cowudi

It has been a while since I have last blogged. For that I apologize to my blogstalkers (all two of you) who felt that I might have been withholding vital information about my misadventures. Since I last blogged, I have taken two separate trips “adentro” (deep into the rainforest/jungle) The first was for a handicraft workshop with the Waorani Women’s Association in the village of Kenaweno. The group received a small grant for the project from ECORAE, a regional organization that disperses government funds that are raked in from oil revenues. Our original plan was to load the Puyo-based women leaders, a half-ton of food, and all our gear in a bus and drive 4 hours to a bridge, then load all everything and everybody into two large and long canoes to get the community. The trip was calculated to take two days. But, two days before we were supposed to leave, we find out that the canoes were no longer available (evidently the community got a better offer from some tourists). So, we were thrown into crisis mode. We couldn’t really postpone the workshop (for reasons I will talk about later) so we had to either a) move the location to a place where we could get to by bus…or b) find another way to get to the community where we planned the workshop. “We can just walk,” one of the women offered. “Yeah, we can send the supplies in a plane and we can walk there,” someone else added.

“So, how far is it exactly?” I naively asked.

“Oh, six hours.”

“No, it is ten hours.”

“My daughter did it in less than four hours.”

Hummm….that is quite a range. I don’t even like the average. But plan B was choice b: we would walk (through the Amazonian jungle of Ecuador, that is)

Anyway, the day we were supposed to leave, I was summoned into the Women’s Association office (a fact that was annoying in and of itself). I ended up getting sucked into a meeting with 20+ indigenous women from Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia…actually I can hardly call it a meeting. It was supposed to be an interchange of experiences, but ended up becoming a rambling one-woman Waorani show. At the conclusion of the event almost 10 hours later (and without eating anything all day) I was informed by my counterpart, in no uncertain terms that I was NOT --under any circumstances—to walk to the community of Kenaweno. She said I would never make it. At first, I was hurt, because I interpreted it to mean that I wasn’t tough enough. “But, I love hiking,” I wanted to say. But before I could, she went on to tell me of all the dangers along the trail…like having to cross creeks that went up to your neck in water (actually, up to their necks, which would “only” be mid-chest on me)…like having to cross super narrow and slippery logs over big rivers…like if anything…say a twisted ankle or knee, or worse—a snakebite would happen, then I would be a LONG way from getting help. Like, oh, say an entire day. At least. Okay, so now what do I do? We’ll fly there.

So, in the end, my trip to Kenaweno, which started as a two day canoe ride, then turned into a 6 or 8 or 10 hour hike before eventually becoming a magnificent 23 minute flight in a small plane. The approach towards the runway was spectacular…and scary at the same time. On first glance, it looked like the short grass runway ended in the chocolatey river. After circling around and buzzing barely over the treetops in a narrow gap in the “big broccoli” of mountainous forest, we touched down breathtakingly close to the river before rumbling down the grassy clearing and coming to a stop.

Once we had all caught our breath, we climbed out of the small plane and were immediately greeted by the usual throng of curious, eager-eyed children.

This is maybe why the canoe trip would take 2 days...

This was the third three-day waorani handicraft workshop I had attended, and, while it was still far from perfect, it was much better than the two. This was partially aided by the fact that I was not already totally exhausted from spending hours in a bus by the time I got there, plus I now come better prepared...like, I know to bring candy and ear plugs. Which the latter was a lifesaver because the Waorani women were like teenage girls at a sleepover…talking and giggling the ENTIRE night. Since we all shared the same small classroom space, there was no way to escape them and no amount of shushing would quiet them down.

I led a short session of the workshop where I talked about the importance of making high quality handicrafts. I made a display that showed both good and bad examples of some of the things they had made. To one of the few men that had gathered around to watch, I asked him that if he had $10 to buy his wife a gift, which of the bags or necklaces would he buy? I repeated it with the women in the group and they giggled.

In addition to being in charge of distributing the supplies and running the cordless drill non-stop during the workshop, I also played the “telephone” game with them. I wrote a short story in Spanish and told one woman from each of the four teams. One of them translated it for the others into wao terero, and then they went to repeat it to the next person in line on their team. Predictably, the last women in each line had wildly different and incredibly short versions of the original story. It served as a small lesson in word of mouth communication and the importance of having your fact straight before repeating information.

It is NOT a very well guarded secret that the Waorani tend to be very chismoso, meaning gossipy, and sometimes the facts are forgotten or wildly exaggerated in the re-telling of stories. I believe this was the case during a recent incident which allegedly occurred in a portion of the Waorani territory, the Intangible Zone. Without going into the gory details (and because I don’t want to repeat unconfirmed information or scare my dear family) suffice it to say that the waorani rumor mill grew a story into a very tall tale that eventually made national news.

During one of the evening gatherings, the women each took time to talk before the group. Many spoke about how excited they were to be a part of the workshop…and that not that long ago they didn’t even know what a workshop was. They spoke excitedly about teaching their daughters the traditional handicrafts, and planting chambira palms so that their granddaughters would be able to keep their traditions alive. It was really moving. I wrote in my journal that it is exactly those kinds of moments that remind me why I am here. I firmly believe that the Waorani culture is at great risk of being lost forever…or at least irreversibly transformed and homogenized with every other poor colonist community of the region.

Another impressionable moment of the trip came when we travelled by canoe (in the pouring rain) to the community of Toñampare, the unofficial capital of the Waorani territory. It was here that I met the famous Waorani leader Dayuma.

“Dayuma is who civilized us,” one Waorani man told me matter of factly.

In short:
As a child, Dayuma ran away from the intertribal warfare that plagued the Waorani before contact with the western world. She later befriended some American evangelical missionaries and taught them the waorani language, wao terero. After the infamous killing of the five missionaries by the Waorani in the 1950’s, Dayuma and Rachel Saint, (the sister of Nate Saint, one of the missionaries who was killed) went to live with the Waorani and “save” them. The culture, character and fate of this small indigenous group would be forever changed from that day forward. This story has become famous. And after having finally seen the movie End of the Spear (which was atrociously translated as Final del Espiritu in the pirated video stores in town) I was that much more intrigued to meet the famous Dayuma.

I followed my counterpart down a short path that leads off the long grass runway to a cluster of small wooden buildings. Tucked away amongst the buildings was a small monument that was erected in memory of the five slain missionaries. A few feet away, a laminate sign marked the grave of Rachel Saint.

Our visit with Dayuma was brief. She doesn’t get around very well and she said she didn’t feel very well either. I noticed a metal walker in the corner of her cluttered front room of her humble wooden house. A few photos and religious posters were tacked to the rough hewn boards. Manuela talked to her in her native language, while the two other non-waorani speakers and I sat in silence and took it all in. At the end of our visit, Dayuma asked us to send her sugar and food.

It was a sad and sobering glimpse into the last phases of her most unusual life. The changes she has seen—and herself brought about—are hard to capture or quantify. It is a thought that I can’t entirely get my head around. She was born into a culture of true semi-nomadic hunter gatherers and warriors…and she will be leaving behind a culture that has rapidly, often uncomfortably, even violently transitioned into what it is today…one that is at once awkwardly trying to cling onto traditions while being absorbed into the culture of the cowudi (outsiders, cannibals, non-Waorani) the Waorani formerly and famously rebuffed.