Rainy season river fruits, the mosquito dance, and a rude rooster

Bora girl Mari steering peque-peque and huitillo fruits on Yaguasyacu River. Photos by Campbell Plowden/CACE

With our gear and bag full of handicrafts loaded in the boat, Yully and I headed downriver with Beder at the helm of a peque-peque with his daughter Mari as his co-pilot. The clear afternoon gave me a chance to get a close look at a couple of plants used in crafts that I hadn’t seen before in nature. Beder first steered us to a “huitillo,” a tree that can survive immersion of its lower section for months. Artisans collect its golf ball sized fruits during the rainy season to dye chambira palm fibers a dark grey-black.

Paschaco fruit on Yaguasyacu River and Bora ceremonial belt made from paschaco seeds. Photos by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Farther along we came to a “pashaco” tree full of yellow kidney shaped pods whose flat coffee-colored seeds are often strung together to make a ceremonial belt for young women coming of age. The most distinctive plant of the afternoon was a vine with a bright orange curved spike flower hanging near the entrance to a sacarita (river loop short-cut). I had just begun to inspect it when Beder warned me not to touch it because it makes the skin very itchy. He called this slender phallic-like plant “patikina” – coincidentally the same name as a discotheque in Pebas.

Dugout canoe and peque-peque on Ampiyacu River at dusk. Photos by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We cruised by the entrance to Nueva Esperanza just after 5 pm but didn’t stop this time. When she passed by here last September Yully told me she had spotted a “bufeo” (pink Amazon river dolphin) floating in the river. She had occasionally seen a dolphin snarled in a fishing net, but this one seemed unharmed. Her concern grew when she saw three more dead bufeos along this section of the Yaguasyacu and Ampiyacu. There were no dead fish to provide any clues, so the cause of the dolphins’ untimely fate remained a mystery.

Yully Rojas receiving crafts from Huitoto artisans at Puca Urquillo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

By the time we got to Puca Urquillo it was already dusk. We set up our craft receiving operation on the sidewalk in front of Cherly’s house to take advantage of the remaining light. The women had done a nice job of putting the final touches on their ornaments. As I attached tags to the items and waited for Yully to pay them, the women stomped their feet and slapped their arms in a sort of jerky dance that is common at this time when mosquitoes seek their evening meal.

Ceremonial mask made of wingo fruit pod by Bora artisan at Puca Urquillo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We returned to the other side of the village to pick up some crafts from a few Bora artisans. We gathered at Elsa’s house where I saw the full range of her husband’s talent turning “wingos” (calabash fruits) into masks and human figures. I learned these pods didn’t need to be dyed because once picked, their green outer shell naturally darkened to a lustrous black. As he casually guided a fine curved chisel over a small one, a frog with a smart-aleck grin emerged within two minutes. Since he had mastered his art over many years, I was impressed that the women artisans had done so well carving our ornaments in their first attempts.

Yagua artisans Mariela and Guillermina with crafts at San Jose de Piri. Photos by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Returning to Pebas, we stored our bags in a hotel near the port and walked up to San José de Piri where Mariela showed us a small traditional Yagua figure she had made as a trial ornament for us. Her mother-in-law Guillermina showed us a chambira bag with an unusual marbled blend of colored figures. The work wasn’t ready for prime time, but it was good to feel like we finally had some place to start in this oft-forgotten indigenous community.

I had hoped to return to Iquitos on one of the “rapidos,” a boat with a powerful outboard engine that can deliver 20 passengers from Pebas to the city in less than five hours. These only run a few times a week, though, so we relaxed for dinner at Pebas’ best (and perhaps only) “polleria” (broiled chicken is only item on the menu) with Beder and Mari. I don’t expect fine dining in the hinterlands, but I was disappointed that a nice restaurant started by the wife of Pebas’ reknowned painter Grifa had barely lasted six months. I guessed it was too pricey for local folks and not enough tourists came through town to make it a viable business.

Rooster in hotel at Pebas, Peru. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Our hotel had the bare basics – a bed with a thin mattress, a small table and chair, one light bulb hanging from the ceiling that worked until power went off in the town at 11 pm. I took a bucket bath with cold water in the public bathroom hoping no one would walk in since there was neither lock nor latch. I slept fine until the rooster tied to a post near some plastic jugs and generator in a back storage area next to my room began crowing with distant fellow foul around 4:30 a.m. This inspired unhumane fantasies and the certain knowledge that writing a negative review about this quirky bit of hospitality on Facebook would have no impact.

I read a little, packed and was ready to go when the motel owner knocked on Yully’s and my doors just after dawn to let us know that a boat was approaching. We hustled to the port and saw that two lanchas coming from the Brazilian frontier had just landed. Both boat reps were yelling out lower and lower prices to attract passengers to Iquitos in the hammock class. The competition also benefited Yully and me since we easily got a camarote (small cabin) where we could store our bags without fear of midnight theft.

