Sea buckthorn comes to the rescue of Pakistan's mountain villages
Last year, Behram Baig left his job at a large corporation in Karachi and moved back home to the Passu Valley to start a new life: promoting the use of sea buckthorn.
Baig wanted to tell people about the plant’s multiple health benefits and inspire others to make a living from it.
Sea buckthorn is a deciduous shrub found across Europe and Asia. It produces small orange berries once a year, which are turned into pastes, liquids and oils for a variety of uses.
Traditionally, the plant is used as medicine for blood pressure, cholesterol, asthma, ulcers, hepatitis, digestion and healing skin damage such as burns, rashes, cuts and sunburn. Women also use it as makeup or sunblock.
Baig grew up in a small mountainous village on the banks of the Hunza River near the Pakistan-China border. He moved to Karachi to study in the early 1990s and worked in marketing and security.
He became interested in the healing properties of sea buckthorn berries after using them to control his blood pressure and was struck by the idea of promoting its use as a way to earn a living.
“I was earning a good wage from my job [in Karachi], but I have got more satisfaction from working at a community level for the promotion of natural resources,” says Baig.
After arriving back to his home village of Passu, Baig joined others who were already collecting sea buckthorn to make a variety of products including jams, syrups, dried fruit, green tea, oil and chocolate.
“Sea buckthorn is a medicine for at least 70 diseases and has been used by villagers for centuries,” says Baig.
“It is 100 per cent organic because sea buckthorn plants are only grown in areas where glacial water is available. You know that no one can contaminate the glacier with urea or harmful chemicals.”
Many people in mountainous areas of Pakistan, particularly older people, have never used antibiotics, relying instead on natural medicine such as sea buckthorn, shilajit and herbs.