Sastun

by Rosita Arvigo

  “But, Don Elijio, yours was a great life,” I said. “You helped so many people even after they laughed at you and called you a witch doctor.”

  The crow’s-feet around his eyes deepened into furrows as he pursed his toothless mouth. “Yes, yes, but it’s all over now. I can’t even say prayers for people anymore. What good am I?”

  I held his scarred, knotted hands in mine and let my own tears fall. I continued to read from the book of his life and work until he drifted off to sleep again. I gazed at the dust mites dancing in the rays of the setting sun that broke through the open window and lit up the gray cement room. I knew his end was near. I am not sure he ever fully understood that a book had been written about him, or even what that meant: as an unlettered person rooted in oral tradition, the concept of a book held little meaning.

  A few weeks later, on February 4, 1996, he suffered a stroke. His grandson, Angel, called us from the Loma Luz Hospital in Santa Elena. Greg and I went immediately. In the hallway outside Don Elijio’s room we met a sober-faced doctor who shook his head and said, “Your friend is brain dead. There is nothing we can do for him. Take him home. Let him die in his own bed.”

  Hospital staff disconnected his tubes and helped us put him in the back seat of our truck. Down the San Antonio dirt road we bumped and bounced to deliver his still-breathing physical body to his family. I held him close to keep him from falling off my lap, cradling his head, crying all the while. Angel, who had left the hospital to prepare for Don Elijio’s return, Angel’s wife, and several of their eleven children met us at the gate to his house. Together, we carried Don Elijio inside and placed him in a little twin bed dressed in clean, sweet-smelling linens. Immediately, his closest friends and relatives began to arrive to pay their last respects. I asked to have a few minutes alone with him during which I held his frail wrists and whispered nine times the prayers that he had taught me. I asked the Nine Maya Spirits and God to guide him, to protect him, and to illumine the lamp of his heart. By the time I was done, a crowd had gathered and we left him with his family and neighbors. A blazing orange and dark purple sunset streaked the western sky, reminding me of the hundreds of sunsets I had watched as I sat on Don Elijio’s doorstep chopping the plants that were his peoples’ medicine.

  Greg said, “Rose, it doesn’t make sense to go all the way home. He doesn’t have long. Let’s go up the road to the Mountain Equestrian Trails. Maybe Jim and Marguerite have a room for us. We can come back first thing in the morning.” And so the moonlight played hide-and-seek with the Maya Mountains as we drove into the pine forests above the jungle in the growing darkness. We shared a quiet dinner with our friends then slept fitfully. I was awake from 3:00 A.M. until dawn. No sooner had I fallen asleep than Greg woke me, at 6:10 A.M. He said, “Rose, Don Elijio has passed. I had the most wonderful dream.” I laid my head on his chest and listened to his dream.

  “I looked down on the floor next to the bed where we slept,” he recounted. “There was old, infirm Don Elijio gasping for breath. He took one long breath, then one short, another long, and finally his last gasp. He was dead on the floor. In a moment, he rose up from the floor a young man. His copper face was completely smooth and fully fleshed, devoid of wrinkles. His dark eyes were lively. His hair was as black as coal. He sat on the bed next to you. I felt the mattress sink. He put his arms around you and kissed your face lovingly. He turned your face with both of his hands to look directly at him. He hugged you and said, ‘I love you, Rosita.’ You returned the caress and said, ‘I love you, Don Elijio.’ Then he turned to one of the corners in the room and motioned with his hand. You followed his gaze. There on a low stool sat little six-year-old Pedro. Pedro’s face changed to Mario’s face; Mario’s face changed to Juanita’s; Juanita’s changed to Vanessa’s. Don Elijio said, ‘Rosita, take the children as though they are your own. Train them and teach them to help each other.’ He squeezed your hand and disappeared.”

