Yesterday I was blowing my nose and sniffling at work, and a fellow English teacher offered me some sort of herbal tea that was good for sickness. We translated its Russian name, but I didn’t recognize it. So I made a cup and drank it, and it was very bitter. Hmm. Not doing that again, even if I am sick. I’m not opposed to drinking a cup of Echinacea tea if I feel sniffly, but only because it doesn’t taste too bad. One thing here that I both admire and doubt is the prevalence of herbal remedies to cure illness. People are always mashing berries to make tea or describing random (and sometimes gross) things to do to make yourself healthy. In general, I think it’s great that people here like to use more natural methods rather than popping pills right away. Ukrainians usually are also more concerned than people in the States about eating food that is uncontaminated by chemicals, additives and preservatives, and I’m all for that naturalness. However, sometimes I wonder if some of these natural remedies were devised by some old babushka who thought we all suffer from psychosomatic illnesses. Someone recently told me that her mother brewed tea from raspberry canes when she was a child and she was never sick, even when everyone else was at school. Was it psychosomatic? Twice we’ve been given little red, bitter berries to put in tea when we’re sick with the flu or colds, and I’ve dutifully mashed them and prepared some not very tasty tea. (Which had few measurable effects on my cold, as far as I could tell.) I looked these little red gems up on Wikipedia, to see what collective common wisdom had to say about them. They’re from the Guelder-rose bush, and are actually mildly toxic. But they are used for medicinal purposes, although for ailments quite different from my common cold. They’re for nervousness, spasms and menstrual cramps.
Actually, this little story illustrates the problem that I have with herbal remedies in Ukraine. Herbal remedies are fine, but only if you know what they’re for. I think my general mistrust of these remedies here also stems from the large amount of superstition that’s mixed in with the medical “knowledge.” It’s a well-known fact here that drafts make you sick, sitting on cold concrete renders women infertile and drinking cold beverages is bad for your health. I guess it’s my Western-minded scientific-proof perspective that’s coming into play here, when I have to verify with scientific research whether or not my red berries are really going to make me feel better. But if I’m going to drink a cup of tea that tastes like tar, I want to be sure that it’s doing me some physical good. (And not just making me think I feel better.)Laura
