LIFE NEXT TO THE EQUATOR'S LINE

We stayed several days in Falco's place in downtown Quito. Falco is the director of Fine Arts College at Quito University. He has some obsession for Mexican wrestling and a fridge covered with all sort of stickers ranging from Jesus Christ to the Transformers. If he feels alone he sits a Mazinger Z replica  to diinner. Now he adds extra plates for these hitch-hikers. Falco is one of those who believe that Art ought to wander out of the walls of Academy. Working together with an organization of sexual workers he designed an image of Virgin Mary that would cater for them. And so was born "Nuestra Señora de la Cantera".

We were not impressed at all by Quito's churches. Latin America is becoming a bit monotonous in that way. Guidebooks describe churches with such detail that one would imagine backpackers are ecclesiastical researchers. The colonial era common to all the countries in the region causes that there is always a La Merced or San Francisco church waiting for us at any city. Moreover, But if you want us to talk about them, let us point that San Francisco church incarnates a fashion that would have repelled that wondeful ascetic monk Francisco de Assis was. He would have found God among "three little birds right on my doorstep singing a song..." and definitely not in gold layered altars. In any case, those stone cathedrals erected by indigenous craftmen call a dramatic lich treat under Quito's stormy skyline.

And we eventually got to "Mitad del Mundo", literally "Half of the World", where one is to find the symbollic line dividing our globe in two halfs. While GPS has come to say  that the 30 meter tall stone landmark is displaced 240 m from the actual spot, it is not any less magical for us. As to hitch-hikers who have made it here from the frozen edges of the Antarctic continent, we are delighted with the event. We suddenly realized that it's been a year and a half since we became "Acrobats of the Road" in plural, which include 9 months of ongoing exploration of South America. Stepping over the Equator's line, in the land of bananas and butterflies, the memory of icebergs seems unreal. But the esence here is celebrating celebrate the mistery of the other half we haven't yet explored.

History relates that a French mission conducted by Charles Marie de la Condamine realized in 1736 the measurements that conclusively proved that latitude 0 wrapped the planet at this spot. A lesser known bit of data is that the same research lead to the outline of the Metrical System, which came to dethrone yards, feet and inches much for the sorrow of British and knackers. The comitive actually walked overland from Cuenca in several stages in their attempt to find the elusive line. The poor Frenchmen couldn't possibly have known that Andean people would ignore their meticulous task just to keep saying their beloved "ahicito no más" when referring either to ten meters or a kilometer. The "metrical expedition" seems to have found a healty balance between work and play, judging by the odd proportion of blue eyed "cholos" in tiny communities like Victoria del Portete and Tarqui, as I personally observed in 2008 while surveying a mining conflict. The French were not dumb, they could have followed their invisible line acros Africa, but I guess lions were less of a tempting option. Way or another, their epic, metric tour gave name to the nation of Ecuador.

Laura and I are enthusiastic to camp in the Equator's line, but we soon learn it's forbidden. That same night finds us in Calacalí, a neighbouring town, equally crossed by the line. It's really easy to make friends in Equador. We first called it dinner time at a corner comedor where we ordered achiras de cerdo and potatoes. We then asked the lady in charge where could we set up our tent. Along with her daughter, they inmediatly suggested their garden. They forecasted the main plaza was not a good  option with wandering drunkmen and reggetòn crasy youngsters with loud speakers. For us, it's more than solving the housing situation. It's a chance to sample how's life in the line of the Equator for an average family. I am glad at the mere contemplation of how they filter grains to prepare morocho. Rosario complains her husband is in a bad mood after she banned him from going out to bet in cock fights. Her mother sustains a similar drama. At a moment we can see how two neighbours drag her drunk husband in, his tongue literally out and his legs as dead hanging elements. In top of that, Rosario and his mother have risen their nephews together. The children were abandoned by their mother crawling. Father works in Quito as security guard and visits them once a month. It's a pitiful Latin frame: two women surviving in spite of their slothful husbands.

