The Price of Medicine (part I)

“Now what?!”

Jack’s singlet is covered in dirt and sweat, a sunlit jungle paradise is singing in the background when the question finally leaps forth from my lips intoned with grave apprehension. His response is unexpectedly calm and laconic:

“We cook.”

Anyone else would be dialling the ambulance at this point or sending for a chopper evac, were we not in the Peruvian Amazon. As it is, I watch another drop of sweat roll down from my friend’s brow he doesn’t bother to wipe. Still…

“What about Chino? Shouldn’t we take him to hospital?”

Jack’s gaze fixes on me.

“No. We treat him here. We have all the medicine we need right here in the forest. It is his best option. If we take him to hospital, he will either die on the way or they will kill him when he gets there.” Gentle breeze moves through coca young coca plants in the chakra behind, birds are performing virtuoso oratories to the unceasing cadence of omnipresent cicadas. Sun beats down. “Lina will look after Chino while me and you cut the vine and cook the medicine. It will not be as fast without the monkey, but we will get there.”

Chino is ashaninka, who are infamous for their stamina and tree-scaling prowess, recruited by Jack explicitly for the job of climbing the vine. He’s been working with Jack and Lina for three years now and became part of the family by proxy. When I rocked up with ardent desire to partake of the cooking chores in the wild and master the trade, Jack summoned both Chino and Lina to help harvest the vine and now the climbing specialist is prostrated on the ground of the camp shelter, groaning from pain after surviving a fall from the height that would most likely kill anyone else in his place. Ashaninka are probably the toughest of all the tribes living in Peruvian Amazon, preferring wilderness of ancestral forest any day to bogus comforts and convenience of living in town. Pucallpa is full of Shipibos but Ashaninka are nowhere to be seen. They do their best in the chakra.

Only yesterday I photographed Chino doubled over under the weight of charcoaled hardwoods we’ve been lugging from the clearing nearby, smiling from ear to ear all the way, and today he is a collapsed broken misery in every way possible. I dared not to pick him off the ground where he laid twisted in a knot with his arm unnaturally jammed underneath the torso and his machete protruding at an odd angle, still slung around his neck and most likely responsible for lacerating cuts across his forehead during the tumbling fall. I had the impression his cranium was cracked and that he was thoroughly massacred by the hits on the branches he received on the way down. As luck would have it, Chino is not exactly a humpty-dumpty and since all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were nowhere near to try to put him back together again, the expert privilege thus went to Lina and Jack.

Harvesting ayahuaska in the virgin jungle is not a joke. The trees have never been cut and some reach sixty meters up. The vine climbs all the way to the crown of the tree, reaching towards the light and must be cut from the top where it gets entangled with the foliage. One has to be a monkey to accomplish it. Our ashaninka has bailed way too early in the game, considering we needed a dozen decent size rolls to match the amount of chakruna we brought with us, but that’s not what precipitated the question… first and foremost, we must see Chino through the ordeal. Any medicine we make is just a bonus from this point.

Feeling somewhat helpless standing over a broken heap, I resorted to filming Chino while Lina herself encouraged me to do so unequivocally. Pulling focus and composing the shots affords a degree of distancing oneself from the calamity at hand, and the filmmaker in me was acutely aware of intrinsic value presented by the opportunity to capture curanderos at work performing their art, having never attended conventional medical school and instead being instructed by plant spirits that

communicate through dreams and trance states of deep meditation. The base of such knowledge, in Lina’s case, has been solidly laid by her grandmother who often asked to collect particular herbs and barks for special preparations that filled rows of bottled remedies in her thatched-roof shack slash pharmacopoeia store. In case there's an emergency...

… I watch Jack break a capsule with the painkiller open and wipe the needle with alcohol I happen to bring for the explicit purpose of dealing to mosquito bites. The injection will help ashaninka to bear chiropractic sessions while his bones and vertebrae are being re-inserted and properly aligned by skilful fingers. This is followed by a shot of anticoagulant agent to keep his blood moving and only two days after the chemicals are gone from the system can the herbal remedy be given. The first aid is thus completed by orally administering urine that contains acids and minerals and is sterile, which makes it perfect for cleaning up cuts on Chino’s head. Urine is actually not a waste artefact, as common sense would have it; urine is a by-product of blood filtration, not waste filtration. It is a purified derivative of the blood itself, made by the kidneys. Not financially rewarding medicine, therefore little talked about as far as its chemicals and nutrients go. When reutilised, these act as natural vaccines, antibacterial, antiviral and anticarcinogenic agents as well as hormone balancers and allergy relievers… first aid at its best, really. For the moment, Chino is in shock. A wreck of groaning agony and desperation arising from the turmoil of misplaced organs that suffered consequence of a smashing impact. Good thing, he retained consciousness through most of it, which will help with diagnosis and treatment to be given in the following weeks.

Healing with plant medicines takes time and trusting the process is a major issue faced by patients, especially those in grave condition. Majority opt out, lured by technologically superior medical science taught in air-conditioned auditoriums and dealing lottery of statistics that cannot guarantee a cure from a simple cough, let alone conditions like rheumatism, diabetes or cancer, for the basic premise of fighting the disease instead of cultivating wellbeing undermines its very efforts. Disease literally means ‘lack of ease’, a lack of health. Similar to darkness, the effort and exertion made in fighting an absence of light or health simply exhausts you. It’s a definition of unwise banking. Energy invested into lighting a candle, however, pays off in volumes as by bringing in the light the darkness recedes by itself with no effort required on your part. This is the fundamental difference between holistic and allopathic approach. One can illiminate all bacteria, good and bad, and it’s easy enough to cut malfunctioning organs out instead of dealing with the problem that caused them to malfunction in the first place, but it is utterly nonsensical to do so in the long run. The difference is not dissimilar to tossing out entire carburettor or an oil pump instead of cleaning it and adjusting few bolts here and there. One doesn’t need to be a mechanic to understand the implications but it does take a leap of faith to get away from popular beliefs and programming implanted deeply in the mind. Unless one is thoroughly disillusioned with the state of affairs prevalent in the 'developed world' so-called and seeing its ruinous trajectory towards self-destruction, it’s impossible to do so in the first place.

