Chapter 30: Yab'il chuqa' aq'om - Health and Healing

Starting point#

Early morning in ma Kawoq's house. The grandfather is sitting close to the fire in his sweater; he did not sleep well.

KAWOQ: Tata', ¿achike nab'än? ¿La at yawa'?
Father, what's the matter? Are you sick?

MAMA'AJ: Janila tew chwe, nuk'ajol. Nsilïl tew chwij, chuqa' k'o k'atän chwij. Man xiwär ta ütz.
I'm very cold, my son. Chills are running down my back, and there's a fever on me. I didn't sleep well.

IXK'AT: ¿La nq'axon ajolom, tata'?
Does your head hurt?

MAMA'AJ: Ja'. Nq'axon nujolom, nq'axon wij. Xpe chuqa' jun ojöb' chwe.
Yes. My head aches, my back aches. And I've caught a cough.

TZ'IKIN: K'o chi yab'e rik'in ri aq'omanel pa tinamit. Rija' xtutz'ët achike najin chawe.
You have to go to the doctor in town. He will see what is happening to you.

MAMA'AJ: Aaaa, näj k'o wi ri aq'omab'äl. Xa ta k'a in ala' na, yib'iyin ta chi waqän k'a pa tinamit. Po wakami in rijiläj achin chik.
Ah, the clinic is far away. If I were still a young man, I would walk to town on foot. But now I'm an old man.

TZ'IKIN: Mani nak'uxlaj, tata'. Yatink'waj pa ch'ich'.
Don't worry. I'll take you in the car.

MAMA'AJ: Ütz k'a. Po nab'ey nintïj ri q'ayïs aq'om, ri ruwäch tunay. Nuqasaj ri k'atän; ke ri' xub'ij ri ajq'ij chwe.
All right. But first I'll take the herbal remedy, the elderberry. It brings the fever down; that's what the daykeeper told me.

KAWOQ: Ütz ri ka'i', tata'. Ri q'ayïs nub'än rusamaj; ri aq'omanel nub'än chuqa' rusamaj.
Both are good, father. The herbs do their work, and the doctor does his work too.

ANA: ¿Achike nib'anatäj chi re ri mama'aj?
What is happening to the grandfather?

IXK'AT: Xyawäj. K'o raxtew chrij. Po man nïm ta ri ruyab'il; xtik'achoj.
He's gotten sick. He has the chills. But his illness isn't serious; he will get well.

Ixchel comes in with the baby.

IXCHEL: Xojpe rik'in ri Ix'ey. Ri iyom xub'ij chqe: ruloman ri tew, k'o chi nqapïs ri ne'y pa jun pisb'äl, richin manta xtuk'ül jun yab'il.
We've come with Ix'ey. The midwife told us: during the cold weather, we must wrap the baby in a blanket, so that she doesn't catch an illness.

MAMA'AJ: Jeb'ël runa'oj ri iyom. Tapisa' ri ne'y... chuqa' rin. (ntze'en)
The midwife's advice is lovely. Wrap up the baby... and me too. (he laughs)

KAWOQ: Chwa'q, wi majani yak'achoj, yojb'e rik'in ri aq'omanel. ¿Ütz?
Tomorrow, if you are not yet well, we go to the doctor. All right?

MAMA'AJ: Ütz k'a, nuk'ajol.
All right, my son.

Look at how the grandfather reports his state. Not one of his sentences is "I am X" with an adjective: the cold is to him (tew chwe), the chills shiver on his back (nsilïl tew chwij), the fever sits on him (k'o k'atän chwij), his head is the thing that aches (nq'axon nujolom), and the cough came to him (xpe ojöb' chwe). Kaqchikel talks about the body by letting the sensation or the body part be the subject and attaching the person with a relational noun. This chapter systematizes that map, and adds the machinery for wishing things were otherwise: xa ta k'a in ala' na, yib'iyin ta "if I were still young, I would walk".

How it works#

The experiencer map: five ways to say how you feel#

Chapters 15 and 24 gave you the pieces one at a time. Here is the whole system. In each frame, notice who is the grammatical subject: almost never the sufferer.