When I started travelling, my central motivation was to flag the message that it was possible to go around the world finding good intentioned people. I assume the continuity of this round the world hitch-hiking trip is still a proof of that. However, my pen is increasingly inclined to feature this every day battles od ordinary people. While some trips are challenge centered (reaching Alaska, etc)  and I can still remember myself akin with such lines, I can't now imagine a journey deprived of ideology. America is sorrounding us, not its monuments. I refer to the magnific, odd America, a locus terribilis capable of -even- surviving itself, where dreams ambush behind the dark glimpses of its inhabitants.

Rosario's aunt arrives, greets us and rises a bag of chicken bones that will be her dog's treat. Keeping them lifted enacts a severe speech about 2012. She assures that draughts and famine will come, and that our politicians should prepare us by teaching the population how to grow tomatoes in a bath tube. While she ushes, her 5 years old son presses over her leg an electric massage appliance someone ordered from a TV sales show. That -too- is America.

SIX DIAMONDS UNDER COTOPAXI'S SHADOW

Our stay in Macas worked as a homey-refill station before hitting the road again towards the Quilotoa region, in the high and cold Equadorian Andes. Just after getting off a 1967 Nissan Patrol I found a playing card on the road, s six od iamonds. Since I began travelling in 2005 I have came across many abbandoned playing cards. I very often felt tempted to collect the, but never did until now, driven buy the quest to collect the whole set randomly as the road decides to deliver them in front of my eyes.

Sonw-capped Cotopaxi reflected upon the indigenous women'e eyes as we all shared a pick up truck. We were bound for no specific destination. SO we welcomed a farmer's suggestion to visit his community, called Guayama, and stay at his families' place.

Inside Cesar's house, women peal potatoes and prepare mid-day meal. Out of the sudden, they say they want to make a special request. Surprised, they ask if we know any agronomic engineer who may want to help their community ti improve the arid land's productivity...

Cesar and his poncho whirling on the wind.... Next morning, we are invited to join the family to the market taking place in a nearby vilage called Guangaje.

As the community meets in front of the church to trade vegetables and llamas, dedicated artists perform a typical dance....

and they effectively gather an elegantly clad audience.

Three women, three llamas. The one unbelievable thing we experiences in Guangaje was mass. Not that we suddenly became believers, but the priest had a Toyota pick up and was driving us to Quilotoa after mass, so we showed some interest. Italian born, the priest openly told the indigenous faithful ones that people in Europe could no longer have babies as a consequence of condoms. Apparently, he was just happy watching at locals having 8 or 10 kids per family when they clearly can't afford to raise them, forcing them to emigrate to big cities like Quito were they loose their identity. There has to be a relationship between poverty and demographic, not as one causing the other, but as the second stressing the first one...

MEANING AND PREPARATION OF AYAHUASCA - A HANGING VINE FROM SKY

TRANSLATED BY ERIC BLAIR - My word wizard!

“Do you all want to try Ayahuasca?”—in Pascual’s proposition there was no sign of taboo. After a week in the jungle we now felt integrated into the family. We knew the character of each and every child. We knew that Manolo was rowdy and daring, and kept hoping for a smile out of MARCELLI who seemed not to have found in her three years of existence a reason to show facial expressions. We had a special connection with Cristian who had confided in us his reservations about studying in the city, and afterwards had taught us how much he knew about the jungle (we, in an unfair trade, taught him how to play chinchon). We had towering vines cut by machete in order to accept the internal wáter that flows through them, swum in their rivers, and tried all their manjar, accompanying them even in the peculiar banquet of sampling ayangos, giant red ants ingested alive after taking off their wings. In this context the invitation was offered.


We haven’t entered the jungle in search of ayahuasca, but we have seen it. According to Pascual the concoction is a vital part of the Shuar culture. The plant communicates a vision to them that can be about the past, present, or future. Not only adult men take it but also women and children. “When one is little it is possible to have a vision that he or she will live 80 or 100 years or have to kill a man or go to war.”