Ucayali jungle ain’t the most welcoming environment to inhabit, given all the bugs and insects inviting themselves over for a free lunch soon as one comes into their sensory range, as well as destitute poverty of local population who often cannot afford the basic commodities and make do with what little they have, living hand-to-mouth one day at a time but loving life to the fullest, which makes them a pleasure to be around with. Talk of Spontaneous Man as a prerequisite to quality to being a Conscious Man, come to the jungle…

Jack epitomises jovial goodness to be imbibed from. His eyes shine and throw off sparks in all directions when he gets going and then rivets you to the spot in stillness to absorb his overflowing vibrations that trickle merrily along to join into cascading waterfalls of guttural laughter, a kind of laughter that shakes you into uncontrollable spasms until diamond tears adorn your vision with sparkling rainbows of prismatic light. Straight from the heart kinda guy, a rare find, really.

It is a non-stop fiesta time with Jack.. I’ve never seen a guy who works so hard and laughs so easily. Back in the day he qualified as a sniper, a franco tirador in Spanish, enlisted as one of the youngest recruits into armed forces at the age of fifteen. While aiming at being a foreign mercenary in Iraq, he was deployed as a part of anti-terrorist force and got shot in the back of the head, which rendered him blind for the bullet had jammed the optical nerve. He refused the surgery and spent next three years going through internal process of accepting the fact he may never be able to see again, concurrently dieting barks prepared by his mother, until he woke up one morning and was able to see the light of day. Once the bullet was dislodged by surrounding tissues and bone had undergone self-reparation, Jack regained his vision. A surgery would wreck a mess and leave him blind for the rest of his life. This miraculous healing had set my friend firmly on the path of vegetalista and I have rare privilege to deliver you an account of yet another miracle performed in front of my eyes as I watch our ashaninka brother being brought back from the other side.

Swinging back from a murky bottle of masato of fermented yukka with a ball of sweet freshly picked coca leaf behind my cheek and mapacho in my hand as I squat on a log among fresh vine piled up in front, I am acutely aware I’m living a dream.

I am in true paradise lost, preparing the medicine that will open up my vision, embraced by the spirit and imbibing the song of the forest. And I get a free sauna while I am at it without taking my clothes off… does it get any better?! I can't think what else one may possibly wish for...

My shoulders are still raw from lugging firewood and I resort to stuffing my backpack with freshly cut ayahuaska that starts to leak its juice once in vertical position and drip on the back on the back of my trousers as I carry my load stumbling along narrow path and having to retrace my steps once in a while after having mistaken my direction. Jack heaves his tied with soga bundle onto a log for extra elevation, squats underneath to position the carry strip on his forehead, pushes off with a grant and marches ahead with teeth clenched tight under pressure. I try to keep up to no avail as roots and looping vine get in the way of my progress until I’m miles away and Jack is nowhere to be seen. Perfect opportunity to get lost and I take advantage of it several times. As you do.

Back in camp Lina is up to her ears in washing bed sheets and blankets wetted and soiled in the night by ashaninka who cannot tell whenever he is urinating or not. On top of this, just like any catholically-conditioned native, he suffers from what is referred to as ‘vergüenza’, meaning ‘shame’, which compounds the issue. Chino is given suelda consuelda that happened to grow on the lemon tree next to the shelter he was resting under to help reduce the swelling and smooth as a baby’s bottom copaiba bark for healing cuts on his head.

There are herbs for lowering fever waiting to be brewed up, herbs to strengthen the bowels, herbs for kidneys and medicinal cedar bark to be burnt into ash and applied to the cuts externally instead of applying stiches, it pulls them close nice and tight with no visible scar formation in ideal conditions.

Tuesday. Two days following Chino’s fall. No luck sleeping through the dawn, thanks to the madly fanatical rooster alarming the neighbourhood with his throat tearing gusto in the ungodly hour of sweet slumber. At 4 a.m. the rest is over with murderous punctuality, every morning. Jack and myself are cutting the vine into manageable pieces to be tied into rolls with a supple soga instead of a rope to be carried back into camp while Lina attends to the patient, cooks food and collects necessary remedies. Chino is immobile and totally paralyzed below the waste.

His legs and torso have swollen up and he groans in pain every time Lina attempts to work on putting his bones back in, a man of rare physical prowess thus reduced to a state of a helplessly whimpering kid by the agony. He has two more ampules of painkiller to help him through it and will have to endure without after that. Lina has harvested bark of Copaiba and various herbs, but the internal treatment can only begin the day after the chemicals leave his body to avoid interference with the blood thinners.

I feel weak first thing in the morning, moonwalking along a narrow trail in the virgin jungle and gaping at huge trees with chest-high labyrinths of root systems that look like abandoned space rockets landed in the middle of the forest, whose solid shafts pierce through and disappear in the green foliage above as they divide, brunch out and fractalize... chewing coca really helps and fatigues recedes into the background as I swing my machete. It’s a mind thing, as always. Soon as you are able to ignore the narrative ‘I’m tired, I didn’t sleep, heat exhausts me,’ energy comes from nowhere and rejuvenates the body. Magic!

