Feeling Nauseous? Try This Ancient Costa Rican Cure.

Her name was Anna.

She was a woman who rented a room in the back of my host family’s house in Quepos, Costa Rica—a doctor from San José. She was very polished. Like Salma Hayek polished. Bish had great hair.

I liked Anna—that is, until one Friday in October 2004.

I had come home from Spanish language school in nearby Manuel Antonio, and I was NOT feeling hot. I was a bit nauseous, like maybe I’d eaten something bad. Needless to say, I didn’t want to eat dinner with my host family that night: besides, one can only have so heaps of chicken and rice, anyway.

I told my host mom I wasn’t feeling well.

She asked me why.

I told her.

And then she called Anna.

Anna came out to the living room—and judging from the look in her eye, I knew I was in trouble. “She’s got a pega,” my host mom said matter-of-factly in Spanish. (Mind you, the only translation for the word “pega” that I knew was “glue,” but I didn’t have any of that???)

It was then that Anna instructed me to lay down on the sofa. I tried to politely decline, but that doesn’t work with Costa Rican matriarchs. :) “Venga,” she repeated, patting the seat. So I did what any obedient host daughter would do, and I walked over there and whacked her in the head with my purse.

And I did lay down. And then she settled into the chair next to me and grabbed a hold of my left arm. After just one or two sweeps of her thumbs from the inside of my elbow down to the inside of my wrist, she proclaimed the verdict for all to hear: “YUP, IT’S A PEGA, ALRIGHT.”

Naturally I assumed she had x-ray vision because I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, much less a bottle of Elmer’s that had mysteriously made its way under my skin. But that’s what she was acting like: as if there were an evil spirit under the skin, and she needed to push it out of me through my fingertips. (I’m surprised she didn’t cut me open, frankly.)

But according to 99% of the Costa Rican population, that’s exactly what I had: not an evil spirit (at least, not this month), but a ball of grease trapped under my skin, thanks to something I had eaten. At least, that’s how the theory goes, and that’s also what the word “pega” means in Costa Rican spanish: the ball of grease from hell. And also glue. And also, coincidentally, someone who you can never seem to get rid of, which totally makes sense. “She’s a real pega,” you could say. I like that definition much more than the one related to physical malaise, because let me tell you what: if anyone ever comes up to you and offers to “help you with your pega,” you had better run.

It. Hurts. Like. Hell.

The process looks like this: someone takes their thumbs and drives them into your forearm repeatedly, with pressure, for approximately one hour’s time, during which nine-hundred of your skin layers get peeled off in a man-made brush burn and you are convinced that a large syringe being injected straight into your eyeball would feel better. It. Feels. Awful. It hurts! It stings! Your skin becomes raw! And it sure as heck is red.

But they’re convinced it works. It’s an old treatment from “the grandmothers,” and sometimes if you’re really lucky they even take hot pork fat and rub it all over your skin, too. Afterward, they’ll then treat you to a tea that tastes like the pig’s armpit, and voilà! You are cured.

Except you probably aren’t—except by now you’re so distracted by the pain in your arm, you will have forgotten all about the pain in your stomach. And from that perspective, maybe it works like a charm:

At least when your arm hurts more than your stomach, you’ll still be up for that happy hour drink. 😀