Bursera simaruba. Jiñote or jiñocuabo. Indio desnudo.
Bursera microphylla. Torote. Elephant Tree.

These are some of the names that people of diverse backgrounds have given to two of my favorite trees in the world. It seems only fitting that this should be the first plant I would wildcraft in Nicaragua. It makes me feel like I really live here, to have made medicine from a local plant.

The first rains are falling today. Horses, chickens and pigs peck around the neighborhood of La Paloma, my new home. The malinche high overhead throws off red flowering sparks. The cacao trees drops their pods to earth. The caretaker of our home, Doña Tina, a friendly arthritic with a serious dowager’s hump, comes by to ask for a donation for the fiestas patronales of Moyogalpa, which are coming up on July 26. What do you need the money for, I ask. For music and gunpowder, she replies. I donate.

Mango trees and palms bend under the weight of the raindrops. Whites washed in time for work tomorrow are rushed inside. (Thank goodness I didn’t become a nurse! It’s so hard to keep whites white in Nicaragua.) My sweetheart plants seeds for another try at vegetables in a hard place to grow organic – eggplants, tomatoes, basil, dill. Licorice at my request – the sweet-tasting té de amolillo went over well in the clinic.

Yesterday I taught our group of community health workers here on the island how to make tinctures and liniments. For the menstruum of our tincture, we visited the local moonshiner – an old woman who lives in a secret house outside of San Lazaro, past the orphanage. In the backwoods shack, she fills your recycled juice jug with your choice of cususa or cogollo – the cogollo, or the heart, is stronger, double-distilled, so that’s what we buy for our tinctures. Last year, there was an incident in Nicaragua where some unscrupulous people stole a truck full of methanol and sold it as cususa. Many people died, and as a consequence the Ministry of Health went and shut down moonshiners all over the nation. Because of this, none of the local folks who sell moonshine have the device that measures the percentage of alcohol in what they are selling – everything was confiscated. Ometepe’s moonshine lady is famous nationwide as a distiller of high quality – perhaps that is the reason why she still operates. This evening, as we push back the local drunks hoping for a taste, she’s got the still cranked up over the fire and the drops are sweating out of the condenser while pigs drink out of a trough right beside. This is the real deal.

For our class, we all held a branch of jiñote and talked about what we could observe from holding it. It makes a cool and agreeable environment, said the first. It has a sweet, delicious aroma, said the second. It makes a thick milk that you can feel on your hands when you hold it, said the third. And with that, they knew most of the secrets of jiñote, although they didn’t know it yet.

Jiñote, and its close relatives myrrh and torote, produce a resin that cleanses the respiratory and urinary systems of the body and stimulates the immune system. That’s the reason we gather the medicine, but it doesn't come close to expressing the tree itself, an incredibly sensual being that sheds its skin and fills the air with its intoxicating perfume.

The sun sets over Lake Cocibolca, a red whisper behind the dense silhouettes of the trees between my house and the water. I sing along to Lucinda Williams’ hymn to the ocean and the spirits of water: “I wanna watch the ocean bend the edges of the sun then I wanna be swallowed up in an ocean of love.” Silver-bellied cicadas dive-bomb me in the kitchen.

Just another day in Nicaragua.