From Nafanua: Saving
the Samoan Rain Forest
(pp. 18, 28-30)
by
© 1997 by Paul Alan Cox.
Used with permission of W.H. Freeman and Company.
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Editor's note: In Nafanua, Paul Alan Cox lets us experience with him the immense beauty and frightening vulnerability of the Samoan rain forest. Cox, an ethnobotanist, went to Samoa initially seeking a treatment for cancer; working with local healers, he instead discovered prostratin, a plant-based drug that offered promise as a treatment for AIDS. He also conceived a deep reverence for the forest, which, in addition to its critical importance to the local people, sustains unique plant and animal life, and he has become a major figure in efforts to conserve it. Samoan legend tells of the goddess Nafanua, champion of the people and protector of the rain forest. By turns dramatic, amusing, and poetic, Cox's story evokes her spirit with a richness and depth borrowed from the forest itself.
Here, Cox describes his family's first encounter with the natural wonders of the forest, and later relates some lessons learned from Pela, a Samoan healer.
As we rounded another bend, the Falealupo rain forest came into view, a vast green canopy of leaf and liana, stretching three miles before disappearing in the haze. A few hundred feet more brought us to the edge of the forest, where the dirt road took on the aspect of a bower, framed on every side by huge trees. As we entered the forest, there was a perceptible drop in temperature. The cool air sparkled with the sounds of birds - not the exotic cacophony so often dubbed into Hollywood shots of "jungle," but the gentle purring of fruit pigeons calling to their mates and the rustle of honeycreeper wings.
Light filtered through the leafy canopy high overhead, giving the forest a play of shadow and iridescence like a Gothic cathedral's. Indeed, the forest light had a luminescent quality that could have been transmitted through a rose window. I thought of a Samoan couplet: "Ua pa'u le vao, ua liligo le taeao" ("The forest echoes with sacredness, the morning is silent as dew.")
All of us stared up at the long and twisted cables of woody lianas high overhead. Small shafts of bamboolike Flagellaria vines intermittently shot up toward the canopy. Freycinetia vines, with their long, linear leaves, covered the tree trunks. Beneath canopy and vine, the forest was open, consisting of a carpet of bright green ferns and an occasional sapling. The play of light and shadow, the massiveness of the tree trunks, and the openness of the forest floor reminded me of a redwood grove. Towering above the canopy, several massive banyan trees stood, their arms held aloft not by single massive trunks, but by a twisted maze of aerial roots. Their branches were covered with epiphytes: climbing ferns, twisted streams of Piper vines, Collospermum lilies with silvery swordlike leaves, and myriads of small, cherubic orchids, so rare that any one of them would incite a near riot among collectors.
The next morning, I continued my interview with Pela by discussing Samoan disease categories.
"What are some examples of diseases you treat with plants?" I asked.
"That vine over there," Pela said pointing to a beach morning glory, Ipomoea pes-caprae, "is useful for mumu."
"That refers to something that is red and swollen, doesn't it?"
"Sometimes," Pela replied.
"What else does it refer to?" I asked.
"There is mumu ta'ai," she said. "It's associated with fever that goes around in the body but can't come out. And there's mumu fefete. The skin swells, but there is a palpitation associated with the swelling."
When Pela finished, I studied the list of fifteen different varieties of mumu that I had written in my notebook, ranging from partial paralysis to skin eruptions.
"These seem to be such different symptoms," I said. "What unites them all into a single disease?"
"I don't know," said Pela. "I just know that they are all types of mumu".
"How could I tell if I saw someone with mumu?" I asked. "Is there any single indication that would tell me that someone has mumu instead of some other disease?"
"You just have to learn them," Pela said.
Pela and I left our fale [house] and strolled along the beach. Picking up a beach morning glory, Pela said, "We call this plant fue moa. Sometimes the children play with the fruits like little tops. But it is very useful for mumu. And that plant," she said, gesturing toward a beach pea, Vigna marina, "we call fuefue sina. I use it to treat mumu lele, a condition that sometimes proves fatal to new mothers."
