Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

CHAPTER EIGHT
Red Gumbolimbo, Naked Indian Palo de Turista
Chaca Bursera simaruba
The shaggy red bark of this common tree is one of the most versatile of all the traditional medicines.
The bark is peeled and boiled as a bath for all manner of skin conditions, including contact with toxic
plants, sunburn, measles, and rashes. A tea made of the boiled bark is used for internal infections,
urinary conditions, and to purify and build the blood. The resin of the bark contains an antibiotic
substance.
Spending three days a week away from home meant leaving Greg alone
with the farm’s seemingly endless, daily chores.
When I’d come home from San Antonio, I could tell immediately how
he had fared. If his cheeks were pink and he stood tall as he waited by the
riverside to fetch me in the canoe, he’d say, “For the chance to study with
Panti—this is worth whatever it takes. Go for it, babe.” But when he was
slouched and his face grayishly pale, he’d snap, “While you’ve been out on
a joy ride with Panti, Rose, I’ve been here stuck in the mud and alone.”
Greg found it hard to wake up each day and face a new crisis requiring a
carpenter, a plumber, or a gardener—professions he was learning through
painstaking trial and error. In addition, there were days when he alone
scrubbed our laundry on a washboard, hung it out to dry, fixed meals,
tended Crystal’s needs, and loaded the wood stove with firewood and
kindling.
“I wanted to be a doctor, not a fix-it man,” he’d gripe when he was
tired.
After all this time we were still trying to push back the jungle from
around our two huts. It was a never-ending project to clear the underbrush
and chop trees. The sunlight had to penetrate or the pervasive dampness of
the jungle would reduce everything we owned to crumbly balls of green
mold.
The burden of a jungle homestead was almost too much of a strain at
times. In those early days of our marriage, we didn’t always get along and