Summer 2011: Amos Part 1

What country is this? And is that little toddler eating a stick?

I have a quiz for you. Where do you find short people, immense tropical plants, stifling heat, and roads teeming with motorcycle-taxis? The women wear headscarves and everyone wakes up before sunrise to pray. Men and women pray separately. Alcohol is forbidden. Nobody has change for a $10 bill. People warn you of evil spirits in the jungle and engage in animal sacrifice. They eat piles of rice topped with fish and are incredibly generous with everything they have.

Welcome to Peru!

Okay, not everything is like Indonesia. The men wear long tunics and never cut their hair. They don’t smoke, play sports, or eat grapes. Instead of traditional jamu medicine, they conduct spiritual surgeries to heal patients whose Western doctors have given up on them. They sacrifice lambs on a weekly basis.

Kids get bored everywhere, even at animal sacrifices.

You may be thinking that this doesn’t sound like Peru to you. I didn’t even mention Macchu Picchu. You’re right. I’m describing the Israelite Brothers religious sect that meets in the central rainforest three times a year for a purification festival. When I was invited by the owner of my hostel, I jumped at the chance to get out of Lima. I crossed the Andes on an overnight bus to a remote town that explodes two weeks a year during the coffee harvest. A short motorcycle taxi ride brought me outside town to the tiny temple of the Israelite Brothers.

Considering the fact that few people at this temple had access to internet, they asked me some impressive questions about the US’s interventions in Libya and Afghanistan, the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mentioned this to the hostel owner who invited me. “Oh, yes,” she said, “We’re all very interested in the end of the world. They want to learn more about the seven plagues that are going to exterminate humankind.”

I wasn’t exactly a model member of the festival. I went swimming in the river every day with the little kids, though the other adults weren’t allowed to swim because the river was both physically and spiritually polluted. Sharing four bathrooms and zero showers with 100 other people did not sound like my idea of a purification festival. I did not participate in any of the 4 am prayers, and I had a pretty poor track record on the seven hours of daily blessings. I snuck in three square meals on the day of fasting.

You can tell this isn't Indonesia because the day care/art class I'm teaching is co-ed.

So much for cleansing.

Still, I was fascinated by the idea of spiritual surgery. The healer explained that spiritual surgery is like regular surgery, except without the risk. It’s very modern—he sticks a spiritual needle in the patient's arm to connect their spiritual IV, inserts spiritual tubes into their nostrils for their spiritual oxygen, cuts them open with a spiritual scalpel and inspects them with a spiritual scope. These tools allow him to perform incredible feats like taking out all the blood in someone's body and purifying it, curing cancer, and extracting evil spirits. I met people who had been miraculously cured of cancer, sprained ankles, and of course homosexuality.

I wanted to get a full-body spiritual X-ray, but I forgot to buy the spiritual X-ray stone. I had to settle for the all-purpose spiritual purification treatment.
“Are you ready for the smoke treatment?”
“Oh no. My body doesn’t like smoke. I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Don’t worry, you’re thinking of bad smoke. This is good smoke that will purify your body.”
“But my body thinks all smoke is bad smoke.”
“Your body will understand that God sent this smoke to purify you.”
In came the healer with a heap of burning coals that smelled like a mix of burning hot peppers and rubber tires. He told us to breathe in deeply. I started coughing. When the room was choked with the toxic smoke, he told us to go to bed and not to leave until the morning.

I woke up at 3 am with a feeling all too familiar from the dog tacos I ate in Mexico four years ago. I started to crawl out of bed, but the hostel owner stopped me.
“Where are you going? You can’t leave.”
“I have diarrhea.”
“Go in the corner.”
“I have to vomit.”
“Go in the corner.”
I wasn't sufficiently dedicated to the temple to poop in it, so I stumbled out. The healer found me ten minutes later, releasing waste from both ends. He squatted down next to me and spoke in his deep, sympathetic voice.
“Did you eat papaya?”
“Yes. Just like you. We all ate papaya for dinner.”
“Ah yes. Papaya is a very strong fruit. It does this sometimes.”
Who am I to argue with a healer?
“One minute, I’ll get something to help your body recover.”
He returned with the bowl of foul smoke and guided it patiently up my nostrils while I coughed and vomited.

It took most of the night for me to convince my digestive system that it was empty. When I woke up the next day, the healer pointed out that my stomach still wasn’t spiritually empty. He helped me clean out the evil papaya spirits with a glass of holy olive oil. I politely declined his offer to spiritually purify and replace all the blood in my body because it required a 3-day inpatient recovery period.

The next day, I went on a picnic with the healer’s family. The picnic's MVP was his wife, Sister Anita, a charismatic, fierce woman who singlehandedly shepherded three children, three dogs, and 12 cows along with us. We trekked further into the jungle, where indigenous tribes sat around in Chinese-made clothing and spoke heavily accented Spanish I couldn't understand. I played with the healer’s kids all day in a river that was clearly less evil than the one near the temple. Exhausted from fighting the powerful current, we collapsed on the riverbank for a lunch of roast chicken, salad, and fried yucca. Then we jumped back in the river until it turned pink with the sunset. As darkness fell, I watched Sister Anita swat, slap, and tongue-lash her herd of eighteen back home. Finally I felt purified.

The man with the moustache is my healer, now in street clothes for our picnic.

It took 20 tries to get a decent diving picture because the older kid couldn't resist the temptation to shove his little bro off the rock and into the river.

Sister Anita walks home from the picnic.