The End of Arizona Cactus Garden
The end of Arizona Cactus Garden. (Uploaded August 2003)
I consider myself to be immensely fortunate to be alive as a human being, at this time in history and in a country like Australia. In my 57 years I have traveled widely (some 40 countries), read thousands of books and had experiences matched by relatively few individuals. In 1991 I registered “Arizona Cactus Garden” business name. (With the exception of 2 years, the sales have been growing every year.) In the same year I started a “Proprietary limited” company, but in time it was obvious - the business wasn’t meant to be. In 1994 I was introduced to one kind of health food - Spirulina. I was so impressed with it, I started marketing it and reading everything connected with Spitulina and alternative health. In 1998 I enrolled in a dietitian’s course, which I finished in November 2002. I have learnt many things about health, nutrition, medicine, life, etc., which greatly changed my view of this world and our life in it. My priorities are very different to what they used to be.
According to some statistics, only 8% of new businesses survive beyond the first five years. Looks like I have enough business talent to keep both businesses going longer than 92% of those who try it. The businesses didn’t make me wealthy, but I am earning enough money to pay the bills, house mortgage, daughter’s education, buy decent clothes, healthy food and have holidays now and then as well. I don’t dream of being a millionaire - I don’t need to impress girls with my material riches - I made it this far without millions and I feel myself to be (economically) much better off than most people in this world. I would like to help those that are less fortunate than I am - not only people, but all God’s creatures. I am going to register a non-profit organization, or foundation, or a charity. Then I will de-register Arizona Cactus Garden and transfer all the inventory of Arizona Cactus Garden as a gift, or a donation to the foundation / non-profit organization / charity that I am going to register.
The main objective of the organization will be preservation of rare and endangered animals and plants. The idea is still in an embryonic stage, but broadly speaking - some villagers in several locations of the very poor countries (where they earn as little as $300 per year) will be financially supported by the foundation. In return the villagers will be like guardians (or game wardens) of an endangered animal such as a rhinoceros, or a troop of gorillas, or chimpanzees, following them all the time, making observations of their habits (like Jane Goodall), and their constant presence acting as a deterrent to poachers. Depending on financial situation, I would like to see the wardens to be equipped with mobile phones, or two-way radios. If they will observe anything that should be taken care of by authorities (police, army, wildlife conservation, public health, and various emergencies) they will have the means to inform the authorities of the problem. But that’s not all - they would be collecting data on all herbal medicines in the area - mainly from old traditional healers, who are the depositories of the experience and knowledge of countless generations of native healers. These guardians would also become knowledgeable on the local plant and animal life. With the growth of eco-tourism, there would be an opportunity for the foundation to offer the guardians as tourist guides. They would be ideal for it - they would know the habits of the local animals - where and when would be the best chance to see those animals. They would also know the locations of some rare and/or unusual plants. I have noticed that flora and fauna photo safaris are getting more and more popular and this would help the villagers towards self-sufficiency. If money was available, I’d like to see the foundation to buy some land and establish nurseries for tourist to visit, and to propagate local rare plants. These nurseries would grow not only the local plants, but also cacti and succulents from all corners of the world, to export the plants and seeds. I would like to see them harvesting wild growing and/or farming medical herbs and process them in compliance with western countries’ health regulation, so that these products can be exported to industrial countries, where the popularity of herbal medicines is continuously growing.
I would like the foundation to encourage villagers to branch out into farming plant foods native to their area, but with some unique nutritional and/or healing properties that would pay them more money than growing bananas, coffee and tobacco, which earns them a pittance. Fruits and vegetables markets in western countries are always looking for some new and exotic produce to offer their customers. Genetically modified foods are filling the shelves of supermarkets in the west and we don’t know what it will do to our descendants in five or ten or hundred generations. Genetically modified canola kills the magnificent monarch butterflies. If it is deadly to those little creatures, I don’t believe it will be 100% safe for humans. We need to utilize as much of the foods that our ancestors lived on, we don’t need Frankenfoods, we need to make a better use of what Mother Nature has for us. One British website has a database of almost 7,000 plants that can be grown for their food, fuel, fibers, medicines or whatever, so there is no shortage of plants to choose from.
I would like to get schools involved - Australian schools would have sister schools in those poor countries. I would plead with corporations to donate written off computers with modems to the foundation. The computers and also some cheap digital cameras, would then be donated to the sister schools in the poor countries. The foundation would be paying for the Internet connections. Somebody in the school would be an administrator of the equipment. The schools would be exchanging emails, each of the the game wardens would have their own web page and would have to update the page at regular intervals.
