BBCi Removes All References To Complementary Therapies

You may not be aware that last week the controllers of BBCHealth (www.bbc.co.uk/health) , the health section on one of the most accessed websites in the world, decided to remove all coverage of complementary medicine!

They used to have substantial coverage with over 40 pages on this subject covering all the major therapies, their pros and cons, evidence for their effectiveness, how to find a qualified practitioner, etc.

However the site has in recent months been targeted by the self-appointed 'Quackbusters', (scientists and medics vehemently opposed to complementary therapies such as Prof David Colquhon et al) who sent a deluge of letters and emails claiming that complementary therapies such as homeopathy and cranial osteopathy were 'unscientific' and should be removed. As a result large chunks of this part of the site were simply removed overnight and now, following recent cutbacks, it was decided that, rather than update this part of the site, it should simply be removed altogether!

It may seem incredible that a public service site this prominent can deem complementary medicine so insignificant that it no longer warrants any coverage other than the odd news story. This is despite the fact that complementary medicine is used favourably by a significant proportion of the population (recent surveys have estimated that around 1 in 5 Britons use it at some point or other) and that increasing numbers of people are now seeking to train in these therapies.

However, as the 'quack busters' become more organised and active, evidence of the backlash against complementary medicine is appearing all over the place - such as the removal of NHS Trust funding for homeopathy, the threatened closure of the homeopathic hospitals, many negative news stories in the press and so on. Rather than taking a reasoned view and considering the evidence from good research studies on complementary medicine these individuals seem simply hell bent on trying to 'stamp out' complementary medicine in any way possible. The BBCi removal of complementary medicine coverage (which has been in place for almost 15 years!) is one example.

If you care about complementary medicine and believe information pages on it should be returned to BBCi, please, please take just a minute to express your views using their online comment form at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/

to make your view known. As a public service company they have to listen to your views so your email will make a difference. Apparently for all the many letters and emails that they received that were against complementary medicine they only received a handful in support. Therefore if you are in support please let them know so they may revise their thinking on this subject.

Please act as soon as possible and pass on these details to anyone else you know who may also be willing to write in support of complementary medicine.

If you have found homoeopathy beneficial you can support a campaign to promote homoeopathy by visiting http://www.homeopathyworkedforme.org/ .

Thank you!

Martin Miles Obituary

Martin Miles, homoeopath and the founder of The Society Of Homeopaths died recently. You can read his book of condolences at this address.

http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-the-society-/founder.aspx

Martin Miles FSHom 29/08/1947 – 27/09/2007

Martin Miles taught that homeopathy can create shining spirits. He was a man of modesty, a man who helped countless people with severe pathology, a man who inspired a love of homeopathy, a man with many friends and no enemies.

He started in practice in 1976, and with others in 1978 set up the College of Homeopathy and the Society of Homeopaths of which he was the first chair. Martin was a quiet yet humorous man - deep thinking, generous, a little mysterious, almost as if steeped in another time. It seems as if this was born out of his extraordinary introduction to homoeopathy through Thomas Maughan who regarded Martin as his amanuensis. Thomas had more or less saved his life by giving him not just remedial treatment but also a discipline and a focus. Their relationship was very much one of master and apprentice and this is how Martin saw homoeopathy being carried forward into the future. He always adhered to the belief that homeopathy should not only be taught, but had to be absorbed through witnessing others at work.

Martin originated from the East End of London where his father had been a travel agent, which was Martin’s occupation when he became involved in homeopathy. Maughan had studied homeopathy probably in the tradition of Clarke, Burnett, Cooper, and later Wheeler and Kenyon. Maughan taught a homeopathy class in South East London which Martin attended, and which Martin then taught for many years after Maughan’s death.

Martin took his Jewish roots very seriously, yet he was remarkably eclectic in his choice of philosophies to plunder for inspiration. He was fascinated by and very knowledgeable about ancient Egypt. He was one of the first to strongly advocate understanding of the chakras as a means to forming a prescribing strategy. His idiosyncratic methodology was, despite apparent complexity, remarkably simple: always support the patient where he is weakest or most vulnerable even while prescribing the indicated remedy. Thus and by dint of his great knowledge of remedy relationships, he developed multi-aspect prescriptions by which his patients received what Martin always regarded as the minimum: the indicated remedy, chakra support and drainage. He is also to be credited with consistently preaching and practising the frequent prescribing of the nosodes to support constitutional treatment, a legacy of Maughan’s.

