We hiked further until we found enough Zorillo or Skunk Root to fill a sack for Don Elijio to carry—probably another fifty pounds. This he carried strapped to his head, Maya fashion. That method gave me a headache, so as usual I carried my load as a backpack strapped around my shoulders. That way the load rested on the small of my back, leaving my arms free to collect Xiv and to wield my machete.
It was 3 P.M. by the time we started down a steep hillside that led to the old logging road and back to San Antonio. Don Elijio was in marvelous form. In spite of his heavy load, he seemed to glide effortlessly down the slope, hardly catching a breath between stories. Above our heads was a playground of tropical birds and butterflies. I envied their weightless flight as I trudged along with my sacred burden.
Don Elijio suddenly slipped and fell, propelled forward by fifty pounds of Skunk Root. I gasped. But hardly missing a beat, he reached out and grabbed a sturdy vine. There he swung back and forth like a pendulum holding onto the vine with the sinewy muscles of his arms. He laughed out loud and said, “Ha! This is good exercise. I should fall more often.”
“Don Elijio, you’re a strong man,” I told him once I had recovered from my momentary fright.
“Very strong,” he answered, as he slithered down like a boy at play. “Enough blood and strength to keep a woman up all night long, kissing, whispering, kissing and whispering secrets. All night long. I don’t tire.”
Don Elijio looked so happy out in the forest that day, I wished we could stay there forever. As we resumed our journey downward, the heady, delicious aroma of humus enveloped us. Don Elijio stopped for a moment to adjust the straps around his brow. “When I was young I could spend the whole night in the forest,” he said. “Would you have that courage?”
“No,” I said right away. “At night the forest belongs to creatures like snakes and jaguars.”
“What if we were to become creatures?” he asked. “I’ve never been tempted to become a jaguar, but, Rosita, I would if you and I could make a nest together in the forest.”
I laughed and told him I was honored by the offer but I didn’t want to be a jaguar any more than he did.
“Well, anytime you’re ready I can pull that old prayer out of my head in a minute,” he said, teasing me. We continued happily down the slope.
It was a few minutes later that we first began to smell the acrid, black smoke. The sky above the trees, once azure and white, was now ominously gray. Just ahead, our little footpath was blocked by flames licking their way hungrily into the forest.
We stopped in unison, shocked to see the abrupt change. Don Elijio cleared a side path that skirted around the advancing flames and motioned for me to follow him. I did as I was told, confident that he would lead me through the forest safely.
We made it down the hill, only to see that the field on the other side of the road was engulfed in flames. On the edge of the field, high swords of fire were consuming the cohune palms, fed by their abundant oil.
Farmers were burning their fields to reap the benefit of wood ash for fertilizer and to rid the soil of agricultural predators. But the milpa fires, intended to prepare the fields for crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins, were out of control.
“This fool has not made a firebreak,” yelled Don Elijio. “No! No! This kind of farmer cares only for himself and damn his neighbor, the plants, and the creatures. They only fool themselves. Nature will make them pay for this cruel treatment. Soon, Rosita, there will be no place left for me to harvest God’s medicines to heal his children.
“I’ve lived too long, that’s what’s wrong,” he continued, standing agape at the sight before us. “I’ve lived beyond the plants and the forest and people who care. When they are gone, I would rather be dead too. What would there be for me to live for? Nothing.”
“We have to get out of here, papá,” I screamed at him, just as a ball of fire blew across the road and landed in the forest behind us. He started to leap for the flame to snuff it out, but I stopped him and did it myself. Balls of fire were flying everywhere now, fueled by sun-dried palm leaves and the afternoon breeze. More trees were catching on fire, and flames were spreading on both sides of the road.
I stamped and smothered what I could in a vain effort to prevent our medicine trail from being destroyed. Then we made our way along the road, following a trail of devastation.