As I cruise after Jack with machete in hand and a ball of coca behind my cheek, he frequently stops in mid track to point out a tree of a shrub with curative properties. There’s a remedy for tiredness and fatigue, for infertility and for impotency, for sprayed ankles and arthritis, for headaches, diabetes and inflammation, for insomnia and bad luck – anything and everything, really, you name it. Plants that make you sleep and plants that make you itch to get up first thing in the morning, quite literally so. There are ‘walking’ trees with trunks that split into multiple roots waist-high off the ground and trees whose stem is covered with conical spikes whose bark is dieted for protection from brujeria attacks and maleficence. Finally, there are millennia-year old giants with huge root systems reminding you of sailing ships whose masts disappear in the high foliage while you stumble over anchoring tentacles snaking their way into the forest thirty meters away from the main trunk. Heavy cables of vines swing in swooping curves from above, some more twisted than others. Jack explains the difference between various types of ayahuaska vine and its uses. Ayahuaska negra, ayahuaska boa, ayahuaska roja, which is used for magic, and ayahuaska 'cielo' used in healing, and is the kind we are after. This land is full of it. But unless you know the forest, it’s all the same, of course. Which is why hunters cut the vine willy-nilly in passing, not knowing what they are cutting...

Wednesday. Jack takes me along on wild honey harvesting mission first thing in the morning. The honey, as well as all of the medicinal barks, must be collected on an empty stomach which also helps to avoid being bitten by bees as extraction is done by bare hands and one must reach inside a hollow tree trunk buzzing with bees to grab hold of the honey combs contained therein. On the way we procure Peruvian variety of dark copal resin oozing down a tree trunk of non-descript tree to fumigate the hive during the extraction and Jack shoots a monkey high up in the branches that refuses to let go and won’t fall down even after Jack blows tobacco smoke down the barrel of his gun and rotates it several times, which usually does the trick.

“This is a big strong monkey”, he informs me. “They have lots of life force and it takes them long time to die”. We wait a few more minutes, smoking mapacho and glimpsing up the tree a good forty meters or so off the ground, too high to even contemplate climbing without a harness, and move on, leaving spent cartridges behind.

As we approach the hive site, humming becomes undeniably audible and I hand over the chainsaw I’ve been carrying to Jack who instructs me how to set copal resin on fire once the opening in the tree trunk has been cut. I never attended a surgical lobotomy before but the excitement of penetration into the buzzing sanctuary through the freshly cut aperture in solid hardwood and the sight of oozing honey combs is comparable to extraction of brains by proxy. Both of us are smiling wide, Jack’s eyes sparkle. “You see, they don’t bite! That’s the difference between medicine bees and the salvage ones. This is medicinal honey right here. With this honey our seven-plant preparation will be complete. Good-bye grippe! Adios covid!”

Oh, that’s right… I’ve been recovering from a vicious bout of grippe I caught in Irapai. It just kept lingering on like a friendly drunk who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Everyone had it, snivelling and running fever in the middle of the day with thirty-six degrees Celsius above zero in the shade. Coming straight from the silent chillness of Codillera Blanca into humid tropical exhaust-fuelled environment of industrious jungle city is a shock to the system that must readjust its functioning dramatically in very short time and the best way to cope with it is moving the blood around, which means going for walks and performing manual labour. I dived into it at the first opportunity, taking on the task of excavating six-month old mix of sawdust and faeces that saw me knee-deep in the shit by the end of the day, exposing myself to elite troupe of bacterial warfare strategically deposited by family members and visiting patients from all over Pucallpa. Naturally, I could not miss a single ceremony, as in doing so the entire purpose of enduring infernal noise of the sawmill factory next door and the rest of the radio-blaring crazy-cock motor-taxi hooting insanity would be nullified, leaving me perspiring with sticky sweat and lead-heavy head for nothing. I wasn’t taking antibiotic shots either, as advised by Cesar to his own diateros, and resorted to self-application of kambo. Twenty-two points later I mustered the strength to dust my entire room and put the floor down using old maloka’s floorboards, concurrently running fever and spilling mucus all over into the dark hours of the night until I could take my flower bath and snort fine tobacco snuff to my heart’s content. It liberated air passages and let me sleep for once. Fidelia’s concoction of ginger, lemon and honey blended with egg’s whites helped a good deal and only several days after catching the bug I was feeling fairly alleviated and blasting away with much gusto to original Tzoi’s records that young Oscar dug up on request… it was incredibly surreal and heart-warming at the same time to hear Victor, a Peruvian advocate slash diatero, a disciple of Cesar, sing along to a ‘Pack of Smokes’ without the slightest idea what the lyrics mean. Translated literally, first verse goes something like this: ‘as I look up at the foreign sky, I don’t see a single familiar star… I walked many a road near and far, turned around and could not find my own footprints’. A rather popular song that bears insight about estrangement and the eternal pilgrimage which life ultimately is, untraceable by definition, put to the measured beat of late 80’s that resonates vibrantly as ever three decades later in the most unlikely of corners, a shipibo slum district of Irapai, ha ha ha... True art endures because it’s timeless. To my great astonishment, Victor was also well familiar with Andrei Tarkovski’s films, which require meditative type of audience and are rarely served up for discussion for the simple reason of not being understood, much more so outside of Russia where they were filmed in the first place. This reference and the prevailing ease with which Peruvians are able to put up with open sewers and miserable living conditions is perhaps why I feel right at home here. These people know how not to give a damn and accept the way things are without becoming aggravated and bitter. It’s a valuable skill. I should have put this in the foreword before entering the story, but here you go… a slight but necessary deviation from harvesting remedies and cooking the vine, which was my primary excuse for taking off with Jack in the first place. Chino’s falling down is just a bonus of top of the adventure, a grand opportunity to enter deeper into the magic world of master plant medicines.

