Before I tell you how we came to knock on Enrique’s door, both me and Rachel totally depleted, heart-broken and physically weak, I should rewind my narrative all the way back to the unfinished story of Chino’s fall I’ve posted some six months ago and never had opportunity to revisit. If I don’t write it now, I’ll never write it. So please find yourself a comfortable lazy boy, ‘cause it’s gonna take a wee while before we return to Santuario while I shall be as concise as I can.
Alright… Chino was ashaninka employed by Jack as a monkey-man for climbing trees and cutting the vine to be cooked. Well, he fell. Very badly, to the extent I thought him dead at first sight of the accident. Instead of rushing him to hospital, however, Jack treated him onsite, in the jungle, while we harvested the rest of ayahuaska between two of us and cooked the brew which turned out excellent and received highest accolades from Cesar and the rest of my shipibo family in Irapai.
Dina, Jack’s mother, did most of looking-after the patient, concurrently cooking our meals, washing soiled by Chino sheets which he dirtied every night in his sleep being paralysed below the waist, and managing to cultivate overgrown chakra in between her chores. After medicine was cooked, me and Jack went back to Pucallpa and this is where I left off my subject matter awaiting further developments, which can be found in Part I of Price of Medicine article.
Several days later I was back in the jungle dieting renakilla brewed up for me by Dina, who’d climb a ladder in the form of a ant-eaten log with steps cut into it every morning to the utility platform that I claimed as my solitary space, pushing chainsaws and burnt engine oil to one side, while Chino remained stationed on the bare-earth floor of the open tambo that had no doors (nor windows nor doors, for that matter) and offered welcoming entry to the visiting dignitaries of the insect kingdom who announced themselves by high-pitched buzzing beforehand or simply crawled in stealthily and administered a healthy dose of calcium with a vicious bite that made you jump in your hammock. Sun backed mercilessly, any movement caused sweat inside the mosquito net.
I listened to Chino’s moaning every time he had to be moved, his recovery being delayed by his stubborn resistance to adhere to the dietary protocol as he would not partake of preparations Dina had made. Jack brought his older daughters along this time, as extra gardening hands to help maintain coca crop and bag up ayahuaska vine for the future planting, almost thousand sticks to be sprouted and transplanted afterwards. Same helping hands offered recovering ashaninka noodle soups, crisp bread, sweet mangoes and fermented masato which he was told to stay away from as they caused his tummy to swell up and resulted in diarrhoea during the night. With the upset stomach no bark remedies could be given until the issue was resolved, which slowed healing process.
It turned out that Chino’s unwilling attitude and resentment towards majority of concoctions prepared by Dina was due to his catholic upbringing. He worked for Jack assisting in ayahuaska preparation while considering it to be ungodly, a Devil’s brew that twists man’s mind. In his eyes, Dina was not a curandero, but a witch. A bruja. He drank some remedies after all the moaning, squirming and protesting, but flatly refused tobacco sopla or ayahuaska ceremony which would help Dina see clearly what is going on inside his body and how he can be helped in the most efficient way, which plant remedies were to be given and in which order.
Long story short, all three of us got tired of the ashaninka and there came a point when Jack, having nurtured and encouraged his unfortunate employee in every way possible, saw no possibility of healing the guy against his own will. Chino had to play the part in his own healing, 'si o si'. The best medicine can be given to no avail, least the patient himself is willing to receive and follow the protocol. "Just like in any hospital," Jack concluded.
Dina was looking drained and had sunken eyes with dark circles around them after sleepless nights when she had to get up several times to turn Chino over and clean up the aftermath of diarrhoea which increased her washing load three-fold the following day only to hear more ungrateful moaning from the ashaninka about being denied fried potato chips, chicken and fizzy drinks. It was ridiculous. Bone-alignment sessions she gave made his face contort in painful agony and his grimace told us that he suffered worse than Jesus on a cross, he had that martyr look about him.
Since the healing progress crawled at a snail’s pace, depleting Dina of her strength and holding Jack back from all the things he wanted to accomplish on the land, the question has been put directly to Chino: what does he want? Jack was primarily responsible for seeing him walk out on his own feet from the jungle, same way as he came in, but he would just as easily carry him out and admit into Pucallpa’s hospital care or ship him back to his family, whichever was Chino’s preference. It was mutually understood that he’d go under a knife if taken to hospital and most likely never walk again. Chino had a night to sleep on it and would tell us of his decision first thing in the morning. That was on Friday, last day of my dieta. I took ayahuaska in the night, quietly meditating upstairs among chainsaws and rats running through dry leaves of the thatched roof two feet above my head.
First thing in the morning I came down to ask Chino where he was at and encourage him to stay in the chakra where he had best chances of getting his feet back. After beating around the bush for a good spell, I pressed him for an answer and he told me, averting his eyes, that he wanted to go to his family. I was looking at a dead man, I felt, and there was nothing I could do. It meant we were leaving for Pucallpa without delay.
