They say you can take the girl away from the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl. After the terrifying wave of Covid19 fears and phobias hit the city of Cape Town where I live, I managed to escape after a few weeks of isolation and fearful anticipation, and returned to the place where I grew up. The farm I have always seen as home, the place where I feel the most belonging.
While I was there, in again in quarintine and in isolation from our extended family members, I went for walks to my favorite place down the river. There had been a terrible drought for three years and the underground water had stopped flowing for the first time in about 50 years. That was the last time I had seen it in August last year.
However, on the 12th of January, an auspicious day, on which Aboriginal Elders and Khoi San alike prayed for earth healing and portals were opened, the drought was broken. It started with enormous hail stones, which made pock- marks in the hardened earth, allowing for a breaking of the crust. This and was followed by beautiful soft soaking rain, which soaked in to the earth, and life returned again.
The lockdown of March was the first time I was able to return to this sacred land. There had been a few follow ups of rain, so the plants were sprouting with new life, after being almost at breaking point with the heat and dryness of the previous season. I was amazed by the remarkable abundance of medicine plants celebrating life after near death. Southerlandia, Wild Dagga, Nettle and many more. Artemisia afra, was one that drew my attention. It was growing in abundunce along the river bed.
I had seen that it was being described as one of the most effective plant medicines for preventing and treating the disease that was shutting down the world as we knew it.
As a child, growing up on the farm, I remember a time when I was ill with a blocked sinus and congestion. Jane Fillis, (who was my nanny from the age of two and a huge influence on me), would boil it up in a pot and instruct me to steam my chest. That meant leaning over a pot of the hot steaming leafy liquid at the kitchen table by the Aga stove, with a large towel or two over my head to make a womb-like tent. It brought huge relief by clearing the sinuses and congestion. This left a huge impression on me and I always remembered how powerfully the herbs had helped me feel so much better.
I also had to drink it as a tea. This is the way traditional healers use Umhlonyane. It is sometimes combined with other herbs, but works well on it’s own. The steaming is powerful and to take it a step further, one should wash afterwards with the herbs and warm water left from the steaming in order to receive the full energetic effect of the medicine plant on the body.
So in the Covid lockdown in March of 2020, I followed my intuition and started picking it. I experimented with drinking it as a tea. One pinch in a cup with some lemon became my new evening drink. In South Africa alcohol was banned during lockdown, so this became the new cocktail. Better than a G+T at sunset, my new tonic from the river. I felt so blessed.
It is a liver tonic, I discovered, and much more thirst quenching than the favorite colonial coctail- Gin and Tonic. It has properties which improve hydration by enabling better absorbtion of nutrients and liquids by soothing and aiding the digestive system. This is a powerful medicine, used by traditional healers in Africa and China for unfathomable ages. It has stood the test of time.
According to homeopath and herbalist Peter von Maltitz, it is a real blood tonic because the phytochemicals in it help the body to better assimilate iron in the blood. Iron in the blood is essential for oxygen in the system. If one is low in iron, one is generally very tired and anemic because there is not enough oxygen to function. This is one of the effects of Covid. This is a topic of much debate among doctors, because the disease causes anemia and death by hypoxy, as if one has low oxygen levels similar to altitude sickness.
Here is a link to a study about this https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00678-5
Cytokine storms are another frightening Covid complication, which occur if ones immune system flares out of control in an inflamed way similar but worse than an asthma attack. Artemisia contains the phytochemical quercitine, which has been shown to calm, soothe and prevent cytokine storms. This is why it works so effectively to relieve asthma. My son was feeling asthmatic in the car when we went to pick up the artimisia sent from the farm recently. He did not have his reliever inhalent medication, so I asked him to chew on a stick of artimisia. Despite the usually cynical attitude, he said a few minutes later. “Mom this really works!” Just chewing on the artimisia stick took the asthma attack away instantly. My husband, who is also asthmatic found that rolling the leaves up and inserting them into the nostrils completely takes away an asthmatic reaction, when sinuses become blocked. This is well known among traditional healers, who also use rolled up leaves in their nostrils to protect themselves from potentially infectious diseases when seeing patients.
