Parra
This is where I have been tucked away for the past month. It is a house deep in Primary rain forest which I had the privilege of living in. I spent a total of three weeks there, with a short three day break between the first week and the second two. I will never forget my time there, and all it taught me.
The Food
First and foremost, this may have been the area of greatest challenge and growth for me. I ate the same simple meal every meal of every day. The meal consisted of 5 boiled bananas and some uca (potato). Occasionally the uca was replaced with papa china (a different kind of potato) and towards the end we started also eating camote (sweat potato!). Often for lunch and dinner Goosman would prepare edible leaves and plants for us to eat.
I am not sure how it works, but I probably ate a third of what I would normally eat in a day and always felt full. I would chew each bite, thinking on it and its sustenance, before taking the next. In this way I never felt hungry after a meal, and rarely between meals. If I only need so little to survive and maintain an active lifestyle (granted not nearly as active as my life sometimes is) where has all that food I have been eating my whole life gone?
To eat only the same bland food for two weeks was difficult at first. I had little choice but to quickly learn to control my cravings for pizza and Ice cream. The time I have spent in my life on the trail has been filled with food fantasies of the outside world, and here simple bean burritos and jars of peanut butter were the subject of my longing day and night. I fought these feelings by cultivating the attitude that I was eating to sustain myself, learning to truly taste everything I ate and meditating to control my thoughts. I learned to taste the sweet flavor in plain boiled potato. With much time and conscious effort I reached a mentality where could catch a thought of temptation about to form in my head, and stop it in its tracks, leaving my mind free of miserable, helpless longing.
By the time I had left that place I had eaten so faithfully only what the land produced that the soil I worked made up the blood that ran through my veins. I think that’s right, I don´t really know how often blood cells replace themselves, but either way it was a powerful connection.
Goosman
Goosman was the only human company I had for my time at Parra. Goosman was not Kichwa but Suah. For years in his home community he suffered from a strange illness where he was constantly cold. Despite living at the equator he would always wear sweat shirts, and still never be warm. The hospital did blood and urine tests, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. He left his home to search a cure, and found it in Carlos (the Kichwa shaman who owns Parra). Carlos practiced ancient cleansing rituals on Goosman, and now he only feels occasional cold in his feet on chilly mornings. Rather than returning straight home, Goosman decided to spend the three weeks with me in this hidden paradise. He is a quiet, curious man, who enjoys laughing at the interactions between the animals. He knew much and more about the jungle and liked sharing it with me. He was silently dutiful and did most of the cooking. My time there would have been lonely and vacant without him.
What is most incredible is the bond Goosman and I now feel. Despite the language barrier, an age difference of nearly twenty years, being raised in entirely different cultures, and having very different personalities there is a closeness and connection between us that one does not feel for many people. We depended on each other. For some reason spending time beyond civilization, truly existing with another person adds a death to relations.
Goosman was the only human company I had for my time at Parra. Goosman was not Kichwa but Suah. For years in his home community he suffered from a strange illness where he was constantly cold. Despite living at the equator he would always wear sweat shirts, and still never be warm. The hospital did blood and urine tests, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. He left his home to search a cure, and found it in Carlos (the Kichwa shaman who owns Parra). Carlos practiced ancient cleansing rituals on Goosman, and now he only feels occasional cold in his feet on chilly mornings. Rather than returning straight home, Goosman decided to spend the three weeks with me in this hidden paradise. He is a quiet, curious man, who enjoys laughing at the interactions between the animals. He knew much and more about the jungle and liked sharing it with me. He was silently dutiful and did most of the cooking. My time there would have been lonely and vacant without him.
What is most incredible is the bond Goosman and I now feel. Despite the language barrier, an age difference of nearly twenty years, being raised in entirely different cultures, and having very different personalities there is a closeness and connection between us that one does not feel for many people. We depended on each other. For some reason spending time beyond civilization, truly existing with another person adds a death to relations.
The Mornings
I would rise with the sun at 6am, and stand by my window to see the gorgeous Amazon glowing gold with the morning sun. Before eating I would do simple daily work outs to tone my body and mind.
After breakfast we would walk together through the woods. Goosman had a six foot blow dart tube that he would use to hunt birds. We would walk through the jungle, listening and searching for birds through the endless walls of leaves around us. Goosman would occasionally teach me a little of the plants we lived surrounded by, and I would teach him simple phrases of English.
On relaxed days we would only walk the line of traps that Goosman had created and return to the house. Most days however we hike to either the river or the waterfall. Every time we visited one or the other I felt another revelation, and grew closer to the land which I so recently was a stranger to. There is a different ambiance to a river that is surrounded by forest that has never been destroyed. It holds a deeper, realer power. It is easier to believe in the magical power of nature. It is beyond me to describe the feeling of a waterfall that still remains an untouched ancient temple of an indigenous people. With every visit to the waterfall I felt an inner thrill and joy and at the same time clear and centered.
I once doubted whether there was anything of real power or significance to the natural world, and felt that it could well be just a bunch of biomass replicating DNA. I now have felt with my mind and soul the deep flowing energy that exists in nature, and feel sure of its existence.
Afternoons
Once we returned from our daily adventure we ate lunch and rested. I would sit on my wooden stool and pass hours writing, reading Gandhi, meditating, and taking slow deeps gulps of the fresh water. There not much to write of my time on that stool (I was only sitting), but those hours were the most important of my time in Parra. I reached new levels of clearness and concentration, I thought deep and powerfully on the issues and thoughts most dear to me, I allowed new thoughts and revelations to come to me, and learnt so much just sitting in that stool. My time in that simple seat was the clearest, most restful and empowering of my life. To sit in such complete satisfaction was my daily pleasure.
Gandhi
He is a man after my own heart. During my time there the only sources of input into my brain were Goosman (who wasn´t much of a talker) and Gandhi. The ways Gandhi has permanently impacted my life are possible beyond counting. I learned from him the value of complete and constant honesty, the joy of sacrifice, the importance of strict and spritual adherence to the laws of non-violence, to always look to your own actions when you see misery in the world, and much, much more. If I do nothing else in my life I must be sure I am always striving to keep alive the light in the world that began to glow with Gandhi.
Evenings
Goosman and I would practice Yoga together in the evenings, and then cook dinner. If we were lucky enough to have ripe bananas we would make a beautiful chakoola (a sort of water banana smoothie) for a fabulous and tasty desert. By that time it was dark, and when there are no lights you rise and sleep with the sun. Before bed we would lie on the floor together and I would teach English to Goosman by candle light (the candles and the fuel in Goodman’s lighter were the only external luxuries we used). We would be comfy cozy in bed by eight every night.
