The following story is about one of the more intense things i have ever witnessed…

So the ¨team¨ headed to Santa Elena to give some Charlas (informative talks). A woman from a neighboring town was to give one on improving family dynamics, a dude was to teach the people how to make gardens and compost, and I was to give a nutrition charla…ie why having a garden would be beneficial. We show up, and as usually no one wanted to come to the charla, so we went around town and attempted to drag the people out of their houses. House to house, shack to shack, person to person…until we hit the jackpot. There were like 30 people crammed into this one room shack. Then we entered, and saw an unconscious guy vomiting and moaning in pain. One woman was supporting him and holding his hair back, and another one was rubbing water on his chest and hair.

Turns out, he had drank a cup of Barbasco cocktail. Barbasco is a poisonous root the Shuar use to fish. They toss the root into the water, and all the fish in the area float to the surface. ¨Did he drink it by accident?¨, I asked. Nope, woman problems. So this guy had tried to commit suicide, and I was witnessing the aftermath, and the community trying to save his life. Luckily, this community was the closet indigenous village to Guayzimi, so an ambulance (pickup truck) was only about half an hour away. A doctor came, put in an iv, and induced more vomiting. The guy recovered, thank god. But when he started to regain conscious, he began weaping and moaning, and everyone started yelling at him. ¨Why the hell would you drink fish poison?¨ Luckily, the doctor was the man, and told them that the physical sickness needed treatment first, and that the patient really didn´t need to be yelled at right then. But you just know that he´s going to get harassed by everyone in the village for the rest of his life. I´m guessing they don´t have the best understanding of mental health issues in the indigenous communities, and the implications of an attempted suicide are most likely poorly understood. Combine that with the fact that this is undoubtedly the most eventful thing thing that has happened in a while, and that the only thing to do at night is to sit around and gossip, and the poor guy is never going to live this down…which won´t help his depression.