Tales from the Medicine Trail: Tracking Down the Health Secrets of Shamans, Herbalists, Mystics, Yogis, and Other Healers

Bernie the shaman pushed his chest out, beamed a cockeyed smile, and announced, "I'm going to save you money, big guy." I eyed him warily. Opening his hands with a generous flourish, he continued, "We gonna take the bus to Boa Vista. It's really cheap." I frowned and said, "Are you nuts, Bernie? The bus is cheap because it's a last resort. Do you really want to ride on these roads almost all the way to Venezuela?" He put on his best hurt expression, the one he uses when I challenge his ideas. "Hey man, don't talk to me like that," he said. "I'm your brother."

We were bug-bitten from head to toe and weary from our uncomfortable weeks on the Amazon River. I welcomed the idea of saving money, but the choice between an hour plane flight from Manaus to Boa Vista and a 15-hour overnight bus ride seemed no choice at all. "Let's just fly up there," I tried again. Bernie stuck out his lower teeth in defiance. "Okay, mister big-shot medicine hunter, you go fly and spend lots of money," he shot back. "I'm taking the bus." Of course, Bernie ended up getting his way, since I wasn't about to let him take that bus ride alone, and he knew it. After I gave in, he said with a smug, triumphant smile, "We gonna have a very nice bus ride."

I was traveling to Boa Vista to meet with Gilberto Macuxi, big chief of the Macuxi Indians, one of the primary tribes in northern Brazil. Gilberto was planning a multi-tribal gathering for the following year that would bring together shamans from all over the Amazon. If the gathering worked out, it would be the largest assembly ever of indigenous native healers, and it would represent an unprecedented opportunity to gather valuable knowledge about plant medicines and their uses.

The lurching bus ride from Manaus straight north through the dark heart of the Amazon was anything but "very nice." The paved road out of Manaus quickly became a slick dirt track, with deep ruts, huge puddles, and sections that were almost totally washed out by the heavy rains that batter the jungle. Our seats were right up front, affording us a horrifyingly clear view of the rusting carcasses of trucks and buses that had slid off the soft shoulders of the road and lay half sunk in viper-infested swamps, the sudden swerving turns that seemed to come out of nowhere, and the roaring, heaving trucks and buses that occasionally barreled toward us like phantoms from some mechanical hell. Panicked chickens in baskets clucked in loud alarm as the bus fishtailed on greasy mud. As we bounced and jolted and woozy passengers puked out the windows, I commented to Bernie what a lovely idea it was to take the bus.

Neither Bernie nor I slept a wink. Instead, we stared saucer-eyed at the gloom of the night before us, as the piercing gray beams of the headlights stabbed through patchy fog and illuminated endless miles of high trees surrounded by swamp and hanging with thick tangles of vines. As if he had gone berserk, the driver hammered the bus furiously as though we were in a stock car race. We careened wildly through the dark. There were two stops at roadside stands, where Bernie and I could take refreshment in the form of Nescafé and crackers, and the motion sickness victims had a chance to rinse their vomit-covered shirts and pants at standing pipes. "You like the ride, man?" Bernie inquired at the first stop, near the town of Carimau, right on the equator. I only growled. "You know," he said in a patronizing tone, "bad attitude can make you sick."

We arrived in Boa Vista jittery, sleep-deprived, and covered with slick, pungent perspiration from a night of fear. As we stepped off the bus, I told Bernie, "You can ride this heap all the way back to Manaus if you want, but I'm flying." Bernie winced.

THE DANGERS OF BOA VISTA

The last outpost in the northern Brazilian Amazon, Boa Vista is the only urban area in sprawling Roraima, the northernmost state of Brazil. Billed as a "planned city," Boa Vista is a cattle and petroleum town with a Wild West atmosphere. It's home to traffickers of all kinds who find the location advantageous for moving goods across the nearby Venezuelan border.

We were supposed to meet Gilberto at the bus station, having sent a message to him through some people at Roraima University. "I don't see him, man," Bernie said as we waded through the crowd at the station. Then a handsome Indian with long hair approached us. He wore a crisply pressed sleeveless white shirt, new blue jeans, a braided leather belt, and smart black leather shoes. "Bernie?" he asked. It was Gilberto. The two embraced, and Bernie introduced me to Gilberto, who in turn introduced both of us to a friendly looking man named Domingo. This man had a wrestler's body and a laborer's hands, and he was sweating so profusely it appeared as though he had just showered and thrown on his clothes without drying off. Domingo, Gilberto told us, would drive us around during our stay.

As we walked to Domingo's car, Bernie quietly confided, "I didn't even recognize Gilberto. Last time I saw him, he looked like a truly wild tribal man, with paint on his face and a spear in his hand. I wonder what happened." What had happened to Gilberto is what has happened to many natives of the Amazon. He was slowly and steadily being eaten up by modern culture, losing his tribal identity in the face of steadily encroaching modern society. Nonetheless, he remains a legend in Roraima. Gilberto is a tireless crusader for native rights, part Che Guevara and part Chico Mendes, the martyred Brazilian environmentalist and union leader. He has been jailed and beaten, and has had his life threatened many times for his work defending and protecting tribal people and their lands. Gilberto has traveled to the United States three times, and to Europe four times, to tell the story of indigenous people and to petition for support for their protection and preservation. He wages the same war that many tribal leaders around the world fight against overwhelming odds, against military forces too powerful to defeat, and against huge corporations too rich to stop. It is a losing game.

Gilberto Macuxi of Boa Vista,
supreme chief of the Macuxi Indians
and a tireless crusader for native rights

In Domingo's battered Toyota Corolla wagon, we bounced along the rutted dirt roads of Boa Vista, enveloping pedestrians in clouds of dirt. Honking trucks spewing black diesel smoke, bald-tired cars without mufflers, and Japanese rice-rockets that sounded like popcorn makers charged together down the broader avenues of town, past thousands of almost identical tin-roofed huts. I sat behind Domingo, watching sweat stream down the back of his neck as we made our way through the city's gouged, chaotic streets to the Hotel Euzebio, where Bernie and I planned to stay for about a week. From there we would travel with Gilberto and Domingo to various Indian villages and gather information on regional medicinal plants.

In the hotel lobby, two shifty-looking characters sat stiffly with leather briefcases clutched too tightly to their chests. One had a conspicuous bulge under the left arm of his sharkskin sport jacket, a garment wholly out of place in the sweltering heat of Boa Vista. Standing at the registration desk, a greasy-haired man openly sported a .357 magnum with mother-of-pearl grips in an intricately tooled leather holster on his hip. He looked like a Tijuana loan shark, with a pencil moustache, cruel eyes, and a nasty pink scar that creased the length of one cheek.

The two-story Hotel Euzebio was less a place of lodging than a bustling center of commerce. Most of the guest rooms served as small, inexpensive stores for moving goods and services, from clothing and kitchen gadgets to airplane rides for drug dealers. Dozens of people loitered in the halls. Whether you were after a few inexpensive shirts or a hooker by the hour, the Euzebio was the place to find it. But our room--a small, monastic cell with two narrow single beds--was spotlessly clean. And it included not only a toilet but also a shower with hot and cold running water. As a respite between stays on the river, the Euzebio felt like the Ritz Carlton. I slept like the dead and made up the rest I'd missed during our cost-cutting bus rampage through the steaming, savage jungle.

Gilberto and Domingo came by the next morning and offered to take Bernie and me about 100 kilometers north to an Indian settlement called Canawani. Gilberto was the most freshly pressed man in sight, as though he had just finished a casual native fashion photo shoot for GQ. By contrast, beaming, friendly Domingo had his shirt unbuttoned to hairy midbelly, and he was soaked with sweat. We climbed into the dusty old Toyota that seemed held together with bailing wire and bubble gum, and headed off for the native village.

