Jungle Journal Week 2

October 6th: Nature and culture

I just reclined in my bumble bee checkered hammock at the end of a looooong day. I smell like a repulsive hybrid of Off! repellent and fishguts, which makes perfect sense since it's prime malaria mosquito time and my hair is drenched from taking a bath right where we chucked piranha innards. Oh joy.

Bright blue and red macaw mates fly directly above our campsite every morning and evening. Anybody see the movie Rio? That bird. At first, the birdsongs were enchanting. Now, we have a feathery fiend who doesn't chirp, but squawks in the wee hours of the morning right outside of our hut.

We form an assembly line daily after coffee to carry buckets of water from the river (our lifesource) to the kitchen. Minnows snatch crumbs before they hit the sand as we wash our plates. I'm still getting used to dipping my toothbrush clean with them swimming around it. This morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I heard the humming of a motor and looked up to see a boat full of indigenous youth arriving. I found out later that they're receiving training to check translated passages of scripture into the Prka language. Currently, they are helping with I Thessalonians. It was both exciting and humbling to know that these young people are using their weekends to come here to learn and translate the very word of God. This wasn't something they were coerced into--it started with a small group of Prka Christ-followers who were thrilled to join. Word spread like wildfire.

October 10th: Three visitors

This morning, a half-sunken canoe piloted by three little Prka girls (maybe 5, 9 and 10 years old) arrived on our shore. We were instructed to avoid asking a person's age because the Prka people don't keep track of age the way we do. We were also told to avoid asking a person's name directly, but instead to ask a third party person nearby according to Prka custom. So, if Person A wants to know Person B's name, Person A has asks Person C. The girls stayed the entire day, eating sweetbread with me and climbing trees to pick premature, bitter guayaba fruit. We went for a swim in the river, and they dove and splashed around like expert synchronized swimmers. We asked them to teach us a song in Prka, and after five minutes of waiting for them to shake off initial shyness, two of them began a magical melody enhanced by the acoustics of the river. Once they started singing, we practically couldn't stop 'em! As we later found out, that particular song, "Xenerowete ywagime hekai," is the Lord's prayer in Prka, and it's also currently the top hit among the four Prka villages.

October 12th:
We've run out of both meat and ice, so we'll be fishing daily for lunch & dinner, and drinking juice au natural. My Portuguese is improving, but I still struggle to "catch the wave" especially when it comes to jokes. By the time I figure out something half-decent to say aloud, and check the grammar in my head, the dinner conversation has usually shifted to another topic. Oh well. :S

October 14th: Jacaré Lunch
Today, we heard two gunshots before dawn. Tchiwere had hunted a small alligator that had been frecuenting our riverbank at night. We watched the entire "cleaning" process in disgust (see pictures below) and fried it up for lunch. It tasted like a cross between chicken and fish.

October 15th: Jungle Treck with Seu Xicopaca
This morning, Seu Xicopaca (shee-koh-pah-kah), a local man with a downward curve of broken front teeth and tight, gray curls gathered above his ears, led us on a two hour hike through the jungle. He paused along the way to hack at medicinal trees with a machete and explain what each kind of sap is good for. The problem was that he spoke Portuguese softly with clenched teeth and a permanent smile such that even the native speakers around me had to read his lips to understand. Each of us took a turn chipping away at the tree trunk to gather leite de amapá, a sweet, milky liquid that's helpful for various illnesses (anemia, muscle aches, gastritis, and respiratory problems). We used it as a simple coffee creamer :)

Jungle Journal Week 1

September 28-October 2: By Land and Sea

The great adventure began with an 18 hour bus ride to northern Brazil (the state of Pará), followed by a frantic two-day shopping spree in the small city of Sao Felix do Xingu on the Xingu River, one of the largest rivers on the Amazon. The campers ran to and fro, bargaining and comparing prices, consulting one another and giving tips, and taking some and ignoring others. A couple of times, we found out the grass was in fact greener on the other side. Nathy realized she could have bought a swiss army Xingu knife for 25 Brazilian realis as opposed to 79, but the rest of us assured her that her super sharp, stainless steel knife would be our survival ticket in the jungle.

