Riverside Dr., Irwin, Montego Bay, Jamaica
Up to 12 in group
6 Days Package (5 nights)
About this Retreat
Firstman is a longtime advocate for the sustainable development of the cultural industry through the preservation, protection, and promotion of cultural events; community development projects; traditional knowledge, and indigenous expression. He is one of the original founders of Rastafari Indigenous Village (RIV); a father, drummer, chanter, singer, songwriter, and orator.
Firstman has had a long career as a community organizer and freedom activist; serving as a charter member of the Jamaican Ganja Task Force; as the Chair of the first Ganja Advisory Committee to the Government of Jamaica; and as a Co Founder of the Rastafari and Grass Roots Growers Association (RAGGA).
Firstman has been certified by the United Nations as an expert in the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention and the 2005 Cultural Diversity Convention; and by the State of Oregon as a Trainer for indigenous practices surrounding visionary plants (pending). In 2016, Firstman and the Rastafari Indigenous Village were introduced to ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms and other sacred plants by MesoAmerican and South American medicine people.
Immediately thereafter, RIV became the first traditional Rastafari community to incorporate these sacred plants into their own spiritual practice, expressing traditional beliefs with new insights; and creating a new, unique and very powerful Rastadelic ™ expression of psychedelic culture and spirituality. For the first five years, this practice was at shared exclusively within the Rastafari community. In 2021, the RIV team began offering this new ceremonial experience to guests visiting Jamaica.
Queen Izeteh Berhan is a Rastafari artisan, teacher, and mother to four children. She considers herself an One Love Therapist ™; intuitively working with the essential elements of fire, earth, water, and wind. She has been trained as a Reiki Energy Healing Master and has been practicing for 22 years; been a plant medicine facilitator since 2016; and is a lifelong student of traditional Rastafari Ital cooking and healing techniques.
Queen I. has embraced the preservation of indigenous healing techniques within the Rastafari and wider Jamaican society, as a personal mission. She knows the healing properties of almost every plant in the garden, and how to prepare and administer them; and assists others seeking healing, as a part of her own healing process. At her workshop in the Village, Queen handcrafts a wide variety of skin-care products from indigenous Jamaican plants and herbs and also offers her adaptation of traditional herbal bush-baths.
Details of this retreat
Where Strangers become Friends; Friends become Family; and Family Becomes Tribe.
Our Life is a Ceremony retreats are five days long, with check-in on Sunday afternoon and check-out on Friday at mid-day. Everything you need from the time we pick you up at the airport until we drop you off again will be included. Our rustic but elegant guest cabins are equipped with private bathrooms, hot water, and optional air conditioning.
Days will be mostly unstructured, allowing you to experience the natural flow of a community that already lives by the lessons that the sacred plants teach us: work in the Addis Ababa garden with Nereree; learn the medicinal, nutritional, and artisanal properties of the plants we grow there; take the callaloo or cacao you harvested yourself to our amazing Ital kitchen, and learn traditional Rastafari food science and recipes; make drums with King Toto and Suga, who have preserved almost-lost drum making techniques that originated in Africa. Bathe in the beautiful falls of the Montego Valley River; and drink coconut water morning, noon and night.
Three delicious plant based meals will be provided every day plus snacks and beverages as requested. Our gym and yoga center is available for self-directed practice 7AM-10PM.
Optional psilocybin mushroom plant medicine ceremonies will be offered on Mondays and Wednesdays during each retreat. Guests are welcome to participate in one or both of them.
Our ceremonies have grown out of the Village’s own spiritual practice with the sacred plants, so they reflect the meaning of these medicines to our indigenous community. We celebrate and revere; we seek communion with those who share our psychedelic path; we bring in rhythm and music and chanting; we share our reasoning of how visionary plants fit into the Rastafari system of belief and way of life; and how the lessons the sacred plants teach all of us can be used to change the world. From time to time, we also offer ayahuasca ceremonies—please email us for details.
Life is a Ceremony retreats are unlike any other and are not for everybody. They are designed primarily for people who have had some previous psychedelic experiences, are comfortable with different cultures, and have some interest in the Rastafari way of life. You will not be in a fancy, purpose-built retreat center. Rastafari Indigenous Village is an actual, functioning village. It has grown organically over the course of fifteen years; and several families of traditional Rastafari artisans, musicians, gardeners, herbalists, scholars, and healers live on site.
We relate to our guests as pilgrims who share our beliefs, rather than tourists from whom we profit. You will not be served by employees; you will be welcomed by brethren. All net proceeds of Plant Tribe Retreats at RIV are devoted to the Protection, Preservation and Promotion of Rastafari Indigenous Village and its associates.
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