  At breakfast, Jim announced that a call had come from San Antonio. Don Elijio had passed away at 6:10 A.M. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Greg reached for my hand and said, “The dream, Rose, the dream.” We gathered up our things, thanked Jim and Marguerite, and drove down from the pine forest to the jungle, back to San Antonio.

  Outside the entrance to Don Elijio’s house stood a crowd of weeping villagers. Candles burned inside and a clutch of women sang Spanish hymns. A great man was gone. We were told that his body had to be transported back to San Ignacio hospital for an autopsy, embalming, and a death certificate, so Greg wrapped Don Elijio in a sheet and laid him on a blanket in the back of our truck. As we drove again over the potholed, dusty road, I looked often into the back of the truck at his lifeless body in its makeshift shroud. We left his body at the morgue with a painfully indifferent attendant during a power outage with temperatures soaring to one hundred degrees. Later, Greg and I returned to pick up his body and drive it back to San Antonio for the traditional Belizean wake.

  Word of Don Elijio’s death spread throughout Belize quickly. The national radio station announced his passing several times daily. We, along with several close friends, assisted his family with the arrangements for what turned out to be a state funeral. Dr. Joseph Palacio of the University of Belize called to say he would like to speak on behalf of the academic community. Several government ministers said they would attend. TV celebrities asked to be a part of the service, as well as officials from the Peace Corps, the United States Embassy, the national police force, and local radio stations. In a few frenzied days we prepared a three-page memorial pamphlet. On the back, we printed an old Chinese fable that tells of a student who has studied with his master for nine years and asks to be released from his apprenticeship to return to his village. The master tells him his work is not yet finished. The apprentice is told he must go into the mountains and find nine useless plants. Weeks pass. Months pass. The student returns to his master’s hut dejected and exhausted. He falls on the ground and proclaims, “Master, I have failed my last task. I could find no useless plants.” “No,” replies the teacher. “You have learned a valuable lesson. There are no useless plants. You may now go and heal your people.”

  The day of the funeral, February 6, 1996, dawned clear and sunny. We arrived in San Antonio by 9:00 A.M. to help set up the enormous tent brought in by the town board on a forestry truck. It spanned the road in front of Don Elijio’s house and clinic, forcing traffic to make a long detour through the village to get back to Pine Ridge Road. By midmorning a brutal tropical sun plowed a cloudless sky. Mourners arrived in buses, in pickup trucks, on foot, and on horseback. San Antonio villagers streamed down from the hillsides onto crowded footpaths. All 250 seats were filled and many people had to stand. All were dressed in black, white, or purple—the traditional colors worn to funerals in Belize. A group of musicians from Succotz, Don Elijio’s home village, arrived and set up a marimba under the tent and began to play. Police in dress uniform stood guard as officials and dignitaries from Belmopan and Belize City took their places on the central stage. Among them was the minister of natural resources, Eduardo Juan; Dr. Palacio, dean of the University of Belize; the director of the Peace Corps; members of the British High Commission; a representative from the ministry of forestry; two Evangelical ministers; and, of course, Angel and Isabel, and Greg and me.

  Four policemen carried Don Elijio’s wooden, satin-lined casket out of the house and placed it in front of the stage. Numero Uno, as Don Elijio was lovingly called, looked almost comical. Someone had tied a strip of cotton cloth around his head and chin, toothache fashion. Angel whispered to me that his jaw would not stay closed and they thought it looked unsightly. Children gathered around the casket daring each other to touch him and a few brave little souls poked a quick finger at the body.

  The radio announcer took the stage. He shook a finger at the crowd and scowled. “You’re all here today to honor and praise Don Elijio. But while he was alive, many of you called him a witch doctor, a devil worshipp
er, and made life hard for him.” It was true, and some in the audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats. I delivered a eulogy. Dr. Palacio spoke of Don Elijio’s contribution to the people of Belize and the importance of preserving the national patrimony through traditional healing knowledge. One of the Evangelical ministers gave an hour-long sermon. The marimba band played a lively tune. I closed the lid to Don Eligio’s coffin and said good-bye for the last time. Six men lifted his casket and carried it a few hundred yards over the white marl road to the little wooden church painted a bright Caribbean blue. After the service, he was laid to rest in the San Antonio graveyard next to his wife and daughter.

