Visiting our Shipibo friends

How a year flies by!  Now we are just about to say goodbye to our two young German volunteers who have done an excellent job receiving children and senior citizens at our Estrella del Sur educational outreach program and helping out in the local public school here in Sauce. Last month they went on an overland adventure by bus to Pucallpa which involved many hours of rough road travel and crossing a river on a makeshift ferry.
In Pucallpa they met up with Lourdes who had been in Cusco and together they went up the Ucayali river four hours in a typical amazonian riverboat to our small school project in the village of Ceilan.




 

Here's Freya doing traditional embroidery with Shipibo girls in the classroom we built two years back.

And here's Andres sliding down the creek bank with some boys.  Later he told me the Shipibo visit was the highlight of his time in Peru.  It's certainly a whole world apart, something increasingly rare in this time of advancing cultural uniformity.

Lourdes with Exhilde and Elias who founded Ceilan 35 years ago.  The embroidered designs reflect Shipibo culture's ongoing close connection with the world of the spirits.  These are stylized images of visions and songs perceived during traditional nighttime ceremonies.  Noya Rao is the name of the healing center in Ceilan where we have our 'escuelita' and is the most powerful, mysterious and elusive of the plant spirit allies in the pharmacology of Shipibo shamans.