Here went my story of miraculous healing, right out of the window. I had nothing to write about as I was done with documenting tragedies. Well, less work for all of us, I thought, proceeding to pack my gear while still swaying under medicine effect and zero sleep. One has to accept how things are and move along humming a jolly tune ever more under one’s breath, for the rest of creation keeps dancing whether or not there’s a semi-paralysed ashaninka with a sour face around or not.
Jack flatly refused my offer to make a stretcher to share Chino’s weight and hauled him up onto his back, securing his moaning load with a utility strap that went under Chino’s buttocks and wrapped around Jack’s forehead the way bunches of plantains are carried. I didn’t insist, taking into account my own feeble post-dieta state, and trailed after him breaking into sweat under combined weight of my medicine-loaded backpack and Chino’s precious possessions stuffed into a duffel bag until Dina took me over and I watched her and Jack slowly but surely disappear up ahead among tree trunks and vines, leaving me stumbling down a sketchy trail with a buzzing cloud of mosquitoes for company.
After the dieta my body was in need of nourishment, and a single roasted plantain for breakfast wasn’t going to be of much help, sweet as was… I couldn’t possibly catch up with the Tarzan marching up ahead. To compound the situation, I got to a dubious spot and chose a wrong trail that kept reverting to wilderness, branching off and leading me past marshes and tiny lakes I failed to recognise until I became aware of the sun being brought around in front of me, instead of shining in the back.
By the time I backtracked through trial and error to the devious spot and took the right path to lead me out of the jungle, Jack and Dina were crossing the last ditch before hitting the road. I told them about my deviation and the marshes wherein I’ve encountered a pishtako in one of the small lakes that looked exactly like me but lived underwater. I was close to sharing my coca with the guy, I told them, was it not for the ripples that distorted the surface when I extended my offer to the other side. Pishtakos are organ-hunters dressed in black bodysuits with latest-tech surgical equipment strapped to their waist descending down helicopter drop-lines, if you don’t know. Someone you never want to meet in the middle of the jungle, unless you don’t care about getting cut up for a set of kidneys. Jack was too exhausted to laugh at my joke, carrying Chino took it out of him. Speaking of the culprit, Chino shat himself on the way and needed a change of clothing. I gave Dina a hand, listening to her grumbling account of ashaninka’s breakfast, who managed a plateful of mazamorra de pescado, fish soup, in addition to his plantain and rice against Dina’s warning for fasting before the trip. The trouble with Peruvians in general, they are very accommodating and will go out of their way knowing better just to avoid interfering with other person’s wishes, regardless how stupid and daft they might be. Knowing better, Dina fed ashaninka what he asked for.
Jack went as far as getting us a mototaxi to the village and washed his hands of responsibility for Chino, sending us to the port on the river. We arrived an hour early for the sailing. Chino shat himself yet again and stared solemnly at the ceiling canopy from his bench where we deposited him lying on his back among fuel drums and bunches of green plantains. Dina searched several knick-knack shops around the ‘port’ for diapers, there were none. I felt compelled to approach ashaninka and tell him how disgraceful his position was, lying there stinking and helpless. He was a baby while his caregiver shopped for diapers around, all because he couldn’t contain his appetite for gobbling up what he knew better does not serve him at this junction in time. Lips in a tight line, he remained stoically silent. I wondered what might be going through his head. I had no encouragement to give him. You have to be a numb-nut not to see the point… an indigenous man reduced to pitiful ridicule by a gringo, sour missionary references aside, is a testament to the degradation of native culture that bought into vice and derangement coming from so-called developed and privileged world that penetrated remotest corners of the planet with its writhing tentacles of consumerism, cultivating stagnation in the mind and spirit of man until one neither had will nor volition to stand on one’s feet, cutting one off from the very ground one walked upon. Indigenous peoples is a fertile soil, absorbing pharmaceutical quick fix, bright plastic and discard-after-use convenience like a sponge, never pausing for a single moment to reflect on the dismal state of open-sewer exhaust-fuelled Pucallpa, the one-and-only, before chucking that foam tray with half-eaten chiken nugged overboard, followed by crumpled tissue of a toilet roll ubiquitously used for wiping oily fingers on. Not a singular thought reflects there, not a slightest pause is given – the discarding action is automatic. That’s what arrival of civilisation looks like around here.
Our dual-engine rápido glides downstream, taking over log rafts of Amazonian hardwoods with their cooking fires smoking and sunshades pitched for the long ride; I watch graceful unfurling of bird formations that choose to follow the river in their transit to better fishing grounds and vacant stretches of soft yellow sand which they favour.
Arriving to Pucallpa, I have to confront in earnest four fellows who just dragged Chino uphill from the boat and demand hundred soles for their supreme effort, medicine running in my veins, straight from hard yards in the jungle, I give them earful at full pitch expounding on our skin differences that don’t necessarily make me a bank machine dispensing free cash for all conmen in the docs and give them two soles each as a fair payment for two minutes worth of work they accomplished. “Welcome to Pucallpa,” I tell Dina once we’re off in the mototaxi, squatting in front of the seat with Chino lying across it. “Nothing’s free in this town”. Dina has to ask me again how much porters were going to charge us and shakes her in disapproval. Some men have no reason. I turn to Chino. “Chino! You glad to be in Pucallpa, or what?!” He can hear me, but won’t open his eyes. I don’t press. Exhaust fumes from tightly packed motorcars stuck in neutral behind traffic lights fill the air with toxic byproducts of petroleum combustion and we can only hold our breath for so long before partaking of the goodies. Oh yes… the price of progress that makes the world go around – we all pay for it, one way or another.
