THE MACAW

The first day of ceremony we woke at our hotel, the Rio Shilcayo, and sat at the breakfast table filling out our eight page Medical Questionnaires. Elizabeth's flight had been cancelled out of JFK, so she caught a flight the next day, getting into Tarapoto at 1am on the morning of the first ceremony. As we sat filling out our forms, Jeni, from France, and Eda walked down to the circular driveway of the hotel. At the end of the driveway there were a series of large bird cages with three kinds of parrots. A blue macaw, two red macaws and about four green parrots. One red macaw, or Guacamayo, had it's wing broken from mishandling earlier that morning. Eda and Jeni offered to buy the macaw off the hotel to take it to a vet. The hotel sold him to them. The macaw seemed traumatized as Eda carried him over to our table. Probably in pain and with renewed mistrust of humans. With our forms completed we piled into three motorcars as they are called, I call them motor rickshaws, and made our way to the healing center, Hampichicuy. Once there Eda led us down to the Maloca or Malocca (don't know the correct spelling) to introduce us to the sacred ceremonial house. The macaw was placed on the floor and immediately walked to the center, underneath the peak of the ceiling. He stood there observing and dozing off for our whole 2 to 3 hour purge experience. Somehow, I think he received much healing there himself. He sometimes would speak up and make a little noise, to which one of us would respond in English, Spanish or Macaw.