Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

Jerónimo looked over suspiciously and asked him to explain what he
meant by “things.” Panti said he wanted to learn about the healing plants.
He explained about his father—a curandero who had wasted his gifts on
black magic and refused to teach him.
He continued to press Jerónimo until the old Carib wearily answered,
“Yes, yes, I know of these things, but I have no patience for healing people.
They make me crazy. I don’t mind patching up the chicleros, but I hide in
these camps to get away from sick people.”
The reflection of the fire flickered in the Carib’s eyes as he turned and
stared deeply into Panti’s. “Do you have patience, boy?” he growled.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Panti promised he was indeed patient
and dependable. “Healing is what my interest is. Always I wanted to know,
papasito. Please, will you teach me?”
Jerónimo turned his face back toward the yellow flames and remained
silent for a moment more. He looked into the black of the bush and then
spoke.
“There is no rest for the healer. Night and day they will come to your
hut with their sad stories, their sickness. Their troubles are plenty. People do
not understand the healer and often mistrust us. When we heal what the
doctors cannot, the doctors call us brujos, witches, and whisper lies about
us. They say we work with the devil. It is a lonely life, I warn you.”
Panti kept nodding that he understood full well, and he continued to
prod Jerónimo until the recalcitrant old man was won over by the young
chiclero’s persistence. “Then I will teach you. Right now. Right here in the
forest, where all the plants grow and the Spirits live.”
There, deep in the thick, steamy jungles of Petén, his birthplace, Panti
began his training as a curandero. He and Jerónimo searched out herbs,
trees, vines, and roots. Panti had never learned to read or write, so he put
everything Jerónimo said into his head. Each night by the campfire, they
reviewed the day’s lessons.
Jerónimo had him taste plants, make teas and powders out of them, and
learn to recognize many of them while blindfolded. As Panti progressed,
Jerónimo also taught him the Maya healing prayers that he had learned
from his teacher and believed dated back to the ancient Maya H’men.
Jerónimo instructed Panti to have no relations with his wife whenever
he was to cure a gravely ill patient or he would lose his power and she