The Ants Go Marchin' While The Humans Be Trippin'

So I mentioned in a recent post that we were going to see a shaman on Thursday, which we totally did; however, I was fairly mistaken as to actual the contents of experience -- in fact, no cuy were harmed in the making of this ritual. The shaman that we saw was very different than the healers at Jambi Huasi. She is actually the host-mom that Michelle has been living with. She works both as a partera (midwife) and a traditional shaman. So much to my surprise, I had yet another opportunity to add a new and unusual experience to my repetoir.

And boy was it strange.

Michelle´s host family lives in Rucallacta, which is a very small, rural town just outside of Archidona. We headed first over to her house; Natalie and Chris were running late, so we didn´t get there until around 8pm. Their living conditions are even more simple and homely than the ones I have been enduring (though they are rather similar to what I experienced during my home stay in Costa Rica). They don´t have a front door, or any doors for that matter. The house is rather small -- very small, in fact -- with a little detached wooden building for the kitchen. The ritual was to take place in her "farmhouse", which Michelle told us was about a 5 minute walk away. In retrospect, the Shaman´s insistence on our usage of her many pairs of rubber boots should have been an obvious foreshadowing of the harrowing trek to come. It actually turned out to be more like a 15-20 minute hike through dense forest -- this was probably the most isolated I have felt throughout the entire trip. We were definitely in the jungle, the mighty jungle. But we eventually made it, and the so-called farmhouse was actually pretty impressive. It consisted of a series of wooden buildings open to the outside, which included an upstairs treehouse-esque addition. We all piled in to one of the buildings and took our seats on some wooden benches around the perimeter.

So remember the whole comment about it being strange? Well, here comes the beginning...

Upon entering the building, we were quickly faced with a rather surprising discovery: there were ants. Lots of them. No, no -- I don´t think you quite understand. There were an unbelievable number of ants. The room we was probably 12 feet in width -- the line of ants appeared as if from nowhere on one end of the room and stretched all the way across, disappearing underneath the bench (that I was unhappily perched upon) on the other side. And these weren´t your typical, everyday ants. They were big, they were mean, and when they bit you, it hurt (I would know; in fact, my bites still hurt). And this was no single file line that they had formed. Indeed, these guys were clearly not big fans of childhood songs, because they were certainly not marching one by one. The trail of ants was easily 6 inches from side to side. There were hundreds of them, probably easily over a thousand. I can´t even begin to describe the sight. Suffice it to say that it was by far the most ants I had ever seen in my entire life.

And then came more.

But before that, there was a bit of an interlude, during which the humans actually made some progress in the war against the insects (They're doing their part. Are you?).

Ah, but before that, I need to backtrack a bit and tell you about the purpose of this ritual. Essentially, what we were told beforehand was that we were going to take part in a ceremony involving the consumption of ayahuasca, an alcoholic, herbal tea with hallucinogenic properties; this ceremonial concoction is traditionally used by Shamans to induce visions of about their lives, the future, etc. Sounds pretty intense, eh? We were warned beforehand that we should avoid eating after noon, because the drink sometimes had the tendency to make people ill (but seeing as I had absolutely no intention whatsoever of drinking the stuff, while everyone else starved themselves, I pigged out on some delicious street food).

Ok, so moving forward. Or backward. Err -- continuing on. Where were we? Ah, the ants. I´m sure you´re all wondering what the heck happened with that whole deal. Well, the shaman informed us that, seeing as we were newcomers -- not to mention practitioners Western medicine -- the spirits and animals didn´t want us around and were thus trying to frighten us off (quite effectively, I might add). Well, she wasn´t going to let that stand in her way -- she had a quick answer in the form of spitting a liquid (what we assumed was, and later discovered to indeed be, ayahuasca -- it smelled unbelievably strongly of alcohol) on top of the ants in a very theatrical fashion. And as I mentioned above -- it worked. At least, at first. The ants seemed to really not like the stuff (for good reason, as you´ll soon see), and immediately started dispersing. The problem, however, is that now instead of going in a nice, uniform line from point A to B, they were instead spreading out across the entire floor. Well, once again, the shaman was not one to give up hope. Solution number two involved putting a burning piece of log next to the benches to try to smoke them out -- one of the oldest tricks in the book. Again, a valiant effort, but only a brief reprieve.

