Sabine Kuegler has learned to live with her inner turmoil

Sabine Kuegler spent her childhood in the jungle. She returned there once again to save her life. This journey not only made her healthy, but also helped her to "finally arrive in the West and lead a happy life there".

Sabine Kuegler is now 50 years old, an entrepreneur and mother of four. Her bestseller "Jungle Child", which has been translated into 32 languages, about growing up among the Fayu people in western New Guinea, this very different childhood and her unique memories, has brought her close to many people. "She didn't play with dolls, but swam with crocodiles in the river," the publisher's announcement said at the time.

This year, she published another book, entitled "I no longer swim where the crocodiles are". It is the memory of how she swam unsuspectingly in a river with her parents and siblings until the locals told her that this was the crocodile river. For Kuegler, it also sums up her experience of how often people assume that everyone knows or believes the same thing. It took her many years to accept that, among other things, the concept of time or community in the tribal culture of her childhood has little in common with that of the Western world.

It is also the result of a serious illness that preoccupied Kuegler for years. She noticed the first symptoms in 2007. What began with flu-like symptoms became a recurring cycle that became more painful and threatening with each round. Her bones felt as if they were on fire. She is constantly nauseous and loses more and more weight. This is how Kuegler describes it in the book.

"I didn't notice it at first because I was just so busy," she tells ntv.de. "I was a single parent, worked a lot, was always under pressure to earn money." But soon that was no longer possible. Kuegler went to various doctors, some recommended vitamins, others acupuncture or diet. There are always new diagnoses, but the problem is that none of the prescribed therapies help. "I've tried everything from modern medicine to Chinese and Buddhist medicine. And nothing helped, nothing at all."

Back into the jungle

Finally, Kuegler decides to take a radical step. Her children moved in with their fathers and she herself set off for Papua New Guinea. She suspects that she has probably contracted a parasite there. And if there is help anywhere, it is probably there too. "The locals have traditional remedies for most diseases, including malaria, for example," she says.

A doctor in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, at least knows the symptoms, but still can't give her patient any hope. This is because all patients who had previously contracted the disease in this way had died. Nevertheless, Kuegler does not give up. She hopes to stay alive until she meets the healer who can really help her. In fact, the complete renunciation of Western food initially brings some improvement. Kuegler eats only coconuts and roots and regains some of her strength. This enables her and her friend Micky to travel to distant tribes.

Months of traveling turn into years. Sometimes Kuegler feels better for a while after taking medicine from a healer, eating medicinal herbs or attending a ceremony. During this time, she helps the villages to grow food. "In a tribe, everything is based on taking and giving. You always have to give something before you can take something." That's why she didn't just ask for a cure. "We said we would help you by growing it in your gardens." So they showed how to put chilies between the plants to use less pesticides. Or how coconut shells can increase cocoa yields. For Kuegler, these are small steps towards combating poverty with sustainable farms.

But then the cycle of painful and debilitating symptoms starts all over again. "Everything pointed to it being a parasite that kills its host very slowly. In the end, I couldn't take any more." The sticky, thick sap of the so-called blood tree finally brought the breakthrough in the Solomon Islands. For three days, she is closer to death than to life. While the tribe is already singing dirges for her, Kuegler clings to the healer's words: "You'll feel like you're dying. But don't worry, that won't happen." It takes a long time for Kuegler to really believe that she is cured. "When I came back and got a cold once, that fear came up straight away. It's back again."

"Understood who I am"

Today, Kuegler is healthy again and lives in Hamburg. She has made up for the lost years with her children as best she could. She says she has grown up in her search for healing. "Back then, when I came to Europe from the jungle at 17, I was so busy trying to survive that I never really had the chance to think about anything or mature. Now I felt like I understood who I was for the first time." This was only possible because she returned to the tribal culture in which her childhood experiences had made her feel at home. It was only then that she realized where the fundamental differences between the two cultures lay, and she learned that she could not cope in the West with the survival strategies she had internalized so much from the jungle.

Towards the end of her five years in the jungle, Kuegler has become so at one with the tribe in which she lives that she no longer wants to go home. But she realizes that she doesn't really belong in the jungle either. After a physical altercation, she is expelled from the tribe and returns to Europe, partly out of longing and a sense of responsibility for her children. "I was given a new chance at life. I wanted to use it to finally arrive in the West and lead a happy life there."

To this day, she still raves about the incomparable light, the vibrancy and the breathtaking colors of the jungle. But there are also disadvantages and things to miss. "You often miss what you don't have." In the jungle, these are toilets, electricity, a hot shower, snow, the Christmas season, blueberries and currywurst. But Kuegler has "realized that in the West, unlike in tribal culture, I am free. I can live the way I want to. At the same time, this means a great responsibility for my life, which I didn't know before and couldn't bear."

The 50-year-old now accepts her inner conflict. "People simply treat each other differently there than here. Maybe there are a lot more physical dangers, but on a psychological or mental level, life is much easier there because you still have this community." Without this, Kuegler would probably not have recovered and she misses it here.

"I see a lot of loneliness and forlornness. But I also see people who are doing well because they have built a good environment with friends and relatives." As a child, she thought that everyone belonged to a tribe. That was like a law of nature for her because she had grown up that way. "But I didn't understand that you have to actively associate with people around you." With people who are good for you and who support you. "That's what brings satisfaction in life."