Amaya shares her month and a half as a volunteer in the jungle, living with the families of the Centro Poblado Nuevo San Juan. There she experiences how life is built from the simple, from the small, from the deepest part of the human being.
It is a great experience, first the arrival by crossing the Ucayali River, which marks the dynamics of time, you arrive when you arrive, everyone with their loads, with things that they cannot buy in their village, little boats loaded with people and belongings go up and down the river, as in a great water highway. Contact with the living, exuberant, young nature and, at the same time, contact with life in the jungle, which is hard, you have to work long and hard to be able to have something to eat on your plate. No matter how old you are, the need is imposed, and this is the priority for everyone. Experiencing that the present is important, living the immediate, something healing and at the same time difficult for me, used to programming myself, here it is a practical exercise, what is important is not what you have programmed, you are at the expense of what is important for others, and you adapt yourself.
Here the priority is to get a plate on the table, something that I have without difficulty, everything else is secondary, these glasses to look at your life and my life are important.
This year has been one of direct and intense contact with people who needed attention for health problems with biomagnetism treatment.
It has been precious to dedicate my time and affection to them, to see how clean and well-groomed they came to the session, and to offer them that space, which is so difficult for them. -I say they, because only two men came – and to take it as it comes, to feel the joy of seeing them get up from the session smiling, and me at the same time as if they were a little bit me, someone important to me, someone special. Our stories come together.
To hear them say beautiful things, coming out of the treatments, “I have been resurrected”, “I came with knee pain and it doesn’t hurt”, “the treatment has been healing”. Or something that touched me and made me a little embarrassed; what is little mother doing, that people are healing? I have become part of their lives and they have become part of mine, with some of them even very intimate.
I can say what I answer when I am asked, “Will you go back to Peru? Yes, as long as I have the illusion of sharing my life, the simple, the everyday, I will go back, because I experience that in a special way, especially in the jungle, where the simple, the immediate is a priority, where the big issues fall by their weight.
Life is simple, as simple as me, as simple as my life.
Amaia Oar-Arteta, Volunteer
