gone native!

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well thats it i have finally gone native! let me try and explain. got to the centro de semillas a hut about an hour and a half from puyo and up a vertical mud slope from the road. this was tricky with my full pack on but never mind. the first afternoon i was shown the propagating areas and some medicinal plants, explained the importance of ayuhuasca and told that wajurat (the man) has many children by many different women "its his destiny!" the other american girl that was there at the time told me after that she couldnt sleep one night and tried to count his kids until she fell asleep! his father lived to 111 fathering 45 kids!
when it gets dark here there is nothing to do so every one parents and kids behave like chickens and put themselves to bed about half 7!
the slightly confused cockrell wakes up a couple of hours before dawn and soon there is a fire going and food being prepared. hte kids are all really self sufficient and chop wood and peel plantains with machetes from about 2 years old. they know how to make different sorts of fires, ones with lots of smoke to keep midges away ect from the same age, its a real learning experience to be told of by a 2 year old weilding a machete for not chopping wood correctly!
the staple food here is manioc, (white starch), plantai (yellow starch) and papachina (white starch) we had capybara one day and tinned tuna another day and a pineapple otherwise its just been starch morning noon and night with no flavour aaaargh! it does funny things to your poo too, whoops i am not allowed to talk about that any more sorry!
the second day was a sunday so we went with w. to his sisters village 3hours walk away where there wre yet more of his children and a wedding going on. unnfortunately in was a catholic one so not very authentic. true to the design of all indian villages there was a football pitch and volleyball net so we watched that all afternoon while thinking up excuses not to drink any more of the chicha that kept coming round! this one didnt have so much sausage taste in it but still.
just before dark we were ushered in in groups of about 10 to speed eat the wedding breakfast in the same ten dishes that everyone else had and and fast as we copuld so the next lot could come and get some. we then saw the arrival of the local sound system, an especially large one carried about 2 miles on the shoulders of several men through the jungle from the nearest track that a vehicle could get to. i should imagine that the owner of this gets invited to every party! the music was then started up loud enough so it drowned out the generator with music called colombia playing, which sounds quite happy but people dance as if they would rather be dead to and is quite boring after 14 hours! i, as the tallest person for several hundred km around i was asked to screw in the village light bulb which prob only came out n these occasions and that was all that was needed to dance til the fuel ran out!
that and vast quantities of manioc and pineapple chicha, cane alchohol and bad wine fom the village glass! its quite a good system, there is no queueing at the bar, no losing your drink, no spilling it, one guy comes round the room giving everyone in turn a mouthful of what ever happns to be in the bucket or un named plastic bottle even if you are dancing! saves lots of time!
they were a really friendlky bunch and much laughing was done, lucky really considering these people were still shrinking heads until fairly recently!
we slept on the floor ofthe trad hut with just a fire in the corner and a few pots and woke the next morning to the music still going! the bride and groom by the way were forbidden to dance because of his religion, whatever that might be, so sat there as miserable as sin the whole night with the bottom of her dress sitting in all the grease from the eating frenzy on the floor earlierr!
all the people were related to w. somehow and all the women were pregnant! we got back to centro de semillas later and the next day we were going to the other house further into the jungle where more of his kids lives. one of his elder daughters lives in puyo with piet oudolfs son(for those who know who he is!) we proper jungle treked along saturated slippy, slopy, muddy, steep pathways for 2 hours til we got to another house. the youngest child and her 10 year old sister had been left on their own to guard the centro de semillas while th mother came with us! she carries a palm leaf basket full of manioc roots on her head on this journey sometimes i dont know how.
we were knackered! we were told that as at cen de sem we could bathe in the river or here there was a waterfall too! excellent, it was the most amazing place i have ever showered in my life!
