Monday, April 25, 2011

As a child growing up in Haiti, what were the 5 most common medicines kept in your medicine cabinet? Which one did you dread the most?

First of all, the “medicine cabinet” was rather a straw basket filled with mostly aromatic leaves.
The 5 most common childhood medications I remember were:

1. papaya leaves for deworming,
2. basil leaves for good digestion,
3. Acacia leaves for skin and tooth care,
4. lemon grass and orange tree leaves (don't know what for)
5. garlic roots skin and cloves for stomachache.

These leaves were used to make tea with either sugar or salt.  Some of the leaves were boiled in water. Some were mashed up for the extraction of a greenish juice which I hated very much.

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