Traditional Healing: an extra source of income

Cotton Ch Momin visited several Govt. hospitals in East Garo Hills in Meghalaya and traditional practitioners to find relief for his ailing wife from severe allergy with high fever but could not succeed. Affording private hospital and treatment outside the state was beyond his capacity.

After being hassled and failed, he decided to treat his wife by giving home-made traditional medicines prepared from herbs and extracts. The results were slow but encouraging and within few months she recovered completely.

Momin started his traditional medicine practice from there and now he can heal disease like jaundice, epilepsy, broken or fractured bones, fever and dysentery through traditional herbal medicines. Basically, a farmer by occupation, he can treat many other diseases in Gitokgre village in East Garo Hill of Meghalaya through traditional medicines.

Initially, he was known to very few people in his village as he did not want many people to have known him as a traditional practitioner. But after the leadership training of awareness programmes of Farm Northeast-II, his mindset changed.

He is now active in agriculture, farming, organising meetings, programmes and much other work. He is also a president of the farmer club and a traditional practitioner to promote medicinal practitioners in the area. He has become the main resource person in the area for sharing his knowledge in terms of traditional medicines and is encouraging and motivating other practitioners in the area.

Apart from being a traditional practitioner and a farmer he has taken a loan from fisheries department and started fishery in a small pond. Though the return is less it adds to his profit. He motivates other farmers to take up fishery and earn their livelihood through various means.

“I do not charge for the treatment but when someone gives me forcibly, I had to respect their feeling”, says Momin. Traditional healing has become one of the sources of his livelihood. He expressed his gratefulness to the FARM Northeast-II programme for changing his thinking and knowledge to boost his confidence. He is more than happy to share his knowledge with others who is willing to learn.