The jungle is that which gives food to the Shuar and provides them with materials for their huts and canoes. It’s logical as well that the jungle, reconfigured behind the mask of ayahuasca, that guides them in that ritual journey of introspection. They have wandered in the jungle for millennia to come across this hidden compass, the heavenly vine, as its etymology suggests. All of this reveals a know-how, a symbolic domestication and practicality of nature.

 The scheduled night we walked barefoot in the mud-as always- to the family kitchen. When we entered we saw Pascual waiting on us with a serene pose next to the ayahuasca that with much love he had worked on all afternoon. First, he had chosen very carefully the vines. He had cut them in equal parts and next, with his machete, had scraped off the mosses that were adhered to the bark. In order to avoid a “bad dream,” he had imitated his ancestors and wrapped very carefully the green residue and returned them to the jungle. With a large stone he grinded each little trunk, adding a dosage of a leaf of yiaji to each crushed up trunk. In the perpetual fire at the center of the hut he had boiled the potion, surrounded by curious little chickens and his dogs until he obtained a dense syrup.




An inoffensive marmalade. It was this that the amber concentrate seemed when Laura and I accepted our cups. She and I were arriving to this common crossroad of destiny from completely different routes. During her pre-trip life Laura had had an attitude of rejection towards any substance that promised to distort in any way her consciousness. Perhaps the double morale of our contradictory society had worked its way into her, a double standard that breaths a relaxed atmosphere of harmful drugs like alcohol and tobacco but catalogues as “dangerous” these substances that are less functional for the production line. Honestly, her impermeability towards any type of temptation had always surprised me. However, it seemed to me that she maintained these barriers because of pride for which her curiosity showed.



Mi case was different. I had never traveled for the hunt of “altered states of consciousness,” but I had tried them out with a collector’s intrigue, with the same ritual inquiry I have when I expose myself to new cultures, languages, and places. I had never pilgrimaged to Catamarca in search of San Pedro that whispers the meaning of my life nor had I spent more than an afternoon in the coffee shops of Amsterdam or Christina. I met many travelers on mystical journeys who traveled all of Latin America with expectations to have magical encounters with some mushroom or plant. Aside from a few exceptional cases, these cases seemed to me a marathon-like catharsis with the urban saturation as a point of refuge. They are valid escapes-but escapes in the end-made by a miserable soul used to moving through the subways and the working around schedules. I had abandoned very early in life that world, with two foundational addictions as my first-time gear: poetry and the road. Perhaps because of having this lifestyle that I had always dreamed—constant travel—I never felt any urgency to dig out secret pockets of the soul in search of other senses. I had had mystical experiences with acids in India and I can say I learned from them, but I wasn’t waiting around for them, but better said had stumbled upon them through opportune invitations.



Now the case was the same. I had stumbled upon ayahuasca and I accepted it calmly. Next to me was Laura in a fix. The stories of “enlightenment” and heightened understanding that we had both heard about were striking to her, but the stories recounted to us about travelers vomiting and defecating themselves upon drinking the concoction instilled fear in her. Perhaps what we shared in common about ayahuasca was that we didn’t expect it to be a delivery of clarity given the uncertainty of our lives.

When Pascual put the cup before me I drank it with respect, following the practiced taught to me by the Russians in order to chug any given drink: exhale all the air and drink the liquid with the instinct of breathing demanded by the lungs. When the cup reached Laura, she was about to reject it. I suppose that Jimena’s, Pascual’s fourteen year old daughter, presence encouraged Laura to drink. In the middle of the Amazon, the brave Laura was putting her consciousness into the hands of a vine.



For a half an hour, both of us felt a certain abdominal discomfort. Pascual watched us quietly as if he were a stone guardian with peace ambushed on his face, almost abstract. Around the light bulb night butterflies fluttered in a fury. Then came the moment that Pascual suggested we return to the house we were staying at in the village. On the way wack, the mud felt morbid, immaterial. Laura vomited on the way. Next to each other inside our tent set up inside the cabin, we both let ourselves go with the plant. I’m not going to talk here about Laura’s visions (see her blog), and I’m afraid that my own are of little inspiration and not so exciting.