Huitoto artisan Cherly Flores with armadillo ornament at Puca Urquillo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Yully and I had a peaceful and productive day to chat, assign numbers to new models and put tags on every craft. We bought popcorn, aguaje popsicles, fried fish, and Bimbo lemon soda from vendors that flooded onto the boat at towns like Oran along the way – stops that seemed to occur shortly before a crewmember from the boat came around with free plates of spaghetti, rice and chicken. I got a few hours of sleep in my top bunk before we docked around 1 a.m. at the “muelle” – a special dock where customs inspect boats coming from Brazil. Yully has had agents search every corner of her bags on a few trips. They cleared our vessel quickly this time after checking the ship’s paperwork. I made it back to the Hotel Marañon in Iquitos around 2:30 a.m. and gratefully crashed in a comfortable bed after spending about 48 hours of the previous three days within earshot of boat engines large and small.

Several meetings and a few tears at Brillo Nuevo

Brillo Nuevo was dark and quiet when we finally pulled in just after 10 pm. Half-way into the rainy season, Oscar drove his boat almost to the back of his house. I took off my shoes and socks to wade through the final few feet to the dry bank. In another two months, I would probably be able to step directly from his boat into his living room on stilts.

Rambo with bandaged leg

I tied both ends of my hammock and mosquito net to rafters in the main room while Yully set up her small tent on the floor. Our actions were closely monitored by Oscar´s two dogs that included Rambo whose left front paw was bandaged but hung limply after a bad fall off the deck of the house. We missed seeing Oscar’s wife Ena who was in Iquitos. It was great to hear that she’d finally been able to have cataracts removed from both eyes. She will need to wear dark glasses until her eyes properly heal from the operations, but she can already see more clearly. Ena is a very skilled weaver, but her obscured vision had sometimes made it hard for her to make straight edges on her crafts.

Renee, the young President of the community, stopped by briefly to confirm we could meet with the community at 8 o’clock the following morning. Starting then should give us enough time to meet with everyone about the social rebate and then meet with the artisans before Church started.

Yully and I briefly discussed ideas for the social rebate with Oscar. Setting aside 20% of the proceeds of the sales of crafts from Brillo Nuevo had generated a potential fund of about $900 to support health, education or conservation needs in the community of their choosing. We heard people were considering buying more medicines as they had done with the first round of the rebate.

I asked Oscar if he thought folks might want to produce stories or other materials to help kids improve their reading and writing skills in their native Bora language. He said there was a project in progress to do this, but it might be good to consider using some CECAMA (CACE in Spanish) funds for this since the other project seemed uncertain. Oscar wouldn’t be present at the meeting, though, because he going back downriver in a few hours to attend a training session for church pastors. I curled up in my hammock fully dressed with my fleece blanket and read a bit of The Secret Life of Bees with my headlamp before I accepted that involuntary closing of the book during bursts of sleep meant it was time to call it day.

I woke just before dawn and packed up my hammock. I was considering paying a visit to Don Eli and his family to express my condolences about the loss of his 24 year-old daughter Alida. Eli has always been very kind to me and key member of our copal team since my first visit to Brillo Nuevo in 2008. Alida and her sister Dalila were keen participants in our craft group. Shortly after I left Peru last summer Yully wrote me that Alida had gone upriver with her baby, husband, and his mother on a fishing trip. They were camped by the river when a sudden storm blew a tree down on top of them. Only Alida’s mother-in-law survived, and she has still not fully recovered from her injuries. It was extra sad to learn that Alida and her husband had just finished building and moved into a two-story house one month before they were killed in this accident. This house remained vacant since people seemed to view it as haunted or cursed.

Eli and his family had appreciated receiving some photos that I had taken of Alida. A camera shop in Iquitos had edited one shot of the baby and printed it against an angelic celestial background. I was hoping to make and give them a DVD copy of a video-taped interview I made of Alida for them as well that morning, but my computer was unfortunately working too slowly to do this quickly.

Beder called us over to his house for a quick breakfast prepared by his wife Monica, one of Ena’s younger sisters. I used to ask my hosts to make thick oatmeal the way I am used to it at home, but I now take it the Peruvian way – a thin hot beverage with a tangy bit of cinnamon. This allows one package to serve six instead of one. While we sipped our oatmeal and downed a few pieces of bread, Beder sat next to a big pile of bright red pijuayo palm fruits and snapped leaves off of chambira palm leaves to remove the fiber strips for weaving.

We wandered down to the “locale” (community meeting building) right at 8 AM, but were not surprised to find that no one was there yet and the front gate was locked. The lady on the other side of the path invited us to wait in her house. Our artisan friends started arriving one by one finally followed by Renee. He didn’t have a key to the “locale” either, but led us into the meeting room through an unlocked back door. I greeted people other people I knew as they filtered in and sat down on sat down on the backless wooden benches. I was particularly happy to see Manuel, the curaca (traditional leader) of the village who had last seemed quite discouraged about the general state of affairs in the village.

