Mas

By: ROSARIO ORTIZ

  Normally, I’m not the type of person who wants to get up on stage and be someone else’s guinea pig.

  But earlier this month, someone asked me to serve as a model for a Zapotec midwife who was giving a presentation about how she examined her pregnant clients.

  Boy, did I pick the wrong occasion. I’ve never felt so embarrassed in my adult life.

  The presenter, Doña Enriqueta Contreras, called me up before about 50 community members, including health professionals, natural medicine business owners and a small group of local news reporters. Doña Enriqueta’s presentation was part of a conference on traditional medicine funded by the California Endowment and organized by the Indigenous Health Project, a Fresno-based program of the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities.

  The midwife, with  45 years of experience, gave a talk on her profession and offered examples of how she takes care of her patients on a regular basis.
Of course, I was one of those examples.

  Once Doña Enriqueta had me standing in front of the audience, she placed her face just a few inches from my mine and looked straight into my eyes. Just by doing that, she knew what was wrong with my body.

  “You’re not eating well m’ija,” Doña Enriqueta told me. “I can tell by the iris and how white it is around it.”
 
  Doña Enriqueta said she learned traditional medicine from her ancestors, and that her experience as a midwife also allows her to determine the inner state of a pregnant woman.

  After telling me about my poor eating habits, which I sadly had to admit was a correct diagnosis, the midwife had me take off my shoes and lay down on my back over a rebozo, or shawl, that was placed beneath my waist.

  I thought she’d touch my four-and-a-half-months-pregnant belly through my shirt to find the position of the baby.

  But to my surprise, she proceeded to pull my blouse half way up and expose my gigantic belly. Not that there’s anything wrong with exposing a round belly. But it is embarrassing when you’re not expecting it, and you have a television cameraman right in front of you. (At that moment I realized I wasn’t born to be an actress, despite my husband telling me all the time that I’m a “drama queen.”)

  As she was touching my belly, finding the position of the baby, I just tried to clear my mind and forget about the embarrassing moment. I thought to myself, “Ok, we’re all grown-ups here. No one should be laughing.”

  She found the baby’s head, which was upside down. Doña Enriqueta continued with her presentation and took the baby’s pulse by placing the index and middle fingers of her right hand over my belly button, while two fingers from her other hand were over my neck, taking my pulse.

  Just when I thought the presentation was over, Doña Enriqueta said the baby was leaning too much toward the right side of my rib cage. So she volunteered to give me a hand and reposition the baby.

  That’s when she finally pulled my blouse back in place. Then she picked both ends of the rebozo, stood up and slightly pulled one side of the rebozo to the left to help the baby move to the center. I must confess it worked. The baby was really leaning too much to the right.

  Once the baby was centered and Doña Enriqueta put the rebozo down I thought that was the end of it, and I could run back to my seat.

  Yeah, right.

  The midwife asked me to keep laying down on one side as she described how she removes the placenta after a woman has given birth.

  She described many things about the placenta. At some point, she picked up a water bottle and told me she was going to spray some water on my body.

  I agreed, no problem.

  Boy, was I wrong again.

  Next thing I knew, Doña Enriqueta sipped some water from that bottle and then spit it all over me. She said the spitting surprises almost every woman, making her jump or unconsciously contract her inner muscles, which in turn helps the placenta slide out of her body.

  I don’t think that would have worked for me. I almost jumped up, but I was too shocked to do anything. I simply froze. What else was coming my way?  My belly was exposed. I felt so embarrassed. Everything was being documented by a television station. And on top of that, someone spit all over me!

  Well, I know Doña Enriqueta never meant to make me feel embarrassed, nor did any of the event organizers. And despite the embarrassing moment, I’m glad I attended the conference.

  I learned a lot about the value of traditional medicine and how traditional healers, whom some call curanderos, have a different way of looking at illnesses.

  Traditional healers, for example, believe illnesses are mainly caused by the physical, mental and spiritual state of a person. Depression for example, can cause lung problems and worries can affect our kidneys, according to traditional healers.
Whether traditional medicine is better than medicine as we know it today, I don’t know. I just think both complement each other.

  One touches on the spiritual part of the person and his or her inner feelings, while science mostly looks at the physical aspects of illnesses.

  I could see how important it is to feel good from within to look great on the outside. Doña Enriqueta was right when she told me my health was not good because I’m not eating properly.

  During her presentation, she also said as technology and science advance every day, men and women are detaching from Mother Nature and the basic core values in life that ensure good inner and mental health, and therefore good physical health.

  Those values are family, respect for the earth and the people around us.