Learning about Herbal Medicine Online
Our Medicine Wheel program, which brings practical knowledge and traditions from culture into contemporary living, has been sharing information about medicinal plants through zoom classes with expert herbalists and indigenous elders.
Designed to support those interested in plant medicine, our sessions follow the body systems so together we can learn about the types of illnesses that affect each system and the possible ways of preventing or treating these illnesses with food and herbs. Our resident herbalist shares information about specific medicinal plants, their uses in prevention and treatment of various illnesses, as well as how to prepare them for use as medicine.
We have hosted 54 university students from April of this year. Students of many disciplines joined the course - clinical medicine and surgery, anthropology, journalism, etc. Monica, an anthropology student from the University of Nairobi found connections to her major and had this to say,
“The TICAH Learning Circle blends in so well with Ecological and Medical Anthropology and that's something I appreciate. It has expounded my knowledge around disease, illness, and health and how various societies handle it using plants as medicine.”
Other students found the practical application of the course helpful and reported finding a new perspective on the foods they eat and the plants around them. The classes have been popular during the pandemic, and we look forward to opening another round of classes soon.
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Title: Tracing Paper | by Moira BushKimani
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Art in the time of COVID - Thoughts from a Nairobi Artist
“... Being increasingly surrounded by music about Corona, murals about washing hands, and people trying hard as hell to look sexy in masks, all this has me curious about how deeply this situation will affect art and how we perceive reality during this period. We are turning more and more to our screens to tell us what is going on rather than observing our immediate surroundings. This hasn’t deterred the spirit to create, though. I have seen from my little window of social media as well as at our studio people challenging themselves to create as they never have and giving time to experimentation and play. I am sure that artists are not the only people who have used this period to flourish…”
Moira BushKimani, an artist with the BrushTu collective and former participant of TICAH’s Rika Residency art program. To read more of BushKimani’s thoughts and to learn more about the Rika Residency, click below.
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Young People, a Pandemic and SRHR
In June an alarming newspaper article in Kenya reported that in one of the 47 counties of Kenya there were over 4,000 teenage pregnancies in one month during the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, many young Kenyans suffered from inadequate sexual and reproductive education, access to contraceptives, and SRHR services. The pandemic is proving to make a difficult situation exponentially worse for young girls and boys. To read the story of a girl we are currently supporting, named Jane, please click here
We are tackling this challenge head-on through WhatsApp reproductive health chats and advocating for comprehensive sexuality education to be included in schools across Kenya when they reopen.
Our WhatsApp chats with students have created safe, reliable online spaces for young people to talk about their sexual and reproductive health challenges during this time and to ask questions. We’ve talked about sex and consent, gender-based violence, contraceptives, HIV and STIs, and relationships within 24 WhatsApp groups with over 1,369 young people involved. But this work will never be finished unless young people can get proper SRHR education.
We have teamed up with 41 other organizations to push for comprehensive sexuality education. Our community is advocating through social media and mainstream media, on Facebook and TV. Recently, our own Jedidah Maina, Executive Director of TICAH, held her own during a lively debate on the topic on a popular morning news show. She emphasized,
“It is important to provide our children with information to navigate life safely for them to make good choices. When we provide accurate, factual information it ensures that our children are not confused or misinformed as they grow up. It ensures that they don’t end up trapped, coerced, or hoodwinked into making choices they would not otherwise make for themselves had they had the right information.”
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At TICAH we pride ourselves on our ability and dedication to being flexible and responsive to the needs of the communities where we work.
During these tumultuous times, we are having to pivot our work in many different ways and directions, but we don’t always have the resources to make these pivots happen due to restrictions with our funding.
To support our work, please follow the link below. Thank you.
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*The photos in this newsletter were taken prior to the start of the pandemic
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