My Jero

Escuela de la Montaña, where we spent our first week in Guatemala, is awesome for a lot of reasons. It is a gorgeous mountain setting where we had our one on one lessons in our own individual “ranchitos” surrounded by flowers and fresh air. We spent our afternoons drinking coffee grown nearby, and doing our homework in the hammocks. The school does its best to educate students on the social and political reality in Guatemala, and seems very conscious of its impact on the nearby communities and the general environment. But I’m pretty sure that my favorite thing about Escuela de la Montaña was Jorge.

Jorge is Escuela de la Montaña’s very own herbal medicine specialist. (I think I just made that title up. I’m sure there’s something much more official.) He studied the medicinal properties of plants for years, at a couple different schools, and the man is basically magic. Anytime a student was sick, we’d describe our symptoms to Jorge, which usually went something like:

“hurt” pointing, rubbing stomach “stomach” making fist “no good” “me stomach,” and repeat.
And that was just to describe a sore throat.

But Jorge always got it, and he’d walk through his garden picking some leaves here and there, and boil it all into some magic potion of a tea for us to drink. He saved Sarah’s life twice, Gabby’s once, and I got in on it every time, prevention-style.

Naturally, being a tiny bit obsessed with Jorge and his gift, we made the poor guy walk us around his garden, telling us the names and uses of each herb, while I snapped photos and Gabby and Sarah wrote down exactly what he said. So now we have our own little catalog—let us know dondé tienes dolor. Oh, and Jorge also happened to be son of my host mother, Aurelia, uncle of Lucrecia, and the one who built our ranchitos. For some reason, Jorge declined our offer to travel with us for the next 9 months.

Sorry it’s been so long. I promise to be a better blogger.