By STEPHEN KAPAMBWE
Sometime in 2012, Mrs Ireen Sitenge Nyambe travelled to Namibia. Her trip was prompted by her niece’s illness.
According to doctors, Mrs Nyambe’s niece was in the last stages of kidney failure which had crippled her kidneys. In other words, Mrs Nyambe’s niece was dying.
“This patient was really in the last stage because both her kidneys had stopped working. She had been on dialysis from 2011 and now the dialysis could not continue because the veins had collapsed.
“Even the doctors had lost hope. She was about to be taken to South Africa but the doctors said we could not take her because even if we took such a patient it would be meaningless. So we were just waiting for anything,” Mrs Nyambe recounted.
At that time, the patient was swollen as a result of the body accumulating liquids and doctors had advised that she should not take any fluids, including water.
She was restless. She could not hear. She could not eat unaided neither could she be left unattended for fear that she could fall off the hospital bed due to the restlessness.
Mrs Nyambe said her niece barely had days to live, until a stranger came to the private ward where the patient was. The stranger was selling a fruit juice called Xango.
The fruit-drink vendor encouraged Mrs Nyambe to give the juice a try, saying the drink had helped many people recover from their death beds.
True to the words of the stranger, Mrs Nyambe’s niece, who had at the time been retired from her job on medical grounds, recovered and was able to leave the hospital she had been admitted to barely a week after starting to take the fruit juice.
“The doctor, a white man who has been in the profession for a long time said he had never seen a person coming out of such a stage. And even when we were discharged, the same bottle that the patient had started drinking from had not even been emptied yet,” Mrs Nyambe said.
The niece eventually recovered fully and was given back her job by her employers.
Puzzled by the turn of events, Mrs Nyambe who was diabetic and had arthritis, bought a box of the fruit drink and came back to Zambia with it. She was not yet convinced about taking the drink herself. But she had her neighbours in mind. She told herself that if the fruit juice worked on the neighbours, then it really was a baffling wonder.
Mrs Nyambe’s neighbours had an epileptic daughter who had sustained horrific burns after she fell in fire during a seizure.
“For six months, the epileptic was admitted to a hospital in Lusaka. When no recourse was found for her, she was taken to a private facility. For three months, they tried to help her but to no avail. So by the time I was taking the fruit drink to her, she was just at home.
“Because of the severe burns, they would put the patient under a mosquito net to avoid flies. And she could not even turn herself. She just used to cry the whole day and we could hear her mourn all the time. So that is the first person I went to,” Mrs Nyambe said.
Mrs Nyambe had been told that the fruit drink could be used to heal wounds just by applying it directly on the affected area and drinking it at the same time. Her mission to the neighbours’ was to see if the results she had been told could really be achieved.
She introduced the product to the epileptic’s mother who at that time had no money to pay for it. The girl’s mother was broke having spent everything she had on moving her daughter from one hospital to another.
Touched by her neighbough’s predicament, Mrs Nyambe gave one bottle of the juice to the epileptic and it took only three days before everyone started seeing change in the patient.
“The pain was becoming less, whereby before she started taking the drink, she could cry the whole night. But after three days of taking the drink, she started sleeping like a baby the whole night and everyone in that house started sleeping. Before that, they never used to sleep,” Mrs Nyambe said.
“She started getting better and right now if you saw her, you cannot know that she is the one who was so sick. She was really finished and we were just counting days before she was gone. Even her voice had changed. She was not talking but she was crying in a strange voice which was different from her normal voice which we had grown accustomed to,” Mrs Nyambe said.
Not only were the burns healed. The seizures too stopped.
The case of the epileptic baffled even the American suppliers of the product so much so that when they visited Zambia, they made a television documentary.
Convinced about the efficacy of the drink, Mrs Nyambe started taking the juice for her diabetes and arthritis. She was also scheduled for a surgical intervention arising from fibroids that had become a concern to her doctors. But that operation was never to be as the fibroids shrunk and eventually disappeared after she started taking Xango.
