the exciting conclusion of Adventures in Bameno (part II)

(continued from two posts ago...)

Like so many overproduced tv show promos, the conclusion to my cliffhanger story is not nearly as exciting as the leadup. It turns out, that our little tangle with the logs was shortlived. Granted, it was a little hairy for a couple of minutes, but we eventually got unstuck, with the help of several Waorani jumping overboard and helping push the canoe. When the sun went down, it got really cold, and we kept motoring along. By some stroke of good luck, it was a full moon, and we were able to continue canoeing after sunset. It was a clear night, so the moon’s light was like a huge flashlight beaming down on the river. Because the river was wider and deeper further downstream, there were very few logs to dodge. So, what could have been a scary situation, actually was fine. At around 8:00 p.m. we stopped in the Waorani village of Boanamu to set up camp for the night. We were all relieved to get out and stretch our legs. The riverbank was extremely steep and muddy, which made unloading our bags in the dark challenging for uncords like me. We set up our tents inside one of the big, open buildings and I immediately crashed. Some of the Waorani stayed up to cook something (they are constantly hungry). I just wanted to pass out. Which I did. Very quickly.

The next day we had a lazy breakfast of ant sandwiches (ants got in our bread bag) and oatmeal drink before we continued our journey downriver another 3.5 hours until we reached the village of Bameno. We pulled up around noon. The sun was out and the heat was pretty intense, making the unloading a sweaty experience. I wasn’t feeling 100%, so I tried to take a powernap, but sleeping in the tent indoors was hot…very hot. I basically just sweated. I caught a couple minutes of sleep then spent the afternoon setting up camp and then the women had a brief meeting in the open air classroom on the banks of the Cononaco River.

The workshop was held in one of the school classrooms which was essentially an elevated wooden floor with a tin roof. The open air design made it nice for catching breezes. The building also had a nice view looking out onto the river. Before each lunch break we had to clean up everything we were working on because there was an industrious monkey that liked to raid our work area and steal stuff.

The workshop, like many of the others I have attended and helped with consisted of two Waorani women teaching the other women assembled how to make various types of handicrafts. For my part, I presented each of the women with a copy of the catalogue that I made which features a photo of each of the different types of handicrafts that are sold in the store. The women who live waaaay adentro were fascinated by it. Some seemed excited to learn how to make some of the different things they don’t already know how to make. I also gave yet another short presentation on the importance of making high quality handicrafts. I brought examples of good and bad quality items that I took from the store and showed them to the women and explained what was wrong with them (bracelet clasp was too loose, seed was damaged or put on backwards, etc). Finally, I also did some icebreaker activities with the women which was fun, albeit a little chaotic.

During the workshop, I took up my usual post distributing supplies to the women…mostly in the form of drill bits and needles…and coordinating the use of the cordless drills. Ciara, one of the Duke students who stayed on for the summer doing additional research came along for this trip along with two of her research partners and parents. Her dad was really helpful in making a little drillpress contraption out of a block of wood. It was great because it allowed us to drill the seeds more easily and safely than holding them between our fingers...which is tiring, not to mention dangerous.

For two of the days we were joined by two guys from Kansas City. They are backpacking across South America and are currently volunteering to help build tourist cabins in another Waorani community. I put them to work drilling seeds. They were great sports about it and spent many, many hours drilling away in the “sweat shop” as they called it.

Bameno touts itself as being the most traditional of all the Waorani communities. And I guess, in some respects that is certainly true. For example there was more than one “casa tipica” (traditional house) and there were a high percentage of community members that had the traditional perforated earlobes and wore tipica and some of the men still hunt with blowguns (although guns seem to be more commonly used). One of the last/only Waorani shaman live there, too. We went to his casa tipica one night to hear him tell stories and channel the jaguar spirit.

