Volunteering in Ecuadorean Amazon Part II, 25 de febrero - 11 de marzo

Blog Entry:  Juyuintza, Ecuador - Part II

Lunes  25  de febrero – lunes 11 de marzo

In my third week there (second week at the school starting lunes 25 de febrero), the students’ pronunciation improves noticeably which is gratifying and I really enjoy spending time with them. After lunch, Francisco and I and Shwirpi head out by boat. Our first stop is to pick up Neli and Wendi in their downstream chagra. Neli has picked some pepino (cucumbers), yucca (cassava), platano (plantain), papa china (Chinese  potatoes), chunta (a small red fruit of two varieties, one sour and one fairly sweet) and I am fairly sure it is in the tomato family by the look and taste. We fish for a couple of hours in several spots and come up with a lot of the small spiny catfish and one big catfish (about 65 cm). Francisco dives in a couple of times to release snags. He also uses a stick to move the line in the other direction to release snags from the boat. When I ask if it is safe to go swimming here, Neli says not really, because you do not know what is out there. However, they keep the time in the water to a minimum. In any case, I have never seen a caiman in this area: they do not really like swift-flowing, muddy water, and the piranhas are only an issue when the water level is very low. 

The next day we go fishing again but fishing is not particularly good. On Wednesday (Feb 27), Francisco (who by this time I call Pancho, which is his nickname here), decides to go out hunting with the bodoquera. He uses it to hunt for small birds without poison, and for bigger birds and monkeys with poison. He can hunt chancho/cerdo (peccaries) with it although a good deal of tracking is necessary as it takes 5 minutes or so to die. He cannot hunt at night with it for big game as tracking becomes too difficult. For monkeys, he notches the dart just behind the poison with piranha teeth he carries so that it will break off. Otherwise the monkey will pull it out and not die. The weird thing is waiting for the bird or monkey to lose consciousness and fall from the tree with a thump. He can shoot up to 30 m up in the trees, which is pretty impressive but at that height, accuracy is less and the low velocity means that the shots do not necessarily penetrate enough. Even when everything goes well, success is about 50% because the animal or bird does not always fall when it dies. Still, I do see Francisco shoot and recover over several days, 10 small songbirds, a large woodpecker, a toucan, a large “partridge”, a small nocturnal monkey, and a large spider monkey. It is impressive. Especially as the bodoquera is about 2 m long and fairly heavy (about 4 kg). To make it, two pieces of a long stem of palm (I think) are grooved on the flat side, and then glued together to make the central hole (about 14 mm in diameter) with a bone insert as a mouthpiece. The whole thing is covered with white latex tree sap, which is heated up and turns black. This is to harden the outside. The darts are made of the stems of a particular kind of palm, which is shaped like a horseshoe in cross section. The rounded part of the stem is split off, then cut into 30 cm lengths, then split into 1 cm wide pieces. These are carved to form thin spindles, pointed at both ends. One end is dipped in the poison and heated to dry it. The poison is plant-based but is purchased from a man in a neighbouring community who has learned to make the poison more potent. Just before use, Francisco pulls flower fluff from a gourd, moistens it with his mouth, and places it around the distal end of the dart, flattened at the distal end and more streamlined at the other end. This seals the tube allowing the puff of air to push the dart efficiently. It works. I tried shooting it and it is clear that it takes some practice to maximize the puff of air and do it consistently.

                                                            A poison dart ready for use

A carpentero (Woodpecker) shot with a poison dart. The bodoquera or blow gun is the black thing leaning against Francisco

 One of more than a dozen species of spider monkey, the black-headed spider monkey?, killed with a bodoquera

Later in that first day, we scare up three peccaries but we have no chance for a shot. At one point, moving quickly, I steady myself on a palm. Bad idea as I get a few thorns in my hand. Ouch!

Two days later, on Friday, Francisco comes to get me at 7 in the morning to say that Jacoba has shot a danta (a lowland tapir, the second biggest terrestrial mammal in South America after Baird’s tapir found in Colombia and Central America) late yesterday evening. Everyone is going to it to butcher it. It is pouring rain. After wading and hiking about 2 km, we come upon the tapir, a young male of about 200 kg. It is an impressive animal. We drag it into a nearby major pond: 2 ft deep. There is water everywhere these days due to the heavy rain. That way it can be cleaned as necessary. Francisco does most of the butchering. He is very accurate with the machete which he uses to split off the ribs from the vertebrae. The intestines and stomach are taken into the water to clean out. People cut off pieces of fat from the body cavity: they appear to prize it which is not surprising as there is no source of oil or fat here, other than this animal. When it is all cut up into chunks, Jacoba hands out the pieces. Much of the meat is brought to a feast at the meeting hall that evening. The neighbouring village, 20 minutes away by boat, has been invited. There is a game of volleyball and a game of soccer. Due to the rain, the playing field for both is a mud hole. I play soccer but I have rarely played the game and it shows. By the time we are half done, I am sore and tired and do not try so hard. It is a bigger field and with the mud it is hard to play. Nonetheless most of the young players do an amazing job. The feast is in honour of Blanca who has finished her teaching contract. Earlier in the day, speeches are given. I of course miss most of it being in Shiwiar. I leave about 6 but the party goes on with the generator started up to give light to the hall. Much chicha is drunk, which I do not mind but am not crazy about except when hungry or thirsty, and the talk is all in Shiwiar. I bathe and wash clothes. I have a long discussion with Estevan, Francisco’s 15 year old half brother, a wiry, short, very competent and intense youth. He tells me about God et al. Wow, someone has really gotten to these guys!

                In the pouring rain, getting ready to butcher a danta (Lowland Tapir), killed the night before.

It rains all night and by morning the river is even higher. For breakfast, we have boiled cassava, boiled plantain, and fried tapir. Boy, this is good. The whole family goes out to the downriver chagra. Completely flooded. When the water is really high, there is more chance of seeing snakes and more risk with anacondas (aquatic boas). We do see one terrestrial boa on a log in the chagra. It is about 90 cm and has a big lump of a meal half way down its length. Francisco and then I pick it up and then when I put it down, it swims off. Shwirpi is scared because he is afraid it is swimming to him and I try to reassure him. We bring back a few flooded cucumbers. 

                               Chagra flooded by the Rio Cunambo, due to especially heavy rains

We then travel to a couple of locations where the high waters have created islands. With the dogs with us, there is a strong possibility of scaring up animals. Neli spots an armadillo that runs under a pile of debris. We close in and it bolts, running right across my thighs. I let it go not knowing what to expect from an armadillo. It heads into a big flooded area swimming. Francisco runs through the water after at, and kills it with a stroke of his machete.

Then a dog scares up a watusa (agouti, a 2-5 kg rodent). It swims off in the river and Francisco swims after it, catching it by a leg. (Unlike the guanta or paca, the watusa will not dive and is easier to catch in the water.) Neli catches up in the motor boat, hands him a machete and he kills it. Meanwhile I spot a cacao tree, something I have been told does not exist in this area. I comfort Wendi who has been unceremoniously dumped on the ground by her mom. I ask Clemente to climb the tree and bring a fruit down. He does although we almost lose it in the current that goes through the woods. We do bring it down. It is still green, not ripe, but when we get back I open it up and the white pulp is sweet and good. We have also the watusa and the armadillo. For supper, we have more fried danta, fried fish, cassava, and a salad of cukes with lemon juice, and salt and hot peppers. 

