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explaining that the old man was very busy, <strong>with</strong> patients trickling in all day<br />
long and sometimes into the night.<br />
“Are you sick?” she asked, looking me over for telltale signs of disease.<br />
“You can wait in his kitchen. He should be back just before noon when the<br />
patients start arriving by transport.”<br />
The door to one of the thatch huts hung open, barely attached by a<br />
broken hinge. I stepped inside and the coolness of the interior surprised me.<br />
So did the state of disrepair. The walls displayed more stick than mud, and<br />
more than half the adobe was chipped away.<br />
The room was no more than ten by ten feet. Three chopping blocks sat<br />
on the floor, surrounded by a dozen sacks of leaves, dried medicines, and<br />
corn. I could see no modern conveniences. It could have been A.D. 800<br />
except for the nearby cement house <strong>with</strong> its zinc roof.<br />
I had lived in huts like this one in Mexico. Panti’s had a well-crafted<br />
clay hearth, where a brazen hen ruffled her feathers in a cloud of ashes. An<br />
enormous black pig grunted in the doorway and made a move to come<br />
inside and rifle through a basket of dried corncobs. “Cuchi, cuchi,” I<br />
shouted and rushed at him. The pig stared dead blank into my eyes and<br />
shuffled away at his own pace.<br />
“They respect no one and no place,” said a man in Spanish, stepping<br />
into the hut <strong>with</strong> a woman and small child in tow. Once settled onto stools,<br />
we exchanged the usual friendly greetings. “<strong>My</strong> baby is sick,” the woman<br />
said as she tenderly stroked the child’s head. “She is four years old but as<br />
you can see looks no more than two.”<br />
The listless young girl looked up at me, igniting my healing instincts,<br />
<strong>with</strong> her arm dropped askew, pathetically out of her control. She drooled a<br />
bit and groaned, turning again to her mother for comfort. The child’s eyes<br />
looked vacant and her breath was shallow. I could see her heart beating like<br />
a trapped bird under her paper-thin, lavender dress.<br />
The girl had been vomiting and suffering from diarrhea for months, the<br />
mother said. They had taken her to clinics in Guatemala and in Mexico’s<br />
Yucatán before running out of money.<br />
“All the doctors say the same thing,” said the mother. “‘We see nothing<br />
on the machines, so there’s nothing wrong <strong>with</strong> your child. She just needs<br />
better food and vitamins.’” However, a nurse in Guatemala had suggested<br />
they see the great healer, Don Elijio.