Cleansing

I’m sitting in my room drinking broccoli tea. No joke. It doesn’t really taste like broccoli, but the package tells me that it’s anti-cancer, so that’s good!

I love my afternoon teacher. For real. I am so so so happy to have her as my teacher. In the first half of the afternoon we had a terrific talk about so many things – we talked about poverty both in Canada and Ecuador, we talked about the political situation in Ecuador, about consumption, capitalism, feminism, machismo, and revolution. To be fair, she did most of the talking and I did most of the listening, but I can’t wait until week four when I’ll be able to have super wonderful conversations with this woman.

In the second half of the class we went to the market. On Tuesdays and Fridays there are women-shamen in the market that will perform rituals to ‘clean’ people of bad energy. Apparently on Tuesdays and Fridays there are a lot of bad spirits around and so it’s important that it is done on these days. Mostly it’s done on children who have illnesses – but these illnesses result from absorbing bad energy usually. They’re expressed through loss of appetite, sleepy all the time, eyes that can’t open all the way, crying a lot and so on. As well, there are some cases where children’s hearts have dropped to their stomachs and have made them sick.

What the shawomen does is she first has a bunch of plants that each are designed to cure a different part of the child (although adults sometimes get cleaned as well) and they rub the bunch in their hands to release the energy – they then proceed to rub it all over the child’s body and tap their body with it all the while saying something in Quechua. After this, they rub and egg over the body to absorb bad energy. Apparently sometimes the shawomen will break open the egg and read what illness the child has but we didn’t see this happen. After the egg, she marks the child in three places – on the forehead, on the stomach and on the back. All of these marks are for protection. Then, she drinks from a special combination of flowers and alcohol and then spits some of it on the back of the child.

For certain illnesses it’s important to come back a few times – for example we met a women whose granddaughter was crying often and she had to get the treatment three times. Each time took place on a different day.

I also found out today that Marta teaches dance! Frig, what are the chances? So on Fridays here she teaches merengue. There is also a salsa class on Wednesday and Thursday. I think I will go on Wednesday and Friday. She also told me that where she lives there is a kind of cultural area where they have different kinds of art – like yoga classes and cooking classes! The cooking classes that start this weekend are vegetarian! I know, no way, right? I know. Shut up, it’s amazing. So, she’s going to bring me information tomorrow in class to see if I can sign up for both the cooking class and the yoga classes. Frig, Cuenca, way to be amazing.

I think this weekend I’ll hopefully do that, explore the old part of the city a bit and take photos (of course) and then maybe go to Cajas national park. It’s a beautiful city here. I like it a lot.

Tea update: after more steeping it does, in fact, taste like broccoli. So strange, but also delicious.