Coca leaves the Peru's 'misfortune' teller's secret weapon

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This was published 9 years ago

Coca leaves the Peru's 'misfortune' teller's secret weapon

By Andrew Taylor
The future: Fortune teller reading coca leaves, Los Jardines, Peru.

The future: Fortune teller reading coca leaves, Los Jardines, Peru. Credit: Alamy

Across muddy fields planted with quinoa and potatoes and dotted with blue outhouses, braying donkeys and barking dogs lies my future.

Unfortunately, the shaman of Copamaya hasn't bothered dressing up for the part, looking more like a gardening enthusiast in his grubby blue slacks and zippered cardigan than a spirit guide.

For the non-negotiable price of 50 nueva soles (about $A20), Sendong has agreed to tell my fortune with coca leaves.

In Western eyes, the coca leaf and more particularly its derivative cocaine is the cause of immense misfortune.

But throughout Peru and especially in the high plains surrounding Lake Titicaca, coca leaves - chewed, brewed into tea, sipped in a pisco sour or eaten as a sweet - are a recommended tonic for coping with the effects of high altitude.

The dizzying, stomach-churning, sleeplessness that can be caused by the rarefied air at 3800 metres above sea level is reason enough to test out its curative properties.

But the promise of learning what the future holds is also irresistible even if it feels faintly like a drug deal.

Sendong beckons me to kneel opposite him on a brightly-striped blanket skilfully woven by the villagers of the tiny hamlet close to the border with Bolivia.

Between us is a large pile of coca leaves that he begins shuffling and spreading out like a croupier, pausing every so often to pop a few of the greenest ones in his mouth.

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Armed with my name, nationality and marital status, Sendong embarks on a lengthy commentary in the Quechua language interrupted only when he pauses to chew on another coca leaf.

Our guide Armando delivers the bad news: "Instead of growing and going to the top, you're still going down."

That's not the happy prediction normally given by astrologers. But the coca leaves have more to say and the prognosis, according to Sendong, is not good.

He selects three of the driest, most diseased-looking leaves and arranges them in a row before picking up another handful that he swishes through the air.

"You must be very careful when you're travelling. That's what he said," Armando translates, frowning as he listens to the shaman's prognosis. "You saw something bad. I don't know what. You have some dreams at night?"

The coca leaves Sendong is cramming into his mouth must be sour because he then declares me to be sick.

"In the head," Armando suggests. "You have problems."

If that's bad enough, he sees my work future in a Centrelink queue (although that is perhaps a fair call for a newspaper journalist).

Sendong's honesty is like a gust of fetid air and I'm beginning to wish I'd bought a woven blanket instead of his shamanic services.

But he insists on more questions so I try the safe ground of asking about the health and happiness of friends and family, thinking it will show my sensitive, selfless side.

He shuffles more yellowed, wizened leaves while eating the fresh ones and mutters something that makes Armando giggle.

"They love you just from the outside," he says. "But they don't really like you."

So now I'm sick, spendthrift, soon-to-be-unemployed and surrounded by backstabbers.

Eyeing the diminishing pile of coca leaves, I decide to quit while I'm behind. Armando later tells me not to worry about the shaman's predictions, suggesting a bad batch of coca leaves may have caused my misfortune.

Or perhaps, as one of my fellow travellers pointed out, Sendong may have chewed all the good leaves.

The writer was a guest of LAN Airlines and South America Travel Centre.

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