In the early 1990s, he formed the Guild of Homeopaths with Janice Micaleff and Colin Griffiths. For a period of ten years, from 1992, the Guild engaged in a systematic programme of provings of new remedies directed toward supporting existing remedies, the endocrine system, and subtle anatomy. Martin was a leader of the Guild graduate course.

To have known Martin as a friend was good, but to have known him as a homeopathic colleague was special. His working life was unique; he turned the work of prescribing homeopathically into an art. He so obviously found homeopathy creative and fulfilling. How he practised homeopathy was unlike anybody else, and those of us who have learnt from him and think of ourselves as erstwhile apprentices, are aware of his achievement of stretching the boundaries of homeopathy a little further in order to cater for all the vastly increased ills that we are asked to consider nowadays. He was fearless in the clinic, unbridled in his contempt for the worst excesses of conventional science, prepared to take responsibility for prescribing in any situation. Yet he always insisted that the great prescribers of the past should be revered as truth-seekers: Hahnemann, Hering, Compton-Burnett, Cooper, Clarke and others, not least Thomas Maughan.
He continued in his thriving practice in the Blackheath and Bexley areas of south east London and teaching in the UK and overseas right until he became ill. He had been married twice and is survived by his three children, Alistair, James and Sarah.

Publications:
1994 Homeopathy and Human Evolution Winter Press.
1998 Interview with Martin Miles, The American Homeopath

This obituary was composed by Francis Treuherz FSHom with the help of Colin Griffiths RSHom and Jerome Whitney.

Websites Supporting Homoeopathy / वेबसाइट्स सुप्पोर्तिंग होमेओप्ति

After you've had a look at H:MC21 website you can look at these others which also support homoeopathy.

http://woowooscienc e.com/

http://freetochoose health.wordpress .com/

http://laughingmyso cksoff.wordpress .com/

Has Homoeopathy Worked For You? / हस होमोएओपथ्य् वोर्केद फॉर यू ?

Has homoeopathy worked for you?

Maybe you're familiar with the controversial research article in Lancet that found homoeopathy to have no effect in clinical trials. Whether the article was biased or not, there's enough people (and animals) in the world who have benefitted from homoeopathic treatment. If you are one of them you can add your voice to a campaign which promotes homoeopathy at the H:MC21 website.

Please note that H:MC21 is a non-profit-making organisation in the process of applying for charity status.

H:MC21 – Homeopathy: Medicine of the 21st Century
For details see www.hmc21.org


With as little as £5 you can help us make the
‘Homeopathy worked for me’ campaign successful

Dear Colleagues and Friends

Thank you for signing our declaration, and for your interest in our work. At the time of writing this message – and after five weeks of mainly word-of-mouth campaigning - we have already collected over 3,500 signatures.

But we need over 1,000 a day in order achieve our target of 250,000. We have some exciting projects planned to do this, but at the moment we have no money to fund them.

So, we are now turning to you all to donate whatever you can afford. This is our all chance to make history and put homeopathy back on the medical map where it truly belongs.

Please donate whatever you can: £5, £10, £100 or even more.

We do not yet have an online donation facility, but are working on it. In the meantime, please send cheques, made payable to H:MC21, to

The Treasurer
H:MC21
The Old Farmhouse
37 Filgrave, Bucks MK16 9ET

Or make a bank transfer to

H:MC21
at Abbey, Account No. 43159698, Sort Code 09-06-66

बेन गोल्दाक्रे, बुस्तेद ! / Ben Goldacre, Busted !

In a November posting you can read part of a response by Jeanette Winterson to an article in The Guardian by Ben Goldacre. Niow you can find out a little more about who Ben Goldacre is and who he works for.

AGANST DR BEN GOLDACRE

Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism is Martin Walker’s fourth book charting the development of the corporate science lobby that has grown rapidly since New Labour came to power in 1997. One of the most recent exponents of the Lobby is Dr Ben Goldacre who has regurgitated a bad ‘Science’ column in the Guardian newspaper since 2003. Like other quackbusters Goldacre claims to write factually based and scientifically accurate articles about health, medicine and science either supporting scientists and doctors or criticising individuals involved in alternative or nutritional health care. Goldacre’s writing, however, actually reflects the ideology of powerful industrial, technological and political vested interests.Goldacre who it is claimed is a Junior doctor working in a London NHS hospital is actually a clinical researcher working at the centre of New Labour’s Orwellian spin operation that puts a sympathetic gloss on anything shown to create adverse reactions from MMR to Wi-Fi, while at the same time undermining cost-effective and long tried alternative therapies such as acupuncture and homoeopathy.