                                         The day's catch: an armadillo and a watusa (agouti)

In talking with Francisco that night, I realize that the Shiwiar also have their food taboos. They do not eat capybara (the world’s biggest rodent, attaining weights over 200 lbs), snakes, and insects other than the two species of palm grubs. Surprising!!

When I am getting ready to go to bed, I hear a large insect land. I find it. It is a huge cockroach, with a body about 3 inches long. Wow!

The next morning there is a church meeting. Waiting for people to arrive, we hang out with Abel and Maruja. Mostly children show up plus Blanca, Fani, and Francisco. We are treated to Francisco reading through several pamphlets in Spanish explaining why Jesus cares about you, and why you are a sinner and what you need to do, blablabla. After an interminable reading, we eat smoked watusa, armadillo, yuca, and platano in a soup with additional yuca and platano. When we are putting pots and stuff away, I join several kids who are watching an enormous grasshopper laying eggs into cracks in a wooden railing. After she is done, I pick her up and then release her. She flies to the ground where a chicken promptly pecks her and eats her. Then I help Francisco set up a bible movie on the one computer. It is enjoyable and not preachy, thank God.

There is another church service that evening but I have had enough. I debate whether to tell Francisco that no one is listening but decide that he does not want to know, otherwise he would. Yesterday during watusa hunt, Francisco bumps his leg on a palm trunk, getting about 20 thorns in his knee. For the next few days he is limping.

Was supposed to do an ayahuasca ceremony the next day but Hernan, the local healer, is not around. His house is 1 km away and the trail is now under several feet of water. I found out later he is out of the community. I try to re-book with him but it is not going to happen.

School, at least Grades 1-6, is closed for the week due to Blanca’s leaving. I go to the school anyway. Although in theory Abel is still working, none of the little kids show up. He and I talk for a while and I give him an English lesson. He and Francisco are at a very basic level but they are motivated. They will learn to speak. Meanwhile Francisco has gone to islands again to hunt with dogs, and comes back with Esteban and 4 armadillos. They missed a guanta which dove into the river and then dove down.

Supper is some fish and then a soup of palm hearts and grubs. Most of the grubs are at the bottom and, after eating the fish, I am not that hungry making it harder to stomach the grubs in my soup.

Tuesday I am out all day with Clemente and Francisco for a bodoquera hunt. F does get several small birds but strikes out with a troupe of red howler monkeys. He actually hit one and thinks it died but did not fall. He must have shot at least 30 darts, but the monkeys were very high up, at least 30 m, maybe 40 m. Coming home without, we stopped at a palm with a kind of purple flesh under a thin skin and over a large seed (called aungawara; ungwok in Shiwiar. The purplish flesh is quite good. F sends Clemente up the tree next to it (has branches and so easier to climb) with a rope. We send a machete up to him and he knocks down huge numbers of fruit and I fill my pack with them. The fruits are boiled to soften them. The boiled fruit are mixed with chichi mash and it is the best dessert I have eaten here. The only other desserts I have eaten here are pineapple and sugar cane. Francisco says that spider monkeys eat these fruits whole. Surprising because the seed is the size of an almond in the shell. Today is one of the first days when it did not rain. Nice!!

Wednesday is the day that dignitaries arrive for inter-tribe meetings concerned with the REDD+ process. The REDD process is Reduccion de Emisiones por Deforestacion y Degradacion de Bosques. This process has been widely criticized for being a land grab by rich countries and mega corporations in the tropics, taking land away from the inidigenous and peasant populations living there. The REDD+ process is intended to correct this. The ‘+’ refers to “Conservacion, manejo forestall sustenable y aumento de depositos de carbon”. From the point of view of indigenous groups in the Amazon, who have been subject to oil exploration and extraction that has been sloppy and highly polluting, gaining some income from alternate sources which will leave their environment alone, offered by developed countries seeking to mitigate global CO2 emissions, is highly desirable. This meeting was intended to introduce several Shiwiar communities to this idea. Besides many boats arriving from other communities, two planes brought in five people from Puyo, some food, and another 30-ish volunteer, Debora, who arrived from Italy.  The five were Pascual (who I had met in Puyo) and Siram (who I had met here), two Shiwiar community members who work in Ecotourism and Shiwiar politics. The other three were: Maximo Cuji Manya, of the Quichua tribe, who works for the Confederacion de Nacionalidades Indigenas de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana; Tito Puanchir, a former teacher who works for the Nacion Shuar del Ecuador, and Nanki Wumpankit, a Shiwiar who is coordinator of the Amazon GisNet, who came to train locals in measuring standing biomass in the forest for purposes of REDD+, something we did on Thursday and Friday. 

 

First meal during the meetings. The visitors get to use the only table. There is boiled plantain and cassava, fried grubs, rice, and meat: armadillo, watusa (agouti) and monkey.

When people arrive from other communities, there is an interesting tradition. Some, particularly Edison and his brother Milton from another Shiwiar community have painted their faces and carry weapons (one a spear, the other a shotgun) which is traditional for protection. They all give long welcoming speeches, but several people are giving speeches at same time.

I learn that this month, Shiwiar gain title to 210 000 Ha of their land after 10 years of fighting, or 0.8% of Ecuadorian territory. Pretty exciting.

Meals include the rice, pop, beer, and candies brought, but also Chicha and local meat. One person has brought a bucketful of gusanos to sell (20 cents each; 50 cents each in Puyo). I am offered and eat one live. Still not used to this, but I will eat them. Shwirpi eats one and promptly gets bit on the tongue by it.

The visiting organizers are interesting. According to Maximo, a short, powerfully built, pot-bellied man who laughs a lot, we must work on 1) political, 2) technical, and 3) arms levels to make change happen. Problems with oil company arrival are: 1) environmental contamination, 2) economic: a lot of money entering the communities causes loss of community cohesion; and 3) sociocultural: entering the money economy causes the loss of traditions, language, alcoholism, and delinquency (incidentally all the problems we see in Aboriginal communities in Canada).

When there are speeches, Tito gives me a simultaneous translation into Spanish which I greatly appreciate. On Thursday, I am asked to give a speech to get a Canadian perspective. Mostly I speak about Canada, the tar sands, and what they mean to native people. Debora also speaks: about Europe and the way they see climate change and the importance of the Amazon.

Pascual gives me some apples which I share with Francisco and family. When I come to get one Thursday morning, they are all gone, mostly eaten by Shwirpi. It is not for nothing that I call him the stomach with legs!

Thursday and then Friday morning, we go out into the bush with GPS and compasses and set up areas to measure biomass. Very interesting although again it is in the rain. It rains Wed aft, Thurs aft and night, Friday on and off but not enough to stop the river level from falling once again.

Friday afternoon, we play volleyball in the mud. I play and Clemente gets upset when I miss even though he is missing more than I. It is not pleasant and I tell him later that day.

Everyone leaves after the plane takes people back to Puyo around 4.  There is a lot of gas to bring to the river. It was brought from Puyo for the people who came by boat from other communities.