There were also many things that were far from traditional. For example, after their cultural presentation where the women and men wear their traditional dress (which is to say almost au natural) and dance and sing/chant, they decide to crank up the gas generator in order to power a radio which blasted horrible techno-cumbia music (which comes from other parts of Ecuador and the Andes and is arguably the worst music ever made) while the little kids gather round the t.v. to watch silent music videos of yet another genre of music which feature scantily clad Latinas grinding up against the moustachioed male singer. It was quite an image, really....the big boombox, t.v., dvd player set up in traditional thatch house with a dirt floor... The most annoying part of it was that they blasted the music until waaay past my bedtime, making sleeping difficult...especially considering we were sleeping in the same room as two dozen other people, including babies and chronic snorers.

The community of Bameno receives a fair amount of tourists. While we were there, at least two small groups passed through…including one that had a dramatic exit via helicopter. They were not on just any tour, they insisted: they were on an “adventure tour.” We of course thought that was funny and cynically remarked how our 12 hour bus ride followed by a 12 hour canoe ride was much more of an adventure than an hour helicopter ride.... Of course while we were making snarky remarks like that, we were each secretly jealous of their luxury ride and almost wished we could go with them.

Let’s see...other highlights of my stay in Bameno... I ate lots of huancana, which is peccary. It wasn’t bad. The Waorani also ate lots of monkey, but I got out of being offered some, which was a relief.

One morning I got attacked by a macaw while I was eating breakfast. The domesticated bird wanted some of the empanada I was eating and came after it/me. Those birds can really bite if they want to, but I got away unscathed by the bird, but burnt myself with the hot oatmeal drink I spilled on myself trying to get away from the damn thing. I am sure that it was a very funny scene to have witnessed from afar.

I was going stircrazy from sitting so long, so I asked some of the Waorani to take me on a short hike. Not 10 minutes into it, I slip off a log and submerge my leg in water up to my hip. No injuries, besides my ego. 10 minutes later we hear a noise that sounded like a tree falling. Both the Waorani man and the woman I was with stop in their tracks...both independently saying “tigre!” (which they tend to use generically for any of the cat species...ocelot, jaguar, jagarundi, etc). Holy shit! A tigre! My heart started to pound. We contemplated which way to go. We went a little ways on, then decided to turn back around and go back towards the way we came because it was getting dark. As we pass through the area where we heard the noise we see a newly fallen tree crossing the path where there wasn’t one before. So the noise really was a tree, not a tigre! I was disappointed

I also took a nice 3 hour hike with the Duke students and while they were taking GPS points for their community map. It was a really easy hike over mostly flat land. The only trick being having to cross some narrow logs that crossed high over a couple streams...yeah, those were scary.

Bathing while in the community was interesting. The big river had a pretty good clip to it, was chocolatey brown and said to be polluted from oil spills downstream. Two of the non-waorani in our group tried to bathe and wash their clothes in it, only to have a couple of their shirts get swept away by the current. I decided to forgo that option. The only other option for bathing then was between two rather stagnant shallow “springs” which was basically a small pool of water about shin deep. Here was my routine: I would strip down to my underwear and bra, dump water over my head and body to get wet, wash my dirty clothes on a board in the water, put on my wet (but “clean”) clothes, then try to get my boots back on without sliding in the mud and making the whole routine all moot. Once back to my tent I would hang up my wet clothes on a clothesline and change into dry clothes. I used to try to take my clean, dry clothes to change into after bathing but too often would get them dirty or wet during the process.

The last night we were there, I skipped out on part of the final despedida (goodbye) speeches and pulled up a student desk outside the classroom to gaze up at the night sky. It was an amazingly clear night, with no cloud cover. The sky was absolutely incredible. I don’t think I have ever seen so many stars in my life. No artificial light to pollute the night sky. Few places where you can find that anymore it seems. Within the first 30 seconds of stargazing I saw a beautiful shooting star sweep across the sky. I made a wish. I stayed out there stargazing with one of the students chatting, eating chocolate and sipping tea until the almost full moon rose and the clouds started to move in. We saw several shooting stars over the course of the evening. I made the same wish each time, after confirming that it wasn’t bad luck to repeat the same wish. We snuck in the back of the meeting just in time to give our obligatory speeches…thanking the community for hosting us, sharing their culture with us, …etc… After the speeches, the Waorani cranked up the radio and played music again pretty late…too late, because our alarms were going off at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m.

