Relaxing times and traditional healers in Xela

This past weekend I hung around Xela and revisited some relaxing places. It was my friend Emily's last weekend in Xela, so on Saturday she and I did one of her favorite hikes to Los Vahos (the natural steam rooms). Even though I don't love steam rooms, these are a great retreat. The hour walk/hike gets you out of Xela and into farmlands within 10 min and is a great escape. Additionally, since my shower here is more of a hot trickle then an actual shower, it's wonderful to feel really hot for once. On Sunday I went back to the hot springs, the Fuentes Giorginas. These are up in the hills about 30min outside of Xela. This time though I went with a housemate's family (Guatemalan) who brought food to grill. We spent most of the day there coming in and out of the hot water, eating food off the grill and even did a little hike above the Fuentes. Next time I go back, I'm going to do it this way again!

This past week I started volunteering a few afternoons with a new organization, PIES del Occidente. They have a variety of projects, but primarily focus on Nurse and Midwife training, have 2 clinics in small towns outside of Xela, have a domestic violence program, have radio shows and also work on other various other projects related to women's health. They are much more in line with my interests. This past week, I went with the Communications Director to help her film a documentary on traditional Mayan medicine. The documentary is for Med students at the local university in order for them to learn about and understand traditional medicine. Unsurprisingly, traditional medicine is widely used (mainly everwhere but larger cities) but not taught in the University or valued by modern medicine folk. Here are the people we met and interviewed...

Chayero: One day we drove to a small town, Puesto del Aire, looking for the local Chayero - a blood healer. He was this adorable 70+ year old man, (but who looked much older). Finding his house, and his not so friendly wife, was pretty easy. But finding him was a whole other story. He decided that he would come and meet us, so went for a "walk" right around when our appointment was. We proceeded to spend the next 1.5 hours driving up and down the one road into the town looking for him walking. We had driven 2 hours to meet him, so were not going to give up easily. We called his cell phone, and he didn't pick up and his wife just waved her hand in the direction she thought he had gone. We did eventually find him, as we were just giving up hope and doing one final drive by. He said he picked up his phone the first time it rang, but no one was on the other line and he had decided to go for a walk... Nevertheless, 2 hours later, we were able to avoid another drive out into the town and interview him. The Chayero only cures "external" illnesses or pain - meaning, no stomach aches, coughs or anything of the sort. He has a piece of glass attached to a stick that he essentially flicks at your arm vein to let some of the blood out. This is supposed to ease the pain and cure you when chemical medicine, as they call it, doesn't work. He has far fewer patients now then he used to, and hasn't trained anyone to be a Chayero. I'm not really sure what is going to happen when he is no longer able to work.

Curero - a bone healer. This man was easier to find, and was there when he said he would be. We saw him make his cream that he uses to heal muscle soreness and problems. Using sheep lard, leaves, incense, and some berries he makes this potent smelling cream. Let me tell you though, I've never smelt something as terrible as the melting of the sheep lard, it is nasty! For the bone healing, from what I could tell, he essentially pops bones back into place if they've been dislocated. Or, he can tell through feeling if you've broken something. He is still pretty popular and has a number of patients a week.

Comadrona - midwife. I don't think we consider midwives traditional healer, but in Guatemala they aren't respected as they are in the US. This probably has to do with them not having any formal training here and many guatemalan's thinking that only western medicine is real medicine. This Midwife started when she was 18 and is now 69. She estimated that she had attended over 4,000 births! During her exam of a pregnant woman (obviously), she used her hands over the belly to estimate how many months along the woman was. She also pushed the fetus around to see if everything was ok and healthy. I'm not really sure what she was looking for, but hopefully will find out in the near future.

Doing these interviews was a really interesting adventure! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but hopefully will have a copy of the documentary for all who are interested!