My life in Yelapa was so enriched by the people and the environment-the generosity and caring I felt at every turn I was compelled to give also and to give back for many years the little treatment center ran on small donations and when people from the pueblos came it was always, como tu quieres. In 1997 however we received a grant that allowed us to implement our vision.
I had observed changes occurring in the small communities where I worked as a result of development and tourism; it was always a mix of positive and negative we conceived of a community wide project that would focus on the use of plants and their healing traditions as a way to validate community knowledge and to preserve it so that it would be passed to their children. Indeed it was a group of teen girls who insisted: we want our mothers and grandmothers to tell us what they know.
Thus we embarked on a community wide project that engaged everyone who wanted to participate, ranging from the school children to the elders.
Following 25 years of work directing a natural medicine public health center that served the residents of Yelapa and the surrounding villages, our center was awarded a 3 year grant to facilitate a community wide effort to support health activities that community members of all ages decided they would like to undertake. These activities included making herbal medicines multimedia arts for the children and adults sewing classes, nutritional classes, cooking classes and teen esteem events and natural medicine health promotion training. A variety of activities coalesced into this booklet. Originally conceived when a group of teen girls asked to record some of the herbal knowledge of their mothers and grandmothers the book became a group effort Thus together we designed and wrote as a group, effort over many months by the elders, the adult women, their teen daughters and sons as well as children in the school and the graduate student interns in residence at Casa Xipe Totec, on the lagoon.
