Sastun

by Rosita Arvigo

  Staring at the vine twisting its way to the forest canopy, I could see nothing remarkable about its gray bark or green leaves. How was I to remember this particular one when it looked just like a hundred other vines around us?

  As if reading my mind, he showed me how the vine and the branches form a recognizable cross. This was a sign, he said, to the healer that this vine is powerful but dangerous medicine.

  I helped him pull down a twelve-foot piece, which he chopped into two parts, draping one half of the snakelike vine around each of our necks. Soon we looked like human burros making our way down the hill with these loads. The journey was getting difficult with the weight pressing on our backs and the emerging midday heat. The inviting coolness of morning had given way to a mean, blistering sun.

  He showed me more grayish, woody lianas, giving each a name, calling it male or female, and providing few explanations about its uses.

  As we lumbered past the watermelon patch I was sure we were done collecting. To my astonishment, he handed me another empty sack.

  “We must collect Xiv for today. We’ll find the rest of the nine plants along the trail back to the village, where patients are no doubt already lined up.”

  Collect seven more plants? Luckily he didn’t notice the stunned look gracing my wet, flushed face, as he continued grabbing and cutting as his load tugged against his wrinkled forehead.

  “This is Cruxi, Cross Vine,” he said, holding up another snippet of green. “You see how this leaf makes a cross over the branch of the vine? Watch for that. When a leaf crosses a branch it is a sign that the plant is blessed with medicinal powers.”

  I leaned in to get a closer look, but with one bulging sack tied to my back, another tucked under my left arm, a pick dangling off my right shoulder, and a circle of Chicoloro wrapped around my neck, it took all my energy just to see clearly. Yet he was quite serious about collecting more leaves, and I was in awe at the amount of hard labor he was capable of. I began to fully comprehend what I was in for as the zampope’s apprentice.

  How I wished for a pen and paper, a tape recorder, a camera, another brain. The extent of his knowledge about the forest plants was staggering. I began to feel overwhelmed at the imposing task before me.

  As I continued trailing behind him and collecting Xiv, I also prayed and tried to count how many leaves we had collected. Four more to go before we reached home. I was drenched in sweat, with sharp roots digging into my back, and I was also thoroughly confused, unable to remember even one of the plants he had showed me. Don Elijio, on the other hand, was full of pep, as if he’d just had a nap.

  “Over there, Rosita, behind that tree and up that hillside. Do you see the large leaf? Go cut nine for today.”

  Obediently, I put down my sacks, removing them one at a time along with the liana around my neck, while wondering how a man who saw people’s faces as hazy masks could spot a particular plant clear across the road and up a hill. I pulled out my machete and headed for the steep hill soaring upward from the road. I looked up to see bunches of shiny, thick-ribbed leaves almost four feet long, growing on a rocky incline and being held in place by a large ball of stringy roots. “That one?” I asked, yelling over my shoulder.

  “Yes, yes, that’s Xiv Yak Tun Ich, Pheasant Tail. Very good medicine for rheumatism,” he shouted.

  I returned with my sack spilling over, prompting him to tie it up with a strip of green, flexible vine he dug out of his pocket. Without a word, he handed me another sack, empty and beckoning for more leaves. I bit my lip and fought back the tears, determined to keep my promise that I would work hard if he agreed to teach me. Since he was keeping his part of the bargain, I wasn’t going to wimp out now.

  “Here is a blessed tree,” he buzzed on, oblivious to my struggle to forge ahead. “Eremuil, Wild Coffee, is its name, and it must always be included in every mixture of nine leaves for the herbal baths. We call it Che Che Xiv or chief herb because it is so wonderful. Remember it well. You collect that bush and I will work on this one next to it.”

  I reached out to pull leaves off the branches, maneuvering to keep my loads balanced, when he reminded me, “You have not remembered to say the prayer of thanks to the Spirit of the plant. The Spirit of the plant will follow you home to strengthen your healing, but only if you remember to give thanks. Otherwise, it will stay in the earth and your medicine will not have power. Listen and learn, child.”

