JimenaPulse
About Jimena de la Frontera, the province of Cadiz and Spain as a whole, focused on this small village in the mountainsArchive for LANGUAGE
HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (2)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA
by CURRINI
Our parents had a lot of these remedies, which, if they really did cure you they made you suffer even more. Opening my mouth my mother would say, “Your tongue’s white” and off she’d go to fetch the classical laxative that came in a variety of tastes, including ‘chocolate’, or Agua de Carabaña, which tasted awful, or little papers known as Panacea. If you had a temperature they’d put cold cloths on your forehead or slices of potato; if you trembled with cold from the fever you’d get a hot brick wrapped in a cloth at your feet. For spots and insect bites there was usually a pot with a bálsamo (balsam) plant (I think my Aunt Encarna still has one) and this was rubbed endlessly on the proper place; the spots or bites were probably cured out of boredom.
My Grandmother Isabel used to cure her sore throats and coughs with the slime of large snails, which she put in a glass, adding two spoonfuls of sugar. When our parents thought our thin legs and knobbly knees looked worse than usual, out came the aceite de hígado de bacalao (cod’s liver oil).
I once had a grano de sangre (‘blood boil’) on my behind: I was in bed face down for eight days while my mother put everything on it the neighbours told her to: hot towels, slices of onion, great chunks of bread rubbed with saffron and san pedro (?) leaves. It was interminable but the idea was for the boil to ‘mature’. On the eighth day my Uncle José ‘Hormigo’ came in from the campo and announced that the boil had indeed matured. “Shall I squeeze it?” he asked. The heavens had opened for my mother, who went about preparing cloths and hot water. My uncle began the torture of squeezing out all the evil the wretched thing contained until the blood came out its natural red. A little trapito (rag) was carefully held by some sticky tape and in no time I was outside in the street. My own heaven.◊
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Follow the story here next Tuesday, October 23rd.
FRIENDS IN AMSTERDAM
There he is, blogging from Holland, trying to keep up with Jimena. On holiday, or puente (bridge – i.e a holiday coinciding with a week-end)), with his family. In front of the Reijksmuseum – intellectual photo, that – and who knows where else. Yes, folks, it’s the one and only Tio Jimeno, live, not digital.
FRIENDS IN RUSSIA
Before Prospero was Prospero, back in the darkest 1990s, he had a programme in English on Jimena radio. It was great fun and served a similar purpose to this blog, as a vehicle of communication for those without a lot of Spanish. Prospero being a cero a la izquierda (‘zero to the left’) technologically speaking, he had to have someone who knew which buttons to push or slide at the right moment. The man behind the glass at Jimena’s now almost defunct station was Antonio Jota Sierra (‘jota’ stands for his middle initial, J, and that’s how it was read out), who came in voluntarily for several hours each week just to help out.
Antonio is a journalist who since then went on to better things, working in Algeciras and elsewhere on various radio, TV stations and newspapers. Somewhere along the line he met his wife Sofía and now they are living in her native Russia (temporarily he says: it’s too cold). That’s them in the photo, though it doesn’t look very cold, does it?
Why do I mention it? Because he has one of the web’s most interesting blogs, written in Spanish, in which he records his prolonged stay there with great elegance of phrase and wonderful humour. It’s worth looking at, even without a lot of Spanish: the photos are great entertainment. CLICK HERE or click later on ‘República de Bur’ on the link on the right sidebar.
(P.S. Sofía, how do you get to do that with your site? Or is it him?)
IT’S CHOREETHO, NOT CHORITSO (4)
WARNING: Parts of this series may challenge the sensitivity of some, so if you’re particularly sensitive, stop reading right now!
(CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE IF YOU’RE NOT)
Step 4 (see here) left family and friends gathered around the table, chopping up onions, garlic, pumpkins and courgettes to be used as part of the ingredients for chorizo.
Step 5 takes place the following morning, when the chorizo ingredients continue to be prepared by the women while the men carry on cutting up the carcass. Read the rest of this entry »
HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (1)
The first in a series of five articles
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH CARE IN JIMENA (1952 – 2007)
by CURRINI
I had to go to the medical centre in Jimena for the first time the other day. As I sat waiting, looking around at the cleanliness, the size of the place and the number of people being served in this modern facility, I remembered how public health used to be in the village where I was born and raised. My first memory was of the capacity for suffering we were handed down from our parents, not to mention the resignation we showed for those illnesses and accidents that beset us all little by little. Read the rest of this entry »
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