Today, Mrs Nyambe supplies the Xango juice from her shop number 87 at Southgate shopping center in Lusaka to more than 100 clients who in turn supply others.
Testimonies of the healing properties of Xango did not stop with Mrs Nyambe’s healing of arthritis, diabetes and fibroids.
One of the people she works with is Mrs Agness Kelelwa Jalabani who used to be in the military. She used to suffer from high blood pressure which in certain instances made her collapse in her office.
In December 2003, Mrs Jalabani opted to be retired on medical grounds after medical examinations revealed that her condition was caused by weak heart muscles. Mrs Jalabani was in and out of hospital until 2012 when she met Mrs Nyambe who introduced her to the fruit drink. Within one month of taking the Xango fruit drink, Mrs Jalabani felt a change in her body and since then, she had taken the drink and also become a supplier who provides the product to others and earns herself money.
“I never used to do any type of work, not even sweeping my bedroom.
This time I am able to do anything. I go to the farm. I do any work at the farm. I rear chickens at the farm,” she said.
Mrs Jalabani last visited a health institution in 2012.
She now lives in Kafue and regularly visits her farm in Kanakantapa from where she rears chickens. She also sells the Xango drink.
Mrs Jalabani’s story is not very different from that of Mrs Thelma Mary Kalima who used to suffer from high blood pressure and had skin ailments before she was exposed to Xango. Today, her blood pressure is normal, her skin is smooth and through selling the fruit drink, she has a livelihood.
With such overwhelming stories about seemingly inexplicable healings involving the Xango juice, one wonders what this drink really is.
In 2008, the Forbes magazine published an article which described Xango as a tart, a pulpy beverage made from a Southeast Asian mangosteen fruit. It described the fruit drink as the ‘hottest products in the dietary-supplement market.’
The article said Xango distributors in places like Patchogue, New York claim the antioxidant-loaded drink cures or prevents everything from cataracts to cancer.
The story, however, says although grandiose claims are made about the healing properties of Xango, which claims are largely spread by word of mouth and all over the Internet, the parent company cannot lavish the health claims for Xango juice, not without having the Food & Drug Administration go after it demanding scientific proof.
However, Internet based Web MD says mangosteen, the fruit from which Xango juice is made, is used for many conditions, but so far, there is not enough scientific evidence to determine whether or not it is effective for any of them.
Web MD says mangosteen is used for treating diarrhoea, urinary tract infections (UTIs), gonorrhoea, thrush, tuberculosis, menstrual disorders, cancer, osteoarthritis, and dysentery. It is also used for stimulating the immune system and improving mental health.
The Web MG article says mangosteen – which is often eaten as a dessert fruit or made into jams – is reported to have been Queen Victoria’s favorite fruit.
The Forbes earlier said although not adequately researched scientifically, the discovery of Xango has been linked to a seemingly inconclusive research from the University of Madras in India and Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan that suggested a connection between the mangosteen rind and xanthones, which have antioxidant properties.
“That whiff of science was good enough to get XanGo (the name blends “xanthone” and “mangosteen”) under way,” reported the Forbes article.
It is claims that Xango helps people with conditions like cancer, kidney problems, asthma, fibroids and diabetes, to mention but a few – and inconclusive scientific data which made Mrs Nyambe to approach the pharmaceutical authorities who, upon testing it, told her that the drink was 100 per cent fruit juice which could not be controlled like a drug.
The authorities told her that the juice could be sold just like any fruit drink provided it met the hygiene, food and nutritional health requirements.
“So that is what this product is. It is a food drink 100 per cent but at the same time it is doing wonders,” said Mrs Nyambe who sells a bottle of Xango at K300.
People interested in the drink have an opportunity of becoming suppliers of the product by joining a group that mostly comprises members who, in one way or another, have taken it and experienced its efficacy.
But whereas such people can earn an income from supplying the drink, its medicinal and healing properties remain an amazing fruit drink even to the women that have seen it work in their own lives.