Mountains and the Things In Them

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Before going to San Sebastian Rio Hondo I had never seen an animal cry. To be honest, I had never even considered whether they could or not. I mean that I was aware animals suffered physically and emotionally but I had never thought about the fact that maybe tears could emerge from the corner of their eye sockets. Turns out they can.

Getting to Rio Hondo isn't difficult but it takes a while. From Ciudad de Oaxaca, it is a 2 hour bus journey southward to Miahuatlan then another hour by colectivo (collective taxi) into the mountains. It then took 45 minutes to find Anisha's house because the village is fairly well spread out across the mountain side. We discovered the place via HelpX and had begun arranging our arrival whilst still in Asia so arrival felt a long time coming. As we trudged along the footpath to the hut there were three other volunteers there - Clara, Natalia, and Aleksey - as well as Anisha, all of whom were eating lunch in the sun. E and I were shown our bed in the small barn-like building then joined them in eating.

It didn't take long for Negro and Bunchow to introduce themselves. The former is a large soppy-looking black dog and the latter is a small, timid Alsatian-like dog with the face of a fox. Together they technically belonged to Anisha's neighbour Pedro but chose to spend half their time with Anisha for the love and food they received with her. These two dogs, and Bunchow especially, are utterly heartwarming despite the somewhat negligent treatment they receive from their owners - a testament to Anisha's commitment to treating them as beings rather than objects, I suspect. "La vida no tiene precio. Los animales no son objectos." Frida, Anisha's semi-feral feline, also appeared out of nowhere and decided to walk across our heads during our first night in the barn.

Anisha initially turned up in Rio Hondo seven years ago as a volunteer but fell in love with the village and the region enough to return as a resident two and a half years ago. Though initially wanting to get away from a past as a vet, the poor health of animals in the village soon drew her back into practice, although this time with a decidedly more holistic approach using herbalism as a primary method of treatment and synthesised drugs only in niche circumstances. Though Mexico is not a country without vets, most here are of a low standard, and Anisha's caring approach has made her successful not just in healing animals but in gaining trust and respect from others in the village to the point that she has work in the surrounding rancheros too.

That is how I met Rosita the donkey. I went with Anisha and Natalia to a ranchero 30 mins away (taken in an auto, which are tuktuks imported from India - they even have Hindi on them) for Anisha's third session of attempting to clip, file down, and soothe Rosita's overgrown hooves. This is a common problem in Mexico as donkeys are not given free reign but instead tied to a tree when not working. The common method used locally is to "arrojar" - throw down - the animal and take a saw to its hooves, often with pretty gruesome results. Anisha instead gained the donkeys trust over several hours before even attempting to gently clip her hooves. By the time I joined her and Natalia, Rosita needed only her back hooves clipping and all feet given a healing salve of sugar and iodine.

Rosita was brought to the front of the ranchero and tied to the tree there, given a pan of damp sugar to soothe her, and left to Anisha, Natalia and I. Natalia, having already attended the previous two sessions, took the lead with Rosita by using a stalk of corn to gently stroke the donkey's back legs, getting it used to being handled there. Once it was calm enough to be touched, her and Anisha attempted to lift a leg up and hold it in place to begin clipping the overgrown hooves so that Rosita would once again be able to stand flat-footed and not totally destroy her bones. As they did this I spent time at the front of Rosita, stroking her head and neck and being as calming a presence as possible. Anisha suggested I was doing a good job as Rosita was more amenable than on previous sessions but perhaps the donkey had just become used to Anisha and Natalia? Nonetheless it gave me ample opportunity to gaze into the large black eyes of a donkey for an hour.

