Ancestral Herbal Narratives

[0:14] Nicole Wines: I want to welcome you. Thank you so much for taking part in this project. You and your family are a very important part of Raíces and the Raíces family so we are so happy and so blessed that you’re taking part in this particular project and sharing your history and your memories, pieces of your family with us and with the world. Thank you so much. 

[0:40] Bernadette Chin-on:  Good. Yes. Very important. Yeah. 

[0:42] Nicole: It’s a blessing for us so thank you. So I’ll start with just a brief intro if you could please just tell me your name, where you were born, and where you are right this very moment. 

[0:56] Bernadette: Okay, my name is Bernadette Chin-on. I was born in Georgetown, Guyana in South America. And right now, I am in Somerset, New Jersey, United States of America. 

[1:11] Nicole: And I’m gonna start with a very, it’s a very simple but also a very complex question, to just bring us into the topic of healing. What does the term healing the word healing mean to you?

[1:28] Bernadette: Hmm. Healing, to me, comfort, relief, health, good health. 

[1:37] Nicole: Great. So throughout your lifetime, what connections have you had to herbalism and herbal healing traditions?

[1:48] Bernadette: My early childhood, that’s all we had. We didn’t have access to a lot of medical things so you know you have to use what was available. We, as a child, my early childhood, I remember we grew up in the country. We call it the countryside as opposed in the city, and so my grandmother was with us. And we didn’t have a, it was a little village, we didn’t have a doctor. The doctor was in the city which was probably like an hour away. We had, I guess you would call it a dispensary. We called it the doctor shop because he was, I’m not sure if he was a chemist or a druggist or he was both, but I know he was not a medical doctor. But he had this little building. We would always go there and he had the counter and the little, um, like you would see in the old movies with the little cupboards with the apothecary jars and the things mixing you know the little bottles of things and so he was like about probably about a twenty-five to a thirty minute walk from our house. So my grandmother, you know, if you had an ailment or an injury or something, we didn’t have modern convenience, everything they did by walking or by riding a bike. And not everyone had bikes back then. So the time it would take you to walk, and if you had a sick person to carry, to get this half an hour trip, it’s nearly impossible you know. And so my grandmother for some reason or the other she just went in the yard and she would pick up different things and you know and get this and get that and she would mix them up and give it to us and make a poultice and put on our wounds or whatever and that’s what we knew. You know and then if it, most times it healed, if it got worse then we would probably next day consult this chemist/druggist guy or if it was severe enough, in a week or so then we would probably have to go to the city to the hospital. But I don’t ever ever remember any of us going to the hospital except when I was very, very young. I was about two or three years old, and I got burnt. But that really needed medical, but that time I was in the city so.

[4:12] Nicole: You mentioned your grandmother picking herbs in the yard. Was she in your family? Was she the individual that people would turn to?

[4:22] Oh yeah, she was the unofficial medical doctor. She just knew, I don’t know how she knew, but she just knew. You know, it was, we call it, we call it, they call it herbs, now we call it like bushes. We’d go in the yard and she would say pick that and I didn’t know the names but I could, I would recognize the shapes and the leaves and the different things and you know she would you know just know exactly what to do and it seemed to work so.

[4:53] Nicole: So your grandmother, do you have memories of her teaching you about herbs?

[4:59] Bernadette: Well when you say teaching, it’s not like a formal teaching. She would just you know we would go down, she would say go get this or she would, originally she would pick it up and you know I was very nosy. I was a very curious person. I wouldn’t know you know what they were. We had a garden. We had a garden. We had a flower garden as well as a vegetable garden. So you kind of knew which things you should pull up and which things you shouldn’t and so I was kind of familiar with the shape of leaves and things that she would need. Specifically my, we had a lot of mosquitoes and my siblings, they, my second brother, his skin would always break out in this you know from the bites, these little bumps or sores or whatever, and she would just mix these different herbs and compounds and rub it on there and he would be healed you know they would go down in like a day or two or if he got stung by a bee or a wasp or something, she would know what to do. And to avoid that I remember she always made us drink everyday except Sundays what you would call herbal tea. We always call it bush tea because this particular thing we always had to drink every morning, it was something or we call it sweet room, and it tastes kind of bitter but it was bitter with a kind of sweet, sweet-ish bitter. And we would drink that and my grandma, she would always say oh that’s good it’ll bitter your blood and you wouldn’t get sores and things that bite you wouldn’t break out and you know, we hated it. The only day we got a break was on Sunday when we were allowed to have hot cocoa. We just hated it. Oh everyday bush tea we called it, bush tea, bush tea, you know but after a while you got to appreciate the sweet room, and there were other things that she used but I specifically remember the sweet room because my job was to go down the night before and pull it up. It was like about maybe a four inch weed or whatever you would call it. It had a little flower in it, on the top, and you know we would, she would hang that up and it would be dry enough for the morning and she would just steep it in hot water and that was our breakfast. We had to drink that no matter what you know. And if you drank it up, you would get a reward like maybe jelly on your bread or something but you know, you just had to drink that except Sundays. We, you know, we weren’t allowed to drink cocoa because she didn’t think cocoa was, you know, the healthiest thing for the body so we got a break on Sundays. We got to drink cocoa.

