A World without Lawn Mowers

Here in Cochabamba, Bolivia the weather is hot, the mountains dry, and many a medicinal plant flowering. I originally had decided to visit Cochabamba way back in the day when I was writing for my Fulbright grant. I had discovered a man named Carlos Prado, a fifth generation herbalist, who runs a small school for traditional Andean medicine with an herbal medicine clinic named Kuska Incari which translates to ¨together to live better¨in Quechua. Since my arrival in Cochabamba my days have been steeped in herbal medicines and mates (that´s south american for tea!). In the morning I usually walk to the enormous market covering many city blocks in search of my morning tea. Here you can find men and women who have set up carts with various glass jars filled with fresh herbs such as chamomile, uña de gato, cornsilk, cedar, or anis infusing in water...you can walk up and say Ï need something for my kidneys or my liver¨and they will mix up a concoction for you, tossing in a bit of fresh honey. From there I usually catch the ¨U¨ a colorfully decorated bluebird short-bus that roares through the cities streets, cutting lanes of traffic, blaring its horn at any opportunity to arrive at the Cochabamba Botanic Gardens. With Carlos I have been assisting in mounting a new garden of Foreign medicinal plants and clearing the original medicinal plant section to contain only Bolivian Natives. From there we usually go to Carlos´s home/clinic/school to see a patient, prepare medicines, or eat lunch with the family. His home is exactly how I imagened it to be: caving in ceiling, clinic room designated by a hanging sheet that sections of the ¨healing space¨from the living area, two rooms full of hundreds of jars of dried plants, five gallon buckets brimming with tinctures, and a patio cluttered with mismatched jars/pots full of medicinal plants. It is in this home that Carlos reads coca leaves to diagnose the origin of a person´s illness, where he burns copal to induce healing, and where he ladels out his medicines into platic bottles to pass on to his patients.

When working with healers in traditional cultures the most magical moments are when their philosophies are shared with you, teachings that often butt up against the western paradigm in which we have been bred. These moments challenge us, giving us the opportunity to completely disregard the information, or more interestingly instigate us to chip away at the boundries that close in our minds. When we choose to ¨chip¨we open the door to a diffent world that appears magical because it often defies our normal beleifs and perceptions.

Two examples:
1)We went out into the mountains seeking native medicinal plants to transplant into the Botanic Gardens. We stopped on the way to eat whole fried fish from the Lagoon, soft-salty cheese, and boiled beans. Knowing my interest in plants used in gynecological matters Carlos was discussing a large native grass species that we were going to dig up. He says to me that according to some women the plant is useful as a contraceptive. My interest peaked, I asked him if its a plant that´s used for short term effects or longterm/complete infertility, as many plants used in this fashion are catagorized this way. He looks at me and says, thats such a westernized thing to say! First, in Andean beleif system the concept of time is very different, so to use the term absolute doesnt fit into his description of the plant or how it would function. Second, the plant is medicine, so it can be used in various ways depending on how the plant synergizes with the person and the plants specific state of growth. A large plant may have a longer effect than a short plant; if its growing at higher altitude versus lower this can influence its effects; if the woman is young vs. old, fat vs. thin, never had a child or already has a litter, etc.

2)I hear Carlos speak about almost every plant with the reference ¨its the famous avocado seed, the famous andean sage, the famous passiflora...¨ Each plant is revered and honored as medicine. When sitting in on a class of university students one of them dared to asked: what is that plant used for, and his response was almost open jawed as he said, obviosly its medicine, its all medicine! the catagorization of uses often constricts the plants abilities, confining it so that it cant do its work.

And now to bid you all adeu, I wanted to share the famous anti-diarrhea formula that we prepared yesterday:
1.5 cups peeled, washed, shredded avocado seed
1.5 cups burnt to a crisp, dry, white rice
1 peel of a pomegranit chopped
1 handful cinnamon bark broken into small pieces
Add all ingredients into 3 liters of boiling water. Steep 15-30 minutes, strain. Dosage is 1-2 Tbsp. To make a tincture add 1.5 liters water and 1.5 liters grain alcohol. Dosage is 15-30 drops.