Her husband, Manuel Tzib, was Chinda’s uncle and one of the original settlers of San Antonio at the turn of the century. He had contributed his knowledge to Don Elijio when the younger man decided to become a healer.
Tzib was still alive at 107 and lived just a short walk from the clinic. He spent his days bossing Doña María around from his hammock, wrapped in his wife’s reboso (shawl) and wearing her plastic shoes on his tiny feet.
Doña María had married the widowed Tzib when he was sixty-five and she was fifteen, over the objections of both families. But now, decades later, she was the family member who watched over Don Elijio most closely. Before Chinda died, the two women had made a pact: they would care for each other’s husbands in the event one of them died.
So it was Doña María who lovingly laundered the clothing Chinda had made Don Elijio before she had died. She stopped by twice a week to pick up and drop off his laundry, bringing along treats of tamales and sweet buns. In return, Don Elijio helped support her and Manuel.
After she folded the laundry and swept the floor, she sat down to chat. Her husband, who never left the house, had a cold. Don Elijio immediately set about filling her apron with Contribo, Duck Flower, vine, instructing her how to prepare a special sun tea for the elderly.
“Everybody has a cold right now,” said Doña Rosa. “My husband and my daughters are at home right now, sniffling and sneezing.”
“These are natural things,” said Don Elijio.
I concurred. “God willing, we never find a cure for the cold,” I said, “because it is a way the body has of cleansing itself regularly. If we take it away, more serious diseases will follow.”
“It’s good for all that gunk to come out of the body,” threw in Don Elijio.
Doña Maria left for home, making a joke about her jealous husband in his hammock. A few days later, Doña Rosa and I left together, worried about how Don Elijio would fare alone. Not that he was entirely alone. Angel, Isabel, and their eleven children were always around. Of all his grandchildren, Angel was the one who took the most responsibility for his grandfather.
Still, it was a tough few weeks for Don Elijio. The making of the documentary was well timed. The film crew and I met up in San Ignacio and headed out for San Antonio, where we found the old H’men in rare form, ready to be a star.
I remember how he asked me to comb his hair and help him dress in something appropriate. He was relaxed, charming, and powerful on camera, as if he had done it a thousand times before.
When the revivalists pulled up stakes, his patients—as he had predicted—came back one by one, sheepish looks on their faces. Even one of the men who had asked him to give up his practice showed up one day with a painful, swollen jaw.
When the documentary aired the following month on Belize television, it was a huge success. Because of its popularity, it was played over and over again.
Once he was on television, his fame spread into parts of the country where he had been little known. For a while, twice as many patients showed up at his door. Many of the new patients spoke little Spanish, and it became necessary for me to spend more time in San Antonio as his assistant, translating, chopping, collecting. Sometimes Greg came to help out, lending his skills and expertise. Even with the three of us, there were times when we could barely handle the influx. Doña Rosa filled in when we were absent.
In spite of my efforts to bring Don Elijio to town so that he could see the documentary in the home of the only person I knew who had a television, it was a full year before he had a chance to see it. Doña Rosa bought a TV, and that same weekend Don Elijio went to visit.
Like excited children, they turned on the TV for the first time, only to see Don Elijio sitting at his chopping block, discussing Man Vine and ciro.
“Ciro is something that jumps in your belly like a rabbit,” said the Don Elijio on the television.
When he came home, he told me how impressed he had been. “It remembered everything we said that day,” he said proudly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wild Coffee Café Sylvestre Eremuil
Malmea depressa
The aromatic leaves of the small tree are considered to be the most important of all the medicinal leaves used in Maya medicine. Traditional healers use the leaves, boiled in water, to bathe patients suffering from any sickness. A steam bath of the leaves is used to treat muscle spasms, rheumatism, arthritis, paralysis, swelling, backache, and fever.
It was a delightfully cool, sunny winter afternoon in late December when a truck pulled into the driveway of Ix Chel Farm. Rolando, our employee, came to get me in the garden where I was laboring over a bed of collard transplants and daydreaming about the salads and pots of delicious boiled greens I hoped we would be eating in a few months.
“There’s a man here to see you, Doña Rosita,” Rolando said softly, so as not to startle me out of my reverie.
“Did he say what he wants?” I asked, reluctant to leave my garden, thinking I might never finish the transplanting.
“He said he has brought a sick child.”
“Ask him to wait on the veranda, get him a drink of water, and tell him I’ll be right there as soon as I wash my hands,” I said.
A couple in their midthirties sat in chairs on the open-air, thatch roof porch that Greg had just built. The woman held a girl, about eight years old, in her arms. She seemed stiff as a board sitting in her mother’s lap. Her outstretched legs were oddly askew. I braced myself for the story.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I am Rosita. What can I do for you?”
As the man introduced himself, I recognized him as the manager of the hardware store in Santa Elena, the town just across the Hawkes-worth Bridge from San Ignacio.