[7:47] Nicole: And you mentioned you would help her or she would send you to pick some of the plants?

[7:56] Bernadette: Yeah, well I was the oldest one because you know my, I’m talking like I was between five and eight so I would always, I was always the one in the garden digging and you know plotting around so she would say we need this and we need that and so I would be the one to go you know. I would bring it up and if it’s the wrong thing she would say no you know every bush or every herb had a specific treatment so if I would go and get the wrong thing, you know, she said no get the other one, you know, so we had things like, I don’t really remember all the names but she had something we called like flat of the earth and we had something called parsley. We had something we called money bush. Different ones she would mix and make like ointments or things like that. Sometimes we had, we had lots of trees in the, we had a really big yard, and I was very famous for climbing all the trees so we had a guava tree in the back, we had a cotton tree, we had the papaya, we had coconut trees, we had a jamun, I guess they call that açaí tree, and cherry trees. Golden apple. Monkey apple. You know different ones, but I remember when we would get ill with a fever or something, we would, she would take the leaf from the cotton tree, we call it buck cotton, and you would just seep that in water and then she got the bark from the guava tree and you would make different drinks with that, or she would get barks from the cherry tree, the cherry tree leaves, the bark from the guava tree and you know make like a hot bath and put you in it and let that steam just come up you know however they did it back in the days but we never never you know went to a doctor. I mean the neighbors would always say to my father you’re lucky you don’t ever have doctor bills because your mother-in-law cures everything and then they would come to her, you know, ask her, you know, what to do for whatever. So we were lucky.

[10:08] Nicole: So was she considered a healer in your community?

[10:11] Bernadette: Well she was. Well for the street I mean. The community was not very huge. It was like a few hundred people. But in the street where we lived, we lived in a I guess you call it a block or whatever you call it. We had about maybe twelve families or twenty families. And you know so the neighbors would come around, oh you know what you do for this and you know what would you suggest we do for that and so that’s what she did. Yeah so you’re asking me where she got it from?

[10:42] Nicole: Where she learned it from?

[10:44] Bernadette: I have no idea. It was probably just inspiration because as far as I know, my grandmother didn’t know her mother. She was raised by an aunt and she was raised in the city so I don’t know, you know, that she had learned too much from you know ailments from them but I know when she did get married, she had I guess, she gave birth to nine children so that probably had something to do with it but you know she was like in the city but when my mom grew up and got married and moved to the country so and I guess maybe through talking with neighbors you know different times people say different things or she just felt inspired to go try this or try that because she believed that everything on the face of the earth was good for something so.

[11:37] Nicole: And so you mentioned that then there was no formal education for you in terms of learning about them so it really came more through experience?

[11:46] Bernadette: Yeah, just through observation you know, trial and error I guess you would say. Because I would see what she would do and you know it worked so you know. Numerous times the things that she did you know it’s amazing.

[12:03] Nicole: And you also mentioned that you were always out in the garden and tending to the plants, and I know you now and I see you always outside tending to plants too. So was that something that called out to you from a very young age was working with plants?

[12:16] Bernadette: Yeah, probably, it probably was. Because I was always you know I just, I guess the freedom of being outdoors you know I got to climb trees, all the trees I could climb you know and this was a big problem because we had a neighbor just as a sidebar this neighbor, she had, she gave birth to twenty-one children. When we lived next to her, she had I guess seventeen or eighteen of them with her. And she was a tiny woman but yeah I guess boredom was part of it. So I would go from one tree to the next to the next to the next and I would always hear her yelling to my mom Miss McRae your daughter is up the tree again. You know I would wonder why she would never mind her own business. But you know then you know other neighbors would come and help my mom with the kitchen garden so my, I had a job to every morning water the plants, pull the weeds out, you know and do stuff like that. So the kitchen garden was really fenced in. The flower garden was just a little thing in the front. So I kind of, that was my job to water the plants in the morning, water them at night and between 5:30 and 6:00 know what herbs my grandmother needed to make tea for the next morning so I kind of you know like I said, lack of nothing else to do in the country. There’s no TV, no radio, you know you don’t want to listen to the radio so what else are you going to do but just go in the yard and always digging and digging and digging you know. 

