Excerpt: michael's daisies

The letter continued on a sheet written the next day

6-2-1988

Dear Lady
The reason why I am using the Herbs is for what the Elderly Couple told me about its value. I called this Old Couple Ouma and Opa that was staying on the Farm on Mamre Rd in the late 1970s as I was employed nearby as a Power Station Operator I stayed nearby going home once a fortnight leaving on the Friday afternoon then returning on the Sunday afternoon so as to take my duty on the Sunday night at 12 oclock midnight since then 1978 I started using this Herb known as Wilde Kaerkie 100 percent fit as Ouma and Opa told me its value that it purges the Liver + the Blood that this Herb is a real cure for people with Diabetes although I never suffered from any complaint it will keep you as fit as a fiddle Oupa explained to me its very bitter but it is very good for you Michael drink it as a tea early in the Morning + late at Night before going to bed. I found it to be the truth both of them have since passed away God bless them I told their Relatives staying close by in Mamre Township even up to this Day I am still making use of it every third week I purge my Bowels with a laxative tablet for open Bowels to day I really feel fit as a fiddle
Thanking You
Lady
Michael
but I do love my lemon tea
as well
Ja vell ja

Now, twenty years later I have developed diabetes and am wondering where I could get hold of some Wilde Kearkie. I cannot ask Michael any more…

Back then I replied to his letter and told him a bit about my life in the Emirates.

Dear Michael,
Many thanks for your nice letters. As a medical doctor and amateur botanist your information is really interesting to me. I do not know much about herbal medicine. The problem is of course that it is always difficult to determine the doses of the effective substance. I hate to think how many people overdosed on foxglove tea before they extracted digitalis from it to treat heart rhythm complaints. One of my teachers used to say that you give digitalis “ad nauseam” – and he meant it literally: until the patient starts to vomit. Then you have to stop, for what helps can also kill.
Whenever I can I try to find out traditional uses of the wild plants that I find here. It is a bit difficult because the local dialect is not much like classical Arabic (which is what I learned before I cam here). Fortunately I have a friend who loves the outdoors as much as I do, and she has been here for over 30 years and speaks the local dialect fluently. She is a midwife in a remote area and has been present at the birth of almost everyone in that area. Everyone knows her and so we visit the mountain people and have tea with them and talk about the local flora and fauna. That is what I like to do best, but unfortunately I also have to make some money.
I am practicing family medicine here in Dubai. The boss of my clinic is a Lebanese doctor who likes to pretend he is America. He does have an American passport but in his behaviour is a full-blooded Middle Eastern – suave, slick, sly. He can be incredibly charming to those who are his social superiors and incredibly rude to his employees. Our poor Indian lab assistant is blasted almost daily for small errors or even for nothing. I have worked for him for almost two years now and I am not enjoying it very much, so I am looking around for another job.
I live in a wonderful place – a small cottage tucked away from the streets between other houses with my own private driveway (the road leading to the house). The garden is larger than many others in this neighbourhood because the previous owner incorporated part of the dead-end road in the garden, almost doubling its size. It is probably not legal to do such a thing, but no one has complained.
When the previous owner, a friend of mine, moved back to Switzerland he used his connections to let me rent the house that has a very low rent. It is very hard to live in this country without connections. In Arabic it is called “waseta” – sometimes they also call it: “vitamin W”
In any case, I got the house, the houseboy (more about him later) and a number of animals. The most important of these is a breeding pair of Gordon’s Wildcats. When my friend bred them two years ago it was the first time they were ever bred in captivity. Now we have kittens almost twice a year and we are supplying European zoos with them. In the wild they are threatened because of the destruction of their habitat by ever-increasing building of roads and villages. And where people come to live they bring their domestic cats. That forms the second threat to the wildcat’s existence. The domestic tomcats are stronger than the wild ones (better food) and so the cats crossbreed and the pure wildcat disappears. Many of the tabbies roaming around the local towns and villages have wildcat blood in them, but very few people have ever seen the true wildcat. I love them. They are very beautiful, their fur is extremely soft (although I must confess that I only know that because I have hand-raised a few kittens. If they are raised by their mother they are so ferocious you can never pet them. In fact – a local farmer once told me: ‘I would rather encounter a leopard than a wildcat!’) Although their markings resemble those of an ordinary tabby cat, there are differences: a wildcat has no white fur anywhere, the stripes are very faint on the body and only deep black on the tail and the lower legs. The feet are black underneath all the way up to their heels, they have pale circles around their eyes (like glasses) and they have tiny tufts at the tips of their ears. You have this cat also in South Africa, but it is a slightly different sub species.
The other group of animals I inherited from my friend is a breeding group of marmosets – a very small south American monkey. They live in an aviary in the garden and have their nightbox in the kitchen with a tube of chicken wire running along the kitchen wall connecting them. They are lovely to watch as they play in the shrubs and ropes with which I have decorated their avairy (and they like watching me through the kitchen window when I do the dishes).
I also have some other animals, but I’ll tell you about them (and the houseboy) later because I have to do some work.
My best regards to you, Michael
Marijcke