TEXT: Sana Sana Colita de Rana

CONTEXT:

Informant- “Okay, so Sana Sana is, I guess I think it’s like, when I’ve looked it up online, it’s supposed to be like a nursery rhyme. It’s usually what people use to consult the children in their family when they’re not feeling well, when they’re hurt, which I think means heel heal- something like that. So the full story for me is that I grew up, I grew up having stomach issues, problems with my GI, or GI issues, um, problems with my intestines as they were like distant I was a kid. And so I was always in pain. And I was especially in pain, like if I ate something that didn’t agree with me. And at that point, I didn’t have it under control like I did now, so it really any little thing would hurt me. And my grandma would always, I go, I’d run to my grandma and I’d tell her that my stomach was hurting or something like that. And so she would like sit with me or she’d lay me down and she’d put her hand. It was specifically her right hand, her right hand on my stomach, and she would say “sana sana colita de rana” and she would change it. She’d say make (informant’s) belly feel so much better. And then she’d like, as she’s like rubbing it, then she’d like pretend like she was pulling the illness out of me and like grab it off my stomach. So, I guess my relationship to it is that it reminds me of my grandma. I even as an adult, like even when I was 18 years old, I would still say, grandma, my stomach hurts. “Can you sana sana me?” And she would come over and son us son on me… I don’t really remember the very first time I heard it. It’s just always been something that she’s done for me. Um. Yeah, I guess it is a sense of the comfort for me. Cultural reference, obviously, for me being Hispanic and like that, but it is a sense of comfort for me that she would use it. I don’t know if it was mind like a minding her mentality kind of thing that I swear every time she did do it, I ended up feeling better after that. So that is my full story of sana sana. That’s my relationship to it. It kind of follows my relationship with my grandma. And I she would always use it when I wasn’t feeling well, mainly with my intestinal issues.”

ANALYSIS:

In the story, the informant tells me of their experience with this traditionally, Hispanic saying and how it was used to comfort her as a child with intestinal issues even into her adulthood. She goes into whether or not she believed that just her grandmother saying this and performing a specific hand motion tricked her mind into making her feel better, but regardless, she believes wholeheartedly that the same always made her feel better. I know this informant quite well and during times where I myself have gotten hurt or felt sick she has performed Sana Sana on me and I think that it’s a very sweet and caring way of sharing culture with someone else.