new internationalist
issue 207 - May 1990
The New Internationalist welcomes your
letters. But please keep them short.
They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity.
Include a home telephone number if possible and send your letters
to the nearest editorial office or e-mail to : ni@newint.org
Greenhouse warrior
Your
issue on Global warming (NI
206) was subtitled How to turn down the heat. But you offered only
vague generalities like 'Save the trees' or bland nostrums like 'Love your neighbour'.
I found your approach singularly unhelpful. Of course we would all like to change
the world. But I need practical advice about how my family and I can help fight
the greenhouse effect in our daily lives. Surely living a 'green' lifestyle
is the key. For goodness sake tell us as individuals how we can help, otherwise
what's the point?
Naomi Randolph
Calgary, Canada
Bible bashing
I was appalled by the views of two readers whose letters on the subject of homosexuality
appeared in the letters section
of NI 204. I had read your issue on the
subject (NI 201) and found it lively,
interesting and very informative. No doubt Bill Peters did too, but then he
shot himself in the foot by quoting the Bible. 'Effeminate by perversion!' Indeed!
St Paul sounds like a nice bloke, Bill. As for Genesis, does anybody really
believe that stuff anymore?
Peter Bird
London, UK
Promiscuous disease
In response to Jenny Mason's letter (Letters
NI 205) God does not inflict illness
on humankind, nor war, nor famine. Humankind spreads diseases, fights wars and
lets others of the species starve. AIDS first ran riot among the 'bath-house'
community in San Francisco not because of God's wrath at homosexual men, but
because of the frequent changing of partners. Like other sexually-transmitted
diseases, AIDS is not a homosexual or a heterosexual illness, but a disease
of promiscuity.
Andrew Wood
Kings Lynn, UK
Healing words
Jesus healed leprosy which was the scourge of his society and AIDS is probably
the modern-day equivalent. Christians need to be foremost in caring for the
needy - and that includes people with AIDS. Christianity is a call to give life
to other people; to heal the brokenness in ourselves, other people and society.
Sean Finnigan
Bath, UK
Funding excuses
I enjoyed your article Dateline 2000
(NI 203), but as a scientist myself,
I must protest at the comments under the heading 'AIDS unconquered'. You imply
that pharmaceutical companies have avoided finding a cure for AIDS for reasons
of financial gain. While it is true, and sad, that profit often prevents new
drugs from being freely available in the Third World, I am not aware of any
example of a cure being avoided in the treatment of any disease. Also, it is
scientists not economists who are doing drug research and they are constantly
screening for a drug that will have any effect at all against AIDS. While difficult
financial restrictions are imposed, it is not to prevent a cure being found.
And if AIDS control is the best that can be done, we should not be disparaging.
Jane Nally
University of Glasgow, UK
Gentle Goddess
I'm amazed at Marion Laring's letter (Letters
NI 203) claiming that Goddess-worship
is mainly suitable for extreme feminists, and associating Goddess-worship with
human sacrifice, prostitution, castration and sexual orgies. Most religions
of our remote ancestors used those things, whether they worshipped gods or goddesses.
But it's absurd to suggest that Goddess-worshippers practise them now. On the
other hand most God-worshipping religions sanction - and indeed encourage -
the mass human sacrifice of war. And some demand the castration of women - euphemistically
called 'female circumcision'. Moreover by continuing to preach that women are
subservient to men, they often encourage prostitution and rape. Goddess-worshippers
are gentle people and their religion has more care for the earth than God-dominated
religions, which tend to regard the world as a place to be conquered and subdued.
Sheila Miller
London, UK
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Weekly worry
As one who is using your interesting 1990 diary, I am constantly affronted by
the setting out of weeks commencing with Monday instead of Sunday, which has
long since been the first day of the week; in fact it was so called in an incident
nearly 2,000 years ago.
J Williams
Fitzroy, Australia
Soft soap
I appreciate that information about ethical products is difficult to obtain
(Green Consumer NI 203)
but the Lux flakes you recommend are based on animal tallow. A visit to any
Australian Woolworths store would have revealed Caring laundry liquid, which
claims to be organic, 100 per cent biodegradable, not tested on animals, free
from animal products and allergy-free. Australian readers might also find useful
The Green Consumer Guide, by John Elkington and Julia Hailes, Penguin
1989.
Brian Crowley
North Perth, Ausiralia
Planet dictates
It is not the planet that needs saving as your issue implies (Green consumer
NI 203), but merely our own species.
The planet is capable of looking after itself. It is highly unlikely that we
could ever make the biosphere unacceptable to all organisms. We would have extinguished
ourselves long before it got to that stage. And if the planet does want to protect
itself, the best thing it could do would be to get rid of the one organism -
humankind - that is working so hard to destroy the present balance. 'Save your
children' would seem a more appropriate title for the magazine, or even 'Save
yourself'. Let's drop the arrogant presumption that the planet is ours to save
or destroy. What we must do is to preserve it in its present state.
M Tostevin
Freetown, Sierra Leone
Mine's bigger
Jeremiah Creedon's article on The towers
of the new gods in NI 202 left
out one extremely important point. The tallest buildings of a given society
are erected by its dominant powers or institutions, and succeeding powers endeavour
to surpass the heights reached by their predecessors in a ratio roughly equivalent
to their relative strength. Thus in Paris, development can be seen to run rapidly
along the following lines: Christian dominance: Notre Dame (the church); Scientific
dominance: Eiffel tower (the industrial landmark) and Capitalist dominance:
La Défense (the high-rise suburb).