 

The guests take their leave: Tito crouching, From L to R: Milton, Pascual, Nanki, Maximo, and two members of another community whose names I have forgotten

Saturday for breakfast, we have some chicha at Guadalupe`s and then watusa and roasted plantain. I also had a little bit of bread from Debora: she has brought some food from the city and the perishable stuff she has to use up. I head out with family to tourist cabins downriver. Beautiful cabin and another casa, with the huge raised thatched roof. This was the home used by about 6 Shiwiar and 6 Spaniards for a film about the traditional life of the Shiwiar. All talk by locals was in Shiwiar. It lasted three weeks, last July I believe. After which, Francisco and five others (including his Dad, Siram, and Fani, his aunt) were treated to a month long tour of Spain, which they all greatly enjoyed. Among other things, Francisco went sky-diving (harnessed to a pro) and scuba diving (buddied with a pro). He loved these experiences.

While there, I spend some time practicing spear throwing. It is an art. Francisco and Clemente go fishing but it pours rain (very heavy) and they come back with no fish. After the rain stops, we go out into the forest to palm trees that have been killed or partly cut a month ago to look for gusanos and harvest 20 or so. But also catch a watusa spotted by the dogs in a hollow tree trunk. With the watusa, we do not need gusanos for bait so we (actually they) eat them.

Francisco searching for gusanos (grubs) in a dead palm tree. The tree actually fell over while Francisco hacked away at it. I did warn him. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Clemente enjoying one of the gusanos; you have to be careful when you eat them live head first. This one was killed first by biting its neck.

Later F and C go out fishing again and bring back 5 little, 2 biggest catfish (1 kg each) plus 2 blind fish. Francisco goes back out again to hunt partridge with bodoquera (that he had heard when out fishing. Later in the evening, there is a rat (local species) that enters the casa. There is a lot of food around and so we do not want him there. Clemente tries to kill with the bodoquera while I illuminate him. He misses about ten times. Finally I take the spear and attempt to spear him but he is too quick. After two attempts he gets the message and leaves.

In the dark, back at the cabin where we spend the night, I spot a whip spider on the outside of the cabin. Huge, and it means business with raptorial arms heavily armed with spines. First one I have seen.

                                       Whip spider: the thin long feeler legs are about 15 cm long

In the morning, we  cook up the fish wrapped in leaves. I finish a big piece that includes the head, having eaten off all the meat. Before I can give it to the dogs, Clemente wants it and seems to get a lot of pleasure out of the gills and whatever there is. Yet I note that they do not eat heads of the blind fish. This is cultural, and it is not supposed to make sense. We notice that the river is rising again.

On Monday, my last morning, I go to the school for the outdoor assembly and Abel and I give short speeches. I give out more candy. I talk to many people. And then it is over.

I leave at 11, spend the day in Puyo where I shave my beard and head. Five blades and they are all dull before I am done!! Spend a day in Riobamba, travel to Guayaquil but Yolanda does not show. Travel to Quito and then to the border town of Tulcan, overnight. In morning, walk across the Colombian border after an hour wait at customs. Change money and off by collectivo and then bus to Ipiales where I get a room and relax, tend to my wounds and sleep. Overnight bus to Bogota, and then have three days. Meet with Felipe and Miguel and talk about filming and get some great ideas from Miguel. I will be in touch. Moving slow as it is painful moving with all these open infected sores. Have to do this better next time… But feeling great about the trip overall. On March 19, have uneventful flights to Miami overnight and then to Toronto. Snowing here and then heavy snow in mid to late April in Thunder Bay. Did not totally miss winter…

Volunteering in the Ecuadorean Amazon, Part I, 9 - 24 de febrero

Blog Entry: Juyuintza, Ecuador - Part I

Sabado  9 - domingo 24 de febrero 

In Saturday morning, I buy a bunch of notebooks, pencils, coloured pencils, and candies for the people in Juyuintza where I am going ($40). I leave Cusco by bus on Saturday afternoon having purchased the ticket the day before Cruz del Sur, S 345 = $155 for semi-cama direct bus (2) all the way from Cusco to Guayaquil. Overnight bus (18 h) to Lima and it was comfortable, and not too bad through the first mountainous part on the way to the coast. Had cramps at midnight and used the baño for what it is not meant for. Took Immodium twice and that cured that. Arrived in Lima at 11 AM. Walked around a bit. Had a bite. Then back. Bus left at 3 PM to arrive in Guayaquil Mon at 6:30 PM.  I sit with Yolanda, a healer in her late 30s who uses a combo of Inca and East Indian methods. Seems mostly about aligning the vertebrae. Interesting stories: almost kidnapped twice in Peru by body parts peddlers at age 12, almost raped at age 17. Seems like a fighter: bright but a little out there. Was a stock broker until 2008 crash. Then a hair salon owner who quickly morphed into a healer? Seems she is in demand and travels between Lima and Guayaquil. Her understanding of alternative healing stems from a couple of injuries that she had earlier that doctors could not heal but others could. Some of her ideas are really out to lunch (like that athletes should only breathe through their nose to stay warm??) but she seems to know what she is doing. Offered to “fix” my nose: reduce the calcified bridge. I thought why not? She manipulated, rubbed, modeled it, in two ten minute sessions. It hurt! Did not see much change but maybe it takes time, or maybe this is just stupid.

The bus waits for us at the border where I change my money S 222 @ S 2.7 / $1. Talk to a German couple who are Christian Evangelicos. Young and bright: he keeps quoting me from the Bible. It is clear that I am going to hell. There is also a fat, Hasidic Jew dressed in a white cotton robe who is from Israel and I do not find out what he is doing there. Old (late 60s) American couple living in Ecuador (because they can, whatever that means). It is hot. Buy $6 worth of junk food to get rid of some Peruvian Soles. 

In Guayaquil, Yolanda tells me that it normally takes three treatments and we agreed to meet in Guayaquil a month later for another treatment. I suspend judgement and am willing to try. (I come back a month later but she does not show. Do not know what to make of this.) Take taxi and ask for a cheap nearby hostal. He charges me $4, and takes me to an OK one which is $25. I buy a cold beer there and relax a bit, go out into the crazy streets of Guayaquil and grab a quick bite. It is hot, seems very Americanish. I do not like this town, a coastal city, the biggest in Ecuador. 

In the morning, I take a taxi at 4:30 as I have already bought a ticket to Riobamba (in the mts) for 5:30. The taxi is $7 (more because it is called in advance, or because the hostal owner takes a cut), the bus ticket is $6.50, and I arrive at Riobamba at 10:30 AM. It is a small city of 100 000 or so, and feels good to me. I take a taxi to the offices of Ecuador Eco Volunteers, the agency that I booked with, which is both a For-Profit adventure travel agency, and a Not-For-Profit organizer of Volunteer opportunities. Vlady, one of the owners is a fast-talker, a businessman who is doing something useful but I do not fully trust him as I see this business combo leaves me a little uncomfortable. Based on his website, it is clear that he does not keep close enough tabs on the volunteer portion of the business. The way it works is: $50 to register and then $75 per week of your volunteer stint (time is up to you with a 2-wk minimum for most and 4-wk minimum for mine). The organization which hosts volunteers gets 70% of the $75 weekly or $52.50  as well as whatever assistance they are searching. His volunteer staff (paid for some things and has a free place to live) is Sam, from Switzerland but immigrating to Ecuador where his girlfriend lives. He is laid back and his info to me via email had been frustratingly incomplete. I conclude that he is too lazy to find out things unless Vlady knows. Vlady knows a lot but cannot be bothered with a lot of things related to the volunteering part of his business. To be fair, he also runs a bar, has a new wife and baby and Vlady is over-extended time-wise. Vlady tells me that there are no seasons in Ecuador. Yet both in the mountains and the Amazon in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, the rainy season is from December to April, with the peak in Feb and March. Turns out Vlady is wrong, and I am going to the rainforest at the absolute height of the rainy season. I am expecting this: it turns out to be as difficult for the body as I had anticipated. I knew that my 3 earlier Amazon trips all ended with me fairly bitten up and the bites do not heal quickly. It can only be worse now: more biting flies and slower to heal with all the moisture. And it is. 

