Interesting story about one traditional herbal remedy named Ama-Kông

Ama-Kông now is nearly 90, while sitting on the stair of the house on stilts made by a type of aromatic wood, he was trolling with a smart and beautiful boy, coming into his house, I greeted: "Hi, nice day an old man and a boy!", Ama-Kông lifted his wrinkled eyes along with a smile "No no, he is my offspring", "Oh, are you joking?", "No, honestly, he is my son with that woman (he pointed into his deep house where I could see a twenty-five to thirty-year old woman splitting corn seeds, she looked and me and smiled then get back to her work), he is just 4 years old". I felt not to believe that why a man could be hardly getting birth at a rare 70 years old but current he is 80. Realizing that I didn't believe him, he then told the story of his life.

When he was about 70, his wife went west, he was alone since then, Ama-Kông lived with his posterity but he used to go into the forest Yok Don to look for the medicinal leaves to macerate according to the heirloom remedy into a liquid drug for massaging his muscles from external. Doing with this work for years, he was still very strong. However, in this large house, he seems to be alone, because his children, nieces and nephews now live with a modern life with their works and pleasures, it kept him home alone, so sad, he went for drink... and then, because of lack of wine, he held the macerated bottle of wine and swallowed. About 3 months later, he felt his "twin brother" grew up and he suspected that the result came from the wine heirloom remedy then he continued to experiment for nearly a year before he request to get married. His posterity and his neighbors, all did astonish and buzz around the story, and they concluded that he might be doting-by-old-age. However, he affirmed that he wanted a new wife so that his posterity had to find our their new mother-in-law, but no one accepted to be his wife with the reason that he was too old and would have not any strength to make her delighted. But luck came in when a young girl (about twenty) accepted to be his wife; one reason was by her "beauty", another reason was she wanted to test. If the rumor was false, she was still being a girl, if not, she might inherit from him a portion of his possession. In general, it was the opportunity of him when after nearly a year; he had a new healthy boy whom could be for showing to his neighbors and for proving himself.

Many merchants, tourists came to Don Village all wanted to visit him and when asking him about the know-how to become a husband and a father at the age of gonna-die, he often said honestly his story and mentioned the result came from his heirloom remedy. All then wanted to purchase from him that drug for experimental purpose but obviously they wanted to strengthen their "twin brother". Seemed to guess that, he and his posterity entered to the forest to find the 2 types of unique plants in the remedy then mixing them into wine with "brand" Ama-Kông for selling to the tourists and weak-gentlemen.

He eager told his story so that his "last son" was peeing out to the trousers while he didn't know.

I recorded this story and silently "test" the effects of the drug through my colleagues and other friends who bought or were presented the drug Ma-coong. It is surprised that all they sounded it has the effects though hard to drink and the wine liquid so condensed. I am sure that till now there is not any study on this herbal remedy but presented in the list of herbal remedies by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bao Huy at Tay Nguyen University, it is "silently checked" by myself so I bought it for gift, introducing to many friends to use it as "re-strengthen the men's wealthy".

This above story is told by a Yok Don forest ranger after his trip at Yok Don - Dak Lak, Vietnam, July 2004.

The herbal remedy named Ama-Kông consisted of to species: Clausena excavata and Hemidescus indicus.

(Translated by Hieu.BVN)