Ancestral Herbal Narratives

[0:11] Nicole Wines: My name is Nicole Wines. We are here at Raíces Cultural Center. I am interviewing Carolina Moratti, for, as part of the Herbal Ancestral Narratives oral history collection. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Carolina.

[0:24] Carolina: No, thank you guys. I’m honored. This is very special to be able to be here in this beautiful place, close to nature. It really very nice.

[0:33] Nicole: Thank you. Can you introduce yourself? Tell, tell us your name in your voice, where you were born, where you are now.

[0:40] Carolina: Yeah. My name is Carolina Moratti. I’m 39 years old. I came originally from Peru. Arequipa to be exact. My father is from Cusco, so he claimed half of that. He said, “You’re not only from Arequipa, also from Cusco.” So originally from Peru, South America, Where Machu Picchu is. That’s the best reference, right? You can give. And I’m also from New Brunswick. I consider myself a “New Brunsquina” because I’ve been working with the community for about seven years and helping the people has been my way to do things. I think it’s my, my fuel. Like I do get my energy and all my blessings and all my health by doing that. It’s my major investment.

[1:45] Nicole: So I have a big question to start with, and then we’ll get into your story more. What does healing mean to you?

[1:52] Carolina: To me, it’s like getting your body ready or prepare or getting your body adjust to everything else that’s happening in life. So you constantly are looking or seeking to be aligned and healthy in a way to be able to be able to give to people. You need to be good yourself. And that took a minute for me to understand when I started my journey on healing and, and looking for a healthy life.

[2:30] Nicole: Okay, thank you. Through, through your life, can you tell me a little bit about your connection to herbalism, to healing traditions and to, to herbal healing traditions and to other healing traditions?

[2:41] Carolina: Yes. I was always very attracted to that because I grew up, I grew up in a kitchen because my family is a family of restaurant owners, but it was ancestral cooking and traditional cooking. So my grandmother was always by the register and checking everybody. But I spent most of my hours with the cooks with las cocineras, and they would first of all, feed me endlessly, but they would also teach me how to be able to heal yourself with herbs. And initially they wouldn’t help, they wouldn’t teach me, they would’ve just gave them to me. Oh, I have a stomachache. Oh, take this. And they would give me teas and they would gimme herbs and they would gimme stuff like that. And then, and then later on in life, I also, and to my father’s side, I learned that from, ’cause my, my father’s side also, my grandma was a restaurant owner, in a smaller scale, but she also have cooks and they would also talk to me about stuff like that. And the Peruvian culture also have a great variety of herbs and ancestral, ancestral medications. And then my father also have his stake on to, became a shaman. She, I mean he is a university professor. He’s the dean of the university now. But when I was a kid, he used to do those pago a la tierra ceremonies in our house and do coca leaf ceremonies and do all kinds of requests to the apples where, where I grew up just seeing. And I was always very attracted to the holistic part of it. And I always wanted to do more or know more about it. And he tell me one time something that it was like, I was like, I understand, but I don’t think you’re a hundred percent right. And he told me, “Los chamánes solo son los hombres.” And I was like, “Okay.” Being who I am, I was like, I have to figure it out how we could do this, you know. But, then I, I moved to Arequipa with my, with my grandmother and my mom. So that kind of went in the behind of my mind. But it was always attracted to it. You know, my college years I moved back to Cusco to study tourism administration. And I got, I encountered that whole thing again, you know, herbs and then ungüentos and how they use alcohol with coca leaves to be able to cure you, muña, different herbs that you can use for different stuff. And I try to apply it here. I try to bring it, I try to figure it out a way to get it here. Fortunately enough now some of the herbs in the dry version are being brought here by the companies, but there is some certain stuff that it doesn’t arrive here. I remember my mom trying to get me one herb that it’s very difficult to find here, but it’s really very good antibiotic. All you just put it is just put it in in in whatever open cut you have and you will get healing. And we try to get that when I, when I, have my son and now my mom just arrived from Peru and she brought, brought also some leaves. So we trying to figure it out if we can maintain it until my sister have her baby. So we trying to maintain all those cultures. And then I remember one too, it’s very, when I have my baby, one of my, caregivers, when I was a little kid, my it would be like a live in nanny here. But for me, she was my family, Vicky, she called me and she said, “You have to make sure you wrap your hair. You have to have your hair wrapped for the 40 days after you have your son or your daughter.” So all of those traditions was always very attractive too. And I just try to bring it here as well. ‘Cause I think it’s very important in anything that I do, be able to bring your traditions and your culture and your legacy with you.