Same day we added wild honey to the bottle containing barks and roots of previously collected plants, Chino started taking Suelda Consuelda, of which our garden borage is a close relative. He woke up from his mid-afternoon nap with a screaming protest. In his dream, vivid and real, a man came from across the chakra and started pulling his legs with a single intent of kidnapping ashaninka for all his worth. Instead of comforting the guy, Jack told ashaninka he missed a great opportunity for the plant spirit was in fact offering the healing Chino was not quite ready for. By that stage Chino was able to endure bone-correcting sessions with only a few screams in between his unceasing groaning and teeth-grinding and allowed himself to be propped up against a sack of rice frequently visited by ducks who found a hole of opportunity to partake from. Paralysed below the waste as he was, Chino aspired to recover the very next day in order to salvage the monkey shot by Jack and left clinging to the branches high up. We all unanimously agreed there was no match amongst us as far as climbing trees and chasing after ducks went. I said it was our best hope of a feast to see Chino up and running, until then we have to settle for farinya and parboiled rice. Jack’s grimace, sour as your kefir probiotic fermented for several days, was an unequivocal response to such a prospect as he had no such affection to hard-dried yukka crumbs as myself…

The morning after harvesting the honey Jack went off by himself on the pretext of hunting and returned to camp only by the nightfall, having spent entire day dry-fasting and beating around the jungle talking to trees and seeking advice from tree spirits on how to treat ashaninka. He shot a monkey at the end of his outing, which happened to be the last animal he met in his path following the pact he made with the forest before setting out as far as shooting things was concerned. There’s all sorts of creatures wandering around here, some more rare and prehistoric-looking than others: ant-eaters, armadillos, etc.

I spent the day ‘machacando’, as in beating the vine to pulp using hardwood sticks provisionally cut by Jack. Lina joined me in the task, lamenting that she was not in her best form and still recovering from her fall, lacking in strength and endurance. At the age of sixty-one she is still climbing trees to harvest the vine, collect the medicines and hang out with the birds while she is up there. About three months ago she fell from one of the highest trees in her chakra, having cut unwittingly the vine she was holding onto. She woke up on the ground some hours later and managed to drag herself back to her shelter, where she was eventually found by her daughter once again unconscious. She spent over a week completely immobile, passing blood for urine and firmly denying her daughter’s attempts to take her to hospital until she recovered enough from the shock and inflammation to start drinking medicinal barks. Everything ached. Bones needed to be put back, slowly but surely. No painkillers, either. She knows perfectly well what it’s like to have one’s internal organs tangled up in a knot from lethal-force impact and how patient one must be to come out from such a messed-up state of affairs.

Chino is lucky, she says. He is neither peeing blood nor running high fever. Paralyzed, yes. The lower vertebrae in his column went out and nerve endings do not connect, thus no feeling below the waist down. In saying it, nothing renakilla can’t fix. Mending bones is what it’s famous for. “You see that vine cut above the ground?” Jack points towards an inch-thick wood dangling chest-high in the air, surrounded by thin strands that fray down from the cut and connect with the earth. “If you diet this plant for a month, your broken bones will grow back together. Same goes for your nerve tissue. Look how it’s been cut! It didn’t die. It was able to restore severed connection.”

Smack, here goes another piece of vine shredded into pieces. My hand holding the sticks turns brown-red, tinted by bleeding bark of ayahuaska. It’s hard to believe in fairy tales until you happen to be in the middle of one, magic on tap and freely flowing – get intoxicated, be merry! There’s no hangover as far as medicine goes, instead there peace and clarity as the world slows down and your breath penetrates deeper into the mystery. For all and one are intertwined by the dance of grace and the beating of the heart.

I sleep like a log while Jack takes off once again in the middle of the night to meditate in the forest. He joins us for breakfast with herbal protocol in his pocket detailing missing roots and barks to be collected. Monkey soup is on the menu. Jack salutes me. “Enjoy the meat! These little monkeys eat only fruit. Meat doesn’t get better than this.” I look at the small replica of a human skull with protruding canine teeth floating in the bowl and the sight of empty eye sockets transports me into a scene from Indiana Jones’ trilogy where Harrison Ford is presented with gourmet delicacy of a monkey brain served inside its own cranium at a feast of honour… I close my eyes and rip into it.

We spend the day smashing the vine between two of us, giving Lina a chance to catch up on washing and cooking. Once the hammering starts, Jack does not get up. He is a robot, he tells me. His pile of shredded vine grows twice as fast mine, no matter how diligently I try to keep up. We talk about ethics of medicine preparation, the diet undertaking prior and during the cooking as the strength and potency of the medicine is affected by the energy and purity of intention with which it is made. For this reason no random people should be wondering in, since nobody knows where they’ve been and what they’ve been getting up to. A menstruating woman, for example, will create unwelcome interference in the vibration. Privacy is paramount but if often overlooked for convenience sake of cooking in town. Gas is waste of time, speaking of convenience. “The secret to cooking ayahuaska is firewood,” says Jack. “It must be hot-burning hardwood, otherwise there’s no sufficient heat to extract active ingredients. I like my pots boiling rapidly and keep stoking the fire… this is why so much wood. Once I start cooking, there’s no time lugging it from the forest.” Whack! His wooden hammer descends methodically on a chunky piece of the vine until the heart of ayahuaska cracks into separate strands, pieces of moist bark flying everywhere. “By the time you buy your vine in Pucallpa, it is several days or weeks old. The juice is gone. Medicine is much stronger when vine is fresh. And it doesn’t get fresher then this! Look!” Indeed… both the hammering stick and the hardwood stump used for beating are thoroughly moist with red-brown run off. “And as far as smashing the vine goes, one must penetrate into the very heart of it with much love and affection.” I watch my mentor launch into a pounding frenzy until all that’s left of the arm-thick chunk is a shredded into strands pulp and we both burst out laughing... I envy not the chances of surviving such fervent devotion, I tell Jack. It will most surely kill me. We laugh again. The distinctive pattern on the cross-section of the vine known as ‘ayahuaska heart’ needs to be destroyed in order to get to the precious alkaloids contained therein by diligent blows of a hard wooden hammer in the hand of the dedicated man seeking purification and wisdom, of which Jack is an epitome.

