiers

In the USA  Doctors without Borders

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was founded in 1971 in France by a group of doctors and journalists in the wake of war and famine in Biafra. Their aim was to establish an independent organization that focuses on delivering emergency medicine aid quickly, effectively and impartially.

Dr Bernard Kouchner who was to become Foreign Minister of France was one of the founding members, so was a French Ambassador to Senegal.

They have about 30 000 workers in about 20 countries around the world. They are at places where emergency care is needed and where medical care does not exist and also take on socially responsible projects such as Rape Victims in Honduras, Refugees in the Sea, setting up field hospitals in war zones and saving lives.

It was recently announced that 1000^th survivor of Ebola epidemic was released by MSF from their centre in Liberia.

I wanted to follow up on the story and what I found was even more heartbreaking. This increased my esteem for these volunteers, very well qualified in their fields, who leave their comfortable lives and put their lives on line.

No other single country, let alone a poor and small one like CUBA, can hold a candle to the fire of enthusiasm for International Humanitarian Medicine of CUBA. Currently about 79 000 doctors are serving around 69 countries in the developing world, in places so remote that many people have not heard of them: Tuvalu, Timor Leste, Kiribati, CAR. The list is long. Cuba also educates about 18000 students at their different medical schools so that they can go back to the poorer countries they came from, in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania.

CUBA has sent 165 health professionals, all of them volunteers and plan to send another 300 to the front line to combat Ebola epidemic. The notice for volunteers went out and this is a response from a friend of mine, who is a Psychologist in Baracoa, Cuba

aquí es el mensaje: 

Creo Que la Ayuda y Voluntad de los cubanos en Sierra Leona es de Una Verdadera Misión, y Siento Mucho, Mucho, Mucho, sin Tener La Oportunidad de Poder ir, y HACER Lo Que REALMENTE nos humaniza: el Contacto Con Otros Seres necesitados. Yo estaria muy orgullosa, ogullosa REALMENTE, Si Fuera Médico y Pudiera ir, desde el Fondo d emi Corazón. 

La escritora es una mujer, de 29 años, una madre y embarazada, y un psicóloga líder en Baracoa, Cuba.

When her friend, who is also a Psychologist was asked to volunteer, my dear friend counseled her and said: It would be a great honour for any of us Cubans to serve these people who need our help.

I have always worked with Psychologists in my work and research.  After realizing that a degree in medicine alone was not sufficient to look after the Indians, I went back to London to study Anthropology, so that my own humanitarian vision for the Indians could turn away from the biomedical, machine model to a much more culturally sensitive, human model. I am very lucky to have as good friends the staff at the Psychology Unit of the National Institute of Endocrinology in La Habana, Cuba and I have learned so much from them, especially about the Psychological aspects of Suffering from Chronic Illnesses, especially Diabetes and Hypertension and their complications.

Do we need Psychologists and Anthropologists to combat humanitarian crises whether in Africa such as Ebola Epidemic or at home, to deal with the suffering of patients with Cancer and Diabetes and other illnesses?

EMPHATICALLY YES!

I will write a longer blog about MSF Psychologist from Trondheim, Norway, Ane Bjøru Fjeldsæter whose blogs can read at The Guardian UK and also about the 1000^th Ebola survivor at the MSF treatment Centre in Liberia!

After reading Ane, you would realize how much a human approach rather than a mechanical approach can help the suffering of patients with any sort of illness or disease.

I dedicate this to my friends and colleagues in CUBA

Rosa Maria LG, Loraine L, Adriana A, Madeline M, Baby F, Yanetsy C and Cari G.

NUTRITION AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS: LAKOTA DIABETES PREVENTION PROGRAMME 2014

NUTRITION AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

This blog is to break your stereotypic view of what the North American Indians consume.

When I was preparing to write this blog, I thought about the common nature of the philosophies of American Indians and Yogic and Buddhist philosophies. When I saw this quote from Swami Sivananda, I thought what the Black Elk had said on a similar theme.

Prepare the soil of your heart. The Guru will appear before you and sow the spiritual seed.

Sri Swami Sivananda

No other people in recent memory had to adjust to an uninvited group of people into their country as much as the American Indians had to. The food changed, the residence changed, the way of procuring a living changed and other belief systems were imposed.

One hundred years after the loss of freedom of the American Indians, I as a foreigner to their land in every sense of the world am confronted with the problems of their history and collaborate with them to find an answer.

I was recently visiting a Youth Diabetes Prevention Programme among the Lakota Indians. I am always glad to visit them because they are one of the successful programmes and the workers are very enthusiastic about their mission.

Taking a page from the Indian Philosophy about Sharing, Food as Medicine and Relationship, we made the best use of our lunchtimes to take turns to prepare fresh food for us all that we then shared over conversations and other pleasantries. There was a cementing of the relationships between all of us, and food was the symbol.

We are humbled about our work, the social nature of it and the success we have and most of all the relationships we have built with young and old members of the various communities in this vast reservation of Indians.

So Bon Apetite!

BLONDE HAIRED GYPSY AND OTHER AMERICAN INDIAN TALES

BLONDE HAIRED GYPSY AND OTHER AMERICAN INDIAN TALES

When I showed a photo of a Breton family get together, taken in a village in Brittany in France, to an American Friend of mine at the UmonHon Indian Reservation, her comment was revealing,

Not a single blonde hair, all of them black hair!