Yes, 2:30 a.m. I had turned my phone on in order to use the alarm to wake up our motley crew. We needed to get up at 2:30 in order to hit the river early, travel by canoe all day in order to get back to the bridge in Tiwino before sundown that same day. I had everything pre-packed, so that all I had to do was throw my clothes on, pack up the tent and go. The goal was to be on the river by 3 a.m. in order to get to the take out point at the Tiwino bridge by 6 p.m. The river is much narrower, shallower and loggyer…meaning lots of logs to dodge. Not something you want to navigate in the dark. I had been polling some other community members to see if that was possible and everyone assured me it was. In fact, they said that we didn’t have to leave as early as we did, but that was the plan that we had made (read: I) and we (I…and the other gringos) felt better leaving earlier rather than later. Packing the canoe was of course more complicated that anticipated. We thought that because we were not hauling the two tons of food that we would have more room in the canoe. Somehow, maybe because more people climbed on (not sure) it was still packed tight…and many of the benches (with backs) were gone. I was in the front of the canoe with the gringos and shared a wood board with three other people. After one false start, we pulled away from the banks at exactly 3:52 a.m. The first few hours were really cold and uncomfortable. All we wanted to do is sleep…(I mean it was 4 in the morning after all!!!)...yet there was no way to get comfortable. I was hugging a lifejacket just trying to find a place to rest my chin and catch a few zzzzs. Then I would lean forward trying to use the lifejacket as a pillow on my own lap. In the meantime, it was soooo chilly and I kept getting splashed, making me both cold and wet. When the sun came up we were more comfortable. We passed the hours bird watching…and chatting about our favourite books…travel recommendations…news from home. But more often than not we sat in silence, taking it all in.

I still had my emergency stash of food which I shared discreetly with my benchmates. I felt greedy hoarding it, but if I shared it with one Waorani, I would have to share it with all of them, which meant I would get basically zero of whatever it was I had. I learned that the hard way when on the way out I started snacking on a bag of peanuts mixed with raisins. One of the Waorani asked for some. I passed the bag back only to never see it again. I don’t mind sharing…I just didn’t have enough to share with everyone… We eventually dug the group food bag out and passed around crackers and cans of tuna. It wasn’t much, but it got us through the day.

We made only two stops to pee the whole day. Well, three if you count the time the motor died and we drifted to the side of the river and a few of the women hopped out while the motorista was fixing the motor. I successfully kept myself from freaking out about potentially be stuck on the river with a broken motor…talk about being up sh#t creek without a paddle… but we eventually got going back upstream. It was slow going…considering we were going against the current, with an outboard motor on the smaller size, given the size of the canoe and the weight of the cargo.

The highlight (good one, that is) of the return trip, hands down, was seeing a tapir in the river. It was only about a dozen few meters away from our canoe. I saw its head come up out of the water and we wizzed by. It was awesome…and incredible considering that I saw it, and others did not (that never happens!). Sooooooo cool.

