the devotees’ only concern was to save my life

The devotees’ only concern was to save my life drums.jpg (30626 bytes)

Chapter Seven - Part Two

Quite often we had to walk from the bank of the river to the village. The trails were difficult to distinguish because they were not used that often. We had to be very careful of snakes and the most venomous creature on earth, the arrow poison frog.

This frog produces a liquid so deadly that one drop of the poison it produces from its skin is enough to kill several people. To extract the poison from these frogs for use on arrow tips, South American Indians hold the frogs over flames until the poison oozes from the skin. This poison, called batrachotoxin, acts on the heart and nervous system.

These frogs were everywhere, hopping here and there, so we had to be very careful.

Unfortunately my experience with dysentery was not yet over. Another incident occurred in relation to this, about three quarters of the way into our journey:

Sometimes we had to visit one of the jungle doctors. Of course in the Amazon there are no Western doctors or hospitals. The hospital ship, owned by the Red Cross, visits each village only every six months or so.

I was not only losing water but blood also and had become very skinny. A high fever broke out and rashes appeared on my body. After a week of suffering, the captain’s wife, who had some experience with first aid, came to see how serious my condition actually was. With an alarmed voice she told me that if I didn’t get medical attention within three days, I would probably die.

The devotees met and decided that they would take me to the jungle doctor. Picking me up on a mattress, they carried me into the village. I had a raging fever and kept losing consciousness, so this whole experience was like an hallucination. I remember being in the doctor’s hut hearing the devotees explaining to him what I had.

I heard him say, (as translated through them), "This is no problem."

Despite the fact that I was nearly unconscious, I have a most vivid memory of when he put the medicine he intended giving me, under my nose. Try to imagine the most obnoxious smell in creation – that’s what that was. In his hands it looked disgusting – all gooey and chunky, and black. When he put it before my nose, I thought,
"Is this vegetarian?"

But the devotees’ only concern was to save my life, so they made me eat it. They stuffed it in my mouth. Just the smell of it made me want to vomit but there was no other choice if I was to live. I passed out.

After two hours I woke up.

I felt great! I felt like a fourteen year old boy ready for a football match. And I wanted to eat. The doctor gave me a little soup but I was ready for a Sunday Feast. Of course he wouldn’t allow that and he instructed the devotees that I should rest for three days.

But I was ready for action. Not only had he cured me but the potion I drank gave me a lot of energy.

Some months later when I was in Rio de Janeiro, back from the Amazon trip, I went to see a doctor because I had a purple like tattoo and I was thinking,
"Am I going to look like this my whole life?"

Because I had been up the Amazon and has contracted several diseases, I was a case study. They wanted to take my blood, look in my eyes, etc When I told them that I had had a particular type of dysentery, they were immediately able to identify it. They said that this dysentery takes anything from six weeks to three months to cure. When I told them that one of the jungle doctors cured it in a matter of hours, one of them said,

"Don’t you come into my office and speak all this rubbish."

I said, "Doctor, its not rubbish, its actually a fact. I was about to die."

"He said, "I don’t want to hear these old wives’ tales. I’m a doctor. Do you think I’m going to believe these old jungle tales?"

To this day he probably doesn’t believe.