First Impressions

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

As the plane was touching down at Accra airport the giant carcass of a jetliner was lying by the side of the runway. Helluva thing to see while landing, but maybe it was just being cannibalized for parts… Or, perhaps the remains of a misadventure not yet cleared away? Taxing to a stop, there weren’t any other commercial airplanes to be seen, just a fleet of various sized jets bearing the United Nations logo. We deboarded down a flight of stairs onto a steamy tarmac where castoff Korean buses were waiting to deliver us to the terminal and into the hands of immigration officers who either ill temperedly or lackadaisically processed our various documents. One young man waved me through with a shrug although I hadn’t been given and therefore hadn’t filled out and consequently didn’t submit the form that apparently it was his sole job to collect. Welcome to Ghana.

 

Homeopathic Surgery

Night had already fallen when the motorcycle slowly puttered up to the clinic. It was during the periodic “lights out” that beset the village every 72 hours or thereabouts, so electricity had been shut down until dawn. In the darkness, one could manage to make out three riders dismounting from the bike.

I had only arrived in the village a day or two before, but later I would learn that patients often arrived at the clinic in this manner. They’d be sandwiched between the driver and someone riding shotgun who kept them upright.

Who Was Allan D. Sutherland?

Over the years, I’ve heard mention of a homeopath, a Dr. Allan Sutherland, who practiced in Brattleboro in the not so distant past.  Usually it was from one of my patients who recalled being attended by him in childhood.  Once a Brattleboro native now living in Connecticut noticed my sign and decided to stop in just to tell me about her childhood homeopathic physician whom she had greatly admired.  Another time, it was a naturopath from Colorado who told me he had spent two years in Brattleboro apprenticing with. Sutherland in the last years of the doctor’s life.

Treating Plants with Homeopathy

Over the years, I’ve heard mention of a homeopath, a Dr. Allan Sutherland, who practiced in Brattleboro in the not so distant past.  Usually it was from one of my patients who recalled being attended by him in childhood.  Once a Brattleboro native now living in Connecticut noticed my sign and decided to stop in just to tell me about her childhood homeopathic physician whom she had greatly admired.  Another time, it was a naturopath from Colorado who told me he had spent two years in Brattleboro apprenticing with. Sutherland in the last years of the doctor’s life.

Better Than Maple Syrup

It’s no secret that heroin is to be found just about anywhere in the region.  The governor of Vermont devoted most of his state of the State speech to the epidemic; a national magazine infamously had a cover story about it complete with a front-page picture of a Vermonter shooting up heroin as the replacement image on what would have been a can of maple syrup.

 In a small state like Vermont, it quickly gets close and personal.   Heroin is not ghettoized into a specific community or group here.  It’s less than comforting when your children are attending the funeral of a friend who overdosed or live across the street from a smack house.  A friend told me that his high school aged child couldn’t get away from the stuff – it was in school, it was at work, it was at play.  Another friend sent their child, recent college graduate, across the country to get away from this drug infested environment.

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