Goldacre is involved with public health researchers well known for trying to prove that those who claim to be adversely affected by pollutants in our modern high-technology society, suffer from ‘false illness beliefs’.Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism, investigates Goldacre’s role in industry lobby groups and puts another point of view in defense of some of the people whom he has attacked, belittled, satirized, castigated, vilified, maligned and opined against in his junk journalism.

* * *Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, quackbusters and corporate science, is available from the Slingshot Publications web site as a free download, from mid-day on Wednesday January 2nd. To be effective as a campaigning document, it is important that this book is distributed far and wide as quickly as possible. Please forward this publication information together with the Slingshot Publications web site address. Another thing that will help with the book’s distribution is the writing of even very short reviews for different web sites, this helps get the book onto Google listings.

This book is free and can be downloaded from the Slingshot Publications site: www.slingshotpublications.com. Please distribute it as widely as possible and if you think that the work is worth it, consider making a small donation. Also on the Slingshot site, is Martin Walker’s last book, The Fate of a Good Man. The book tells the story of Jim Wright, the investigation into him, his prosecution and trial by the Big Pharma regulatory agency, the MHRA. A good read at £5.00

Childhood Immunisations

Threatened support group needs more help / थ्रेअतेनेद सुप्पोर्ट ग्रुप नीड्स मोरे हेल्प

As homeopathic practitioners you are very likely to be asked on numerous occasions about your views on the subject of vaccination. I know some of you do encourage your patients to contact the Informed Parent, which is greatly appreciated, but after fifteen years of existence we are in danger of folding due to a lack of subscribers. So I’m appealing for support to help boost numbers which will not only keep the Informed Parent flourishing but also create an opportunity to widen its services.

It all began back in 1988. As a first time mum, it didn't even cross my mind to look into the issue of vaccination. Instead I diligently reported to my surgery with my new baby daughter for all of the vaccinations that were due. I don't think any parent likes to take their baby to be vaccinated because there is an instinctive feeling that you are betraying your baby's trust by handing them over to a stranger, who then proceeds to stick a needle into their thigh, unexpectedly - and most babies do cry at that moment! However it seems reasonable 'that a few moments of pain will mean a lifetime of protection.

It wasn't until my second daughter was coming up to 12 months old that I started to investigate this subject, which was triggered by a two-page article featured in the September 1991 issue of the London Evening Standard magazine entitled: Vaccination-The Hidden Facts. After reading it I began to wade through a great deal of literature, attend lectures, discuss the subject with various medical and scientific researchers and other concerned and well-informed parents. This led me to being one of the founder members of The Informed Parent which was initially set up in September 1992. The other three founder members, Janet Smith, Kim Harrington and Melany Still, were all mothers who had researched the subject prior to giving birth and all had chosen not to have their babies vaccinated. Our main aim was to encourage the public to inform and educate themselves on the vaccination issue before making their decision. However, by late 1994, the other founder members were unable to offer further involvement due to their family commitments and so I found myself in the position of either going it alone or 'shutting up shop' on the project!

Well, I decided that I had to continue spreading the word, as my passion for the subject was strong and I would have found it very difficult to walk away from it. During the 1990s, the Informed Parent had some publicity through the media and a few opportunities to be involved in TV and radio coverage, but in recent years it has become very rare indeed. Political correctness seems to have eradicated almost all debate or challenge on the subject leading to a growing number of parents completely unaware of any alternative avenues to investigate. Also, I believe that the vast amount of information now available on the internet has also had an impact on the falling

I am presently looking at ways to not only help save the Informed Parent but to expand and develop what is offered.

I would welcome any feedback or suggestions that may improve the service offered. The annual subscription is only £15 which entitles you to three newsletters; a 12-page resource pamphlet listing book titles, websites and useful contacts relating to vaccination; and other useful information leaflets. Homeopaths subscribing up until the end of February 2008 will be sent two extra back issues in the first mail out.

The established view on vaccination is very well protected, and it is hailed as one of modern orthodox medicine's greatest achievements. And yet there is much research which casts doubt on some of the claims made and I strongly believe parents should be made aware of this before making a decision on whether to vaccinate their children. It is about information and choice.


To subscribe please send your contact details along with payment to: The Informed Parent (Hom Special Offer), P O Box 4481 , Worthing, West Sussex , BN11 2WH. Or for more information phone 01903 212969 or check out the website at: www.informedparent.co.uk

IN DEFENCE OF HOMEOPATHY

This article was written by Jeanette Winterson and published in the Guardian. I read the article to which she refers when it was brought to my attention at the case study group I attend. Here I've taken the liberty of cutting and pasting some of Jeanette Winterson's response. You can read the rest by following the link at the end . . .