the next day we went to clear a small area to gow some plants in by burning some wood that had already been chopped down, we did this for couple of hours til the flies and heat dove us mad then walked back up a stream in a ravine so we would be in the shade. it was like indiana jones! we saw snakes and had to jump up hill on boulders!
the next day w. had to go to puyo to help someone who had been hurt in the war. i am in a war zone here by the way, the miltary are pushing the shuars off their land so they can grow cane on it for fuel and they are using force. i saw some of the press releases made by w. s freind in puyo which i didnt understand much but enough to know that people have died and the government is trying to deny it and helicopters are being usd and dogs. they have publically nicknamed the military leaders as something like adolfo suarez, mao tsedomingo and margaret isabel thatcher!! v funny.! i am safe here but have seen cleared area from the bus.
any way so his sons took care of us yersterday and finally took us to collect seeds from the kapok tree which is a giant and not common round here like it is in zabalo. on the way however we saw an anaconda on the path. it was looking straight at us and luckily the lad was walking infront of us otherwise i would have trodden on it! walking through jungle doesnot allow you to look up or ahead unfortunately otherwise you fall over so thatnk god he saw it. he told me and henry to wait with it while he went back to get his brother who had stopped to shoot some baby parrots with his blow gun. he had been making the darts for this all week and when i saw the size of the birds and the beautiful colours it made me sad apart from thinking there cant be much meat on it! we had been told to follow it if it moved so luckily it hadnt when they got back, they quickly chopped down two small trees with machetes and then beat it to death! i dont hav any time for snakes so this was great as far as i was concerned! then they cut its head off and it was still alive for another ten minutes. by this time the flies were driving us mad so we left it there while we went to get seeds.
looking for seeds about 5 inches long in the shade of the jungle is like being a kid lookinmg for conkers! was great and what we were there to do after all.
on the way back we collected the snake. back at the ranch my leatherman was used to skin the thing , you will be pleased to note mike! it took two of us to stand on it while the skin wa pulled off. it was over 2m long and they use the skin to make crowns from. a very exciting day!
that night it poured and poured andwe had the most amazing electric storms. we wanted to get back to cent de sem so we could get into puyo and do this tyoday so we set off in the rain yesterday and the route we had take became th river and we were saturated when we got back.
a typical day is this, up at dawn, no choice, the cockrell and kids see to that, make fire, peel manioc, plantain and papachina, boil these, eat these, do the only poo of the day! maybe do 2 hours work or not, or walk miles somewhere, depends on w., peel more food, boil and eat, read, play with kids, go to waterfall or river and bathe and wash clothes, collecft moss to use for tomorrows poo! check sleeping bag for tarantulas before dark, peel boil and eat more food, try and avoid any chicha, wash pots, sweep out kitchen (it has no sides so this is fairly easy), when darkj go to sleep! dream of fruit, veg and donuts! mmm donuts! as you can see i have adapted fairly easily and very quickly it is so natural and easy to live like this if you dont have anything else to do. clean has become relative, i have got very good at sleeping and sitting on planks and working out when it is going to rain. i dont mind sharing the same glass as 60 other people! and sleeping for 12 hours a night is easy. i just wish there was a bit more food variety and more plant work but see waht happens next week!

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Comments

[Me]

Dear F. Queen of E......
LOVE the blog, I can really identify with it and understand how wet it is, hot it is, how much you need a doughnut, want to shut the cockerell up and avoid the chicha - especially if they are making it without the addition of sausages. Seems like you'd better avoid w too, hope Chris isn't worried (Chris DON'T worry!!). So glad the Leatherman has been put to good use, what does anaconda taste like? Missing you madly. Mel and I are meeting up with Olivia, possibly Carol and John MG who are coming to an SES scientific lecture on Monday 15th. Joel is better!!! Roy is our hero. Elodie has just arrived in the UK. Want so much to come out there and go boulder leaping with you - Luce xxxxxxxxxxx PS: It is OK to discuss the c of your p if you are still out there - it's us back here who are trying, unsucessfully in some cases, to stop.... PPS: Have you discovered the tiny surprise planted in the bottom of your rucksack yet - bit worried you'll have simply thought (quite correctly actually) that it was a bit of rubbish and thrown it out.....