“The human immune system consists of innate and adaptive mechanisms of defence that protect the host from harmful substances. Cytokines and other immune components play an important role in the induction and regulation of these defence mechanisms. Despite these mechanisms, sometimes pathogens still manage to evade the immune system causing disease; or allergens result in hypersensitive reactions; or the immune system becomes overly sensitive and starts attacking the “self”. Irrespective of the cause, despite its best efforts, the immune system sometimes needs help regulating its defences.” Wrote Kriel. In the study, which used Artemisia Afra tinctures on blood samples,.
The immune-modulating activity of Artemisia afra : Results showed that Artemisia afra was significantly cytotoxic (P<0.050) at 5 000 μg/ml. IL- 10 production was significantly suppressed (P<0.001). This result indicates down regulation of the Th2 pathways, coinciding with its traditional use in allergic conditions. IFN-γ production was also significantly suppressed (P<0.001). This implies that although no directimmune defences are offered against bacterial, viral and parasitic infections, they may still provide symptomatic relief by decreasing fever as it also significanlty decreased IL-6 release (P<0.001). Direct anti-microbial effects of Artemisia afra on various pathogenic agensts vi such as Plasmodium and Influenza were not tested. The decrease of IL-6 production occurred at high concentrations (1 666 and 5 000 μg/ml). This demonstrates a potential ability to reduce the effects of conditions associated with abnormally high levels of IL-6 such as rheumatoid arthritis and arteriosclerosis.
This study shows that herbs can be effectively screened for potiential bio-activity using in vitro methods. Further studies will be needed to better explore Artemisia afra’s effect on immunoregulation, particularly long term effects of the herb on the immune system and its effect on other disease states.”
No wonder the president of Madagaskar has focused on this plant as a preventative and cure for Covid19, a drink was manufactured and more recently a capsule. It was mandatory for all children returning to school to drink artemisia as a preventative for Covid19. Numbers show that it has worked, but the World Health Organization did not allow it to be taken seriously, and used weak arguments such as this one published by the British Press online:
” There are no scientific studies, and Africa deserves to have rigorously tested medicines.”
The irony is that 1. Madagaskar is not actually in Africa and if it is working for so many people, surely it’s worth a study that WHO aproves of. The WHO has been discouraging the use of Artemisia for Malaria for fear that the Malaria will become resistant to it. However, this argument is weak at its very foundations. When we dig a bit deeper, we start to wonder about the motives of the argument.
In ancient times “the commons” was the common land, used by communities to gather herbal medicines, berries and hunt for meat. The commons were cared for by the communities and tribes who used them, the oceans, the forests and the wild mountain lands have diminished and now all that is left is national parks. Nobody is allowed to harvest from them anymore. Common sense is common knowledge, something well known and understood, simple truth.
Why stamp out a good thing? Why invalidate a medicine that is affordable and accessable to vulnerable people and make an expensive man- made medicine with harmful side effects the only official cure?
One has to ask questions sometimes.
Why did they have a lot of Artemisia in Madagaskar? Well the answer is that Artemisia is grown there in huge quantities to sell to the Pharmaceutical industry, who use an extract of it in anti-malaria medication. It is however proven that the herb actually works better in it’s whole form as it is a natural combination drug against malaria, and because by nature, the plant is always slightly different according to where it is grown and the conditions at the time, it is not possible for the malaria to become resistant to it. However, it does not suit the big pharma monopolies to allow this obvious cure to become well known as they would not make their money on the anti-malaria pills. Can you believe it? What kind of wicked greed is this?
(I have even heard reports that Artimisia was being converscated from vendors on the streets and health shops by police in South Africa at the begining of the Pandemic, because it is the known herb to take for Pneumonia like flu’s by the African people, and somebody somewhere did not want that happening.)
Artemisia has an amazing array of phytochemicals. The big Pharma companies who tried to extract the ingredient they thought was the cure for Malaria and transform it into an easy to swallow pill, were missing the point. The plant works best against a disease like Malaria in it’s whole form, because the combination of phytochemicals in the plants create a constantly shifting barage against the disease. If the disease adapts to one chemical there are others working as a team and constantly shifting according to the season. Nature is much more powerful and intelligent than our cleverest scientists and much better at adapting.
Artemisia annua is the species used against Malaria, as it is the species that grows in China and Europe. This is an annual plant that has to be replanted every year However, it has been proven that Artemisia Afra works just as well for Malaria. Artemisia Afra is indigenous to Africa and is a periniel that grows wild and can be pruned and re-grows, so it’s easy to harvest it sustainably in the wild.
The Malaria Business: Big Pharma vs herbal medicine is a well researched documentary, which explains that it is due to the fact that the makers of the drug first thought that a certain phyto chemical which was at first thought to be the main cure was being extracted. This only exists in Artemisia annua, but actually there are other phytochemicals that work in combination with it and still destroy malaria, and are present in both varieties. This information is life saving, and it means that people who live in Malaria prone countries only need to have this herb available in their gardens and public spaces or have it available in it’s dried form as a tea, to both prevent and cure Malaria. This disease kills almost half a million people a year!
The Chinese have been using this plant as medicine for malaria for centuaries. In Africa this plant has been used for many ills for centuaries too. It is called Wilde Als – heals everything in Afrikaans. In Xhosa and Zulu, it’s name is Umhlonyane and Lengane in Sotho. Both these names can be interpretted as “Courage” or “Truth”.
Artemisia afra (Asteraceae/Daisy) is one of the oldest and best known of South Africa‟sindigenous medicines. The plant may also be found in Eastern parts of Africa and is used as a medicine in Ethiopia (van Wyk and Gericke, 2005; Van Wyk, 2008). Wormwood, the common name, is derived from the Old English word „wermode‟, meaning “mind preserver” (Mars, 2007). African tribes like the Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho all have different traditional names for Artemisia afra. Popular names include „wilde als‟ or „als‟ in Afrikaans, „mhlanyane‟ in Zulu, „umhlonyane‟ in Xhosa, „zengana‟ in Southern Sotho and „lengana‟ in Pedi and Tswana (van Wyk and Gericke, 2005, Mukinda, 2007).
Y.Kriel PhD abstract.
Courage is the antidote to fear. Truth is the opposite of lies and deception, which cause the murky field of fear and shadow.
The Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho names for the herb umholyane and Lengane and mean courage, because of it’s properties. It preserves ones health. I can say this with confidence. Countless times over this season, I have felt myself coming down with something. Each time I have taken my tea of Courage, drinking up to four cups as a tea over a day, and the heaviness has left me. I have also found that it has been a mood soother and uplifter, and that my sleep has improved.
I tried it on my children and husband who suffer from asthma and allergies, and they have reported that it has instantly relieved the asthma.
There have also been tests and studies showing that this miracle plant destroys Bilharzia, another disease that kills thousands of people. It is caused by a waterborne snail. Here is a link to a an article about PHD study that was conducted…. proving that Artemisia kills this parasite effectivley curing the disease.. Why do we not use this medicine all the time if we know it can save lives?
Who is fooling Who?
I am not fooled. Are You?
If you would like to buy some Tea of Courage I now have it as a product which can be purchased online.
You can order through my Facebook/Instagram https://www.facebook.com/wildhealingherbs
Or from this online shop: https://mui-shop.co.za/product/wild-healing-tea-of-courage/
I am also making delicious Artimisia infused pure, nourishing balms using raw shea, cocoa butter, coconut and other oils. No parabens of course.
Helena Kingwill - Earthnotes for hope 
One thought on “Take Courage”