In defence of homeopathyJeanette WintersonTuesday November 13, 2007The Guardian

Picture this. I am staying in a remote cottage in Cornwall without a car. I have a temperature of 102, spots on my throat, delirium, and a book to finish writing. My desperate publisher suggests I call Hilary Fairclough, a homeopath who has practices in London and Penzance. She sends round a remedy called Lachesis, made from snake venom. Four hours later I have no symptoms whatsoever.

Dramatic stuff, and enough to convince me that while it might use snake venom, homeopathy is no snake oil designed for gullible hypochrondriacs. Right now, though, a fierce debate is raging between those, like me, who trust homeopathy because it works for them, and those who call it shamanistic claptrap, without clinical proof or any scientific base.

There have been a number of articles in the press recently criticising homeopathic remedies as worthless at best, and potentially lethal at worst, if they are being taken instead of tried-and-tested conventional medicines for conditions such as malaria or HIV.
I have found myself cited, and drawn into this, because I am on record as supporting homeopathic practice in general, and in particular the Maun homeopathy project, a clinic in Botswana set up by Fairclough.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2209998,00.html

Follow the link to the full article.

ROWLAND AT HOME

Hello again. It's been a long time since I last wrote. I've since returned from Botswana and returned to practice in London. I'll tell you about what adventures I have here in the coming months and my reflections on Botswana.

Journey To Ubuntu, The Spirit Of The Ancestors

Gentle readers, this may be my last written from Botswana as I am due to leave next Sunday to resume my practice in London. I’m sad to be leaving as I am just beginning to get to know this little part of this great country and excited at the same time as I ‘ll be travelling back down to Johannesburg by bus and so have time to see some more new things on my way home.

We’ve had another wonderful weekend as we traveled south west, past Sehitwa down to D’Quae Q’Are to the Kuru San dance festival. Once again we took to the road with the remarkable Marty who pointed out to us the Thamalakawe fault along which our river runs and the ancient shores and sand-bars of paeleo Lake Ngami.

We saw some very fascinating things concerning ubuntu, the heritage of the ancestors, the ancient and contemporary landscape and Botswana’s delicate relationship with water. As we left Maun and and passed the Hereo village Marty began to describe the intricacies of Ngamiland’s subteranean waters. Lake Ngami has been dry for about 160 years. Sehitwa is situated on it’s shores and on the map appears next to a large expanse of blue. However, in reality the best you could expect to see was a few muddy pools. The most striking evidence of the absence of this water is the dead Lead wood and acacia trees. These trees are incredibly slow growing and those of any reasonable size are likely to be around 150 years old. Along the road as we passed out of Maun we could see a great many of these trees recently dead indicating that there is gradually less and less water flowing underground.

Further on we came to a great Baobab tree. Again, in this desert region these trees are incredibly slow growing and the one we saw could be up to 2000 years old. It’s smooth bark felt like stone and in it’s branches were growing it’s furry fruit. Marty pointed out to us a square outline on it’s trunk. This scar showed where people had stripped the bark in order to make cloth at least 300 years ago. This remonds me of the artefact we found when we gathered wood on the way back from seeing the waters of the Boteti flow again.

So, there we are, just off the old Samedupi road colllecting firewood when we come across a bleached white piece of timber, deeply weathered, about 1.5 meters long with grooves about it’s circumfirence. So we brought it back with us to figure out what it might be. Batsamai had the answer. It was a tool in the tanning and leatherworking trade and would have been suspended from a tree by ropes running around the grooves. Now, this piece of wood was leadwood, which used to be used for cart axles because of it’s durability. This piece was bleached white and deeply grooved along it’s grain so that although it had been worked it looked like an outer covering of leadwood bark. Forr the wood to have aged so much it must have been at least 200 years old. A piece of wood with so many stories to tell because it would have heard the ancerstors talking as they worked and then lay and watched as the cattle drivers passed with their herds, as woodgatherers passed and seen the old Samedupi road being built.

So, on we went and saw to our delight a much younger baobab growing beside the road and acacia’s beginning to put out yellow blossoms here and there. I got my first sight of real live wild ostriches. A pair of females were pecking beside the road apparently oblivious to passing cars.