So here´s where it got really strange.

The ants went absolutely nuts. They started coming out of nowhere. They must have had a nest somewhere underneath the bench, because the hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand that I described previously was exponentially augmented to an astounding, terrifying degree. There...were...THOUSANDS. They were everywhere. At one point they tried collectively retreating up a pillar, and they literally covered the thing from top to bottom. It was unreal. Now, at this point, we were pretty much all ready to give up the whole experience and get the heck out of there while we still could. But we didn´t get the chance. Cue shaman technique #3: raging fireball attack. This tactic is actually a combination of the previous two -- she simply took another big swig of alcohol, and blew it directly onto the burning log sitting amongst the hoard of ants. And just like that, a burst of fire erupted toward the ceiling, and the ant´s army was reduced in size-- but not even nearly noticeably so. We were still vastly outnumbered. But, after continuing this for a number of minutes, chasing the hoard to various locations around the hut, we really did start to make a dent in their forces. I can´t even begin to explain the sheer magnitude of insecticide that was taking place. There were ant corpses strewn all about the floor. You could practically hear there tiny little screams. As much as I despise the use of semantic redundancy, there is really only one word that can adequately describe the situation: unreal.

After effectively decimating our adversaries reserves and finding they that still kept coming, we decided to take our ritual elsewhere -- namely, to the safety to of the second floor. So we relocated, and it was then finally time for the ceremony to begin.


And then, believe it or not, it got even stranger.

The shaman came out dressed in her traditional garb, which was really neat. She laid down some sort of leapord-like animal skin, a tortoise shell, and a variety of other strange items such as leaves and herbs. She then took her seat at the head of the circle (does that even work?). I had asked prior to coming to make sure that she wouldn´t be offended if I was merely an observer, and Michelle had insisted that she would not. So while I took my place as a mere onlooking, the others each in turn took part in the following series of rituals. She started the ceremony by rolling up a tobacco leaf cigarette, taking a few puffs and then passing it around. Next she took a long pipe and blew tobacco directly into the nostrils of those particpating. They were instructed not to breath the tobacco in through their nose, and immediately afterwards blew it out into a tissue. Those who experienced it said that it gave them a bit of a buzz, and was rather calming. After that, she gave everyone a shot of a strong sugarcane alcohol (mixed with some other plants, I believe), which is supposed to be taken before the hallucinogenic drink. And lastly, the moment everyone (even me) had been waiting for, she went around the circle with shots of the true object of everyone´s curiosity, the ayahuasca. Most everyone but myself participated in the various rituals, including taking shots of the drink; a few braves souls even went back for seconds. After everyone had had their share, she did a "cleansing" excercise, during which she cleaned us with a leafy brush, and also proceeded to spit more ayahuasca into the air (most of which seems to subsequently land on my face). She told us afterwards that there had been some bad spirits there that night, but they had appropriately been dealt with. Oh yeah, she also sang some traditional songs in Kichwa, which were really beautiful. She also invited us to sing some songs -- we mostly just sang silly ones, but Michelle did a really wonderful rendition of a Indian song from her childhood. Finally she turned off all the lights, used her brush tool to do a little seated dance, and basically allowed the drunks to trip out.

Now, while nobody had powerful visions of their future, it sounded like the purported effects of the ayahuasca were at least somewhat confirmed -- my companions claimed to have experienced everything from mild to profound, reporting strange feelings, visual hallucinations like lights and spots, and even feelings of half of their body spinning while the other half stayed still. Pretty wild. On the other hand, although the mental effects of the drink were quite variable, the purely physical ones were quite ubiquitous among all of the participants; nearly everyone who tried the drink ended up vomiting shortly afterwards, and many of them were also faced with the charming surprise of liquidy explosions from both ends. It was quite the sight to see, as everyone ran, one by one, down from the top of the farmhouse to take their turn in the bushes. 


Score one for abstinence.

And thus concluded yet another night of nearly unbelievable Ecuadorian antics. In fact, I´m sure quite a few of you are sitting there now, contemplating, if not openly professing, your incredulous disbelief of my wild assertations. Indeed, if I wasn´t there myself, I probably wouldn't believe them either. But trust me, I couldn´t even begin to make this stuff up.