Stuff We Like
Stuff We Like
Stuff We Like
Nurturing Knowledge {Book}
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Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands: The Women, the Plants, the Treatments.
But aside from being loaded with a wealth of health and botanical information about dozens of plants, the book features a brief history of and explains the social setting for the development of local medicines. These narratives offer information about early social organization in the Marshall Islands and the importance of medical practitioners, rules, taboos and chants associated with treatments, the status of traditional medicine today, and the impact of urbanization and out-migration on traditional knowledge. It gives the general reader a welcome overview of the islands.
There are also sections on women’s roles, and treatments used in the old days, which look at the spiritual worlds, physical and mental illness and sorcery, among others. The core of the book, or about 200 pages, is given over to detailed descriptions of the plants, their medicinal uses and excellently reproduced color photos of the plants.
When you understand that virtually all traditional knowledge is fiercely guarded, and shared only with those deemed worthy of the knowledge, the advent of this book is extremely impressive.
“Two Hawaiian traditional healers, Auntie Aalapa’i Aka’apo Ahuko’oohumukini and Roland Bula Ahi Logan, played a critical role by relating how the Hawaiians had lost much of their traditional medicinal knowledge,” writes Majuro USP Center Director Irene Taafaki in the introduction to the book.
“In encouraging Marshallese holders of traditional medicinal knowledge to record their wisdom, they emphasized that if Marshallese medicinal knowledge were not recorded now, then much of it would be lost forever. The Marshallese would then suffer the same fate as the Hawaiians, New Zealand Maoris, Australian Aborigines, American Indians and others, who are attempting almost too late to record information and to revive dying cultures.”
—Giff Johnson
Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands: The Women, the Plants, the Treatments
By Irene J. Taafaki, Maria Kabua Fowler and Randolph R. Thaman, 318 p, published by USP, Suva 2006. USP member countries US$25.00, elsewhere $45.95. Order from www.ipsbooks.usp.ac.fj; also at Na Mea (Native Books) in Honolulu.
Challenging The Pacific {Book}
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The feat is most compelling—73 days crossing 4,300 nautical miles with her body power alone—but Fontenoy’s immediate prose also pleases. She delivers her audience into the fiberglass rowboat with her, smartly beginning her narrative with the dramatic fear of sharks. “The question kept resonating, like a bell tinkling to the rhythm of my body,” Fontenoy writes of the moment she decided to leave her craft’s relative safety and enter the deep to clean the boat’s bottom and repair an ailing rudder. Though she succeeded without incident, she suffered a cracked rib while reentering the boat, an injury that haunted her throughout the voyage.
Fontenoy left Lima, Peru for Hiva Oa in January 2005 in Océor, the renamed 25-foot long, 5.5-foot wide, 1,320-pound boat which took her across the Atlantic in 2003. Though most of the journey was spent battling sun and fatigue, eating dehydrated meals, and enduring constant physical labor, there were also close meetings with large ships, the lingering fear of pirates, and 30-foot storm troughs before arriving safely in March.
Though the timing of events is not always clear, and the book’s similes—frequently related to food—sometimes falter, her reflections and affection for the sea’s stunning performances elevate the writing when most needed. Her indomitable reach for new horizons can’t fail to challenge those of us who also perpetually “yearn for something more, something different.”
—Christine Thomas
Victoria University Press. www.vuw.ac.nz/vup NZ$39.95