Frame 1: the body part is the subject. The verb -q'axon "ache, hurt" is intransitive, and its subject is the part that hurts. "My" rides on the body part, not on the verb.

n-Ø-q'axon  nu-jolom
INCOMPL-3sB-ache  1sA-head
"my head hurts"

Two more body-part-as-subject expressions work the same way: nsurin nujolom "my head spins, I'm dizzy" and nimulun nuk'u'x "my heart churns, I feel nauseous". Both come straight from the sequel volume's childbirth story, where the expectant mother wakes up and xmulun ruk'u'x, xsurin rujolom "her heart churned, her head spun" (the verbs are -mulun and -surin).

Here is a sick woman describing her days to a doctor, in the authors' sequel volume:

Pa nimaq'a' niq'axon nujolom. Pa toq'a' niq'axon wij.
"In the morning my head aches. At night my back aches." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 152)

pa nimaq'a'  ni-Ø-q'axon   nu-jolom
in morning   INCOMPL-3sB-ache  1sA-head
pa toq'a'    ni-Ø-q'axon   w-ij
in night     INCOMPL-3sB-ache  1sA-back

(The sequel writes the incompletive as ni- where this book writes n- before the zero 3sB; both spell the same prefix.) Note wij "my back": the same -ij you know as the relational noun "behind" (Chapter 21) is here an ordinary possessed body noun.

Frame 2: the sensation comes TO you (chwe). The sensation is the subject; you are the recipient, marked with the -e series chwe, chawe, chre... (Chapter 21). This is how coughs, colds, and cold itself arrive.

The last two are the standard clinical questions; the sequel's doctor opens with Tatzijoj chwe achike nib'anatäj chawe "Tell me what is happening to you" (draft, p. 152). Learn them as your all-purpose "what's wrong?" follow-ups after ¿Achike nab'än?

Frame 3: the sensation sits ON you (chwij, chawij, chrij). Fevers and chills also perch on a person's back, with -ij:

The chwe and chwij frames overlap for cold: the sequel has both nsilïl tew chwe and nisilïl tew chwij within two pages (draft, pp. 26-28). Use either; the fever idiom, though, is consistently chi ... -ij.

Frame 4: something is IN a part of you. Existence plus a body-part relational noun:

K'o ya' chi nupam.
"I have diarrhea." (there is water in my stomach) (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, grammar appendix)

The same mold gives k'o rupam "she is pregnant" (literally "she has a stomach"), the everyday discreet expression; royob'en "she is expecting" is the other.

Frame 5: you feel it with -na'. The one frame where the experiencer is the subject: Tew ninna' "I feel cold", Ütz ninna' "I feel well, I like it" (Chapters 15 and 16), and with a clause, Ninna' chi ... "I feel that ...". Also useful: ¿Achike nana'? "How do you feel? What do you feel?"

From body to heart: q'axon, q'axomal, and grief#

-q'axon does not stop at the body. Its noun is q'axomal "pain, suffering", and with -k'u'x "heart" as its subject it is the ordinary word for grieving:

The sequel's vocabulary lists -q'axon -k'u'x outright as "grieve, experience heartfelt sorrow" (draft, p. 166), alongside poqonal "suffering" and -tïj poqon "suffer" (literally "eat pain"). Two more heart idioms round out the set: xq'ax pa ruk'u'x chi ... "it passed through his heart that ..." = "he realized, he felt", and -kuqub'a' -k'u'x "settle someone's heart" = "reassure, comfort": Xukuqub'a' ruk'u'x ri yawa' "She reassured the sick person." When someone is pitiable, the warm exclamation is jo'k ruwäch "poor thing" (literally "sorry is his face"): Jo'k ruwäch ri mama'aj, k'o raxtew chrij.