We go through better half of the pile by the nightfall and I am thoroughly exhausted. It’s tough enough to be hauling logs and bunched up loads of vine through the jungle, let alone doing it in the heat of the day with long sleeves and gumboots on to keep the crawlies away.

While Jack was gone meditating, I took liberty to boil a small pot of medicine, hoping to take it on full moon by myself, if I had to. Heavy-headed and tired, I help Jack to mount the pots onto iron fretwork with raging fire underneath and resign to postpone my ceremony for another day.

Pots are huge and Jack will need a hand throughout the night emptying the buggers, which is not a joke, considering one has to navigate among flaming logs to heave a boiling vessel filled to the brim with vine up and manoeuvre it outside the cooking compound through the obstacle course of abovementioned iron fretwork with incandescent ambers scattered around its perimeter. The pot is then positioned on a stump and angled down into a basin while you watch red-brown ayahuaska broth, squinting through the hot medicinal steam, level up to a crack in the side of the basin... at which point we must stop the pouring and empty what we got into another drum for subsequent refinement. Water is replaced and pots are boiled again three times. With a total number of six pots going all at once and unpredictable nature of cooking on the open flame with stone-age methods of temperature control, the whole process is one continuous emergency, really.

We finish filling and setting up pots to boil by ten o’clock in the evening to behold full moon roll out in all its shining glory, casting silver light on lavish banana palm leaves and slender coca shrubs further out in the chakra with not a leaf moving. I bid Jack good-night and tell him to wake me up when the pots start running low.

Jack is bright and chirpy first thing in the morning, having stayed up all night long dancing between the pots. He’s drinking renakilla preparation throughout the whole day during cooking, starting with a full mug on empty stomach.

I can hear Chino’s groans and protests all the way from my vine-smashing stump as Lina wakes up his body with her strong fingers, finding and readjusting misaligned bones and pulling his organs back into place. His cuts on the head are healing well and swelling remains mainly around his lower torso and legs now. He still can’t feel them. Mornings are hard but he will be telling jokes comes afternoon, invariably prompted by silly impromptu songs of Jack composed in passing and praising at random duck- hunting prowess of ashaninka and his future forthcoming success among the damsels impatiently awaiting his prompt return from the jungle with horns and trumpets blowing; this would keep Chino going with much sly giggling as he recounted his past accidents in falling down on multiple occasions, starting with harvesting aguaje and ending with flying off the horses, which not only didn’t deter him from climbing but made him climb higher than before. Cutting ayahuaska, therefore, was a perfect opportunity to get as high as high gets in the jungle and get paid at the same time. Hearing him laugh out loud makes me realise our friend is not a dying man any longer and it’s just a matter of time before he is up and running again. It would probably happen faster, did he not refuse a ride on a stretcher from two small stout fellows who came to fetch him in his sleep. He woke up from his daily nap with a scream, "they are taking me to the forest!". 'They' were the plant spirits, two little guys offering Chino to climb up onto a stretcher for heatling, explained later Jack. Had he taken the ride, he'd get better really fast. It's your willingness to undergo healing which makes it possible.

Helping Jack smash out the vine gives me a chance to narrate my ongoing love affair with a certain princess awaiting her chance to break free from pandemic entrapment back in Aotearoa to come and join me in the paradise lost. And just like that, out of the blue, Jack promises to have a mansion erected for my beloved’s arrival… More than that, he is willing to do a three day dieta to facilitate her flight connections and custom clearance. How is that for a friendly offer?! Seeing all the magic manifested around, it’s easy to suspend disbelief… yeah, I could really do with a hand here. Bring on jungle juice power! Let’s enchant the hell out of it, ripe time for that legendary broomstick of yours, brother. Time is ripe to make things happen. The moon is still fairly full and I am going to taste the brew tonight… yei!

I pour myself a thimble and them some. The brew tastes bitter as I had not bothered refining it. Just wanted to taste the oomph in the soga, since it is fresh and all. Feeling tired after a smashing day, I leave Jack tend to the boiling pots and crawl under my mosquito net. When I wake up in an hour or so, everything is swaying gently. The effect is there beyond doubt. By the time I make it to my improvised ‘moloka’ on the edge of the field, I feel medicine comeuppance quite strongly. A quick excursion into the forest to purge confirms it: smells are overly pungent, everything is alive and what used to be tree roots are now weaving and slithering brown snakes that don’t seem to reach anywhere in spite of all the apparent motion. I spend couple of hours in and out of medicine state seated on a blanket of my maloka with neither walls nor a roof, waiting anxiously for the next trooper to crawl into my pants with a single purpose of administering another dose of calcium until I am thoroughly sober and ready to sound retreat into safety of the mosquito net.

