Amazonian Time

March 1, 2006- Sick Time
(photos:Villagers with boom box & electric clock,
David pressing sugar cane,
School children,
Shamans,
Ready for night hike)

We had a wake-up knock on our door at 6AM to get ready for a skiff ride into the jungle to see early morning activity. Unfortunately, it was raining and animals and birds have more sense than we do and take shelter. We postponed the activity for another day.

We’ve stopped locking our cabin door. If anything is missing we have a limited number of culprits. Besides, the steward is in and out of the room all the time. We do keep the desk drawer where we store the computer and documents locked and that key stays with us.

Since our schedule is so flexible some of us decided to list an alternative schedule next to the one that Eric put up. We included a parasite check with a notation to bring a stool sample; we planned a key exchange after the Mute Band concert; and skinny-dipping after dinner.

Two of the three couples joining us in Lima are now sick. Dolores who is traveling with a female friend is suffering from both ends. If nothing else there’s a good supply of Pepto, Imodium, lomotil, and Cipro on this boat. Supposedly the water on the boat for drinking and ice-cubes is purified. We’re all taking malaria meds and that can cause slight diarrhea but not what has been going around. David is convinced that the food and drink on the boat are safe. I think the source of contamination is somewhere in the kitchen.

Visiting Time

We moved up our village visit to fill the morning and boarded our skiff to float approximately twenty feet to shore. I guess the river was too shallow to get the big boat closer. We walked up newly cut mud steps into La Palma, a close-knit communal gathering of fifty people. The government owns the land but the village leaders parcel it out for the use of the inhabitants. Overseas Adventure Travel, the company that organized our tour, doesn’t pay a fee for each visit. Instead, they built a school. The government provides the teacher and the supplies needed to teach. Students have to provide their own supplies. That’s why we collected money last night and one of the crew went into Nauta to stock up. We left two bagsful of crayon, pencils, etc. People in our group who have traveled with OAT before brought gifts from home.

The palm thatch roofed houses were spread over a large area with a well-maintained soccer field as a centerpiece. They keep the grass cut by using machetes. Machetes are also the basic kitchen tools. We watched women nimbly peeling manioc without a thought to losing a digit. The same machetes are used to cut down the manioc tree so we knew it was sharp. The first open-walled stilt-house we stopped at was a handicraft workshop. It tickled me that they had a boom box and working clock on a shelf. That goes along with the teen-aged girl wearing low-slung hip-hugging jeans. There was a little disconnect for me there.

They salt the excess meat and fish for the future and several people tasted BBQ cayman meat and the many fruits and drinks prepared for us. David thinks that OAT knows what it’s doing but I will watch to see who gets sick. Eric said the food is high in carbs but low in vitamins, protein, and calcium. Villagers don’t have good teeth at all, but the carbs provide the energy they need for all the physical labor they perform. They showed us a nail file/buffer made from the scales of the arapaima fish. It was attractive and worked very well.

Some of us took turns shooting a bow and arrow at a papaya. The papaya gets to live another day. No one, including the villager who demonstrated for us, hit it. By comparison the cane press we saw yesterday at the still is light-years head of what they had in the village today. They used an ironwood press to manually squeeze every ounce of juice out of the cane. The sweetness is appreciated there. Native fruits are mostly sour due to the soil. Eric explained that several are used as medicine. Papaya seeds are a purge and the juice can be sprayed as a fungicide. Yellow tomatoes are used to treat diabetes. It is a barter economy. Cash is only needed for what they cannot grow like sugar and salt.

