Saturday, May 30, 2009

I´m cleansed!

This week has been great and really productive actually, so I guess taking a nice ¨vacay¨ was exactly what this little PCV needed. Friday I helped out in Zamora, with my Intercultural Health boys, on a charla they were presenting to health leaders of the communities throughout the province. I got to meet Shuar and Saraguro shamans, medicinal healers, and midwives. It was pretty cool, all I really did was help with a slide show and play a game with them, but I sported my Intercultural Health t-shirt (that I designed, thank you very much) and smiled and did the Gringa wave and I was good to go.

But I quickly left after my part to go to Loja to witness yet another Intercultural health event. This time, it was actually in Vilcabamba, an hour south of Loja, and my friend Andy had invited another volunteer, Clay, to come do a technical exchange and bring his Tsachila family with him. The Tsachilas live in the Santo Domingo region (about 3 hours west of Quito, in a transitional zone of sierra and coast) and they have a very distinct culture. Clay has the amazing opportunity of living with them, wearing the traditional garb, painting his body, etc. His host dad, Alejandro, is a traditional medicine curer, or shaman, and he performed cleansings on us. Alejandro is extremely proud of his culture, wearing the traditional red paint in his hair, a knee-length woven skirt, and body paint that comes from a dried fruit. I have seen pictures and heard a lot about this culture, but I have not witnessed it real live.

Alejandro brought his wife, Rosa, too. She wore this really beautiful multi colored skirt and had her face painted (just lines across her face), as well as her legs and feet. When I arrived, Rosa was making a traditional ¨sauna¨ which consisted of a giant pot of boiling leaves, about 30 different types she said. They dug a hole, about 2 feet deep, and then put a rock that had been sitting in the fire in the hole. Then someone sat on a stump, put their feet on a plank of wood that stretched across the hole and Rosa poured in the steaming water. Then you placed a sheet over your whole body, excluding the face, and just sat and enjoyed the instant steam bath. It looked awesome, I didn´t get to do it...I opted for the cleansing ceremony. But Katie, another volunteer, said she is looking forward to doing this in the US, in her manicured lawn and with neighbors looking out at her while she just chills with her mom´s 70s print bed sheet wrapped around her. Hey...I wouldn´t object.

But while most were doing the sauna, I wanted to watch Alejandro perform his cleansings. I was able to see him ¨cleanse¨ Andy´s host parents, and that was good because I got to see what it was like and I was able to see what he said, so as to verify he didn´t say the same stuff to me.

He started out by taking a swig of cane alcohol and blowing it on his hands, so as to clean them I guess. Then he blew all over the mom´s body: her arms, chest, patted down her head. Then he spit on these rocks he had. After that, he rubbed her with a candle for a few minutes and then lit the candle. While he was rubbing her with the candle, I noticed he kept rubbing his eye, like it was itching him. After the reading was over, he told her that she ate too much salt, and that his eye was burning, like a salty sensation, and that´s why he told her that! It was so cool.

He basically did the same thing to me. However, what he told me was really interesting. After rubbing me with the candle, he asked his wife if she brought these special leaves for a cold bath and had said she didn´t. He looked disappointed...and I started to freak out. Am I ok? Will I explode if I don´t get this bath? Are wild boars going to come eat me?
Tranquila, Corrie....it´s just sunburn. He told me that the sun is really affecting me where I live, that it is making me weak. This bath would help me, but unfortunately he didn´t have the leaves to do so. I couldn´t believe it, I told him I lived in Zamora...but by the sound of it, he didn´t really know too much about Zamora and that there is as much as there is. PLUS, I´m super sunburnt...freaky thing.

He also told me that I am missing my family (kinda general, but true) and that I will live a long life. He had a big smile when he said this, so I totally believe him and it made me feel really good to hear that.

After that, he cleansed me with an egg. Rubbed me all down with an egg, and then spit some perfume concotion on me. He was very happy with the egg cleansing because when you shook it, you could hear that it was pure yolk, there was no liquid inside. He smiled big again and said all the bad energy was trapped in the egg, he had gotten a lot out. Hallelujah!

So I mosied back inside after this reading (it was outside in the pitch dark, by the way) and I had the most intense amount of energy! Everyone was like Corrie, are you ok? I was like so ready to go. But it was cool hearing how other people´s readings turned out; one guy had a lot of friendship (amistad), another girl had stomach issues, etc. They were all like, oh, it´s so general, it´s like a horoscope. But I was totally into what he told me. That shaman ROCKED!

We all had to pay $5 for the readings, but it was totally worth it. It was great too, because they have never really left Santo Domingo, so for them to have this opportunity to come all the way down to Loja, was great. Clay was super excited to have exposed them to another part of the country and for others to witness what their culture was like. I definitely want to go to visit them again; they are trying to boost tourism in their site as means of income generation. So if you ever want a cleansing, I got your shaman.

5 comments:

Scott said...

I may not be able to heal you, but I see something coming your way in the future: partly cloudy skies, chance of thunderstorms.

Anonymous said...

I saw one of those cleansings on the travel channel the other day. Did they also smack you with leaves?

Kristi said...

COOL! I'm so glad you feel back in the game. The shaman sounds awesome, and I am down with your fellow PCV Katie, especially the part about the 70s bedsheets, bob and aphro def have those in the closet. You sound great! I miss you and hope you are having a great daay!

Andre -- RPCV said...

I have a couple of fantastic experiences taking ayahuasca under the supervision of a Shuar shaman in Los Encuentros.

Anonymous said...

Corrie~
Do those men ever come to America? I bet they could make some money here! I'm happy to know that you will live a long life- means more of Corrie to spread around!
Love always,
Anna