As Christmas traditions, western medicine, gadgets and Peruvian forms of governance became embedded into modern Bora life, his role as the actual village leader dissolved. He ostensibly retained responsibility for cultural affairs, but village interest in holding traditional festivals and the maintaining the maloca (his home) where they are usually held had waned as well. The large manguare drums in the maloca that he and his predecessors used to be beat to call people together are now silent save for brief demonstrations to visitors. I recorded several hours of Manuel telling stories about Bora legends and festivals two years ago that I hope to translate and post online. Manuel had told me he was even thinking of selling these pieces of heritage and moving to the city. He still regularly prepares his coca leaf and cetico bark ash mixture, but he unfortunately has also often had too much alcohol. It seems some people do want to continue organizing traditional festivals from time to time but prefer to do so themselves.

When a critical mass of people arrived in the new meeting house, Renee, Yully and I sat on a bench behind a table on an elevated cement section in the front of the room and each gave brief into remarks. After assuming that the matter of deciding how to spend the balance of the Brillo Nuevo social rebate account was still open, I threw out my suggestion about using part of the funds to create Bora educational materials. Manuel voiced some support for this, but the matter went no further when Renee surprised both Yully and me by reminding the group that they had already decided in a previous assembly to use these funds to build a community pharmacy. It would be stocked with basic medicines that would be sold to community members at cost. Proceeds would be reinvested to buy new supplies.

There is a health a post in the village supposedly backed by government assistance, but it has had problems with adequate and honest staffing. I was disturbed to learn that at least some of the medicines bought with our last social rebate fund had been sold by a health technician for his personal profit. The community, therefore, wanted to have a place to manage at least some medicines under their direct control. When Renee asked the assembly, though, to confirm this decision, there was no response. The silence seemed long and awkward to me; perhaps it was just the Bora way of indicating they weren’t ready to decide.

Eventually Beder spoke up and proposed using the funds to buy basic supplies for all of the school kids – notebooks, pencils, etc. I wasn’t opposed to the idea since we had done this with our first donation to the community, but I was hoping they would choose something other than items that would be consumed in a short time. The robust artisan Ines then proposed building a bridge over a big stream on the trail to Ancon Colonia to help kids from this nearby village walk more easily to the school in Brillo Nuevo. This seemed like a novel idea, but it also went nowhere. People apparently thought Ines was more interested in easing the walk to her farm field on the other side of the stream more than helping bids from the other village commute to Brillo Nuevo.

After half an hour of these fragmented comments, a man who had some community responsibility for health issues voiced his firm support for the pharmacy proposal. Without further prompting from the chair, the gathering clicked into an energized gear. People stood in turn to either endorse or express concerns about the proposal. No one disputed the potential value of a community pharmacy; several did seem convinced the community could not manage it in a fair and efficient way. It was sad to feel that their frequent experience with corruption and incompetence made it difficult for them to believe that successfully organizing this endeavor was even possible. The idea of buying school supplies was briefly revisited, and I wondered if the meeting was heading for an impasse. Renee then asked rhetorically: “the community had already decided to do the pharmacy, did people really want to change their mind?”

I stuck my neck out a bit once more with a reminder that it would be great if the community could have a stated goal that we could promote along with craft sales. They could use the funds available now to build and equip the pharmacy and then consider concrete ways to support education with the next installment. Renee put this idea to the assembly for consideration. It didn’t generate a rousing show of hands, but he noted that enough heads were nodding to consider the proposal adopted. A few people would prepare a list of the materials needed to build the pharmacy and pass it along to Yully to estimate the costs and move forward.

As the first meeting broke up, Don Eli and I met each other’s eyes and walked toward the center of the room. He was smiling as usual and we hugged. I said softly into his left ear, “I’m so sorry about your daughter.” We faced each other again, and tears fell down both of our cheeks. I had never imagined crying in a room full of Bora natives.

As the artisans coalesced for our second meeting, I sensed some heaviness in the group and imagined they were getting ready to launch into their concerns about pricing. I began by explaining the economic realities of our craft enterprise. As happened with the Huitoto group the day before, our Bora partners seemed to appreciate my openness. It was hard for them to believe that someone could make $65 per hour sitting at a computer to make a website while they spent one or two days collecting, processing, and weaving plants into a craft for $8 to $10. They seemed to trust my assertion, though, that we needed to invest a lot of money to keep buying more crafts from them. Ines definitively stated she wanted to keep working with us.

We then moved on to other themes such as communication challenges. The pace and heat of one discussion alternately between Spanish and Bora shot above my ability to follow it. At one point I motioned for Yully to let Angelina finish her thoughts on one topic. They finally reached a logical resolution that Yully could pass along dates for her upcoming visits or craft orders to any of three members of the quality control committee if the local coordinator wasn’t available.

We returned to Oscar’s house to receive completed orders of belts and a few guitar straps. It turned into a spontaneous cooperative craft making session when we found that the holes and loops of many belts were out of place. Angelina’s coral snake models were beautifully woven but were slightly too wide to slide comfortably through the buckle. She went home, carefully removed the excess and came back.

