Martha Hanna-Smith is an educator who grew up on the 92 square-mile island of Acklins within the Bahamas.
As an artisan and educator, Hanna-Smith has been instructing native residents learn how to flip their crafts into entrepreneurship for over 40 years.
She works with the pure supplies of her homeland, together with straw, shells, and sand, to make culturally related artwork. Different specialties embrace her natural teas, jams, and jellies.
“I drank bush teas all my life, in order that’s all I do know. I knew nothing about cocoa or Ovaltine, so I needed to resort to what we had within the yard,” Hanna-Smith says. “All the crops, just like the soursop and the entire others, have been there.”
She discovered about herbs by observing her elders. If she noticed a plant she didn’t acknowledge, she requested to study extra.
“I discovered so much from aged individuals, simply by asking questions and in addition seeing what they used,” she says.
Finally, Hanna-Smith’s work with crops gained consideration, and she or he obtained a distinction for her research on bush medication. In 2006, she revealed a guide known as “Bush Medicine in Bahamian Folk Tradition.”
Hanna-Smith has been instrumental in instructing in regards to the well being advantages of bush medication, establishing native craft associations, and embodying and preserving Bahamian tradition.
“The apply of bush medication was one of many many contributions of the Africans to this a part of the world,” Hanna-Smith says. “It’s regarded within the Bahamas as an African survival [necessity].”
She notes that bush medication is linked to the transatlantic slave trade, and the crops used when slavery was in impact are amongst these nonetheless used at the moment.
“We imagine that Africans, after they have been transported right here, introduced seeds and crops with them, they usually handed on their data of those crops,” Hanna-Smith says.
Bush medication is most frequently used to make tea, but it surely may also be used for salves, poultices, and rubs. Some generally used crops embrace:
Fever grass is among the most well-known bush medicines and simply recognized by its perfume.
Often called lemongrass in different components of the world, it’s used to alleviate fevers and promote leisure. The flavour is just like lemon peel, and the plant helps help the immune system.
“Fever grass is one which it’s essential to wash fastidiously as a result of canines like to pee on it and that may make you very sick,” Hanna-Smith warns. “As soon as washed, you possibly can boil it, however some individuals additionally crush it. And I discover that technique offers it extra energy.”
Cerasee has a popularity as a flexible herb within the Bahamas. It’s used for frequent illnesses, from abdomen pains to colds, and it’s additionally useful for diabetes.
Many Bahamian adults have reminiscences of being compelled to drink the bitter tea as sick youngsters.
Kamalame, additionally known as gumbo limbo, is called the “therapeutic tree.” Its sap can be utilized to deal with pores and skin reactions to different crops.
In her research of bush medication throughout islands, Hanna-Smith typically found totally different names for a similar crops.
As an illustration, sapodilla, or dilly within the Bahamas, is called neeseberry in Jamaica. A plant often called blue vervain in Jamaica known as blue flowers within the Bahamas.
“Our dad and mom used to make use of blue flowers each Sunday morning to scrub out their programs.” Hanna-Smith says.
Most often, the makes use of of the crops are the identical throughout islands, however there have been some cases by which crops have been used for functions totally different from these recognized to Hanna-Smith.
Hanna-Smith notes that a lot of this data was saved by Obeah practitioners and witch medical doctors, who have been among the many enslaved individuals dwelling within the Bahamas.
These have been, and nonetheless are in lots of circumstances, individuals accustomed to the medicinal properties of crops believed to have connections with the non secular world.
Whereas these medication individuals have been normally necessary to their communities, the time period “witch physician” has pretty unfavorable connotations in fashionable parlance.
“We have now a extremely wealthy historical past. In that interval, 1600 to 1800, the Europeans and the Africans have been right here, and the Europeans didn’t agree with using this bush medication,” Hanna-Smith says.
The oral traditions of Obeah, Vodou, Santeria, and Shango are nonetheless commonly practiced within the Caribbean, regardless of the colonial legacy that labels them as nefarious and even demonic.
These stereotypes can nonetheless be seen in standard tradition.
As an illustration, the 2009 Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog” contains a character named Dr. Facilier, an instance of the distortion and villanization of Haitian Vodou frequent in white tradition.
