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Abuelo Vasquez  
Sitting outside his home/ clinic. from Sami's Pucallpa images 

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Abuelo Vasquez is the chiropractor whose fingers resemble jumbo size markers.

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He has a few chairs outside his ‘clinic’ a few beds inside the room, which double as a bedroom for his grandchild and himself. To the right, there is a very crowded table. A picture of a woman with a gentle face sits in between pots of menthol balm and a bible. 

As the patients go in, the door keeps open, to let air in. He then welcomes patients with a smile and asks

-"where does it hurt?" He extends his long  fingers and starts working on people’s backs, legs and arms.

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Abuelo Vasquez  lives with his children and works from home. He keeps his windows and door open all day and likes to crack jokes about the weather.

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Mrs. Diana,   from Sami's Pucallpa images 

Although each practitioner comes from a different discipline and tradition, they all share a similar system of knowledge about the plants and their properties. At the market there is an entire section dedicated to medicinal plants only.  I  would visit my favorite plant sales-lady every week. 

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-what happened to the market, why is it closed?

-its raining

-what?

-its raining, everyone went home...

Yarina Market, Peru​

Ms Paty and Mr Paco

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Mrs. Paty cuts hair. Yarina, Peru 
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Who is going to be there with you in illness and in health?

 

Mrs Paty and Mr Paco are not healers under any tradition. They are just lovely people. 

When I first arrived I had the good fortune to meet Mrs Paty. I rented their back tiny house, where I stayed for long periods of time. During treatment I was prescribed to follow several plant based baths. New to this experience, I went home and followed the step by step process of these new methods. My everything hurt and I wanted to go to my real home, with my loved ones. It is at this moment that I realized, you never know who is going to be there with you in illness. The body that doesn't know pain, doesn't understand it in others. 

-knock, knock... I heard someone at the door

Mrs Paty stood there with my hot water in a pot. 

-"Hijita, what's wrong?" She looked concerned. 

-"Oh... I am just in pain" I could barely speak. "This treatment hurts and I miss my mom"

Mrs Paty walked in, took the hot water and poured it into my medicinal bath. She rearranged the blankets covering my body so the steam would not scape. She grabbed a chair and sat next to me. As she sat down, I could tell her hips and legs were in pain. She looked at me with the kind of empathy only a body that also knows illness does. 

She waited for half an hour and then said goodnight. 

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Mrs. Paty. Yarina, Peru
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Mrs. Paty. and I. Yarina, Peru
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