“We’ve come to see you because our daughter is very ill,” he said, “gravely ill, and no doctor has been able to help her. She hasn’t been able to move her legs or walk for more than three weeks now. The doctors sent us home saying they didn’t know what the problem was and had no treatments to offer. As we left, one suggested we find someone to massage her. If I were a rich man, I would take her to Merida, Miami, or Guatemala City, but I am poor and anyway, I’ve heard of you. People say you do good work and that you learned a lot from Don Elijio. I come to see you with great faith, Doña Rosita.”
“Tell me what happened,” I asked.
The mother, an attractive woman, who like her husband was of Spanish descent, took a deep, troubled breath. She let out a mournful sigh.
“About two months ago, Shajira [Sha-heér-a] had the flu,” she said. “It was a very bad case and she was home from school for what seemed too long of a time. Usually my children recover quickly and well from colds and flu, but this time Shajira stayed in bed for three weeks. Then one morning, she was unable to get out of bed. She said her whole body hurt terribly and she was unable to move from the waist down.
“We took her to the hospital in Belmopan,” she continued. “They sent us to Belize City, where they kept her for observation for ten days. They said that none of their tests could tell them why she was unable to walk. The doctor prescribed some pills, which made her vomit, so we stopped using them. Then he gave us some pills for the pain, which made her feel nauseated and sleepy. We didn’t like that but were afraid to stop the medication and leave our daughter in pain. So we started giving her aspirin, but that only helps a little.
“Now, it has been three weeks since we came home from the hospital with her, and we see no improvement. She cannot walk and there is little feeling in her body from the waist down. Some days she has a fever, no appetite, and seems listless. And she cries often saying she’s afraid to be a cripple. Can you help us?” the mother pleaded.
I took a long deep breath and looked searchingly at little Shajira. She was exquisitely beautiful, with a warm terra cotta complexion, shiny black hair, big round doe eyes, and a sweet expression.
“Bring her into the examining room and let’s have a good look,” I said. Unfortunately Greg was back
in the States visiting his parents, and I missed his comforting presence. We usually teamed up for difficult or seriously ill patients.
I examined the child and determined that there was soreness but no swelling in the tissue of her upper back, very close to the spinal column. Her lower back and the entire musculature of her spinal column were tense and rigid.
Shajira responded nicely to tickles and pinches, which was very encouraging. But every time I put pressure on her right upper back she screamed out in pain and tried to wriggle off the table. Moment by moment I was feeling more confident that I would be able to help her. I wasn’t sure how much of the function of her legs and torso she would recover, but I felt the general prognosis was good.
It had taken me many years to be comfortable enough with Don Elijio’s healing techniques and plants to incorporate them into my own practice. But here I saw a perfect opportunity to blend his system and mine.
I told Shajira’s parents that I thought a pocket of infection left over from the flu virus had settled in her spinal column at the very point of a nerve plexus. This, I thought, was causing her paralysis.
“She will need two naprapathic treatments each week for a while and a series of steam baths in between the treatments,” I counseled. “I would also like her to take something for that virus and have a good purge.
“Are you willing to follow this therapy?” I asked the worried parents.
“Doña Rosita, we have no other hope,” said the father. “Thanks be to God that you are here and there is hope for our daughter. We have four other children who are all strong and healthy. Shajira too has always been a healthy child. I can’t bear to see her like this. She sits in the window looking down on her brothers and playmates, longing to run and play. Yes, we agree. Of course we do. We will do whatever you say.”
“Good, then,” I answered, pleased to have their cooperation and understanding of the task before us.
I gave little Shajira a naprapathic treatment, paying special attention to her upper and lower back. She winced and cried out when I applied pressure in order to restore proper circulation of blood and nerve currents. I hated to hear her cry but remembered the words of our professor at the College of Naprapathy: “Sometimes there is no gain without pain.”
I tried to be as slow and gentle as I could, breaking the intensity of the discomfort with soothing massage to her neck and shoulders. She was obviously relieved when I finished.
I left her parents to dress her and asked them to wait for me on the veranda while I went into the forest behind our farm to search out the Che Che Xiv, the chief herb formula that Don Elijio had instructed me to use in cases of paralysis.
I found the Eremuil or Wild Coffee tree first and said the prayer of thanks to the spirit of the tree before taking the leaves. Next, the Xiv Yak Tun Ich or Pheasant Tail bobbed in the breeze as if to let me know where to find it quickly. It took a longer search to find the last ingredient of the mixture, the Palo Verde (Green Stick) leaves. Since it grows only near water, I had to climb down the steep riverbank and follow the shoreline to a rocky, eroded section where it grew.
The whole process took about thirty minutes, and the family was obviously relieved to see me return with a cotton sack full of the leaf mixture. I instructed them to boil a large double handful of the leaves in a five-gallon pot of water for ten minutes.
“Sit Shajira on a chair behind the steaming leaves and cover her and the pot with a warm blanket, leaving only her head exposed so that she can breathe,” I told them.
Recently I had begun to take Don Elijio’s warning about the Winds more seriously, especially in cases of paralysis and muscle spasms. So I added, “Close all the doors and windows, because if a Viento, Wind, should catch her during or after the steam bath she might get worse instead of better. Please, mamá, be very careful about that.”
