Ayahuasca

"There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion.  This is how you live a life in two days.  And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life." -Ernest Hemingway

     Sorry for the lapse in time between blog posts.  I can only make the 27 km bus ride to town on the weekends to get internet.  We have a new volunteer on the farm, a 56-year-old American named Richard.  He´s an interesting fellow.  He has 4 degrees and speaks 3 languages fluently (English, Spanish, French) and has been living in Ecuador for the past year.  He has a very negative outlook on the future of the planet but he is such an intelligent human that you can´t help but listen when he speaks.... which is all the time.

     Work has been the same.  A few days have been pretty warm so it is important to stay hydrated since you sweat like crazy in this humidity.  We are just about ready to plant everything I think so hopefully the work load lessens a bit.  Time will tell though.

     Last night we drank Ayahuasca.  A very brief description: Ayahuasca is a vine that grows in the jungle. It has intensely spiritual properties.  Marco, the shaman we live with, prepared it for us.  We start by cutting out all meat and dairy from our diet 2 days previous.  Then the day of the ceremony we woke up at 7am to drink this tea that helps cleanse your system. 


 You basically drink a lot of it really fast and vomit.  You can´t stop drinking until you have thrown up.  Then we went the rest of the day without eating.  The ceremony started at 7pm.  Marco did his ritual of fanning the air around you and chanting to get rid of the negative energy.  Finally it was time to drink the Ayahuasca.


     We drank about a shot each.  It tasted like dirt.  Slowly the effect began to overcome us. It was as if someone turned up the volume all around us.  The sounds of the jungle were so vivid.  I also heard buzzing for around 3 hours.  You´re vision goes all crazy and you´re mind starts racing.  For me, it was like this.  Imagine that every memory you have is a drop of water.  Each memory fills a huge bucket and then suddenly that water starts getting splashed in your face.  It was just memory after memory in no particular order.  No memory stayed long enough to really go in depth with it but it was clear enough to understand it.  Then in the the physical world around me, shadows and plants started to form intodifferent animals.  Some peaceful and others not so much.  The Ayahuasca is supposed to be cleansing your body of bad energy so I was having a constant struggle between good and evil with my visions.  Then you become violently ill.  It lasted about 3-4 hours and I had so many visions about things and people in my life that it is impossible to share them all.  I woke up this morning feeling very peaceful, though weak from lack of food.  I have since refueled and had time to work out what the visions were about.  It was a very strange journey I went on last night. 

     I came to town today in hopes of catching the Lions game online but it isn´t until 8 pm tonight so I will just have to think positively.  Sorry if this post is a little scattered, it was a rough night.  This next week should be pretty routine, or as routine as life in the jungle ever can be.  Working most of the week, but Marco said something about giving us tattoos that last around 70 days.  Oh boy! What to get, what to get.  Hope everyone is having a good winter back in the states.  I´ll post some pictures and videos when I have faster internet access in about 2 weeks.  Adiós!