For her, black hair has a great significance since all American Indians have black hair and all the native peoples she had encountered had black hair. Of course when I told her that Breton people are the Native People of what is now France, she was indeed elated.

{DOLMEN at Carnac Prehistoric Site, Brittany. In Breton, Dol means table, Men means stone, so stone table)

If you do not have admixture with European blood, the hair of a native person tend to be black, it is a kind of universal rule.

I was in seat 2 G, busily putting down on paper my wonderful experience with the Cheyenne River Lakota this past week, when I was interrupted by the older man on the other side of the aisle.

(My CRST YDPP Visiting Card in an Unusual Location)

In what language are you writing? Even though I knew the full significance of his question, I answered, in English. I thought so, he said, and his wife, an older blonde lady with very white skin, with a definite Texan accent, wanted to know whether I was writing a book and where she could buy it! I told her I am writing about American Indians and that my writings are of interest to very few people. She replied, and my heart sank: I am an Apache!  I was speechless for various reasons, and her husband reiterated, my wife is an Apache.

I extricated myself from the situation, as gently as possible, by saying, there are about 8 million North Americans with some Indian blood or other but only about 1 million American Indians live in the Reservations.

Even though my Indian teachers ask me to view these people who so desperately want to claim an Indian ancestry, favourably, as they cant claim to be Indian and at the same time harbour anti Indian racist sentiments!

I thought of my Meskwakia teacher who once said: When the white man has one drop of Indian blood, they claim to be Indian; I don't see them rushing to proudly proclaim that they are Black if they have one drop of African Blood!

I was watching the concert by Diego El Cigala on my ipad during the flight and I realized that all gypsies also have dark hair and I don't hear people rushing forward to claim themselves as gypsies!

(A Meskwakia Indian friend of mine in his tribal regalia)

And Mexicans and Mexican Americans, the largest group of people with a significant native blood are happy to denounce their “Indian-ness”, something they perceive as Inferior, like the Ladinos of Guatemala.

In the West, USA or Australia, where the white people are so tout their “native” credentials, it is because of the society’s perception of native people being spiritual and leading harmonious lives with nature. This romantic notion, which is far from reality, makes people who live in Texas or places where there are no Indians to claim to be Apache or Mission Indians. (A Mexican nurse claimed to be a Mission Indian!)

My plea to these people is this. You claiming to be Indian, really distort the picture of what it means to be an Indian in America. Having just come back from the poorest county in the USA, with a mean per capita income of only 6000 dollars, beset with thousands of social and economic problems, most of those Indians do not have the luxury of touting their Indian-ness, aboriginalidad, they are busy being humans, being Indian is not that important to them, when there is no food, no police protection, no heating in the house…

In counties where there are large number of Indians, such as Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia and Peru, the mixed blood population is only too eager to shed their Indian Identity, as they don't want to be associated with the reality of that identity. In countries where there are hardly any Indians or natives, such as Canada, USA, Australia, Argentina, there is a fashion among people to claim a distant Indian or native ancestor. In India and Malaysia, the original inhabitants, called Adivasi in India and Orang Asli in Malaysia are looked down upon.

If you want to know more about Indians, please respect them. If you are truly interested, come and live in a reservation for a few months.

That blonde lady, will no longer claim to be an Apache, if she had lived with the Indians! This concept of wannabee is different from the Going Native concept popular among the Colonial days but that arose out of respect for the native populations.

Just a few minutes before boarding the flight to Miami where I had the encounter with the White Apache (not White Mountain Apache!), an Indian said hello to me, I see you are wearing a Cheyenne River Sioux tribe Jacket. We chatted and within a minute we had established a common world that we both know. He is from Crow Creek Sioux Reservation where his wife is an administrator; they were on their way to a conference in Nashville.

In symbolic healing, one talks about a Mythical World, mundo mitico, which is common for all. I realize that while not being an Indian, I have been given the privilege of entering the mythical world of Indians and able to communicate with them. Interactions with Indians are usually open with no hidden agenda and there is usually some form of exchange, you establish a common world and then you communicate. Within five minutes, we had already mentioned names of individuals or families we both were familiar with!

He knows that I am non-Indian familiar with Indians and that he does not have to proclaim he is Indian, because he is.

Both he and his wife had Black Hair!

El Cigala in Asia with me! He has long dark thick BLACK hair! Listen to him singing, in his inimitable Gypsy style, Dos Gardenias para ti, a Cuban Classic!

This morning, I went to have my Cortadito at my favorite hole in the wall cafe in Miami. How do you like your coffee, with or without sugar, asked a lady, obviously not Cuban by her speech.. I said to her, I beg you, please make me a cortadito like is made in La Habana.. estilo de la Habana!

she smiled and asked me, where are you from?

I had been thinking about it as I walked to the cafe:

My Body is Australian but my heart is Cuban, I smiled and all of us laughed

Cuerpo Australiano, Corazon Cubano!

Celebrating the arrival of Shabbat at the Lounge at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Shirt courtesy of my brother Eliyahu who shleps them, Bag with Che's face, gift of a friend in La Habana. It was an evening to remember, Kippah made by Sarah Cohen of Cochin, India