22- WITCH DOCTORS AND WHICH MEDICINES

  In 2009, my son Trevor and I were working in a destitute refugee squatter’s village in Zambia near the border to the embattled Congo. Our goal was to figure out how to improve the health education of children in a mission school in hopes of both affecting their generation, but also of creating an inroad through the kids’ literacy to their illiterate parents. We had a chance to talk with a pastor and a healthcare worker about the response of these people to the threat of death often from AIDS, TB or malaria. We wondered how they coped with approaching death without the hopes - or the false hopes of modern medical technology.

 Would we discover an aboriginal tradition of wisdom, grace and destiny as Murray Trelease  had found with the coastal Natives of British Columbia? (as discussed in earlier blogs) We didn't. Instead, we heard stories of the same disabling fear of death that we see in the West, only in Zambia it drove them to witch doctors, who skillfully manipulated their fears to separate them from their money and meager possessions. A pattern of expensive mumbo jumbo witchcraft, hope, anxiety, failure to improve and despair was repeated until their resources were exhausted or their lives lost. The Dragon is clearly active there – different culture, same tactics

We in the West share with them the same humanity and are haunted by the same Dragon. Here only a few cast their lives at the feet of witch doctors, just an occasional quack. Instead, more often we cast our hopes at the altar of “which medicine” until ensnared in the same exhausted bodies, finances and hopes we give up and die.

 Length and quality of survival does depend on which doctor you choose but it also depends on which hopes you choose to stake your life on. Our society's health care system will not help you to navigate your way through the really tough health/soul care decisions. It has no weapons to fight the Dragon. So you had best do your homework while you are able so you will be ready to make decisions in your own best interest if that time comes, as it will for many, but not all. There is a point at which less is more and you need to be prepared to find it. Start imagining yourself in that situation now and how you will make such a decision. Remember one face of cowardice is postponing a decision until it is no longer relevant.

Don’t put this blog down if you think there is too much emphasis on the fourth quarter, endgame, home stretch, finish line stuff. I’m convinced that your whole game, your whole bell lap, your whole fight with cancer will go better and be more successful if you start thinking about and even preparing for the home stretch right now – which seldom means you plan to get there very soon.  Believe me. I’ve watched a lot of people do it both ways.

You never need lose to cancer, even if it takes your life. You can beat cancer every time by how you live, why you live and in the manner in which you live.*4  It is not how you start that counts, but how you finish.