Ghana

Treating a Cerebral Vascular Accident

First this one morning, a man made his way into the clinic leaning heavily on the shoulder of a young boy.  As he entered, my attention, initially grabbed by the brilliant violet tunic top he wore, subsequently fell on the telltale curl of his left arm and the dragging of his left leg.  

Falling into a chair, he explained that in the night he awoke with the sensation that the left side of his body was heavy and weak.  Now, he was breathless, dizzy, his head hurt and his heart felt too large for his chest.  There was also a burning sensation internally and especially in the left thigh.

The Hope Homeopathy Clinic

Mafi Kumase is a small town of 2500 persons in the Volta region of Western Ghana, about an hour from the border with Togo.  Other than its technical high school and a weekly market, it is a fairly nondescript place: basically a crossroads with low slung shops, cinderblock houses and simple structures that serve as churches.  The main thoroughfare is busy with 2-, 3- and 4-wheeled vehicles, herds of goats and groups of schoolchildren.  

To the outsider's eye, what is most striking are a handful of buttes that rise up in and around the town as well as the plastic garbage strewn everywhere.  The buttes make for nice hikes and views over the surrounding fields of cassava and okra.  The plastic is an eyesore and probable health hazard that makes one not want to look too closely.

The Hope Homeopathy Clinic is located just at the outskirts of town on the main road.  It consists of a few rooms and front porch of a house set back behind some shops and another home.  But it is a well-utilized facility that everyone in town knows - along with the man who created and runs it.