Version 2007.02.08

## “Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rainforest” - ©1982 by Florinda Donner-Grau

### Chapter 1

I was half asleep. Yet I could sense people moving around me. As if from a great distance, I heard the soft rustle of bare feet over the packed dirt of the hut; the coughing and clearing of throats, and the faint voices of women. Leisurely I opened my eyes. It was not quite dawn. In the semidarkness I could see Ritimi and Tutemi, their naked bodies bent over the hearths where the embers of the night's fires still glowed. Tobacco leaves, water-filled gourds, quivers with poisoned arrowheads, animal skulls, and bundles of green plantains hung from the palm-frond ceiling, appearing to be suspended in the air below the rising smoke.

Yawning, Tutemi stood up. She stretched, then bent over the hammock to lift Hoaxiwe into her arms. Giggling softly, she nuzzled her face against the baby's stomach. She mumbled something unintelligible as she pushed her nipple into the boy's mouth. Sighing, she eased herself back into her hammock.

Ritimi pulled down some dried tobacco leaves. She soaked them in a calabash bowl filled with water, then took one wet leaf and, before rolling it into a wad, sprinkled it with ashes. Placing the quid between her gum and lower lip, she sucked at it noisily while preparing two more. She gave one to Tutemi, then approached me. I closed my eyes, hoping to give the impression that I was asleep. Squatting at the head of my hammock, Ritimi ran her tobacco-soaked finger, wet with her saliva, between my gum and lower lip, but did not leave a quid in my mouth. Chuckling, she edged toward Etewa, who had been watching from his hammock. She spat her wad into her palm and handed it to him. A soft moan escaped her lips as she placed the third quid in her mouth and lowered herself on top of him.

The fire filled the hut with smoke, gradually warming the chilly damp air. Burning day and night, the hearth fires were the center of each dwelling. The smoke stains they left on the thatch ceiling set one household apart from the next, for there were no dividing walls between the huts. They stood so close together that adjacent roofs overlapped each other, giving the impression of one enormous circular dwelling. There was a large main entrance to the entire compound with a few narrow openings between some huts. Each hut was supported by two long and two shorter poles. The higher side of the hut was open and faced a clearing in the middle of the circular structure, while the lower, exterior side of the hut was closed with a wall of short poles wedged against the roof.

HTML EDITOR:

Photo Credits:

First Photo - From web-page http://www.rainforests.net/antoniomari.htm

Second Photo - From web-page http://www.valdosta.edu/~ksstewar/world.html

END HTML EDITOR

A heavy mist shrouded the surrounding trees. The palm fronds, hanging over the interior edge of the hut, were silhouetted against the grayness of the sky. Etewa's hunting dog lifted its head from under its curled-up body, and without quite waking, opened its mouth in a wide yawn. I closed my eyes, dozing off to the smell of green plantains roasting in the fires. My back was stiff, and my legs ached from having squatted for hours the day before, digging weeds in the nearby gardens.

I opened my eyes abruptly as my hammock was vigorously rocked back and forth, and I gasped as a small knee pressed into my stomach. Instinctively I pulled the hammock's sides over me to protect myself from the cockroaches and spiders that invariably fell from the thick palm-thatched roof whenever the poles holding up the huts were shaken.

Giggling, the children crawled on top and around me. Their brown naked bodies were soft and warm against my skin. As they had done almost every morning since I had first arrived, the children ran their chubby hands over my face, breasts, stomach, and legs, coaxing me to identify each part of my anatomy. I pretended to sleep, snoring loudly. Two little boys snuggled against my sides, and the little girl on top of me pressed her dark head under my chin. They smelled of smoke and dirt.

I had not known a word of their language when I first arrived at their settlement deep in the jungle between Venezuela and Brazil. Yet that had not been an obstacle to the eighty or so people occupying the shabono in accepting me. For the Indians, not to understand their language was tantamount to being aka boreki- dumb. As such, I was fed, loved, and indulged: My mistakes were excused or overlooked as if I were a child. Mostly my blunders were acknowledged by boisterous outbursts of laughter that shook their bodies until they rolled on the ground, tears brimming in their eyes.

The pressure of a tiny hand against my cheek stopped my reveries. Texoma, Ritimi's and Etewa's four-year-old daughter, lying on top of me, opened her eyes and, moving her face closer, began to flutter her stubby eyelashes against mine. "Don't you want to get up?" the little girl asked, running her fingers through my hair. "The plantains are ready."

I had no desire to abandon my warm hammock. "I wonder- how many months have I been here?" I asked.

"Many," three voices answered in unison.

I could not help smiling. Anything beyond three was expressed as many, or more than three. "Yes, many months," I said softly.

"Tutemi's baby was still sleeping inside her belly when you first arrived," Texoma murmured, snuggling against me.

