Ask around in Cape Town, and you’ll find someone who has tried ayahuasca soon enough.

Maybe they travelled to South America and dabbled, as has become popular on the well-trodden backpacker routes, although there are also people in and around Cape Town itself who will guide you on your journey.

Here’s a story on Mahala from a few year’s back, and a thread on MyBroadband with a few options.

We’re focusing on events in Peru for now, and the murder of 41-year-old Canadian Sebastian Woodroffe that is grabbing headlines.

Back in 2013 he quit his job and moved to Peru to study plant medicine, having raised money for an apprenticeship with traditional healers in the Amazon.

Of particular interest was ayahuasca, “a sludgelike hallucinogenic potion used by indigenous shamans in spiritual exercises”, with IOL taking up the story:

It’s not entirely clear what happened in the years that followed, or whether the Canadian tourist found the healing for which he was searching in the Peruvian Amazon. But late last week, this Canadian tourist’s name and face somehow landed on a wanted poster accusing him of murdering a beloved shaman and indigenous activist in a remote rain forest in northeastern Peru.

Enraged members of the indigenous community appear to have taken matters into their own hands. Peruvian authorities say a mob of locals in the Amazonian region of Ucayali lynched Woodroffe before burying him in a makeshift grave.

A cellphone video that emerged in local news outlets shows a man – later identified by officials as Woodroffe – being dragged through the mud by a cord wrapped around his neck. He moans and pleads for mercy before lying motionless in the dirt.

You can see that cellphone footage here, if you’re so inclined, but we’re moving on.

Police found the buried corpse and identified it as Woodroffe’s body, Peru’s interior ministry said in a statement Saturday, vowing to pursue an aggressive investigation into both his killing and that of the shaman, Olivia Arévalo Lomas, a respected member of the Shipibo-Konibo tribe in her 80s.

The image up top shows both Woodroffe and Lomas, who wasn’t just a shaman. She also had an extensive record as an indigenous-rights activist, which has led some to believe that she may have been murdered by those representing the interests of mining, agribusiness, logging, and dam projects.

That is very much disputed by locals:

Locals told an indigenous news outlet that witnesses saw Woodroffe [above] shoot Arévalo multiple times after she sang an ikaro, or curing song. He then fled, local residents alleged, prompting Arévalo’s family members to post a “wanted” bulletin online and on Facebook, showing Woodroffe’s photo, identifying him by name and nationality, and offering a reward.

Friends from back home in Canada dispute that Woodroffe could have been the man behind the murder, with this from VICE:

…an old friend of Woodroffe’s, Yarrow Willard, told CBC that he had returned from Peru “troubled” after taking ayahuasca. Willard called Woodroffe a person “who likes to poke, and likes to test the boundaries of people’s beliefs, but is very much a gentle person underneath all of that.” Willard described disbelief that Woodroffe could have been involved in the Amazonian shaman’s death. He said Woodroffe had never had a gun.

“We’ve just been in shock,” he said. “It just felt like a scam because there is no way this person is capable of that.”

Here’s Lomas performing a sacred Ikaro, uploaded to YouTube by Temple of the Way of Light, a healing centre that offers ayahuasca retreats:

Authorities say they have prioritised both murders, and are determined to win back the public’s faith in the justice system by getting to the bottom of what really happened.

To finish, the nasty side of making a tourism industry out of something like ayahuasca:

Ayahuasca retreats have become immensely popular among foreign tourists. Each year, thousands of people travel to the Peruvian Amazon to experiment with the hallucinogenic brew, also known as yage, and referred to by some locals as “the sacred vine of the soul.”

…But the growing number of tourists in the town has added to mounting frustrations that a double standard exists in the way indigenous people are treated in the criminal justice system, local residents told Peruvian news broadcasters.

“There is justice for those with money,” one local resident, Alder Rengifo Torres, told TV Peru.

“A foreigner can come and kill us, day after day, like dogs or cats, and nothing happens, the State does nothing,” one local woman was captured on television telling a Peruvian vice minister who visited the indigenous community over the weekend.

Some food for thought, hey.

[sources:iol&vice]