I t is one of the Nation’s most unnoticed places. One could not know much about it unless some unforeseen hap takes him/ her to the spot on the right time. Every October a very special occasion is held inside the tick woods of this special place that the world does not know much about. It is located 227 kilo meters away from Addis Ababa. The place is called ‘Bore Mountain’ of Yeme Special Woreda, in Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples State.
And the occasion is the Traditional annual medicine gathering ceremony, in which almost all members of the Yeme people from all surrounding Kebeles take part and they call it ‘’Samo-Etta”. The people believe that the first ray of the sun caresses Bore Mountain than other places and the plants around this mountain have a great potential of curing or healing both human and animal diseases. The medicines collected from this mountain are efficacious enough for a year that means until the next gathering season.
Leafs, roots and bark of trees are carefully collected in the woods based on their curing purpose of humans or animals. They are also preserved separately with clean packages for they have to last for a whole year. Based on the number of diseases attacking human beings or animals and which are cured by the herbal medicines of Bore Mountain, one can say everything has a cure. Bore Traditional medicines offers cure for more than 170 diseases. Several people have witnessed how these medicines have cured different diseases in three days, while the modern medical treatments take more days.
Even those that does not seem to have cure buckle under the Bore mountain medicines. Witnesses verify that a person with a gangrenous finger destined to be chopped off, came to this place and was cured with in three days. A Woreda administrator who was suffering from epilepsy was cured within a three-day treatment with traditional medicines from Bore Mountain. Both patients are currently giving their testimony and promoting the wisdom of the society. Wolde Meskel Jorga is an elderly traditional medicine practitioner.
He is on the right side of seventy. Wolde Meskel says he learnt and started practicing traditional medicine following in the footsteps of his father, Jorga Waji. My father told me that the only treasure he could pass down to was the wisdom of herbal medicine,” says Jorga. All the plants on Bore Mountain, except the ones locally known as or called Ttuto and Suluto, are decisive ingredients for different medicines. One type of herb plant could be concocted with others to make medicines for diseases ranging from five to fourteen. The communities of Yem Woreda believe that there is no disease that has no cure and nobody dies because of disease but only bad accidents.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Traditional Medicine is the total sum of knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures that are used to maintain health, as well as to prevent, diagnose, improve or treat physical and mental illnesses. However, most of the times modern knowledge has been putting too much influence in the modern society and people seem to be forgetting the compassion in traditional ways and indigenous wisdom. People are becoming fond of pills. For a little headache they run to modern drug store. Sometimes headaches continue to turn so painful.
So people just keep taking too many of them but they never kill the pain. On the other hand, there are plenty of effective traditional medicines for plenty of diseases and people are giving less value because of some understandable reasons. Some say most traditional practices do not go with the scientific standard and the dosages might be dangerous to the patients. Since the modern scientific practice of medicine for so long has been mostly dependent on plants and the traditional ones are still reliable, it seem that researchers also need to focus on how to integrate traditional medicines with modern or scientific standards. Practicing indigenous wisdom for medicine with a public ceremonial occasion is rarely witnessed in most parts of the country.
There are Kentimos, women who specialize on children health care with the tradition Medical practice from Bore mountain plants of Yem Woreda. These women do not only give midwifery services but also follow up children’s health. We were talking about compassion earlier. Traditional Medicine practitioners like Wolde Meskel has many patients coming to their residents every day. Meanwhile, if a patient does not afford to pay for the medicine, s/he will go home having the treatment for free.
A person would be asked a decent price for the medical treatment, if s/he can afford it, he said. The tradition medicine practice that is held by several people of Yem woreda on December every year could be the best opportunity for medicine hunters and travelers to check out. In this case, the government is also expected to alertly turn its concern towards the preservation or protection tasks of natural forests like the ones on Bore Mountain.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition May 26/2019
BY HENOK TIBEBU
