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Day 6:


We took of early for visiting a shaman living in Corozal. On the way to Corozal we stopped in a little village where a young woman lived who had been bewitched by a shaman. As we came in there the woman had just died a few days before. It was told that the woman had been bewitched two years ago. This caused her body to dry out. And besides her being young she aged more and more till death. The doctors in the hospital examined her but could not find anything.

As you can imagine from this story not all shamans seem to use their power for healing. Often they were called for love matters or to send diseases. This was how the Piapoco shaman lost the ability to use his leg which now stands 90° away from his body. This happend during his apprentice as a young boy. Another shaman cursed him. They had to call another shaman for curing so that he didn't dy on this disease. This shaman could stop the diasease from growing but he couldn't save the leg. Now Jose Antonia Garcia is 68 years old.

Shamanism in this part in Venezuela is mostly an act of inheritage from father to sun. Woman are not allowed to become shamans in this part of the country. In some parts shamanism is just disappearing because of no one being able to do this job. For one reason this is because of the strict rules of the apprentice. Sometimes the old shamans says that his apprentice is just too young - although in one case the apprentice was 30 years old.


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