Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Warding off vampires (sickness?)

I tutor one of the orphanage counselors regularly. We were covering a certain topic and I asked her what she does to avoid getting the flu.

Her first response was that public events and social activities should be canceled for a time. Schools, etc. should be closed to prevent sickness from spreading further.

Then I asked her about her personal approach. She went to her room and returned with a little pouch on a string and explained that one of the other counselors had sewn a bunch by hand for them all to wear.

The woman whom I teach describes herself as "Muslim," but doesn't practice, as far as I know. Meanwhile, the counselor who sewed the pouches is Russian Orthodox.

"What do you do with it?" I asked, fearing some kind of witchcraft. Even among Russian Orthodox believers, some remedies border on paganism.

"You put garlic inside," she said. That wasn't as bad as I thought. If you can eat garlic as a remedy, maybe wearing it also does something? Not something I would try, but...to each his own.

5 comments:

  1. Hey Liz! I have a question regarding some legal changes that I recently heard about from our brother. I basically wanted to know A) if you knew anything about it and B) how it might affect you. I'm going to e-mail you, just wanted to give you a heads up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay. I might post about it if it seems appropriate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think the garlic pouch is to keep the sick- people- away, not necessarily the sickness. I know I wouldn't go near anyone wearing garlic :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, two remedies in one, I guess!

    ReplyDelete

Just added word verification to reduce spam. Nothing personal!

You’re welcome to leave a link to your own blog here if it's relevant to this blog.

Please make sure that your comments are 1) relevant and 2) respectful (i.e. no cuss words, attacks on individuals).

Voices

 In the past month, it has been interesting to read the published thoughts of Russian friends as they've gotten their voice back upon es...