Naming the illnesses#

The general words first. yab'il is "illness"; yawa' "sick" (an adjective: in yawa', yawa' ri ne'y); -yawäj "fall ill"; -k'achoj "recover, get well" (its core meaning is "come out right, be completed", which is why the same verb means "for a task to be finished"); raxnaqil "health" (from räx "green, fresh": to be healthy is raxnäq, "green-fresh"). The doctor is an aq'omanel, from aq'om "medicine" and the verb -aq'omaj "treat, cure"; the clinic is an aq'omab'äl (place of medicine, with the -b'äl suffix of Chapter 7), the hospital an aq'omab'äl jay.

Note majani "not yet" (Chapters 12 and 15) doing exactly its old work in a new domain: Majani nik'achoj "he hasn't recovered yet", ¿La atijon yan jun aq'om? Majani. "Have you already taken a medicine? Not yet." (Taking medicine is -tïj, the eating verb, for solids and herbs, and -qüm, the drinking verb, for liquids; the perfect atijon is Chapter 15's transitive perfect.)

The specific illnesses, all from the sequel's health chapter (draft, pp. 151-164):

A sentence pattern worth learning whole: an illness gives its symptoms. Describing whooping cough, the sequel says Re yab'il re' xuya' k'atän chi ke "This illness gave them fever" - the disease is the subject, -ya' the verb, the sufferers on chi ke. And a pain that will not let up man nitane' ta "does not stop": Man nitane' ta ri ojöb' "The cough won't stop."

One term of our own era: the sequel names COVID-19 ri Q'eqaläj Jïq' Ojöb', "the terrible whooping cough" (draft, p. 164, in a sidebar on the pandemic years), shortened elsewhere to ri q'eqaläj ojöb'; the ordinary word for a pandemic is nimayab'il "great illness". You will meet the phrase again in the next section, because it comes packaged with this chapter's new time word.

Ruloman: during and while#

You know loman as "so-so, middling" (Chapter 8) and as the conjunction "while" between two clauses (Chapters 15 and 22): Loman yisamäj, ye'etz'an ri ak'wala'. The longer form ruloman looked like a dialect variant there. The sequel's reference grammar reveals what the ru- is doing: -loman is at bottom a noun, "the middle stretch, the duration", and ruloman X is a possessed phrase, "in the duration of X" - a relational noun of time, built exactly like the relational nouns of Chapter 21 and listed by the sequel alongside chwäch "before" and chrij "after" as the time-linkers of the language (draft, p. 288). That gives it a use plain loman does not have: put a NOUN after it, and it means "during":

Ruloman ri q'eqaläj ojöb' (COVID), xojkanäj kan pa jay oxi' ik'.
"During the COVID pandemic, we stayed at home for three months." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 231)

ruloman  ri q'eqaläj ojöb'   x-oj-kanäj  kan  pa jay  oxi' ik'
during   the terrible cough  COMPL-1pB-stay  remain  in house  three month

With a clause after it, ruloman is simply "while", as before; the sequel uses both freely: Ruloman nsamäj ri ma Kawoq pa juyu', nkemon ri te Ixk'at pa jay. "While Kawoq works in the fields, Ixk'at weaves at home." Our first source already recorded ruloman as the "while" of some towns (¿La ütz awäch? p. 188), so the two books agree; the "during + noun" use is the sequel's addition.

The likelihood dial: wi, ta, xa ta, xa manta#

Chapter 22 hinted that each ta a speaker slips into an "if" sentence makes the condition sound less likely. The sequel's grammar lays the whole scale out (draft, p. 287), and it is worth learning as a dial you can turn:

The last row is the new construction: when the condition is flatly contrary to fact ("if I were rich", "if I were young again"), wi disappears and the clause opens with xa ta - the familiar particle xa "just, only" compounded with the irrealis. The sequel's example pair, with its own spellings kept:

Xa ta ïn b'eyom, ninlöq' jun nuch'ich'.
"If I were rich, I'd buy a car." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 287)

and, with one more ta in the result to add doubt even to the daydream, Xa ta ïn b'eyom, ninlöq' ta jun nuch'ich' "If I were rich, I might buy a car." (ïn is the sequel's spelling of the pronoun in.) The grandfather's line in our dialogue runs on this pattern: Xa ta k'a in ala' na, yib'iyin ta chi waqän "If I were still a young man, I would walk."

