Sunday, May 17, 2009

Dream Interpretation

Saturday night was rough, between the rooster crowing and the animals sniffing around the tent, I did not get much sleep. Strangely I still felt quite refreshed when I woke up. We had a nice breakfast although it was a little damp from a small rain shower. After we ate the shaman came over and offered to help interpret any dreams or visions people had during the night. It was a slow process as he did not speak English, so everything had to be translated into Spanish then into Achuar and back again. Some of the visions were pretty wild and engendered long conversations between the shaman and our guide Celistino, but the interpretations were usually very short and positive. One person told of seeing two men with skulls for heads while on a boat. When he approached them they offered him a skull. The shaman talked to all of the Ashuar man gathered around him for several minutes about this and then told us, "you'll go on a journey where you will find a skull." We were all sure there was something he wasn't telling us. Early in the evening, I had heard a strange noise that sounded like the shaman was throwing up. Turns out there were people from around the area that had come for healing. As part of the healing, the shaman would suck on the afflicted area then spit, thus removing whatever was ailing them.
Once we were all done with our dreams and visions, the shaman told us an interesting story. Usually they don't talk about their visions, as they believe them to be intensely personal, but this one was so strange to them that they wanted us to know about it. Once we had all gone to bed the shaman and Celistino were still sitting up when they heard the leaves they use for cleansing russelling around. They looked over and saw a small person taking the leaves. The shaman shouted, "why are you stealing my leaves" and the little person took off running into the forest. There was a lot of debate about what this meant. The shaman took ayahuasca, but Celistino did not (we are not 100% sure about this) and they both saw the little person. The shaman was very upset about it that night, but the next day he said he thought there was a powerful force in our group and thought one of us had special powers.
After the shaman was done we had a very interesting cultural exchange. Several people from the community came and sang traditional songs. All the women sang about missing their men or wishing them well in battle and the one man who sang performed a traditional hunting song. Most of the women were very shy, but the man was amazing. Turns out his good singing voice paid off as he is also the best hunter in the community. After the singing, the women laid out crafts that we could buy. There were 100s of beaded bracelets and necklaces, headbands, bowls and a very rare blowgun which one of our group bought (no easy task to get that home). I will say this about the Ashuar, they are savvy businesspeople. The stuff they were selling was not cheap compared to other things I had seen in Ecuador and they negotiated hard on the prices, still you did not feel bad about giving them the money.
Once the business was done, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the lodge. On the way, we made a quick stop at the great hunters house so he could show us the boat he was building. The dugouts are made from one piece of wood. In this case our host had found a tree about a mile from home, cut it down and made the rough outline of the boat before carrying it back to his house, all in about eight hours (the Ashuar all wear watches, but the don't seem to care too much about time). We got to use his primitive tool to do some of the finish work, but I think ended up making more work for him to fix it. Once he boat is all shaped, the fire it to make it waterproof. By the way, the Ashuar word for canoe is canoe.

When we got back to the lodge, we ate lunch, then I had one of the best showers of my life and fell asleep in about 30 seconds. Later that afternoon I did the self guided tour at the lodge which was about a mile trek with signs explaining different plants and trees. I also enjoyed a cold beer with a traditional Ashuar dinner and went to bed pretty early. There is not a lot to do after it gets dark in the rain forest.

No comments: