Back in Chicago, editing photos and continuing my professional life as a photojournalist, I received a call from a friend of my wife telling me that Saday had become seriously ill back in Colombia. When I finally reached her on her cell phone, she was in agony.
A few days went by and then I also fell into a delirious brew of high fevers and migraines. In my case, the doctors were not familiar with tropical diseases and a week later we were both interred in public hospitals in our respective countries. Our condition worsened. I was weak and felt a torturous chill. My wife was faring worse: the painkillers had not kicked in and without any idea what to expect we were losing hope of recovering.
My first test for malaria was negative and I was instructed to wait out whatever was causing the affliction. I begged for another test after convincing myself that it would be the right thing to do. The results then came back positive and as soon as the doctors had left the isolation room and I struggled to walk with an IV strapped into my veins, I called my wife and inform her of our diagnosis.
It all began three weeks earlier, when I embarked on a trip from New York to the jungles of Colombia. Wanting to photograph a community of Embera Indians who had captured my curiosity on a previous assignment, Saday and I headed off to the Chocó. On the second day of our bus journey a passenger inserted himself into the seat in front of us. Dressed in a wide palm-fiber hat and adorned with dozens of necklaces made from fading tails, paws and claws, the journeyman clenched a staff from which more animal parts hung together with cheerful ribbons. For hours he sat silently as the other passengers looked on in bemusement.
As we entered the thick canopy of rainforest, our rural bus began to fill up with Emberas giggling and talking amongst themselves. The mountains and the day soon gave way to darkness and we disembarked in a dimly-lit village inhabited by some Afro-Colombians, soldiers and Indians who still had days to go to reach their communities in the heart of the Chocó.
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We decided to follow the medicine man to some lodgings and after an introduction in the austere fluorescent-on-plywood structure, he asked us to clench a rock from which he could discern our medical histories, our worries and plans for the future. We agreed to meet the following morning and accompany him to Las Peñas. Going by the name Felipe, this shaman had come from the interior of the country and had a mission: to heal a sick villager. He invited us to accompany him and witness his power.
Roused from our sleep with the cry of roosters at dawn, we began the final league of our journey. The landscape was changing dramatically, becoming darker, denser, the road turning into a swampy trail, hardly visible through the mist. At one of the puddles Felipe stopped the bus.
Trying to keep up with our shaman we descended a steep and rocky hillside. Fog had set in and the unforgivable mud banks made walking tedious. After crossing a suspension bridge made up of rusty cables and wood, we arrived in Las Peñas. With sweat dripping from our faces, the inhabitants welcomed us. Over breakfast, Felipe set out to gather medicinal herbs for his healing ceremony.
It was dusk when the villagers began to assemble at the schoolhouse. Candles were lit and women huddled on the floor. Boys fought over cigarettes and I joined some of the men in sharing their homemade liquor. Felipe began meticulously organizing his potions on a giant leaf. When he finished, he took off his shirt, a few beats, put a militant-looking headband around his long black hair. He prepared his shaman stick for action.
The sick man was led into the room. With pronounced check bones, this middle-aged man was pale and shivering. Even more striking than any physical ailment were his hopeless eyes fixed on the ground. Earlier, Felipe had explained to us that the villager’s fever and painful aching were caused by the curse of a neighbor, but he could not reveal his diagnosis to the rest of the village. Throughout the day he induced vomiting in his patient, but the true treatment was reserved for the night. When the murmur of the anxious spectators subsided, Felipe began rubbing the man with herbs, and sang in the language of the Embera. He sang late into the humid, delirious night.
While children wailed and a supporting cast of villagers pleading for the shaman’s attention by handing him folded bills, my wife and I ceremoniously drank the different alcoholic beverages going around, out of respect for local traditions. Around midnight, the schoolhouse emptied, and Felipe lay down to sleep on a mat across from us. Then the attack began.
Four itchy and nauseating hours crawled by when suddenly we heard chanting from the corner where the shaman had been sleeping. He got up swiftly, put on his hat and hurried across the empty square disappearing into the mist before anyone, including us, could fully wake up. We tried to follow him, tired and hung over, slipping and clumsily grabbing onto the wet rocks, the hanging bridge, and the steep path that lead to the road.
We were frantically fleeing the village and we didn’t know why. Three weeks later as we lay in our hospital beds, we understood what happened that morning in Las Peñas. A swarm of malaria-carrying mosquitoes had descended upon the hamlet, and Felipe, our shaman had a vision. A premonition, which saved our lives.