  It was well past noon, and my water bottle and stomach were empty, but I kept my complaints to myself.

  “Ah, this darling little plant is Cancer Herb. We will put that into the formula for today. As a powder it is good for diabetic sores and boils. This little one with the fat flower is the female and growing right next to it is its lover, the male. You see how tall and thin the male flower is?”

  I didn’t see the difference at all. When I bent down to pick the leaves, my back load shifted and fell right over my head to the ground. When I reached out to pick it up, the vines around my neck caught in my hands, and soon I was a hopeless tangle of vegetation. Don Elijio gave me a sympathetic look but made no attempt to assist me, only looking overhead at the mounting sun and admonishing me for holding him back so much this morning.

  Where were we now? How far was it yet to the village? Were we on the sixth, the seventh, or the eighth leaf? Was this one Anal? Is this Cordoncillo? I felt like dumping all the sacks on the ground and taking a snooze under the nearest shade tree. I began snickering at how funny I must look, loaded down like an overused coatrack in the middle of winter.

  “We shouldn’t have done so much shopping this morning at the marketplace, maestro!” I said capriciously, trying to get my perspective back.

  He laughed and shook his head, saying, “Yes, but we are not done. If we don’t collect enough Xiv this morning, I will have to return after lunch, and I’m too busy for that today.”

  He kept showing me more leaves, more branches, and more vines until my mind was crammed with a prickly wad of knowledge. When I tried to recall even one of them, I drew a frustrating and embarrassing blank.

  The end of the road veers uphill for the last mile to the village. At last, he stopped and swung around to look at me. He eyed my sacks and the sweat dripping off my chin and said with gentle crinkles forming around his eyes, “You did well today, my daughter. Do not despair. Day by day, step by step, little by little, I will teach, and you will learn.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Red Gumbolimbo, Naked Indian Palo de Turista

  Chaca Bursera simaruba

  The shaggy red bark of this common tree is one of the most versatile of all the traditional medicines. The bark is peeled and boiled as a bath for all manner of skin conditions, including contact with toxic plants, sunburn, measles, and rashes. A tea made of the boiled bark is used for internal infections, urinary conditions, and to purify and build the blood. The resin of the bark contains an antibiotic substance.

  Spending three days a week away from home meant leaving Greg alone with the farm’s seemingly endless, daily chores.

  When I’d come home from San Antonio, I could tell immediately how he had fared. If his cheeks were pink and he stood tall as he waited by the riverside to fetch me in the canoe, he’d say, “For the chance to study with Panti—this is worth whatever it takes. Go for it, babe.” But when he was slouched and his face grayishly pale, he’d snap, “While you’ve been out on a joy ride with Panti, Rose, I’ve been here stuck in the mud and alone.”

  Greg found it hard to wake up each day and face a new crisis requiring a carpenter, a plumber, or a gardener—professions he was learning through painstaking trial and error. In addition, there were days when he alone scrubbed our laundry on a washboard, hung it out to dry, fixed meals, tended Crystal’s needs, and loaded the wood stove with firewood and kindling.

  “I wanted to be a doctor, not a fix-it man,” he’d gripe when he was tired.

  After all this time we were still trying to push back the jungle from around our tw
o huts. It was a never-ending project to clear the underbrush and chop trees. The sunlight had to penetrate or the pervasive dampness of the jungle would reduce everything we owned to crumbly balls of green mold.

  The burden of a jungle homestead was almost too much of a strain at times. In those early days of our marriage, we didn’t always get along and we had our share of arguments. The added stress of my absences made it worse. There were times when he lost heart and I was absolutely exhausted from working full steam at two households.

  I felt as if I lived a double life and the transition from one environment to the other was overwhelming. No sooner would I lay my head down on a freshly laundered pillowcase and feel the cool night air move through our open thatch than my mind would leap back to my hammock in Don Elijio’s cramped and stifling cement house.