The air was thick with smoke that burned our eyes and turned the already hot afternoon into a living inferno. Don Elijio’s failing eyes became useless and he stumbled several times. Knowing he would never leave the bags of Billy Webb and Zorillo behind, I took his bag and staggered along, trying to carry both of our sacks. As I struggled with the bags, I was all too conscious of the fiery projectiles, falling trees, and my maestro, walking slowly in front of me, his shoulders slumped, dragging the pick, machetes, and hoe.
Several farmers had decided to burn together that day. The more careful, thoughtful men had made firebreaks to protect surrounding stands of forest. In these fields, the fire was contained and under control.
After getting through the worst of it, we stopped for a rest under a shady tree and shared an orange. Don Elijio sat down, defeated and exhausted, looking like the ninety-some-year-old man he was. His shoulders drooped and his eyes teared. He looked nothing like my playful companion who had swung on a vine over my head an hour ago.
We sat in silence. At last he said sadly, “That field we just passed was the last place anywhere around here where I could collect Eremuil leaves. A month ago, I went to the farmer and asked him to please spare that blessed tree because I need so much of it. Did he listen to me or my plea? No! Chopped it down and burned it all up! His own wife needs that tree.
“Now what, Rosita? Now what? Nothing does what Eremuil can do. It is the queen of all the Xiv. This is what comes from living too long. The day will come when there’ll be no medicine left around the village and my art will be finished. Only tales and stories will remain. Where will my people get healing then? Where?
“I lost my daughter. I lost my wife. All of that I bore. But now I wish Saint Peter would find my name in his book and call me home.”
It was hard to console him. What was I to say? I too felt discouraged and disheartened. Here was another swath of one of the world’s last great rainforests going the same way as all the others. We never learn.
“There are still some Eremuil trees on my farm, papá,” I told him. “I’ll bring you leaves from those trees every week. I promise you’ll never be without. Don’t worry, please, my king. We’ll help each other. Greg and I will go searching for your medicine wherever we have to go, we will.”
At that moment I was struck with a plan. Why not talk to the farmers ahead of time and arrange for us to harvest their medicinal plants before they burned their fields and destroyed them? That’s what Don Elijio’s friend Don Antonio did for the plants on his farm. He harvested them and sold them before he burned so that less of nature’s bounty would be wasted.
“What a shame the farmers didn’t let us know they were burning today so we could have gotten some help and harvested the plants,” I told Don Elijio. “Next year, we’ll start asking in February before the March and April fires are set.”
“Good idea,” mumbled Don Elijio. “But what do I care? I’m dying and probably won’t even be here next year. When I was young medicine was everywhere—easy to find and abundant. Now, ha! Harder and scarcer every year. Where will it end? This is a bad sign for me and my work. Worse for the people, though.”
We picked up our burdens and made our way slowly back to the village. To the left were the charred remains of a piece of second growth forest. Tree stumps were still smoldering and the hilly landscape was gray, black, and barren. There were no signs of forest life anywhere, just the hot sun beating mercilessly down on the already-baked earth.
To our right was an untouched piece of woodland. The larger trees shaded our advance under cool breezes. A yellow flowering vine hung from a branch above. Butterflies romped, insec
ts buzzed, and several species of rainbow-colored birds flitted and chirped in and out of the foliage. A chameleon darted for cover as we approached.
The contrast was sad and sobering. Don Elijio and I paused for a moment to contemplate the stark, smoking graveyard just across the road and what used to be and was no more. I felt as if my best friend, the forest, had a knife to her throat and I could do nothing.
That particular dry season, in 1989, was a low point in rainforest destruction in Belize. Never before had we seen such extensive burning of both small fields and large tracts for agriculture and community development. That year, too many farmers defied the rule to always cut a firebreak, and escaping milpa fires raged in every district, jumping over roads and fences. A black haze filled the air daily, and ashes fell everywhere.
When the rainy season came, this large-scale wrenching of trees from their deeply rooted beds caused the rivers to rise as never before. One large, mature tree alone can hold thousands of gallons of water in its trunk, leaves, and roots. But thousands of trees had been killed. Without trees, nature had no way to contain the mammoth amounts of rainwater that came pouring down the hillsides. Along with the water went the thin topsoil, turning the engorged rivers into churning mud that carried riverine plant and animal life.
