Zacapoaxtla is a smaller town between Puebla and Cuetzalan. We spent Monday through Wednesday in Zacapoaxtla and the health clinics in surrounding villages before moving on to the larger regional hospital in Cuetzalan. The rural clinics still have to worry about issues that we have nearly forgotten in the United States including malnutrition, intestinal parasites, and lack of education about STDs, etc. The Cuetzalan hospital has a relatively new, government-funded program that allows traditional and modern medicine to be practiced side-by-side. In addition to radiologists, general surgeons and pediatricians, the hospital offers curanderas, parteras and hueseras. These traditional healers, midwives and bone healers (there´s not really a direct translation for this one) use only herbs and natural plant products while attending to their patients. The majority of them are older women who learned their profession from their mothers or grandmothers and walk an hour or more, barefoot, to arrive in town. We were able to spend Thursday and Friday in this unique hospital, chatting with the curanderas through the English-Spanish-Nahuatl language barrier.
Ok, the scene is set. Enter my science-minded self and my affinity for making lists.
MY TOP 3
- As I said, the first few days of this adventure we spent in rural health clinics. It turns out that this past week was National Health Week, a campaign that focuses on updating vaccinations, administering anti-parasite medication, nutrition education and sexual education. I met some truly inspirational public health workers who spent the week hauling around boxes of desparasitantes, Vitamin A, and condoms. The school I remember most was the first we visited, a government-funded boarding school. It housed kids from ages 7 to 13 years and many of them didn´t go home for the whole semester, either due to travel or financial reasons. Needless to say, these kids were starved for any attention and the appearance of my blond self and my Korean American rotation partner was almost more cultural excitement than they could handle for one day. After assuring the kids that the medicine tasted just like coconut yogurt and checking that they drank it all, we were mobbed with questions and had to be reminded each time that there was another classroom. We were probably slowing the health workers down more than we were helping, now that I think about it. Whoops. Everyone I met in the Zacapoaxtla area was extremely welcoming, friendly and politely curious. One little kid piped up that we were the first Americans he had ever seen. This helped us to understand a little better why everyone kept taking pictures of us as well.
- So I think I´ve mentioned my theory on intimate touches before, but we can review. The idea is that people need physical (as well as social and emotional and intellectual, less relevant) contact with other people to be happy, I´m pretty sure that it releases a good hormone of some variety. Anyways, I have a habit of blaming my bad moods on not giving or receiving enough intimate touches that day. You might ask: Libby, how is this relevant at all to traditional medicine in the mountains of Mexico? Well on Friday I was about to give up on that silly traditional medicine hospital because nothing was going as planned, the doctors abandoned us for their lunchboxes, whinewhinewhine. Then a very professional-looking female doctor told me to fill out some paperwork and follow her. I stumbled through the paperwork and followed her to the pediatric ward. After explaining her half dozen patients´ cases, she directed me to wash my hands and directed me towards a tiny, wailing baby in an incubator. This baby had weighed less than three pounds at birth and was not looking great. The young mom had not been around much and wasn´t spending as much time with her new baby as the doctor wanted. I was instructed to comfort him, talk to him, touch him gently, and stay there until he fell asleep. Interpretation: this little guy needs some intimate touches pronto. So I held his itty bitty hand, rubbed his belly, and sang the only Spanish songs that I could think of. This may have consisted of a Shakira hit and the Cordera de Dios (Lamb of God) song from Mass. If I had to pick a favorite 30-minute period from the last week, this would be it. It was all about going with the flow, being patient, and being in the right place at the right time.
- This is actually going to consist of 2 separate but chronological activities (yes, I realize I´m already breaking my own rule). On Saturday we went to a nature preserve outside of Cuetzalan that doubles as an organic coffee farm. We were guided through the quasi-rainforest by the Mexican equivalent of a forest ranger and stopped often to examine trees, ferns, leaves and lichen. Most of these stops were accented by the command, ¨Cómelo!¨ as the guide handed out leaves. We were pretty skeptical about eating the first piece of lichen that he handed us, but by the end of the hike we were obediently sticking leaves in our mouth, stretching our limited Spanish vocabulary to describe it´s taste and drinking spring water out of a leaf-turned-cup. No te preocupes, don´t worry, we all lived to tell the tale. While this was all very exciting and was sufficient to quench my NATURE ADVENTURE cravings for a few weeks, it was just the trail to the main attraction. Hidden down in a valley was a beautiful waterfall that fell into a deep pool before hurrying off into the rainforest. It was not quite frozen snow, but it was darn close. Nevertheless, we had just tromped through the buggy woods for an hour in shorts specifically to risk hypothermia in this waterfall, so that is what we did.
Other activities this week included: attending nursing school classes, eating pan dulce, lots of market wandering, a group appearance on a local radio show, a Zumba dance class, a visit to the ancient ruins of Yohualichan, several intense games of Bananograms (boardless Scrabble) and Pictaphone (Pictionary/Telephone hybrid), and a few killer workouts up and down the hilly streets of Zacapoaxtla and Cuetzalan. I´m still feeling that one in my calves, for sure. The last fun fact that I will share before bedtime doubles as an explanation of the title. In addition to massage and herbal treatments, curanderas use temazcal bathes in their traditional treatments. A temazcal bath is the Mexican equivalent to the Native American sweatlodge, in which water and herbs are poured on hot rocks to make a sauna-like atmosphere inside a small dark hut. The rituals of a temazcal bath are based on the pre-Hispanic religion of the area, which focuses especially on the four directions of the universe, the numbers 4, 5 and 13, and the duality of nature. Oma Teo (don´t quote me on the spelling) refers to the bi-gender or genderless deity that was important in a way that I can´t exactly remember. Anyways, we ended up saying ¨Oma teo¨ every time that a new hot rock was introduced, the special tea was served or we entered or left the temazcal hut. Or anytime that there was an awkward silence. So it was said a lot.
In summary, I had an indescribably marvelous week and ironically learned much more than I would learned reading 16th century Spanish literature in a classroom. HA.
What Eli said.
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