I collected samples of both plants and returned to our fale with Pela. I attached the solar panel to the computer and recorded the data for each collection: the plant's Latin name, the precise location where I collected it, the date of collection, and the local names and medicinal uses Pela had described. I next spread a piece of the plant on a sheet of newsprint, wrote its Latin name and collection number on top of the sheet, and placed the sheet inside blotters in the plant press. Pharmacological specimens followed. On a cutting block I chopped up the remaining parts of each plant and stuffed the pieces into Sigg aluminum bottles, originally manufactured in Switzerland for transport of fuel by mountain climbers. I poured ethyl alcohol into each bottle to preserve the plant, slipped a small piece of paper with the plant name and collection number written in pencil into the top of the bottle, and labeled the outside of the bottle with the collection number and plant name with a marking pen.
During our first week in Falealupo my work with Pela progressed, but not as I quickly as I had hoped. To get a better idea of Pela's concepts of diseases, I asked her to name every disease she knew as I wrote each name on a three-by-five card. Soon we had a large pile of cards on the mat in front of us. I then handed the cards to Pela and asked her to place them in groups.
"How do you want me to group them?"
"However you wish."
Pela fiddled with the cards, and then began to place them in piles. One pile consisted of all of the mumu diseases. Another pile consisted of ila diseases, skin ailments she identified as occurring in children. Another stack of cards was for tulitā - a group of diseases characterized by abdominal distress. Soon there were several piles. It appeared that in Pela's system most diseases had two names - a generic term such as mumu and a specific modifier such as lele combining to form mumu lele. Pela's card sorting was entirely consistent with a theory developed by anthropologist Brent Berlin, who argued that indigenous peoples usually adopt binomials in classifying the natural world. Based on studies in Central America, Berlin also suggested that indigenous peoples invariably employ five levels of hierarchy in their classification schemes. Pela had documented the first two. Excited to see the next hierarchical level in Samoan classification, I produced string and Scotch tape.
"What I'd like you to do, Pela, is to show me how the diseases in these different piles are related to each other."
Pela looked puzzled.
"For example, if these two piles are closer to each other than they are to any of the other piles, I'd connect them with string like this."
I stretched the string between the two piles and taped the ends onto the top cards.
Pela looked frustrated, but seeing my eagerness, she pointed out several different piles of cards to connect with string. After fastening the string between the piles with tape, I asked her what she called these new groupings. Pela was again puzzled.
"For example, Pela, you've connected the mumu pile and the ila pile. Why?"
"Because you wanted me to."
"Yes, but what do these piles have in common with each other?"
"I don't know."
I explained to Pela that many people group birds or plants into species, genera, and families. Different peoples have different types of classification schemes, with different types of hierarchy. Pela looked at me. "I really don't think about things that way," she said.
"So this pile here that you call mumu doesn't have any relationship to any other group of diseases?"
Pela shook her head. It was apparent that although she used binomials to categorize diseases, she had no higher level of taxonomic hierarchy, a remarkable finding. Samoan disease classification consists of unrelated groups of binomials. Some of the words Pela used, such as ila or mumu, appear in disease classifications in Tahiti and other distant islands. Perhaps anciently there was a well-articulated Polynesian disease classification system, with consistent connections between different modules.
But I was disturbed by the apparent arbitrariness of the task I had set for her - Pela had begun to tape connections between the piles merely to appease me. Like Procrustes, who guaranteed a perfect fit to his bed for all guests by either chopping off their legs or stretching them on a rack, I had attempted to force Pela's knowledge into divisions of my own making. Fortunately Pela resisted. Had she complied, I would have ended up with simply an echo of my own preconceptions.
Paul Alan Cox, one of the world's leading ethnobotanists, is dean of general education and honors, and professor of botany, at Brigham Young University.
Pictured above is the beach morning glory (Ipomoea pes-caprae); Samoan name, fue moa. From Nafanua (p. 146). Drawing by Michael Rothman.
Endlinks
Heroes of Medicine: The Plant Hunter - details Cox's role in saving the Falealupo rain forest. One of a series of online reports on medical innovation from Time.
The WWW Ethnobotanical Resource Directory - an extensive set of links covering both educational and networking resources.
Ethnobotany - a series of introductory articles on ethnobotany. From Access Excellence, this series was designed for young students, but is also informative for those unfamiliar with this field.
Rainforest Remedies: Shaman Pharmaceuticals, Inc. - an HMS Beagle Profile of the company that is based on finding new drugs from the traditional medicine of other cultures.
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