Skip to main content

The Chief who saved his village in the influenza epidemic of 1918.


During this covid-19 pandemic we can learn from what worked 100 years ago during the 1918-1919 pandemic.   

This is a story of a small village called Syatiminda in Africa in what was then Northern Rhodesia and is now Zambia. This village was located not far from the village of Kanchindu in the valley of the Zambesi River.   

The homes at the time were similar to the one shown in the photo below which was taken in Kasenga another village in the region.  The photo was taken a little more than a decade after the time of the 1918-19 pandemic in the 1930s.   

As occurred elsewhere in the world during the pandemic of 1918-1919, communities in Northern Rhodesia were devastated by the pandemic with many people being infected and with many lives lost.  There was an exception in the village of Syatiminda.  

Here the Chief, whose  name was Chief Syatiminda (also spelled in one reference Siatwinda), felt, perhaps prompted by the local government, that the virus was transmitted inside the homes where people were very close together.  He decided that the best option was to keep people outside their homes during the day.  He felt that his people would be healthiest if they were outside and that they were protected by being outside and healthy.   He therefore mandated that everyone in the village had to leave their homes at sunrise and not return until sunset.  

Remarkably, the village largely escaped the ravages that were being experienced in many other nearby villages at the time. 

My father used to tell me the story of this village and what had happened.  He was a good observer and a good recorder of details.  He was two years old in 1918 and survived the epidemic in Kasenga at the time.  When he was 16, he returned to Zambia (Northern Rhodesia then), in the summer of 1932, visited the community of Syatiminda and met Chief Syatiminda.  He made the following observations in his diary written at the time:


At Syatiminda, the name of a chief and also his village, we paused to see the chief.  He is a very notable man and very progressive.   

During a flu epidemic [1918-1919] he gave orders to the effect that nobody was to be inside their huts from sunrise to sunset. He also prepared a medicine from the sap of the baobab and only 2 small children died.  This is extraordinary when in many cases, whole villages were wiped out by the epidemic.”  

My grandfather and grandmother were in the village of Kasenga during the time of the 1918-1919 pandemic.  My grandfather was a physician and he was in Kasenga as a medical missionary.  He helped people in Kasenga and in the nearby villages and would, I am sure have talked to my father about what had happened during the pandemic.  So my father's observations would have been backed up by the information he had gathered from my grandfather.  

It is paradoxical that today we tell people to stay home during the current pandemic, and Chief Syatiminda kept people healthy by ordering them to go outside. Perhaps part of the reason for the difference is that when people were outside in 1918-1919 they not only kept healthy, but they also were more physically separated than they would have been if they had stayed inside. 

It is also important to point out that even during the present epidemic, the general advice has been to go outside to get exercise, but to do it safely by ensuring physical distancing.  A CBC report  by Stephanie Hogan on March 25th provides good advice on how to go outside and get some exercise during the covid-19 pandemic.  You can find it by clicking on this link.    

As a final comments, I do know that my father was influenced enough by Chief Syataminda's story so that for the rest of his life he recommended and practiced getting outside for fresh air and exercise every day - and he lived until he was two months short of being 97 years old. 



Comments

  1. My name is Johannes van der Weijden, a former teacher of Namwala Secondary School. This school was mentioned in the book Africa Calling on page 169. Page 170 mentiones the name of Mr. Maonde, my headmaster in those days. Last year we installed an isolation ward for the Namwala District Hospital which helps the hospital to deal with the actual pandemic.
    Besides the supporting of the Namwala Secondary School, we try to found a Museum on the Ila Culture in Namwala. For this reason I collected a lot of documents and other relevant information on the history of the Baila and have compiled it in a book.
    I would appreciate it very much to come into contact with you. Noting the above article and the picture, I can imagine that you might have additional materials which has not yet published.
    Please have a look on our Website: https://www.namwalafriends.org/en/
    Hoping to hear from you soon.
    Kind regards
    Johannes van der Weijden, Switzerland

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dougald Lamont speaks at Meth Forum last night to present positive ideas to address the epidemic, while exposing the lack of action by the Pallister Conservatives

Last night at the Notre Dame Recreation Centre in St. Boniface, at an Election Forum on the Meth Crisis in Manitoba, Dougald Lamont spoke eloquently about the severity of the meth epidemic and described the Liberal plan to address it.  The Liberal Plan will make sure that there is a single province-wide phone number for people, or friends of people, who need help dealing with meth to call (as there is in Alberta) and that there will be rapid access to a seamless series of steps - stabilization, detoxification, treatment, extended supportive housing etc so that people with meth addiction can be helped well and effectively and so that they can rebuild their lives.  The Liberal meth plan will be helped by our approach to mental health (putting psychological therapies under medicare), and to poverty (providing better support).  It will also be helped by our vigorous efforts to help young people understand the problems with meth in our education system and to provide alternative positive

Manitoba Liberal accomplishments

  Examples of Manitoba Liberal accomplishments in the last three years Ensured that 2,000 Manitoba fishers were able to earn a living in 2020   (To see the full story click on this link ). Introduced a bill that includes retired teachers on the Pension Investment Board which governs their pension investments. Introduced amendments to ensure school aged children are included in childcare and early childhood education plans moving forward. Called for improvements in the management of the COVID pandemic: ·          We called for attention to personal care homes even before there was a single case in a personal care home. ·            We called for a rapid response team to address outbreaks in personal care homes months before the PCs acted.  ·          We called for a science-based approach to preparing schools to   improve ventilation and humidity long before the PCs acted. Helped hundreds of individuals with issues during the pandemic including those on social assistance

The Indigenous Science Conference in Winnipeg June 14-16

  June 14 to 16, I spent three days at the Turtle Island Indigenous Science Conference.  It was very worthwhile.   Speaker after speaker talked of the benefits of using both western or mainstream science and Indigenous science.  There is much we can learn from both approaches.   With me above is Myrle Ballard, one of the principal organizers of the conference.  Myrle Ballard, from Lake St. Martin in Manitoba, worked closely with Roger Dube a professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, and many others to make this conference, the first of its kind, a success.  As Roger Dube, Mohawk and Abenaki, a physicist, commented "My feeling is that the fusion of traditional ecological knowledge and Western science methodology should rapidly lead the researchers to much more holistic solutions to problems."   Dr. Myrle Ballard was the first person from her community to get a PhD.  She is currently a professor at the University of Manitoba and the Director of Indigenous Science