[7:24] Nicole: So you mentioned that in the beginning, in the kitchen, that the cooks would, they wouldn’t teach you, but they would be giving you herbs.

[7:32] Carolina: Yeah. Yeah. But then I started to find out myself, what is that called? I would’ve asked somebody who I would I, my way to get to know the name of the herbs and stuff like that is I’ll get to the youngest one, to the young cook or to whatever person was assisting the family for that time. And I will ask her to find out. They will tell her, and then she will get, tell me. It was like some, some charming secrecy between them. Like for some reason they thought because my grandma was the owner, they shouldn’t be teaching me things without my family knowing, I guess. I don’t know. I never understand and I never ask. I was just curious. I just wanted it to find out why was the thing that it was making me feel so good. You know? I was like, what is this? Because they were like, oh no, no, you know, you, you don’t have to use pills. You can use this and that and really work. And not only herbs and stuff like that. I remember one of my uncles said, I said, “I have such a migraine.” And he came and grabbed a little bit of my hair in the back and pull it. And I was like, “Ah! It’s still giving me more pain.” But after a while my headache went away. So I, I don’t know the technique, but all I knew is that because he told me, that’s gonna make you feel better. It did. You know, I don’t know if that technique of pulling my hair and work out, but it is certain magical part of that when we talk about healing and herbs and techniques, how you can be healed. I remember I went back to Peru after falling down the stairs here, but I have to be on my parents’ wedding anniversary. He said, my father is like, “I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but you have to be here.” So my knee was messed up. My arm was messed up. As soon as I arrive, one of the cooks said to my sister, “You have to take her to the cosero right away. She’s not gonna be able to do nothing.” ‘Cause I came on the wheelchair. They took me so far from our house, probably like an hour and a half, two hours driving. This guy opened the door. With all secrecy. Open a little window. And he’s like, “What’s your problem?” I said, “My arm and my knee.” “How it happen?” Like a doctor? “How did this happen?” Da da. So I say, I, “I fell and I went down the stairs.” He’s like “How?!” “I don’t know. I was packing to come to the trip and I didn’t see the plastics in there, and I slipped.” He’s like, “Okay.” So he opened the door, he put us in a room for like 15 minutes, like a doctor’s office. And then he came and wrapped me with some herbs. So he put something called a emplastos, but first before putting the emplastos he pulled my bones and he make me yell to this, to the sky. I was like, what? You know? But he pulled me, he fixed my knee, and then he grabbed a big pot with herbs again. I’ll never find out what it was in there, right? So he put all the herbs and he wrap it up and he say, “Two days you’ll be new, don’t worry.” And I went and I stayed with the emplastos, for like overnight, I think he said “Overnight you take it off.” And I haven’t had problems with my hands anymore. My knee, I can’t say the same thing, but it was other, other different reasons. But that’s things like that in moments like that make me believe a hundred percent that nature is the way to be able to cure a lot of stuff. And it’s difficult to people to understand that because we are, and now nowadays people think medication and chemicals are the only way to go because it’s easier, because it’s faster. But if you have patience and you also in the, in the spiritual level, you believe in what you’re doing, you’ll be able to, to achieve that healing. You know? And it’s, it’s a really, it’s a gift to be able to understand that. But you also have to have some certain belief. My grandma used to tell me, “If you don’t believe, nothing is gonna happen.” Mind you though, she, she was, she was very special character. But, yeah, she always tell me, I can give you all the herbs. I can ask the her, she, my, my grandma never got involved. For her, her connection to Earth was different. She used to do pagos a la tierra every single year. And ceremony at midnight, which I was just admitted to be part of it when I was almost 13. Before of that I was prohibited to be part of with incense and stuff like that. But she wasn’t much of a healing part. She was like the ceremonial part of this culture. And after she passed away, I think they did it 3, 4, 4 more times after. And that’s it. That’s something we stopped doing at our house. But, my father’s side, they still continue those ceremonies. And one of my uncles goes around the world, being a shaman. Mm-Hmm.

