In this book are fifty-two compelling tales that will lead the reader on a journey of discovery of the African continent. It tracks the ancient grail of traditional African medicine or muthi. The journey takes one year, with one story for each of the fifty-two weeks. Many of the stories inherited through Africa s compelling oral tradition are between these covers: committed to paper for the first time ever.The ancient African people were the first aromatherapists who well understood the effect of plants on the human body, mind and soul. Innately spiritual, the thousands of lineages of African people across thousands of years have all used plant medicines for healing, always with the blessing of their ancestors.Knowledge of African plant mythology and its associated healing practices is most certainly a grail because on this great continent we call Africa; knowledge has always been an oral tradition. Because it was never written down, thousands of years of healing wisdom and intelligence have been lost in the transference from one generation to the next.This book endeavors to bring to light the deep history of fifty-two of the thousands of indigenous medicinal plants of Africa before it is too late. The focus is towards Southern Africa because this region is a hotspot of cultural and botanical diversity. Unlike the healing knowledge of other ancient cultures, such as India or China, little of Africa s healing history is recorded.As you read the stories about fifty-two of the continent s prominent indigenous plant cures, the authors hope you, too, will experience some of the magnetism, mystery and wisdom of Africa. They hope it will help you understand a bit more about yourself and about our species: the human being."

When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, Christine Jeske invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The Laziness Myth challenges the widespread premise that hard work determines success by tracing the titular "laziness myth," a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups. Jeske offers evidence of the laziness myth's harsh consequences, as well as insights into how to challenge it with other South African narratives of a good life. In contexts as diverse as rapping in a library, manufacturing leather shoes, weed-whacking neighbors' yards, negotiating marriage plans, and sharing water taps, the people described in this book will stimulate discussion on creative possibilities for seeking the good life in and out of employment, in South Africa and elsewhere.

Note that this is the complete and final version of The Drug Users Bible. People are dying because of ignorance. They are dying because unremitting propaganda is denying them vital safety information. They are dying because legislators and the media are censoring the science, and are ruthlessly pushing an ideological agenda instead. They are dying because the first casualty of war is truth, and the war on drugs is no different. This book makes a significant contribution in confronting this harrowing and tragic narrative. Over a 12 year period the author of this book self-administered over 180 psychoactive substances; both chemicals and plants. For each he recorded the life-sensitive safety data, including the anticipated onset times, the common threshold doses, the routes of administration, and the expected duration of the experience. In addition, for every compound he also produced a trip report, detailing the qualitative experience itself. This delivered another invaluable insight, enabling, for example, an objective assessment of the extent of any loss of judgement and self-control. This is a substantial body of work, embracing a wealth of direct support material, including addiction/overdose advice, relative harm tables, and legal briefings. Its contents also extend to cover aspects such as drug tourism, psychedelic exploration and drug related culture. It is crammed with detailed reference data, and even includes its own drug dictionary. The Drug Users Bible is a unique and unprecedented volume of encyclopaedic research, embracing the full extent of the drugscape. Its objective is to provide, without fear or compromise, core and critical information to support the health, welfare and well-being of the 250 million people in the world who use drugs. The book itself is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of photographs, taken by the author himself. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS The first section comprises a comprehensive introduction to crucial drug concepts and practices. This, in itself, is indispensable prior-reading for anyone who chooses to use a psychoactive substance. It contains, for example, a detailed risk mitigation procedure: 'The 10 Commandments of Safer Drug Use'. This presents a generic set of easily understood steps to aid personal safety, inclusive of an illustrated explanation of how to identity test the substances themselves. THE PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS The full gamut of psychoactive chemicals and botanicals is meticulously covered. Well known examples include heroin, cannabis, xanax, kratom, cocaine, DMT, methamphetamine, ketamine, LSD, ayahuasca, alcohol, and MDMA. Lesser known examples include 4-ho-met, calea, ephenidine, mad honey, mapacho, a-PHP, and yohimbe. The scope also extends well beyond the most common categories, of psychedelics, stimulants, depressants and dissociatives. Included, for example, are dream herbs and nootropics. The investigation of psychoactivity was unbounded and unfettered. THE WORLDSCAPE Drug use does not occur in a vacuum, so the final section considers the wider context, with in-depth examination of everything from travel to the horrors of the war on drugs. Facts, science and genuine statistics replace the myths, fabrications and propaganda of the prevailing social order, again with welfare and safety emphasized. EDUCATION SAVES LIVES Education underpins harm reduction, and is the primary driver throughout. Indeed, personal safety is the first and last message, and guides the entire narrative. This is a book for drug users and their families. It is a book which will help to avert tragedy. It is a book which will save lives.