As always, I kept my pen and notebook at hand (once in Laos, an involuntary combination of antimalarial medicine and marijuana made me write a kilometric poem). The colors and geometric patterns began to parade around my closed eyelids. In addition, in the old Indochina, an experienced Frenchman swore to me that ayahuasca submerged itself into a person without piety in the depths of miseries. I believed I maintained a level of acceptable coherence in my life and I left the plant to be the judge. Think about my mistakes, I supposed I could be judged based on my exaggerated love of the road, for having left behind my studies, for being almost a stranger to my nieces and nephews (whose birthdays I sometimes remember), for taking my stories and the social journey as sacred.



But such a judgment never came. Geometric figures, snakes, masks that seemed to be molded in African ebony appeared and dissolved. Fractal outlines, multiples of themselves. Among all this picturesque carnival I managed to see cursive letters drawn in the void. Later, I saw the cover of my own book, Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil. Suddenly, a map of South America appeared next to it, and it was being filled with cursive writing that was now more intense and fierce. In those days I had certain minor dilemmas about how to fit all the realities and challenges of such an extensive continent. Latin America, for me, was infinite, and we were too curious for our own good wandering around this region. I felt then that the plant was advising me to limit the next book to South America in order to give more protagonism to each story and each struggle.



Speaking of struggles, soon after surged a sequence that both Laura and I shared. In a painting, the Shuar were coming out of the bushes of the jungle waving their spears and blowpipes, closing in files against the threat of mining companies. Their faces looked painted as if in signal of war and they adorned themselves with feathers. Among them, to my greatest surprise, was I, also holding a spear (then I remembered that Florentino, another Shuar, had given me the nickname Nanki, or “spear”). In the background the phrase “You’ll never convince us” resonated.



Those two visions were the clearest. During the four hours that the effect lasted, neither of us lost lucidity. At most we were slightly dazed. In the morning I asked Pascual if maybe I had had a lower dosage than Laura. He responded to me what I had already suspected: the plant chooses, if there were no more visions it was because I didn’t need them.



The human mind is like an onion with different levels of consciousness, an infinity of internal folds. For a system that values the dog-like attention of the individual to the orders of a boss, substances like ayahuasca or marijuana can implicate a threat to this system´s foundation. The alteration of consciousness is produced, and at much more embarrassing and pernicious levels, during the excess of alcohol, a venerated and promoted state from the age of fifteen and up. But it is accepted because it permits a letting-go of tension and anxiety generated by consumerism and because of that contributes to its continuity. When the alteration of consciousness, in turn, is accompanied by dangerous learning that may challenge or contest the established order, then we work for the imposition of discredited labels. It doesn’t matter what the manuals of the efficient contributor to society say, the plant has earned itself a spot in the world. It has been officially declared Cultural Patrimony of Peru, and it is used by some psychiatrists to treat phobias. I interpret the disinterested offering of the Shuar and a petition for alliance given their problems (thus the vision of the spear).



If you, the unknown reader, are considering the option of going off to the jungle in search of the wisdom of this plant, don’t forget that you will be using for your benefit an element of its culture. Your ethic will tell you until what point you deserve to indulge in these fruits without knowing the strength of the roots. The Amazon is, to use chess terms, in check, and it is much more than ayahuasca: it is depredation, mining companies, and multinational oil companies. You can see here our humble attempt of giving back to our Shuar friends. Happy travels!