[12:52] Nicole: You answered a lot of questions without me asking them. Do, are you an herbalist? Do you consider yourself an herbalist?

[12:59] Carolina: No, no. I, I wish,

[13:00] Nicole: Are you a healer?

[13:05] Carolina: I wouldn’t say, but I will tell you what she’s doing. I will try to give it to you and I will try to heal myself that way as well.

[13:12] Nicole: Mm-Hmm.

[13:12] Carolina: I wouldn’t say I consider myself a healer, but I will say that I am a long time apprentice. Yes, yes. I keep always digging into that. I always try to figure it out. I’m always trying to find out things we can do. You know, yeah. It, it’s something that very is really excites me. But I I, I’m still learning. If somebody ask me, I will gladly, gladly try to help them out. But I will be like, oh no, come in a consultation with me. I will, I will heal you, No. But I will just give them.

[13:51] Nicole: Right, Right, right. So it’s more everyday practice. Practical applications in your life, the people who you know, will talk to you about it. And I, I think a a lot of our, a lot of people who we’ve interviewed in this series are the same way. And something that you mentioned, so you call you, you said lifelong apprentice. You mentioned the way that you began to learn was really through people giving you herbs and then you asking questions. It wasn’t formal, it wasn’t any, there was. So was there ever any formal training in herbs?

[14:21] Carolina: No. No.

[14:21] Nicole: In the use of herbs?

[14:22] Carolina: No, no, no. It was just getting the box. My mom was like, “Oh, my kidneys are bothering me and I don’t know what to do.” And then I went and I call a few people. This thing is like, the people who knows about it, they’re not too computer savvy, so I have to spend a lot of time on the phone. And now sometimes they don’t even have cell phones and the home phones are not, you know, so when I go back home, I try to get all my stuff and the, the more that I know the better. But yes, I, my, when my mom was here, I tried to heal her with her, with herbs about her kidney chronic situation. So yeah, I’ll try to push all the time.

[15:05] Nicole: Oh, okay. You mentioned your father and your uncle.

[15:08] Carolina: Yeah.

[15:09] Nicole: Being, the shamans.

[15:10] Carolina: Yeah. My father did his stake on, shamanism in his younger days, probably until I was, like, before we moved with my grandma, probably nine years old, eight years old. He allowed me to be on the ceremonies. So from him, I have all the memories of the ceremonies because we, my father bought a home next to my uncle, the shaman. He was like, “Oh, we’re here together. You have to open up. We have to start doing the ceremonies.”So that was my first experience seeing, seeing a shaman and seeing coca leaves and seeing all of that with him in Cusco. So, and like I said, my, my uncle’s still going to Europe doing that. He, his stake is more into Europe, but he goes through the year, and it’s very exciting to see all the stuff he does. We talk sometimes, but it’s just the knowledge that he has is just a lot. And, and one thing that I got very attracted to is because my uncle is an expert on ayahuasca trips. He is. So I told him that I do want to do my, my, my to have my own experience now with ayahuasca the next time I go to Peru. And when I mentioned that to my father, he said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, because no, you are not ready yet. You need to be ready.” And, and people come here from Europe or America and then think they think they can access to that. You have to spiritually be ready in, in before getting into something like that. So I’m still doing my research trying to figure it out, how able to do that. It’s for me and I, and all my curiosity trying to find out, I find out that there is a shaman in New York City who does that here. So I asked my father again and I said, “You think it’s easier if I just go to New York and I do my consultation with the shaman here?” And he’s like, “You first have to let me find out who he is. If he’s legit.” Between them, it’s like, like a respect or like or like, they, they, they respect each other, but they also try to be sure who they are, and they make sure that you’re going to the right person. It’s seriously like going to a doctor’s recommendation between them.

