Los Arhuacos: The Poporo

A typical Arhuaco man, any moment of the day: chewing, poporo-ing, and covered with bags

I walk off the plane in Valledupar, still in a daze from the silent retreat and this lingering sickness—Flu? Altitude? Too much quiet time? Who knows? But it is miserable.

My energy is low; I am in the Bogotá-cold-has-its-thick-hands-wrapped-around-my neck-state and I am so exhausted, from nothing, that I can barely pepper my host with questions.  I don’t really know where we have landed. I just know that is it hot, hot, hot. Whenever I leave Bogotá, the weather is 40 degrees warmer.   Even though I don’t know what awaits us, I am sure it will be fascinating.  Will we end up picking tropical fruit, going on turtle patrol, or salsa dancing with a group of cafeteros?
In the midst of a sea of men and women dressed in jeans and t-shirts, we wait for our bags and I listen to the Bogotános whining: “He left me, she left me.” “Why is the coffee so bad?”  “I am boiling! this place is impossible to dress for!”

I could have been anywhere: Islamabad, Chicago, Sarajevo.

I stumble out of baggage claim and see two indigenous men: cone-shaped white hats flattening stringy long black hair, teeth disappearing from decades of chewing coca and intricately stitched man purses draped around their necks–clearly members of the local Arhuaco tribe. These two men are out of place—like me.

For a moment my mind flashes to Pakistan, and I think of my old Urdu teacher: something about the over-sized long shirts, the sombreros, and the baggy pants remind me of him and of exiting the Islamabad airport.  On my last trip to

Pakistan, I took this picture, because it was always such a shock to see the swarms of Pakistani men, dressed in local Shalwar Khameeze, waiting for their

The first thing you see as you exit the Islamabad airport...

relatives while I moved through the crowd looking for the embassy armored vehicle.  Feeling a small pain in my chest, wishing I had spent more time getting to know rural Pakistan, my colleague Jimena interrupts my thoughts, “Amy, I would like to present you to Wilbur and Juan Raul, our hosts for the trip.”  I about choked.  “Ahh, a pleasure to meet you,” I respond to the two indigenous men I had just been staring at.  Taking a closer look at their clothes, I wonder what it all represents. Later, I learn that the white hats worn by Arhuaco men  symbolize the snowfields of the sacred peaks they protect, and that the sack cloth pants, the coca leaves in their bags, and the famous poporo in their hands all serve to help the Arhuaco strike a balance with nature and one another.

Lt to Rt: Juan Raul (9), Jimena (6), Amy (8), Wilbur (3)

The Car Ride

Barely able to sit up and breathe, I climb in the van and try to listen before asking questions. Juan Raul is sitting in front with the driver and I am back with Jimena.  I am still in shock that I get to spend two days with these very special men.  Chomping on something like tobacco, he could have passed for a baseball player.  He reached into one of these mysterious bags and gave me a handful of dry leaves as a greeting of some sort.  Later, I would understand that the

Daily greeting=exchangint coca leaves.

standard male Arhuaco greeting is an exchange of coca leaves, like shaking hands.  Women never exchange coca leaves, and this would be the only time I was offered the prized plant spontaneously.  Like so many moments in Pakistan, I was considered an honorary male.

I took the leaves and wondered if I would chew them.  Would I start hallucinating that I had become an Arhuaco woman who spends her daysstitching these bags every day by the river?  Would I fail my next security examination with coca in my blood?  I am told it is an unassuming plant that has no real effect if not processed.

Hmmmm, what to do?

This moment reminded me of the cultural faux pas of not fully understanding what these rituals mean.  When I lived in Bosnia, at least a full year passed before I finally accepted Sanjin’s daily offer to have a cigarette.  Each day, sometimes twenty times a day, he and other Bosnian friends would approach me and say, “Wanna smoke?”  I of course, heard this question like any good girl from Wheaton, or well from Moody Bible Institute, would have heard it. “Of course I don’t want a cigarette,” I would think, “you want to kill me?  Haven’t you seen the smoker’s lungs pictures in the seventh grade health book?”  It took me a full year before I understood the proper translation of this greeting.  It really meant, “Hey, wanna spend some time with me? Let’s hang out for five minutes?”  I learned to take the cigarette and enter in to the heart of their ritual. Here with Juan Raul in the coca leaves—it was déjà vous. He wasn’t really asking me to become a coca addict, he was inviting me to participate in his culture.

