Wild spinach is in season now too, so while you’re out picking wild lettuce, look around for some of that too.

To prepare it, just snap off the tough bottom ends, rinse it, soak it in saltwater for half an hour, and rinse it again.  You can then eat it raw or cook it like greens.  Wild spinach doesn’t take much time, but wild lettuce needs to slow boil for an hour or two to take out the harsh bitterness.

Season it with salt, Vegeta, or Mivina (looks like Mibiha) vegetable condiment while it’s cooking.  For those who haven’t tried it before, cooked wild lettuce tastes a bit like collard greens.  So put some onions in it.

Another way some people cook it is to quick boil it, then drain it, and then stir fry it with onions.  I personally find this a little too bitter for my taste, but many people like it this way a lot.

Wild lettuce helps your skin and scalp retain moisture, while at the same time ejecting impurities.  It is just an all around good skin and follicle health builder.  Not only can you eat it, but you can use it on your body too.  Crush a few leaves and add it to a cup of  hot water.  Let it steep for awhile like a tea, and then strain this and put it in the refrigerator.  You’ll have a nice after-shower splash for the face and body that will last a week.

For the hair, do the same, but put it on after you wash your hair.  Let it set for a half hour, and then rinse it off.

Once you try it, you’ll understand why wild lettuce is one of the favorite plants of Oshun.  Aside of being beautiful and tasty itself, it helps you to stay beautiful and…tasty.  Your skin will funtion better, so you’ll even smell better.  So get outside and pick some!

First thing, you must find out where your local “shouk” is.  The prices there are usually around half to 2/3 what they are in the supermarkets.  The meat, fruits, and vegetables are also fresher.  So it is a better bargain all around.  Don’t go to the first place you see.  Walk around and compare prices and quality.  In time, there will be places you will know to go to first.

Second, do the math.  If you have say, 700 N.I.S. to spend per month on groceries, then you have to divide that by 30 or 31 (however many days you have  in a month).  You have to feed your family on 23 N.I.S. per day.

It doesn’t seem like much, but 23 shekels can buy enough food to feed a family of 3 or 4.  Think about it…A kilo of chicken breasts costs around 25 per kilo at the shouk.  You only need 1/4 of that, 1/2 kg. of rice, and a few handfulls of vegetables, and 2 eggs to make fried rice.

You can feed your family eggs and solet (grits) in the morning, sandwiches or salad for lunch, and beans and rice with some chicken or turkey in it, for 23 shekels a day, and nobody will feel like they’re starving.

Now, think of recipes that are within your budget.  I’ve already mentioned fried rice.  There’s also turkey soup, turkey breasts that you can cook and slice the leftovers for sandwiches or salad, onion fritters.  You can even make weekend treats like chocolate cake and cookies.

When you get to know more people in Israel, you’ll encounter people who have gardens and fruit trees, or small farms.  They are often trying to get rid of their extra.  A friend of mine brings me kilos of dates, lots of pickled olives, and figs jam every year.  You can get many nice things free or in exchange for favors if you are a generous person and appreciate generosity.

This system has worked for me very well.  I used to complain about how hard it is to live here, but now I understand that it’s pretty easy if you just know where to go.

It’s one of many that have started so Africans from the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nigeria, and even the diaspora from the Americas and Europe can have places we feel comfortable.

My experiences in public have not been nearly as grim as for the average Black man in Israel.  As discussed occasionally on one of my favorite blogs, The Obsidian Files, Black women aren’t seen as the same kind of threat that Black men are.  Aside of guys here considering us an exotic…um…novelty, we’re not viewed as personally dangerous.  So in the club scene, nobody’s really trying to keep us out, and security isn’t watching us, waiting for us to do something, anything, that will give them an excuse to bust some heads.

So it’s nice that a few places here and there are opening up where we can meet and dance with Black men, and just be women for a change.  Even if we’re not viewed as dangerous, we do have to contend with stereotyping that is dangerous to us.

