Man in the Moon, mental health, and motherhood 

Cheerful smiles, my face now wears, my thoughts suspended, except a singular focus, on God’s awesome creation.  

My camera captures the moment, a love letter to my descendants, whose fortune it will be, to see what their ancestor beheld. 

I retreat to my study, to record in my journal, but through the glass window, the clear western sky, presents a full moon.

The two heavenly bodies have conspired with Mother Earth, to treat me to a spectacle that has fascinated me since childhood. The stories of the elders, about the marriage of Sun and Moon, flood back, triggering smiles and chuckles, and sweet memories of myths and facts, about the infinite heavens.  

The celestial couple present the sweet illusion of a shared size. The illusion is easily explained. Whereas the Sun is about 400 times larger than the Moon, it is also about 400 times farther away from us than the Moon. 

However, not even Jonathan Watson, my high school geography teacher, who taught us about the nature and relative movements of the Sun, Earth, and Moon, fully succeeded in erasing the sweet myths learnt from the elders in Kahondo and Mparo.

A full Moon in broad daylight, the elders said, signals serious events ahead. The Sun has beckoned the Moon for consultation about the rumblings in the skies, and human folly down below. Wise are those who defer plans for marriage.

The sane ones sheath their weapons, abandon planned assault on a neighbouring clan, and sue for peace. The fools keep at it, causing distress to fellow humans, dispensing all manner of injustice until the oppressed rupture with volcanic force. History is rich with examples of awakened humanity and revolution.
 
Happily, for me, it is a Sunday morning, with no obligation to leave the house. I open Paul’s Letter to the Romans, for reorientation, and a celebration of the joyful safety that is my assurance, by the grace of God. I am at peace.  Then, this past weekend, my wife and I took an evening stroll along the shore of Lake Ontario.

The heaven is lit so bright, a full Moon smiles on us, the gentle waves on the lake reflecting the light, to produce a soundless song to Nyakubaho, God, whom my elders called Rugaba Kazooba Nyamuhanga. We sit on lakeshore rocks, and take it all in, a gentle breeze caressing our faces, one’s thoughts transported to the distant unknown. 

It is a fascinating rock that Moon, which has been a companion of Earth for a little while now, currently travelling about 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) from us. People who earn a living gazing at the Moon, and fiddling with her rocks and soils, have recently discovered that she is a bit older than previously thought.

Hitherto thought to be 4.42 billion years old, we are told that she is at least 40 million years older than that. Not much in cosmic time, but interesting to one fascinated by God’s awesome creation. 

In an article published last week in a journal called Geochemical Perspective Letters, Jennika Greer, B. Zhang, and colleagues reported that the Giant Impact in which an object the size of Mars slammed into early Earth, shearing off a chunk that became the Moon, occurred 4.46 billion years ago. They reached this verdict following their study of soil samples that were brought to Earth by America’s Apollo 17 astronauts who landed on the Moon in December 1972. It is worth reading.

Considering that our Solar System is thought to have been created 4.57 billion years ago, the Earth had moonless nights, with consequent celestial load shedding, for about 100 million years.

The Giant Impact melted the earth and its assailant, fusing them into eternal union, but not before sending a molten ball of rock into space that eventually started its celestial dance around planet Earth. 

So began the great partnership that would intrigue future inhabitants of Earth, and trigger myths that would shape attitudes, actions, and dreams. Humanity’s desire for explanation of everything, has conjured up multiple myths about the Moon, some of which enjoy universal embrace. One of them is the alleged impact of the Moon on our mental health.

Derived from Luna, the Roman goddess of the Moon, the myth of lunacy (or the lunatic) was entrenched by Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, who taught in the fifth century BC: “One who is seized with terror, fright and madness during the night is being visited by the goddess of the Moon.” 

To this day, many believe that a full moon causes people to act strange. After all, if the moon’s gravitation influences ocean tides on Earth, why would it not influence human emotions?  It is sweet nonsense that has been debunked by science.  What about the Moon and female fertility? When, as a young lad growing up in Kigyezi, I first heard mention of girls and women being omukwezi (in the moon), I carried on with life, blissfully ignorant of the fact that this was a euphemism for the monthly lady’s business that has the odd name “period” and thousands of other names that help humans avoid calling it menstruation. 

When I arrived in Canada, confident that I understood human reproductive physiology, I was astonished to learn that the phases of the moon had a potent effect on fertility.

Even doctors and nurses claimed that a full moon triggered an increase in births, a convenient explanation for busy nights in the delivery rooms.

Happily, scientific studies debunked this myth too.  The phases of the Moon have no verifiable influence on menstruation, female fertility, and childbirth. 

My most favourite myth, imparted to me before I even graduated to wearing shorts under my long shirt, is the one about the Man in the Moon.

The poor fellow, we were told, committed a serious transgression, for which he was banished to the Moon, forever fated to split wood with an axe, that was visible to my preadolescent eyes as I gazed at him from the foothills of Kikuba.

Nearly seven decades later, the fellow, visible from Canada, is still toiling with the axe. His freedom will come, five billion years hence, when the Moon and Earth disappear, obliterated by the red giant Sun that is the irreversible fate of our precious star.  Do not bother to disabuse me of the myth, for mine eyes have seen, the Man in the Moon.

But if you like the facts, telescopes, satellites, and lunar missions, have confirmed that the Man in the Moon is dark areas (lunar maria) contrasted with the lighter coloured highlands and valleys on the surface of our neighbour. How boring!  

The fate of the Earth and the Moon is not a myth. It is a fact that, I believe, will be preceded by the events that are recorded in the Book of Revelation. Praise God for that.

Mulera is a medical doctor.         
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