“Why is it important to preserve Kukama culture?” someone asked.

“Because the plants don’t speak to us in Spanish,” answered Pascual. “They speak to us in Kukama.”

*

On Friday I got back from five days in the Amazon.

(When I’m not writing, I volunteer with an NGO called Minga Peru. Usually that means meetings and emails. But sometimes it means getting caught in a thunderstorm at the birthplace of the Amazon River, translating as an indigenous professor describes the Kukama cosmovision, and helping folks cross narrow planks from a muddy bank to a boat.)

I’ve done this trip before with students. But this time, it wasn’t a school trip — it was a spiritual pilgrimage for people of various faiths seeking connection with the divine.

Naturally, words fail. But I can try.

*

We visited a school in the indigenous community Las Amazonas, and saw what 3-,4-, and 5-year-olds were learning: children’s rights.

“Children have the right to play.
The right to a happy home.
The right to healthy food,” their teacher said.

🧸

While hiking, our guide Rafael kept disappearing and then reappearing, silently, with something astonishing (to us) in his hand:
a tarantula the size of his palm;
a poisonous frog the size of his thumbnail.
He found us a sloth, a boa constrictor, ayahuasca root.

In the 60-person community of Puerto Prado, Herman, an Indigenous Kukama man, told us he fasts for a day before harvesting medicinal plants.

“Where did you learn to prepare them?” we asked him.

“My grandfather taught it to me in dreams,” he answered.

“Does it work?” we asked. “What’s the life expectancy of someone in your community?”

“Yes,” he said. “Ninety years.”

🌱

The Kukama believe that there are five levels to the world. We live on the third. Fish, dolphins, and mermaids live in the second level, the river.
They are all conscious beings, and each one has a mother.

So the Kukama ask the river’s permission whenever they fish.
If they don’t, he says, they don’t catch anything.

🐟

In the Amazon, strange and beautiful things happen.

Coincidences, surprises, the uncanny…they’re daily life there.

🌴

And it made me think: maybe we’re not meant to be comfortable.

The Amazon isn’t comfortable. It’s hot, wet, and muddy.

Back home, we crave AC, soft carpets, the ability to sit whenever we want. But comfort doesn’t equal happiness or meaning.

Is that a coincidence? Or is there some causation there?

I don’t know. I do know, though, that I’m fortunate to spend time in a place where comfort falls away…and what’s left is wonder.

I’m Kimberly, ghostwriter & book coach who specializes in memoir with themes of relationships, spirituality, and mental health.

Curious? Let’s chat, or message me below.