  Over the next weeks, many friends came to Ix Chel Farm, our home on the other side of the Macal River, to offer support and condolences. I vowed to perform nine Primicias to the Maya Spirits in memory of Don Elijio. In spite of the frantic activity, I was able to fulfill the promise in ten days, sometimes with friends and at other times alone. The Primicias were all performed in the old Healer’s Hut on the farm, just a few yards from the end of the Rainforest Medicine Trail we had built so that visitors from Belize and other countries could learn about some of Belize’s medicinal plant treasures to better understand the value of the rainforest. The hut was a typical Maya thatch and stick house, modeled after the hut in which I first found Don Elijio in 1983.

  During those ten days and nine Primicias, there were several dream-visions, but two were the most memorable. On the third night of his passing and after the second Primicia, the first dream occurred: I am gazing at a map of the Americas. I see an endless march of indigenous people moving slowly toward Belize. They are all on foot walking from the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, and even as far south as Argentina and Brazil. They wear feather headdresses, jade pendants, and jaguar-skin pelts on earth-colored bodies. They pound on drums, blow on flutes and horns, and shake gourd rattles. The music is not funereal, but bouncing and joyful. One man, his face painted bright red, steps out of the parade and faces me. He has long, sleek black hair; bangs cut straight across his forehead. He wears only a red embroidered loincloth and, across his chest, a rough piece of palm frond from the cohune tree hung from strips of vine. On the brown frond, written in white letters, are the words, AMAZONIAN SIDE. The man smiles and looks at me tenderly. Then, suddenly, the Amazonian Indian and I are in a dank, dark room that resembles a basement. There is a clamor of noise outside the only window. A group of angry people are shouting at us, hurling rocks and insults. I am quite frightened, even upset. I search the man’s eyes for meaning. He looks at me with compassion. I expect him to say something comforting, but then he laughs and laughs until he is doubled over in fits of mirth. At the time of Don Elijio’s passing and for many years prior, I, like Don Elijio, was at times an object of ridicule and scorn in Belize. I interpreted the dream to mean that we can’t get upset or angry at people who laugh, insult, or threaten our work. Like Don Elijio and the Amazonian man, I must simply keep laughing.

  The second dream came on the fifth night following Don Elijio’s passing. I am sitting inside a hovel somewhere in Central America. It feels and looks like Guatemala, but I am not sure. There are three Maya women in traditional handwoven and embroidered dress sitting on a dirt floor with me. The little hut has only three walls made of chicken wire. The back is propped up against a high stone wall that seems to be the property of someone wealthy. Five bland-faced children in torn and patched clothing sit on the dirt floor. I get a clear sense that these people are not here by choice, but by need. The wood door creaks opens. An unseen person shoves a rusty tin plate of old, dried beans onto the dirt floor. It looks like something that would normally feed a dog. Each of the women holds a bundle wrapped in embroidered cloth. They unfold the cloths and inside are stacks of corn tortillas. The women spread the dry, stale beans on the tortillas and pass them out. One of the women hands me three bean-filled tortillas. Emotion wells up within me as I am overwhelmed by their generosity and poverty. I say, “No, señora. Feed your children.” One of the Maya women looks deeply into my eyes. Hers are wide, bright, and beautiful. She smiles at me and answers. “No, señora, eat—because the more we give the more we receive.” I came to believe that this dream was in response to the great fuss regarding an erroneous statement made during the funeral that Don Elijio never charged or expected payment for his healing. That was not true. He was happy to treat people whether they could pay or not, but he believed that if they could pay, they should. He said that people who could afford to pay and were generous with their donation received more blessing from God and thus got well faster.

