Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

CHAPTER TWO
Breadnut Ramon Chacox
Brosimum alicastrum
The fruits of the Ramon tree once provided a staple food to the ancient Maya and Aztec Indians. The
fruits are boiled and eaten like young potatoes or ground into a cereal-like gruel and sweetened. The
cooked ground nuts combined with corn make an excellent, nutritious tortilla and help to stretch the
supply of corn. The flavor of Ramon nuts is reminiscent of chestnuts. The leaves of the tree are
highly valued for female animals that have recently given birth because they greatly increase and
enrich the milk supply. The diluted white, milky sap may be fed to newborn infants as a milk
substitute when mother’s milk is not available.
The dry season had begun, and our farm surprised us by quickly
transforming itself from a mud slide into a dust bowl. Until the grass we
planted patch by patch began to grow, we were going to suffer through a
cycle of mud drying into dust, dust churning into muck. This was taking a
heavy toll on our fragile gardens, which either washed away or became
parched in the blistering sun, leaving the soil cracked and split, as if there
had been an earthquake.
In the peach-colored dawn the family was enjoying a tropical breakfast
of bread and fruits. It was one week after my first encounter with Panti.
This was Crystal’s first day of school at Sacred Heart Primary School in
San Ignacio, and I was hoping it would be my first day of school in San
Antonio with Panti.
We climbed down the steep, slippery bank to the river. Mr. Thomas
Green, a tall, thin, dark-skinned Creole man in his seventies, was at the
helm of the twenty-one foot dory, which he’d fashioned himself from a
giant tubroos tree. I squeezed in among the children and schoolbags and
asked Mr. Thomas to drop me across the river. “I’m going to see the old
bush doctor, Elijio Panti,” I announced, relishing the sound of my
adventure.
“You gwen go see di ole man?” he said excitedly, in the Creole-English
that most Belizeans speak. “Dat good. Me like di bush med’sin. E good and
di ole man know plenty,” he added, while deftly maneuvering to the