About 20 kilometers out of town, Domingo pulled over to the side of the road and had me follow him to a tall, leafy tree. It was my first actual look at a jatobá tree, which I knew only from reading and by its botanical name, Hymenaea courbaril. Domingo produced a well-worn jackknife from his pocket and pried off a chunk of bark with a sure, practiced motion. "You boil this in water and drink the tea," he said. "It gives you energy. If you have to work all day, you take some jatobá tea with you, and the work will be much easier. When I worked on my father's cattle ranch, I would drink this all the time." Domingo also lauded jatobá's effectiveness for "many women's problems." Some people, he said, boil the bark and drink the liquid to stop diarrhea. Then Domingo squatted down and employed the knife again to dig a small clump of semi-hard gum from the base of the tree. "In the churches they use this to make incense," he explained. "But this is also very good medicine. You rub it on aches and pains." He took my hand, rubbed a little bit of the sticky material on my wrist, and invited me to smell it. The resinous aroma was infused with terpenes and reminded me of other natural gums that are also used as medicines.

Tree gums, or resins, have been employed as medicines for centuries. Tragacanth gum, from the thorny western Asian desert bush Astragalus gummifer, has been used as a stabilizer and thickener in natural medicines since the time of the early Greeks. The oleo gum resin frankincense comes from the trunk of Boswellia carterii, a shrub indigenous to northeast Africa and Arabia. One of the most revered of all fragrances, frankincense has been used since antiquity as a ceremonial incense in India and China as well as in Catholic churches worldwide. This is fitting, because frankincense conveys an aroma that quells anxiety, abates nervous tension, and eases the mind. In traditional medicine, the gum is used in topical preparations for wounds, scars, and blemishes. Frankincense holds a unique place in religious tradition as one of the gifts presented by the three wise men to the infant Jesus. A second of those rare gifts, the gum myrrh, comes from various species of Commifora, shrubs that grow throughout Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen. First mentioned in medicinal texts more than 3,500 years ago, myrrh was an essential ingredient in the Egyptian embalming process and is well-established in traditional Chinese medicine. Myrrh gum is used for cuts, wounds, sores, ulcers, hemorrhoids, inflamed gums, sore throat, coughs, and colds.

FRANCISCA'S BREW

After almost 2 hours of banging, bouncing, dodging potholes, and eating road dust, we arrived in the village of Canawani and saw no one. "I think everybody is out working in the fields," Gilberto commented. We walked through the village until we finally spotted a slender, long-legged man leaning against a supporting post of a small maloca, a hut with a thatched roof. The man introduced himself as Adir and informed us that since the village chief was away, proper etiquette dictated that we pay a visit to Francisca, one of the head women of the village. He offered to come along and make introductions. We crowded back into the Toyota, this time with leggy Adir to fit in, and bounced down the dusty road to the other side of the village.

Francisca owned two malocas, one with walls and one without. The one without walls was apparently the site of heavy food production. The centerpiece was a round, 4-foot-high wood-fired oven topped with a flat-bottomed iron pan about 4 feet in diameter. Called a fugao, this apparatus is used for roasting manioc meal, the grainy flour made from the staple manioc root.

We had, of course, seen--and eaten--much manioc in Brazil. Also known as cassava, manioc (Manihot esculenta) has tubers for roots that resemble sweet potatoes in appearance and are prepared to yield a granular, carbohydrate-rich staple food that appears on virtually every Brazilian table. When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in the early 1500s, they found that the main staple of the native people was manioc. The plant, they discovered, was relatively easy to cultivate, but processing the raw roots into the carbohydrate-rich end product required serious labor.

Manioc root contains prussic acid, a potentially lethal toxin. Poisonous when raw, manioc root must be pressed and cooked in an elaborate and time-consuming process to dispel the prussic acid. The tubers are first peeled and then grated, after which the pulp is prepared by one of two methods. Typically, the pulp is packed into long cylinders called tipitis, which are made of woven plant fibers. Once a tipiti is filled with manioc pulp, it is hung from a house rafter and either twisted by hand or attached to a heavy weight at the bottom end. This compresses the pulp and squeezes out the poisonous juice. In the other method, the manioc pulp is put into a cloth sack that is fitted at the bottom of a heavy press made of logs. Resembling a medieval catapult in design, the press has a long, heavy pole that is pulled down at the far end and tied. The pressure exerted by the press expels the juice from the pulp.

