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 :)
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