[17:47] Nicole: That’s a, a great leading in great lead into our next set of questions about culture and herbs and culture and healing. Because you just, what you just mentioned, I mean, that’s a very controversial topic that a lot of people talk about. And what you, what you said about what your father said to you is something that I’ve, I’ve heard that a lot. And there’s the, the question of culture, right? So you mentioned this is a cultural practice, very cultural practice with a very specific application, which you’re lucky enough I’ve, I find that lucky that you have someone who can guide you through that without thinking of it as, oh, I’m just gonna go on a trip to, to discover something or just because I can, right?

[18:33] Carolina: Well, they don’t guide me. Remember he said Shamanism was for men only. So he kind of challenged me to try to figure it out. And I think that’s something you shouldn’t do to girls, because if you tell them though, it’s going to be worse, and I don’t understand why he didn’t want it. I mean, I guess he just wanted me to have my, my regular life of being a professional and just don’t worry about that. I guess.

[18:59] Nicole: Can you talk about the connection of culture to those practices for you in your, in your experience, how are these herbal traditions and healing traditions taught? How are they passed down in your culture?

[19:12] Carolina: Yeah, I mean, growing up in Cusco, my first 10 years of my life, and not only growing up in a regular way, because I, my father used to have a travel agency in a, in a hotel, so I was surrounded with this. They have raised it so much because they kind of sell it to the tourist. So all of this was to me, like, I saw it all the time. So we go to, we take trips. I was very attractive. How do they mix culturally? I was very attractive and very curious. And I remember I was five years old and I went, my father took me to a, a celebration of a virgen, like a virgin, like a, like a church it’s called peregrinaje, pilgrimage. So we all went and I was so impressed to see how do they mix religion, religion with healing and traditions and herbs. And I’m like, I was like, I was five years old, but I guess I was like, I don’t know, I was always very curious. I was like, but the church in my mind of five years old was like, “I don’t think the church, it’s okay with this.” You know, because they have all these ceremonies outside the church, all these dances, all these drinks that they drink while they are going to church. All these alcohol mixed with herbs and all these traditions that I’m like, and my mom was next to me and she said, it’s okay. She always, she was like, it’s okay. I remember her holding my hair. And then she said, you have to enjoy this. This is beautiful. God knows when we’re gonna have this opportunity. And we still trying to go. It’s like 35 years after it. It is beautiful to see. Same thing that I saw, it was with another santo, closer to our home, the, it’s called Señor de Huanca. And they have, while you go up to the sanctuary, they have these traditions and they have like, if you want a home, you will buy a little home, you will buy a little truck, you will buy, if you want health, you’ll buy like a little package of herbs and things like that. And you will put it in your pilgrimage to the sanctuary. And you set it up in there with your wishes, wishes of healing, wishes of health, wishes of a home, wishes of wishes of a university title. You will buy all of that little and put it in there and believe it. And, and you know what it was, what was the crazy part? You pray it to the apple, to the apples. So you, you believe and you pray and you want, and you ask the apples and the sun to give you that, and you wait to church to ask the saint to also give it to you. So I grew up seeing all of that. And to me then spirituality and healing and religion was a great mix. I was like, okay, I’m gonna take it all in and embrace it. And since then I’ve been doing that. And then I remember also one time it was very impressive or touching to me. My grandma had somebody who she raised as a daughter, so she’s still there taking care of the house. My grandma passed away like 50 years ago, but she’s still there taking care of my father now. So it’s like a sister. She was giving the food to the Guinea pigs from the house. And I said, I think I say my stomach hurt or something like that. And she grabbed the herbs that she gave to the Guinea pigs and make me a tea. She said, “You have to drink that.” I was like, “Do I have? No!” She said, “Yes, you do. This, we use this for that, and you be fine.” And I drink it. I don’t really remember what happened to me, but I initially I thought, I’m gonna die. She’s giving me the stuff for the Guinea pigs. But all those things put so many stuff on my memory and make me, make me, first of all make me be open to this stuff that maybe for a regular person, like that’s crazy. How did they raise you like that? Right, but to me it was normal. All of this was normal. So it gave me a kind of normalize this kind of stuff to me, so.

[23:46] Nicole: It was just all around you?

