CALDO DE ZOPILOTE: VULTURE BROTH

In Liberia, in the village of Barkedu, within walking distance of Guinea, there is a man we call the Elephant Dreamer. Since childhood he has been dreaming of elephants, receiving messages from them that often play out in waking life. Some are very specific: Meet me at your house on Thursday morning. Or, Make your farm here, not there. He meets them at the appointed time. He plants his crops where he is told. All around him, hungry elephants destroy his neighbors’ farms, but never touch a single plant on his. In his dreams they have told him that this is because the people in his village are behaving badly, contrary to traditional norms, and that many of them continue to hunt and shoot big animals, including leopards and elephants, both of which are protected.

Before the war, elephants were recognized as a sign of peace, and still are, although patience is wearing thin with increasing destruction of crops. But five years ago, when elephants first returned to Lofa county shortly after the ceasefire, hunger was tempered by awe. At the sight of the elephants, the elders of certain Muslim villages knew that specific verses of the Koran were to be recited when the elephants came and these were duly read aloud into the forest.

In the village of Samodu, a widow told us how she negotiated with the elephant elder to share her crops. He was big, much larger than the others, and he was thought to be the oldest living elephant in the country at the time, having been released from the zoo at Tototá at the beginning of the war. He and the other animals – those not killed at the time for meat – were left to fend for themselves during the fifteen years of fighting, after at least that many in captivity. It was known that this particular elephant also understood English and had learned to follow simple commands. The first time the farmer woman of Samodu came upon the old elephant eating her crops, she ran for cover. The second time, she stood her ground and spoke to him directly: “I don’t care how you look at me,” she began, “I will not run away today.” Then she said, “I’m a lady and I don’t have a husband. Will you be sorry for me? I grow these crops to feed my children. Now you have rooted up all the corn and cassava I have planted. You have destroyed all! Can you at least leave one stick of cassava for me?” The elephant stood listening, then gently uncurled his trunk from the cassava stalk he was about to root up, and stood there looking at her for a long time before slowly turning around and sauntering back into the forest.

The following year, our friend Master General, the former rebel commander and LURD Minister of Defense told us that three months before the ceasefire and before the arrival of the UN, he had come upon a mother elephant and her calf while marching through the forest with his men. He said, “The sight of the elephant told me, No more war in Liberia! God said the war is over!” He commanded all his men to lay down their arms on the spot. Anyone who disobeyed the order faced a firing squad. How many men? Thirty-six thousand laid down their guns, just like that. UN Peacekeeper Col. Raza Malik, commander of the Pakistani forces assigned to Lofa county, confirmed that most of the fighters had voluntarily disarmed before UN troops arrived.

The following year, we heard about the relationship between a local village and the crocodiles in the river: It seems there was a time when people were killing crocodiles, and being killed by them. The eldest elder called the eldest crocodile to come for a palaver. Sure enough the biggest, oldest crocodile raised himself from the mud and slowly walked from the river to the elder’s hut. They talked all afternoon and into the night. Pretty soon the crocodile waddled back to his people in the river and told them that he and the humans had made an agreement: there was a certain stretch of river where humans were to be safe from crocodiles, and another stretch of river where crocodiles were to be safe from humans. Humans would not hunt crocodiles and crocodiles would not kill humans. The contract is still in place today.

These tales of reciprocity and relationships that defy Western logic are common throughout Liberia and the rest of Africa, where animal taboos - relationships with totem animals - are still practiced in most places. Sometimes the relationship goes back so far the original story of alliance has been forgotten. Other times families or clans can still tell of how a particular animal either helped or saved the life of a family member, or vice versa, thus forging a bond for all time. It is forbidden to harm, kill or eat the flesh of one’s totem animal, on pain of instant illness, madness or death. Those that share a totem animal are considered brothers, regardless of age, religion or ethnicity.

These close relationships among humans and between humans and Nature form an organic conservation and peacekeeping network that remained intact for generations, accompanied by the stories of the original link. Modern conservation, with all its talk of corridors and preserves, is no match for the relational complexity of earlier times, with its multiple forms and functions. Unlike before, the survival of the animals, the waters, the forest and the people are now considered by humans to be at odds with each other, and therefore all are threatened.

When I was twenty-two and living in Mexico, my boyfriend and I went to Mexico City to visit a friend. His beautiful brown standard poodle, La China (Curly Girl) was being treated for what we thought at the time was a mild infection. It later turned out that she had been given a ‘hot’ rabies vaccine during routine vaccinations the week before. The day we visited, La China was docile as ever, never snarling or biting, although she suspiciously refused to drink water. Not yet knowing the actual diagnosis, the doctor had prescribed some medicine, so we took turns holding La China’s mouth open and gently pushing little white tablets down her throat. A couple of days later, she died. The grimly comical autopsy report that arrived a few days later indicated that she had tested positive for rabies and recommended she be decapitated then killed. There were over twenty of us who happened to visit La China that weekend. For weeks afterward, we all trooped to our local clinics to get daily rabies vaccine injections – 21 in all.

One day, we heard the story of a man we knew – my boyfriend’s former baseball coach - who had been bitten by a rabid dog, had actually gotten rabies and was cured by drinking caldo de zopilote - vulture broth. Even then I wondered, How does one capture, kill and cook a vulture? What ingredients does one include in such a brew? This formidable carrion-eater would make powerful medicine, indeed. I found out later that in addition to curing rabies, Caldo de Zopilote is a well-known folk remedy for cancer and (taken without salt) is said to cure madness. (One should bathe in the leftover broth after drinking). It is even said that drinking the blood of the vulture is sufficient in itself to cure rabies. When I see vultures circling, I wonder what might be the equivalent cure, the caldo de zopilote to heal the rabies of greed that threatens all of life on Earth?

The medical description of rabies sounds like an advanced case of consumerism: A viral illness, inflammation (swelling) of the brain that travels there from peripheral nerves (from the outside in, like healing, like war) until it reaches the central nervous system. Malaise, headache and fever progressing to acute pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression, hydrophobia, mania and lethargy, coma and, finally, respiratory insufficiency.

Without familial ties among all life, human and non-human, it is difficult to see where human beings fit in the symbiotic Big Picture. Science sees homo sapiens as a natural progression of Nature’s evolutionary reach toward refinement and complexity. Indigenous thinking, and perhaps the indigenous within each of us, recognize the lived expression of sacred relationship with the natural world as a uniquely human capacity. Gratitude and the myriad forms of making offerings (whether as tangible gifts, silent prayers or simply living with humility, awe and respect) affirm our connection with the sacred, feed the divine, and sustain a relationship of dialogue, beauty and reciprocity. Perhaps this is our ecological niche. Perhaps this is the correct understanding of ‘development’.

In Mali, Senegal, the Gambia and other parts of West Africa, singers known as Griots were originally peacemakers whose job was to chant and sing the deep, historical relationships of conflicted parties back in time through countless generations, reaffirming that their connectedness overshadowed their separateness. Are there any among them that also recount the relationships between humans and the natural world? If so, we need them now. Perhaps we can make a caldo de cuentos - a broth of stories - to sip that will nourish the memory and make it strong.