TSANTSAS! Shrunken Heads!

The Shaur and Achuar cultures who live in the upper amazon, we can thank for giving us the shrunken head! The Shaur live in the Upano Valley in eastern Ecuador and it was my mission to try to find a shrunken head while in Ecuador. The culture requires water just like any other culture but doesn't live near rivers. Also unique to their culture they don't use bows and arrows but only blowpipes.

To the dead, who do wrong during life, their heads are transformed into key chain sized charms. The skull is first removed and then the head undergoes a desiccation process of heating and cooling to shrink it down to size. Shrinking the head prevents the spirit from being able to seek revenge and also gives the spirits energy to their owner. The mouths and eyes are sewn shut to trap the spirit for eternity. Owning a head shows both braveness and power.

I came across 5 heads around Quito and they were awesome. They are smaller than a fist and still have their hair, eye brows and eye lashes. They are really unreal looking and a mythical thing that becomes a reality in person. You can look into their ears and see their hollowed heads. Its strange to fathom that these were actually really people with normal heads during life. You wonder what bad things they could have done to earn the right to have their heads shrunk. An awesome culture and interesting history!

Death On the Pan Americana

Along the entire Pan American Highway from Brazil down to Uruguay, across Argentina to Chile, Bolivia to Ecuador; there are memorials and flowers lining the road for those who died in accidents along it. While travelling along the Pan American and seeing how many there are it just becomes a commonplace sight during long distance bus routes. Only does it become reality when you see life taken from a person in less than a second.

As the bus departed from Guayaquil my only worries were my own petty problems and getting to Colombia to fly home. After 30 minutes of driving recklessly to get out of the city all would change. In the other lane of speeding traffic through a residential area outside of the city, a women carrying groceries attempted to cross the street. The only sounds were a thud and people around the scene shouting. No brakes. No screams of pain. Just the end of a life.

As her body flopped to the ground as an inanimate object people flocked to the windows of my bus and those around the scene ran over. Noone did anything. Noone checked if she was even alive, it was just assumed that she was dead.

Infact she was as she lay barefoot; her shoes having flown off from the hit. Her overweight body lay in a cheerleader position, something that during life she could not have done. Noone showed any remorse or sorrow for this newest casualty to the Pan American but moved about her as if ur were normal.

Disgusted with the way things went I slunk into my bus seat and thought deep and hard about life. The world is a strange place and things can come and go. My ordeal in Peru just turned to a speck of a problem and for days all I could think of was this pile of flesh that once had a family and a life, lying limp and deformed on the side of the highway.

Peru Medical Care!

Day 3 of visiting friends in Arequipa took a twisted turn for the worse. An out of control STAPH infection spread like wildfire in my lower abdomen and in just 24hours was the size of my fist. Thankfully I was with Michelle and Alex or I probably would have just died. The first hospital we tried was trying to charge 25$ just for consultation. So we declined and took a taxi across town to another hospital that was only charging 3$ for admittance. We explained what was happening and what I needed in the ER and I reluctantly sat on the ER table and waited.

I watched as the woman next to me was bleeding from her head, a baby cried in pain from double arm burns, and a criminal sat bleeding in his wheel chair with his tending police officer. The hospital was a bring-your-own-medical supplies type. So Alex had to go out on the street and find a place to buy anestesia, needles, and a cutting tool that were sterile.

The woman bleeding from her head took a turn for the worse as her young son was shaking her and screaming for someone to help her. The doctors slowly rearranged the ER ordering me to someone else´s bloody bed and Alex and Michelle out of the room.

Finally the doctor came over to me and without warning shot me with lidocaine causing the infection to burst open. Then he just began cutting away without saying a word. Blood and puss oozing into a bed pan then said finished. Bandaged it up and gave me a prescription for painkillers I couldn´t afford anyways.

For two days I slept on Alex and Michelle´s floor bleeding and in pain unable to move. Still pussing and bleeding I decided to take a 17 hour overnight bus to Lima where better hospitals or cheaper flights home are. Upon arrivlal I had blood stains all over me. I think that it´s improving so am taking another 17 hour bus journey to Tumbes on the Ecuador border and hoping for the best!