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The sap of the barbasco slowly clouds the transparent waters of the river.
It is not a poison as such, it does not contaminate or leave residue.
The barbasco absorbs the oxygen of the water, and so the fish are forced to come to the surface to breathe.
Then, it is a simple matter to catch them.
In a short while, the barbasco is swept away by the current without any consequences for the river.
Today wouldn't seem to be a good day for fishing.
The fishermen stare down at the water, but the fish do not emerge.
And to make matters worse, the sun has now given way to a storm,
a very frequent occurrence at this latitude where the weather can change several times in a single day.
In the Sanema villages there is always a communal covered area where most of the social life of the group takes place.
In the morning, it is customary for the Sanema women to gather here, to paint their faces and bodies with clan or esoteric designs.
Another of the usual communal activities is delousing.
Almost constantly, the women comb through each other's hair in search of these tiny parasites.
When they catch one, the kill it with their teeth and eat it. There's no accounting for taste.
Like eye drops, the juice of this liana soothes the irritation in the child's eye.
They know a thousand and one remedies for the ailments they suffer.
But here, illness has a religious significance, as the source lies in magic and spells.
So, apart form the potions and ointments with which they treat the ill,
the shamans must travel to the other world, the country of the spirits, to receive their advice.
They are the only ones capable of undoing the spells.
They have to ingest large doses of sacona, which makes them salivate profusely.
The journey they must go on to find their gods and ask their questions is very long.
The ritual chants and the rhythmic movements are efficient means of leaving their bodies,
transcending to the world beyond, to open the door which allows their consciousness to enter a different reality.
In this case they are trying to cure a child who has a stomach ache.
The mother believes that a shaman from a nearby village sent this evil with a man who came to woo her and was rejected.
This type of conflict is very frequent among the Sanema.
The problem is that there are fewer women than men, and this causes constant disputes.
Kidnappings, and the consequent clashes between tribes and villages, very frequent.
The head shaman indicates what they must do in order to purge the evil from the body of the child.
The others execute his orders, while they continue to ingest the powerful hallucinogenic.
The youngest rubs his hands over the stomach of the child to absorb the evil within.
Then, he turns and throws it away from the covered area, into the jungle.
The child will almost certainly be cured by the herbs they give him later,
but the mother needs this cathartic rite in order to feel the spell has been broken.
The woman are preparing for the dance that will take place at sunset.
They make skirts from banana leaves, separating the veins and cutting them in half.
These hands hold 3,000 years of culture.
These same skirts were made by their mothers their grandmothers and great grandmothers
and all the women since the beginning of time, their time in this jungle.
It is a world that is coming to an end.
Like so many other cultures in the Amazon, it will be destroyed in one way or another,
and with it will be lost the knowledge of the jungle.
Even the jungle itself is disappearing forever, taking with it its pharmaceutical secrets,
secrets that might have provided solutions to the terrible diseases that today threaten humanity.
Meantime, the Sanema women will continue to wear the ceremonial quilts or the cotton-like fibres,
the same ones they use in the death ceremonies,
in which they acquire the qualities of their dead relatives by ingesting their ashes mixed with banana pulp.
The men also decorate themselves for the dance, though less elaborately.
It must be said, our friends of the forest are not the best of dancers.
Their dances are simple and monotonous, but once again they demonstrate the cheerful, playful character of these people.
Here ends our fascinating journey across the Guayana Massif in Venezuela,
and back in time with the Sanema Indians.
Perhaps now, those who have followed us feel the same need as we do,
the need to protect this unique world which is in danger of being lost forever.