Ines, Monica, Lucila and a woman who didn’t even make crafts with us adjusted the models made by Ena and others who weren’t there. I was really impressed with the new models of woven net bags that Ines had made and Gisela’s unique multi-colored diagonal belt. Marcelina and kids took turns swaying in a lightweight hammock.

I took photos while Yully recorded and paid people for finished items. Later her husband Aurelio came by with a pair of three pipe bamboo flute inserted in a carved balsa wood model of a sungaro catfish – complete with the black swirly stripes painted on its white body. He and another fellow then played a traditional Bora tune with them. We had hoped to head down river by 11, but we needed a few more hours to get the crafts in order, load the boat and say our goodbyes. It was surreal spending less than 15 hours in the village that’s become my new home base in the Amazon, but it was good to feel I will be welcome again for a more relaxed stay in June.

One river town and three villages

Sunday, February 25, 2012

I wonder how many creative ways there are to say it was a long day. Before heading off to the port, Yully and I had a quick meeting with Romero Rios – a Maijuna leader from the community of Puerto Huaman on the Yanayacu River. We had attended several Maijuna congresses and hoped to begin a copal project with them, but for now we hoped we could at least explore buying some handicrafts from them. Romero told us they had several dozen artisans from two villages who were steadily improving the quality of the chambira baskets they were making but had no certain market for them. We would check out samples at the PROCREL office and let him know which ones seemed good to start with.

I got a few hours of sleep on board the Jorge Raul before rising early to write and observe the lancha make pre-dawn calls at settlements to offload cargo such as blocks of ice. We pulled into Pebas amidst intermittent rain where we spotted Don Oscar from Brillo Nuevo waving to us from the waiting crowd. We lugged our gear across the new bridge connecting the bank to the new floating dock and stowed it in his peque-peque – a fifteen foot long wooden boat with a 5 hp engine and elongated propeller.

I noted that food vendors no longer lined the elevated wooden walkway that had led from the boat landing to town. The new market was now an enclosed concrete space where a few tables offered warmed over plates of non-descript meat with noodles and brownish rice. I ventured a bit farther up the street where enjoyed two pink smoothies and simple egg sandwiches at a table with some friendly folk who asked me to take their picture. The owner proudly shared her recipe for her juice concoction saying I could make it when I went home – papaya, banana, passion fruit, lemon juice, milk, egg, sugar and vanilla. If only ….I knew to enjoy such treats during my trip because I’ve rarely found a papaya in Pennsylvania worth eating after being picked rock hard before its long journey from some tropical zone.

Yully and I walked up the steep road and steps to the plateau of downtown Pebas and then traversed the muddy trail to the village of San José de Piri. We a few positive meetings with folks from this remnant Yagua settlement last summer, but since then Yully had had a difficult time building any momentum with our proposed craft project. Her main contacts were often absent or hadn’t followed through on anything. Attempts to encourage artisans to make even simple starts met usually only produced excuses the following month. Our morning visit appeared to be headed for familiar discouragement – the supportive Don Telmo was off fishing and chance encounters with one artisan revealed that the local coordinator hadn’t actually informed her or others that we were coming. She didn’t have any chambira so she hadn’t made anything anyway. We revisited our discussion about the utility (or perhaps futility) of trying to work here when there were other villages that would be immediate enthusiastic partners.

We were finally led to the home of Mariella who laid out a few items she had made on her dark wooden table. These included a chambira bag, a few open-ended woven pouches stuffed with white fibers for blow guns, and a Yagua doll fashioned with a small calabash fruit pod head, a skirt of rough chambira leaves and bits of subtle sun-bleached llanchama inner bark. Her craftsmanship was basic at best, but it gave us some hope. She agreed to make a smaller version of the doll as a trial for a Christmas tree ornament by the time we pass through town later tonight.

Oscar motored us 45 minutes up the Ampiyacu River to Puca Urquillo and dropped us off at the Huitoto end of this dual ethnic village. Strolling up the concrete path to higher ground, many kids offered a friendly “Buenos dias,” but I remained just another occasional visitor until Cherly Flores warmly welcomed Yully and me into her home – as usual full of crafts mounted on her wall. We had arrived fashionably late (perhaps early by Peruvian standards), but within half an hour seven more women arrived to show us their recent ornament creations.

We had good success selling small tutumas (dark brown calabash fruit pods) etched with wildlife figures last Christmas, but our request to increase our order from a few dozen to several hundred had presented a challenge. While the women are skilled weavers, a few of their husbands had made all of this type of ornament in the first batch.

In the past two months, though, the women had been practicing hard. When the carving awl slipped off the slick pod surface, they had often jabbed their hands and ruined many pods, but most of them had gained enough confidence and control to produce lively figures of butterflies, parrots, tapirs, fish and snakes coiled around all types of creatures.

A few women had also woven spider web-like ornaments and miniature armadillos. We had to reject a few but agreed to accept most when they added achira seeds to the tutumas to make them miniature hand maracas.

