I have a lot of video to upload, but am currently in Sumatra where the Internet comes through a straw. Suffice it to say that this shit is really real, and is coming as fast as I can get it up there. As the new go date for heading to Tiger Territory is tomorrow, had some time today to try to get some stuff updated. But really it ain’t worth the effort until I get back to Jakarta.
So anyways, enough harping. Here is my host and hero, Aman Sergei, before the ceremony that would save his soul. He wanders outside, not sure who he is, awaiting the activities of the coming night, the big balls-to-the-wall Shaman Shindig. And believe me, it took a lot of balls for him to admit he had lost his way, and it was through this amazing display of moral courage that we was able to find his way back.
He just hung in there and made it through. Good lesson for all of us.
T’was such an intense experience, and it’s going to take awhile to get out. It just ended, and I’m still processing. This video is from the day before the all night crazyfest where everybody went batshit to get cleared out the bad spirits who had taken over and open the way for the good ones to come back in. So it is just a few seconds of me in the rainforest with these four Sikerei shaman who had agreed to lead the ceremony that night. They are looking for just the right plant medicine to bring back for an this all night dance ceremony. Goal: to retrieve the soul of my host, Amansergei, the Sikerei Looking for His Soul.
It was now time. All the clan had come. All the Sikerei had come. The day was upon us, and soon the night: we were to find out if we could find Amansergei’s soul.
We are on Siberut, and we are deep in the jungle. January 25, 2012. ~14:00.
Through a series of strange and hilarious circumstances and happenstances, I ended up having a kind of a life changing week last week. It all started by taking a boat from Padang, which is the capital of West Sumatra, to Siberut, which is the biggest of the Mentawai Islands, about 10 hours off the coast, without really knowing what I would do. I just wanted to go. It turned into living with Mentawai people in one of their long houses for a week, said week culminating in a big ceremonial party thing to retrieve the spirit of a Mentawai Shaman, called a Sikerei. His name was Aman Sergei, and after a week living with him, and think I can actually call him my friend.
And the kids and a lot of the family, I got to know them all pretty well. They are funny as hell, pretty fiesty, do not like the mainlanders or the Transmigrasi policy one bit, and we had a lot to talk about, even with our limited vocabulary. My eyes welled up with tears when I had to say goodbye.
Anyway, the Sikerei needs to know how to identify plants, administer medicine, sing, and be a totally kick ass dancer. The dancing is kind of like a jungle flamenco. Oh, and it’s very important they don’t lose their mind, which if they do, sometimes requires four other Sikerei to come and help the loser of the mind to journey to get it back. And this is what had happened to Aman Sergei. He had lost his way, and had humbly asked his brethren Sikerei to help him find it again. But there was no guarantee that this would happen, and so the whole week was kind of up in the air. It ended up being a bit of an exorcism, not in a Linda Blair kind of way, but still…and I was blown minded to be allowed to be part of it. By the end of the 7 day blow out, 62 members of the clan had arrived. This clip is from in the morning after we stayed up all night clearing out the bad spirits, asking for forgiveness, asking in the new spirits, and then dancing in celebration when they came.
I cannot wait to upload the video I have. It’s burning a hole through my hard drive!
So for the moment, here is a highly poisonous caterpillar I came across while trekking through Kerinci National Park. Just brushing against his fuzzy fuzz can cause your skin to expand and extreme pain. There were lots of weird things in the jungle that were designed to destroy you, and lots of things that were meant to save you, and all of them were competing like crazy, still going at it after all these years.
I am a technologist, futurist, and businessman from San Francisco. I hope to use the energy and abilities of the people in Asia to create a deeper conversation. I headed back to Asia in December, 2011 for a three month visit to do research on me and the world, on Buddhism and meditation, and to explore and see where the road leads. You can read more about me in The Context. Welcome.
