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 2o
7.0’ W 76o 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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