As my first placement with the volunteer organisation I´m working for in Ecuador, I headed deep into the Amazon to live and work with a shaman and his family. I decided to forego any preconceptions about this one, because anything I could think of would probably inevitably be wrong; this situation was a new one for the books. That said, I was still a little surprised when I met Marco the first day and he was dressed in normal clothes, not a feather or talisman in sight. We made our way by bus to Paraiso, his "eco-lodge" (which was really just his house with a tourist slant), and met his family. That evening we went for a walk, ate chicken and rice, and headed to bed early. All very normal, non-shamanistic type things to do, really. During the three weeks, the odd shaman-esque thing would pop up: the baby armadillo in a jar I found on the shelf next to the cooking oil (when asked what something was, Marco´s typical response was, "Medicine." When I pressed him further I found out baby armadillo juice is apparently good for respiratory problems: asthmatics take note), the gigantic boa skin on the wall (it had been hit by a truck), the jaguar head hanging on the stairs (this was killed out of necessity, Marco said, as the jaguar was skulking around with its eye on the younger children). With regard to the volunteer work, we helped out with the small organic farm Marco keeps: pulling weeds in the corn fields, planting yuca plants (a tuber very similar in taste and texture to a potato, but a bit drier), hunting around for the eggs the duck left around the yard. All things considered, the days were fairly ordinary in a a lot of ways.
Except, of course, we´re in the middle of the jungle. One thing this means is more insects than I´m accustomed to. It took me a while to get used to the cockroaches, giant moths, mosquitos, and unidentified buzzing orbs scurrying around my room at night, as well as the mosquito net I was provided to protect against this insect army. Now, I´d always had a fairly romantic view of mosquito nets, something between fairy princess canopy and crisp white cotton Emperial England in India á la the opening scenes of "The Secret Garden", but this was all before I actually tried sleeping under one. My first night I most certainly did not have the hang of it, and whiled away the hours afraid to move under the pink gauzy pall that was mere centimeters from my face, imagining all sorts of terrors clinging to the other side of it. The second night I discovered the mattress tuck method, and by my second week I was old hat at the whole business. Unfortunately this didn´t ensure a peaceful night´s sleep; night-time meant roaming and quacking time for the nosy duck which had the run of the place, and this combined with the growls and yips of the puppies under the house and the rooster which began his crowing duties at 4 in the morning and continued every hour on the hour until 7 (at which time he increased to every twenty minutes or so) made for quite the moonlight sonata. A million thanks to the inventors of earplugs.
Marco himself is a very interesting character (I mean, he is a shaman, after all...). He comes from the Quichua tribe, which is the largest indigenous group in Ecuador. Although Quichua is his first language, his wife is from a different indigenous group and doesn´t know how to speak it, so they speak Spanish at home. Marco expressed his worries that his children don´t want to learn his language, how he´s afraid that they will know nothing of his culture because they have no interest in being a part of it. He does his best to teach them when they listen, but it´s a struggle faced by people all over the world: how do you keep a culture alive for a new generation that´s drawn in by the allure of a modern, globalised mono-culture? It reminded me a bit of the debate in Ireland regarding whether or not to keep Irish a mandatory subject in schools; are language, tradition, and culture things that should be forced, or should they be optional, kept alive only by those who really feel passionate about them? Can they survive if the latter is the chosen route?
Most of the time, however, Marco took his culture and shamanism in stride, mixing a bit of them in here and there. One night he treated us to some traditional dancing lessons, and another rainy day as we helped make beaded necklaces out of seeds for his grandson´s school play he showed off his tigerwear. He came down from his room decked out in a tiger vest, beaming as he stated, "This is my tiger clothes. Do you like it?" I was a bit unsure whether to laugh or act impressed; was he playing dress-up or showing me his shaman gear? There were other moments like this, when it was difficult to know how to react. Another rainy day (it rained a lot in the past three weeks) we were all playing a card game called Cuarenta Cartas around the kitchen table, and Marco constantly matched my cards. He grinned and said, "Careful, I am reading your mind!" I´ll be honest, this is an unsettling thing to hear from a shaman. Are my thoughts that easy to read? Do shamanic powers include mind-reading? Does the shamanic code allow them to use their powers to beat gringos at card games? I´ll have to work more on my Jedi mind tricks...