  For two years, I contemplated Greg’s dream of Don Elijio’s last words about the children of Belize. The question I asked myself was “How can I best fulfill those parting words of my dear maestro?” I was raised in the inner city of Chicago in the 1940s and remembered that the best parts of my childhood were the summer camps held by the Chicago Boys Club. We nature-starved urban kids were taken out into the countryside of Michigan and Wisconsin for two weeks every summer. There I fell in love with trees, lakes, and big skies. I reasoned that if summer camp was so inspirational to me, it might also be for the children of Belize. Greg and I hit on the idea of creating the Summer Children’s Bush Medicine Camp in honor of Don Elijio, and with the generous support of the Gildea Family Foundation, we have run the camp for the past thirteen years. Twenty-four Belizean children spend two weeks learning about medicinal plants with plenty of hands-on activity. They learn how to treat earaches with oregano, headaches with nopal, anemia with hibiscus flowers. They give each other spiritual baths to combat susto, or fright. And amid all that learning, they sing, dance, swim in the Macal River, and put on a talent show for parents’ day. Thus far, more than three hundred children have attended Bush Medicine Camp, and we know from parents’ reports that they indeed did learn “to help each other.”

  The New York Times published an obituary of Don Elijio on February 10, 1996, with the headline “Eligio Panti, 103, Maya Healer With Modern Ties.” It began, “Eligio Panti, a traditional healer whose ancient herbal remedies attracted the attention of modern medical scientists and drew thousands of patients to the door of his humble hut in Belize, died on Sunday in his home in the village of San Antonio.” The obituary went on to add that “Don Eligio was schooled in a thousand-year-old oral tradition, learning what many generations of botanical trial and error had taught his predecessors: which obscure plant would cure which ailment and how to prepare each cure.”

  This epilogue is written during the great year of 2012, the year that the Maya calendar ends and begins again. It is not, as some have said, the end of the world; only a new beginning. Let it be a beginning of an era in which we learn to live in greater harmony with the gifts of the earth and its indigenous peoples.

  PICTURE SECTION

  Don Elijio holding his sastun (photo by Carol Becker)

  Rosita with Don Elijio on the trail

  Rosita on expedition

  Don Elijio with patients

  Don Elijio, Rosita, and Mike Balick

  (photos by Michael Balick)

  Jackass Bitters

  Gumbolimbo

  Contribo

  (photos by Michael Balick)

  Cow’s Hoof Vine

  Polly Red Head

  Wild Yams

  (photos by Michael Balick)

  Don Elijio gathering herbs on trail

  Inside Don Elijio’s house with herbs

  Rosita with Don Elijio chopping medicine

  (photos by Michael Balick)

  Don Elijio on trail to village (photo by Carol Becker)

  GLOSSARY OF MAYAN WORDS

  c’ox ca’ax: “Let’s go to the mountains.”

  comal: a round clay disk used to make corn tortillas and to toast food or plants

  H’men: Doctor priest(ess), “One who knows”

  ik: wind

  inca: “I’m going now.”

  sas: light,
mirror

  sastun: a divining stone used by the H’men

  tato: an affectionate term used to address the elderly and the revered

  tun: stone, age

  Tzibche: (literally) letter tree

  A BASIC CATALOG OF MEDICINAL RAINFOREST PLANTS

  Allspice

  Pimienta Gorda

  Pimenta dioica

  Use the leaves and berries as an old household remedy for stomachache, colic, indigestion, and fever. Apply the crushed berry over the gum of an aching tooth to bring quick relief.

  Amaranth

  Amaranto

  Calalu

  Amaranthus sp.

  A “pot herb” used for both food and medicine. Leaves are high in iron and calcium; seeds are rich in protein.

  Anal

  Psychotria acuminata

  Several varieties; all are used for part of herbal bath formula.

  Avocado Pear

  Aguacate

  On

  Persea americana

  Boil leaves with other species for cough syrup. Drink as a tea for pain, colds, and fever.