[13:54] Nicole: So now transition from Guyana, the countryside to here in the U.S. in the Northeast part of the U.S. in one of the most densely populated areas of the country where we are now. Have you continued practicing learning about herbal healing traditions?

[14:14] Bernadette: Not as much as I was there because in the city is nothing you know the closest since I came to this country I remember in my early days is my one landlady so she had mint growing in the back in her backyard and I wasn’t really familiar with mint other than when we had you know the menthol rubs or you know we didn’t have mint growing. I don’t remember ever seeing mint growing in Guyana. So but there was nothing to plant you know it’s just these already big grown trees. There was no land to plant or do anything so you know. That kind of faded in my adult life.

[14:55] Nicole: And since you don’t actively practice herbalism, are there though ways that you have incorporated that knowledge into your own daily life?

[15:07] Bernadette: Well what I do when I had my own children, you know, I found that little Caribbean stores, and I call them Caribbean stores because they were like people from the Caribbean, they would most times you know sell things that I was kind of familiar with and would buy like the senna leaves and the senna pods and I would buy the castor oil you know things that I remember that I thought were gonna give those to my children you know the cleansing, and you know there weren’t too many herbs that I would see around to heal anything so you just have a big problem, big scars, and you go to the doctor you know there’s no yard you could go into to pick anything. There’s no, except just recently when you know you really started being familiar with people who seemed to be, found people who were really into herbs, and wanted to, they would grow things, and they would talk about things you know, I remember this one woman telling me one time you know I think I had conjunctivitis, I guess they call it pink eye. She said no you don’t need to go to the doctor for that. You just get the coffee bean and you boil it and you, you know, you strain it, and you wash your eyes with it. And that was something I wasn’t familiar with you know. And then I, you know, we found the aloe plant which was good. But you know like more as I got older, more and more, I’m seeing things that are useful but none of the things that I really grew up with as a child. I mean there are people who now have herbal stores that people would just you know like they would say like the, what’s the, like the, what’s the herb with [inaudible] the rabbits, the clover, now we can go pick clover. There’s clover growing in the yard. You could pick up the clover and make tea with it you know the red clover, the white clover. Not too many of the things that are grown. But once in a while, I would go by the herbal stores, and they would have these things, or the health food stores, they would have these big books now oh this is good for that and that is good for that so once in a while now I would use them you know if I can find them but like way back when I was a child, you know, you would just go in the yard and you picked it, you plucked it. And that was it, you know. But I think now, people are becoming more conscious of how important herbs are for the healing and you know because the medications that you have these days to tell you the honest truth, you take one medication and you have like about twenty-five side effects so it makes you wonder, it makes me wonder do I want to take this thing, you know? Why would I want to take this and it’s gonna make me have twenty-five other ailments? It’s good that people are now you know most people I should say have seemed to realize the importance of using herbs which is what people used years ago before they had these medical facilities. I mean medical facilities are good for some things but you know we’re based in good health. You do need the herbs and the things on the Earth. 

[18:33] Nicole: That’s true. In your memory, do you, can you, do you have any recollection of there being a close connection between your culture and herbalism and herbs?

[18:53] Bernadette: A close connection, hmm. Well I would have to say I mean you know going back to my childhood, everything that we did, every ailment that I can remember you know from my father I don’t know to my youngest sister that’s what we used, you know. I remember one basic thing I remember, like I said, I was very curious and sometimes a you know bothersome child, and we had coconut trees, and the young fellows would come around and they would show you know how to, they had these different things where you to get to the actual coconut you had this thing that you would use and then they showed us how to and then we had like a fireplace and this was really really before we had stoves and all that stuff, we still use that. And they would show how to split the logs and again being curious I would go and they would say you know show me how to swing an axe and I was not a really big person. I thought I was big but I was not like less than four feet, and so when my parents would be entertaining in the front with the people, I would be in the back trying to amuse myself. And one day I snuck down the back and I was trying to split the coconut and I heard my neighbor in the back saying something and I guess for a split second I got distracted because I knew how to do it, I knew how to stand on the log and place the actual coconut and how to swing the axe and where to hit it but I guess the sound of her voice distracted me and the axe slipped and it went right between my third and fourth toe on my right foot. And I saw the blood, I didn’t feel any pain. I said oh boy you know so I ran up the stairs, we had like from the yard where I was, it was eighteen steps up to the main house and as I went going, this blood kept dripping and dripping and dripping and I was trying to feel how can I hide this so they don’t know what I did you know. Of course my neighbor had already sent one of her eighteen children around to the front to knock on my parents’ door to tell them that I had got injured and I was in the bedroom trying to bandage this thing up so and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. And so then my grandmother came and said what did you do. I don’t know what she did but she did something, but anyway long story short, that wound, it took three days, like by the end of the, this was like about 5:30 in the afternoon, and by midnight my foot was swollen. My toes were swollen, my ankle was swollen, and then she put it in the sling and put it up you know, and I don’t know what she did, but for three days, this foot was swollen. I don’t know what she did but I got healed. I didn’t have to you know. I heard them whispering about, what’s that thing you get when you get a blood wound, a, you know, you get the blood wound, what you call it, the infection with coming to gangrene or something like that. But thank God it never happened. Whatever she did, you know, and I know I can still see the scar once in a while but that was like one of the worst things that ever happened to me besides being burnt when I was three years old. 