In Riobamba, I go and buy some food for supper and bfast in a grocery store, which is a novelty. Then Sam takes me in Vlady’s jeep to buy some rubber boots ($9, and the most comfortable ones I have ever owned: made in Ecuador and is a softer rubber) and a ball cap ($3.50). Sam takes me to Vlady’s house (inherited from parents) where Sam stays and volunteers can stay when here for the weekend. It is a big house, and was once very nice, but is run-down and really dirty. The living room has a pile of dusty photos and stuff which looks like it has all been there for 30 years.  The kitchen has a lot of old dirty dishes, a pile of stinky recycling stuff, and Vlady’s wife stays in their bedroom with 5-mo old baby most of time. They have two dogs which are not house-trained, stay outside, and then in one room for the night. To me, Vlady is doing a lot of things right but is not taking care of a lot of basics. My guess is that the business will either go through some big changes or will not last. Vlady’s business partner, who is not around, is an American who has traveled a lot. (Both are in their 30s). His partner has written up a travel guide for volunteers. It has some good info but is mostly a rant about how travelers all tend to visit the same places (true, of course a lot of this with good reason), and it is the people that make your trip not the places (also true, to a significant extent), and how travel guides are only for idiots (I think that they are really useful, at least until you get to know an area, or maybe it is just that I am an idiot). In his ranting, he says “fuck” a lot which tells me that his rants could be thought through a little better. I separate out my gear: half to come and half to stay in Riobamba.

Vlady is taking two Canadians to a hot spring bath very early in the morning and then later on a hike. He asks if I want to come and I agree. He charges me $10 (only for gas, he says, although with the super low price of gas here I am sure I paid the whole shot for gas and there were five of us). Anyway it is beautiful countryside and I have a chance to talk to the two Canadians at the start of their South American trip, in their 20s and from Alberta and BC. The Alberta one is an apologist for the Tar Sands, all too ready to buy the government story that they have made a lot of improvements (which they have; still a very bad idea and incredibly polluting of the world’s second largest watershed, and of Canada’s largest National Park, Wood Buffalo). They are fairly well prepared for their trip covering a lot of the same ground as me but flying around a lot more. 

At 9, I am off on a bus ($4) to Puyo, the small city near Shell. Shell is the small town named after the Oil Company which first established this town for a base for its oil exploration/exploitation efforts in the Amazon in Ecuador and the adjacent part of Peru. There is a large military airport here that serves the entire Amazon portion of the country with about 10 very tiny airlines. I phone Pascual, when I arrive. He is Shiwiar (pronounced Shi-vee-ar), the tribe I am visiting, and is short, 40, with a pot-belly with six children, and constantly on his cell phone. He is the person who is supposed to be organizing my trip: basically organizing my flight in and out. He tells me my flight will not leave today due to poor visibility (heavy rain), and I sign in for a room at the hotel where I met him. $10 per night with private bath, tv, and bfast. What a deal! We talk for a half an hour about the Shiwiar territory and what they are trying to do, and the issues with the oil companies (I will explain a little later). He also wants $600 for the flights, now. Vlady had told me I would have to pay $400-500 depending on how full the flights in and out are. I give him $500 and tell him I will have to get more out of the bank, which is true. However, I know whatever I give him is gone, so I have to think about this. I walk around town in the evening, have a light supper and get ready mentally.  While walking around, I meet another Shiwiar guide that Pascual had introduced me to, named Patricio.  He tells me that the weather is clear.

                                             Pascual arranges my flights in and out of Juyuintza

In the morning, Pascual comes by the hotel at 8:10 and we end up taking a taxi to the town of Shell (I pay the $4, would have been 25 cents each by the excellent bus service between towns). We wait and wait there, and Pascual tries to get me to pay an extra $100, and then a few dollars’ extra  for an “airport tax” which I am to pay to him. I politely decline on both counts. As an afterthought, he then takes me to a nearby small grocery store to buy some food. He starts pulling out noodles, and then some jam, and I do not quite understand why. I have been told that food will be supplied and I would prefer to eat what the locals eat, so I again tell him no. This turns out to be a good idea.

The flight is full with another passenger and a large load of bags of cement. Not long after we take off, we are floating over a sea of green, what looks like intact rainforest, which is a relief to see. We travel at about 1800 m and there is a thin cloud cover so the view below fades in and out.  In a very few locations we can see small clearings whether there are either small villages or some kind of more modern building. The other passenger and the cargo all get off at  a first stop: a tiny village where about 10 villagers are waiting as the plane lands. Fifteen minutes later the same scenario repeats itself where I land. I see an airstrip and only a few buildings. All but one are thatched roofs with no walls. 

This is the village of Juyuintza, a Shiwiar village not more than 10 km from the Peruvian border (downriver) on the banks of the Rio Cunambo, which flows across the border and then joins with the Rio Tigre, which then joins the Maranon and then the Ucayali to form the Rio Amazonas upriver from Iquitos, Peru. It is 100 km in from the edge of the Amazonian rainforest, and is only accessible by canoe or by plane. I meet my hosts, Francisco, 23, whose Dad was one of the founders of this community 15 years before,and his Mom is from another tribe, and now living in Puyo (both his parents have remarried) and his wife, Neli, 20, and their two children, Shwirpi, 4, and Wendi, 1 ½. Shwirpi is the Shiwiar name for a small songbird. Francisco lived in Puyo with his mother from the age of 13-18, so he knows about city life. I guess that too is where he became a born-again Christian (ugh) after the usual teenager stuff. They share their house, which Francisco’s father gave them, with Francisco’s brother, Clemente, 12, whom I assume is one of Francisco’s mother’s children. These children all have interesting personalities. None seem repressed: they are who they are. When I ask Francisco why he preferred to live a traditional lifestyle his main concern seemed to be economic: wages in the city are low and you have to pay for food and a home: here they require effort but not money. 

                                              My hosts: Francisco, Neli, Shwirpi, and Wendi

Their home, a raised thatched roof, with a raised platform with walls at one end and open dirt floor for the firepit and kitchen at the other end, is oval-shaped and measures about 8 x 4 m, about half the dimensions (and a quarter of the area) of most houses. It is pretty small to accommodate me so they put me up in the roofed platform (surrounded by two rooms, one a storeroom, the other an office for the local malaria control worker, and a bathroom) put in place by the Ministry of Transport for the airstrip. We put up a small tent and a mattress, a sheet, a pillow, and a sleeping bag for me. This is pretty luxurious. Everyone sleeps in a hammock or on a hard wooden platform covered by a blanket. There is one outhouse for the community; otherwise people go to the bathroom in the forest. They wipe their bums with leaves or wash with water. Nobody told me to bring toilet paper I settle on with washing with soap and water which works fine. 

Juyuintza  S 2^o 7.0’  W 76^o 12.0’ Elev: 194 m

I have arrived on a Thursday, and intend to leave Monday, so I really only have 3 ½ weeks here. On my arrival, there is a work detail (called a minga) fixing up the house of a divorced man, Gustavo. It needs new pillars (they have rotted) and the vegetation in the area around it needs to be cut, which is accomplished with machetes. Everyone here speaks Shiwiar amongst themselves but all speak Spanish, most very well, so we communicate in Spanish. I dig holes for new posts, and tamp down new ones, and then take a machete and work on mowing the “lawn”. 