There’s a ceremony on the night of my return to Irapai, but I am too tired to even think about participating. Lying in bed and unable to sleep for the thumping beat in the neighbourhood, I can hear stifled screaming coming from the maloka that just won’t stop and has a kind of ferocity that only a dying animal could possess. Must be an overdose. I resort to stuffing earplugs in and it muffles the madness to a manageable level allowing me to drift of and pay a visit to Morpheus.
In the morning I catch a glimpse of a patient lying prostrated in the maloka, a young Peruvian fellow with matchstick legs and arms, skin drawn tight over the skull as if he was freshly transported from Auschwitz death camp. The exertion of screaming during the night rendered him meek and listless. An hour after catching the glimpse of the young man, I am smoking mapacho outside when a woman I’ve seen earlier taking care of him, which I later learn is his mother, rushes out of the maloka to snatch Rode I’ve been conversing with. An emergency. Ander follows suit clutching one of those booty mapachos used for giving sopla in his hand. Neither Cesar nor Fidelia are around; I watch don Felipe enter the maloka and follow after. The air inside is thick with grave apprehension. There’s Ander solemnly blowing tobacco smoke over mother bent-over her one and only, Felipe is pacing back and forth whistling a tune into a bottle of agua florida. The woman starts crying, ignoring Rode’s requests for calmness. After observing the scene a few moments and being a fifth wheel, I run into my room and come back to Rode’s screaming “Miguel! Miguel!” at the top of her lungs, holding young man’s head in her lap while his mother is beside herself with inconsolable anguish. Miguel’s face by that time has gone pale like ash, eyes sunk into sockets, features collapsed, lungs no longer rising with breath of life. He was no longer in the world of living.
Cesar turned up back in time to oversee Miguel’s family load the body into the motorcar and take off. Nobody spoke. Once they were gone, a small ceremony took place outside. Don Felipe later explained that the medicine used in healing must now be retrieved since the patient is dead – that’s what was happening. First death in the maloka left Cesar shattered. “Nobody ever, ever died on us,” he told me. “Everyone who came, no matter how grave their condition was, always walked out. Always!”
I learnt the whole story later: Miguel was brought in at the same time as I left for Masesea, in critical condition. Hospital couldn’t help. The medicine family worked eight days in the row doing consecutive ceremonies until he started getting better. For the first time in two months, he was able to eat fruit and fish soup. He was able to sit up and spoke to his aunt on the cell phone, after weeks of not uttering a single word. Everyone was exhausted and healing was to be resumed after a two-day break, during which Miguel’s parents administered their son three litres of intravenous vitamins while he was in their care, without asking Cesar. Miguel’s mother, much overjoyed at the signs of recovery, wanted to accelerate the process. The pharmaceuticals clashed with the delicate medicine of icaros and Miguel’s body reacted, locking up and eventually ceasing altogether.
Maloka and the rest of the household had to be smudged with santo palo smoke several times and the following ceremonies were extremely difficult. Miguel’s illness was a result of daño, a curse placed upon him out of jealousy. His girlfriend was killed several months ago for her expressed fidelity towards the young man. On the night before Miguel died, Rode had a vision of a tiger devouring Miguel’s head, hence all his screaming in agony. His face mutilated beyond recognition, he was covered in thick pale-white fluid while his head became a cocoon inside of which larvae moved. His half-eaten head came to attack Fidelia in the next ceremony, putting her into a state of terror. She was thrown out of her body and had to seek refuge in the Universal Light which delivered her back into the body equipped with enough blasting power to win the battle. This is fairly serious stuff for a curandero because one can lose one’s vision and remain trance-blind for years to come. In the meantime, Rode was being dragged to a cemetery for her upcoming entombment by some rather dark characters in long grey cloaks. Lying inside the coffin and unable to sing, she heard this faint icaro, a fine voice coming from far-away until it got closer and stronger, liberating her from the prison of forced silence. An angelic spirit came to her rescue. Once resurrected, she was back in her seat in the maloka, watching men in grey cloaks walking outside, entering kitchen prowling around, looking for her. When they finally entered the maloka, she was ready to sing them back to hell whence they came from. More smudging, more flowers were gathered to dispel the dark energies after the passing of the young fellow. Finally, Miguel’s spirit showed up, kneeling in front of Rode to ask forgiveness, who simply responded that there’s nothing to forgive – go in peace, and don’t come back. She watched two men escort him outside into the street, Miguel’s arms held tight behind his back. He was going to the cemetery for his own funeral, this time.
