And here’s where I am 3 hours after my ankle-spraining.

Eventually, it’s time to move upstairs to my apartment.

This is not going to be easy. I’ve got the crutches, thank God, ice for the ankle and my first aid kit complete with pills.

I face the cement stairs. I cannot even put weight on the ankle, at all, because it hurts too much.

Abby, my friend and sitemate, has been notified of my need for peanut butter and Maria’s brand cookies and internet credit for my phone. Suddenly I have nothing to do. I’m so grateful for the overstuffed magenta pillow I bought for Walmart. It’s just been decorative until today.

Abby eventually arrives and I feel even more at ease. She’s sprained her ankle upwards of 15 times, being a former soccer player, whereas me being the sports evader that I am, am learning what a sprained ankle means.

She tells me: Ten days of this, this being horizontal living? She keeps me company as Clara comes in and out, she asks Abby if this has happened to her before and she confirms that ice is the best way to heal it. I’m grateful because I come to learn that the ice treatment is totally foreign to them.

Clara was heating water on the fire and carrying a bucket of it upstairs. I was to put my foot in hot water then cold water for 15 minutes each for an hour to confuse the tissue in my ankle, per Peace Corps medical. I had to wake up at 1:30 and 5:30 to ice the ankle, and continue on the every four hour icing schedule, asking Clara to go buy ice for one quetzal a bag. We decided the 1:30 ice could be purchased at 10pm before the stores closed and last through my 1:30 and 5:30 icing (wishful thinking but it mostly worked).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t reflect on all the unusual things I learned from being in this state.

First of all, in the campo of Santa Clara La Laguna, no one has heard of putting ice on an injury. My host family thinks it’s the weirdest thing they’ve ever heard. They even tell me: “We don’t put ice on injuries. We put it in hot water. Be careful with the ice it could burn your skin.”

And as I continue to put ice on it, every four hours, paying my host sister to go get me ice from the tienda (because we are fridgeless) they ask me: “When should we start putting vinager and salt water on your ankle? And camphor oil?” And I learn the word “lienzo” too, which means dressing or treatment. We do lienzo with vinagre y aqua con sal.

“We don’t put ice on anything” they tell me. “My mom didn’t take pills when she hit her arm. She suffered, she cried.” “Yes,” my mom chimes in. “I had to ask help from the neighbor across the street to put my corte on. I couldn’t do it myself. I cried…” The ultimate indication of helplessness: not being able to put her corte on.

I am learning all these new words: sobar, lienzo, reposo, la tentación, torcer, el tobillo and I’m reminded of others: golpear, herido, inválido, débil.

And then they tell me: There’s a place you can go and they’ll push on the bone to put it back in place. And this negates everything I’ve heard ankle healing. You do not apply pressure to a sprained ankle, especially a fresh one.

But time goes on and everyone in town asks me: Did you go to the bonesetter? Did you let anyone sobar it? And I tell them: No. Ice and rest and a bandage for when I walk. To them, I am missing an essential element which is someone pushing on my ankle until I cry. And it links back to an ancient tradition of healing and, well, it just showed me how different our cultures are.

Pills, ice and rest verses vinager, bonesetting and prayer. 

I must say, you learn so much when something break downs about how people put things back together.

Abby made it over with my peanut butter, cookies and little snack bottles out of repurposed pills. This is how Peace Corps volunteers care for each other, they also have to respond out of necessity.

Three weeks later and I can finally walk without the bandage, but I did buy a lunch to thank my host family: shrimp and steak with salad. I truly can’t imagine what it would have been like without their help, I was the luckiest girl on earth to fall and be sustained and maintained by this beautiful family of three female generations. I’ll carry it in my heart always, even when I can walk like a normal person again. Community is part of healing, but then again community is a part of everything here. And I’m taking it all in knowing that it might never be this way again. And I’m so grateful that I learned what it means for loving non-family to care for me like family.