There are a lot of dogs in the community (1-2 per household) which are fed a few scraps, and otherwise fend for themselves. They are not well-trained but are useful both as a warning system for dangerous animals and also used a fair bit for hunting: to find game and scare it up. This is useful for those who hunt with shotguns (16 Ga; BB shot), or for most people who use bodoqueras (blowguns) they are useful when water is very high in areas that are flooded and running away means swimming. 

     Their younger dog, Oso (means Bear, due to his very short tail), and the village's tame trompetero

There are also chickens, although I see few eggs collected. This is because chicken raising is new, and the flocks are being built up. Since the chickens run loose (roosting in trees at night), they are hunted by snakes and various birds of prey mostly owls. Solving this is an ongoing  project. Besides that there are two pet monkeys (one a woolly, the other some kind of very small monkey I have never seen before). There is also a large bird with black, gray, and metallic blue plumage with long legs and neck, a trompetero in Spanish, that obviously walks more than flies. It is imprinted on people and follows people around. It does these weird running and jumping dances from time to time (a mating ritual I am guessing), and searches for food constantly like the chickens.  Abel and Maruja also have a 25 cm long box tortoise, which they have tethered to keep it from running away. I watch it walk at the end of the tether, and go nowhere. Additionally when I arrive there are a couple of baby peccaries and a brood of small (irritatingly noisy) young songbirds. All the pets are  the result of having orphaned babies when the mother or parents were hunted, or were simply found trapped or abandoned or orphaned through non-human means. I enjoy very much getting to know tame versions of the local wildlife, especially Jamie, the woolly monkey, who is very friendly but, like the young children, is very vocal about getting his needs met. (Mostly this is about wanting you to keep holding him especially when he is tied up.  He at times will get into everything although less as he grows up (now about 1 year old). He accompanies his family members when they go hunting, although he will disappear into the trees at times to forage for food or just for fun. 

                     Jamie, the woolly monkey. Jamie is a pet because his mother was killed and eaten.

The lifestyle here is very laid back. People hunt, gather, tend their chagras (cultivated fields), make chicha, make baskets, build and fix houses, get together with neighbouring villages and play volleyball and soccer and drink chicha. The kids go to school but also play a lot. On hot days they spend a lot of time swimming or climbing trees over the water and jumping in. It is a simple life but a good one. Everyone seems pretty happy.

There are six houses in the community. In one is Francisco’s flamboyant and friendly father, Siram, in his 40s, and his second wife, Rosinda, about the same age and very quiet but self-assured, and their four boys plus a couple of small girls they are taking care of for the moment. Both parents and the children are also very good-looking. Siram works for a Shiwiar organization in Puyo and really only is in the community but rarely so I do not understand how this marriage works. Gustavo lives in a house alone at one end. He is separated from his wife, and their one child, Sisa, 12, lives with her aunt and uncle, Fani and Patricio, who live at the other end of the airstrip. They are 60ish, soft-spoken and very warm. (All the houses are along the air strip, which roughly parallels the river. There is also Gustavo and Siram’s sister, Guadaloupe, also divorced, who is very strong but also very overweight and with attitude. She lives with her three boys, Jose, 14, Dixon, 12, and Israel, 10, her pregnant daughter, Maribel about 16, and her husband, Jacoba, as well as another young couple, Delila (Francisco’s half sister) and Wilson, and their baby. There are the teachers at the school and their families which occupy three huts next to the school but one of these is empty as they are short a teacher. There is Abel (Pascual’s brother) who teaches the children of pre-school age (up to 5 or 6) and his wife, Maruja, Fani’s daughter, and their children, Naomi and a baby. In another hut is another teacher for Grades 1-6 whom I meet only briefly. He is away at meetings in Puyo and when he is supposed to come back, his pregnant wife has gone to her parent’s village to give birth so he goes there. The other empty hut is occupied by Blanca and her baby. Blanca is replacing the Grade 1-6 teacher. Finally, a kilometer away along a trail flooded at high water is Hernan, 54, and his wife, Puar, late 30s, and their many girls and oldest son, who is the malaria worker. Hernan is the president of the community, a position with more work than perks, and which changes each year. The people here are mostly short, muscular, brown, black-haired, with very handsome features. Francisco, unlike the rest, is about 6 foot tall. Almost all the people here are in excellent physical condition. The rare exceptions are those who work out of Puyo, and really do not live a traditional lifestyle.

                     

Houses - outside

And inside

What has changed recently? Since missionaries arrived here in the 50’s (60 years ago), the Shiwiar have acquired a few modern tools which have meant that they have been able to settle down in villages instead of their formerly more nomadic life.  Physically, they have machetes, axes, chainsaws, shotguns (although most still use blowguns), western clothing, boat motors, solar panels and generators for electricity, a few light bulbs wired to the generator, a computer in the school, and nylon fish nets. For cooking, they have metal pots and pans, as well as matches and kerosene lamps and flashlights. Services-wise they have access to air travel, health care including free flights out for emergencies or other medical needs, education (teachers do not now but soon will need to have a university education), some internet access (when they visit a larger community downstream across the border in Peru), and a shortwave radio to communicate with the airport in Shell. Besides their education, they have also been exposed to Christianity. Some tribe members seem to have absorbed the fundamentalist variety. 

                                                    Getting lumber to renovate the house

                                                Trying out the renovated raised floor

 

Their houses are high, with a ridgepole about 6 m high. The frame pillars are dug into the ground and so rot, and need replacing every 3-10 years depending on the wetness of soil. The frame consists of an lower oval series of beams supported by pillars in the ground. In turn, there are a lot of poles from here which support the ridge pole. On top is the thatching. A ditch is dug at the dripline of the roof. Some have inside platforms (sometimes with walls; others are totally open). Most of this is bound with vines. Nails are used if available.

Cooking is done over a fire built at the intersection of three long green logs which are pushed in as they slowly burn down: each set of three lasts about a week. The green logs will smoulder long enough that a new fire is only rarely needed. For smoking meat or roasting food wrapped in leaves, three or four y sticks are dug and driven into the ground in a triangle or rectangle. Green sticks are placed on these to form a grill. 

                                                              Typical cooking fire

                                                         Cooking fish over the fire

The only buildings using outside materials (metal roofs, some metal sidings and fittings and wooden mouldings) are for those paid for by the state. These include the three school classrooms, and a fourth adjacent meeting room. As well, the community has built three small homes for the teachers which are all Shiwiar but not necessarily from this community. There is also the aforementioned “waiting room” building for the air strip. The air strip itself, about 600 m in length, has to have the grass cut short every couple of months. Someone in the community, currently Gustavo, is paid to keep it short. Gustavo was doing it with a long handled mower, rented from a neighbouring community. But it died, and he went back to the laborious job of cutting by machete.