  Greg would patiently listen to my worries and triumphs at Don Elijio’s: the backbreaking work, the patients’ stories, the marvelous tales of healing plants. Rehashing my San Antonio days out of context gave me a sharply different perspective. I’d remember, again, how important it was for me to continue my work with Don Elijio. Speaking about Don Elijio also helped me come to terms with the extent of my involvement with him and my ever-growing love and respect. The venting allowed me to readjust to life on our homestead and the embrace of Greg’s arms.

  I always came back to the farm caked with mud and covered with bug bites. Greg often joked about burning my clothes and shoes while I was showering for the first time in days. Then I’d climb into bed, naively thinking that a hot, soapy wash in the new shower that Greg had installed had killed off the jungle critters. But the ticks were embedded in my skin and the chiggers jumped from my body to Greg’s. My condition couldn’t be helped. It was part of my life in San Antonio to dig in the earth and pull out roots and collect leaves that were infested with biting ants and insects.

  Once I had a run-in with a toxic caterpillar. I was on a mountain looking for plants with Don Elijio when I closed my palm around its hundreds of tiny, poisonous hairs coated with noxious toxins. Don Elijio rushed to my side when he heard me moan. He grumbled, “Very bad, very bad,” while pointing to the furry, elongated creature responsible.

  “Does it kill people?” I asked, between gulping sobs.

  “Sometimes. But there is no cure, only prayer and time.”

  My palm felt like it had been plunged into the red hot core of fire. I couldn’t pull it away from the flame; the excruciating pain felt as if it was consuming my hand. Don Elijio sat me down under a shady tree. He gently held my wrists, blew on my fiery palm, and whispered Mayan prayers.

  I held my throbbing arm to my chest and let the tears flow freely as Don Elijio and I made our way down the mountainside. By himself he carried the sacks filled with the day’s harvest. The pain increased with every step.

  As we walked, he tried to cheer me up. “If you’re going to die today, you might as well marry me,” he suggested.

  His comment infuriated me. I was scared and didn’t want to be teased. Through my tears, I told him he was completely shameless. When we got back to the hut I said I wanted to go home to my paramedic husband.

  Don Elijio showed little sentiment, which made me angrier. But I guess he’d seen too many bush accidents to get emotional over my less-than-fatal injury.

  I left for home, and by the time I stumbled and winced my way through the forest trail to the river, I was nearly hysterical. Greg was sipping a beer with Mick at Chaa Creek. He was startled by my surprise homecoming and quickly offered the sympathy I was craving before putting me to bed. He went into our stash of homeopathic remedies and gave me Arnica pills, then rubbed Rescue Remedy into the wound. I lay down on the wicker couch as Crystal prepared cool compresses. Then, as Don Elijio had said, we could do nothing else but watch my crimson and blistering palm slowly heal itself.

  My absences were also hard on Crystal, now ten. It was a delight to see her when I would return home. She’d run to me and give me an update on everything that had happened while I was gone, recounting tales of tomato bugs, visiting iguanas, and the escapades of our live-in cats, one of which showed her love by bringing Crystal a fresh decapitated lizard every afternoon.

  Crystal was often lonely, and for a while she moved in with the Flemings and their children. As the only two homesteads for miles, we were one big extended family. We shared a common goal of carving out a wholesome, nature-based lifestyle. The children were inseparable, and Mick and Lucy were our closest friends.

  Without much hired labor between us, we often had to help each other fight back the encroaching forest, which never stopped threatening to reclaim its ancient domain. We offered each other support when one of us ran out of fresh food, supplies, or a sense of humor.

  Together we worked to make our tropical existence safe for ourselves and our children. Greg’s paramedic experience was invaluable, as was my increasing knowledge of home remedies. When Crystal, Bryony, Piers, and Gonzalo all came down with tropical measles—much more dangerous than the northern strain—I bathed them in a tub filled with boiled Red Gumbolimbo bark. It soothed their painful rashes, lowered the high fevers, and helped them fall into a deep, restful sleep.

  In the beginning of my apprenticeship, I would return from San Antonio and search my backyard farmacia, pharmacy, for a specific plant, never certain I could identify it without Don Elijio’s help. After about a year and a half of tramping about in the rainforest, plants began to stand out as individuals with uses and exciting histories. The dark, mysterious forest of trees and lianas was becoming a familiar place of knowledge and healing.

