DIY For the Disconnected

I was in rural Brazil last spring, at a little natural hot springs town in the middle of the country called Caldas Novas. My boyfriend and I were waiting for hours for a bus to take us back to the hotel, listening to our iPods, surrounded by miserable families trying to sell a bag of popcorn or peanut brittle for 25 cents. When I saw two women interacting I paused my iPod and feigned disinterest but tried hard to hear all they were saying. The older woman asked the younger one (who had a baby in her arms) if she had vitiligo. The young woman said yes and that she had tried a treatment in a nearby town but the bus fare was too expensive so she had to stop. Her body was covered in large spots much lighter than her complexion. The young woman's hair blond (as if burned into colorlessness) and her skin was almost black. Not by birth, but from being scorched by the ungodly Brazilian sun and having never applied sunscreen. The vitiligo spots were so prevalent you may not know which were the spots and which was the inherent color of her "base" body.

The older woman said her niece used to have it too, and that she had the perfect solution for the vitiligo to go away. "You have to go to the middle of the woods. Not close to the city, it must be in the actual woods. You bring a piece of fabric with you and find a termite mound. You rub the fabric really hard inside the mound and then rub it onto your skin. You have to rub it really hard, not softly, around all the spots. Then you leave the fabric inside the termite mound. As soon as the termite eat the piece of fabric the spots will be gone."

I stared at the young woman's face certainly expecting her to show gratitude but complete skepticism. Yet she asked the old woman to repeat the recipe again so that she could remember. "I will do it tomorrow. I will leave the baby with the dad and go to the woods."