Our gathering in the sparsely furnished meeting house attracted fewer Bora artisans, but they had made many quality spider-web and etched tutuma ornaments. I was also impressed with the fine weaving and subtle natural colors that Milda Quevare had used to make several chambira bags and placed an order for several dozen of diverse designs. Outside the meeting house a large mamey tree was practically vibrating as thousands of bees immersed themselves in profusion of fuchsia.

Oscar piloted our peque-peque a bit farther up the Ampiyacu before veering off to the right to ascend the Yaguasyacu River and arrive at the Ocaina village of Nueva Esperanza about an hour later. We had had a modest but good start working with a small group of closely related artisans from this village with a few dozen families. Since there was not a single phone in the village, though, Yully usually had to let people know when she was coming through personal contact or messages delivered by Oscar in transit to his home upriver in Brillo Nuevo. Yully had given our last order for another batch of the woven chambira coin purses to the artisan group’s coordinator when they met in Pebas the previous month, but unfortunately this message never reached the rest of the group. This woman had been having problems with her husband, and when he left Nueva Esperanza to go back to his native Bora village, she had abruptly followed him. We consequently arrived with no advance notice, and no crafts from our order were waiting for us.

Our friendly frequent host Gloria had been busy on her own, however, and I admired and bought a few of the extra-large chambira bags she had made. She had been one of the village’s founders 19 years ago when a group of families had left their former location adjacent to the other Ocaina village on the Yaguasyacu. Nueva Esperanza is small but still thriving while Puerto Izango has been all but deserted by all but one family.

Yully got out her computer, and a handful of artisans gathered to examine photos of the different models of coin purses we hoped they could make before her next visit. I wandered off to enjoy one of my favorite outhouses in the region at the end of the village. It was made from the usual assortment of heavily weathered wood and rusty metal roof, but it was open on several sides and offered a beautiful view of the river to its temporary occupant. On the way back I chatted with Gloria’s elderly aunt who was perched on the corner of her house weaving a bag and reveled in the prime photo-taking sunset light.

As we readied for our departure, I noticed that one girl about ten years old who had been paying more attention to my picture taking inside than the craft discussions with Yully playfully escorted us to the river’s edge. I noticed her speech was off, and Yully told me that she was mute but not deaf. I hadn’t noticed her using sign language and wondered how she fit into her small society. This slim black-haired girl lacked no joie de vivre. She pushed our boat off the mud bank, dove into the water, tagged a boat with three women washing clothes and swam back toward us with a big smile as we eased out of the village cove.

Reunions in Iquitos and challenges ahead

Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012
On board the lancha Jorge Raul – less than 90 minutes from Pebas.

I appreciated that many things were the same in Iquitos and had to accept that others had changed since my last visit in the summer of 2011. I welcomed a ride from the airport to the city with a van from the Hotel Marañon. The driver I knew had been replaced by Lucho – a native of Loreto who had spent decades as a truck driver elsewhere but had come home to treat his diabetes with a local plant he knew well. I then got to meet a new receptionist at the hotel because the woman I had known well (even if she seemed overly serious much of the time) had been transferred to the newer (and more expensive) Hotel Gran Marañon built by the same owner. After a long two days of travel I was disappointed to have a room tucked away in the back of the fourth floor, the internet signal was too weak and the hot water came out in a dribble. I put aside my pride, though, and ventured out to the street.

Iquitos artisan Luisa Paredes

I first needed to change some money and headed up to a corner past the Plaza de Armas that usually has a line of “cambiastas.” Most were gone by 10 pm, though, but I gave one pair of men a try. They looked suspiciously familiar, though, and my memory of them was confirmed when they rejected two bills as imperfect and tried to short-change me with the soles they offered for another. I withdrew knowing it would be better to deal with the reputable “Chino” in the morning. My next destination was the Boulevard – one block overlooking the river that is packed with touristy restaurants and bars, street entertainers with a line of shacks on a side street selling handicrafts. I looked for Damaris Panaifo who had made some very nice earrings for me last summer, but her and most other stalls were shuttered for the night. I did meet the engaging grey-haired artisan Luisa Paredes. She was raised in San Martin near Lima but has been living and selling her crafts in Iquitos for 19 years. I bought a small assortment of paiche scale earrings and achira seed bracelets.

The next familiar face I encountered was Devon Graham sitting with two fellows outside his favorite haunt El Meson. He is a teacher at a university in Florida and director of Margarita Tours that organizes creative eco-tourism trips in the area. Devon has allowed us to put a selection of our crafts on their boat to sell to their upscale clients. His operation also supports a partner NGO called Project Amazonas. This group attracts doctors to spend several weeks offering free medical care to many communities downriver including the villages we work in on the Ampiyacu.

I told Devon about my visit To MINAG in Lima and the lengthy new requirements for doing DNA studies. He urged me to contact a biology student at UNAP who had been collecting and studying the DNA of some butterflies at a lab on campus. I didn’t know that any local institution had this technical capacity, so it will be well worth exploring this option.