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| Havin´ a bit of a dance |
He´s also in the process of learning English, and the titular phrase of this post was one of his favourites. Throughout the day if one of us was startled by a blood-thirsty insect of some sort or was showing off our mosquito bites, he would laugh and say, "This is jungle life!" Another day we had been discussing the bats he had seen the night before when he broke into English, "Why is he Bad-man if he is good?"
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The past few weekends have been no strangers to adventure either. The first weekend a few of the volunteers went off on a horseriding trek around Chimborazo, the majestic snow-capped peak which resides over the city of Riobamba. I´m not exactly a Butch Cassidy on a horse so five hours of riding for two days didn´t bode well for the aul derriére, but it turns out that wouldn´t be my biggest concern for the weekend. I was assigned an aging white-haired little horse, and for the first half hour of riding he puffed, snorted, and wheezed so much that I thought he was going to give up the ghost right there with me on top of him. But he found his stride, and turned out to be a noble steed in his own way; by the time the first hour was over he had already gained the affectionate title of Old Jim. However, by the time the first hour was over another development of a more climatic nature had manifested itself: we rode right into the middle of a hail, thunder, and lightning storm. At one point at the top of a mountain I scanned our surroundings, watching the lightning striking nearer, and noted warily that we were the tallest objects for miles in any direction. Crouch down there a bit, Old Jim...
After a few hours of riding in the hail we were all soaked through and, we admitted to each other later, were all silently considering our survival options. The most popular idea seemed to be to find some shelter and get the horses to lie down around us for heat until help arrived. But we soldiered on, and four wet and shivery hours later we rode out of the storm. The last hour was dry and beautiful; we made our way down to a verdant valley and followed a river all the way to the tiny village of Salinas, land of chocolate and cheese.
The next weekend another group of us headed to Baños, an adventure sport mecca two hours from Paraiso. The first day I decided to fly my tourist flag high and jumped on a chiva, which is an open-sided truck that drives around blasting cheesy dance music and flashing disco lights. After circling the main plaza 7 times (when we asked the driver he said this was the "city tour" part of the trip) we made our way to some of the local waterfalls that speckle the area.
The next day was a wash-out (what did I expect in a place called Baños...), and so that night we did the only thing to be done and headed to the pubs. Late enough into the night, some of the other volunteers got talking about their plan to go puenting the next morning. Puenting is in the same family as bungee jumping: they tie a rope to a bridge, tie the other end to you, and off you go. I had not planned on going puenting, nor did I have any desire to really. However, a few merry pints in, and surrounded by young enthusiastic folk, it started to sound like a thing that maybe I would want to do. The conversation inevitably came to the shake, the sealing of my fate; tomorrow, I was going to jump off a bridge, hurrah! Sunday morning I felt a bit differently about the situation. As the excitement became visible with the other volunteers, my breakfast got a little less comfortable in my stomach. But everyone else was doing it, I couldn´t be the only one...When we got out of the car at the bridge and I saw how high it was, I very nearly got sick. It was a good 150 meters, and the river I had affectionately thought of as frothy chocolate milk the previous day was now a raging, foaming deluge coursing its way through a ragged canyon. The other volunteers dropped off the side one by one, and then it was my turn. I was belted and buckled up, and climbed over the side of the bridge to the 1 foot by 2 feet dinner tray hanging on the other side. The man behind me counted to three, grabbed my ankles, and off I went. In the first two seconds or so I couldn´t feel the harness and I actually thought I was going to die. If there was anything going through my mind at all, it was something along the lines of my logic throwing its hands up in the air with exhasperation and screaming, "Jumping off a bridge, seriously?! Twenty four years of careful tutelage and you decide to jump off a bridge. Great. Well done." and storming away. But in the next second the rope started to tighten and once I realised today was not my day to go, I let out a hearty, terrified scream. After that was a few minutes of the best swing ever, and then I was pulled onto the cliff and sent on my way. And that, my friends, is the tale of how I jumped off a bridge just because everyone else was doing it. And lived to tell the tale.
Tune in three weeks from now for stories from my time in an indigenous community in the Andes. There´ll be dancing, there´ll be farming. There may be llamas.
More photos of shamans, Baños, and horses here.
