Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

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
versatility 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