I am writing this from personal accounts shared with me in the wake of the actual event, vivid and real enough to have left people shaking and gasping for air. This account has direct pertinence to Chino’s story, as you shall see, by proxy of dealing with the phenomenon of daño. We all laughed at doll-sticking woo-doo magic upon hearing such exotic nonsense, black witchcraft credentials grossly eroded by early-eighties horror flicks featuring thick silicone makeup of downright evil personages as the likes of Freddy Krueger… well, suspend your disbelief, now, my friends, the curse is real as the damage that follows in its wake cannot be denied. Furthermore, without understanding true nature of an illness, there’s no cure.
While being thus entertained during the first several nights after my arrival to Pucallpa, I get to check up on Chino in Dina’s care during the day where he’s taken up Dina’s own bed, sprawled on rough-sawn wooden boards recoiling semi-naked from summer day heat as intercepted and amplified by rusty sheets of corrugated iron slapped on top of make-shift shelter commonly referred to as a ‘house’ in the slum-town of Pucallpa’s sprawling beast. I wait for Dina to finish massaging his slick with oil body while he faces the wall, disgusted by his sorry-arse state and quite unable to ditch his bloated ashaninka pride that keeps him a victim of his status quo. I tell him of the young man who died in the maloka, not withholding gruesome details of his departure and ask point blank if he made any enemies as of late. As a matter of fact, he has, he nods in agreement. An old man who thinks that Chino has stolen from him.
He makes a quick denial of it, announcing it was another fellow who robbed the guy. Nothing to do with him. Fresh from the ceremony and still under significant medicine effect, I can tell he is lying to me, to Dina, and most of all - to himself. When a man manages to convince himself of a fictitious reality, there's no hope. "Chino," I tell him, "you've been cursed by that old man. Sonia saw it in her mapacho two weeks ago, but I had no idea how bad it could get. Your physical illness is a result of negative energy sent your way. It must be cleared. And the best way to do it is to have an ayahuaska ceremony. You don't have to drink. Just lie there and listen to icaros." His reserved look tells me it's a 'no'. "Think about it. If you wanna walk again, that is."
Jack is back from Masesea and we agree to embark on another wee jungle mission whilst leaving Chino in Dina's care with an expressed desire of ashaninka to undergo strict dieta in Dina's chakra across the river. Naturally, he has our joint blessings for his quick recovery. Aside from attending to fallen ashaninkas, all this time I've been invested in bringing Rachel (referred to exclusively as 'princesa') to the Peruvian soil, which on my part constituted of forking out plandemic-rate air fair, 4 a.m. video chat slash gossip sharing sessions to support and encourage her to pay the price of freedom and be gone from the nazi climate of good old Aotearoa that's been prevailing of late with painstaking cultivation by Jacinda Arden, a turn wolf without the decency of a sheepskin that she is, as well as sending massive amounts of affection and holding my breath that I shall behold my beloved in the flesh comes the start of September, providing the sky doesn't fall and her plane is allowed to take off. In other words, I had to pray for the miracle, as aptly suggested by Jack who has excelled in praying department, backing up all his healing sessions, personal affairs and even business transactions with a good fast and meditation. Therefore we'd walk out to some trunk of a massive fallen tree at exactly midnight and Jack would compose on the spot an all-encompassing prayer to deliver thy sweetheart into thy lap across great oceans and security gates guarded by deaf and mute officers of law, until the sign was given through the starlit gap in the foliage left where the tree once stood.
Rachel's arrival was on the cards, without slightest doubt, as given by Sonia's reading dating back to my arrival to Lima when I crash-landed in her house filled with euphoria and apprehension for new beginnings, as well as her prediction of my investment into Jack's land where cards saw me forking out fair amount of money, which indeed happened. Cards advised me to stay away from those asking for financial handouts and be clear with Jack on all accounts. After the low denomination tribulations of clubs and spades filtered themselves out, the royal pair was reunited three times in the row, my queen of hearts by my side, preceded by an ace of triumph that heralded victorious resolution to the whole thing in the end and followed by ten of hearts, much love.
In the meantime, I am perched on a log in a moonlit clearing in the virgin jungle, listening to Jack's address to the plant kingdom and universe at large whereby he recruits his old allies of spirits, deities and elemental forces to manifest my princess in the flesh coming out of Lima's international airport surrounded on all sides by unassailable grey walls and iron girders into bleak dust-filled ghetto on the other side, welcome to third world and god bless. Walking the same jungle trail later during the day, Jack points out various 'tree doctors' whose medicinal barks can alleviate and treat just about any sickness and disease known to man. Other trees are suitable for milling to provide highly sought-after Amazonian timber that in majority of cases ends up floating down the river bundled up in humongous rafts or loaded onto barely floating barges sitting well below their waterline on their way to furniture factories of developed countries that have long exhausted their own hardwood supply.
Some of those trees would have taken half a millennia to reach their mighty berth and it saddens one a great deal to see their trucks chopped up into manageable stubs, blunt victims of insatiable industry moved by one factor and one factor alone - profit. Along Ucayally river and its many tributaries one doesn't see any big trees - they are all gone, as well as any other usable timber, for dozens of kilometers inland. Much more than timber, old giants create vibrational fields that hold one spell-bound in their presence; one feels their potent, unrefined magic that inspired pagan rituals of worship back in the day when our world was much less contaminated with indifference and trivia as it is now. We come to a winding helix of a liana made up of arm-thick strands shooting up along a s smooth tree trunk some forty meters above. "Ayahuaska," Jack smiles widely. "This jungle is full of it. It's ayahuaska land, a true medicine paradise."