For a PAST contrary-to-fact whose "if" half is negative - "if you had NOT done it" - the compound is xa manta:

Xa manta xinachäp, xitzaq ta qa pa jül.
"If you hadn't grabbed me, I'd have fallen in the hole." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 287)

xa manta  x-in-a-chäp        x-i-tzaq        ta   qa    pa jül
if.not    COMPL-1sB-2sA-grab COMPL-1sB-fall  IRR  down  in hole
"if you hadn't grabbed me, I would have fallen into the hole"

The verbs stay in the plain completive; only the particles carry the unreality. A negative result clause simply takes manta itself: Xa manta xuqüm ri aq'om, manta xk'achoj "If he hadn't drunk the medicine, he wouldn't have gotten well."

Now the honest note. Chapter 19 taught you manta as the contrary-to-fact "if" and warned that the form alone does not tell you which way the unreality runs - manta xab'ij chwe is "if you had told me" for some speakers and "if you had NOT told me" for others. The two books by our source authors split exactly there: ¿La ütz awäch? consistently reads manta clauses positively ("if I had money..."), while the sequel reserves manta for the negative ("if ... had not...") and uses xa ta for the positive - and then its own exercises slip back into the positive reading. So the variation is real, and it lives inside one team of authors. The practical advice stands: in your own speech, use the sequel's tidy division - xa ta for "if I were / if X had happened", xa manta for "if X had not happened" - because it leaves no doubt; in your reading and listening, when you meet a bare manta clause, try both readings and keep the one the rest of the sentence supports.

One last relative of the family: richin manta + potential is "lest, so that ... not". The sequel, on infant vaccination: babies get their shots richin manta xtikik'ül re yab'il re' "so that they will not catch this disease" (draft, p. 164). Our dialogue's midwife uses the same frame: richin manta xtuk'ül jun yab'il "so that she doesn't catch an illness".

Two kinds of medicine, side by side#

Everything in this section comes from the sequel's Chapter 7 essay and dialogues (draft, pp. 148-165); it is the factual heart of how health care actually works in Kaqchikel towns.

The clinic. The aq'omanel examines (-nik'oj) a patient, asks the questions you learned above, and prescribes kaxlan aq'om, "Castilian (Western) medicine": pills to swallow (-tïj), syrups to drink (-qüm), injections given with the akuxa, the needle (the verb is -sïb' "inject"; the same word akuxa covers vaccines). Access is uneven: many towns have few doctors or none, clinics are often far and under-supplied, and many health workers do not speak Kaqchikel, so patients man yetikïr ta nikitzijoj kiyab'il - "cannot tell (the doctor) their illness" - a sentence the sequel uses of a clinic in Sololá. Kaqchikel wariness of hospitals also has a history behind it: from colonial-era neglect to twentieth-century medical experiments carried out on Guatemalans without their consent. That is the background against which newer organizations that offer care in Kaqchikel, in partnership with Maya practitioners - the best known is Wuqu' Kawoq, the Maya Health Alliance - have mattered so much. For the plants below, the sequel itself points readers to a bilingual handbook by a doctor and a Kaqchikel co-author, Tiqaq'omaj qi' ("Let's treat ourselves", Rohloff and Sotz Mux 2008).

The traditional specialists. Three callings, each understood to be a gift one is called to, not a trade one merely picks:

