I don't remember what village we were near, but I think we took canoes up river to a remote compound / farm to visit a shaman named Ramone who lived on a farm, quite a ways outside the closest village.
Their farm was awesome. There were no cleared feilds, the plants were just scattered around the jungle floor. Never two of the same plants next to each other. They said that if you planted too many of the same plants together that the bugs would eat them. So.. cool...
We got to see casava growing which looked nothing like I thought it would. That huge starchy root grows underneath a skinny stick of a tree with long oval leaves. Who knew?
When we asked why Ramone didn't live in the village, he grumbled and said "it is too noisy".
Later our guide Oscar told us that the real problem was that he had slept with too many of the women in the village and they had run him out of town. Heh...
After our tour of the farm, we had a camp dinner of sardines and fresh fruit, and then as the sun started setting, we gathered with Ramone who was going to do a cermony for us. We were joined by Ramone's apprentice, a young mother and her husband with a very sick baby, and a few other villagers who were helping to work the farm. The mom was very sweet. She couldn't speak English or Spanish, but she hung out around us and gave us lots of shy smiles and tried some sign language.
Apparently Ramone works with some special stones (rock is not really found in the jungle, so he had gone on a quest to find these "rock allies"), the native tobacco, and ajo sacha (white garlic) soaked in fire water. He doesn't use other herbs, but mostly works on the spirit plane using the rocks, smoke and garlic fire water (which is really gross) as conduits for healing.
The part of the ceremony he did for us seemed to be a litte bit of "fortune telling showmanship", but it was still very interesting, and I certainly couldn't blame him for wanting to give US tourists what he thought we would want. However, when he started to work on the sick child, he got down to business.
I was quite worried about this baby. Fever and lungs were so full of phlegm that you could hear it rattling from the other side of the hut. It wasn't even crying. I spoke to Ramone before the ceremony and offered him the respiratory herbal tincture I had brought with me from Seattle. He smelled and tasted it, and said it was very good, but that he wanted to wait and see if the baby still needed it in the morning.
After he did his "shaman show" with us (saying he could see our houses, and that they were beautiful houses), he moved to sit with the mom and her baby. He argued with is rocks, blew smoke on the baby, and spattered the baby with garlic fire water for about an hour. After that the baby was asleep.
We all went to bed after the ceremony. When we got up, the family had already head down to the docks, so I didn't get to see how the baby was. We did see them on the river on our way home, and the sweet mom smiled and waved. The baby was still alive, so that was something.
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