The Curandero

A few weeks ago I was riding our horse when he stumbled and pitched to his knees. I was thrown off sideways and landed on some rocks with the horse laying across my legs. I've healed for the most part - the cut on my elbow is now just a series of small scabs and the pain in my shoulder and ankle is hardly noticeable. For the first several days after my fall, I was walking really twisted as my left hip was out of joint. But after about a week of applying ice packs and ointments, I had thought I was better. I was walking straight again, and my hip no longer hurt. But perhaps I made a mistake by thinking I had healed enough to begin using the mattock and shovel and wheelbarrow to continue an earth-moving project I had going in our back yard.

When I started walking crooked again, Chayo suggested that our neighbor don Pancho could help me. Don Pancho is a curandero. Our dictionary translates the word as "quack," but the people here in Papagayos use the term with respect. It refers to a healer, one who may not possess a medical degree but nonetheless has a natural gift for curing others.

I went over to don Pancho's place and he agreed to see what he could do. Don Pancho is an elderly man with eyeglasses and long dark hair flowing from his ears. He explained in Spanish and mime that he would massage my hip. He led me across the yard and into the part of the house his family uses for sleeping. He pointed to the bed in the corner and I understood that would be the "massage table." I crossed the room, but before I could lay down, a very indignant chicken rose up from the pillows and squawked and fluttered her way across the room and out the door.

Hanging on the wall above the bed was a large and worn photograph of a much younger don Pancho dressed in the fanciest get-up you can imagine. As he liberally applied Vick's Vapor Rub and kneaded my muscles, I asked him about the photo. Yes, he had once sung and played guitar in a mariachi band in Mexico City. But his fingers hadn't touched a guitar for many years. I suggested that his fingers probably remembered. He wasn't quite so sure about that, and anyway his interests had changed. Music was no longer his passion. And besides, his beautiful mariachi suit had been eaten by the mice.

When he finished the massage, he rubbed on a tonic from a large Pepsi bottle. It was the color of Pepsi, but he assured me that it contained alcohol and a number of herbs and that he had concocted it himself. He said I should come back in a couple days for another treatment. Meanwhile, I should not shovel any more dirt; I needed some more recovery time.

As we opened the door and exited the bedroom, the very indignant chicken squawked and re-entered, ready to reclaim her spot on the bed. She had been waiting impatiently for us to finish so she, unlike me, could get back to work.