There are fantastic opportunities waiting for farmers/gardeners in Australia as well. Kedrostis foetidissima is a very effective treatment for asthma, piles, sore throat and chest pains. Hoodia gordonii - native to the Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa and used by indigenous San bushmen to stave off hunger during long hunting expeditions is to be developed by Pfizer pharmaceutical company into a remedy to fight obesity. The six foot plants contain an active ingredient which research has shown could reduce appetite by up to 2,000 calories a day. Anybody growing them in Australia, slicing and drying them and offering them as a dried fruit (that’s how the bushmen consume it) will create a gold mine on their farm. And it doesn’t have to be just Hoodia gordonii - all species in the genus are used by the bushmen. Another very useful plant for slimming is Rhodiola rosea - check a few web sites about it. Another incredible plant would be maca and several other tubers from South America. Then there are several genera of cacti that produce rather large fruits - the best known of them is the “dragon fruit” which can be bigger than a large mango and sells for up to AU$ 10.00 each. Fruits of Hylocereus undatus were the first to be called the name, but these days the fruits of other Hylocereus species, as well as Selenicereus, some Cerei (Cereus peruvianus is sometimes called "Peruvian Apple Cactus") and I think some Stenocerei as well. Selenicereus grandiflorus is one of the best things for bad heart and I know it would grow well the northern parts of Australia.
If I were younger, I would definitely start a cacti and succulents nursery. The demand for them in very near future will explode. There is not a day that somebody on TV or radio or in papers wouldn’t mention the worsening water situation and the increasing restrictions on water uses in the future. In my last house I didn’t water the front garden for the last eight years I was there and it was still attractive enough to make it onto the front page of the local paper. It was a landmark in my street. The huge advantage of the succulent plants is the fact that during dry weather the plants may shrivel up, but after first rain they will soak water up and look fantastic. Some succulents can make incredible bonsais within a few years. Some of the cacti and succulents have unbelievable healing properties.
Now that I have a diploma in nutrition, dieting and eating disorders and my daughter is studying myotherapy, I am dreaming of buying a property to turn it into obesity / eating disorders treatment centre, using some elements of ‘instincto’ dieting philosophy, as well as CRON (calories restrictions with optimum nutrition), and food combining. For anorexia patients I would use one method used in Great Britain very successfully since 1980’s. I hope there would be a chance for a succulent nursery and organic gardening of herbs, fruits and vegetables for consumption by the centre.
There is a great wealth of information available on the effectiveness, preparations and dosages of European and Asian herbs. There is much less info available on African and American herbs, yet the snippets of information available do indicate a veritable treasure chest of medicines with traditions of countless generations, much more effective than the pharmaceutical medicines, with much less serious side effects and hundreds of years of proven safety track record. These are the medicines of the future. (One of them is Lophophora - if there is anybody with an exceptionally green finger I would recommend they grow it. A friend of mine is very skilled in Indian herbal medicine - he would certainly make a very good use of all the plants that he could get - there is an incredible future for it - when used in dozes of about one tent required for a psychadelic trip it is incredibly effective for stomach ulcers. Extracts from Lophophora plants ARE A CURE FOR LEUKEMIA. It is incredibly effective for healing cuts and bruises, sunburn and as a disinfectant - just wondering if all the viruses and bacteria die of a mescal overdose; also wondering what kind of hallucinations would viruses and bacteria have.)
I have immense respect and admiration for modern medicine - it is awesome and doctors can do miracles. But it seems to me that at present the modern medicine is going through its adolescent years. Mark Twain once said: “When I was a teenager my father was so dumb it was embarrassing. By the time I was twenty one he learnt so much I was amazed and truly proud of him.”
At the moment modern medicine is trying desperately to divorce it self from anything even remotely similar to any of the traditional healing methods (parents of modern medicine). Alternative medicine practitioners in their eyes are nothing but snake oil merchants, witch doctors, sorcerers, quacks and opportunists trying to cheat out of gullible ill people their last dollar. Stephen Barrett, a de-licensed MD, operating “Quackwatch” out of his basement in Allentown, PA, USA is the grand inquisitor on behalf of the modern medicine. Reading his articles gives me the impression that every health provider, who uses anything else but scalpels and pharmaceutical drugs, should be burnt at a stake. The methods of these modern days witch hunters are getting more and more radical, but the traditional medicine will weather it, just like it did survive the most brutal excesses of holy inquisition of the Christian church, and just like the most dedicated and caring parents will weather the hatred and abuse of their rebellious adolescent children. Every parent is aware that a vast majority of teenagers know everything and if the parents tell them they have a lot to learn yet, the teenagers get really annoyed. If an alternative medicine practitioner tells the orthodox medicine establishment that some treatment can work without us understanding what is happening and why and how, they dismiss it as quackery, old wives tales, without scientific evidence, unsupported by double blind trials, etc.
