She's spent 25 years as a well-known television journalist - hunting down dodgy traders on Fair Go, chasing the big news stories as part of the 60 Minutes team, making documentaries on topics like the Steven Wallace shooting or the Tuhoe police raids.But now Kim Webby is taking on one of her hardest tasks to date: training as a naturopath.Kim has just completed the first year of a three-year naturopathic degree and says going back to studying and writing hardcore academic papers has been a slog."But it's an incredibly fascinating journey," she says, adding the 23 fellow natural health students in her class at Wellpark College of Natural Therapies have become an incredibly tight team."Everything we learn about the body is so interesting ... it's like there are little miracles happening inside of us all the time."Over the summer break Kim is taking her fledgling healing skills to a remote corner of Sumatra to do voluntary work with a New Zealand doctor."We are going to a remote island off Northern Sumatra to work with New Zealand doctor Derek Allan," Kim explains. Derek is the sole doctor to around 60,000 people on surrounding islands where developing country health issues like gastroenteritis, dengue fever, malaria, leprosy, typhoid are paramount.Travelling with Kim is a fellow Wellpark student (a trained nurse) and the two women will help teach hygiene and health topics to the locals.Kim, who still files regular documentary pieces, says she initially felt the call of training as a healer as a school leaver. Her mother, a public health nurse in the Bay of Plenty, had been undertaking naturopathy papers when Kim was young."But I was good at English at school and the guidance counsellor pointed me toward journalism," says Kim. After training at the then Auckland Technical Institute, Kim began at TVNZ as a researcher and soon became a staff journalist."When I was 39 I took off overseas for six months and when I came back I again thought about naturopathy; but I got a couple of media jobs and that led to more and I was soon back on the treadmill."Kim again felt the pull of a healing career when covering the plight of the former Whakatane saw millers - who have been struggling to have their dioxin poisoning recognised by government for 28 years."Many of them have turned to other forms of healing like rongoa-type things to get help. Covering that story made me feel that I wanted to be able to do more than just report on the issue," says Kim.As part of a medical humanities paper for her Wellpark degree, Kim wrote a dissertation on the Whakatane situation. It was so welcomed by SWAP (Sawmill Workers Against Poisons) that it has already been forwarded to government officials working on the issue.Kim says that over the past five years the desire to know more about natural healing has grown from an intention into a real compulsion.She investigated different training institutes, worked to put some money aside to cushion her years of study and enrolled at Wellpark because she liked the friendly atmosphere and stringent NZQA naturopathic degree ."And it's also just around the corner from where I live in Westmere."Her classmates range in age from 23 through to mid 60s. "I'll still be keeping my hand in with media work," she says, "I've done two documentaries this year and already have one underway for next year."Of Chinese and Paheka descent with affiliations to Tuhoe, Kim says in the big picture she'd like to work as a naturopath for Maori health clinics and combine this with her current affairs and directing roles.In the future she also sees herself living part of the year overseas working with indigenous groups in developing countries that are unable to access medical care - particularly in the South East Asia region. Kim says indigenous people already have that holistic health perspective that she is currently studying.In preparing for her Sumatra trip, Kim was packing homeopathic remedies, essential oils and vitamins.
Source:Voxy News
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