White Ginger Lily (Hedychium coronarium J. Koenig) belongs to the Zingiberaceae (Ginger) botanical family. Mentawai people use the crushed stem to clean their hands after touching arrow poison or one of its two poisonous main constituents. In another article on…

Natural shampoo can be extracted from a variety of plants worldwide. In the evergreen forests of Lowland in Northern Vietnam, we used the leaves of a so-called soap plant. With these leaves, we regularly washed our hands and bodies. In…

In the former Soviet Union- and its satellite states, many citizens had and have water dispensers in their so-called ‘Dachas’ (Russian: дачи). Dachas are typically simple, free-standing houses located in city suburbs or the countryside. And most of them do…

The Himba women continue practicing traditional personal hygiene methods, including using a smoke shower and a mixture of red ochre and butter-fat paste. These Indigenous people are properly referred to as the ‘OvaHimba’ when plural and are mainly semi-nomadic, residing…

A safari toilet is essential for any temporary tented camp in the wild. For a Trails Guide course at Timbavati Private Nature Reserve in South Africa, we had eight students, two mentors, and one cook, a total of seven tents…

Chewing sticks, or toothbrush sticks, were widely used in former times from Ethiopia down to the southern tip of Africa. Nowadays, plastic toothbrushes are commonly used, and chewing sticks are still commonplace only in very rural parts of this area….