Wandering off in search of food, I was temporarily very upset when I thought that my favorite hangout, the Karma Cafe had been replaced by a techo bar with flashing blue neon lights. My need to absorb this change, though, was blessedly short-lived when I realized one block later that my navigational memory was once again less precise than my emotional faculties. My “Cheers” of Iquitos was right where it had been. I was greeted by the manager Antonio and set up my computer to catch up on email, edit some photos, and enjoy a papaya smoothie and warm sandwich. I’m not part of the usual clientele that often includes people en route to ayahuasca healing sessions, but I enjoy the living room atmosphere of the place. The British owner Stacy returned for the closing shift around 11 pm, and he caught me up on some of his affairs. He’s very comfortable in Iquitos although he does miss the beer and a few other special foods from home. I proposed a game of chess at midnight but he declined due to the late hour, and encouraged me to come back when he was around earlier in the evening. It was good discipline for me as well to retire to my hotel and get some sleep.

Yesterday morning I unpacked my big duffels and sorted contents into piles of vials and research supplies for Angel, outfits for his new infant son, highly coveted duct tape and tags for Yully’s work in the Ampiyacu, and a big bag of clothes that Luke had outgrown for Italo’s (our copal project field assistant) family in Jenaro Herrera. Yully and angel both arrived at the hotel for our morning powwow around 9 am. Angel was very happy with the gifts for Yamil, and admitted that he was still getting used to the extra work and less sleep that accompanies caring for a newborn. His wife Yolanda had to go back to her job as a nurse after one month so Angel needs to help with feedings more often.

Yully Rojas and daughters

Yully shared some of the sad story about her recent trip downriver to help recover the body of a friend’s daughter who died in a ferry accident – unfortunately far more common here than one would wish. Yully had heard another piece of news that was noteworthy for our work was the apparent collapse of the export of chambira baskets made by several villages along the Tahuayo River including our partner community Chino. They had been selling as many as 800 baskets every three to four months to a broker in the U.S. She didn’t know the cause of this change, but it must have caused a profound decline in the livelihoods of these villages. Anticipating a continual growth in this market, this project’s sponsor PROCREL had taught artisans in two Maijuna villages how to make these baskets last year, but the enterprise was aborted before it even got off the ground. We will need to confirm this from people at PROCREL and in the communities to find out what happened with this situation and learn whatever we can from it. When things were going well, training multiple artisans to make 20 standard models of one product seemed to make sense. It now seems that the core risk of this approach was putting all of its baskets into one basket. CACE does not yet sell a large number of any one type of craft. Our strategy has been to work with our partners to create a diverse array of products to satisfy many tastes and market niches.

Yully told me that I will need to address another concern right away. Artisans in several communities reacted strongly to the news that we sell crafts in the U.S. for three to five times what we pay them. My job will be to explain our reasons for returning 20% of our sales to their communities as well as other aspects of our business model and reality. Unlike many buyers who take craft on consignment, pay the artisans for the crafts they sell months later and return the ones they don’t sell, we pay the artisans up front for all crafts we receive from them and assume the risk of not selling them. Analyzing our craft sales, I found that we have sold about 42% of the items bought at Brillo Nuevo. We will hopefully eventually sell many of those in stock, but I accept that we will never sell many items made by artisans who are learning to make a new product and some of our experimental products just don’t work. We can get full retail price when we sell to people directly but selling to stores at wholesale prices or on consignment reduces what we get by 20 to 40%. We are still in the early stages of figuring out how to manage all of these affairs. Developing a business as a non-profit with non-business motives is not easy. I am committed to being totally open with our partners and reach an agreement about pricing that feels fair to them and is viable for us. If we can’t operate this way, there’s no point doing what we’re trying to do.

Leaving home and revisiting Lima – Feb. 23, 2012

Feb. 23, 2012
Lima
Today has really been almost two consecutive days of traveling to mark my return to Peru. It began yesterday morning around 4 am when I got up with my wife Yuri. She walked our dogs while I completed backing up all of the documents, pics and videos from my computer to an external hard drive that will be left at home just in case. After one last bowl of my regular cereal for a while and final hugs to Juno (dog), Joy (dog), Xander (cat), and son Luke, Yuri and I hit the road around 7 am. It was a wonderful four hour drive to Washington, D.C. because the weather was clear, and taking turns during the drive gave us time to have an uninterrupted conversation that flowed from family affairs, to politics, relationship insights sparked by reality TV, tensions between leading a totally spirit centered life and desires to change the world, and sharing memories of my grandfather kindled while attending a Zen Buddhist ceremony in a tiny village in Japan. Coming into DC brought up strong memories for Yuri because she grew up around there and spent so much time driving to various spots on the Potomac River where she kayaked every day for years. That was another life time ago for her. I was setting out for my first trip to the Amazon when we first met. We’ve been together since now for more than 25 years. I couldn’t do any of these Amazon journeys without her full support in so many ways. Saying farewell to her at the airport truly marked the beginning of another journey because it meant that I was once again setting off on my own without my best friend to talk to every day.