NAME-GIVERS OF JUNGLES AND SACRED WATERFALLS

TRANSLATED by Eric Blair

We were getting close to Tsunki, a Shuar community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When we had everything under control, one of the passengers in the canoe told us that Pascual Yampis, our local contact, had left for Macas. We feared that the rest of the community would be hostile or unfriendly towards our visit. When the canoe finally arrived in Tsunki we were exhausted and we didn’t even know if we would be well-received. However, by only mentioning Pascual, his wife, Rosana, came up to the precarious dock and gave us our welcoming. We climbed the stairs carved out of mud and with timidity took cover behind Rosana and her children, among other locals who looked at us perplexedly.

A wooden cabin separated from the ground by some wooden boards was assigned to us. Inside we set up our tent to protect us from the various insects of unpredictable size. I noticed that on top of each cabin there were solar panels. Other dwellings in the community were simply huts thatched with straw in the traditional style. Later, we would learn that they were not homes but kitchens. In the middle of everything a wide open space served as a soccer field. We fell in exhaustion on top of the sleeping bags and deeply slept for three hours, lulled by an amazon diluvium, until we were called to dinner.

  

In the famliy kitchen we were invited to dinner, seated at a school bench serving as a table, in an area separated from the kitchen by a partition formed by some planks between which the fire’s smoke was filtered. One of the little girls put two plantain leaves in front of us which wrapped up a ration of chicken with sliced up hearts of palm, a typical dish known as ayampaco.

Afterwards –just as I feared- we succumbed to the chicha ….. The preparation of chicha, made from boiled yuca, is a task delegated to the women, who spit the chicha into a pot so that human bacteria can make the yuca ferment. Slowly, the drink develops a higher alcohol content. The final concoction is served in a cup made from “pilche,” a native fruit. I had learned to fear that yellow hemisphere filled with sour liquid. But I had to accept it in order not to offend our hosts. Laura can certify that is is very difficult to find something I’m not willing to consume:  I used to consider myself an ostriche, and here I am completely defeated by the laws of the jungle. In this context I formulated a theory about the existence of an individual palate and another that is cultural and collective. And in this collective palate of the Shuar yuca is praised instead of forgiven; therefore, it is the staple tuber of Amazon villages, and assumes the role of the potato and corn of the Andean world or of wheat in Europe.

After dinner we asked for permission to go into the humble kitchen. Until then they were tending to us as if we were ambassadors –and maybe we were, from another culture- but sooner or later we wanted to break that barrier and to share space. A fire was burning in the middle of the room. The pots and cooking utensils were situated on top of a wooden table, while changinas, sugar cane baskets used by the women for collecting on the farm, were hung from the ceiling. On another table some of Pascual’s eight children sat side-by-side. There were so many children that we never got to see them all together, quiet and in the same place. We still didn’t know we would fall in love with this family. At that time the children still looked at us with a mixture of respect and fear. The first name that we memorized was Manolo’s, maybe because he was always monkeying around, dancing, or running to us wih capturaed cicadas in his little hands.

 We went back to the cabin somewhat let down because we didn’t get to have a table chat with Rosana. Five minutes later, she entered out of nowhere, sat down on the floor, and, as she breast fed her baby, began to talk to us about her life. She was 34 years old and had had nine children, one of which died from a vomiting complication. Just to reach a doctor requires a two-hour canoe ride and then a small plane to Macas. She speaks with a serenity that doesn’t omit her fortitude. She pauses after every word. The Shuar speak Spanish whimsically and with ever-changing grammar. Nevertheless, they are masters of a language just as exuberant as the jungle whose words name trees, seeds, forces, and spirits. More than just a language, it is a cosmogony. Rosana explains that each of her children possesses a Hispanic name and a parallel one from the Shuar. Cristian, the oldest of sixteen years, is Arutam (the supreme spirit of life), while Henry is Itti (wasp). She proudly clears up that all of her children are baptized, but when Laura asks if they maintain their beliefs she belts out like a geyser a mighty YES. In Egypt I went to Mount Sinai and the desert environment where the Judeo-Christian god spoke to Moses. In comparison just imagine the religion that the Amazon jungle may have dictated to man.