[23:47] Carolina: Yeah. And then I remember one of my aunts, the, the wife of the shaman, she also have crystals. So she showed me another part, right? She said, “Ay, my kids, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t care about this,” but she say, “You have something, so I need to show you this.” So she brought me in and she showed me all these crystals and she say, this is to heal this, this is to heal that. And I remember she did something to me like that. And she say, you gotta put it here. And then you know you’re gonna concentrate. You’re gonna learn how to breathe. All of those things to those little experience with every little person that I have in my life was very special. And it showed me a lot. And I, I, I was like, from, from like five when I have memories to 10 and Cusco, I was surrounded with people like that. My father’s circle was all of them like that. And then every summer I used to go to my grandma’s kitchen until we moved there. And I have the experience with the, the cooks and the kitchen. So it was just culturally I was nurture with all these new things left and right. It was just there. It was just there. But if you ask my sister, she will not have memory of any of this, neither my brother. When do you see all of that? And I think it’s just because when you’re attracted to something, it’s just your call and you just wanna, you just get curious.

[25:21] Nicole: That’s true.

[25:22] Carolina: Mm-Hmm.

[25:23] Nicole: You talked about a couple of things that have changed and evolved specific to those practices, but you also, so, and there were a couple, maybe say a major event of moving from one country to, to another, right? You have the migration. So with that in mind, the move from one country to another and the passage of time, because we’re living in a time where things are changing very quickly, right?

[25:51] Carolina: Yeah.

[25:52] Nicole: And, and, how do you see how these practices are changed and evolved to you with those two things in mind? Like the, the change into modern, even more modern times and your move from Peru to New Brunswick?

[26:06] Carolina: Well, it make me embrace it more. It make me try to go into it more because I guess whatever is not out of reach. The same way when my father told me, you can’t, when it’s out of reach, you feel more attractive to get into more be because we first, because I feel like all of that is kind of dying. ‘Cause people doesn’t feel interested on that anymore. So I don’t see the younger people to be like into it anymore. So I was like, I feel like kind of like the responsibility to be able to keep that and in a way pass it to my grandson. Even though I’m still a long-term apprentice. The little that I know to be able to pass it on him, I try to start figure it out. When I get the dry, the dry herbs from the store, I started to investigate if I could take seeds out of that and work and if I can planted it here. People is like, you can’t do that. You cannot do that. Da, da. I was like, okay. But I started to get more like into it and trying to find out or figure it out. How can I keep this? It’s like, yes, with time and life and all of the things that I went through on my personal life for a minute, it kind of like go away because I was doing my whole life and trying to put my life together after I became a single mom and a domestic violence survivor with my son, all of that kind of went away and I have to pick up my pieces, the pieces of my life and restructure everything. And when I was established and good again, I was like, well, okay, you know, Carolina something is, is calling, you need healing. And I will back and I start to figure it out how to bring the stuff and how to start doing it back again. So I’ve been doing it for those reasons. I wanna keep traditions alive, I wanna keep this going. And I think I have a personal responsibility to keep it here because no matter where I go, I still have ancestors, I still have history, I still have these stories for the people who was able to share with me to keep it alive and in the best way I could. So that’s why I always feel attracted and I wanted to do it.

[28:51] Nicole: What are ways that you see others or what are ways you might suggest to others to preserve these, these herbal and ancestral healing practices and the knowledge contained in them?

[29:03] Carolina: I, I would like to see, I mean, I firmly believe in education. I would like to see if we could provide this kind of classes or information to the people, especially because we live in a community that access to medicals, medical services or access to a doctor or access to, you know, services in general, it’s so expensive. Not only expensive, it’s also out of hand. People is afraid to go to the doctor because they afraid of the bill. And on a immigration level because there is no knowledge, they’re so afraid to go to a hospital because they think, oh, I’m gonna get deported. Something’s gonna happen. They’re gonna go to my house, da da. And then when the patients got to my, ’cause I work for a doctor’s office here. When the patients get to the doctor’s office and sometimes it’s for me, it’s time for me to help them out. They already have diabetes to the top, they high blood pressure is to the roof. You know, there is a lot of stuff that is already super messed up. So if we can provide this information to them, to the people, and if we’re able to tell them, listen, we’re not gonna, we can, we can compete to the doctor because that’s something that you have to do on your own and you have to deal with your doctor’s appointments or whatever, if you can, that’s on you. But I wanna be able to provide you these options that you can do to prevent, or these options you can do at your house to get a healthier living. I understand that people in the community work regular time overtime, extra time and every time possible because they have to make it to the end of the month. But if we can give them a few things that they can apply and do in, in their homes, we will be making a big change. But like I said, like you asked me in the beginning, you consider yourself a healer or you consider yourself as somebody who knows about it? Not really, but I would like to get in contact with people who can probably know more about it and make like a conference or make like a class or something that we can provide this, you know? And I’m sure people is gonna come because I’m sure I’m not the only one curious, I’m not the only one attracted to this. And if we can get the younger community to do this, because I see, I work with a lot of kids in COLAB. So I, I know that it’s kids that they feel attractive to this, but they just feel attractive. But they never, and I seriously think it’s maybe the same attraction I felt it when I was young. You just feel it inside you. It’s like a call, like this is familiar. I don’t know if this is, it’s like an ancestors connection or something in the back, but you felt something. It’s like something stuck inside you. I know some kids have to feel the same way. The curiosity about this, it has to be around. So it we were able to do that here it will be life changing for the people here.