  Once I felt sure that the plant in my hand was what I believed it to be, it took much more time before I felt completely confident that I could use the plants I collected on my patients. Only gradually did I became proficient at using the cures Don Elijio had taught.

  Our lives were still difficult and challenging, but our perseverance was showing results. Our natural healing practice in San Ignacio Town was flourishing. As Greg and I began to realize that we had purchased thirty-five acres of medicine—enough to last several lifetimes—we no longer needed to import herbs from the United States.

  An increasing number of our patients were coming from the Mennonite community of Spanish Lookout, about ten miles northeast of San Ignacio. The German Mennonites, a Christian sect, had settled in Belize in 1958 to form a farming community of several hundred settlers. They came to us mostly for naprapathic treatments. Hands-on healing had always been a part of their culture, and they arrived at our office by the truckload. We treated all ages, from newborns to the elderly. Sometimes as many as twelve members of one family filled our waiting room.

  Gradually, our ugly, burned-out clearing in the jungle was transforming itself into a showplace of tropical flowers, including hibiscus in four shades, orchids, and heliconia.

  The fruit trees were beginning to bear their mangoes, oranges, lemons, and avocados. The pineapples and bananas were fat and sweet. We discovered wild fruit trees in our jungle, including annona, hog plum, and zapote, a favorite fruit of the ancient Maya. Its delicious flavor reminded me of a peach embellished with a dash of cinnamon.

  Our organic gardens were sprouting some hearty, deep green varieties of lettuce, with succulent, tender leaves. Collard greens had become one of our most reliable crops, and we relished them in their raw and cooked states. Ground crops such as cassava and macal (taro root) had become our staples.

  With our finances improving, there were times we were able to hire farmhands and a housekeeper to relieve some of the burden of the relentless, daily chores. We also paid Panti tuition—a source of income that never failed to surprise him but one that he greatly appreciated.

  We still had bad days, but more often Greg, Crystal, and I appreciated that we had our very own piece of paradise. There was no more talk of moving back to Chicago. We no longer wanted to be anywhere but at our little riverside farm, which we decided to name in honor of the Maya Goddess of medicine
.

  We celebrated the christening of our homestead with a bottle of champagne we had chilled in the river.

  We named it Ix Chel Farm.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Anal Psychotria acuminata

  A common herb used primarily in the Nine Xiv formula for herbal baths, for treating skin disorders, swellings, bruises, nervousness, and insomnia, and for all children’s diseases.

  One day as we collected Anal Xiv, I noticed that Don Elijio seemed sad and distressed. He hadn’t made a single joke all day long. We were on our way back along the logging road when he cleared his throat and began to talk. He told me about a woman he called La Cobanera.

  She was a Latina woman named Claudia from Cobán, Guatemala, who now lived in a village ten miles south of San Antonio. She had come to him as a patient with a pain in her belly. After she was cured, they began a courtship.

  But things weren’t going well. La Cobanera had promised many times to come and live with him: “Until you bury me or I bury you,” she would say. But the last time he had seen her, she had broken this promise with yet another transparent excuse.

  “I told her she is like the flower called Amor de un Rato. Love for a while. She says she still has much work to do before she can stay with me. It is always ‘next week, next week.’ I guess next week never comes.”

  He had spoken his heart to her, admitting to her he was lonely and in dire need of a woman to administer his house. “I promised her she would not suffer with me. I’ve eaten a few beans in my time and I know how to make a woman happy. Before she could ask me, money would be in her hand. I have no rushing river of money coming in, but I have a reliable drip.”

  He was getting visibly more upset with each disclosure, and soon the story rushed forth like an emotional hurricane.

  “Each time she comes to stay, she asks for money. The nights she spends with me are very affectionate. But in the morning, it hurts me when she packs up her bag and then holds out her hand. At first it was twenty, then thirty, then she asked me for eighty dollars. Rosita, she’s playing with me. Flattering me, loving me in the night, and laughing at me in the day.”