Once in the safe sanctuary, however, it doesn’t take long for the medicine to come back. Which it does, stronger than before. I opt for sitting up around the fire and listening to chakra-opening chants when one of the logs sparks up with loud cracking, waking me to the sight of precariously leaning pots. Half-way through my attempts at mending the situation by trying to prop up the flaming affair into more stable position Jack stumbles out of the darkness, yawning wide. He was taking his first nap in two days only to wake up halfway through it from the screaming alarm in his sleep, namely my voice yelling that someone is trying to tip the pots over… He checks the iron girders that sunk somewhat on one side and proclaims there’s nothing to worry about. But since we are both up, we might as well correct it. In order to do so, pots need to be taken off and we should just empty them. Oh well… here goes my chakra-opening trance and Jack’s well-deserved rest, all in the same basket. By the end of our shuffling with massive and fairly full pots, it’s close to dawn and Jack sits down with a hammering stick to finish what’s left of the vine. My body is pliable and soft like a rag doll with no strength to move on its own and as I contemplate sneaking back into bed I realise I’m gonna be having another wave of mareacion coming over soon as I lie down and Jack’s hammering is not going to help to relax, either.

Next thing I know, it’s two instruments pounding away in unison. Good lord… if Lina is up for it, I might as well come over and join them. “Jesus Christ,” I announce myself coming into the light of their torches illuminating old tarpaulin covered with chips and pieces of bark flying from under the blows. “You guys don’t know how to stop, do ya? I can’t rest with all this noise going down… pass me that hammer, Jack, will you?” We all laugh. “Here you go, brother. Just don’t smash your fingers. There’s enough cripples in our midst as it is and I like my slaves functional and healthy.” The slave joke has gone the distance around the vine-beating circle of ours, because it is true enough: who else in their sane mind sign up for sweating it out in the bush day in day out for the privilege of eating simplistic campesino diet and sleeping on a dirt floor without a hint of a cushioning mattress, shoulders raw and aching from lugging vine-bundled loads through an obstacle course in the jungle? I adjust my headlamp and join the ensemble. I’m quite beyond the exhaustion; where the strength comes from to lift the hammering stick, I have no idea. Once again, it is a mind-over-the-matter theorem proven in action. Soon as you change the background narrative looping on the fringe of your awareness energy is restored by proxy. Jack tells me he has never met a gringo that could potentially handle working alongside with him and it's a suprise for him to see one in the flesh. He was giving me a trial in the same way I was testing his claims to impecability in the medicine work and we both were exaulted to find deep satisfaction. Underslept but jovial, we meet dawn smashing the soga and laughing out loud to Jack’s improvisation of the rooster execution the day before when I finally could not take another throat-tearing cry in the wee hours of the morning and beheaded the poor creature with a single blow of a machete. It was a matter of the survival, you see? Long before dying of thirst and hunger, one will die from the lack of sleep… cookareku, indeed!

Meditating on love and being physically removed half way across the world from my beloved, I stumble upon a discourse of Osho that crystalizes the essence of experience I’ve been having. Back in Huaraz and freshly landed, the fire of desiring for my beloved was burning me inside out and the only possible solution was to let go and surrender to the situation being what it is. One must understand a few things here. The experience we perceive as love is not necessarily the experience of love in its ultimate blossoming. When love happens, it happens in the absence of self, similarly to experience of meditation and death, which both are self-less. “Love gives freedom… only in love you attain to your grandeur, only in love your splendour is released. If the freedom is missing, avoid the commitment like a plague. It is something else masquerading as love. The moment you feel love for somebody, the surrender has happened. That’s what love is. Not the surrender to other, but surrender to an unknown force that has taken possession of you. You both have bowed down to an unknown energy. You both became two pillars supporting the same roof. You support something beyond you, above you, something that transcends you but you remain separate. Love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface you individuality. It gives you uniqueness. Love is very respectfull.” Osho says, drop both the mind and the divine. God is not an object, it is a merger. The mind resists a merger, the mind is against surrender… because surrender is not something that you can do. If you do it, it is not surrender, because the doer is there. Surrender is a great understanding that, "I am not." Surrender is an insight that the ego exists not, that "I am not separate." Surrender is not an act but an understanding, it means neither yes nor no. You are not there to say yes or no. And it is scary… to part ways with the known. Coming close to the edge, looking at the abyss in front and knowing well you ain’t gonna survive the jump as you are. This is why it is called a ‘jump of faith’. But what to do? You know exactly what’s gonna happen if you don’t – nothing. You will go back to things how they were. Nothing will change. You’ll wake up back in the Matrix, believing what you want to believe. Being in love sets me free. There’s nothing I am missing, apart from being able to embrace my princess in the flesh and feel her pulsating warmth under my fingertips. I am saying ‘my princess’ with a big smile, knowing well that I am embracing vast emptiness of the beyond that brings me peace as I bathe in the golden glow that accompanies me throughout my day. It’s nothing special… just the way universe works. Freaking magic!