In the next breath, Jack tells me he wants to sell it. He can't make ends meet providing for five kids that sprung from his loins cooking vine for a dodgy export gamble involving high overheads of SUNAT certificates and paying off customs officers their extortionist rates. "Don't sell it," comes out of my mouth before I can think about it. A pact is formed between us there and then; a dream is born. Not just a dream, but a vision. Jack has extraordinary vision of the plants and embodies work ethics seldom encountered. I have a bank account and a great thirst for learning. With a wee trickle of finance we can make this happen. The land is rich, all resources are there. All what's needed are tools, energy and dedication.
On the way back to basecamp we stop to gape at a huge tree planted among its labyrinth of roots like an Apollo rocket some fifty meters high, sprawling its vast crown in a burst of fractal geometry up above. A home of chuachaqui, Jack tells me. Herein lives a small stout trickster spirit resembling a man, with hoofs for feet and bent on mischief.
"What a powerful tree," I muse. "Would be amazing to build a maloka here... people would come from the other side of the world to drink medicine here." Jack's eyes light up. "Yes! And we plant ayahuaska all around! Clear the paths and give out customers a tour. This tree is such and such, cures this illness... this vine is good for this condition, this bark you can diet." He points at me, "You will learn all these plants and teach gringos how to cook medicine, a full immersion experience. They will pay for the privilege to take the brew with them when they leave... Furthermore, we will label the trunks with metallic plaques containing name of each tree and describing its medical properties..." and on and on, as if he's been planning the whole setup all along.
Once again I was back in Irapai with a new batch of medicine to share with my shipibo family, thick and strong. I've advised Cesar that half a thimble is a full dose, but some drinkers asked for a top-up, desiring strong effect. "Very, very good medicine," Cesar informed me in the wee hours of the morning upon leaving the maloka. One fellow, he recounted enthusiastically, passed out with his face inside the spewing bowl. 'Desmayado' is the word in Spanish. I reported the incident to Dina while waiting on the fish I brought for breakfast being grilled at the back of her house, still swaying from the medicine effect that lasted several hours into the daylight. Suddenly feeling nauseous, I had to go empty my stomach but there was nothing save for foul air. Dina was glad to see me but she looked worn-out, with dark circles sagging under her eyes as a result of sleepless night.
Chino had broken dieta, again. Freysi’s four year old daughter had a birthday party, paper flags strung up in the front yard and a fine spray of colourful confetti scattered on the ground testifying to the festive aftermath. Naturally, ashaninka couldn’t resist the offering and gobbled up lollies and sugar-coated cake brought by the children in a typically Peruvian custom of sharing the treats, washing down his desert with a fizzy drink which caused massive swelling in his tummy and he spent the night moaning in pain. Dina was bunking in the same room and thus did not get any sleep. Suffice to say, Chino never did go to the chakra as planned. Dina was over his disobedience and told me all about her frustration in one lengthy monologue featuring repeated reiteration of ashaninka’s stubborn resignation to do his part and finishing with ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t do it no more’. Bending down to hug Dina’s slender agile body, I had a surge of fiery angst flush through me straight afterwards regarding ungrateful ashaninka. He had no idea how far she went to deliver his sorry arse from a crippling fate he had coming to him, giving him her love and care without a second thought.
Jack was furious when he found out, barely constraining internal explosion that would have destroyed half-a-block had he released it in the neighbourhood. He was under unwritten obligation to see his helping hand back on his feet, but without cooperation of the latter it wasn’t possible. He marched into Chino’s quarters to inform the ashaninka there would be no food for him today. Chino meekly murmured his agreement, or rather understanding of the fact he had no say any longer, allowing Dina one last try at feeing him the necessary plant medicines. His stomach was the problem. The hard cannon ball that almost disappeared under Dina’s fingertips while she massaged Chino the previous week was back, bulging as large as in the days following his fall. I’ve talked to Chino before about mental and emotional issues manifested in sickness and how stomach issues testify to one’s defective perception of the world. Outside world was neither miraculous nor a safe place for him to inhabit. He literally couldn’t stomach his trauma. Misaligned bones in his pelvis, result of a rough landing, caused paralysis below the waist and acute pain in the lower back which correlated to his broken trust and inability to move forward in life.
The path he walked was a crooked one. It turned out Chino was prone to drinking, spending entire month’s earnings in a three-day binge in the company of his mates. Coupled with his vice of stealing, it made the picture fairly clear: he was moving in the wrong direction and close proximity to the medicine preparation work he did for Jack provided him perfect opportunity to ditch a lifestyle that didn’t serve him. Instead of seeing his fall as an opportunity, he saw it as a damnation. He didn’t want any change to his worldview, at least not consciously enough to cooperate with the healing being given. Dina’s efforts, therefore, were wasted, as in trying to keep afloat a rotten vessel: Chino was a leaking boat in the classic sense of the word. A lesson to Jack to choose his aides wisely from those young fellows who respected the medicine, or at least be open to it, lest he suffered the consequences. He was paying the price, I told him, of poor judgement. Ironically, it was me who forked out the cash for all Chino-related expenses.