The hours dragged on. Around 6 p.m. we started to wonder anxiously if we were getting close to the bridge…as we had well less than an hour left yet of light. When we asked the Waorani, we received a wide variety of responses from 20 minutes to 2 hours. 6:40 p.m.: the sun has set. We hand the puntero (the guy in the front of the canoe looking for logs) a flashlight. Despite the many obstacles in the river, the motorista kept going full speed ahead. We bumped a couple of logs, one pretty hard, and got brushed by some overhanging branches. 7:00 p.m. : it is now very dark, especially in the areas where it is densely forested. We can’t see anything. We keep going full speed. Finally, we spot the light on the tower near the oil installation in Tiwino. We all exhale seemingly simultaneously. We are no more than 50 meters from the take-out point…we can almost make out the shape of the tourist hut, when BAM!!!!! We crash into a log. Hard. We are stuck. The log was submerged, thus it wasn’t spotted. The middle of the canoe is firmly lodged on the log. Chaos ensues. Everyone has a different idea of how to get us unlodged. People are shouting and arguing about what should be done. The engine keeps revving, trying to back us out of the situation. We don’t move…we only start to spin. It was kind of sketchy. No, it was super sketchy. As Ciara’s dad commented, if the boat were to flip in this shallower water we would be in a world of hurt because the boat is so damn heavy. So, after about 10 minutes of arguing, the consensus was, finally, that anyone not carrying a child would get out of the boat and help push. So, we jumped ship. The water was only about hip deep and pretty cold with a pretty good current. We all gave a push and ungracefully dislodged the boat. It started to drift back downstream. The motorista fired up the motor to propel it back towards us, where we were then faced with the problem of not having an easy way to get back in the boat. It was super sketchy because we were doing all of this with the aid of a few small flashlights (including mine which was a crank one, that needed re-cranked every few minutes). We finally climbed back in the boat to go the final 50 meters to the sandy take-out point. As we unloaded our gear, we realized that the bus that was supposed to be there waiting since 6 p.m. to pick us up…wasn’t there. I wasn’t at all surprised. Thus commenced the blame game. It was a bad scene. The upshot is that Manuela—and many of the Waorani for that matter---have a very bad sense of time and dates. I had previously overheard her telling some people what day we were leaving the community and she was 3 days off. I sensed that this was what happened this time. We heard no less than three versions of what happened. One person said that there was a strike and the bus couldn’t pass (totally wrong). Another version was that the women in Puyo had called via radio to confirm the time we would be arriving and were told by someone (again, stories vary) that we would wouldn’t be getting in until the next day (this was closer to the truth). So, we were soaking wet, and stuck in Tiwino overnight. Thankfully, I had one pair of clean, dry pants to change into. Some of the other women were not so lucky. I felt bad for them… especially those that didn’t have tents or anything beyond a sheet or thin blanket in order to sleep on. The group was famished and went to order some food at what looked almost like a restaurant. They weren’t prepared for a large group so late at night, so they said it was going to take at least an hour to prepare (which meant longer) I bought a piece of stale bread and a tomato and made a sandwich and then went to pass out in my tent. I am glad I didn’t wait around, as they said it was only chicken foot soup. Cold at that.

The next morning there was a little more drama. The details really aren’t worth mentioning, though. The bus pulled up around 8 a.m. Those that were still loitering around the tourist hut loaded up...but half the group was out wandering around or something. We drove 5 minutes to the neighbouring community of Bataboro to pick up a few stragglers. We got off the bus and I was shocked at the changes that have occurred in the year since I had last been there. It was awful. I didn’t even recognize the community. The oil company appears to have extended its operations further south into the Waorani territory. The lush foliage that once enveloped the dirt road into the community was all cut down. The road had been widened and a bridge built over a river and a bunch of new houses…from ramshackle wooden houses to brand spanking new concrete castles were scattered along the road. Oil trucks and construction vehicles flew up and down the road. It was disheartening to see. Evidentally a bunch of Waorani from another community have moved to Bataboro to work for the oil company or just look for handouts. They say that the company is going to open up another big well much deeper into the forest, chopping and clearing or bribing everything and everyone standing in its way. The feeling in this community was just sooooooo different. The community is irrevocably changed. It was suddenly an extension of Tiwino which I always thought felt dirty, slimey, sketchy. Anything but tranquilo. Evidently there was a murder in the community while we were gone. There were no less than four different versions of what happened so who knows what the real story is. Lots of people were upset, though. Lots of speculation. I didn’t even try to sort through the gossip. I just got back on the bus and zoned out.

So, in hindsight, although the bus was a day late picking us up, it at least offered me a decent nights sleep laying down…versus trying to sleep in a bus on a very bumpy road. The rest of the trip was uneventful…and actually shorter than I had steeled myself for. I got off the bus in Tena and skipped the 6 hour detour. On the last leg of the bus I got sucked into a Japanese soap opera that was playing on the bus. Then they put on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It has been years and years since I had seen it. Ahhhh…the famous dinner party scene where Indy and his girlfriend are served a variety of insects as well as monkey brain soup. I remember I was horrified and grossed out when I saw the movie as a kid. Now I think it’s funny. And I don’t know what that says about me…