We walked across the field to the school and were seated at desks. The building is elevated as is everything and has a metal roof. Small dried animals hung from the beams; three blackboards were scattered around the large space; and maps, posters, and childrens’ drawings hung on the walls. The little girls were especially cute and had a noticeable Asian look. Since they’re on break now and the teacher is gone, Eric took over. He knew the drill having grown up in a similar village. The children lined up and spaced themselves by putting their hands on the shoulders of the one in front. Then we introduced ourselves. After each of us said our name the children repeated it back. Then they said the name again as they clapped out to the number of syllables in the name. They sang a song that required us to join in and then it was our turn. French was our leader since he was a teacher. He chose “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” as our song. We all stood up and sang using the motions. It was a perfect choice since the next thing the kids did was to teach us body parts in Spanish. We presented our gifts and the president of the mother’s club stepped forward to thank us. She will be the one to distribute them. The children all came to say good-bye to us and to shake hands. Freddy, Eric’s assistant, is a tour-guide-wannabee. He stood by with wet towels for us to clean up. As with all “touristic” experiences there was a stop at the gift shop. Some shopped. I went to jail. The two narrow cells hold one person each. They were barely wider than my shoulders. Most of the prisoners are there as the result of family feuds and abusive behavior.

When we got back on the boat we were glad we’d bought rubber Totes boots to use over our shoes. We left them outside the door as instructed and they were cleaned and returned to us within half an hour.

Shaman Time

In the afternoon, after a 2-hour siesta, we visited a village shaman. We walked along a path fashioned from tree stumps to a large round open-air building with a conical palm frond roof. The first thing I noticed were mannequins of how the tribe’s people dressed before the missionaries made them put on clothes. It was a bit too much Disney for my taste. This is a tribe that takes heads as war trophies. The most recent were from Ecuadorian natives. The enemy heads are shrunken as a way to absorb the strength and knowledge of their foes.

Smoke wafted from an aromatic fire to ward off mosquitoes and we settled in and tried to breath the heavy air. We sat on tall stumps and were introduced to the head shaman, his assistant, and his apprentice. As Eric introduced the shamans he told us that he’d been an apprentice and had taken hallucinogens called aya huasca while studying. Behind the seated shamans was what looked like a bar with bottles of liquor lined up. Over the bar hung a cross. The head shaman started studying at age sixteen. He became a full-fledged shaman at twenty-one. He is now sixty-seven years old, has one wife, and nine children. He takes hallucinogens three times a week in order to contact the spirits. That compound of plants contains atropine and scopolamine among other goodies. It’s important to learn to control the drug-induced visions in order to help his patients. Sometimes the patients are given aya huasca as well. It means dead vine and is considered to be a way into the spirit world. It induces a ceremonial death where no one dies. It cannot be taken by anyone with high blood pressure. Since there is no blood-pressure cuff available the shaman feels the pulse and can tell if it’s safe. His assistant came from one month away by river to study with the other shaman and decided to stay. He ‘s fifty-four years old, has one wife and nine children. There was a twenty-three year old woman apprentice who had one child. Female shamans take the hallucinogen while pregnant. It makes the baby stronger. It ‘s thought that women make the best shamans. They’re stronger physically and spiritually. The head shaman said that they’re dedicated to finding new plants and cures.

Shamans don’t work with animal spirits and will pray to God when the meds don’t work. They believe that God works through them and the medication and doesn’t perform miracles. Since the Spanish arrived they only believe in one God. The cross over the bar protects their bodies and spirits through Jesus Christ who gives God’s blessing. They assist in childbirth and try to cure the problems caused by black magic done by witch doctors who practice the evil arts. They’re paid in food and other goods. Shamans are born not made. When a baby cries before it is born and still in the mother it’s a sign it will become a shaman. Shamans don’t do surgery but refer to modern medical professionals. There aren’t many shamans now. The Spanish brought diseases shamans couldn’t heal; their people were disillusioned and cast the holy men out or killed them.