[22:31] Nicole: But she was able to heal it?

[22:34] Bernadette: She was able to heal, whatever it was, she didn’t even need to go the druggist down in the village to get something, I don’t know what she used, but what she did I mean, by the end of the first day, the second day, I was in so much pain you know but she was able, I didn’t have to go to the doctor, I didn’t have to go to the hospital. They didn’t have to take me down to see this guy, the chemist or whatever he was and I don’t know what she did, what herb she found and the thing, but she was able to, I’m still alive so. 

[23:02] Nicole: We’re blessed that you are and we have you. You talked a little bit about some of the things that have changed. So for you in your life, a lot of it came from the moving from the country to the  city and so you didn’t have the access to the plants and the nature and the outside. Was there anything else that changed over time, evolved over time, in terms of herbalism and herbal healing and healing practices? Or was it more, for you, was it the change really coming from the change of lifestyle from country living to city living?

[23:41] Bernadette: I think it’s both because as I got older, I began to appreciate more you know the things that she was really telling me when she was instilling us that were good, and we thought that you know we wanted the modern glitzy things with the fancy labels and you know the modern things that they were selling and which weren’t really good so when I came here and I realized that of course you have to have insurance which we didn’t have that in Guyana you know you just got sick, you went to the doctor, you paid whatever you paid. Over here, you had to have insurance, you had to have this, you had to have that, I wasn’t really familiar with all that. So even when my mother was having children, the midwife lived two doors down and so I remember she would you know she was the only midwife in the village and everyday we would see her with her little bicycle with the thing and she would go when somebody’s having a baby you know sometimes she’d be gone all night but my mother lived three doors from where the midwife lived and so all the children were delivered at home, homebirth, and I remember my grandmother was always there. She always knew what to give, what foods she should eat, and what, you know, herbs should be used and you know what baths she should take and all that stuff. But when I came to America, you didn’t have all that. And then the price of going to the doctor as a newman and who has money to pay you know exorbitant doctor fees and all that you’re not familiar with it so I kind of tried to remember what she would use and try to you know kind of preempt any things that would happen you know as far as keeping healthy to avoid any, you know, major disasters so I would use that, you know, basically just castor oil, everything I cured my children with, you have to take a dose of castor oil. That was the doctor herb. And then I had you know we would use the peppermint oil and the eucalyptus oil and the coconut oil which is another thing we had in Guyana with all the coconut trees. My job was always to make the coconut oil. I don’t know if you know because you probably well you’re not Caribbean, I just keep forgetting you’re not, you would grate the coconut you know and you would you know squeeze it, let it sit and then you would take off the cream and then you would fry it and you would get the oil and so we made our own coconut oil and you would infuse that with you know the eucalyptus oil or peppermint oil which we didn’t make. We got that from the druggist down the village. And so that would be our poultice or you know make the steam bath with it when you have a cold or whatever. But you know over here you have to buy your own coconut oil, you can’t make it because of course there’s no coconut trees in America so. 

[26:52] Nicole: Great, so just a couple more questions. In terms of healing, what do you see from what you’ve learned in your traditions and from what you’ve learned since you know you’ve said you’ve reconnected with people who have interest in plants and herbs and healing? What is the connection to you between healing and spirit? Healing and energy?

[26:19] Bernadette: That’s a good question. How do I answer that? I think when you’re healed, you feel comfort because if you’re in pain or in agony or in any type of distress, you need comfort, you need relief. So I think healing is all part of that. And what was the other thing? Between healing and?

[27:41] Nicole: Healing and energy. 

[27:44] Bernadette: I’m sorry?

