English version
19 July 2016
With our sympathy and our love to our neighbor, Balbina Camacho, who died the 18th of July 2016.
“You are not wealthy until you have something that money can’t buy” .
Garth Brooks
If there is something that I have learned living in Vilcabamba since 2008 it is that health is not something that money usually buys.
This statement requires a little bit of clarification.
What is the secret of health?
Sure money can buy better medical care. With money, one can go to a private clinic like San Agustin in Loja instead of relying on the free public system (and get his prostate taken out to treat kidney stones as happened to an Ecuadorian friend of mine).
Money can also buy expensive supplements available from the Juice Factory in Vilcabamba or on line or get a full set of essential oils. Money can buy everything organic, usually at double or triple the price of the non organic equivalent.
But does health really depend on good private healthcare and on supplements ?
I live in a small village a few kilometers from the “buzzing metropolis of Vilcabamba” (:-)) and there one can still witness some people, not so many unfortunately, living the old way, wandering around on their donkeys, eating their traditional diet which they do not call “organic”, and certainly not “raw”, they don’t even know the word “organic” and have never heard of “raw diets”.
These people look very healthy, they are skinny, they are fitter and stronger than 30 year younger typical westerners. Most are not rich and some are really poor.
These people represent what to me is the real “secret of longevity” that nobody will find in the Vilcabamba water or in the air or in the Iniger lab.
The secret of longevity
The secret is a complex. multi-dimensional combination of factors involving lifestyle, diet, exercise, water, air, emotional state, stress, possibly genes and certainly others that I forget to mention or am unaware of.
What is certain is that money is not one of them.
Balbina is well known in Sacapo. I never remember her age although I have asked her several times. Is it 95? or is it more? It does not really matter in the end. She is skinny, too skinny now because she is getting old and won’t probably last many more years. She was a midwife and a reputable one.
We asked her to be our midwife for our now 3 year old daughter but she declined saying that she could no longer handle it and no longer had the strength.
But ten years ago when she was “only 85”, she was very active, always out, walking along the river, always doing some physical work. She still managed to help my wife a lot during pregnancy, alleviating the back pain for example and putting the baby back in a good position with gentle movements and massages. She obviously knew what she was doing. She was very sweet and I will never forget her.
The point I am making is that her health, she does not owe it to money but rather to her lifestyle.
When foreigners come to settle here, my very first piece of advice is for them to keep a low profile, watch and learn and not come here to teach the people of Ecuador about their own beliefs. Everything is relative. I am sure that there is value in raw food diets and in gluten free diets and in vegetarian or vegan diets. However let’s not forget that we are here in the “Valley of Longevity” and that our hosts were here well before we had even heard about the place.
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18 July 2016