The mother shot me a look of surprise and understanding as if she didn’t expect me to know about the dangers of Vientos, since most Americans consider it local superstition.
In the workshop, I poured off a pint of Jackass Bitters tincture from a gallon jug. I gave this to the parents.
“Give Shajira this wine tincture by the spoonful three times daily before meals. Tomorrow you are to give her whatever laxative you use for your children. What do you use?”
“My grandmother knows plenty herbs for that,” answered the mother. “I will ask for her help.”
“What is in the wine?” the father wanted to know.
“Do you know the plant called Jackass Bitters or Tres Puntas?” I asked. “It is excellent for viruses.”
“Yes, I do know the plant,” said the father with a smile.
“Give her lots of papaya juice, lemonade, and simple meals for fourteen days,” I instructed them further. “Bring her back the day after tomorrow for another treatment. These herbs for the steam bath will last a week. Then I will pick them fresh for you again.”
They nodded happily.
“Before you take her home, I would like to say the Maya prayers for her, with your permission,” I said.
“Yes, of course,” they answered in unison.
It was a moving moment for me. I felt her pulse and, by its rhythm, instantly knew which prayer to use. I repeated the prayer three times over her right wrist, three times over her left wrist, and three times over her forehead. As I looked down at her, cuddled comfortably in her mother’s lap, our eyes met. She reminded me of a helpless, innocent creature one might encounter in the bush. I badly wanted to help this child and said an extra prayer for myself.
The family left in much better spirits than when they arrived. The father carried his daughter in his arms to the truck, where he placed her tenderly on her mother’s lap. He covered Shajira with a blanket and rolled up the window. Good. Very smart, I thought.
Over the next few months, Shajira and her parents returned twice weekly for treatments, prayers, and herbs. For the first month, there was no improvement. But none of us lost faith. We consoled and encouraged each other and continued with the treatment program. I conferred several times with Don Elijio, who agreed completely with the course of treatment I had prescribed.
By the fifth week, Shajira was able to stand up unassisted. By the sixth week she could take halting steps, dragging her right leg. The treatments were still painful, but she was now comfortable enough with me so that I could manage to keep her laughing and hopeful.
Things really began to improve by the beginning of the third month. By now she could walk from the truck to the treatment room. The next week, she returned to school for the first time since her illness.
After twelve weeks, Shajira was 95 percent recovered. She still had residual tenderness in the spinal column, but her sacrum was no longer sensitive and she had regained full use of her legs.
I can’t tell you how happy it made me to see her running and playing in the schoolyard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Billy Webb Tree Sweetia panamensis
The bark of the tree is boiled and drunk as a tea for diabetes, tiredness, lack of appetite, delayed menstruation, and dry coughs.
Like a thousand other mornings, Don Elijio and I set out early in search of plants. This day our task was to locate Billy Webb trees from which we carefully strip long slivers of bark in a way that allows the tree to regenerate easily. The bark, boiled and drunk, was an important part of Don Elijio’s arsenal of plants. He used it to treat diabetes and dry coughs, and to encourage the appetite.
The day before, we had finished our supply of Zorillo or Skunk Root. It seemed we could never keep enough of the foul-smelling root in stock. Many days we gave it to patients as soon as we set down our sacks, without a chance to chop and dry it.
A tea of Zorillo was used to cleanse internal organs and to help heal stomach ulcers. Baths in water steeped with the root helped many skin conditions common in the tropics. Don Elijio’s nickname for Zorillo was Metinche (someone who puts their nose into everything), in reference to its versat
ility for both physical and spiritual ailments. Whenever he was confused about symptoms or didn’t get the expected results with other herbs, he would prescribe Zorillo. So we needed also to restock our Zorillo or Skunk Root supply.
We had brought a light lunch of tortillas with us because the Billy Webb trees were a long, circuitous hike away from the forest footpath that lay about two miles north of the village.
Just walking to the trail took over an hour. “When I first started with this work, I could see my farmacia from my doorstep,” he explained. That was the late 1930s. By the 1960s, he had to walk thirty minutes to reach the old growth forest where his vital remedies grew. In the 1980s, the healing forest was an hour’s walk up a road, through merciless sunlight. The tall denizens of the roadside that had once provided shade for humans and shelter and food for wildlife and plants had vanished. The forest had given way to new fields, roads, and homes as the village had expanded and population had increased.
Still, it was a beautiful day and both of us were happy to be where we were, at home with each other and nature. Don Elijio was in a playful and happy mood, making jokes and telling stories all morning. We found the Billy Webb trees and said our prayers in thanks to the spirit of each tree before beginning. He carefully showed me how to use my machete to make oblong cuts in the trunk three feet above the Earth to prevent rain from splashing soil contaminated with bacteria into the incisions.
It takes a long time to skin a tree carefully, and it was almost midday before we were finished. We had stripped enough bark to fill a sack for me to carry weighing about fifty pounds. Then Don Elijio showed me other trees he had stripped before and how well they had healed. He caressed their new bark as if they were also his patients. They were.
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