[27:45] Nicole: Energy. 

[27:47] Bernadette: Energy. You have to have a positive energy. You have to believe that what you’re doing is right and it’s going to make you feel good so mind and body I think have to work together. If your mind is, you know, willing and positive and you do the things that physically you have to do, I think the two work together. They have to work together. 

[28:14] Nicole: That’s true. Do you feel that we’re in danger as a community, as a multicultural community now in modern times of losing our connection to these healing practices or do you think that this is knowledge that is well-preserved amongst families or in specific communities and cultures?

[28: 36] Bernadette: Oh, I think we’re in danger. I definitely think we’re in danger because I think most of the people, modern people, they need everything that’s instant, right away, you know. If you have an ailment, oh give me a pill for this, oh give me a shot for this, and then you just take the one time thing and then go on about their businesses as normal, and I think that’s, you know, I don’t think that’s good because for the simple reason I said, you know, you’ll take a pill, but then the after-effects of that pill could cause a myriad of other issues you know and if you know it’s important that they pay attention that most of these compounds that, you need the Earth, you need the Earth to keep you, you’re part of the Earth, so you have your body and the herbs have to work together to keep you going and keep you healthy and if people don’t pay attention like you know people were like they would cement everything over and cut down trees and the trees you need, the oxygen to breathe, it helps filter the air, clean the air, you know, different things. And they’re going down around the world just chopping trees down and polluting and doing crazy things, you know, without any thought to the importance of the environment and how it has sustained and it will continue to sustain it if you be good to it and, you know, pay attention. So unless, you know, there’s a massive, massive, something to make everybody just start paying attention, and I mean there are groups here and there that are trying to preserve it, but it’s a tough battle. 

[30:23] Nicole: That’s true. And you’ve already answered why it’s important to preserve this. Do you have any ideas how?

[30:30] Bernadette: Well they should start by stop chopping down trees in the Amazon and start you know growing more things you know encouraging everyone to at least have a little spot, a little plot to plant things and start teaching the young children of the importance of growing plants and trees and you know things like that to start it in an early age and get them accustomed to this is what you need to do. You are just as important as the tree or the plant. You just can’t be cutting things down and you know going about your business like it’s nothing. 

[31:10] Nicole: And why is it important to preserve specifically the knowledge about healing and herbal healing?

[31:19] Bernadette: Because, if they, you know, this is what your ancestors what the people before you years and years ago, that’s what they did and that’s what kept them alive and led them to survive so who are you to just be born a few years ago to decide that, you know, what people did before who had more knowledge and experience, that what they did was nonsense, and you know, you should start, they should start paying attention. You know, paying attention to your parents, your grandparents, the ancestors, the people who came before you, you know, so how did they survive, you know, what did they do? How did they, you know, what things they did to sustain themselves and to keep the Earth going so that you know we’re here?

[32:05] Nicole: Do you see that younger generations have an interest in this topic?

[32:12] Bernadette: I don’t know too many that have, to tell you the honest truth. I mean I haven’t been in the school system, I don’t know what they’re teaching them in school these days. You know, but it seems to me like it’s such a fast-paced world, you know, and the technologies seems to be ruling everything, you know, you just want to push a button here, push a button there and everything is instant but there’s more than just pushing the button, you know. Because if they really think about it, you know, the Earth has a lot to offer and you have to be kind to the Earth and you know treat it with care and you know acknowledge that it’s important. It’s not just going and digging and taking out what you want and polluting the waters and polluting the streams, you know, cutting down the trees because you want this particular thing, it’s like going into a farm and cutting down all the corn and just throwing it aside. You know, you need the corn to feed the animals and to feed the livestock and you just can’t do it because you want to build a house here, you go chop the cornfields though, you do whatever, and you know, and everything else be darned, you know. So, you know, I think they really need to pay attention to that and realize it’s important. You can’t go around polluting and just destroying.

[33:46] Nicole: I think I want to thank you again for sharing. I think that just by having these conversations, I think that’s an important step for us to take in being able to share some of these stories and to encourage some of the people in the younger generations to learn from them and to continue on with these traditions. So thank you so much for being a part of this. 

[34:13] Bernadette: I think it’s commendable what you’re doing. Hopefully, this will grow and more and more people will be involved. And you know we need people like you, your group, your organization, to spread these stories around and keep people informed of what’s important.

[34:28] Nicole: We wouldn’t have an organization if it wasn’t for the wonderful people in your family who are part of it so we’re all in this together.

[34:37] Bernadette: Sure. Sure.

[34:39] Nicole: Thank you again. 

[34:40] Bernadette: You’re welcome.