I sat staring at the base of a palm tree with a plateful of grilled fish in my lap, revising recent revelations pertaining to Chino’s case when my mind suddenly came to a grinding halt and I beheld an intricate overlay floating just above the ground as my breathing gave transparency to the texture otherwise rendered solid by the trained to focus upon objects eyesight. I had the medicine vision without the usual ‘drunkenness’ effect, feeling perfectly calm otherwise. What was most fascinating, I could willingly go back and forth between the states of blissful dhyana, filled to the brim with ambient silence, and the normal functional state of differentiation between objects that resumed with the flow of thoughts. The magic shift of attention from object-orientated to subjectless awareness rendered the ground a rich tapestry to behold fit for a royal palace, in place of what was a poverty-stricken backyard familiar to the senses in all its prosaic detail just a moment before. I watched stout frame of Gato lumber across the periphery of my vision in his wrestler stride, muscular calves protruding from tennis shoes donned on bare feet planted in round-about motion, burly shoulders bulging under his t-shirt, pumped forearms and a crew cut hairdo of a marine commando offset by a Cheshire cat smile that sprawled on his face each time you looked. I smiled back without lifting a finger in greeting, enjoying myself too much to break the trance. Chino’s problems were his own choice and wouldn’t stop me from having time of the day. Having time of the day was Jack’s number one policy; I was learning from the master of festive living there. “I am happy in the jungle, I am happy in town. I am in my shorts, I am happy barefoot. I am happy with my woman, I am happy alone. Because that what I am – a bundle of joy roaming the universe.”
Recovering vision after three years of complete blindness gives man unique insight. ‘Insight’, by definition, means exactly that: looking within. Religion renders people blind by giving them doctrine. Once you swallow the bait, assuming the man raised on the podium knows better, two things occur. For one thing, the weight of conducting your own inquiry is off your shoulder, one feels relieved to ditch the responsibility for arriving at heaven on earth. At the same time one also loses insight as it becomes atrophied due to lack of use. There was no point telling Chino off, he was precariously poised on the edge of the precipice as it was. If anything, he could do with encouragement.
Having finished my food, I gave Dina a brief account of last night ceremony when Rode looked into Chino’s case in her trance on my request and saw a motello, a fairly big larvae, lodged in his stomach and feeding on his negative emotions. Think of Scott Ridley’s Aliens, you’ll get the picture. Dina already knew as much and procured a round fruit of ayauma size of a canon ball, as well as other companion herbs needed to get the motello out.
The larvae was implanted energetically as a result of daño, and unless extricated would grow into unsightly monster devouring Chino from inside. This was fairy-tale black magic stuff which I would find hard to swallow, was I not a privy to the whole thing. The only way to save the fellow was to get the entity out of his belly, otherwise he was doomed.
“Chino, amigo,” I announced myself, in spite of my prior resolution to address ashaninka with a formal ‘Usted’ to let him know I’m past endearing terms, ‘I understand how you feel, stuck to your bed day and night week after week. You are exhausted and clearly over it. I understand why you ate those treats the children brought you: they were happy to share. More than food, you wanted happiness that came with sharing, you wanted to partake of their joy. Perhaps this is what you lacked in your childhood. But you didn’t have to eat the offering to receive the energy. Simply accepting the gesture is enough. Now, we gonna fix your tummy. That hard ball you got is a motello, a parasite. We gonna fast and perform a surgery. She will drink toe and I’ll accompany her. This is your last chance, pal. Jack has given up, but we still want to help you. You don’t have to say anything, a nod will do. Without your consent and cooperation we can’t proceed… we need your help here.”
I got the nod from Chino and thanked him. “Don’t punish yourself, either. We all make mistakes. Through mistakes we learn. Guilt feelings simply postpone the learning. You said you wanted to die, but I know it’s not true. I’ve seen your big bright smile that embraces life. You just have to dig for it. My princesa is sending her love from New Zealand. Believe it or not, you have friends you never met. She asks you to remember that moment right after you fell. It had clarity, when you were beween life and death and all your life energy was mobilised to survive. For a brief moment there was a window of knowing who you are, your true essence. You have plenty of time to meditate, so meditate on that. It will help you to activate your vital energy without which no healing is possible. As Jack told you, the best medic can give all the medicine but the healing must come from within first. Without your will to heal, medicine is helpless. Gracias, hermano!”