                     A church meeting in one of the classrooms. Note the puddle of urine on the floor

On the day after my arrival (Friday), Neli is picked up by her family (by boat) who live several hours downriver. She is going to spend a few days with them, and vote in the national elections (Sunday). There is a polling station there but not here. She is the only one in the community who has the opportunity to vote. Rafael Correa is re-elected. He is left of centre and has brought in universal education and health care, which is really incredible. In spite of that, this community does not like him as they believe he is pushing the oil companies on the Amazon. Maybe that it is true, but he has enacted much tougher environmental rules for oil companies and has kicked one out for not following the rules. For a morning meal, we cook up fish caught yesterday in pieces wrapped in leaves on a wood grill over the fire. Eaten with boiled platano with a bit of super hot peppers in water. There are quite a few bushes of these hot peppers in the community, and they are bursting with these tiny, potent peppers. Meals are almost always some kind of meat or fish with boiled platano or cassava. The only condiments are salt and hot pepper water. The salt is taken as a pinch right from the plastic bag and used liberally. Generally no cutlery is used but bowls are (home-made from gourds or pottery, or else plastic).

I usually go over to Francisco’s house and eat if there is food being cooked, which there are often is. If not, I do not eat, although a few times I do cook or prepare something when it seems obvious or the kids are there and in need of a meal. I lose weight over my time there, but only after I decide I will not starve and stop over-doing it with the platanos and cassava which there is usually plenty of. Shwirpi has an amazing appetite. He has also polished off a whole bag of candy: one of three I gave to Francisco, but they all seem destined to be eaten by Shwirpi. I also brought one over to the school and gave a couple to everyone and then as a reward for students that figured something out.

On Friday, we take a boat out and go fishing. This is the only time that I do not catch anything. I guess it takes a while to figure out the fish. We catch some catfish. Francisco had found a type of fruit tree that had ripe fruit that were falling to the ground which guanta (otherwise known as a paca, a common 6-12 kg rodent)  are fond of. So we build a tree stand with a few saplings cut up and bind it with vines. When we do this, Shwirpi is with us, and he explores everything and soon comes across a wasp nest on the under side of a big leaf. He gets stung several times as I brush the wasps off him and Francisco lifts him away and proceeds to destroy the small nest (why I am not sure). We intend to come back that night but it rains all night. The river rises about two meters. This is the rainy season and this happens repeatedly that the river will rise several meters over one to three days and then fall just as fast. I gather the river levels are much lower in June to September when the rain is at its minimum: then, sand bars are exposed, turtles lay eggs along the rivers, and more animals are to be seen at the water’s edge. Right now, the water is unbelievably fast. 

                                                  Small dugout canoe when river is up

                          Same tree at left where canoe was tethered in previous photo, a few days before

That evening I talk to Abel, one of the teachers. He and his 5 year old, Naomi, are shelling corn for the chickens. Most people here do not feed their chickens, nor their dogs for that matter. The animals are always foraging, and going into and out of houses looking for scraps. The chickens are also always foraging for bugs. Abel tells me about the school schedule. He also shows me two tiny peccary babies that he discovered trapped in a hole of some kind. He rescued them and is feeding them but a couple of days later they disappear into the forest. He and his wife Maruja also have some baby birds in a cage that they found on the ground and that they will release when they are older. The birds make a loud, really annoying sound, begging for food. Hard to ignore. I come back, and get a little supper. It gets dark by about 7 and I am asleep by about 8. It is light out by 6 AM but I usually am pretty tired and do not get up until 6:30 while most people are up at first light.

On Saturday morning, we go next door to Guadaloupe’s casa and drink some chicha. Later, Francisco goes off across the river to collect some palm hearts. He comes back soon after with some gusanos (worms): palm wood grubs, one of two varieties and the only two kinds of insects eaten here. I try a couple live. OK and very oily but hard to get used to. Francisco is in a hurry because he has heard a troupe of peccaries. He borrows a neighbour’s 16-Ga shotgun and his own two shells and he and I cross the river by canoe and head up a trail which goes many kilometers to the nearest village. (Firearms and ammunition have trebled in price in Ecuador and can no longer be imported privately, which may be due to an uprising in the Amazon a few years back.) I find out later too that the other side of the river is actually the territory of another tribe. We follow the trail up and down and cross one big log covered with thorns, and then cross a creek valley on two thin logs separated by about 15 cm that bounce up and down under our weight. Halfway across I give up and complete this on all fours. It may not look eloquent, but I go across quickly and surely. Over the few weeks I get used to crossing creeks while walking on not much more than air. Everyone does it. Eventually we pick up the trail of a large group of peccaries (at least 100 I guess). We follow the tracks (he follows the tracks and I follow him) but get confused a couple of times because there are so many and it is pretty confusing. I do not know if I could have done this or not. We finally find them after a half an hour or so. I can see a few them through the vegetation moving within 40 m of me. At that point I would have snuck up on of them. But not his plan. So we agree that I will wait there for him to avoid spooking them. He heads on and then the peccaries start getting agitated and two then three more then a couple of sows with a baby or two come by, generally startled and take off when they finally see me, some coming within 3 m of me. Francisco comes running back and follows them and I tell him I will wait here. So I do. About 20 minutes later I hear a shot and assume he is going to come back. I have a whistle and use it every few minutes but hear nothing. After an hour or so, I surmise that maybe he is going to take the peccary home first. It is about 3 or so in the afternoon. I have my GPS with me, and I decide it will be more interesting to head home than sit and wait. The unit indicates about 2 km to home. I take at first a direct approach, crossing a big swampy area that we had skirted in tracking the peccaries but eventually come out at the river. I decide to try and follow the bank and I have to cross a very wide and deep stream and so I look for a way. Eventually I find a big log across it and go. I keep going and get disoriented in the heavy vegetation close to the river but eventually find a trail and then recognize it as our trail so follow it out to where our boat is still tied. I cross, paddling for the first time. I do an upstream ferry across but it is clumsy as I am not used to the boat. Back by the village, I end up talking to various people and waiting. Eventually Francisco appears and I go back and get him. He has no peccary: his shot was a desperation shot and missed. Apparently, a peccary was not good enough. When we first saw the peccaries, he was looking for a big fat one.

                                                          White-lipped peccary

That evening (Saturday) the sky is partly clear. We wait until the moon has gone down (about 11 PM) and, with a 16-Ga shotgun that Francisco had borrowed, we paddle a small dugout canoe upriver, find the tree stand from the other day and wait. I give Francisco my head lamp which he switches on each time he hears something. An armadillo passes nearby but no open shot is possible. About 2:30 AM, a guanta passed underneath, Francisco takes very careful aim as it moves around below him and shoots it in the head. I do not ask to do any shooting. Francisco has only one shotgun shell and far be it for me to ask to use it in unfamiliar circumstances when we have little food back in his house.

In the morning (Sunday), I watch Francisco pour boiling water over the guanta to loosen the sparse fur. The fur pattern reminds me of a 13-lined ground squirrel back in the Canadian prairies although this is many times bigger. He scrapes it all, guts the animal and then quarters it leaving the head and feet on as well as the skin. In many cases, especially bigger animals the cleaned intestines are eaten as well as the heart and liver and fat amongst the organs. The head and skin is always eaten. They do not tan hides here: bark and vines are readily available and they are less work to prepare. Gourds and baskets and pots are all they need for containers.

       

                                       Guanta (known in English as a Paca) from the night before            

We make a soup from the backbone with onions, papas china (Chinese potatoes, literally a potato –like crop which originated in or around China), and platano from the chagra. An additional seasoning this time is a small orange root which is kind of spicy. The rest of the guanta is covered in leaves on the wood grill and is smoked over the fire for about 6 hours. Then it is placed on a shelf high up in the casa. From here it will be taken for meals. It lasts us until Thursday, eaten heated or in stews. It is good but then I am hungry: everything tastes good (which is how it should be. The only thing I am at all troubled by eaten are the gusanos, in spite of the fact that I have eaten lots of insects in Canada. It is the size and the strong smell that slows me down a bit.