Looking at the number of pages filled with midnight scribbles, I am wondering how many of you are sacrificing your sleep to receive this… it works both ways. The energy exchange, I truly appreciate this. I’m barely skimming through the landscape of the journey I’ve been on and I am acutely aware I am far from being the only one loaded with stories to be shared, some more epic then others. Eden is frequently on my mind, a wondering alchemical wizard wielding his improvised samurai sword with a strip of seaweed wrapped around the handle for a soft leather grip with a dangling snake-skin tail he nibbles on to access rich sea minerals and replace much needed salts at the end of an arduous walk among Castle Hill rocks, humming to the brim with harmonic vibrations of pure unrefined levity that rises up in spiralling vortex all around. Sasha, recently out of twelve-day coma, jokingly encouraged by Brendan to locate her own mouth with a handle of ice that slips and falls inside her hospital gown to be once again extracted by instigator of the experiment himself carefully observing his beloved going through the steps of regaining her weakened body. Varya Diatchenko, looking like an alien visitor from Epsilon freshly landed, with all her hair gone and skin wrinkled to old age, wrapping her slender frame until she beams defiant joy of greeting in a testimonial salute to the shining spirit contained therein, in spite of all attempts to ‘cure’ her by most efficient means of chemotherapy torture available on pharmaceutical markets in good old Aotearoa. It would make you laugh, was it not such a grave matter. We are not talking about writing novels here, either. This is authentic reality people I love dearly face every day of their lives because we happen to be in the planetary crisis. The fire is aging. You either ascend in spirit or you die. Simple as that. Chino’s process is an extension of the crisis faced everywhere else. Being confirmed adventist and lacking trust a great deal, his struggle with partaking of master plants as given by Jack and Lina nearly prevented him from receiving the healing. A friend of mine used a very apt expression, which is that Peruvian jungle is filled with 'disconnected amazonicas'… in any case, one has to be a bloody legend to be born in this time, to choose such an opportunity for growth and I salute you for this alone. How is that for acknowledgement, buddy?

Alright, back to cooking. The medicine gives you a glimpse onto the other side and one is confronted with ridiculously vast and powerful amounts of energy. Mind is not able to comprehend it because its nature is fictitious. We do not see reality with eyes open for the simple reason that we lack capacity to absorb energy of such magnitude. ‘Enlightenment’ literally is burning up your crusty shell, liberating the inner flame. In this context, life is but a pilgrimage to the apex of ultimate surrender and cessation of self. Any form of self-identification will prevent one from entering into the brilliance of the Beyond because one cannot be merged with the whole and remain separate at the same time. It is hard to grasp with intellectual understanding because it implies cessation of thought itself, but your heart knows the way home. Give it a chance. Songs of joy and mad hallelujah will follow just as surely as the dawn follows darkest hour of the night. Freaking magic, as always! Hear them birds forecast the sunshine, ha ha ha… birds know it!

I’m going to skip last day of refining the medicine and stomping through the jungle with a backpack loaded with ayahuaska, all twenty-five odd litres of it, consistency of thick honey and almost just as sweet, to arrive to Massesea quarter of an hour late to catch the rapido to Pucallpa… One quick sketch, however, is worth depicting. Once out of the forest, I am ahead of Jack for a change and by sheer luck there’s a vehicle coming. It’s a tractor, pulling trailer behind and I can see people sitting in it. Hollering ‘Massesea!’ at the top of my voice I flag the transport down and face the nonplussed look of total un-surprise from the man in the driver’s seat, a stout clean-shaven fellow in faded blue overalls and boots. “David!” Jack catches up, “you give us a lift? We got some cargo to haul.” Now I click that this must be the industrious farmer from a German colony growing copious amounts of rice in the neighbourhood with fields whence the jungle was once stretching for miles into the distance, all the charcoaled glory laid bare in the name of Lord Almighty and Holy Spirit, of course. A quick glimpse into the trailer confirms it: puritans, from head to toe, oozing air of prudence and sterility and utterly out of place in the surrounding landscape otherwise exploding with unabated growth anywhere you look… I climb into the trailer facing two larger-than-life nuns in monastic regalia a-la-chakra planted on a wooden bench and a young man in dress pants and neatly tucked-in shirt next to them, bred of the same ilk. All three retain silence in response to my salutary chit-chat as if separated by inch-thick plexiglas window from a chance invasion of their time-capsule by sweaty half-naked wild thing with poke-style tattoo of a broken heart sprouting from his ribs, contaminated by world fellow who had misfortune to dive neck-deep in to the obscene jungle above mentioned.

I plonk myself down on a low stool, jamming plastic canister filled to the brim with potent ayahuaska honey behind similarly loaded backpack of mine and watch scenery drift by, rocking along with the bumps in the road and smiling shamelessly from ear to ear. Such a surreal ride… I was very much tempted to snap a family portrait there and then, but common sense prevailed: it was seven odd kilometres from town which I did not want to walk under merciless sun after a wee excursion into the monkey land I’ve just had. What drives these folks to inhabit the middle of nowhere surrounded by indigenous people they neither understand nor wish to encounter, eradicating pristine jungle with wholesale ambition to cultivate plain rice, for god’s sake? Perhaps I need to significantly reduce the number of functioning brain cells to grasp the phenomena of missionaries transplanting themselves in bulk to foreign lands for the sheer fun of recreating two–thousand year old biblical fallacy, as for the love of Jesus I don’t get it. Perhaps good old puritans are set on saving the world from starvation… hence all the rice fields. I cannot deny certain contentment that gives them peace of knowing they succeeded in going backwards, however. Perhaps ‘peace’ is the wrong word to use; ‘docility’ is more accurate.

Fast-forward to Wednesday night ceremony in Irapai, maestro Cesar is serving freshly cooked aya I brought. He carefully pours half-a-thimble. “I’m afraid to drink Platon’s medicine,” he chuckles. “It’s going to be strong.” Maloka is two-thirds full, there must be two dozen people present. I take a full glass and ask for another half to make sure I enter a trance. Lights are out, it’s my cue to make my way into my room at the back of the house so I can avoid being distracted by others spewing, which is already began. I am fairly tired, having been unable to rest during the day and seeing bugger all sleep the previous night. Someone managed to get a signal on an old TV set in the family kitchen and it kept rolling some local soap opera from midday onwards until the neighbours drowned its broadcast with loud techno reggaeton blaring in megawatt amplification that penetrated through makeshift walls and hammered its way into my cranium by the sheer force of base frequency alone, regardless how deep I pushed the earplugs inside my ear cavities… there I laid prostrated, contemplating possible means of escape and reflecting on the fact that I cannot handle the jandal and ignore the infernal noise I’m bombarded on all sides as others do without being afflicted, until my frustration took an upper hand and I went outside to ask the owner of the disco to turn it down or suffer irreparable damages to his precious stereo. I found the stereo alright, pulsating with fancy lighting I could glimpse through the cracks in the walls. The door was locked, however, with a solid padlocked bolt… from the outside! Nobody in the hut. I’ve been enduring it for hours on end… freaking ridiculous! This is the reason you fall asleep after drinking the medicine. The body is exhausted and trance does not come.