When I have the time, I’ll be exploring some clubs, the ones that are legal at least, and showing some love.

• 25 drops Tea Tree (ti tree) oil
• 15 drops eucalyptus oil
• 15 drops rosemary (rosmarin) oil
• 10 drops mint oil
• 5 drops bergamot oil
• 5 drops lavender oil
• 2 drops citronella oil or 5 drops orange oil

Turn the bottle over and over again to mix it somewhat, and then shake vigorously.  Let it settle before using.

Rastaguard Body and Hair Oil

The recipe above plus

• .5 liter mineral oil (baby oil or “liquid paraffin”)
• .5 liter olive oil
• 1 heaping tablespoon unrefined shea butter
• 1 teaspoon oblipicha (sea buckthorn) oil

Shake vigorously until the shea butter is dissolved into the rest of the oil.  It may take a few days with a few sessions of shaking.

The reason I use mineral oil in this recipe, even though I would normally use only vegetable oils for other purposes is because mites and lice HATE mineral oil.  It gunks up their system and eventually they die of starvation.

Usage

Prevention

When the weather begins to get warm, use the shampoo once every week to two weeks, and the body and hair oil once a week.

Treatment

Use the shampoo every second day for one week.  Use it once a week or every two weeks thereafter.

Use the body wash every day that you shower for up to two weeks.  Be advised that if you are also using a crotamiton cream, your skin will become very sensitive, so you should stop using the Rastaguard body wash and the oil on your body after 2 weeks.  Continue to use the shampoo every week or 2 weeks though.

Warnings!

Do not use the Rastaguard body oil in your body’s creases.  It is only for the arms, legs, and hair.

Bird Mites Printable Info Page

You may have bird mites.

Many people have been popping up with bird mites in the north of Israel lately, and most doctors here don’t really know what to do about it because they’ve never seen it before.  It’s apparently something new to the area, but now that they’re here, they’re probably here to stay.  So those of you out there with dreadlocks or who have pets who sometimes go outdoors will want to pay close attention.


Bird mites are different from lice, and are not killed by the usual pesticides because they are microscopic.  Similar to bed bugs and dust mites, it’s impossible to totally get rid of them, but you can keep the population down to low enough levels that they’re not so much of a bother.

All of the ingredients you need to keep them down are available in pharmacies here.  If you have a particularly bad infestation, to the point that your arms, legs, and/or body have broken out in a rash, you will need to ask your doctor for specific things that I will list here.

Even if you haven’t broken out yet, if you work outdoors, camp, or hike, you will need to do some preventive care.

First things first though.  I am sure that some of you out there are already suffering, and need to know what to do about it right now.

If You Are Itching Like Crazy Right Now

If you’re already itching, and thought you had lice or scabies, but went to the doctor, and he told you no, you need to go back to your doctor anyway.

1. Inform him that you believe that what you have may be bird mites, and ask him for a cream called “Eurax”, which here is sold as Dr. Fisher’s Crotamiton 10% lotion.  Get the lotion, not the small tube of cream, because you will need to cover your entire body with it for a week.  You’ll go through about a bottle every other day.

Be aware that because scabies is somewhat rare here, and the bird mites outbreak is still somewhat new, most pharmacies don’t carry it.  You may have to get them to order it.  Your best bet is to go to smaller local pharmacies first, because they are usually mom & pop places with customer loyalty from people who work outdoors or on farms and such.

Do the treatment as if you have scabies.  Take a good shower, and coat yourself with the lotion from your neck to your toes.  Don’t take another shower, but coat yourself again the next day, and the next.  If you can’t stand your smell, wipe your creases with baby wipes or something, but don’t shower until the third night or fourth morning.  Then shower daily as usual, and coat yourself with the lotion after showering, for another 4 days to a week.

