A Growing Partnership‍

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Sonja Prexler-Schwab is a Doctor of Medicine and Arnold Schwab has a doctorate in agriculture. In 2007 they founded a German NGO, Tabanka, which is made up of former aid workers in West Africa and others who wish to back them up in their activities to alleviate poverty and provide humanitarian aid. Their emphasis is on herbal medicine and education, especially of women and girls. They travel to Guinea-Bissau every year to visit villages and run training programs. In December 2019, Hertumisa, the deputy leader of our WellFound team in Bissau, attended their training on natural medicine in the town of Bafata. Sonja was speaking on naturally available remedies and treatments for the most common ailments in the rural villages. During the discussion Hertumisa shared something of WellFound’s work. Sonja and Arnold were immediately interested, and this led to further meetings and discussions with the WellFound team back in Bissau.

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COVID and the lockdowns intervened in 2020, but WellFound and Sonja and Arnold met again on their next visit in 2021. They put us in touch with trainee doctors who they support at the main hospital in Bissau, and a group of these trainees volunteered to come out to Caravela island with us to provide COVID prevention and other medical support in the villages where we were working.

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On their next visits Sonja started to provide training in some WellFound villages on natural medicine, and Arnold provided training on agricultural techniques to reduce disease and pests in the market gardens. After one of the courses organized by WellFound Sonja wrote: “The training is very well planned and structured. My job is to talk about the treatment of malaria, coughs and diarrhoea with local medicinal plants. The women, and a few men too, are very attentive, especially when it comes to making creams. A cream, made from a local, strong-smelling basil plant (called "mosquito grass" in Creole), which actually repels mosquitoes, is used successfully by one of the participants the following morning as a full-body cream against the morning cold!”
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Arnold wrote this following one of his village visits: “My job is to inform people about the pests and diseases affecting vegetable plants and to present manageable methods for combating or preventing them. During our tour of the garden, we found aphids, spider mites on the tomatoes, green vegetable worms that were hollowing out the tomatoes while they were still green, soil-borne fungi, blight on the tomatoes and powdery mildew on the leaves of the okra plants. Locally possible and easy-to-implement methods for controlling pests are presented. Strong-smelling plants, such as the ubiquitous African basil have a repellent effect. This plant broth can be applied to the plants together with soap and a little cooking oil. Making a broth from neem leaves or powdered chili peppers also has a repellent effect on the vegetable moths. The use of imported pesticides which can be bought in local markets is also discussed, with particular emphasis on the dangers of inexperienced use and all the potential damage that can cause.” (Note that WellFound discourages the use of pesticides for this very reason).
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On their most recent visit in February 2024, Sonja and Arnold ran more training programmes, this time in the village of Cabame where the well was funded by the US Ambassador to Senegal, Special Self-Help Programme in 2022. People came from all the surrounding villages to participate. We were also able to take Sonja and Arnold to see some of the villages which had benefited from their training in the past and how villagers had implemented what they had learnt. Sonja and Arnold were very encouraged by the feedback and the impact. More generally they told us they were very impressed by how we work with communities in partnership, together aiming to bring sustainable, positive changes. We had some excellent news following their return to Germany. Sonja and Arnold had spoken to the Management Board of Tabanka who have agreed to support a WellFound project. They have provided a grant of 10,000 euros which will provide seven villages and over 3,000 people with access to water. Thank you, Sonja and Arnold, for your inspiring work with the people of Guinea-Bissau and for your partnership with WellFound.

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