Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

make them tired and dizzy. We must try God’s medicines first, I tell my
children. If that doesn’t work, then let’s go see the doctor.”
“Yes, sister, you are right,” said Don Elijio. “Sometimes what the doctor
can’t cure, bush medicine can.
“Rosita, bring a small amount of Contribo vine for this child,” he said. I
released Marina’s neck and shoulders. She looked disappointed. She had
been enjoying the massage.
Back I went again into the dark hut, searching through the dozens of
unmarked sacks for Contribo. I located it easily due to its strong, almost
unpleasant, aroma.
Once again, I handed Don Elijio a ten-cent plastic bag stuffed with
plants.
“This Contribo vine is to be soaked in a glass jar all day and then given
to the child by the spoonful,” he told the girl’s mother. “Give her six
tablespoons every day. Soon you will see that the phlegm worsens and
seems to increase for a while, but that is good—it must all come out before
she can be cured. Do you understand?”
“Yes, grandfather, I do,” she answered using the Mayan word nol for
grandfather. Nol was another familiar term of affection, like tatito and
viejito.
I thought the family might be ready to leave, but Doña Juana shoved the
other woman before Don Elijio.
“This daughter has a very serious problem with a fungus on her foot that
is too stubborn for my treatments,” she said forcefully. “Show him,” she
commanded the woman, who obeyed immediately.
This granddaughter, Josefina, was the mother of the newborn baby. She
dutifully took off her plastic sandal and turned her left foot around so we
could see the sole of her foot.
“Good grief!” I thought.
Don Elijio and I glanced at each other in disbelief. There were deep
tunnels in her heel. Several fissures, the width of a pencil and an inch deep,
cut into her flesh. The flesh itself was white, peeling, and cracked.
“What have you been using on it so far?” he asked Doña Juana.
“Like always, I bathed it with a hot, hot tea of Jackass Bitters,” she said.
“It’s better than it was—if you can believe that—but it doesn’t heal. What
should I have done, hermanito?”