Before being aloud to enter into the part of the Choco Rainforest that the Chachi hold sacred, we would have to be cleansed by the shamen down the river. We finished our dinner in San Miguel and hopped into the canoe, after, as usual, having been forced to take third helpings lest we fail to get our fill of rice porridge and plantains. The Choco River at night is full of eyes and sounds and we moved slow to seek some of them out while avoiding others.
When we got to the shamans house, it was utter chaos. There were at least three generations, the youngest was having a soccer match throughout the two-room, dirt-floor house. We kicked it around for a second while meeting the mothers and sisters and aunts in the kitchen side before being ushered into the mens’ side of the house.
The shaman was seated in a plastic lawn chair that seemed to swallow him. He was skin and bones and shadows and even in the not-to-be-trusted firelight, his eyes had that bluish glaze that make me think glaucoma. He spoke through his son-in-law, a middle-aged man, who is a shaman in training but only part time b/c he has a family to provide for and shaman apprentice pays as well as any apprenticeship. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to learn all he needs to know before his father-in-law passes on, which by the look of it, could happen at any moment.
We were instructed to sit around the low-burning fire - our white faces were the same orange-red as the brown faces across from us in the glow. The son-in-law handed the shaman the pack of cigarets and bottle of booze we’d brought, examined them uninterested, and said a few words to his son-in-law. The son-in-law in turn reached down for a bundle of herbs next to the chair and handed it to the shaman - the cleansing had begun.
Several rounds of different herbs followed, some where used to slap our back and shoulders, others were spattered with booze and thrown into the fire, all were accompanied by the shaman’s low rhythmic singing. The cigarets? He smoked one and blew a few puffs into our faces. All the while, the chaos of the rest of the household transpired behind us. We were the first group of gringos to be entering the Chachi’s forest in 5 years and only the third group ever, yet this sacred ceremony being administered by an 80 year old man the size of child, likely the last Chachi shaman, seemed as every-day to those around us as the afternoon rain in Ecuador. Not so, for me. I left that house feeling invincible.
The number of eyes I had noticed on the canoe ride down tripled on the ride back up. The moan of the 2-cycle engine drowned out the nights’ sounds, but in between current-battling revs a cacophony enveloped us. The sky was as dark as I can ever remember, and the universe displayed a depth I’ve rarely known. It’s good to fall asleep feeling kinship with stars, it leads one to wake like a lion, fearless of whatever the day might bring.
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I was flipping through a Nat. Geo. and saw a picture that brought back this memory from a trip to Ecuador in 2003.
