Horse-and-Buggy Genius by Royden Loewen

Author:Royden Loewen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Published: 2016-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

Healing the Sick

Providing health care has been another concern among Old Colonists. They certainly have made use of modern medicine, travelling to Santa Cruz, Casas Grandes, Hopelchén, Belize City, or other nearby cities to access highly regarded medical practitioners. But doctors have also come to them. In Mexico, home to a foundationary state-run medical system, doctors or nurses often travel out to the colonies. On Nuevo Durango, Campeche, for example, residents revere their local “Dr.” Heinrich Peters, not only for his folk medicine, but also for his authority arising from accompanying state-licensed nurses and a doctor on their semi-monthly visits to the colony. But this system does not address emergencies. When accidents occur on this colony, says Aganetha Guenther, trucks are hired to take the injured to a regional hospital. In cases in which they have not been available, someone has been sent to the Mayan village of Ramon Caron, ten kilometres away, to hire a truck.

Given their distance from regional cities, however, most colonies have produced their own “doctors.” Some are male, most are female, though often it is a couple who operate a medical centre. And, as with all local know-how, knowledge in the birthing clinics, farmacias, or chiropractic rooms has been transferred informally from generation to generation. But the effect of an entrepreneurial spirit cannot be exaggerated. Elisabeth Hildebrandt of Nuevo Durango, East Paraguay, has worked as a chiropractor, midwife, and unlicensed pharmacist since she was seventeen. She learned her healing skills from her father. And, following his example, she has “read a lot in books in German on different types of therapies.” In 2003, after the colony’s “Dr.” Isaac Hildebrandt moved to Bolivia, Elisabeth established her own birthing clinic, Clínica Lucero, as well as a pharmacy. Her income has increased considerably since she began operating her very “own clinic.” In the fifteen years since she delivered her first baby, in 1994, she has overseen the births of 1,400 babies, about 100 a year, only half of whom were Mennonite, the other half Paraguayan or Brazilian. She has developed a broad client base, in part because the price of 360,000 guaranies (eighty dollars US) is affordable, but also because she comes from a recognized medical lineage.

Other women, however, have struck out on their own, without having been raised in a “medical” household. Some entries into the medical world were rather simple, some even occurred by happenstance. Sara Hildebrandt5 of Sabinal, in northern Mexico, is a local dealer for Herbal Life, a diet supplement. She says she used to be overweight, and it badly affected her life since even washing dishes was an effort. So she went to Cuauhtémoc for medical advice, and there a “Dietsche woman gave [me] some Herbal Life, and it helped very much.” When the woman in Cuauhtémoc asked “if there would be other people on Sabinal that would benefit from Herbal Life,” Sara agreed. Today she is the product’s agent on her colony. Katherina Teichrob of Valle Nuevo, Bolivia, also entered the medical world by chance, even though she had a long-held interest in the field.

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