 

Our first encounter with that jungle occurred the following day. Cristian solemnly offered to go with us to a waterfall. It would be silly to think you could keep up with someone who has walked in this jungle since his first steps. The Shuar adolescents have very toned and robust bodies and are efficient receptors of the hunter and warrior legacy of their race. Each three or four steps Cristian tells us the name of a fruit or a tree. Just like a wave of a magic wand he makes once unknown objects shine upon the fabric of our urban ignorance. Over there is the pitchfork, and we learn that it wasn’t straw used to thatch the dwellings but instead a type of palm. There is also a plant from which they extract a poison used when fishing. A few more steps and…”You all wanna eat hearts of palm?” Cristian steps away about ten paces and with his machete begins to chop a palm tree. He returns with a cylinder the size of a bazooka, a great surprise for us who are used to small canned ones from the supermarket. After a while, with the manners that characterize him, he asks: “Would you like to try grapefruit?” With one swing of the machete it falls, with another he cuts a small piece and then offers to Laura: “Take this, ma’am.”

The journey to the waterfall isn’t simple. Sometimes we had to climb just by holding onto roots and lianas and cross fallen and mossy trees used as bridges. Cristian notices our difficulty and makes us two walking sticks made of sugar cane. He anticipates the road. He walks ahead of us and takes out all the low-lying branches. Some of his machete swings are absolutely necessary to create a path and to counterattack the slow and growing bite of the jungle. At regular intervals, other swings from his machete end up jammed in hard trees that he would never be able to take down:  through them Cristian establishes a dialogue with the jungle, perhaps even expresses his affection for them. .

Finally, we arrive to the waterfall. It’s not huge, but it creates a beautiful watering hole for swimming. I let the vertical torrent wash over my head, at least for a second. The light is magical. Before diving into the water Cristian crosses himself, executing a premeditated act of syncretism. In Shuar thought waterfalls are sacred. The Shuar men only go to some of them during periods of fasting and “with a mission,” as Cristian designates to the occasion of drinking ayahuasca. Just before he puts his foot in the water Cristian announces that the water frequently inhabits a boa. When he sees our reaction he clarifies: “It’s not a real boa. It’s the spirit of a boa.” All of this talk concerning being devoured and the essence of the creatures of the jungle is something typical of the Shuar. The jungle gives us armor, not only with mud and sweat but with its legends. Our urban world, when evoked (with difficulty) from the symbolic bushes of the jungle, is a fictional narrowness, which likely projects no shadows or influences. From below, above, and all around she is resounding. Beyond each specie it is a supportive conglomerate that contemplates the scorpion, his venom, and the exact antidote hidden in the bark of the right tree. The Shuar know about the relationships between all the entities of the forest. They are served by these relationships. They name them in myths and songs. And they die in them..

“We don’t need to go shopping. The jungle gives us everything. We live free here,” explains a proud Cristian. Some might see the Shuar as a relegated Amazon people that abandoned the loincloth just a few decades ago. In my opinion, however, they make up a sovereign community from their environment. There is no division of labor here. Each person knows how to fish, hunt, and cure, and could parachute into any other sector of the jungle and, like a seed, could reproduce each aspect of the culture. In comparison, a city kid is an inept addict to videogames. And because of this I fear the moment when the mining and logging companies contaminate their environment, forcing them to move to the city when they can no longer hunt their huanta or armadillo and are made to be common workers in a building under construction. Furiously and with powerlessness I am reminded of the Ayoreos that I met outside of Santa Cruz de la Sierra who were once great hunters but now weave cell phone cases or panhandle in the streets.

We went back to Tsunki. Under each step of our boots the texture of the jungle, woven in a language of light and chlorophyll, crunches. It has only been a three-hour hike, but only now do I start to feel convinced –and not only theoretically- that the defense of indigenous cultures must not be understood as a behavior based upon altruism or backing them into a corner of anthropological rarities, but as a horizontal line, a barricade resistance, together with the ancestral wisdoms of the planet, together with the few who can educate us about respect towards the land.