A Celebration of Life in Sabah

Look carefully what’s clinging on to my forearm… A fast glance and you might think they are blades of grass… It all began the night before I took this photograph which leads me to the encounter with this slimy creature… That night, I went to visit my adoptive family in Kg. Lapai, Tenghilan, after three years of absence! My adoptive brother, David Pinus, had a house warming party in his new home atop a small hill and that stood next to his father’s. We had a celebration as David threw a feast and naturally, ’spirit’ was in the air and I meant the tapai that we drank and our heads started to spin and funny stories began to roll out one after the other. My indulgence that night is not something that I’m proud of. I was offered a bed to sleep on but I had refused and instead I chose to sleep outside the house…

The next day, I woke up with a head-splitting headache. To regret was useless and pointless, I had gotten myself into this voluntarily; I had asked for it. The best thing to do now was to relax and let the almost-crippling hangover wears off on its own. Then… Walla! A very special remedy presented itself right before my very eyes but not for the faint-hearted! The master of the creatures, Mr. David Pinus himself, posed a challenge to me to let the leeches suck out all the toxins! David led me down the slopes right to his tanks that contain the squiggly swimmer. I was so excited at the thought of getting in contact with the leeches. But suddenly, I had my doubts and qualms. Didn’t those thing repulsed me a lot whenever I saw them out in the wild when I was a little kampung kid? Do I want to dare it now? My pounding head says, “Go for it!.” And so I did…

David placed one on me first and I almost screamed! The thing was sinking its small pricky teeth right into my flesh. Help! Then come another one… David stop it! Enough! Then something hits me. This thing was actually helping me draining out dirty blood and toxins away from my body and I am feeding it with its staple food, blood. It’s a win-win situation. So I let it suck and suck and suck… The feel of biting of teeth into my flesh was actually becoming quite addictive. I became used to it in no time and I actually began to like it!

This picture sure tells that I had become more daring than I thought I could. I asked David to put on more and he carefully placed them on the proper points, just like acupuncture needles need to be placed on the right points. See this leech, it was getting fat with my blood, and so near to my ear’s entrance too! But at this point, it didn’t bother me anymore.

This feet actually belong to a friend of mine. He had asked for the leech to be placed on top on his wound. We let the leeches on our skin for a good fifteen minutes before pulling them off, and then discard them for they should not be re-used since they contain the bad stuff by now. And you know what? My friend and I bled for 1/2 hour at each leech wound. Blood could not stop flowing out. But we weren’t scared because those are bad blood that need to come out and we knew we would not die of bleeding even though the amount of blood that seeps out seemed a real lot. Just keep wiping those blood away. Without realising it, my head had lightened up, my hangover was cured by like 80%!

These leeches are great, I tell you. They heal many types of ailments. Look it up on the internet and you’ll find lots of info. Try it soon!

Those longish stuff looks like snakes but they are actually a fish called lindung. They had been placed inside the tanks for the leeches to suck on its blood. The leeches need to grow up too in order to reach its full potential as a nature’s healer.

So, they you are. A healer from nature whose forces are to be reckoned with. Indeed, it’s the leech of life and they have been known to give people a new lease of life by sucking away their illnesses. My friend and I look forward to another leech-therapy session in the near future. That means, running off to meet our dear Mr. David Pinus!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 8:03 am and is filed under Health By Nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.