• The iyom or k'exelom, the midwife, accompanies a mother from pregnancy through birth and afterward. The two words are a couplet pair (Chapter 25 taught you couplets): iyom is built on iy "grandchild", k'exelom on k'ëx "exchange, replacement" - a grandchild is one's replacement in the world, and the midwife is the one who ushers the replacement in. A mother says wiyom, nuk'exelom of the woman who delivered her child; used alone, k'exelom is the commoner of the pair. Midwives today usually also train with the health system and know when a birth must go to the hospital. Their practical advice fills the sequel's pages: keep the newborn wrapped (-pïs, pisb'äl), and let the mother warm herself in the tuj, the sweatbath (-tujan "bathe in the sweatbath").
• The aj yuq'üy b'aq, the bonesetter, sets breaks and treats sprains - vital work in towns with no doctor. The calling often reveals itself in a crisis; the sequel tells of a farmer who discovered his gift setting bones after the 1976 earthquake.
• The ajq'ij, the daykeeper (Chapter 24), treats the causes a stethoscope cannot reach. In the sequel's story of a man whose long illness no kaxlan aq'om had touched, the ajq'ij finds TWO causes, one spiritual and one bodily, and prescribes two treatments: a ceremony, and a flower-leaf infusion to drink. Herbal knowledge belongs especially to this calling, and with it the gesture of -jub'aj, ritually blowing on a person as a sign of respect for their spirit; the sequel's herbalists insist the plants and the ajq'ij's work go together, chi ka'i' nikib'än jeb'ël samaj - "the two of them together do beautiful work".

The underlying idea, the essay stresses, is that well-being is one whole: body, mind, and spirit, assessed inside family and community. In practice families use both systems, in whatever order the illness and the roads allow - exactly as the grandfather does in this chapter, taking his elderberry and his clinic visit, and nobody in the family sees a contradiction.

The herbs. The reference table in the Vocabulary lists the medicinal plants the sequel's healers name, with their uses where the text gives one: tunay (elderberry) for cough and to bring fever down, meteb'a' (ragwort) to draw out the cold of a fright, sik'äj (apazote) and xuk'üt q'ayïs (chamomile) among the everyday remedies. Learn the names as vocabulary; the uses are the healers' knowledge, reported here, not a prescription.

And the pandemic. The sequel's COVID sidebar (draft, pp. 164-165) is a small document of the era: towns closed, masks (tz'apichi', "mouth-cover") required, school moved onto the k'amaya'l (internet) for those who had it. Where the state's help failed to arrive, communities ran collections - the old institution of the kuchuj, the pooled contribution - and shared food with elders and the poor, while the ajq'ija' kept ceremonies for the towns' protection. It is a hard chapter told with pride: Xkito' ki' - "They helped each other."

Reading: Nik'achoj ri mama'aj#

Pa ruka'n q'ij, majani nik'achoj ri mama'aj. K'a k'o na k'atän chrij; man nitane' ta ri ojöb'. Roma ri', ri a Tz'ikin xuk'waj el pa tinamit, pa aq'omab'äl. Ri aq'omanel xunik'oj: xutz'ët ri ruqul, xrak'axaj ri ruxla'. K'a ri' xub'ij chi re: "Man nïm ta ri ayab'il, tata'. Nik'atzin yawa' ütz, yawär ütz, chuqa' k'o chi yatuxlan. Taqumu' re aq'om re' pa nimaq'a' chuqa' pa toq'a'." Ri mama'aj xuqüm ri kaxlan aq'om; xutïj chuqa' ri q'ayïs aq'om, roma ke ri' rub'anon jantape'. Eqal eqal xqa ri k'atän; xtane' ri ojöb'. Wakami xk'achoj yan; k'o chïk ruchuq'a'. Nb'iyin chïk pa juyu', ntze'en chuqa' rik'in ri Ix'ey. Yekiköt konojel: man roma ta jun aq'om, xa roma ka'i'.

On the second day, the grandfather is not yet well. There is still fever on him; the cough will not stop. So Tz'ikin takes him off to town, to the clinic. The doctor examines him: he looks at his throat, he listens to his breathing. Then he tells him: "Your illness is not serious, sir. You need to eat well and sleep well, and you must rest. Drink this medicine in the morning and in the evening." The grandfather drinks the Western medicine; he also takes the herbal remedy, because that is what he has always done. Little by little the fever goes down; the cough stops. Now he has recovered; his strength is back. He walks in the fields again, and he laughs with Ix'ey. Everyone is happy: not because of one medicine, but because of two.

Patterns at a glance#

The experiencer frames

Falling ill and getting well

The likelihood dial

Ruloman

The healers

Vocabulary#

Reference: herbs, remedies, and the sickroom#

Browsing vocabulary from the sequel's health chapter; not drilled.