Once the pulp is pressed, it is removed from either the tipiti or the press and placed into a fugao. A wood fire underneath heats the bottom of the iron pan to a scorching temperature. The manioc pulp is placed in heaps upon the hot fugao and then stirred with a large wooden paddle for a long time until it turns into dry granules of coarse meal or flour known as farinha de manioca.

The toxic juice of manioc is collected and left to sit and separate. Starch settles out from the extracted juice. The liquid is poured off, and the starch is placed onto the hot, flat surface of the fugao, eventually clumping together into small, round granules called tapioca. The juice, now free of starch, is cooked, resulting in a nontoxic and delicious condiment known as tucupi, which is often spiked with hot chilies and poured liberally onto meats, fish, grains, beans, and vegetables.

Francisca's fugao was not being used when we arrived; instead, it was piled high with dried leafy branches of the common cayupa tree. I would soon find out why. There were also pieces of beiju, a hard, flat bread less than an inch thick, made of crunchy manioc flour. Francisca welcomed us warmly, shaking our hands with arthritic, sausage fingers. A short, rotund, mostly toothless old woman in a thin, stained smock, Francisca was a native who had been made both strong and old by decades of hard labor. In honor of our coming, Francisca announced with a flourish that she would offer us the ultimate in regional native hospitality--freshly made caxiri (pronounced "cash-er-EE"). This news incited genuine jubilance among Domingo, Adir, and Gilberto. Bernie, I thought, appeared more circumspect. I didn't yet understand what was about to transpire.

I am far from squeamish. I have eaten cooked insects without complaint, and I accept virtually all dishes offered to me in far-flung corners of the world, where ingredients are unfamiliar and hygiene questionable. But what ensued was one of the most horrifying food-related scenes I have ever witnessed. I could hardly believe my eyes when from under a table Francisca dragged a large metal pot, brimming with a foaming yellowish substance that looked very much like vomit and was aswarm with flies. Setting the pot down, she picked up a red rubber washbasin filled with soiled laundry soaking in milky gray water and emptied it on the ground. Pouring a small amount of fresh water into the tub, she swished it around with a brief circular motion of her short, thick arms, and emptied it. That brief rinse accomplished, Francisca was ready to make caxiri.

Pointing proudly at the pot, Francisca explained that she had carefully chewed and spat cayupa leaves and manioc flour into the vessel for 3 weeks, and that the whole batch had been fermenting for 4 months. "Oh, God," I thought as I realized I would be offered a beverage made from the insalivated muck that bubbled before me. I thought of the fly excrement that had been incorporated into the ingredients, and envisioned a host of pathogenic bacteria invading my entire body and setting up shop. Francisca announced with great gusto that caxiri is the best of all foods, a drink so potent in its health-imbuing power that after consuming it, one can toil tirelessly in the fields all day long. I turned to Bernie with wide, pleading eyes. "This is the real indigenous stuff," he said, his magnified eyes narrowing behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "You're really going to love this delicious, hygienic drink."

Francisca laid a woven-fiber straining mat framed by wooden sticks over the washbasin. Then, employing both hands, she scooped up a pile of the bubbling mixture and plopped it onto the mat. She poured some water from a small crock over the mound and proceeded to knead the mixture vigorously with her thick fingers. As she worked the mess, liquid trickled steadily through the mat into the washbasin. I felt a crawling sensation along the hairs on the back of my neck. Bernie smiled wickedly, relishing the moment. Now Francisca was up to her stout elbows in bubbling caxiri, waxing effusive about its manifold health benefits. "It is the very best for the stomach," she said. Bernie nudged me. "You hear that, big guy?" he asked. "It's good for your stomach." I told him my stomach was fine. Francisca, just warming up, then let us know that caxiri was good if you're having trouble with your urine. Bernie smiled at me again. "My urine is perfect," I reported. "Get us out of this, whatever you have to do."

