Why Would Anyone Need Sapo/Kambo Training?
Someone on a social media platform asked me what I thought of people
being trained in kambo --frog sweat -- medicine by an organization
called IAKP which has been training people in the medicine use for
several years now. They suggested that indigenous kids just get the
medicine a couple of times and are good to use it on themselves and
others. This was my response:
I
do not have any direct experience with IAKP, but have met some of their
practitioners and they appear well trained. I know that when I
occasionally train people -- and I don't know where I get the right to
do that other than wanting people to use the medicine in a careful and
positive fashion -- it is not at all similar to someone being brought up
in an indigenous culture that depends on the medicine for hunting, for
eliminating the grippe, and so forth. Those kids are around the medicine
from birth, just like they are around the jungle from birth and so are
at home with it without any need for formal training. But then you take a
kid from Whitestone, Queens, New York, like me and put me in the jungle
and I need lots of training to be able to survive well out there. I
think the same applies to sapo/kambo training.
Yes, a person can just
use it once or twice and then give it to other people, but what happens
when something goes wrong? What happens when you allow a guest to walk,
unattended, to a bathroom and they black out and hit their head on a
counter top? Or wind up with their head in a bad position and start to
vomit and then choke and panic? What do you do when someone absolutely
freaks out on taking the medicine? There are so many things to learn to
use the medicine in our cultures that it is impossible to compare the
learning to indigenous culture learning. I have guests who need two or
three hours to come together again after a session, and other guests who
are good to go 20 minutes after initial application. How do you judge
when to give them back their car keys and let them drive off?
I am not a
believer in shrouding the medicine in a whole lot of mysticism and pomp
theatrics, but I do sing people into the first four or five minutes of
the experience to help them go into it gently -- as you all know it's
darned abrupt!!! So while I do not know the IAKP directly, I think that
training people to the things to be aware of prior to serving others, is
probably a good thing. And I do not know what they charge, but if they
are giving you 10 days or two weeks' attention, well, someone has to get
paid to do that. That is a lot of work.
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