(Below: Travel tips north coast around Santa Marta)
We had the rare opportunity to be welcomed to stay in the Kogi village YINKUAMERO and learn their art of weaving. I’m very grateful for our guide Jaime, a man that since 28 years has a relationship with the Kogi, and shared a lot about the Kogi culture and mythology. (Read more about the Kogi here.) This is how I experienced and understood it:
In the big night MALKUA the spider, is weaving a web of all what will happen and will be created in the universe. (Also in Navajo, Celtic, Egyptian, Greek,… culture women weave the web of life. (link) (link).) Malkua heard our desire to visit a Kogi tribe and weaved that we would meet Jaime, that brought us 5 hours walking into the the heart of the energetical web of our planet: the Sierra Nevada. This ancient mountain range is guarded by the Kogi people. Small of figure, long hair and white clothes that are a reflection of the snowcaped mountains of the Sierra Nevada. As is the white hat of the MAMA’s, the male Kogi priests/chiefs that are connected with ALUNA, the cosmic consciousness.
As Malkua weaves, so do the Kogi women weave shoulder bags. Their ropes are made of fique cactus, twisted around each other like the planets around the sun (NUWI) and the moon (SAJA) around the earth. Women are connected with the moon. During their first menstruation the young woman sits in isolation to make her first real shoulder bag. She is than visualising and weaving her future as a women. Than she sows her menstruation blood in the earth: sembrando luna.
Boys also have their coming-of-age ritual, when they are 13. They sit alone for 1 or 2 nights with a mini version of the POPORO, a calabash with chalk inside and a stick to put the activating chalk within the coca leaves in their mouth. It is the first time that they are allowed to chew coca and practice the positive, uplifting contemplation that comes with the chewing. In this way men also honour the feminine. The poporo is their first wife. Even when the physical poporo changes, their spiritual wife will always be the same. When the man dies, the spiritual wife will help him going back to the big mother (GALJOBAN) in the spirit realm.
A deceased person is buried in fetus position, with their last meal in the mouth, into a double-folded hammock. The two ropes for hanging the hammock are twisted together into one umbilical cord that will stick out of the earth attached to a tree. The Mama will pass by time to time, to pull the cord. When the cord breaks, the person is born in the spirit world, back by Galjoban. To get back by the big mother the deceased has to cross a river. When the family members cry to much, the river swells too high for the deceased person to cross.
The village exists of round shaped mud-straw houses. There is the temple of the Mama, on opposite the temple of the SAGA (wife of the Mama), a women temple and men temple. Every evening the men meet in their temple to shew coca, contemplate and talk, to materialize their ideas, make decisions and solve conflicts. And to drum.
And like MALKUA weaves her web, the men create a network of roads that connect the villages and the EZWAMA (energetic points). It is an energetic network charged with the energy of the sun/men. It is important to think positive thoughts so the roads are positively charged. The SESHISHA is a black line on the seashore that marks the boundaries of the Kogi-web. Before entering and after leaving the village we had to wash of negative thoughts and patterns.
The Mama’s nourish the ezwama with chrystal stones charged with energy. They can also put the crystals into a place where water needs to flow again. The Mama does divination by putting crystals in a bowl of water. The saga works side by side with the Mama. She is specialized in massage and menstruation. Deep in the Sierra is the village MAKOTAMA where only the most ‘connected’ Mama can enter.
21 of June is the closing of a cycle. From 16 till 23 June the Kogi ‘pay back’ for what they received, to the plants, animals and rivers by performing dances and giving sacrifices. The Mama invites all the couples to confess and share about what is happening in their relationship. After conflicts are resolved, the Mama gives each couple a piece of white cotton and a place (in a circle around the village) where they will make love. The juices are catched in the fabric. The next days the Mama gathers the cotton bolls charged with sexual life energy and put them in his shoulder bag to bring it as a payment to the river, to thank for the abundance and fertility.
Illness is often cause by spirits. By ‘paying’ the spirits, the illness will disappear. Many Kogi-men struggle with another kind of spirit: alcohol. When they go down to a nearby village to sell their goods like PANELA (a block of sugarcane), they often drink and return home without money. Even some Mama’s struggle with an alcohol addiction.
I imagen it as a mist that floats around the web and makes the cultural and energetic paths cloudy or invisible…
TRAVEL TIPS north coast around Santa Marta
Minca: quiet mountain village with a lot of yoga.
- Stay in ‘Madre Tierra’, a hippie/slow travellers place & learn to drum Samba rythms around the fire.
- Stay in or visit ‘Casa Loma’. Epic views, delicious vegan meals & loads of yoga (especially on Sunday).
- Hike to Cerro Kennedy. Take the local bus to the ‘Y’, hike 4 hours up (eat coca), sleep in hostal/campground ‘DondeMoncho’ & hike the next morning at 4.30am to the top.
Palomino: seaside village with a local conscious community & (very difficult) surf.
- Stay in ‘La Aldea’, a hippie/slow travellers Hostal & campground.
- If you want to stay in nature, next to a river & kayak or hikes to private beaches, a 5min drive from the village, stay in or visit ‘Jaba Jan’. At the rivermouth you can see many birds, the whole the mountain range behind & the surf is easier.
- In ‘Casa del Artista’ there are daily workshops.
- On Instagram @hoyenpalomino you can find local activities.
Yūgen 