Now that I have been with the tribal people one night when the patient is having one of his episodes of sickness, I understand more about why they describe it the way they do.
Night before last, about 7 pm (already dark) they came to our house and asked if I could help attend to young Tabung (he is about 20 years old), as he was beginning to have one of his fits of madness. So I went over there, and at first the young man was huddled with his head down, people around him on all sides. He was coherent for the time being. I put my hand on his forehead, and then I noticed – he was burning up.
The funny thing is we had asked them before if he had a fever, and they said no. At first I didn’t understand why they didn’t notice that he was burning up, but now after having watched one of the fits I do. When the fit of madness begins, they are so focused on holding him down they don’t pay much attention to anything else.
Here is what happened. He started to tense up and his eyes got real big and wide. Everyone jumped on him, with 2 or 3 people holding each limb and one person holding his head from behind. He would try and grab and bite at people but was restrained. While people were holding him down, the one who was holding him by the head from behind would yell and spit at what he believed was the spirit affecting the patient. In the corner the older shaman was continuously talking and commanding the spirit affecting the patient to leave.
As I watched, it occurred to me that a high fever with fits of madness in a malaria prone area most likely equals cerebral malaria. So I went back to our house and we looked it up in the book. Sure enough, most of the symptoms matched. So we brought him chloroquine to take. In between his fits of madness he would be coherent enough to talk and take the medicine, so he was able to swallow it down.
As I write this, the chloroquine seems to have had the desired effect, though he is not completely well yet. All the people in the village believe he is better because the shaman chased the bad spirit away with a machete. Please continue to pray for Tabung and the others, because there is a spiritual battle going on for the hearts and minds of the Palawanos.
Blessings in Christ to you all
Dear George and Ginny,
ReplyDeleteWhat a battle you are in--its almost the opposite of the way the battle plays out in the states...or in our culture. Your people have a physical needs that they would contend are spiritual and ours have spiritual needs that we tend to be incapable of seeing as spiritual. So our culture tends to only treat with the physical or worldly solutions, make more, spend more, take more...
So, how do you shift the spiritual Palawano to Christ and how do we help our hurting culture to even see their need for Jesus?