On and on and up and over the edge of the Thamalakawe fault, through the vet fence at Kuke where we were in two minds whether or not to head off to the central Kalahari game reserve as it was relatively nearby but we’d set our hearts on going to the festival so on we went. Along a long gently curving road bounded by acacias and leadwoods. No Mophane trees though. There’s a Mophane line just southwest of Maun beyond which no Mophane grow.

We found D’Quae Q’Are and were searched at the gate for alcohol. During the festival no alcohol is allowed on site as it pollures the vibe for anyone likely to go into a trance while they dance. Smoking is forbidden at the dancing arena for this reason too.
We drove along a straight but bumpy track through the game reserve where the event was being held. We were passed by Ian Khama, the Vice President’s entourage going in the opposite direction and a bus full of schoolchildren who shouted ‘I love you’ and made Marty’s day as we passed each other.

I’d love to be able to describe the dances to you in great detail but it has been a long day. One of the most striking things about the dance groups is the role of the men and women. The women clap and sing and go out and dance in two’s and threes. They are accompanied by up to three men. One carrying a stick, one a fly whisk and one both stick and flywhisk. They provide a contrapuncta lrythmn of their own by stamping their feet in and shaking the belts of seeds which are wound round their legs. Men dance differently from women too, they are generally bent at the waist with their shoulders hunched and their elbows out looking awkward but dancing gracefully. For the women there’s more freedom of movement, they look more relaxed without their shoulders hunched.The other thing which struck me was the range of ages and costumes. One group were particularly striking as there were dressed in contamporary clothes. They struck me because it brought home to me the reality of the San people’s lives. Their no longer the pure, simple bushman characterized in ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ but fully paid up members of the twentieth centuary albiet with a unique culture and heritage.
Suffice to say, everyone was enjoying themselves.It was a place for people from all over to meet up and rekindle aquaintances and catch up on gossip, buy tasty food, look at something and generally hang out in a festive atmosphere. Hey, I saw my fisrt Hartebeest there too. They were having a party too with a couple of Zebra and a wildebeest. Hartebeest look like elegant wildebeest. Where wildebeest are grey and shaggy hartebeest are golden and clean lined and the males have impressive slowly spiraling and curved horns. They have a similarly long face to the wildebeest and theirs is accentuated by a black line running down the middle of their faces from forehead to nose making them appear like masked animals.

I’ll put up some pictures from this trip and scenes from Maun and our trip top Boteti in the coming days. We’ve actually been pretty busy in the last couple of weeks and I’ve just been enjoying the opportunity to relax after work,. So sorry for the absence of pictures recently. Things aren’t going to slow down either. We’ll be in Shorobe on Wednesday and Friday next week to attend a convention of all the local HIV support groups., That’s going to be very interesting and a lot of fun too though I guess I will have left Botswana by the time I have time to tell you guys about it. Until then, take it easy.

Exploring With Marty: The Return Of The River

Today we went for a trip into the bush with Marty. We were keeping her company while she looked for holes in the cattle fence lining the Maun-Francistown road. This is one of those things that was put up by Central govern,ment with the best intentions but does not really work in practice.

Here’s the reasons why. The fence is sparsely gated and a gate only works when it is closed. Most of the gate-posts we passed were ungated as gates are very useful to people elsewhere. Those gates we did see were either left open or mangled beyond repair. Long stretches of the fence were non existent for one reason or another. In many places the fence had been trampled down by either people or animals and ceased to serve it’s purpose.

Why is this such a problem? The fence is there to stop cattle and other livestock getting onto the road and being squashed. When there’s no fence the cattle get out and graze along the sides of the road as there is very good grasss there. So Marty’s involved with getting the fence repaired etc. We drove out of Maun at half eight this morning and traveled along the road playing a sort of Eye-Spy car game for sections of fence which was non existent, bent and climbable, gated and closed, gated but with no gate, gated with an open gate and gated with a mangled gate. We did pretty well.

This journey brought us to the turning for Samedupi so we went down there to see whether any water had reached the bridge. We were travelling through fully rural Africa . We’d left the builders merchants, car spares shops, garages, take-away’s and liquor rests way behind us on the outskirts of Maun.

The way was lined with species of acacia, sage brush, mophane and mogotho trees. Every now and then we’d see compounds with one or two ntlo or rondavel houses, a big tree for shade and people going about their business. We’d pass donkey carts laden with containers for water and usually a couple of boys or an old man at the controls.

At Samedupi we got the first happy surprise of the day. Water had begun to flow in the Boteti river, a thing not seen for at least 20 years. It has been left in standing pools near Makalamabedi higher up the river in years prdeviously but had never flowed as far as Samedupi in about 20 years.