It was not that I had ceased being aware of time, but the days, weeks, and months had lost their precise boundaries. Here only the present mattered. For these people only what happened each day amidst the immense green shadows of the forest counted. Yesterday and tomorrow, they said, were as undetermined as a vague dream; as fragile as a spider's web, which was visible only when a streak of sunlight sears through the leaves.

Measuring time had been my obsession during the first few weeks. I wore my self-winding watch day and night and recorded each sunrise in a diary as if my very existence depended on it. I cannot pinpoint when I realized that a fundamental change had taken place within me. I believe it all started in a small town in eastern Venezuela where I had been doing research on healing practices even before I arrived at the Iticoteri settlement.

After transcribing, translating, and analyzing the numerous tapes and hundreds of pages of notes gathered during months of field work among three curers in the Barlovento area, I had seriously begun doubting the validity and purpose of my research. My endeavor to organize the data into a meaningful theoretical framework proved to be futile, in that the material was ridden with inconsistencies and contradictions.

The emphasis of my work had been directed toward discovering the meaning that curing practices have for the healers and for their patients in the context of their everyday life activities. My concern had been in discerning how social reality, in terms of health and illness, was created out of their interlocked activity. I reasoned that I needed to master the manner in which practitioners regard each other and their knowledge, for only then would I be able to operate in their social setting and within their own system of interpretation. And thus the analysis of my data would come from the system in which I had been operating and would not be superimposed from my own cultural milieu.

While in the field I lived in the home of dona Mercedes, one of the three curers I was working with. Not only did I record, observe, and interview the curers and their numerous patients, but I also participated in the curing sessions, immersing myself totally in the new situation.

Yet I was faced day to day with blatant inconsistencies in their curing practices and their explanations of them. Dona Mercedes laughed at my bewilderment and what she considered my lack of fluidity in accepting changes and innovations.

"Are you sure I said that?" she asked upon listening to one of the tapes I insisted on playing for her.

"It's not me speaking," I said tartly, and began reading from my typed notes, hoping she would become aware of the contradictory information she had given me.

"That sounds wonderful," dona Mercedes said, interrupting my reading. "Is that really me you are talking about? You have converted me into a real genius. Read me your notes on your sessions with Rafael and Serafino."

These were the other two curers I was working with.

I did as she asked, then turned on the tape recorder once more, hoping she would help me with the conflicting information. However, dona Mercedes was not interested at all in what she had said months earlier. To her that was something in the past and thus had no validity. Boldly she gave me to understand that the tape recorder was at fault for having recorded something she had no memory of having said. "If I really said these things, it's your doing. Every time you ask me about curing I start talking without really knowing what I am saying. You always put words into my mouth. If you knew how to cure, you wouldn't bother writing or talking about it. You would just do it."

I was not willing to believe that my work was useless. I went to see the other two curers. To my great chagrin they were not much help either. They acknowledged the inconsistencies and explained them much as dona Mercedes had.

In retrospect my despair over this failure seems comical. In a fit of rage, I dared dona Mercedes to burn my notes. She willingly complied, burning sheet after sheet over the flame of one of the candles illuminating the statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar in her curing room. "I really can't understand why you get so upset about what your machine says and what I say," dona Mercedes observed, lighting another candle on the altar. "What difference does it make about what I do now and what I did a few months ago? All that matters is that the patients get well. Years ago, a psychologist and a sociologist came here and recorded everything I said on a machine like yours. I believe it was a better machine: It was much larger. They were only here for a week. With the information they got, they wrote a book about curing."

"I know the book," I snapped. "I don't think it's an accurate study. It's simplistic, superficial, and lacks a true understanding."

Dona Mercedes peered at me quizzically, her glance half pitying, half deprecatory. In silence I watched the last page turn to ashes. I was not bothered by what she had done; I still had the English translation of the tapes and notes. She got up from her chair and sat next to me on the wooden bench. "Very soon you'll feel that a heavy load has been lifted off your back," she consoled me.

I was compelled to go into a lengthy explanation concerning the importance of studying non-Western healing practices. Dona Mercedes listened attentively, a mocking smile on her face.

"If I were you," she suggested, "I would accept your friend's offer to go hunting up the Orinoco River. It would be a good change for you."

Although I had intended to return to Los Angeles as soon as possible in order to conclude my work, I had seriously considered accepting a friend's invitation for a two-week trip into the jungle. I had no interest in hunting but believed I might have the opportunity of meeting a shaman, or witnessing a curing ceremony, through one of the Indian guides he planned to hire upon arriving at the Catholic mission, which was the last outpost of civilization.

"I think I should do that," I said to dona Mercedes. "Maybe I'll meet a great Indian curer who will tell me things about healing that not even you know."

"I'm sure you'll hear all kinds of interesting things," dona Mercedes laughed. "But don't bother to write them down- you won't do any kind of research."

"Oh, really. And how do you know that?"

"Remember I'm a bruja," she said, patting my cheek. There was an expression of ineffable gentleness in her dark eyes. "And don't worry about your English notes safely tucked away in your desk. By the time you return, you won't have any use for your notes."