Why such unfavorable remedy?
Apart from the non secular conflict of the colonizer’s faith, these traditions, and the plant medication that went with them, was an influence that African individuals had and retained whereas they have been enslaved.
Their data and, in lots of circumstances, mastery of herbalism gave them the flexibility, to a sure extent, to regulate and heal their very own our bodies.
It is a proper Black individuals have often been denied.
Practitioners knew which crops would heal wounds, ease abdomen aches, induce vomiting, and even have an effect on the reproductive system.
This allowed Bahamians to maintain themselves and one another, even when they didn’t have access to the same medical care and remedy as white colonizers.
Whereas some indigenous data of bush medication has been misplaced, Hanna-Smith believes it’s necessary for the custom to be handed on and continued by generations.
“We have now some crops which are toxic, and everybody must know to keep away from them,” she says. “We have to know learn how to use the crops which are good. Individuals shouldn’t die with this info.”
This conviction is a part of what fuels Hanna-Smith’s work.
Bush medication isn’t a relic of the previous.
It’s a doable avenue to a brighter, extra empowered future for the Bahamian individuals — and a possible gateway to a specialised trade that Bahamians can develop utilizing ancestral data.
This is able to not solely result in improved bodily well being, but additionally to financial well-being.
Each are undeniably interlinked.
Beforehand, others capitalized on the experience of elders within the African diaspora. It’s important for this info to be protected and used for the great of African individuals.
For Hanna-Smith, the way forward for bush medication appears optimistic.
Bahamian college students are participating in analysis initiatives on bush medication. And a few academics are giving assignments that require college students to establish crops and their medicinal makes use of.
Together with bush medication in formal training helps make sure the custom will likely be understood and practiced for years to return.
“I need to see my guide in all Bahamian faculties and bought in grocery shops,” Hanna-Smith says. “I need to see wellness facilities the place individuals can get the teas they want.”
She provides that she’s engaged on a second guide with extra crops and kitchen treatments.
Hanna-Smith notes that individuals typically go to the Bahamas and acquire info on bush medication. In lots of circumstances, info is given too freely.
Then, they return to their nations and capitalize on the data of African descendants.
As an illustration, soursop has grown in reputation due to claims that it helps
This sort of reactionary consumption distorts the true makes use of of the plant, turning it right into a commodity that’s faraway from its organic and cultural context.
This makes it simpler to control public notion.
Soursop merchandise are more and more marketed as “
Soursop is a food and medicine staple within the Caribbean, and its rising reputation places it susceptible to being overharvested and changing into endangered.
Hanna-Smith emphasizes the significance of attending to know crops and herbs in your native ecosystem. She shares some concepts, like:
- studying to establish crops
- studying the historical past of bush or natural medication in your area
- listening to what native animals eat for clues
These practices may also help you change into extra conscious of the medicinal plants round you.
You may start to discover native crops by:
On the identical time, train excessive warning.
In studying about plant medication, it’s necessary to concentrate to the main points. Correct identification will be the distinction between life and dying.
As an illustration, Hanna-Smith shares that kamalame typically grows close to poisonwood, a plant that lives as much as its identify.
She remembers a time that somebody died after utilizing poisonwood, pondering it was kamalame.
“When you use the mistaken plant, I’ll sing for you,” she says, implying {that a} funeral will quickly observe.
Warning
By no means eat crops you’ve recognized based mostly on an app, on-line dialogue, or guide. These strategies are for training and exploration solely. Really studying to establish crops takes time, in-depth research, coaching, and many apply.
At all times confirm a plant’s id with an herbalist, botanist, or different certified skilled earlier than utilizing it for any purpose.
Bahamians love bush medication, as a result of it connects them to their land, their heritage, and their ancestry. It’s a convention they belief.
The custom of bush medication helped many Bahamians preserve autonomy over their our bodies and their well being in the course of the period of the transatlantic slave commerce.
It continues to be a solution to honor the previous whereas empowering the longer term for the Bahamian individuals.
Alicia A. Wallace is a queer Black feminist, ladies’s human rights defender, and author. She’s enthusiastic about social justice and group constructing. She enjoys cooking, baking, gardening, touring, and speaking to everybody and nobody on the identical time on Twitter.