At the bridge it was coursing along like a mill-race and Marty pointed out that it was deep because the silcrete outcrops were submerged! Silcrete appears to be a little understoodmineral which forms somehow along rivers. It appears in stratified or nodular outcrops depending on how it was formed and can look like tree branches, trunks or rootrs which have become fossilised. The bits I saw reminded me a lot of the type of flint nodes which we found on Har Karkom when I was working with Professor Emanuel Anati’s yearly expedition there to catalogue the rock art. After all the Negev had once been a sea, and then had lakes and rivers. Thinking along those lines I asked Marty if she’d ever come across anything like the bulbusim you can find in the Negev and she had but much smaller and had at first mistaken hem for bolas stones.

We met a couple of local men on the bridge who were delighted with it and who pointed out fish to us. You could see on either bank people filling water and nearby work was going on on a pipeline. Marty found an acheulean hand axe on the bank, highly patinated. What marks these hand axes out is that they are shaped and pressure flaked before they are struck from the core.

We then continued on to Makamalabedi. Makamalabedi is a really pretty village. All the compounds are very neat and tidy looking and there are often well tended plants in them. Many of the traditional ntlo houses were decorated and had the traditional lowapa, a low wall creating a smaller space in front of the door. The veterinary fence that we passed through on our way to Meno A Kwena extends through here also and we had to pass the checkpoint. The friendly policeman there told us where we could get down to the river and so we went through the village and down there.

On our way we met a family in their Sunday best on their way to church and asked them when the river had arrived and it was only last night. We could see on the banks many people enjoying themselves. Children were splashing around as women and girls came and went with water containers. And everyone was very happy and you can understand why if you live in a desert next to a river which possibly hasn’t flowed in your lifetime.

We decided we’d carry on and see if we could find the leading edge of the river creping forward across the dusty earth. We went off the tarmac road and hugged the river banks. Along here were great molapo fields reacing almost from he crest of the bank down into the middle of the river beds. These are fields marked out by fences made from piles of acacia branches and saplings. They are quite an ingenious sort of agiculture. The idea is that you build your field and wait for he river to rise. Once the river has risen intoyour field you’re OK. Then as the water retreats you plant your crops and they are rooted well as trheir roots follow the retreating river water.

Down in the river beds we could see smaller area’s fenced off like this which were wells people had dug to reach the ground water. We had lunch in the shade of a tree high and dry up on the bank. Afterwards I went to look for scorpions in amongst the silcrete rocks on the river bed and scout a possible route back to the leading edge of the river through the field of spiky silcrete. What I found was the pelvic bones of a cow still joined at the symphysis and making a great mask for a sangoma. I took it back to where we were all sitting and Marty claimed it in the name of her grand-children.

I forgot to mention that on our way we’d lost sight of the river and when we came back to it it was dry as it ever was. Marty who can read landscapes like you can read the letters of this blog explained why. We could see that the river curved back to where we had last seen it and this curve was caused by the river having to edge round a large formation of silcrete below the topsoil.

OK, you’re up to speed now. So after lunch we continued back along the riverbank towards Makalamabedi weaving down to the river bed, up the bank and from one side of the riverbed to the other and passing molapo fields and wells along the way. Makalamabedi came back into sight above the river on the far bank then we emerged from the bush and saw a backie parked and a cluster of people so we headed towards them. The backie turned out to belong to Water Affairs and we’d found the leading edge of the river being very dramatic.

The river had found itself a nice narrow channel to creep along around the edge of the silcrete deposit. It had just arrived at the lip of a well dug in the river bed and the men from water affairs had broken the lip to allow the water into the well and replenish the groundwater. The water poured over the edge in a healthy torrent and to the delightof us and the onlookers swiftly filled the well and spilled over the edge and began to flow forward through the parched grass like so many glistening snakes.
So, how is it that a river which has been dry for 20 years suddenly return to life? The reason is good rains in Angola . One of the men from water Affairs told us that the waters were continuing to rise in the panhandle, i.e. the point of entry iof water to the Okavango Delta in northwestern Botswana.The river was a beautiful thing to see flowing through the desert, reflecting the blue of the sky and glittering invitingly through the trees. Just looking at it you can feel its coolness and really appreciate its importance, here in the desert as a source of life. This was something which I had never seen before, a river in the desert returning to life and I was sharing this amazement with the people who lived here some of whom had never seen the Boteti river flow in their lives. I may not see such a thing ever again in my life.