What looked like liquor bottles at a bar were liquor bottles filled with potions. Rum is used to marinate tree bark in some instances. They passed around samples for us to smell or taste depending on our courage. We smelled. The aya huasca smelled like a Bloody Mary. Eric said it tasted like chicken. The dragon blood concoction was used to heal wounds. It stops bleeding and regenerates cells. Many rubbed it on their mosquito bites. Cats claw has been proven by science to improve the immune system. A German company is making it into pills to help with cancer. It’s also used to treat AIDS. It smells like rum. Then there was STWS. It’s to help with impotence and is what the locals call Seven Times Without Stopping. It’s good for men and women. In the 1970’s botanists began to study Amazonian plants and their medicinal qualities in earnest. Most have been found to be efficacious.

They started a ceremony to bring us good fortune. They knelt and chanted and made the sign of the cross over their own foreheads. We were all given dried berries (beads) to hold in our cupped hands. One by one the shaman blew smoke from a large cigarette that smelled like a cigar into our hands. His assistant followed around the circle with a fan and waved it over our hands. The next step was for each of us to have smoke blown onto the back of our heads and into our hair. We are now a great smelling group but bug-proof. The woman shaman then did the same for the head shaman as he knelt before her. Her chanting was different and the assistant shaman accompanied her with rain sticks.

I realized that it was Ash Wednesday and we had Catholics in our midst. They said they’d remember it as the most unique Ash Wednesday they’d ever spent. I found it very moving. It spoke to me more than the ritual to which I am accustomed. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar and primitive that I was caught up in. Maybe it was the utter belief and sincerity with which they shared their tradition. Through it all I identified with their struggle against oppression to save this precious part of their history, culture, and identity.

At the end of the ceremony the mood broke when we were invited outside for a photo op. We posed, shook hands, and hauled out our Purell. They must think that foreigners practice an odd hand-shaking ritual.

We walked down a path to a man-made lake and got to canoe in catamarans. They used to use single canoes but too many tourists went overboard. The lake was formed for the study of dolphins and a few breached as we paddled by. We were able to see scarlet macaws, capybaras, and otters. River lettuce was being grown hydroponicly in log-rimmed enclosures. I became really excited when I spotted what looked like a long “something” swimming under water. I thought it might be a snake, a dolphin, or the Loch Ness Monster, but it was John’s fishing lure. Once again he came up empty.

Night Time

Meals have been pleasant socially. People mix it up with different dinner partners at every meal. The pre-dinner concert tonight was Nick and Louise singing original songs and accompanying themselves on guitars. They’re quite creative and talented. They’re working on a CD. You heard it here first.

We debated whether or not to go on the night walk and decided we didn’t want to miss anything. We were told to outfit ourselves in the gaiters and to wear long sleeves and long pants. Longs and longs have been standard for most daytime treks as well. We put our Totes over our shoes and wore fly nets over our hats. We were supposed to wear hats in case anything fell from the trees. That wasn’t heartening. In this heat and humidity we became walking human saunas. We stepped gingerly navigating by flashlight along the path made of sunken tree rounds and I noticed they had wire mesh nailed to the surface to prevent slipping. Everything in the jungle is wet, slimy, and waiting for a misstep. We had Eric up front and Freddy at our rear. Along the sides of the path we were escorted by four native youths also wearing gaiters. I guess they take the snakes seriously. Halfway through the walk I realized that no self-respecting snake would venture onto the path with sixteen tourists clomping along. I did realize my goal of not seeing a single snake along our route. We saw spiders, a scorpion, a sloth, a beetle, a kinkajou, and monkeys. The beetle was as big as my palm. It got me to wondering why bugs are huge in the rain forest and people are so small. At the midpoint of the hike we came to a clearing and were asked to sit down on benches. We were told to turn our flashlights off and be quiet. The darkness was complete. There was no difference in my vision whether my eyes were open or not. The dense canopy kept out any ambient light from stars and we stood in silence for a good five minutes. The squeaks, chirps, and howls were intensified and our isolation was magnified.

Tomorrow we get to do it all in the daytime. It will probably look much the same. My focus was on where I was stepping. We asked one of the waiters what we would see in the trees at night. He said that we would see leaves. He was basically right.

Toby