Xingu knife: Little did I know how important it would be.

Trying out our hammocks in Sao Felix

While in Sao Felix, the opportunity opened up for me to briefly visit a health post for the indigenous people group Kayapo. I don't usually write poems (and that will become obvious), but my visit and smiling with the children inspired these lines:

Tell me what you see.
Tell me what you know.
Your smile tells a story
Of God´s splendor with its glow.

A handshake and a smile,
Perfect strangers, yet we met.
And now you´re in my story
With a smile I won´t forget.

This is what I see.
This is what I know.
Now I´m in your story, too...
(Your smile told me so).

I love meeting new people and forming friendships that last. So, there is a sort of sad reality that sinks in when a first meeting comes to an end, knowing it will likely be the first and last. But I´ve also learned that this is where trust comes in--trust in the omnipresent God, who is sovereign and unchanging. People flow in and out of my life, but God´s presence remains.

Preparing lunch on the back of the boat

October 3rd: Gator Island

After learning how to hang a hammock properly with a mosquito net in Sao Felix, the crew (13 total) packed our bags, filled our water bottles, and hit the Xingu River for yet another two day trip. I knew we'd eat lunch on the boat, but I figured (silly American me) that we´d have PB&J sandwiches or something that could be slapped together in a jiffy (ha!). Not quite. Three of my fellow travelers sliced meat and peeled greens right at the ship´s stern. As I later learned, the same platform we cooked on was also the designated squatty pot and bathing area. We had huge pots full of rice, beans, beef and tomato..and of course, farinha sprinkled on the side in the Brazilian tradition.

At nightfall, we stopped at a little island inhabited by creepy, white mosquitos and gnats galore. It was hard to stomach the idea of eating with bugs swarming all around in the dark, knowing  more than a few would hitch a ride on the Fork Express. But we ate. We also enjoyed a bit of excitement when our leader, Tchiwere, shined a flashlight on the surface of the water near the sand bank, and something caught his eye--a small jacaré or caiman/alligator. Well, we changed our bathing plans, tiptoeing in groups of three to the stern to bathe by the bucket instead of the river.

We stayed up for awhile to listen to Tchiwere´s stories of adventures from previous camping trips. His wife, Tia Alili, expertly held a citronella candle upside down, letting the wax drip onto a pan, then flipped the candle over onto the wax to hold it in place. I also found out about a natural, homemade bug repellent that actually smells kinda good and works well:

Put cloves and cinnamon inside of rubbing alcohol. Let sit for four days. Mix with Johnson baby oil.

Unfortunately, I dont know the amounts of the ingredients, but there are online recipes also if you google search "natural repellents".

October 4th: Arrival to island base:

Bugs! Eeek! While digging moats around our tents for periodic heavy rainfall, we came across plenty of creepy crawlies, including millipedes and cockroaches. The next day, while hacking away at vines to clear a space for all of our training activities, we uncovered a few scorpions in the sandy dirt. In short, there are big bugs and venemous insects everywhere.

After two nights in a stuffy tent, I tried out my hammock in a snake, scorpion and tarantula-inhabited hut, partly because I wanted to get use out of my R$80 mosquito net. It took me awhile to fall asleep initially, but you can imagine it only got harder after hearing about the top of the food chain on the island---jaguars.

Making Waves on the Xingu River

I'm without a phone, computer, watch, alarm, and music. The intense sun is the hour hand. The clanging of the meal bell is the minute hand. Beads of sweat are a constant reminder that a month in this exotic, wild place will be challenging, but good. I dont have means of connecting with family and friends, but I have my fellow campers to laugh and joke around with, to ponder and discover with every day.