Through the darkness,Ovencio Canto lights two long white candles, which quickly illuminate his tanned weathered face. Reaching into a plastic bag he pulls out a photo of a hefty, dark-skinned Guatemalan woman with short black hair. He slowly wraps black thread around the photo, making a cross over her face. Softly, he recites a prayer in the mysterious-sounding Mayan language that only a few people still know.

At 11 o'clock on this Friday night, the 46-year-old Mayan bush doctor, performs a sacred ritual that will cause the woman in the picture to return home to the husband she ran away from more than three years ago.

"The way I do this is a secret," Ovencio says. "It's against the government. I can make you fall in love and also get rid of a person bothering you."

Centuries ago Mayans used these ancient rituals, known as black magic or voodoo, to solve problems involving jealousy and other relationship issues. But, this dark magic is now rarely used, except in secrecy from outsiders.

"This works with the spirit. You have to deal with the devil -- that is nothing nice," he says. "Love is better when it's natural."

Working with spirits is one of the many duties of this Mayan traditional healer, along with herbalism, massage and acupuncture.

From his small hut in San Antonio, a quaint Mayan village in southwest Belize, Ovencio heals hundreds of people by using vines, leaves, roots and tree barks -- all resources that he collects weekly from the rainforest directly behind his home.

"I need to walk the bush to find the medicines I need," Ovencio says. "Sometimes I have to walk five to six miles to find the good medicines. I start early in the morning."

Into the bush

At 6:45 a.m. the roosters begin crowing and Ovencio steps out of his 8-foot by 8-foot kitchen and onto his neatly manicured lawn. He assembles his rusty shovels into a potato sack he has made into a backpack. He is about to go on his weekly five-mile trip deep into the rainforest to collect medicine.

Ovencio places a pick-ax over his shoulder, grabs his rust-spotted machete and says, "We go."

With his pants tucked into his black rubber boots he begins his long hike into the rainforest. Walking up the steep, muddy slopes, this 5-foot-tall Mayan man makes it to the top of the slippery hill without showing signs of exertion.

Ovencio says he's been going into this great maze of greenery since he was 15. He knows exactly where to turn and exactly where to find each medicine.

"I got lost in the bush only once, when I was 15. It's very dangerous and scary to lose yourself in the bush. I had to hide in a tree because I was scared of tigers," he says with a chuckle. "My friend didn't find me until after dark. I made sure that I never got lost again."

After more than an hour of trucking through muddy puddles, fire ants and swarms of mosquitoes, Ovencio suddenly stops and points to a small piece of brown root sticking out of the crumbly soil.

"This is china root," he says with excitement. "It's good for the blood."

He bends down, takes his old tools out of his homemade backpack and begins to unearth the root.

"Wow," he says when he realizes how big the root is. After more than 20 minutes of digging, pulling, cutting and yanking, Ovencio frees a watermelon-sized chunk of china root from the ground.

"Being a bush doctor is not easy," he says. "It's a hard job I have."

Ovencio gently wraps the root in plastic, places it in his backpack and starts home, where he will prepare the root.

The medicine

"There are medicines all around us," Ovencio says. "You just have to look carefully. For most every sickness, God has provided a cure."

Along the newspaper-covered walls of Ovencio's hut, medicines sit in worn, brown potato sacks. They do not seem to be much more than ordinary wood chips in a large assortment of shapes, sizes and colors. However, these little pieces of wood are pieces of special roots that Ovencio has collected from inside the rainforest.

"The key is making the right mixtures," Ovencio says. "One single medicine cannot always do the job alone, just like a man cannot have a baby without a woman."

Mixed correctly, these roots have the power to heal most ailments, even increase a man's libido.

"If you drink too much of this certain mixture, you are going to be looking for a lady quick, quick, quick," Ovencio says, laughing. "You are going to need to find a wife right away!"

Ovencio then warns that the medicine has some drawbacks.

"It tastes a little bit bad," he says. "But it works. You only have to drink a capful. No medicines taste good. No medicine is sweet. The plants have many different tastes and smells."

Outside of Ovencio's hut is a garden where he and his wife have planted the most important plants such as ginger, allspice, gumbolimbo, basil, jackass bitters, avocado and garlic, just in case an emergency arises. These plants can help many different things from gas and stomach pains, to coughs and fevers.

"But my garden is not big enough for everything that is important," he says. '"I want to plant a bigger garden one day, so I don't always have to go looking for plants deep in the bush. Sometimes it is hard to find certain plants out there."

When Ovencio's search is unsuccessful, he says he will say a prayer before he goes to sleep, hoping the location of the medicine will come to him in a dream.

"Sometimes God will give me the answer in my dreams,"Ovencio says."I will see a certain leaf in my dream, then the next day I will see the same leaf and I know that will be the leaf to heal."

Healing

Just before a Friday evening sunset, a teen-age girl and three young children, two boys and a girl, approached the edge of Ovencio's yard and gazed curiously from the dirt road they were standing on. Once Ovencio noticed them standing there, he quietly motioned with his hand to come toward his home.

After a short conversation in Mayan, Ovencio told the children to sit down on a long wooden bench. One at a time, he gently placed each child's hand into his own and whispered a Mayan prayer. After holding 3 little pairs of hands and reciting prayers, he placed the palm of his hand onto each of the children's foreheads and repeated another prayer. The little boy in the worn blue t-shirt closed his eyes seconds after Ovencio's palm reached his forehead because of the calming effects of his touch.

These prayers were said to calm the children down, and make them less nervous about something that was bothering them, Ovencio says.

People come from all over Belize, Honduras and Guatemala for Ovencio's healings. Most people hear about him through word of mouth or by a handwritten poster he hangs around town. Sometimes three patients come all at once, and other times patients won't show up for days. Ovencio says it depends on the transportation available on each day. Some days it is tougher to make it to San Antonio than on other days because of inconsistent bus schedules.

When patients come for a visit, they enter Ovencio's hut, the only place he does his healing. A wooden bed frame covered by a white pinstriped sheet is to the left of the doorway. The only cushion on his bed comes from the red polka dot pillow.

This is where Ovencio gives all of his massages and lets patients stay to be healed. It is also the place where he often spends the night.

According to Mayan traditions, a healer must sleep alone and keep to himself when he has healed someone.

"I need to purify myself and cleanse myself before a miracle can be performed,"Ovencio says."The purer you are, the quicker the person will get healed. I can't make sex with my wife and must sleep alone. Most bush doctors don't have a wife around because it is too tempting."

Ovencio says he believes he can heal almost anyone, as long as the patient has a flexible mind. However, some sicknesses, such as cancer and AIDS, give him trouble in finding a cure.

"It's very hard,"Ovencio says. "I have tried and tried, but I can't find anything. The doctors can't find it either. I can help slow it down and give you a longer life to live, but that's it."

For other incurable treatments, Ovencio says, "Sometimes God sends you like that for a reason, and nothing can be done."

"As long as you have prayer, everything will be alright in the end,"Ovencio says. "If you don't have faith, you can't be healed. Prayer is the most important thing when I perform my healing. It is really vital in this work."

Holding onto tradition

"You have to pray with all your heart. I have faith in the Mayan religion. The new Maya don't have the same faith we all once had," he says.

Now, traditions are slowly becoming lost because people in the village are starting to use modern medicine instead of traditional healing. "My ancestors used so many things that we don't even know about now," he says.

Ovencio hopes to pass his healing methods along to his 12-year-old son, Esedro. "I don't want these traditions to die out. . . Now people are burning down the rainforests, and we are losing good medicines. I need to try to keep these traditions alive."