Sunday we also hike with Francisco and Shwirpi to one of their two chagras to get what we can (it is an old chagra and everything is overgrown). We bring back some sugar cane stocks (which are peeled with a machete and the pith chewed which is sweet and juicy. We bring back some green onions, plantain, and a few other things. They actually has a much newer chagra, along the banks of the river, 1 km downstream. Shwirpi eats the cane unbelievably fast: like a deer grazing.

That evening (Sunday), Francisco goes to Fanni and Patricio’s casa for a Sunday night religious “discussion” he says. They used to have a church but it collapsed. I do not go as I am tired and also starting to suffer a lot of discomfort from mosquito bites. This will only get worse throughout my time here.

On Monday morning I head to the school to help out there. They are actually short staffed because their “college” (Grades 7 and up) teacher has resigned and they are still looking for a replacement. Also, the Grade 1-6 teacher is away and his replacement, Blanca, from Puyo, could use some help. So for the remaining time I am there (not including the first week when the school is closed for March break, nor the last week when the school is also closed because Blanca has finished her contract and the teacher she replaced is gone to another village to be with his pregnant wife) I teach for three hours in the morning. At first, Blanca gives me all of her students for the morning but after a couple of days I realize that this is too much and I ask her to take the Grades 1 and 2 children. Otherwise she has nothing to do. She teaches with her baby on her hip or back, or in front when she breast feeds. She and Abel mean well but they do not have more than a high school education and no teacher training. There is no legislation coming and teachers will be required to have a degree (hopefully with some teacher education). The kids are nice and helpful and fairly eager once they overcome their shyness with me. They are tolerant of me regularly asking them for a word in Spanish or looking it up in my dictionary. They all speak Shiwiar and Spanish although they appear to be more comfortable in Shiwiar: not surprising as that is what is spoken most here. It takes a while to understand that they have an independent study program with texts and workbooks for each subject. Works OK for some students and it is reasonable but not up to Canadian standards for sure. I spend an hour on teaching them English which mostly ends up revolving around pronunciation as most of the students have a great deal of difficulty with English sounds. I also teach them a song which they enjoy: “I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly”. Good ‘cause it is so silly. I also regularly work on English with Francisco mostly from a book of his, and sometimes I work with Abel on his English. Their Spanish is fairly basic and so easy for me to understand, which helps. The school runs from 7:30 – 10:30, and 11:30 – 1:30.

           Abel and me with the student body (up to Grade 6; older students awaiting a new teacher)

 

A lot of the community is working this week at the school. They are cutting the grass in the playing field and building a new hut: a separate small raised cooking hut for Abel and Maruja. This area is pretty low and pretty wet. At 10:30, when the school breaks so does everybody. They all adjourn to the meeting hall adjacent to the classrooms: a raised building with three-foot walls on two sides which are otherwise open and a bench on three sides inside. Here people talk and drink chicha brought and served by the women. I like to join but it is somewhat frustrating. All the conversation is in Shiwiar except with me (in Spanish).

I go out hunting and fishing with Francisco most days. I am surprised that no one sets traps here but he says that hunting is easy enough that there is no need. Then, too, the ubiquitous ants and wasps (as well as other critters big and small) would make short work of meat that lies around. In two months in the Amazon, I was stung by wasps 3 times and bit by ants more times than I can count.

Chicha is a fascinating tradition and is central to the Shiwiar identity, and that of many Amazonian tribe. Fundamentally it is peeled, boiled, mashed and fermented cassava (yuca in Spanish). Cassava is a root crop with a very large root with white flesh which is very bland and which originated and was first cultivated in the Amazon basin although it is now grown in the tropics all over the world, and is a very important crop ironically, in drought-prone parts of Africa because it survives droughts very well. The women only make it and they make it in very large quantities on a weekly basis. They start the fermentation process by chewing mouthfuls of the mash and then spewing the mouthful back out all over the surface of the mash. Afterward, it is placed in a big covered tub (to keep off the clouds of fruit flies that it attracts), where it will last about a week. As needed, women mix smaller amounts with water and then pull out and squeeze the liquid of the many lumps and throw away the lumps. Every time we went hunting, we took a sizeable leaf-wrapped amount of chicha with us. When we wanted lunch, we would find a stream, make a drinking vessel from a large leaf pinned into shape with a couple of sticks and add stream water and chicha. Thirst-quenching and filling. The lack of hygiene in producing the chicha would not have bothered me at all except that Neli is making it the whole time I am there and she also has a bad cough the whole time I am there, frequently coughing up phlegm. Fortunately, in spite of that and the general lack of hygiene with dishes, water, and the sharing of food, only the children pick up her bug, but not as bad as she has it. 

                                                             Eating lunch in the forest

 Which reminds me of the water. I never had problems with water but I filtered the water which came from big plastic jugs which collected rain off a plastic roof for that purpose. Or I filtered it out of the river upstream from all the river activity, to get to which I had to wade through mud. All the Amazon rivers I have been on have a heavy clay mud on the banks which are always wet because the water level is always changing. Therefore there is always mud. However, the chicha always was mixed with unfiltered water from the rain collection so why bother filtering? Well, the rain collection system was not the cleanest. It was made of three connected jugs (50 L or so each). Some kid had slashed one of them. To fix this I had placed a sheet of plastic on the inside letting water pressure hold it in place. Which it did, except that after a heavy rain it moved and had to be put back. Each time I lifted the lid, there was a frog inside swimming around and I would catch him and put him out.

At one part of the river bank, there was a little bay allowing access to the river where the bottom was more gradual. As a consequence, everyone washed clothes, bathed, washed dishes, washed dirty diapers, butchered animals, and even pooped there during the night. Not the cleanest place. That is where I bathed and washed clothes every evening: not surprising that a lot of the insect bites on me and especially on my legs that I had scratched open, became infected. The infections festered and most did not start to heal until I left the Amazon. Even then, it took a month to heal. 

For the first week and a half I was there, I share the platform I slept on with Flora, an older woman from another community across the border (Peru), and her grandson. She is waiting for the return of her husband who is in Puyo at the hospital being treated for a brain tumour. It was decided that there was nothing to be done and he is coming back to die in his community. After about a week of waiting, he returns. He waits there for two days for his son to come upriver to fetch him. He has lost the ability to speak due to the tumour. I gather that this is a new development by the way Flora receives him. He and Flora are sleeping on the wooden platform only covered with a blanket. I offer my mattress. He tries it for a while but gives it back. He finds that it makes him to warm. This is probably why no one uses mattress: wooden platforms or hammocks are cooler. In exchange, that night Flora gives me a hot supper: fish and platano. I appreciate it. The next morning their son arrives and off they go. It is very sad.

The same day, Fani tells me that she has been very ill and is in a lot of pain. I pull out some Ibuprofen from my First Aid kit and give them to her. Later in the day, I bring her some T3’s, a stronger pain killer. She is waiting for approval to get a flight into town to go to the hospital which she does not get for another week.