[32:34] Nicole: Thank you for sharing. I wanna just pause a moment and ask my colleague here if he has any questions, any follow up questions from anything that he heard before I get my last one. Then I will ask my, I’ll ask my last question, which is a quick and fun one. I just wanna know, is there any herb or plant that you feel a particular attraction to or that you’ve been working with or learning about a lot lately?

[33:03] Carolina: Yeah, The, the, in the beginning I told you that we tried to bring that herb. When I have my son and I think this herb I have to investigate more on, on the actual name of it. It’s called, llanten, it is to me it’s just a miracle like that herb is my passion. I love llanten. It’s just so magical. And we have, even though my mom and my aunt, their chefs, they, they do more of their healing through food. ‘Cause that’s another whole topic, right? They do all their healing through food to cooking, to, you know, they heal yourself in a different way when they give you a hot dish, that’s more them. Our conversations through llanten, it’s like you pull a fire in there and we can talk about it. So I was just dealing with a little piece of llanten that I was trying to rescue just last, the night before, the night before yesterday. I was like, oh my god. So, my mom brought me a little, a little llanten dry and I was working and how do I’m going to take the seeds? And I put it in a paper. So I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna see if this is gonna work out. It did work out with me from the seed that I got from aji amarillo frozen. I got it frozen on the store here. I got the seeds and it work out and I have my plant oven. I’m super proud of it because I live in an apartment and that, that happened. So I was like, I hope this gonna happen with llanten because it has been very difficult for me to be able to get access to it, especially because my sister is about have her baby, not about like five more months gonna have her baby. So we need that because it’s like, I don’t know what llanten does seriously, but you put it on top of anything, it will just seal you up. And, sangre de grado is another one that I really like. There is a big tree on the Amazon that if you make a cut to it, it will bleed and it looks like blood. If you put that in any open cut, I love that one too. It’s not an herb, but it’s just know it’s part of a tree. Nice. And my father sent it to us when my mom, my mom used to have a patient that she really loved and she was having all this bed sores and we saw it with our own eyes. How she got cured with it, they went away. So that’s, that make me feel like there is answers and there is healing and there is things we can do. But if, if you ask me about an herb that I’m passionate about, I’ll say llanten a hundred percent.

[35:42] Nicole: Great. Well thank you so much for talking with us and sharing a little bit of your story. I look forward to continuing to dialogue over time to learn more. Is there anything else you wanna share with us before we?

[35:53] Carolina: Yeah, I mean I talk about a lot of the Peruvian part of my connection to that, but moving to New Brunswick also made me learn that the Mexican community have so many things and herbs and things that they use. And it was so beautiful to see that when I went through my surgery process, the lady started bringing arnica to me and things like that. You have to drink this, you gotta put this in, da da da, you gotta put it in the open cut. And it was beautiful. I’m like, I’m glad we still doing this, you know? And this, you know, it’s just, it’s just nice to see that we still trying to do this and it’s just exciting and I’m just looking forward to see what we are going to be able to do together.

[36:41] Nicole: Awesome. Us too. Thank you so much, Carolina, for joining us today.

[36:45] Carolina: Thank you. Thank you so much.