Donkeys are very expressive creatures. They are much more vocal than cows or horses. There are several in Rio Hondo and you could hear them braying and talking to one another across the mountainsides. There was an unseen donkey tied up behind trees on the overlook behind our barn and its calling could be called nothing but mournful. Rosita was not vocal. She didn't say a thing during the time we were with her. As Anisha clipped one of her hooves, however, she was crying. I looked up into her eyes at one point and could see the slightly thickened fluid emerging from the corner of her eyes and sticking to the fur of her head. She was crying because, as Anisha later explained, of the pain. It's no surprise. Imagine having had ingrowing toenails for the past year and the pain of them being cut out without anaesthesia. I certainly couldn't have coped, as Rosita did, without an immense amount of shouting, swearing, and squirming.

Eventually Anisha was able to apply the sugar-iodine solution onto the clipped hooves and Rosita was returned to her normal tree to await Anisha for a fourth and final session smoothing the feet. The family shared bean soup and tortillas with us before Anisha, Natalia, and I returned to Rio Hondo.

Herbalism is not something I was very familiar with before Rio Hondo and to be honest I was largely skeptical due to my "allopathic" bias. Anisha had trained in the UK through normal veterinary channels and thus received normal allopathic training. She now swears by holistic care with a focus on herbs and plants not just for animals but humans too. Her role in village life is as a doctor to both and she has established a better rapport with the local Zapotec community than most of the other foreigners there because of it. Anisha explicitly states that her approach - that all good approaches - make time with the subject as well as prevention of problems a focus of their outlook and is thus highly critical of Western medical systems for not doing much of either.

As a result, the Rosita incident is just one example of her work. Hours were spent gaining the trust of Rosita, with entirely natural methods used to counteract years of maltreatment. Pinky the rabbit's massively infected ear was cured with a combination of synthesised drugs to treat the initial infection and plants for the next few days; it was cured within a week. E provided another evidence of Anisha's approach, with a bitter herbal tea mix that proved almost immediately effective in easing a dickey tummy. E also witnessed the positive effects of nutritional information, herbal teas, and a plant salve on the face of a woman in the ranchero of San Felipe. Two or three people would visit the house daily for help with medical problems due to Anisha's successful track record in treating everything from common colds to parasitic infections.

I am now convinced by the potential of herbalism and will make it my first point of call for all issues.

The use of plants as a cure was part of Anisha's connection to the land that included companion planting and permaculture (currently gravitating towards forest gardening), animals as beings and not as machines, veganism, nature spirituality, individual autonomy, and of course living in the mountains. She is unique in the village though. There are six or seven other foreigners in the village, mostly American, that have poor relationships with animals although one woman there, Connie, is a total dude with animals and goes out of her way to feed and rescue them. She is also different from the locals who, despite their very close working connection with the land, seem to have a real disconnection from the creatures they share the village with. To me she represents an ideal synthesis of living for oneself, living for one's community, and living within the world and its many beings.

As volunteers E and I began learning about the basics of permaculture, teas, firemaking, DIY building, animal care, and of course more about the daily lives of the local community. We helped look after Pinky the rabbit and his gammy ear, and began the construction of a woodshed by putting in posts and hammering in costeras for walls, and turned the bokashi and worm composts, and generally had a fairly rustic life for 2.5 weeks. The weather was cold in the morning and hot during the day, enough for E to catch the sun on her face and both of us to get a little browner, and subsequently for E to discover the compatability of aloe vera with her skin. With Janet, one of the ex-pat Americans in the village, we had the opportunity to watch and learn the basics of soap making. Some of this was done alone as Anisha took a couple of periods off to visit friends elsewhere in the state. A couple of times I was able to spend several hours weeding the gardens in the sunshine, listening to music and generally engaging in therepeutic focus of simple landworking. At night the stars came on brighter than almost anywhere else I have seen; familiar constellations made strange by their altered position in the sky as well as entirely unfamiliar patterns both shone brilliantly.

I entered Rio Hondo having never seen an animal cry and carrying doses of skepticism about herbalism. Both those things changed in the mountains. I entered Rio Hondo with nebulous focus on what home, community, and connection to the world meant and that changed too. Forest gardening and plant medicine, veganism and animal care, ecology and autonomy, community and gift economics now begin converging for me into a single, broad pathway to the future.

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