For several nights, I hear Shwirpi crying in the middle of the night. He is crying a lot during the day too for nothing. We figure it is due to the absence of his mother. Neli is gone for a full week. In the night though this is different. When I aks Francisco about the night crying, he says that Shwirpi was bitten by a vampire bat. I ask him if he isn’t using a mosquito net which they have for everybody. He says no that it is too hot. The second time this happens, Shwirpi is missing a layer of skin on the tip of his nose: “That is where he was bit”, I am told. I have noticed other small children with the same skinned noses. Must be good hunting grounds for the local vampire bats.

All week, we work on renovating the house. We are replacing the posts at one end of the height, which means first dismantling the whole raised floor and its contents which is mostly clothes and lots of it. Francisco wants to replace the flooring and the walls and build a table. We need lumber so Francisco has cut down a very large tree with hard, reddish wood a month before to dry out. He spends about five days deep in the woods (two different trees at two different locations) cutting the trunk into 1-inch thich boards, 10 inches wide and 8 to 10 ft long. I spend much of my time carrying them back. As it rains most of the week, the trails are mud and puddles; some of the puddles are up to a foot deep. It is not easy going and I am glad when it is done. The wood is beautiful and I tell Francisco that each of these boards would be worth $100 in Canada. Actually probably more like $200.

I see a very large spider, a female, on the ground in the casa. As I point it out to Francisco, a chicken comes along and pecks it to death and eats it. The same fate awaits a huge female grasshopper near the school that a group of students and I are watching lay eggs. When she is done and leaps to the ground, a chicken does the same thing.

At the school in my first week, in geography, I decide to teach the students about the movements of the Earth and the days and the seasons (although they do not have winter and summer here). I use a globe and a flashlight and we end up going under the classroom where it is dark enough to get the idea.

At the end of the morning several days that week, I see Jamie (woolly monkey) tied up on the outside of the back wall of Abel and Maruja’s hut (rope tied around his middle). I find out that Fani has gone to Peru (downriver) to buy a “pekapeka”, the small boat motors that people use here. Maruja, her daughter is taking care of him. Each day, I go and talk to him and he crawls over me. It is the first time I have seen a prehensile tail close up. There is a tough, hairless section on the inside of the tail near the end, the part that grips and grip it does. Each time when I want to leave, Jamie makes it clear that he doesn’t want me to go, holding on with all five limbs, and he screeches. The only time it is easy is when Sisa, Maruja’s niece and one of my students, brings him a bunch of bananas. Then he no longer wants company.

At night, whenever it is not raining, there are fireflies. Some are flying but most seem stationary on trees. They are very bright. Then one night, I see one inside Shwirpi’s mosquito net. I investigate and it has firefly-type lights with two reddish ones on the dorsal surface of the thorax, and then the typical yellow-green glow on the abdomen. Except this is not a firefly. It is a click beetle. Shwirpi likes to catch them and put them inside his mosquito net for his amusement.

On Friday morning, Francisco went fishing and we had a great fish soup. Fish here are eaten as is, only gutted. Skin, head, fins all eaten. Not filleted either: the bones just pulled off or spit out. At one point, I noticed Wendi, his 1.5 year old stop, and then see a stream coming down her pants; she is peeing. I notice she usually crouches for this. Here no one uses diapers. So in meetings these puddles appear here and there where the babies are. On another occasion, I see poop appear at the waist band of Wendi’s pants, and fall to the ground. She is about to start playing with it, so I pick her up and carry her to her mom who is not far away and suggest that her daughter needs cleaning. I take a shovel and fling the poop into the water.

Saturday morning there is a minga: a group work session, in the morning. I am feeling really tired and sick to my stomach so I just sleep most of the day. The stomach I later realize is due to the malaria medication I am taking: not advisable on an empty stomach. I am not sure about the tiredness. I am thinking it has to do with a slowly worsening allergic reaction (my eyes are starting to get itchy and this continues until I leave) and/or the many infected open sores I now have, especially on my legs from scratched insect bites combined with the septic water I am bathing in. I feel better by Sunday. I think I just needed to give my body a break. I notice that whenever I have bare legs, like before and after going swimming in shorts, there are tiny flies that feed on my open sores: must taste good.

Sunday I do some fishing on my own along the shore. First I go to an area around a certain kind of tree that harbours many earthworms in the earth around it. The earthworms are a small species and very fast moving. When I have a few dozen that wrap up in leaves, I head to the river. Super muddy banks. I catch about 5 of the small catfish with three poison spines (one on each pectoral fin and one on the dorsal). Francisco bites these off. However, I don’t. I cut them off with a knife. The first one I try to hold down with my foot (I am wearing rubber boots), but I feel something strange. When I look at my boot, I realize that the spine is sticking up (with the fin) and has gone right through my boot, but fortunately, I stopped pressing down just in time, so it did not break the skin. Last time I try that. These fish are interesting as well as tasty. They make this weird sound when flopping around in the boat, quite loud.

On Sunday afternoon, Francisco’s half sister Delila gives us some meat (mono chorango or woolly monkey) as we have been working on the house and have not hunted much. It is smoked and good, although it does feel strangely like eating one’s hermano. When I say that, Neli laughs. We also eat my fish and some platano (as usual). I ask Patricio why there is so little fruit in the community. He says that it is not the season. This may be true but they have not yet planted much in the way of fruit trees either. Francisco has a small coconut tree growing (a seedling). But there are no avocadoes, cacao, oranges, mangoes, or many other fruits. It is a little strange.

Sunday evening I go with Francisco to Fanni and Patricio’s for a discussion group about God and religion. Except that there is zero discussion. Other than three of four songs, there is just Francisco preaching and reading from the Bible. The preaching is in Shiwiar but the bible reading is in Spanish so I get that part. He drones on for an hour and a half, but he is the only one listening. Everyone else is sleeping or talking among themselves. I do not understand why Francisco does not see this. I guess he is mostly concerned with getting to Heaven. Heaven and Hell are a major concern and non-believers as well as homosexuals and other sinners will be going to the latter. I was not expecting to see that here. On the other hand, I am also not seeing any rituals connected to hunting which really surprised me. There does not appear to be any overt spiritual connection with the land.

What there are, are rules to do with growing things and hunting. The community has decided that there will be no hunting within 1 km of the community, no hunting of birds and monkeys except with blow guns, and no more chagras within 1 km of the community. The purpose of all of this is to keep nature close at hand. What is not clear is whether this is for the community itself or for the ecotourism that they are starting to develop.

It is a small community and people share a lot here, and with relatives in other neighbouring communities. For instance, Francisco does not have a fish net, which is the only way to get a lot of fish: fishing by line is fine for getting the small poison spine catfish but few other fish caught this way (although they can be when the line is placed deeper with heavier line and bigger bait. He lent it out to someone in another community and finally admitted that he will not be getting it back. So I gave him $40 to buy one in Peru: the nearest store is in a community 6 hours downstream which is across the border. Apparently their nets are better than those found in Puyo.

Francisco and family have two dogs: Paloma, a female about 3 and Oso, her son. Oso was in a fight in the forest three months ago, and his lip was badly ripped. It has healed but there is a scar and a chunk missing. They are both skinny and like most dogs here they are only given the barest of scraps to eat. The dogs are always close by although when they accompany Francisco to the forest, they take off and sometimes get lost. On a couple of occasions he has had to search for them to bring them back. Mostly this is with Oso who is still young and has a lot to learn. They are helpful in scaring up or locating game. Nice dogs. They like to be stroked and massaged but I have the impression that no one does this locally.