Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Yachag
This weekend I finally got to see the shaman practice – for some reason he wasn’t working the last 2 weeks. His first name is Espiritu. First, I observed a cleaning with eggs. These are just normal eggs that the patient actually has to buy, and I’m not sure yet why they use eggs, but the shaman takes them in his hands and just rubs them all over the patient and sometimes he blows on them. After a few minutes he drinks some special water with medicinal plants and spits it on the eggs and stores them to burn later – however on one adult patient he spit the water actually on the lady, but the other cleanings were on kids. Someone had requested a cuy cleaning and actually brought their own guinea pig, but that never happened because while the yachag was examining it he found some fleas so if it’s not healthy he can’t do it. He gave everyone prescriptions too of plants they should put in water to take a bath or to drink, with very specific instructions like “bathe in this on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons for 2 weeks.” Apparently some of the plants are really hard to find too – and I thought it would be cool to plant a garden somewhere near the clinic, but some of the plants only grow at really high elevations or in a certain ecosystem called the páramo which is kind of a high elevation wetland I think. I also watched a midwife perform a manteo, which is done when the baby is in a weird position and they try to move it back to normal. In this case, the baby was upside down with its arm ready to head out first. The pregnant woman was laying on the ground and first the midwife rubbed oil and bengay stuff on her stomach. Then she put a cloth under the pregnant woman and lifted her up shaking her all around to try to reposition the baby. At one point the mother of the pregnant woman was holding her legs up while the midwife was shaking her around – the whole thing just looked really painful, even if you weren’t pregnant. That’s another shocking thing about pregnancies here is that almost all of them give birth at home with no anesthetics or anything! Maybe some of the medicinal plants they use have anesthetic properties…I think it would be really cool to analyze the plants to find the active compound, and compare it to the drugs we use – I bet they’re pretty similar, and a lot cheaper just to grow yourself!
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It would be interesting to know what was in the plants. Do they use other things too? Rocks, liquids?? You could just grow the things that grow well at your altitude in your medicinal garden. Or plant a few different garderns in other locations.
ReplyDeleteIt's been really fun reading your updates! You are far more adventurous than me : ) Sounds like an amazing experience, and I can't wait to hear more. I found your last post really interesting because I'm super curious about their natural and spiritual remedies. And, I just wanted to say that I chose to have a drug-free child birth (and will have another one in February) and it's not bad. I think that movies, tv and American's dependence on drugs and medications has really led people to fear child birth.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work and take care!
love, Tricia
ya they do use other things, like eggs and guinea pigs. I am going to ask him about what plants we could plant there, and that is a good idea to plant them in different locations.
ReplyDeleteTricia - congratulations! Maybe your baby will have the same birthday as me, February 10th. There is a lot of vertical birth here, we're in the process of putting a traditional birthing room in our clinic, but I have visited some other ones. They have a rope hanging from the cieling, or sometimes a bar kind of like you would use for ballet and the woman is usually standing. The midwives know a lot about medicinal plants and stuff too, I actually just learned about one called Ruda that works pretty much like oxytocin. If administered right after birth it prevents hemmorhage caused by uterine atony, but can cause abortion if administered during pregnancy because it is so strong!