SHAMANS ON DEVELOPMENT
Midnight, November 23rd, 2009, Huacabamba, Peru.Yachak, the shaman, wakes me up. He is adorned in a feathered headdress. He leads me through the dark to his voodoo, shaman room. There are stuffed animals everywhere; weird plants are hanging from the ceiling and a large table is littered with crucifixes, human skulls, llama foetuses, blood and feathers. Yachak pulls out (what I can only describe as) his ¨He Man, Castle Greyskull¨ type sword and stabs it deep into the dirt outside – apparently this is the signal for the ceremony to begin.
Next, a bucket of San Pedro is brought in. Half an hour later and the floor starts to melt away. The full moon becomes disturbingly close and the shaman beckons me towards an ancient flight of stairs leading up into the clouds – I try to follow him but he is too quick and he dissappears.
Twelve hours later, 3ºC glacial water wakes me up. I have been through hours of chanting, dancing, jumping, skull throwing, moon worshipping and sword waving. Once I get out of the freezing water – spluttering, naked and confused – my shaman has a satisfied look on his face. Clearly he thinks that the ceremony has been enough to remove any bad spirits from the ¨gringo¨ world.
The sad thing is that while he sits there in his jungle retreat in Northern Peru, sipping on San Pedro and contemplating the Universe, I sit at my computer: just one of a million feeding the global system that eats away at Yachak`s piece of jungle paradise.
A last desperate communication from an elder race to a younger one – stop advancing and take a look at the world around you.
