A Ngobe Guide to Healthy Living

Many of the most memorable conversations I´ve had with people in my site are about health and home remedies. People here rely on botanical medicine and some of the local healers have extensive knowledge of the local plants that cure a wide range of ailments. What they know is impressive and to be respected. The only objection I raise to the use of natural medicines is in serious cases, when a person fails to get better, or needs urgent care, and the family inevitably waits too long to take the person to a doctor. Some of the medicine men´s remedies are guesses, and they have no ¨real¨ training beyond tradition. There are limits to what they do, although the people I live with will be just as quick to remind you that the same is true of doctors.

As a volunteer, it´s important for me to walk the line of acceptance and support for local knowledge, while also offering some ideas and tips from a more modern, clinical perspective.

During my time here, I´ve learned a lot about the basic beliefs and superstitions of the people in my area. Here are a few of the most common :

1. For parasites, diarrhea, stomach ache, etc., follow the following recipe:

Boil very stong coffee in only a few ounces of water. Add the juice of one lemon and dissolve an Alka Seltzer tablet. Drink it all and expect relief within a few hours.

Note: People swear by this. I doubt what value it could possibly have, but it certainly sounds like something that would flush out the pipes.

2. Skin infections. When I was having a lot of problems with infections of my legs and feet, people were always asking who I had been hanging around with. This question made little sense to me, until they explained that the sort of infections I was getting are usually contracted when the afflicted person spends time near a pregnant woman. They say that the ¨heat of her belly¨ causes the outbreak. Don´t worry though. There is a simple cure. Go to the woman´s house and ask her for a glass of water. Drink it all and the infection will go away. But it is important that you drink her water, or else it won´t work.

They are aware that this sounds a little fanciful, so they usually say, ¨I know it seems like a lie, Cati, but it´s true.¨

3. People believe very much in curses, and for people who are chronically ill and don´t get better, or who visit a doctor who cannot render a diagnosis, it is assumed that they have been cursed. The doctor can´t see the disease because it is only the manifestation someone´s ill wishes against them. For this reason, people often don´t take medicine given to them if they believe the root cause of the illness is really a maldicción. (Medical compliance is a whole other issue, which could be a post in itself.)

4. Relationships of hot and cold are extremely important and can explain away the onset of virtually any sickness. For example, one must never bathe right after working, because the cold water combined with a hot, sweaty body is a recipe for disaster. You should also only drink hot drinks when it´cold because that is the only time your body can truly handle them. I have offended more than a few visitors by offering hot coffee on a warm day.

I once baked using my neighbor´s stove, and she came in and told me not to bother washing the dirty dishes. She mentioned how I would get sick if I washed them, because I had been so close to the hot oven and taking pans in and out all afternoon. I thought this was her way of telling me she didn´t mind cleaning up my mess, but I washed the dishes anyway. I received a very angry scolding afterwards, and she checked up on me for days afterward to see if I was okay.

5. Worms (of the intestinal variety) are so normal that people believe they are necessary to digest food. When I talk about eliminating contaminants from drinking water, people have asked, ¨but how can we keep eating if we don´t have worms?¨ I didn´t quite realize how strongly people believe in worms being necessary for sustaining life, until a child asked me if I had worms, and when I said no, both he and his cousin asked in unison how I was still alive.

6. You must never eat pork if you have any kind of medical condition, real or imagined. Any kidney condition will be especially aggravated. (Many have already told me I will have to buy chicken for them when I have my goodbye party, because that pig I have been raising is no good to them.)

7. People usually don´t attribute diarrhea to bad water or unwashed hands. It is almost always caused by fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, or virtually any food that that they don´t eat every day. And you know, this may actually be true because some things are so unfamiliar to them, they may upset stomachs. Nonetheless, this belief is a serious inhibitor to good nutrition.

It´s always a challenge to determine if I should offer counter information and when to do it. Even though these things sound ridiculous to us, I am conscious of the fact that me explaining ideas like solar disinfection of water sounds just as preposterous to them. The invisible rays of the sun are killing the invisible microbes in the water? Sure, Cati. How can I convince them that their baby really shouldn´t pick things up off the floor and put them in her mouth when babies have always done that, and most of them grow up to be healthy, functional adults?

When I first came to my community, I was shocked at what I perceived as a blatant disregard for basic cleanliness. What I now realize is that people are very conscious of cleanliness and their family´s health, but their reasons for preventing or explaining illness are very different, and unfortuantely, in many cases, misdirected. They take great care sweeping out their houses, bathing their children, and generally making sure their homes look as neat and tidy as possible. They are doing what they think is best to be clean and healthy. Every mother loves her child and wants him to be well. She does everything with his best interests in mind. This is a universal human trait. If she fall short, it is almost always due to a lack of education or simply traditional beliefs that offer different explanations.

A friend recently explained it this way, and it makes total sense: Very few of us Americans have ever actually seen a germ. By this I mean, to have looked through a microscope and seen a cold virus, bacteria or anything else that causes disease. But we believe it because we have years of education and resources that tell us that it´s so, and we accept it as fact. We have had access to scientific information and education, and that is what informs our thinking and behavior. For people who haven´t had that access, there are other explanations and reasons for things that seem as plausible to them as a cold virus does to us.

Thinking of it that way, how can we look down on someone who has a lifetime of experience that indicates to them bathing right after work might cause the flu? It seems irrational to an American, but we sound equally so to them when we explain that there are harmful things in their water that looks perfectly clean to them.

Part of my job has been to touch on that common desire we all have to be healthy and offer some new ideas and strategies to be even healthier. And sure, I´ll drink that pregnant lady´s glass of water to clear up my foot infection, if she meets me halfway and puts bleach in it first.