The next year, several hundred acres of forest were cleared just miles upriver from our farm for development of a citrus plantation. One day over a period of five hours, the Macal River rose a record sixty feet, nearly arriving at our doorstep.
The destruction of the rainforest and its pharmacy seemed to drain away Don Elijio’s spirit and stamina. He had been deeply shocked by that fiery day in the village fields. He spoke of it for a very long time, lamenting that he had outlived his plants and his friends, therefore his usefulness.
It wasn’t long after that Don Elijio stopped going alone into the forest in search of his healing partners. By this time, the rainforest had receded even further—it was over an hour and a half walk from his door—and his eyesight had deteriorated to the point where he couldn’t discern stumps and vines from creeks and rocks.
It became part of my service to him to be sure he was well supplied with his primary medicines of vines, roots, and barks as well as the Xiv (leaves) used for bathing and wound powders.
Since he required hundreds of pounds of dried medicines each week this was a formidable task. I had no idea where I was going to get enough plants to be able to supply both of us. Don Elijio knew the rainforest like no one else. He had roamed daily through fifty acres of high mountain government-owned forests above San Antonio, into places I was doubtful I could ever find alone. Some plants he purchased from old friends like Don Antonio who shared his respect for plants but were themselves rapidly succumbing to old age.
Some plants I purchased from herb vendors or paid people to collect. Greg and I and a local herbalist named Polo Romero also began visiting farmers before they burned their milpas, so that we could harvest their medicinal plants. Mostly, I spent hours alone in the forest and the fields, gathering his plants. Sometimes I collected on Ix Chel’s thirty-five acres, or in the forests and fields near San Antonio.
Wherever I was, I missed my longtime companion. As much as I loved my solitary forays into the rainforest, it was never the same without Don Elijio.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Pheasant Tail Cola de Faisán
Xiv Yak Tun Ich Anthurium schlechtendalii
A bath or steam bath of these leaves boiled in water is considered a specific treatment for muscle aches, backaches, rheumatism, arthritis, paralysis, and swelling. The leaf is crushed with a stone and then applied directly to sore muscles or backache.
Antonio was a friendly vendor from whom I bought beets and onions every Saturday morning. His booth was a regular stop on my weekly shopping trip to San Ignacio’s busy outdoor marketplace, overlooking the Macal River.
One Saturday morning, Tony looked uncharacteristically grim.
“Are you still working with Don Elijio? Can you cure now, Doña Rosita?”
I could tell from his expression that he was not just making small talk. He seemed genuinely anguished.
“Maybe you could help me? My wife and I will come see you this week, yes?” he continued. I was just about to say “of course” when he added, “Things are not right for us, Doña Rosita. Something is not natural.”
Those last few words pierced through the voices of buyers, shouting orders for corn and plantains. I’d heard them enough times at Panti’s clinic and I’d been dreading the time when they would be addressed to me. After seeing hundreds of cases at Don Elijio’s clinic, I couldn’t deny the existence of evil forces. But it was one thing to assist Don Elijio. It was another to make that final leap of faith alone into the frightening and ambiguous sphere of spiritual healing.
Nor did I have confidence that I could treat spiritual diseases. Physical, yes, but spiritual? That was a different story. Was I as strong as Panti? I didn’t think so.
“You better go see Don Elijio,” I warbled.
“No, I want to see you, Doña Rosita. I have faith in you,” he said.
I was unable to refuse his request. It was a genuine plea for help. I told Antonio to come to my farm as soon as he could.
Two days later, he and his wife Helena sat at my kitchen table, recounting their story. They lived in Benque Viejo del Carmen, where their grandparents and every family member since had been born. They had started their business by selling modest harvests off the back of their truck, eventually opening a permanent stand at the San Ignacio market.
Recently, they said, one of their neighbors had become jealous of their hard-earned success. The neighbor had been heard complaining that Antonio and Helena were too smug about their good fortune. He had told many people in town that he would put an end to their conceit.