There is a bridge in San Francisco infamously frequented by desperate souls wishing to plummet to their death, yet some miraculously survive its fatal height to give account of their fall. All survivors testify to the change of heart the moment they jump. The moment they jump, mind stops internal chatter and a man is thrown into awareness of senses, no longer clouded by suicidal thoughts that drive one to the edge. The moment one jumps, life rushes forward in all its shining splendour, followed by deep regret to waste this unique opportunity to experience existence in human flesh. Self-awareness is a precious thing in the universe, a culmination point arriving only after billions of years of vegetating, snaking and crawling our way to the luminous state of beholding grand self-perpetuating design glimpsed in visionary artworks and music compositions that cultivate a state of reverence. Opportunity to inhabit this flesh is precious. How many close calls does one need to become enlightened? How many broken bodies does it take, how many lifetimes?
Existence is generous in this way, providing us with infinite learning opportunities until we graduate into luminous beings capable of ascending higher realms; if this process could be circumnavigated or sped-up, you’d hear about it by now. There’d be a fine-print in Vedas, a footnote in Tantric teachings, an appendix to Tao. As it is, checking-out makes little sense, you just get reborn in another body and deal with the same problem that made you check-out in the first place. I tried explaining this to Chino but not sure how much he was capable of absorbing, if any. ‘Mad gringo’ was probably his diagnosis, ‘what does he want from me? Can’t even let me die in peace’. But he would be right, I wanted something. I was tired of investing my livelihood into stories that didn’t end well; I have developed an allergy for tragedies. Chino was my starring protagonist in the half-shot doco and without him performing a victorious pirouette in the joyful finale, the whole thing might as well be aborted. I wanted ashaninka back on his feet with a big smile stretching from ear to ear. I wanted him to take me hunting for turtle eggs. I wanted him to teach me walk in the virgin jungle at night without a headlamp. I had indeed a vested interest in his wellbeing.
So it was two of us on Friday night having a quiet ceremony at the back room of Dina’s dirt-floor house, or rather a shack, to be more accurate about the setting for the forthcoming surgical extraction. Me and Dina were sitting on a blanket in front of prostrated Chino, Dina drinking toe she prepared beforehand while I confined myself to half-a-thimble of ayahuaska to stay awake. The medicine provoked nausea on empty stomach and I was doubled in half with abdominal pains that came within several minutes, descending into darkness. Unable to move, I watched Dina apply concoction of herbs to Chino’s tummy and massage his body.
She whistled and chanted and at some point I heard slurping sounds of sucking and spitting as she bent over the ashaninka. It went on and on for close to twenty minutes. I recovered somewhat enough to light a mapacho and blow the smoke over Dina while she worked. Tobacco always helped to clear negative energies. I had no vision, no trance, walled-in on all sides and completely cut off from the medicine. Ayahuaska effect was in full strength, but I couldn’t connect. There was no point sticking around doing nothing. I felt utterly helpless to be of assistance to Dina or Chino in any way – if anyone could help, it was Lord Almighty. I went to bed, stretching on a blanket thrown over rough-sawn planks.
The morning dawned eventually, promising another sweltering day in the ghetto. Dina did the job, accomplishing what she sat out to do: Chino’s tummy went down and was soft to the touch. I was beside myself. It worked! I nearly kissed the ashaninka, telling him he will be up and running in no time. All he had to do was stick with the dieta for another week or so. Dina was already grilling his boquechico and plantain. I had provisionally purchased a watermelon and it was time to crack it open. Miguel got a slice in passing, and carelessly proceeded to walk into the back room biting into juicy flesh and dribbling sweetness all over. That’s all it took for the ashaninka to lose what little was left of his resolution to see the dieta through. His budding smile was removed like a stroke of chalk on the blackboard in one swipe of the cloth, never to return. The change happened so quickly had no time to prepare for the reverse of tides: it hit me flat in my chest, sending me tumbling backwards too flabbergasted to utter a word of protest. There he was, moaning about ‘damned fish’, unhappy to be in Dina’s care and wishing to be taken back to his family in his sorry-arse crippled state.
When I finally regained a gift of speech, all I could say to ashaninka was that I’m going to walk out and let him think about it real hard one last time. Who would take care of him in his village? Was there a curandero to look after him who knew what plants to give? Would he escape the same strict dieta in someone else’s hands? “Think hard, Chino. You got a day. When I come back tomorrow and you tell me you still want to go, so be it.”
Dina was beyond heart-broken; she has lost hope for Chino one too many times and simply accepted another tumbling-down off the edge as a karmic blow of the universe, taking it with a resigned sigh that reminded me of that ancient Greek king, Sisyphus, punished by gods to push a stone uphill only to lose the grip near the summit time and again and watch it roll all the way down, shattering his efforts. One last time, I told her. One last chance, and then we ditch him. We can’t keep pushing against the man’s will, or suffer the lack of thereof. I gave Dina a hug and started down the dirt road towards the main way and its wheezing motorcars. With each step, indignation grew stronger and spread through my chest like a fire. I had two days left before boarding a bus to Lima to meet Rachel at the airport. I had neither time nor energy to waste on a hopeless case of Chino’s. Jack has washed his hands long ago, perfectly aware that if the maloka was to be erected, it must be done now, before the rains start up in November.
It was either babysitting the lost cause, or laying foundation for the future centre, Jack’s Mundo Feliz. Jack was by then in possession of brand-new sawmill powered by a beast of a motor and manufactured to order solid iron cutting table with a selection of diamond-tooth saw blades capable of ripping through 8-inch blocks of hardwood. Here's a frame from the dream sequence: behold the grand scope!