This handbook explores the diversity of religious practice in tribal cultures in India. It looks at the interactive spaces where the religious practices of tribes and other communities have changed and adapted through the years in contemporary India. Tribe as a social category emerged in India during the colonial period; this handbook departs from the conventional approaches to studying ‘tribal religion’ and analyses the intersections of spirituality, rituals, gender and identities within tribal religion through a crosscultural and pan-Indian perspective. Tribes in India follow various religious denominations including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and traditional indigenous faiths. The chapters in this volume provide insights into the cross-cultural religiosity of tribes via ethnographic accounts and the study of animism, life cycle rituals, ancestor worship, shrines and religious institutions, revivalism, religious identities, religious conversion, transcendental religious spaces and the space for gender, identity and politics within religious traditions. It also discusses conflicts, contestations, anxieties within and the politics of religious traditions and identities in India and how tribal communities and the state negotiate with these issues. This and its companion handbook, The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Readings on Tribe and Religions in India: Emerging Negotiations, provide a comprehensive look into the religious life and practices of a very diverse group of tribes in India. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the fields of religion, anthropology, indigenous and tribal studies, social and cultural anthropology, sociology of culture, sociology of religion, development studies, history, political science, folkloristic, and colonialism.

Seventeen Award Winning Stories Whose Common Claim Is Only To Excellence.

This volume focuses on African indigenous women legends and their potential to serve as midwives for gender empowerment and for contributing towards African feminist theories. It considers the intersection of gender and spirituality in subverting patriarchy, colonialism, anthropocentricism, and capitalism as well as elevating African women to the social space of speaking as empowered subjects with public influence. The chapters examine historical, cultural, and religious African women legends who became champions of liberation and their approach to social justice. The authors suggest that their stories of resistance hold great potential for building justice-loving Earth Communities. This book will be of interest to scholars of religion, gender studies, indigenous studies, African studies, African-indigenous knowledges, postcolonial studies, among others.

Crossing the remote, southern tip of Africa has fired the imagination of European travellers from the time Bartholomew Dias opened up the passage to the East by rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Dutch, British, French, Danes, and Swedes formed an endless stream of seafarers who made the long journey southwards in pursuit of wealth, adventure, science, and missionary, as well as outright national, interest. Beginning by considering the early hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the Cape and their culture, Malcolm Jack focuses in his account on the encounter that the European visitors had with the Khoisan peoples, sometimes sympathetic but often exploitative from the time of the Portuguese to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. This commercial and colonial background is key to understanding the development of the vibrant city that is modern Cape Town, as well as the rich diversity of the Cape hinterland. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Issues for Nov. 1957- include section: Accessions. Aanwinste, Sept. 1957-

This work briefly records the lives and achievements of 502 men and women who contributed, or are still contributing, to the natural history of the Free State and Lesotho, between 1829 and 2013.

This book is an important contribution to the cultural heritage of southern Africa and Lesotho. For the first time, all the Sesotho names for plants and animals are included in one volume, which also accurately records all the plants that are known to be used by the Basotho for food, medicine and traditional practices, together with their correct botanical identities. It will undoubtedly become a standard reference work and valuable resource for future students and academics.