The meeting of Sharma and Secundo: Part one
He embodied the monkey, le singe.
He related to us the story in which he lost his left leg because of an amazonian snake bite when he was a child. He had to have that leg amputated, and he slithered along the primitively designed wood plank floor, made from rainforest roots. Earlier we had trudged along a dirt road fringed with pineapple and banana trees, with colorful toads innocently jumping through our path. We were talking about meeting the shaman.
We get to the hut. It's a humble abode not unlike the other ones in the community of 2000 people living on the banks of the Amazon. Getting their daily income by cultivating the luscious stew that is in the waters. A squirming soup of fish.
We enter the hut, a primitively designed abode with raised stilts to protect against floods. Babies of all ages run amok. Our guide tells us, "the shaman is there, introduce yourself", so we meander across the crowd of lactating mothers and chuckling grandfathers, babbling babies, to
touch hands with the shaman.
He doesn't stand up, because he can't, Our guide introduces us as the shaman sways in his hammock surrounded by babes and babies. He takes my hand but doesn't shake it, he has an impish smile on his face. He says " Come back later, when everyone is sleeping". He looks like he could be 30. Everyone stares at us.
We trudge back later down the same dirt path, still feeling the exhiliration of being in a place that is so foreign it couldn't even exist in our dreams. We go back to the hut and 10 men are sitting around in a circle while various women are still preparing their babies for bedtime.
In a few minutes everything quiets down. Everyone is watching us. Apart from the men and our guide, there are some women around who are watching us with an amused smile. I can't figure out if this is good or bad.
The monkey shaman comes out with a big coke bottle full of this cloudy marrooon colored substance, he tells us to drink one full cup of the stuff in one gulp, so we do. It tastes like gasoline mixed with fstomach acid, so vile that when we drunk it down it tasted like some visceral poison. They watch us still asking us "do you feel sick".
The place starts to change, I feel a tremor taking over my body but all the anxieties I felt before seem to melt away. Our guide told us that this was a house of confidence.
The singe shaman comes up to me and says "when i do ayahuasca i make myself into a cocoon, like this" and he demonstrates this for us in his mirthful way, made me think of some north american hippie finding humour in his bizarre habits. He slithers across the floor next to me, and says "lay down like this" and puts his hands in front of him in the prone position. I, not wanting any sexual connnotations to arise from this meeting, gave that vibe to him by moving away from him although I was having difficulty moving at this point. He said " NO, yo astationed aca, tu es aca", like im not going to touch you. Then I lay down too. A cool blanket was laid over my body, covering my feet as well as my sisters who was lying next to me. My lungs let out a blissful breath, like it was clearing out all my organs. Then I went totally into my own mind
He took a plank off the floor that led to the cold ground basement saying "when you want to vomit, do it in here". I asked him where the vomit would go. He replied innocently "into the earth", like there was no problem despite the gutteral grunts that were coming from underneath the huts from what I think must have been hogs.
posted by Anita @ 10:56 PM
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