One day while Antonio was away, a dish of stewed pork was sent to their home as a gift, delivered in the hands of a child. “My auntie sends this to you,” the youngster told Helena. She didn’t recognize the child and wasn’t sure who had sent the plate of food, but she ate the stewed pork for lunch. By the time Antonio returned home from Belize City, she was strangely ill with nausea, acute anxiety, and an overpowering sense of doom.
Antonio called in the family’s granny healer, who was respected by dint of her decades of experience and knowledge of medicinal plants. The crone immediately suspected the symptoms and asked Helena, “Did anyone send you something to eat?”
The grandmother concluded that the meat had been tainted with black magic by the jealous neighbor, whom she also had overheard boasting in public that he would teach Antonio and Helena a lesson about pride.
But Antonio and Helena didn’t believe the old woman. They went to the town clinic, where Helena’s sickness was diagnosed as gastritis. She took pills for a month but only got worse. The original symptoms intensified, and she had severe menstrual cramps for the first time in her life. She also began to suffer from nightmares, twisted fantasies, and depression and became indifferent to her roles as wife and mother.
Antonio brought Helena to Belize City to see another doctor. The doctor admitted that he didn’t know what was ailing her but suggested it might be hysteria. From Belize City, they took a bus to Merida in Yucatán, Mexico, to consult with a specialist who took X rays and ran a series of tests with no conclusive results. He gave Helena Valium, which made her even more nauseated and depressed.
In utter desperation, having spent most of their meager savings, they again asked their granny healer for advice.
“You need to see a curandero who can do this work,” she scolded. “Someone like Don Elijio in San Antonio. That is your only hope.”
I had been wringing my hands throughout their story. I believed what they had told me. It was a classic envidia scenario. I felt sure the woman had been poisoned by the pork stew, which had been treated with enchanted powders and evil prayers.
Again I tried to send them to see Don Elijio, but the
y protested. “We have faith in you, Doña Rosita,” they said.
My stomach was rolling and my tongue felt as thick as a foam pad as I reached for Helena’s wrist and put my fingertips on her pulse. Instantly, I felt the sensation of painful stabbing soar up my hand and forearm. The familiar cold chills racked my flesh. Her pulse was extremely rapid, bouncing, and fat. It felt like firm, rushing bubbles under my touch.
As Jerónimo had done for Don Elijio, Don Elijio had done for me. For nine Fridays he had said special prayers that would protect me from the onslaught of evil forces while working with victims of black magic. Still, I was nervous and couldn’t help wonder if the prayers would really work.
Then I looked into Helena’s eyes. She gazed at me with intense confidence and hope. I fought back my reluctance, called on my faith, and let my healing instincts muscle their way past my trepidation and doubts. Without another moment’s pause, I began reciting the prayers for envidia into her pulse.
I wished I could use my sastun to ask the Spirits to confirm my diagnosis of envidia. But the Spirits had never taught me to use my sastun as a divining stone. I could only use it to request dream visions and strengthen my healing powers.
Even if I had had a divining sastun, I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to read it. Many times Panti had tried to teach me to read the little bubbles and black dots, but I had never been able to decipher their meanings.
I prepared dried Skunk Root, Zorillo, for her to boil into tea three times daily and instructed her to add the holy water from the Catholic church, Rue, and the sacred Esquipulas powder. Like Panti I prepared a mix of Copal and Rosemary for her to burn on nine Fridays.
By the time I had finished, Antonio and Helena looked remarkably relieved.
“Thank you, thank you, praise God that you are here to help us,” they told me. “We were so weary of people telling us that there was nothing they could do for us. May God repay you and grant you a long life.”
As they left, I wondered if my prayers would work. Then I remembered Panti’s warning to never harbor doubt or the power to heal is severely diluted. “Don’t say to yourself, ‘I hope this works’ or ‘Maybe this will work.’ No, you state clearly that you have faith with all your heart.”
Sastun Page 18