2. On the first day, when you take your initial good shower, wash your hair with my “Rastaguard” anti mites shampoo, and coat it with the oil.  (I’ll give the recipe in the next post, for those who like to make their own.)  If you have long braids or dreadlocks, this is the one time you’ll break the wet hair rule.  You’ll need to wrap your hair in a long, cotton scarf or headwrap, and tie it up so that your hair cannot touch your body.

Unlike lice, bird mites usually don’t like to live in hair, but they will hide in it during the day to wait to bite your body at night.  So the idea is to trap and kill any that are hiding in your hair, and prevent them from getting to your body.

On the third or fourth day, when you take the next shower, wash and oil your hair again.  Then wash and oil it every other day for the next week.  Remember to keep it tied up away from your body until the treatment is done.

3.  Meanwhile, wash all of your clothes and bedding at 60 degrees Celsius.  Put 10 drops of tea tree oil in with the fabric softener.  Iron what you can.  Also clean your house to a “fine, fine Navy clean”.

A “fine, fine Navy clean” is even more intense than a hospital clean.  It’s the kind of clean that a ship is before inspection.  Every corner is clean, even the ones around doorways.  Shake out your computer keyboard and vacuum it and electronic devices.  Vacuum your mattresses and shoes.

Wet dust plastic, stone, walls you can reach, and non porous surfaces using a 10% solution of lemon juice or vinegar and water or “degreaser”.  On wood, use a citrus infused oil or lemon Pledge.

4.  Don’t bother with pesticides.  Use deodorant.  Sano “Dai” kills mites, but you will be filling your home with poison every day trying to use it to control bird mites.  A better solution is deodorant containing Aluminum Chlorohydrate.

The Careline spray deodorant in the white bottles has this in it.  Spray it lightly on your bed an hour before you go to sleep every night during your treatment, and about once a week after that.  Spray a little once a week in your closets and over any bedding you have stored.

5.  Consider the source.  Usually, bird mites come from birds, especially their nests.  If just before you started to break out, the municipality or your building association had the branches trimmed on trees around your home, or you started dating a guy who works on a poultry farm or in a pet store, this is probably how you got them.

So if you got them from the trees around your home, sprinkle some diatomaceous earth around your yard, and line the corners of places around your building with it.  As cute as bird’s nests may be, you’ll also want to have them removed if they’re close to your windows and such.  Have a professional do this instead of doing it yourself.

Spray your screens, shades, or curtains with the deodorant so that any mites that float onto them are weighed down or killed.

One thing that is very important to note is that until you’ve got your infestation under control, you are contagious.  Bird mites are everywhere in the north now, but they can be controlled so long as everybody is relatively clean.  So you’re not really contagious forever, but if you have adults running rampant on your body and clothes, those active adults can spread very easily and become an out of control infestation for someone else.

Many people I’ve seen who are currently itching didn’t get it from birds near their home or pets.  Some got it from another person who is just dirty and thinks infestation is normal.  So be careful who you hug or spend time with.  If you see them with unexplained rashes, inform them or get used to the idea of showering with “Rastaguard” after every time you visit them.

6.  After treatment, even when you’ve got the infestation down, you may still have an allergic reaction.  Use hydrocortisone cream, alow vera, or other anti itch treatments to calm down your skin.

Just remember to keep good hygeine, and use the preventive care tips in the next section.

If You’re Not Itching Now, But Don’t Want to Start

When the weather starts getting warm is usually when bird mites reproduce the most and spread around.  So once a week, use the Rastaguard recipe shampoo, body oil, and lotion.  Pick a day of the week, and have everybody in your home use it that day.

Keep your residence clean and free of too much dust.  Bird mites travel the same way dust mites do.  Sweep your floors and dust weekly.  In the summer, if you don’t have air conditioning, this can be a drag, so don’t stress over it.  Just do a little at a time.  Slowly is better than not at all.

Again, be careful who you hug and hang around.  If you’re going to a festival, take some Rastaguard with you.  Share it with others.  You don’t want to be unfriendly, so invite others to join in your natural cleanliness.

Bird Mites Printable Info Page