When I wake up it’s well past one o’clock already. I can hear lively and somewhat intense singing going on, muffled by maloka walls. The medicine is there in my body, but I am completely sober. Might as well pop in. Congregation is rocking. Everyone is singing at the same time. I find my mattress, already stripped of its bed sheet, and plonk myself down amidst the aftermath of folks spewing their guts out and scattered mapacho stubs that failed to land in the spitting pails. Soon as I adjust my posture, there’s a Shipibo woman seated in front of me and whistling an icaro until her voice picks up and lifts me up on a high frequency of vibration into a proper trance. I feel energy streaming through my body as I move, or rather let the movement happen, which is the essence of true rest and liberation. It’s pure joy to be in the flow, to be carried away to higher realms. One is instantly recharged as if one was a device with flat batteries that got plugged in into the network and started feeding off freely available electricity once again. True nourishment for the spirit. Deep sleep has similar effect of boundaries being dissolved, albeit somewhat unconsciously, which is why those who meditate can get away without much sleep. The icaro finished, leaving me exalted. I had no idea who my maestra was. When I questioned her expressing my bewilderment at the profound effect of her song and familiarity of connection, she simply said that it is energy that brings us together and this is how medicine works. She happened to be Cesar’s cousin, but that was beside the point. Her name was Visna. She blue tobacco over me, touching my feet and torso and pressing her palms with short exhalations to impart her vital energy to me, finishing off with my crown. Amazing feeling, to be built up and rejuvenated by curanderos’s touch. While touching my feet maestra said my feet have seen a lot of walking… it made me recall recent stint in Cordillera Blanca that now seems to be another planet. I told Visna about the price of medicine paid by ashaninka brother who fell down badly, nearly killing himself, while climbing to cut the very vine we’ve been drinking. She said she saw the asusto of Chino, a shock suffered by him, while singing the icaro, and everything else that happened. Two worlds overlap, the material and the invisible, and it is not until one stands on the very junction of their meeting and is able to see both realms at the same time that the understanding arises. Until it happens, all one can do is suspend their disbelief.

I never cared for academic pursuits, as experiential learning is where it’s at. There’s no environment more challenging than the jungle that I know of, and this is why the benefits of learning are so great. Maestra bids me farewell and goes back to her mattress across the room, leaving me with a fat mapacho to finish off. I barely have a chance to close my eyes when Cesar plonks down in front of me, joined by his wife Fidelia on his side. Finally, I am graced with Cesar’s presence during the ceremony for the first time since my arrival. Hooray! Good things in good time! As of late he’s so loaded with patients that everything else has taken a back seat, as far as attending do vagabond disciples go. After finishing the icaro and giving me a sopla, I have a chance to inquire how is the medicine on his end. “Very, very, very good!” he announces emphatically, swinging his head sideways in affirmation, “very strong and clean.” Of course it would be… it’s been cooked in earnest, with sweat, tears and laughter in one continuous bout without putting out the fire three days and three nights while we kept to the appropriate dieta and put our heart into it. Cesar reported that the onset was so strong he had to meditate well to centre himself, almost leaving moloka at one point… our friend Bob thought he was dying, which made Cesar assume his responsibilities. He giggles while Fidelia’s eyes grow big, which always is the case when she gets excited. “Platoncito, ask Bob how he is feeling?” Fidelia was likewise worried about Bob sailing in rough seas earlier on as everyone is connected in the medium of the ceremony. I translate her question to Bob and get most positive and calm as your next reincarnation of Buddha response that all is well. I can tell he is going to cruise through his dieta. “Bob is good. Storm has passed,” I confirm. “Platoncito, we care for you very much,” Fidelia hugs me warmly. “You are a part of the family, you know that!” Of course I do. I can feel it. That’s why I come back every time, in spite of all the insanity and noise going on day in and day out. We share another laugh. I stick around for a few more icaros, even though trance is long gone, bid good-night to maestros as I’m gonna be leaving first thing in the morning and take off to my room for a virtual date with my princess in all the pixelated glory a video chat can afford. Once in bed and resting, medicine comes back just like that. There I am, snuggling into the pillow and narrating this very story with snakes swimming behind my eyelids, until it gets too much and I have to run out from under my mosquito net trying not to vomit before reaching my favourite tree to pass on the nutrients to the soil. The purge leaves me shaking in the knees. Night wind tugs and pulls on the leaves up above, getting stronger by the minute and making foliage rustle in a turbulent jig. With arms outstretched I embrace the vortex localised above me, feeling energy freely flowing through my body and out of my open palms. Trance is back… what an amazing night! Who would have thought? I was on the verge of desperation, thinking of bailing out, and now this gift.

Things happen the way they do for a good reason; to see the benefit and to remain grateful in the face of disaster is a skill worth acquiring as it goes long way towards transcending oneself. Mad roosters will soon be tearing their throats to announce inevitable dawn and I still need to finish the packing as today we are due to get back to the jungle where our ashaninka friend awaits our prompt return.

Thanks for reading… part II is coming up. It goes still deeper as healing process of Chino goes ahead. Everyday has been absolutely epic but I promise to keep it short next time.