Health (Medical bulletin #1 – centipede)

“…you should really marry Agus.. That way, he could spit on my wound..”

One would hardly imagine he will pronounce such a sentence in his life.. and yet, here is another experience granted by that great place that is an Indonesian forest..

How do we get there? Well, I was bitten by a centipede. I thought that it would just hurt a lot, but remain localized, maybe swollen. But I was wrong, a plague-looking sore (I spare you the pictures) started spreading behind my knee, soon making it painful to walk, and then, on the third day, convincing me to go out while I still could on my legs (also following the concerns of the field assistants, who somehow don’t cherish the idea of carrying my dead-weight again).
I always appreciate local traditions, so before going to a proper doctor, I inquired on the traditional medicines that would be used in that case, and here are the two best ones:

1. You must find a person (a woman is preferable), who was once married, then wasn’t anymore (it doesn’t matter if widow or divorced, though perhaps the latter is more powerful), and then re-married, with a person who is instead married for the first time. Once you get hold of that person, she can spit on your wound, which is sure to cure it. [Hence my suggestion to Alice, Agus being a suitable (a mix of subtly fascinating and slightly disgusting traits) “candidate”, notwithstanding his being married..]
2. You find a kirai tree, extract its sap, boil it and make a sticky potion with which you can dress the wound. This was suggested by a radiant and excited Ismail, who then proceeded to show me the broad and thick scar that this method had left him. Having ascertained that all of the people who had it except from Ismail were cured by “non-traditional” doctors, and that it would be harder to find the re-married woman than a doctor, I decided to go for the latter: found a rather creepy purple-orange-haired old man, who looked at the wound and said “four days”, which happened to be true. He gave me lots of medicines, which I despise, but which cured the bloody (literally) thing in a few days.