Francisca making caxiri, a beverage of fermented manioc root

I was aware of fermented manioc beverages made by insalivation. The Maya make a drink they call balche, into which they sometimes add hallucinogenic plants for an extra kick. Peruvians commonly drink chicha, which is also made by chewing and spitting manioc. But in both cases, the drinks are complete within a couple of days. And while there is no question that you could still contract hepatitis or a pathogenic bacteria from either balche or chicha, they seemed to me drinks that you could more easily survive than Francisca's caxiri, which had been stewing for 4 months in fly shit. On the bright side, a fermentation period that long would render a high alcohol content, which just might kill anything in the drink. But I still wasn't eager to find out.

By this time, Francisca had practically burst into full-throated operatic song, extolling the manifold virtues of caxiri. And God bless Francisca, for she was performing hard labor on our behalf, to make for us the thing she prized most. Her intentions were golden, her spirit generous. Gilberto, Domingo, and Adir appeared as excited as school boys at a ball park as she heaped more yellowish muck upon the mat, wetting and kneading it, and squeezing the evil, septic drippings into the poorly rinsed laundry basin. Pursing his lips and nodding thoughtfully, Bernie once again expressed his considered opinion that it would be good for me to have this "real indigenous experience." I resorted to bargaining. "Okay," I told him. "You drink and I'll drink. Whatever you do, I'll follow." Bernie backed up a step and held up his video camera. "I'm just a cameraman," he said. "You drink and I'll shoot, all right?" I held my ground. "No deal, Bernie. You drink and I'll drink. We'll die together."

The moment of reckoning was upon us. Francisca filled a tall steel cup for each of us, and we all made toasting gestures. I felt like a condemned man taking a last drink before execution. I raised the cup to my lips, noticing a pleasant banana aroma. "Don't drink that," Bernie said under his breath. "Give me yours and take mine." I did as instructed and received an empty cup for my full one. I gave Bernie a sidelong glance and asked him secretly if he'd drunk his. He shook his head. With Bernie's sleight of hand, we both wound up with empty cups and were spared. Domingo, on the other hand, went on to consume four, smacking his lips loudly after each one. Gilberto and Adir had two each and proclaimed that Francisca's was some of the best caxiri they'd ever drunk. Bernie and I respectfully declined seconds, slapping our bellies and declaring that the first tall cup had filled us up.

I had mixed feelings about my reprieve. On the one hand, I was truly appreciative of Francisca's kindness and generosity. But realistically, I was relieved to avoid drinking a brew that might have debilitated me with dysentery or hepatitis. Francisca picked up an aluminum pot and pointed to numerous small holes around the bottom. "If you leave caxiri overnight in a pot like this, it makes these tiny holes, see?" With that information, I was no longer conflicted about my decision.

We all expressed our gratitude for Francisca's hospitality, and we enjoyed a little beiju, the hard and mildly sweet manioc bread. Domingo proudly stowed a jug of caxiri that Francisca had given him in the hatchback of the Toyota. After goodbyes and handshakes, we piled back into the car. As we drove down a dusty dirt road, I could hear the bubbling caxiri gurgling and fizzing underneath the cap.

A MEETING OF NATIVE CHIEFS

After spending a little time in Canawani, we said our goodbyes to Adir and rumbled back toward Boa Vista, to a meeting of tribal chiefs at the small headquarters of APIR, the Portuguese acronym of a grassroots organization that helps sick, homeless, or destitute native people. "In a lot of cases, Indians just come wandering in out of the jungle," Gilberto said. "Sometimes they are very sick, or hurt, or totally messed up from hunger or because they have been abused. At APIR they can get some rest and a little medical help if they need it, and also they can get food." The halls of the concrete APIR headquarters were stacked with plastic bags filled with grains, sugar, and other staples--all to be given away to Indians being run out of the forest with no place to go. "It is not enough," Gilberto said, gesturing at the care packages with a wide open hand. "It is never enough."

