IN 19
‘People will have to start listening to
Rastafarians
in order to survive’ Just like nature, Touzah Jah Bash is thriving during the lockdown. His days are filled with planting in a garden that no longer suffers from the pollution from cars. Without the corridor of carbon monoxide between him and the sea, he now experiences what he calls ‘the fog from the ocean’, something he has been longing for all along. “Oxygen! Life depends on it.”
Y
ou can live up to 30 days without food, one or two days without water, but don’t hold your breath for longer than two minutes. “Oxygen is our first food,” says Touzah Jah Bash. “Yet every island has a road along the seashore, continually functioning. We are living within a circle of pollution, day in, day out.” He shakes his head in dismay. “The trees and plants in the valley are flourishing, but not on this side, near the road. Look at the trees, you can see it for yourself.” Touzah Jah Bash. The farmer, the educator, the healer. And the prophet. A month before the lockdown he said: “For the destruction to stop, you have to wake up civilization. I can’t do it, but nature will.”
What is the lesson to be learned?
“People who was ignoring the true value of the properties
of plants will have to reconsider. You don’t hear about a deadly outbreak of coronavirus among animals, only humans are dying from it. The few animals affected are confined by humans, in zoos, or secluded in a house with humans. But the animals that are free, they know what to do. Have you ever wondered how animals survived for thousands of years without doctors? Animals self-medicate, they know what to eat to heal themselves. I study them and learn from them what to eat.”
We have to study animals in nature to help ourselves?
“Yes. You see, during the dry months, the animals are sick; they have ticks, boils, rashes. But when the rain comes and everything becomes green again, the animals thrive. I knew a cow that was heavily battered during hurricane
Irma. She was cut by branches and had many boils with flies all over. She came by my kitchen and started eating a plant that I never saw a cow eat before. The third time she came back to eat the leaves of Man-Better-Man (Achyrantes Aspera, ed.), she lifted up her head and gave me the eye. It was the last time I saw her. About six months later I asked the owner: “What happened to the cow that was messed up by Irma?” He pointed at a tree. “The brown and white one, you mean? Look, there she is.” I couldn’t believe it. What I saw was a brand new cow. No doctor had come. No chemicals were applied; the cow had cured herself completely.”
What do you eat in a day?
“I eat like the birds. I take the fruits from the trees while I work in my garden, and when I get hungry I dig up a sweet
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potato and boil it to eat. I am experimenting with a new way of planting, I am creating a herb garden. Every year we lose many of the medicinal plants we have in St. Maarten. If we don’t study them now, preserve and cultivate them, we soon will be too far gone to recuperate the true knowledge of nature and healing. If we stick with the animals, value them, not just eat them, we will learn a lot from them.”
Do you eat meat?
“Once it had life, I don’t touch it. I haven’t eaten animal flesh or fish in 45 years. I eat vegetation because it was written that every herb bearing seed and the fruits of the trees shall be called meat for me. And the leaves from it shall be for the healing of the nation.”
Many people interpret the Bible differently.
“The children of Israel had no right to eat the birds that Moses gave them in the desert. But that is what they did want. Sometimes, even when we know that something is not good, when the majority wants it, it will be considered justified. Those who follow after may not know that it was the majority who caused it to be implemented and they just join in and continue with it. But we all know that flesh does not digest in the human body in 24 hours. And the food that you eat must digest and leave the body in 24 hours, otherwise it starts to rot. You end up with bacteria in your organs that should not be there, that cause diseases, and possibly tumors and other abnormalities.”
Do people see you as a medicine man?
“Well, yes, but my true calling is a spiritual man. Because of a lady, Mrs. Adams. One day
