Even though we´ve had a stable home to come back to, a decent amount of downtime, and the locutorio (internet) is half a block away, Justine and I are already slacking on blog-writing. Much has happened in the past week, but I won´t try for chronology because I don´t think that matters to much to the casual reader anyway.
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El Arbol de Brujo (The Witch Tree): If you are angry at someone, you take their underwear and you cut a hole in this tree. Then you put the underwear in the hole and put back the piece of tree you cut out. The tree will heal up with the underwear in it, and then the person will fill up with water until they explode. Our scrutinizing, practical, scientific rainforest guide Jose tells us that it sounds crazy, but he knows its true because he´s seen it with his own eyes.
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One 5 o clock morning we got into a mototaxi, then got into a car, and drove into the night to a place we couldn´t find on a map, and therefore knew nothing about. As the sun came up, we became aware of our surroundings-- we were on a one-lane dirt road carving through fog up some rainforested mountains. To our right there was a big river. Our driver was good, and managed the sharp turns with ease.
It was maybe 6:30 now, and people were milling around. We saw people carrying water on their heads, and others carrying these sort of backpack-buckets of things, but the strap attached to their foreheads, not their shoulders. We saw a man carrying a pig´s head -- lord of the flies. Later, we saw the rest of the body. We finally felt in a world very different from our own.
The car arrived in Chasuta and we got on a boat with some other people and some chickens to get to Llucanayacu, half hour a way on the river. We were dropped off at Llucanayacu and we walked up a muddy river bed until we found the actual path. We balanced on a flexing plank to cross a small gorge, then followed the rooster cries until we got to downtown (a few houses in a square formation). We asked a man where El Centro Situlli was. He looked like he had just gotten back from a hunt. Me: Let´s ask that man where El Centro Situlli is. Justine: The one holding a shotgun? He was friendly and had his children lead us there. So we followed a 10 year old, an 8 year old, and a 5 year old through several twists and turns and hopscotched across a river until we finally arrived at our destination at 8 in the morning. The kids, sort of skeptical, said: We will only arrive once you pay us. Of course we would pay them!
At El Centro Situlli, we were meeting with Winston the Curandero (gringo name, but local Peruvian). We spoke to him a lot and learned a lot, but here, I diverge--
We´ve been having trouble processing the information we´ve been gathering. This time, I don´t mean processing in terms of ANOVA and Chi-squared. Rather, we´ve been asking people a lot of questions and receiving a lot of intriguing answers, but always we are left distilling the sincerity from the contradictions, and then trying to pluck out our own western biases and preconceptions. For example, Winston-- we liked a lot of what he said and he seemed a very sincere, warm-hearted man, but it was hard to get over his oddly-placed Catholicism. He said that when people from Spain come to see him, he charges extra because he is vengeful against the Spanish conquistadors that massacred his ancestors. But then he is a devout Catholic, swallowing up the very religion of his enemies. He saw Jesus while on Ayahuasca and believes that Catholicism was real before the Spaniards were...
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We saw LIONS! Lots of lions! We were taking a mototaxi (a taxi, on a motorcycle) to somewhere when we stopped at what would be a red light... if they had stop lights (It is a mystery to me how drivers here know how to follow the flow and unofficial rules of traffic -- I think they speak a language of honks and glares that I will never learn). At this "red light," we found ourselves a foot away from a truck carrying a big cage with lots and lots of real live lions. The cage was narrow enough to keep their paws on their side, but my hands are small, and I know I could have stuck them in the lion´s den.
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Back around Tarapoto, we spent 12 hours hiking around the rainforest with a personal guide, Jose, who is a walking encyclopedia. He knew three names for every plant, but knew little about the adaptation processes that made them be the way they were, about their ecosystem interactions, or about herbivory (Rodolfo Dirzo would have been disappointed). Sometimes we took trails, often not. It rained most of the time and we were a lot heavier when we got out of the forest because of all the mud on our shoes. In all, an exciting day.
Most of the medicinal plants our guide Jose showed us were used for purging. That seems to be the basis of Amazonian medicine: the purge. It cleanses out your body by making you shit and vomit (somehow, the opposite vision of "health" than the one we see in the USA...). I can´t help thinking: If I swallow something that is poisonous to me, that my body doesn´t want, then I think my reaction would be to purge it out. Still, I am trying to set my skepticism aside and be open-minded.
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My birthday was celebrated in the home of our wonderful hosts, Sylvia and Martin. They bought me a cake and sang happy birthday and it was all a merry time. Sylvia tells us that she tells all of her friends at work that she has two new daughters. We will miss them the most when we leave here.
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Until next time,
Ana
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