Inside a shabby room that served as the APIR office, Raymundo, a chief of the Macuxi Indians, sat behind a beat-up metal desk on an ancient swivel chair, while others sat on rusted metal folding chairs or on the floor. In Brazil, tribes of size typically have many chiefs of varying ranks, in the same way that an army may have numerous generals from one-star to four-star. Gilberto was supreme chief of the Macuxi, but Raymundo was of high rank and very highly regarded. Here he was chairing a meeting to discuss the gathering of tribes planned for the following year.

Periodically, Bernie leaned over and translated bits of the discussion, which was conducted in Macuxi: "They say that they want to have this very important gathering on sacred land, but that the government agencies are doing everything they can to prevent the gathering. They say that government officials are pretending to be helpful, but are demanding all kinds of licenses and papers that these people don't know how to get. You watch, this gathering they want to have will be very difficult to make happen."

After the somber meeting, I was waiting outside in the shade when Chief Raymundo emerged from the APIR building wearing a feathered headdress and carrying a hunting bow and a long blowgun. He was also sporting a T-shirt with an incongruous cartoon bear on it. The ever-energetic Domingo picked a small leaf about the size of a finger from a bush and pressed it against the bark of a tree at about head height, making the leaf stick. He took the 7-foot-long hardwood blowgun from Raymundo, hefted it to shooting position, took a large breath, and blew off a shot. He missed the target by a foot or more.

Miguel, a dark-haired man with a handsome face and a quiet manner who also carries the title of chief, motioned for the blowgun from Domingo, as if to show him how to do it right. Miguel slid a long wooden dart into the mouth end of the blowgun, feathered the back end of the dart so it fit the blow hole just right, lifted and sighted the blowgun, and missed hitting the leaf by a few inches. The misses of Domingo and Miguel prompted a round of shots on the part of about 10 Indians. One by one they tried, none getting near the leaf. Several missed the tree entirely. Only Miguel hit close.

I asked if I could take a turn, hoping it wasn't a breach of protocol. They were happy to let me try. I fitted the dart into the blow hole, feathered the cotton end to fit just right, and hefted the heavy wooden shaft. The leaf was about 25 paces away. I recalled the basics of shooting from when I was a teenage crack shot with a .22 caliber rifle. The principles were the same. Aim, steady, fire. I took a large breath and, with as much compression as possible, blew the dart out with a punch, missing the leaf by only an inch or so. This provoked some murmuring from the Indians. Beginner's luck.

Several more Indians tried again, but the only one who shot close was Chief Miguel. He also missed by about an inch. I put myself in the rotation of shooters, and missed again by only about a finger's width. Miguel shot again and came close, but didn't hit the leaf. The others gave up shooting, and that left Miguel and me to pass the blowgun from one to the other while the Indians divided into two groups--one standing beside Miguel, the other beside me, like cheering sections. Jurcelina, Gilberto's daughter, declared that this was the international blowgun contest between the indigenous Indians and the United States. The pressure was definitely on.

As Miguel and I each shot and missed by incredibly tight margins, our teams applauded and shouted: "Come on, hit the leaf." "Go U.S. You can win." "Miguel, you have to beat him for all the Indians." Miguel and I were both aware of the silliness of the situation, but neither of us would give up. We were in this contest until one of us hit the leaf.

After about 30 turns each, the right thing happened. Miguel hit the leaf dead on. Everybody cheered, and I shook his hand and congratulated him heartily. We both laughed, and each of us wiped sweat from our foreheads. Chief Miguel gave me a look that seemed a mixture of relief, respect, and friendship. He raised an eyebrow and cracked a wry smile. "Too close," he said, shaking his head. "Too close."

Despite the lightheartedness of the blowgun contest, I could see the strain and fatigue of struggle on the faces of the meeting participants. These people wanted desperately to prevent the destruction of tribal culture in Brazil and to retain some decent tribal lands. But every day they lost ground, lost land, and lost lives. They knew the clock was ticking on their heritage.