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est fulfill those parting words of my dear maestro?” I was raised in the<br />
inner city of Chicago in the 1940s and remembered that the best parts of my<br />
childhood were the summer camps held by the Chicago Boys Club. We<br />
nature-starved urban kids were taken out into the countryside of Michigan<br />
and Wisconsin for two weeks every summer. There I fell in love <strong>with</strong> trees,<br />
lakes, and big skies. I reasoned that if summer camp was so inspirational to<br />
me, it might also be for the children of Belize. Greg and I hit on the idea of<br />
creating the Summer Children’s Bush Medicine Camp in honor of Don<br />
Elijio, and <strong>with</strong> the generous support of the Gildea Family Foundation, we<br />
have run the camp for the past thirteen years. Twenty-four Belizean children<br />
spend two weeks learning about medicinal plants <strong>with</strong> plenty of hands-on<br />
activity. They learn how to treat earaches <strong>with</strong> oregano, headaches <strong>with</strong><br />
nopal, anemia <strong>with</strong> hibiscus flowers. They give each other spiritual baths to<br />
combat susto, or fright. And amid all that learning, they sing, dance, swim<br />
in the Macal River, and put on a talent show for parents’ day. Thus far,<br />
more than three hundred children have attended Bush Medicine Camp, and<br />
we know from parents’ reports that they indeed did learn “to help each<br />
other.”<br />
The New York Times published an obituary of Don Elijio on February<br />
10, 1996, <strong>with</strong> the headline “Eligio Panti, 103, <strong>Maya</strong> <strong>Healer</strong> With Modern<br />
Ties.” It began, “Eligio Panti, a traditional healer whose ancient herbal<br />
remedies attracted the attention of modern medical scientists and drew<br />
thousands of patients to the door of his humble hut in Belize, died on<br />
Sunday in his home in the village of San Antonio.” The obituary went on to<br />
add that “Don Eligio was schooled in a thousand-year-old oral tradition,<br />
learning what many generations of botanical trial and error had taught his<br />
predecessors: which obscure plant would cure which ailment and how to<br />
prepare each cure.”<br />
This epilogue is written during the great year of 2012, the year that the<br />
<strong>Maya</strong> calendar ends and begins again. It is not, as some have said, the end<br />
of the world; only a new beginning. Let it be a beginning of an era in which<br />
we learn to live in greater harmony <strong>with</strong> the gifts of the earth and its<br />
indigenous peoples.