I cashed out for the lot some seven thousand soles a week before. The motor alone weighted some 250 kgs and took four man to lift; it sat proudly in the middle of Jack’s small kitchen, in all its shiny enamel glory, waiting to be deployed in the jungle. Looking after disobedient and ungrateful ashaninka, apart from mildly infuriating Jack, made it impossible to get any work done. Dina, however, could not say no. She was under unspoken oath to care for Chino no matter what he did, no matter how he accused her of being a bruja and how he expressly detested his condition, his dieta and Dina herself.
As my feet walked away, my heart and my mind swung back to Dina, this remarkable golden-hearted woman and gifted maestra-curandera gathering remedies, massaging and encouraging ashaninka while washing by hand his soiled bed sheets day in and day out for over a month…
...until it brought me to the point of ignition and the flame of just indignation took over. I turned around and went back to the house, knowing what had to be done. It was up to me to make the call and send Chino on his merry way. Dina was waiting for me in the front yard, guessing what I was going to say before I opened my mouth. She collapsed into my embrace, eyes moist with tears, wiping them with a back of her knobbly weathered hand. “We take Chino back to his family today, Dina. Call Jack. Enough is enough.” “I just can’t do it no more,” she hides her face in the palms of her hands. “I’ve brought up ten children, all healthy and strong, with nobody’s help. This is not my responsibility… I’m wasting my time, my energy, my joy while I could be planting things, looking after my chakra and enjoying life.” Oh yes, her chakra… burnt to black singes by her agriculturally-minded neighbour as a token of gratitude for the lease of Dina’s land.
Dina was beyond exhausted. So much more undignified to see her drained and listless, a woman who nurtured her grown sons from gunshots and knife wounds, car wrecks and motorcycle accidents, gangrenes and blindness back to sound health. What can you do if one rejects the healing subliminally? “It’s in the hands of God,” I told Dina. “We’ve done all we could.” God is the saving grace for everything we have no control of. I never thought I’ll supplicate, yet what do you know: Amazonian desperation encourages it.
Chino was reclining where I left him, a plate of half-eaten food by his side. “Amigo Chino, I’ve come to tell you we will do as you wish. You will go back to your family soon as Jack is here. I’ve also had enough. No matter what we do, what sacrifices we make, it ain’t helping you. You better ask forgiveness from the old man who you pissed off and pray while you are at it. Till this happens, no healing is possible.” Ashaninka remained quiet, staring some place beyond the opposite wall – perhaps fathoming forthcoming stretch of the road unfurling in front of him, a grim landscape as far as inner eye could see. “Take care,” I bade farewell. “I hope someone will look after you wherever it is you are going.”
I spent the rest of the day in Irapai, sorting through mountain camping gear and waiting for Jack’s call that never came. I saw him next morning at his place in Yarina and he gave me a full account of previous night’s events delivering Chino to his family that had no idea up until then what happened, Chino being reluctant to make a phone call. Jack looked tired, returning back after midnight. He said they had trouble locating the family house, having been taken to the wrong village indicated by Chino at the outset. While asking directions in the middle of the road, an old ashaninka stopped by and announced his surprise that the son of the bitch wasn’t dead yet. He should have been. The old ashaninka was the man Chino stole from. He turned out to be the brujo who administered his jungle justice without bothering with warnings, court summons and paperwork of formal accusations and just blew Chino off the tree with his sopla – unapologetically so. Jack appealed to the humanitarian side of the old man’s conscience, reminding him we are all human beings who make mistakes and ain’t exactly perfect, while Chino sprawled across the seat of the motortaxi staring at the ceiling.
Chino’s family turned out not to be his real family. He didn’t have one. He was adopted as a kid by a woman who had enough children of her own to take proper care of him. She didn’t want him back, either. He owed her six hundred soles and had bad reputation in the neighbourhood for stealing things. Jack emptied his wallet that contained some none hundred soles, everything he had on him at the time, on the table in front of the woman and left Chino on the front porch of her house with a single blanket for cover. “I said I will return in a week’s time to check up on him,” he finished his account. “Chino was crying, asking to come back with me. It wasn’t possible. I got work to do, Dina needs rest. We all have a life of our own.” “We can only do so much,” I replied. “We can’t keep dragging so much weight if we are going to move forward.”
I gave Jack a hug and headed to town to book my bus. According to him, Chino’s expenses amounted to over three thousand soles in food, reimbursement and diapers. Dina badly needed a new set of teeth, her mouth collapsed and munching abilities impeded from having knocked out her own teeth six months ago in ayahuaska-related accident when she fell down from double the height of Chino’s fall. She badly needed fifteen hundred soles. That too would come out of my bank account… naturally. Price of medicine, you tally it up, amigo, downing that thimble of ayahuaska in the cosy circle of fellow space travellers setting out to explore inner dimensions in all their illustrious glory, sitting cross-legged in cushioned room warmed by soft yellow candle light.
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