I pulled out my laptop for hour long slots before, during and after my flight from DC to Atlanta and finally finished putting together a summary of CACE’s income and expenses since the group began in 2006. We’re still a small group, but I was glad to see that we’ve grown from a $12,000 per group in the first year to almost $50,000 last year. This growth has been made possible by the steady support of two families who believe in me and our mission, two foundations that have given us a pair of grants, and steadily increasing sales of handicrafts made by our partner artisans in Peru and Brazil.

I started to feel the excitement of my travel juices stirring waiting at the gate in Atlanta as I was surrounded by people speaking Spanish (presumably Peruvians heading home) and Japanese (probably a tour group heading to Macchu Picchu). Scattered through the waiters were Americans wearing t-shirts indicating they were heading to Peru for a mission trip. The economy section was apparently full (including many on the wait list) so I was pleasantly surprised that the Delta gate clerk gave me an upgrade to “business elite” – not the fancy first class seats, but they were in a section that had a good bit more room to stretch my legs. I read through a bit of the New York Times, pleased that I’d actually already digested the essence of the news listening to NPR Morning Edition. One new story was about a group of folks who help escort hundreds of salamanders across a busy road during their annual mating time. I knew I should have slept more, but I’m a sucker for free movies so I watched about two and a half (the plane landed before the third one finished) even though I had to keep upward pressure on the little prongs on the piece that fit into the seat jack in order to hear the narration allowing me to get good practice opening the various plastic wrappers surrounding even item on the dinner tray.

Arrival in Lima was blessedly easy as well. Slow but steady plodding through the immigration line, and chance favored me when I pushed the button at customs that allowed me to pass through without inspection. If one gets a red light, you have to open all your bags to be looked at. One nice feature of the Lima airport not found any more in U.S. airports is a place to stow one’s luggage. I always have two big duffle bags that I can’t lug around for the day. I then camped out at the airport Starbucks for a while since it’s the only place to get “free” internet access in the airport. Since I’ve been having troublesome pains in my tummy for the past week, I had some soothing mint tea. I was glad that a trip to the doctor and hospital for blood and other tests the day before I left showed that I didn’t have anything that would be dire enough to postpone my trip. I started taking Prilosec to see if that would calm my tummy in the interim. I then got a few hours of sleep on the tile floor of any upper lounge with my backpack as pillow and jacket as blanket along with other weary travelers who arrived on flights at midnight and were waiting for connections to various parts of Peru at daylight.

I got up around 6:30 am and got a good breakfast of eggs, toast, coffee and papaya juice at one of the nicer airport cafes (I couldn’t quite bring myself to have a breakfast sandwich at McDonald’s) and edited some photos of artisans with their kids and crafts. The restaurant also had a closed off section called Lucky Strike – an area for hard core smokers. I don’t like to see anyone harming themselves this way but it was disturbing seeing that there was one large family group in there – about ten people that included four kids who seemed to be less than eight years old. The dad was apparently oblivious to the sign right below the place’s name that said “Fumar produce infarto cerebral” – Smoking causes stroke.

As the normal business hour approached, I took a cab into downtown Lima to go to the office of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) that deals with Wildlife and Forestry affairs. Driving through the morass of endlessly crowded highways and streets of this city of 9 million is never an experience of joy for me, but I do like to chat with the cab drivers. Ronald gave me his opinions about the new president, where he’s been and where he’d like to go in Peru, and enjoyed hearing my stories about the size and diet of whales.

I was glad to meet with one of the biologists at MINAG that had been handling my most recent application for a permit to collect biological samples as part of our research on copal resin. We sent in all of what we thought was the proper paper work last summer, but it had gotten hung up for reasons that were not clear to Yully (our CACE representative in Iquitos) or me. It seems that the requirements to get these permits have been growing every year, particularly for any research that intends to do any genetic analysis of collected samples. My meeting gave me a chance to finally understand all of the questions they had raised in a letter to us about our application. To get the process back on track we will stipulate that we won’t do any genetic work on our samples. In the meantime, we can prepare another ten forms or documents in order to get permission to do the DNA work – very important for us to be able to figure out how many weevil species are forming the resin lumps on the copal trees.

I took a long walk to a mall, edited some more artisan photos, had some lunch and got a taxi back to the airport. My energy for conversation was very low so I mostly slept for the next 45 minutes as my driver weaved his own way back. I woke up with enough time to learn his name was José – a decent fellow of Croatian descent. He dropped me off outside the airport to save the hefty tax they must pay to drop off passengers inside the terminal. There are official airport cabs that cost about twice as much as the ones on the street. They of course say that they are much safer. Safety is good, but I’ve never had a problem with any cab driver. Some of their cars are pretty funky, but I’ve never been ripped off. It is mandatory, however, that you negotiate the price you will pay to get to your destination before you get in the cab to avoid any shocks.

