Chivay (3) - Alejandro

Ofer attended two shamanistic ceremonies while searching for Asher with the High Mountain Rescue Unit.  They were both recorded on video, and we''ve seen them.  The first was with 

a woman, who told them that Asher was still alive, and the second, a few days later, was with a man named Alejandro, who told them that Asher was dead and where to look for his body.  He turned out to have been right 

both about Asher's fate and also about the approximate location of the body.  Alejandro said that he communicated to the spirit world through the condors.

The men of the unit insisted on getting supernatural help in their 

search, according to Ofer, and they would not have been motivated to go on looking without that input.

The ceremonies involved burning coca leaves, reciting incantations in the Quechua language, pouring libations, and offering llama fetuses to the gods.  They took place very early in the morning, at the edge of the canyon.

Ofer gave Alejandro about

 a hundred dollars worth of food in return for his assistance.  The men of the rescue unit said that if he gave Alejandro money, he would just drink it up.

Alejandro came to the rescue unit headquarters in Chivay shortly after we had finished with Asher's knapsack.  He was a short, slight man, in a huge black felt hat, so drunk that he was incoherent, and he had a black eye.  He came with his wife and their eighth child, an infant.  His wife was thin and worn, sad-looking.  Though she was probably only about forty, she seemed to be closer to sixty.

Ofer had wanted us to get up at four the following morning to take part in a reenaction of Alejandro's ceremony, but none of us saw the point in it.  His visit to the headquarters was in place of that ceremony.

Communication with Alejandro was difficult.  His Spanish, even if he had been sober, would have been too mixed with Quechua for Ofer to understand, so Robert had to explain to Ofer in ordinary Spanish, and Ofer explained to us in Hebrew.

Judith asked him how he had come by his supernatural powers.  He explained that eighteen years ago, he had been struck on the shoulder by a meteorite, which was in the shape of a condor, and since then he had possessed powers.  He took the piece of metal out of his pocket and showed it to us.

Alejandro works steadily at his profession of telling people's future, and he is paid pretty well for it.  In fact, he was just as glad not to go through the ceremony with us the following morning, because he had been called to another place.  However, he told us, his abilities will only last for another four years, after which he'd have to work at something else.

By the time Alejandro showed up, I was suffering terribly from altitude sickness, not to mention the intense emotions that arose when we went through Asher's belongings.  My head ached, and I could barely focus on what was happening.  Otherwise I'm sure I would have been interested in hearing just what powers Alejandro possesses, whether he is also a medium, for example.

Look how far Asher took us - to the genuine folk religion of the Andes.  He would have been fascinated by Alejandro and would have enjoyed him, because there was a kind of sweetness and innocence about Alejandro.  He was no charlatan.  He believed in his own powers as much as the people of Chivay believed in them.

Part of me is shouting: What good did any of it do?  Asher's death is an undeniable, unchangeable, empirical truth.  But the fact that we involved so many people, who helped us as much as they could, is a kind of good.