Healers offer Amazon community free services because spirits don't want us licking toads

Whispering Wind, anti-toad licking activist and shaman
Photos by Persephone Bolero-Trento 

By Persephone Bolero-Trenton

AMAZON — The healers of the Amazon Sunday gathered in Acan’s Hunt to offer the community free health services for whatever ailments they suffered from.

Whispering Wind, shaman of the Tapirape tribe, claimed that “spirits” had spoken to her and said they are, apparently, very angry with all of us.

"The ancestors spirits are tired of being summoned for problems caused by carelessness, poor decisions and jealousy,” the shaman averred. 

What, dear readers, would upset these ghosts so much? According to Shaman Wind, they really don’t like us licking of toads and mushrooms. They also don’t like humans throwing trash into the river.

"The river spirits complain that humans keep throwing trash into the water, and the fish are getting sick of it,” Wind said.

 

Xoco Chieftess Khaing Zar offered counseling services.

 

Wind offered no words on how the spirits feel about the natives letting their bodily wastes run into the river rather than using latrines, but some questioned whether the spirits truly objected to toad licking as the shaman claimed.

“I am thinking of better things to lick,” Kaela Morningstar, a local healer, remarked.

The healers met privately with their patients, and when the Amazon River Sun asked healers what maladies they treated Sunday, they refused to break doctor-patient confidentiality.

A source, who asked to remain anonymous as he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press, told the Sun that sexually transmitted diseases and cholera were among the most common ailments patients complained about.

Shaman Wind consults with a patient.