Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

of the village farms, finding an unusually large number of musical
instruments in the more than three hundred homesites of the ancient Maya.
The village, which archaeologists call Pacbitun, was ruled by the ancient
city of Caracol, just thirty miles up the road.
I tried to imagine the ancient settlement, but modern San Antonio kept
reemerging with its duet of barking dogs and blaring radios. Playful
children ran up to me, singing out, “Gringa, gringa, gimme sweet.” Their
mothers scolded them in Mayan, and the children called back in a hybrid of
Mayan, Spanish, and English, reminding me of a line from a Mexican
revolutionary song: niños mismo color de mi tierra. Children the same color
as my land.
Several women were turning peanuts they’d spread out on palm woven
mats to dry in the sun. They waved as I walked by. I had seen no men, since
it was September, harvest time for corn and beans in the fields just beyond
the village.
Ahead on the road, three bronze, barefoot Maya women approached,
balancing sacks of corn on their heads and babies in their arms. “Buenos
días. Where, please, is the house of Elijio Panti?” I asked.
Their eyes darted playfully back and forth to each other, and they
covered their mouths to mask their giggling. One pretty, almond-eyed
woman pointed to the cluster of huts just inches from where I stood.
Panti’s home and clinic reminded me of the old Chinese proverb:
Sometimes, the greatest people in a village look like no more than a turtle in
the mud. A dilapidated gray shack made of sticks and leaves leaned against
a small, sturdy cement house with a zinc roof. Behind them stood a thatch
hut with most of its walls torn away and a roof with gaping holes, open to
both sun and rain.
A plump woman stood outside a general store just a stone’s throw from
Panti’s front door. She eyed me closely before telling me he was out
“andando en el monte.” Walking in the mountains. I followed her into her
one-room store, crammed full of tins, chocolate, coffee, lard, cloth, brooms,
and buckets of pickled pig tails. She opened the door to a rusty, gas-fired
refrigerator, and I gratefully chose a cool tin of Guatemalan juice.
While she left to fetch her crying baby, I settled onto a stool in a
shadowy corner. The woman returned and sat down near me to nurse her
baby. She was Isabel, the wife of Angel, Don Elijio’s grandson, she said,