Secrets of a gypsy

My stomach churns, my head pounds and I’m hot all over. Job, my partner, is also green. We’d been travelling 3 months in Latin America, eating questionable street food and brushing our teeth with dangerous tap water, only to get sick now?
That night was spent sweating in bed and bolting for the toilet. According to our trusty Lonely Planet we had Salmonella. However, I insisted on doing the Tikal tour we had booked as we couldn’t get a refund - $30 was the budget for a whole day! Job on the other hand, refused to leave the hostel.
Arriving at the park, I started having second thoughts as it was necessary to run for the throne every half hour. The bus trip had pushed my luck far enough – I had nearly pooped my pants. Discreetly, I approached the guide and asked if there would be frequent toilets during the half day tour.
He eyed me with a knowing look, “Do you have diarrhea?”
“Yes”, I admitted. “Speaking of which, where is the closest one now?”
After another desperate dash, he motions me away from the group. I follow him off the track and into the bush.
Treading carefully, he looks down and around the dense foliage. Finally he stops and bends over, rummages through the lush undergrowth and pulls long leaves off a shrub. “Put these in your water bottle and drink as much as you can. It’s a local medicine.”
I drink. Then I drink some more. When I run out of water, he buys me another bottle, put fresh leaves in it and I drink that too. The rest of the group give me odd and intrigued looks at the branches in my bottle, but no-one asks why.
Within the hour my fever disappears, and I’m no longer running to the toilet. Back at the hostel, I hand Job a bag full of magical leaves and tell him to drink up.
Job recovers enough to see the ruins the next day and coincidentally gets the same guide. After thanking him for his help, the guide is so pleased that he enlightens his tour group with a tale about ‘the girl with diarrhea’.

The locals really do know best.