Kris Stenseth
Oslo, Norway
Opening doors
I was surprised and disappointed to see that your edition on Modern
architecture (NI 202) had almost
no mention of disability. The inaccessibility of buildings and transport systems
massively discriminates against the disabled and is one of the main causes
of their second-class status. Access - in the broadest sense, not just for
wheelchairs - is one of the major campaigning points of disability-rights
organizations.
Reawyn Stone
London,UK
Sexual demands
Your issue on Homosexuality (NI
201) will make history for sure. But I would have liked to see more that
was purely about sex. It is a shame that there could not be a little more explicit
material dealing with sex among gays and lesbians in poor countries. The subjugation
that gays and lesbians have to confront in the under-developed world is one
of the most miserable attitudes of the modern world.
Jimmy Herrera
Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic
Nazis everywhere
Your issue on the Palestine/Israel conflict (NI
199) omitted a few key facts. First, all Arab States except Egypt are in
a state of war against Israel and have been since they declared war in 1948.
Second, without the West Bank, Israel is extremely vulnerable being only nine
miles wide at its narrowest point. Third, Sarah Faith's article claims that
Arabs have no connections with the Nazis except in the Israeli imagination.
She conveniently ignores the employment of former Nazis by Arab governments,
the use of Nazi propaganda print materials by Arab governments and the Nazi
content of propaganda broadcasts from Arab radio stations. Fourth, compare Israel's
response to the Intifada with that of Saudi Arabia to demonstrations by Iranians
- 390 deaths in one day.
Cohn Alfred
London, UK
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The views
expressed in these letters are not necessarily those of the New Internationalist
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Calling the spirit
Balancing body and soul is a juggling act involving
cow-dung, a
slaughter house and occasionally a hat. Susanna Rance explains.
MY ten-month-old daughter lay soundly sleeping, tightly swaddIed on the bed. An orange and an apple were bound against her, inside the striped woven blanket. On her head, still damp from fever, was the woollen bonnet which minutes before had been used to summon back her spirit. Come Nina, come,' Mami had called, waving the baby's knitted hat from the back door until the child's ajavu or spirit had returned, restoring wholeness and health to her body.
Although I was relieved to see Nina so tranquil after days of fretful illness, the hairs on my arms stood on end as I listened to her grandparents whispering and moving downstairs. A pungent smell of burning herbs and incense wafted up from the yard. No-one was allowed outside now, until the offering to the Pachamama - the Andean Earth Mother - had been consumed.
Had I been an anthropologist I might have been eager to witness the ceremony and record the muttered Aymara prayers. As it was, I felt panicked, completely foreign to this world of magic where sickness is believed to come from supernatural causes, and healing is an intimate affair, closer to religion than to medicine as I know it. I kept out of the way, partly out of fear and partly hoping that the rituals would have a better chance of taking effect without the interference of my modern-day scepticism.
Like most 'educated' city-dwellers in Bolivia I turn to herbal or ritual healing only when 'modern' tests and remedies have failed. For Aymaras of Mami's generation, traditional cures are the first resource, and doctors, laboratories and pharmacies the last. Talk of analyses, bacteria and viruses make little sense to someone who is convinced that the air, wind, fright or the evil eye are really to blame for sickness.
When my children got ill, Mami would always give me a few days to try out my version of healing, nodding silently as I showed her the latest prescription. Then she would summon relatives and scan market stalls for herbs, waiting for the night that I would seek refuge in my room and allow 'Ia familia' to take over responsibility for my children's health.
Their father was caught between two worlds and so kept a foot in each, altemately chasing laboratory results and making a fire in the yard for the Pachamama's offering. According to Mami, he was living proof that traditional remedies succeed. At three years old he had been cured of a severe wasting illness by being buried up to the neck in fresh cow dung at the slaughterhouse. 'Larpha, we call the illness,' said Mami. Modern paediatricians call it malnutrition.
On my parents-in-law's farm in the Yungas valleys I experienced natural healing for myself after a troop of red ants marched into my gumboots and started biting my legs. I screamed with shock and pain. As I ripped off my trousers, el Papa grabbed my straw hat and started calling my frightened spirit back, a much more urgent matter than dealing with a few carnivorous ants. Later I was washed in a hot bath of quinine bark and made to drink the bitter liquid.
Every year after that, Mami came to treat my winter cough which reappeared with the first gusts of dry, cold, mountain air. Putting on a large kettle of water, she put me to bed and rubbed my chest and back with a sticky ointment. Then she ironed brown paper, stuck holes in it and pressed it warm against my skin. As I itched and crinkled under the blankets, she would wrap a woollen shawl around the hot kettle and refasten it tightly around me. Finally, having watched me sip her sharp herb tea, she firmly turned off the light and ordered me not so move until morning.
More than anything, I felt soothed by her confidence, her caring, the warmth and rest. To me, Mami's remedies embodied an equal dose of herbs and Tender Loving Care. But she confided one day that she had special healing powers because as a young girl, she was almost struck by lightning. Having been brushed so closely by death, she kept in her hands the power to call back the spirit and mend she imbalance between body and soul.
Susanna Rance has lived and worked in Bolivia for several years.
