medicinal treatments

There was a little lady,
who got bit by a sand fly,
that bit a sloth,
who had the leishmeniasis protozoa parasite,
and I don't know why she got bit by that fly,
perhaps she'll die.


Well, not really die, just get her flesh eaten away slowly by those little protozoas. I recently found out that I was hit by the "bite of the vine", otherwise known as leishmaniasis in scientific terms. It comes from a little bite from a sand fly who has bit a sloth infected with leishmeniasis. It starts as just a little bug bite and begins slowing opening wider and deeper. This part is not the troubling part. Those wounds can be healed. This is a common ailment in my community, many adults have scars on their faces and children have little marks on their faces. It advances slowly and when I first began to suspect something, many community members began commenting on my little wounds. They were sure that it was leishmaniasis, but not to worry, because there are many natural cures. In my time visiting around I was offered various medicines, truly out of the hearts of my friends. Here are a few of the examples (some do not qualify as natural)

boa oil
manta ray cartilage
cacao
leaves
vines
raw cashew juice
tree sap
battery acid
Kerosine
Nail polish

I tried a few and do not doubt the healing abilities of these treatments ( maybe the battery acid) but through Peace Corps I am required to receive the western medicine treatment. At first I was opposed to the idea, wishing to cure it in my community, but as I began to read more about it, I became more convinced of the seriousness of the issue. As I said, the sores are not the worrisome part. Truly what is worrisome is that the leishmaniasis may come back in another form in the future and begin to eat the cartilage of your nose, ear or roof of your mouth. And after seeing a few people with flat noses that looked as if they had been eaten off, I was convinced.
So now I am receiving 20 days of IV treatment for 2 hours a day. It was difficult to explain my necessity to leave for three weeks to my community member and this came at a poor time, with only 2 months left in my service. But now that I am here, I am enjoying the luxuries of the world including internet, electricity, hot showers, and flushing toilets. And for the moment, it is pretty nice.
Before I left my community, my close friend and "little brother" Placido told me that they figured out why I got so many bites of the vine. It must be because I walked over a tree that had got hit by lightning without tying two banana leaves together after crossing. And then he handed me a little film canister of a botanical medicine made out of leaves and cacao to take with me for my treatment. It just goes to show, that no matter what people or place, as human beings, we will always search for a reason and a cause. Another one of those things that crosses all boundaries.

A hike across the divide

About a month ago, I went on incredible three day hike from the top of the panamanian mountains down the famous cricamola river and to the caribbean. The cricamola is the river where the majority of the ngabe people living in the province of bocas del toro retreated to when the spaniards came. Later, many ngabes migrated from the river to the rest of the Bocas del Toro province in the 1950s and 60s when the banana company sent boats up the river to look for workers.

So three girlfriends and I and a wonderful ngabe woman from Kat's community set out on this adventurous hike. We started up in the cold windy rainy mountains, hiking downward, following the river and watching it grow from little creeks to a rushing river with rapids and later to a wide meandering river. We had to cross the river walking over and over, and then later when it got to big, by pieced together bridges and by ziplines.

(daily commute to work anyone?)


We saw the culture changing from the ngabe style of living in the reservation on the pacific side (with nagwa dresses and round houses on the ground) to the ngabe bocas style (with bocas house dresses and raised square wood houses).



We stayed in schools and houses along the way. Many were curious about why we were there, some openly welcoming and others retreatingly scared. We met kind old men who yelled out to us in ngabere, pleased that we could speak their language a little. We met inventive young farmers, excited little children, and a wonderful old women who invited us to be her children for life. We even met a young ngobe boy in charge of a zipline crossing who was more like a troll in his demeanor. A few asked whether our backpacks were full of money. Unfortunately we only had dirty clothes and cans of tuna fish to show for. But it makes you think of the image of tourism and what are effective ways of supporting communities along the way. These communities are incredibly isolated. In order to get out to go to larger towns to get merchandise for their stores, some would have to walk for a day and a half and then take a long boat or truck ride. We saw families on their way out to visit other family or to buy more merchandise.

(Kat and Kate in their Ngobe hiking clothes)


(Yes that is a pig crossing the river)

I think my two favorite memories were at our first zipline crossing, watching parents send their children across in a chakra hung from the zipline and later seeing a young women in a traditional pink nagwa flying across the the beautiful turquoise river on the zipline. It was an amazing hike, challenging, a few sicknesses along the way in our group, both overall, incredible. When we arrived in Kankintu, the ngabe city in the jungle, we were amazed by the sidewalks that seemed to appear out of the no where. It is a small city 5 hours up river by boat or three days walking but has a small university, restaurants and lots of people. The night we got there, it was the day that women were in Kankintu to collect their welfare checks. At 8:30pm there were still women in line. Those that had already received their checks were with their husbands, browsing the different street vendors that set up on the side of the sidewalk with flashing lights selling everything from radios to undies and shoes. It was quite a sight. The next morning at 5:00am, we left in a big dug out canoe headed to the ocean, we even got a coffee break halfway down river. Incredible.