In China and India the modern medical establishments are much more mature than in the west. I believe that in China students of modern medicine do get substantial training in the traditional Chinese medicine, which has written records going back to 2952 B.C. I don’t think it is an official government policy in India to give the students of modern medicine much training in the arts of folk healers, but Indian Ayurveda traditions go back some 5000 years. Those Indian and Chinese doctors trained in modern western medicine have the advantages of knowledge gained through microscopes, microbiology, biochemistry, x-rays, etc. Even high school chemistry is good enough to explain how lack of, or imbalances of minerals, vitamins and other nutrients can cause serious health problems. None of this knowledge was available to anybody until VERY, VERY recently. Yet these Chinese and Indian doctors, while growing up in the villages couldn’t help it but remember how the traditional healers were able to fix just about all of the health problems of the villagers by using traditional healing methods. Salesmen of US pharmaceutical companies couldn’t just walk to these doctors and tell them that everything they’ve seen and experienced in connection with the traditional medicine is not worth second thought, because the effectiveness wasn’t scientifically proven. Those healers most likely still don’t know why their treatments work, but they have 5000 years of trials, experimentations, observations, eliminations of items that have serious side effects, and useless items in the prescriptions. 250 years ago nobody knew why lemons prevent scurvy, they just knew it. These days we know it is Vitamin C. These days there are so many things in traditional medicines that are far superior to treatments with pharmaceutical drugs, but because modern sciences cannot explain the reasons for their effectiveness, western medical establishments dismiss those treatments as unscientific, unproven, placebo, spontaneous healing, anecdotal evidence, etc and they will do their utmost to discredit them. If Stephen Barrett of “Quackwatch” went to India and started handing out copies of his article “Ayurvedic Mumbo-Jumbo”, he would be laughed out of the country.
Another major objective of the foundation would be to research the effectiveness of alternative medicines using the same criteria that are used in the evaluations of the latest medical treatments. Much of the research has already been done elsewhere, but it is not publicized enough. The foundation will publicize the most effective traditional medicines.
Volunteers would do most of the work. As much as possible of the administrative work would be done in those poor countries, where the payment for their work would eat much less into the funds than if the work was done here. Several years ago it was disclosed that the manager of one well-known charity organization was paying himself a salary of AU$ 150,000/year out of the donations. When criticized, he responded - “if you pay peanuts, you get monkies working for you”. I was outraged and never donated a penny to that charity again. During my travels in the Third World countries I met so many missionaries, who were paid peanuts for all their work. And they did it all for the love of fellow human beings, not for money. They had a lot more respect from me than the manager. I know there is a lot of corruption in those countries, but I also know there are lots of dedicated, honest and hardworking individuals, who would be very helpful to this foundation. Most of them really “Do unto others, as they would have them do unto themselves” - too kind to become rich.
I would like to hear your comments about my visions and plans and I would like you to suggest some names for the foundation - something like “For all God’s creatures”, or “My planet for my children”, or “Second chance”, or “Survival of the Kindest”.
(As for the name of the non profit foundation, I made my decision in October 2003. I described in the “Save Hoodia gordonii” page: I decided on Brotherhood Of Kindred Souls - BOKS and I already reserved an internet domain - www.boks.ws (ws stands for website). I chose to include "soul’ in it because a soul has no skin colour, no body shape, size, or weight, no sex, no age, it cannot be judged by the clothes it wears, what car it drives, what neighbourhood it lives in, what is its level of education, by the size of its bank account, by its eloquence, social class, occupation, religion, race, nationality, language, only by deeds and attitudes. Another reason to include "soul" in the name was to remind those hardnosed scientists, who will not acknowledge the existence of anything that cannot be measured, weighed, tested, manipulated in laboratories, etc. - there are things that everybody knows about, but nobody can prove their existence. Brotherhood is defined as an association of men (and women) with common interests and aims. One of the definitions of "kindred" is "similar in nature, character’, something like soul-mates. In other words, it could have been called Association of like-minded individuals interested in performing and/or supporting good deeds. Membership in the Brotherhood will be open to anybody that will do or support good deeds.)