I took them.

Juan Raul began explaining our itinerary.  We would be driving four hours into the Sierra Nevada mountain range, into their sacred reservation, closed to tourists, to visit their spiritual capital Nambusimake, discuss our projects with their governor, and then end the trip at a coffee collection center.  As he spoke and chewed, he was also doing something with his hands that caught my attention.  In his left hand was a dried out gourd, with a long neck and ball at the

Poporo-ing=Arhuaco meditation

bottom.  In his right hand was a special 12-inch stick that he would insert in the gourd, pull out a powdery white substance from the hallowed-out gourd, put the stick in his mouth, allowing the limestone to mix with the coca leaves and then apply the mixture of saliva and limestone to the neck of the gourd.

This is an unusual thing to see.

After about five minutes of this, I could not focus on the play-by-play of our itinerary,

“Excuse me Juan Raul, what is that in your hand?”

“ A popuro,” He said nonchalantly.  It was as common for him to be holding his poporo as it is for me to hold my blackberry which I constantly check.  Hmmm….the blackberry is to Amy as the Poporo is to Juan Raul???  Not exactly.

“What’s that?”  I had to know.

Again, as casually as one might explain our electoral college he went on to say.

What would be similar? What is always in your hand? Car keys? Cell phone? Child?

“The poporo represents life, order, the union between male and female.  The gourd like the earth is female and the stick is the man.  The women represent creation and the man represents wisdom.  Together the poporo symbolizes the laws and norms of our society.  One with nature, it represents our integrated spiritually and  sexuality.”

Hardly believing my ears, I about choked on the coca leaves.  My Indian guide was holding a symbol that he used as some sort of meditation prop to remember the things he cared about most, the values his community was built on and who lived the very questions I had been asking lately, albeit with a bit of drugs thrown in.  This was going to be a memorable trip.

“How long have you been “poporo-ing?”

“Around a boy’s 14^th birthday, our spiritual leader, the Mamo calls us in, teaches us how to use it, and reminds us of our deepest truths. This is our custom, this is our culture, we use it all day as a visual representation of who we are–men.  We are men, we protect the earth, we fulfill my role as a man to my wife.  Sex is power when you have discipline, when it is only pleasure there is no wisdom.  All day long as I “poporo” I am reaffirming my spiritual promise to be an Arhuaco, an indigenous man.”

Every stitch represents a thought...

“And the women, they poporo as well?”  I had to ask.

“Oh no, they stitch the bags, every point represents a unique thought. This is why my three bags are so precious.  One for coca, one for the poporo, and the other for things like pens and my cell phone.  For both of us, this is meditation.”

We went on to discuss how the essence of Arhuaco culture is a built on a belief in their dependence on nature, the interdependence of female and male energy, and a hierarchy which places the spiritual leaders and the center of all decisions–including who to marry, when to open the village to ecotourism, and how the profits from their organic specialty coffee crop will be divided.

The day would close with my colleagues and I in a room of about twenty Arhuaco men, all poporo-ing: rubbing their male sticks along the neck of the female gourd, while dipping inside the hollowed center to extract the limestone powder they mix with the coca leaves to accentuate their high.  You can’t imagine the surprise, of having to keep a straight face while giving a short speech about the US Government’s commitment to preserving Indigenous culture and tradition in Colombia, while the buzz of 20 poporos hummed around me.

"Clad in traditional white tunics, Arhuaco men in the village of Bunkwimake scrape fiber from the leaves of agave cactus. Women spin the fiber into thread and weave it into bags. The men weave the thread into stiff white hats." Stephen Ferry (NG)