Usage and dialect notes#

• yawa' ixöq is not ixöq yawa'. Adjective-first yawa' ixöq is the fixed, polite phrase for a PREGNANT woman; noun-first ixöq yawa' is simply a sick woman. The sequel makes the contrast itself, asking students to explain achike roma jun yawa' ixöq man junam ta rik'in jun ixöq yawa' - why the two are not the same (draft, p. 157). Chapter 24's note on yawa' as a euphemism now has its grammar.
• nq'axon and niq'axon. The sequel regularly writes the incompletive as ni- where this book, following our first source, writes n- before a zero 3sB (niq'axon vs nq'axon, nitane' vs ntane'). Same prefix, different spelling conventions; read both.
• Quoting the sequel. Its lines above keep its own spellings: ïn for in, wakamïn for wakami, chke for chike, po "but". Data, not instructions (Chapter 25 discussed this).
• Shivering. -b'ayb'öt and -b'erb'öt are variants of the same trembling verb; the sequel uses both. The chills idiom runs on -silïl "quiver": nsilïl tew chwe or nsilïl tew chwij.
• Take care of yourself. You will hear tab'ana' kwenta awi' with the Spanish loan kwenta (cuenta); the sequel's doctor says it. The loan-free equivalent is tachajij awi'. Both are real usage; this book drills the second.
• manta, once more. When you read older or utz-awäch-style texts, manta + clause may be a POSITIVE counterfactual ("if I had money..."); in the sequel's usage it is negative ("if ... had not"). Chapter 19's rule of thumb stands: try both readings, keep the one the sentence supports. In your own speech, xa ta (positive) and xa manta (negative) leave no doubt.
• The pandemic's name. Q'eqaläj Jïq' Ojöb', "the terrible whooping cough", is the sequel's coinage for COVID-19 (draft, p. 164), shortened to ri q'eqaläj ojöb' on p. 231; nimayab'il "great illness" is the generic "pandemic". q'eqaläj is built on q'ëq "black, dark" with the -aläj intensifier of Chapter 8 - "black-awful".
• iyom, k'exelom, ati't. The midwife words form a couplet, iyom k'exelom, and a mother says wiyom, nuk'exelom of her own midwife. A third term, ati't "grandmother", is used too - but the possessed wati't for one's midwife belongs to the CHILD she delivered, who has in her a spiritual grandmother (draft, p. 290).

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. Do not translate "I have a fever" with a Set B pronoun: not in k'atän but k'o k'atän chwij - the fever is on you, not a property of you.
2. Do not make the sufferer the subject of -q'axon: "I hurt" is not yiq'axon; name the part: nq'axon waqän "my leg hurts".
3. wi cannot introduce a contrary-to-fact condition. "If I were a doctor" is xa ta in aq'omanel, never wi in aq'omanel (which would mean "if I am a doctor", a real possibility).
4. In a counterfactual, remember the ta in the RESULT clause: Xa ta in ala', yib'iyin ta. Dropping it leaves the result sounding factual.
5. "Not yet" in answers is majani, not man ... ta: ¿La xk'achoj? Majani.
6. ruloman ri jöb' "during the rain" needs the noun with its article; bare ruloman jöb' sounds clipped.

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter gathered threads from all over the book: the body vocabulary and first symptom frames of Chapter 24 (People, Work, Body, Feelings), the -na' feelings of Chapter 15 (States and Ongoing Actions), the imperatives of Chapter 13 (Commands and Wishes), the majani of Chapter 12 (Completive and Potential), and above all the irrealis ta of Chapter 19 (Negation and Irrealis) and the conditions of Chapter 22 (Connecting Ideas), which now form one continuous dial from plain "if" to pure counterfactual. Ruloman showed a relational noun of Chapter 21's kind conquering time itself. The healers you met here - the iyom at a birth, the ajq'ij reading causes, the aq'omanel with the stethoscope - belong to the wider world of work, ceremony, and community that the other chapters of Part II explore domain by domain.