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Out of the Blue
The agony of the long-distance commuter
For some flight attendants, three airports and 2,500 miles isn't a major trip -- it's a normal journey to work.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[11/02/99]

Pilgrim of the dead
To get a real dose of the meaning behind Halloween, visit the bone chapels of Europe.
By Summer McStravick
[10/30/99]

Wanderlust
Turning Parisienne
In Paris for our fifth anniversary, all I could think was: What's so seductive about French women? And how can I become one?
By J.A. Getzlaff
[10/29/99]

Travel Advisor
Holy hassle
Getting to the Vatican for New Year's Mass, plus advice for first-time cruisers and Auckland sightseers.
By Donald D. Groff
[10/28/99]

I booked it online
From mega-travel agencies to boutique sites, the Internet has exploded consumers' hotel-booking options. But what do the different sites really offer? And where are the hidden treasures?
By Judy Jacobs
[10/27/99]

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"I'm not sure I like the power dynamics I see here," the analyst commented.

Finally, it was announced that the initiation would proceed even though we had cheated them. However, at the end of the ritual, the king would not give us the special oil bestowing a deeper understanding of our visions through the year. "He himself will not walk with you into the forest and explain to you the myth of the Bwiti," our guide translated. Moutamba's tribe now seemed to regard us with contempt. Bwiti no longer suggested quite the "essence of love" our guide had referred to.

At dusk, the ceremony began. The women took the analyst away and then the men came for me. The Bwiti had changed to full tribal dress -- animal skins, body painting, feathers -- and they played drums and rattles and horns. In single file, we marched from the village over a path through the jungle to the banks of a small stream. The younger men of the tribe had the sleek and muscular bodies of hunters, and the white patterns on their dark skin glowed like neon. Stumbling along with them, I felt like a tall blancmange.

I was directed to undress completely and step into the ice-cold stream. The young man assigned to be my "Bwiti father" poured a soapy liquid over me -- some kind of spirit-medicine -- and smeared a red paste across my face and torso. The Bwiti chanted while I put on the initiate's outfit -- straps of tanned animal skins and shells looped across my chest and upper arms, a short garment of red fabric and the red feather twirled in my hair. For the Bwiti, the color red is like a mystical traffic light, signaling the crossing zone between this reality and the other world.

Woozy with anxiety, I looked up at the group assembled on the slope above me as they sang and drummed a dirge-like melody. By casting off my clothes, I had symbolically died; after taking iboga, I would be reborn. Moutamba produced a plaintain that had been sliced open and filled with white powder. My Bwiti father carried this sacrament to me gingerly while the others watched with serious, expectant faces. He held it up to my lips.

Even now, whenever I think of the taste, I start to shudder. The iboga was like sawdust laced with battery acid. When I finished chewing the dry fruit, I was fed a few more spoonfuls of the drug mixed with honey. Moutamba nodded encouragingly. I struggled to hold the stuff down.

"Le journaliste a mangé beaucoup, beaucoup," he said.

I was worried as we returned to the village. Had I eaten too much?

Walking was more difficult now, as my legs had become rubbery. In a courtyard, the men sat down around me and continued playing music. One of them strummed the M'congo, a one-stringed mouth harp resembling a bow, with an eerie, almost humorous tonality. The M'congo is the essential Bwiti instrument; the voices of the ancestors are channeled through it. My Bwiti father put a bundle of leaves in my right hand and a tight whisk of dry thistles in my left and instructed me to keep shaking both in time to the music. As with many of the rules surrounding the ritual, this one was strictly enforced -- whenever I lowered the rattles, my Bwiti father would rush over to have me shake them again.

"Seeing anything yet?" the botanist asked.

"Not really." I asked him how the analyst was doing.

"She is having lots of visions -- members of her family appearing to talk to her and other things. She is in the temple, describing them to Borgia."

They fed me more iboga and brought me into the torch-lit temple. I was placed alone at the center, facing a mirror decorated with fern leaves and carved figurines. Moutamba and the tribal elders sat to my left, and the rest of the tribe on my right, about 25 people in all. Even in my stoned state, I felt acutely self-conscious. The atmosphere was tense. The king had decreed I would have "wonderful visions," and I began to realize that not satisfying him was not an option.

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