Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

“Ooooooohh,” he said after a few seconds. A look of rejection crossed
his face, and before I could tell him how much I’d grown to care for him he
climbed to his feet. He towered over me and grew into a colossal figure
against the blinding midday sun. Light seemed to emanate from him and
dance on the golden cornstalks. I had never seen Panti look so powerful. Or
so tall. My heart began to pound.
He said in a clipped, reproachful voice, “Just what is it that you want to
know, my daughter?”
Without hedging, I said, “Don Elijio, if you will accept me as an
apprentice, I promise to work hard and learn well.”
Startling me, he pointed his finger and nearly shouted, “Do you have
patience? Do you promise to take care of my people after I am gone?”
In rapid succession, he asked me about my plans for the rest of my life.
Throngs of questions washed across my mind as if a mental dam had
suddenly cracked open. Could I tend to the legions of sick people that
crawled, limped, and stumbled to his door? Would his patients accept me as
his apprentice? Could I now, right here, without even asking my husband
for his opinion, agree to take Don Elijio’s place?
The maelstrom of doubts and worries swirling about my brain were
silenced by my convictions and commitment to healing. I heard my voice
answer firmly, “Yes!” to all his questions.
“Yes, papasito, I promise.”
Unconvinced, he continued hammering away at me, warning of the
hazards of a medicine man’s life. He outlined a picture of daylong hunts in
search of a vital but elusive plant. Then picking, hauling, chopping, drying,
and grinding the precious healing flora. “This is a lonely road, my child. Do
not agree too hastily. Curanderos are often not even trusted by the very
people they heal. They fear us, envy us, and some hate us. The gossip never
ends. When we heal people that couldn’t find help elsewhere, they call us
witches. Then at night when you drop your weary body in the hammock,
you hear, ‘knock, knock,’ and there is the person who called you a witch
holding an infant on the doorstep of death. There is no rest by day or by
night.”
I told him I understood what his life was like. I’d witnessed his
obligations and burdens for months on end. I wasn’t afraid of hard work. “I
want to learn, Don Elijio. I ache to know the names of the plants and how to
use them to heal. Everywhere I go there are plants calling to me, but I know