A segment of Sri Lanka’s traditional food, traditional nutrition and indigenous health experts speaking at a forum last week asserted that Sri Lanka needs to ensure that knowledge is shared island wide to educate policy makers and the public on the vast local food and medicinal resources available.
This will be vital to combat any looming food and medicinal crisis, they said. Traditional food and health specialists of Sri Lanka called upon the mass media to educate themselves and thereafter the people on the many steps each person can take to become aware of the multiple steps towards food and medicinal security that the country has been historically endowed with.
They appealed to policymakers and the media not to create a fear psychosis or a dependency mentality on international food and medicine assistance without recognising the inherent resources of Sri Lanka.
Traditional water tanks
They shared their views at an island wide weekly online forum that commenced last Thursday under the theme ‘Combatting Food and Medicine shortage in Sri Lanka.” Food security, medicinal security, current relevance of traditional water tanks (wew) and a Covid-19 time initiative promoting local medical expertise were among the topics covered at the event.
Speaking on the topic ‘Re-looking at the definition of medicinal security in Sri Lanka; Sri Lankan traditional medicine expert, Deshiya Waidya Kalutharage Sampath spoke on the importance of policy makers and the mass media comprehending that ‘aushada’ (medicinal drugs) should not be within a particular monopoly.
He said that national awareness is needed that local curative methods and medicinal resources are relevant for every common disease ranging from diabetes to heart disease.
“Nittawata Suwa Kireema (curing permanently) is the way of our Deshiya Chikitsa. We do not maintain diseases for life. Consuming tablets for life for a particular disease is different to curing it permanently,” Waidya Sampath said.
“In our curative system we do not depend on someone else to give, send or import us the medicines, spending in foreign currency. We know how to make each medicine which is from nature and we take responsibility for the ‘aushada’ (medicinal drugs) we provide,” said Waidya Kalutharage Sampath.
Fear psychosis
He said that there is a fear psychosis created today concerning both food and medicine. He pointed out that this is because the concepts of both food and medicine is understood only within a particular mental or ideological cocoon.
Waidya Kalutharage Sampath had during the height of the Covid-19 virus fully cured patients without oxygen, deemed as too old to be treated in the hospitals practicing Western medicine.
Speaking of the relevance of demystifying wew (traditional Lankan water tanks) and the link with national agriculture; Mass Communication practitioner and Godakawela Pradeshiya Sabha development officer Prasad Harindra Kumara spoke on his initiative taken around ten years ago to create a wewa to supply water to a mass scale cultivation done by him and other farmers in the village of Sankapala in the Embilipitiya region.
“I did this without any support from anyone. What I am told during the scarce visits by politicians to this location is that they cannot support ‘paudgalika’ (personal) wew. I would like to reiterate that there is nothing called a ‘personal wewa.’ A wewa is not a swimming pool that someone uses exclusively. A wewa has a particular philosophy and ideology around it linked with our agrarian national consciousness.
Community initiative
Our ancient monarchs and our ancestors did not build wew to be coveted selfishly for personal use. A wewa is a community initiative – built by the community for the community.”
He said that he may have taken the decision to construct a wewa as an individual but that the rest of the process and the benefitting from it is a community centered matter.
He said that Sri Lanka should stop viewing wew as something done in the past and without significance for today.
“I appeal to all Sri Lankans at this time to understand that we do not have to beg from other nations. We have every single resource we need within this land to ensure our food security. What we have to guard against is poverty of the will and mind,” Harindra Kumara said.
Speaking on the topic ‘Agrarian Security and the link with health and economy’ Local agriculture and Sri Lankan food knowledge and food entrepreneurship activist, Arjuna Pannilage, known as Pannila Podi Wedamahattaya spoke of the importance of each individual understanding the almost limitless range of Lankan foods that is vastly present in the natural environs of Sri Lanka referred to in Sinhala as ‘parisaragathaahara.’
Continue to be afflicted
“We now think that food in Sri Lanka is limited to bread, dhal or potatoes.The fear that Sri Lanka will face a food crisis can manifest into reality only if we continue to be afflicted by this ignorance,” he said.
“There is now a ‘beethikawa’ (a fear psychosis) injected to us by the media which we are absorbing into our minds without realising that we are upon a land that is an untapped goldmine of food,” he said.
He added that while the international community and the world at large may out of genuine sympathy be motivated to send out red alerts concerning Sri Lanka, citing impending food shortages, which are currently leading to countries donating Sri Lanka potatoes and rice, that at least we within this country Sri Lankans should try to understand that there is food and that there is medicine all around us which we are unaware of.”
He reiterated that it is akin to a joke to think that people can starve in this country, the majority can be duped to believe that Sri Lanka is a country where people can starve. If we believe this and wallow in misery, inertia, fear and dependency, this is the foundation for creating a crisis,” he warned.
He said that there are plants and trees that spring up naturally and generally thought of as weeds by especially urban dwellers which are all food citing the Kebella, Kadupahara and Monarakudumbiyaas three examples.
He stressed the importance of focusing on cultivating food such as traditional yams and tubors which do not need chemicals unlike the potatoes we eat commonly. He said that almost every vegetable we purchase is cultivatable even in pots and that it can be incorporated into landscape and even interior design.”
The story of the only Sinhala Wedakam/Ayurveda hospital in Sri Lanka that emerged out of the Covid-19 scenario initially to treat Covid patients was narrated by founder of the Sinhala Weda Uruma Baraya and the Lak Suwa Sahana Maha Weda Gedera, a registered hospital in Kelaniya, Eng. Harsha Kumara Sooriyarachchi and Hospital Director ,Deshiya Waidya Dulari Matararachchi.
“We commenced during the Covid-19 time when Sinhala Wedakama (Deshiya Chikitsa) paramparikawedakama was not encouraged. We mobilised many intellectuals and our Lankan medicine practitioners at a crucial time to put our medicinal heritage to practice and show its modern relevance,” Sooriyarachchi said.
Deshiya Waidya Dulari Mataraarachchi spoke of the national role of correctly understanding the value of Sri Lanka’s human resources in traditional medicinal and interlined food expertise at a time when Sri Lanka was facing medicine shortages and when there were fears of new viruses emerging in the world.
This knowledge was shared at the first event in a series on the topic ‘Combatting food and medicine shortage in Sri Lanka,’held on Thursday June 9, as part of a national discourse organised by researchers of traditional knowledge.
This online series will continue every Thursday and introduce up to four persons each week who are experts on diverse aspects connected to food and health security in the country.
The representation of the above series is island wide.