Dr. Sebi

Born on November 26th, 1934, in the village of Puerto Castilla located in Honduras, Central America, Dr. Sebi (whose legal name is Alfredo Bowman) is a world-renowned herbalist and founder of The Fig Tree and Usha Herbal Research Institute. Although having a close relationship with his mother Violet, he was raised by his grandmother, who he dearly referred to as Mama Hay from a very young age. Dr. Sebi left school early during his studies to help support his aging grandmother financially. After working several menial jobs as a young boy, he received an opportunity to leave Honduras at the age of 20 as a deckhand on a shipping boat. Dr. Sebi eventually graduated to become a merchant seaman. It was during this time that Dr. Sebi had his initial experience traveling across the globe. Through these travels, Dr. Sebi began to find an interest in herbology, although it wouldn’t be until later in his life that he would find himself guided to use natural herbs to heal himself and then his own clients.

After leaving Honduras and traveling the world as a merchant seaman, Dr. Sebi finally settled down in New Orleans with his first wife and family in the United States. During this time, he was also in the Nation of Islam under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In the mid-1960s, Dr. Sebi and his family moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles, California. With his knowledge of steam engineering, he procured a job as a stationary engineer at Martin Luther King Hospital. Later, a co-worker recommended Dr. Sebi go to Mexico and seek out an herbalist to help cure him of asthma, diabetes, impotence, and waning eyesight. These trips to Mexico allowed Dr. Sebi to reconnect with plants as a source of medicine, in which he had taken an interest several years prior.

This information traveled down to the Island of Dominica, where the Prime Minister, Oliver Seraphin, personally invited Dr. Sebi to start treating patients. To Dr. Sebi’s surprise, a newly elected Mary Eugenia Charles was not too excited to hear of the natural remedies he was employing and mandated that he and his family be deported. Dr. Sebi and Maã decided to relocate to the nearby island of St. Croix to carry on their approach to healing and open the very first Fig Tree store on 429 King Street in 1981.

After opening the first Fig Tree store in the Caribbean, Dr. Sebi began to travel to Washington D.C. on the bequest of his good friend who owned a community space coined The Warehouse. This was the first place Dr. Sebi treated people in the United States after previously leaving Los Angeles. After moving his operation from St. Croix to Puerto Rico in the early 1980s, Dr. Sebi began doing lectures up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the United States promoting his plant-based methodology to curing diseases. After opening an office in Brooklyn, New York, in the mid-1980s, Dr. Sebi put an ad in the Village Voice and Amsterdam News declaring, “HIV/AIDS, cancer, blindness and many other diseases have been cured by The Fig Tree and the Usha Herbal Research Institute.” This prompted the Attorney General’s office to reach out to Dr. Sebi, demanding that he remove the ads from the papers. Dr. Sebi politely declined the request, not in defiance of the law, but rather in obedience to his ancestors and the journey they set forth for him. The events that followed led to Dr. Sebi being arrested and tried in the New York Supreme Court. Dr. Sebi eventually prevailed by demonstrating that the underlying cause of many modern-day diseases is mucus, which is caused by the body not being able to process meats and animal by-products. This landmark case laid the foundation for Dr. Sebi, and the original products he used are known and respected worldwide.