Time to get my big bags back and check in for my flight to Iquitos. Amazon, here I come.

“Roba mujer” and new craft at Nueva Esperanza (“new hope”) Ocaina village

Dog at Ocaina village of Nueva Esperanza. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

After some days of getting right to work, I enjoyed having some time in Nueva Esperanza to do my morning exercises carefully watched by a little dog named Candy.   I was unfortunately too exuberant with my shoulder stretches and an upward swing of my right arm broke off a piece of coiled red bulb hanging from a rafter.  We of course pledged to replace it – wondering playfully if the owner of the house who was away was planning on using the colored light as the center-piece of a disco set-up after he finished expanding the floor space.

Maloca behind mango trees in Ocaina Village of Nueva Esperanza. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

After breakfast I appreciated one unusual feature of the village – an expansive outhouse enclosed on three sides looking out to a vista of the river.  Another asset of Nueva Esperanza was a grove of mango trees planted near the maloca (traditional house of the curaca sometimes used for festivals) when the village was founded about 18 years ago.  The site was chosen because it was the only one in the area that was never flooded during the rainy season.  It still has a greater than average quotient of mosquitos, but I would gladly spend time there when mango fruits ripen and fall from the trees for several months.

Campbell Plowden with Ocaina village Nueva Esepranza Vice-President. Photo by Yully Rojas/CACE

While waiting for someone to open up the meeting house, Elieser brought me into a storage room with their radio, battery and charge controller for their solar panel.   I told him I had had a few solar panels at my house in the Tembé village in Brazil, so he asked me if I could figure out why their system wasn’t working.  All of their connections looked firm so I could only suggest they get a voltmeter to measure the output of the battery.  I had burned through several batteries before I learned to monitor their level and not pull out too much juice.

Nueva Esperanza artisan Gloria Vasquez with woven chambira bags. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

"Roba mujer" craft demonstration at Ocaina village of Nueva Esperanza. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Yully Rojas explaining designs for coin purse crafts to Ocaina artisans at Nueva Esperanza. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Nueva Esperanza artisan Mirtha Vasquez with chambira palm fiber bracelets. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

The Ocaina community listened attentively to our presentation about our work in Brillo Nuevo, admired the Bora handiwork, and endorsed our proposal to work with them.

Their core group of six artisans displayed various bags and bracelets they had made with chambira palm fiber.

One man showed me a string full of an unfamiliar object that had a stiff ring attached to a tube of woven bonbonage cane.  Asking me to put my finger in this end while he gripped the other, he then pulled me across the room with this one-sided Chinese handcuff.  I didn’t imagine this “roba mujer” (woman stealer) would become a top seller for us, but we asked this fellow to make us a half-dozen of these with alternating strips of blond bonbonage and walnut shade bacaba fiber.

We had contemplated asking the women to make prototypes of cell-phone holders, but seeing their current wares, we opted to start with a simpler product – little chambira coin purses.  I drew a few basic designs and color schemes on the chalk board, and Yully explained the details.

Each woman then volunteered to make a few pieces that matched her level of confidence.  Yully will return next month to see how they have fared in their first venture with us.

The son of the curaca (traditional leader) came up to me after we had wrapped up things with the women and showed me a heavy pointed dark red carving of “palo sangre” wood.  He said this was a small replica of a five-foot long “macana” (called a bijawoho in the Ocaina language) that his people used to fell trees in the pre-metal age. They would whack at the base of a tree until it could be bent over.  They would then dig out earth and roots beneath the exposed base with the spear and stoke a fire there until the tree could be knocked over.

Drawing of traditional Ocaina macana (wooden ax) in Plowden field notebook. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I could easily envision the outline of the macana as a signature logo for these artisans.  It was also obvious why native Amazonians would have immediately welcomed steel axes from any outsider.

I wrapped up our layover in Nueva Esperanza by interviewing a few village leaders and artisans.  Carlos reminded me that the original homeland of the Ocaina (as well as the Bora and Huitoto) people was in Colombia.  They had been slaves in plantations there and brought to Peru some 80 years ago by their former masters when a regional war threatened their operations.  The first Ocaina in the Ampiyacu region were based around the village of Puerto Izango.  This community has now virtually disintegrated leaving the young Nueva Esperanza as the only intact Ocaina settlement in the area.  I hope our efforts can help them develop some new thread of economic development and strengthen their grasp on their culture.

Ocaina man and daughter untangling fishing net at Nueva Esperanza. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

As we carried our gear down to our boat, we passed by one man carefully untangling a fishing net with his daughter.  He noticed my small camera and asked me the one question I have come to dread: “How much does one of those cost?” followed by “I might like you to bring me one of those.”

******************************

For more information about the Center for Amazon Community Ecology, please visit us on Facebook and our homepage at www.amazonecology.org.

Huito hairdo and farewell to Brillo Nuevo

I slept better than the night before, but still awoke well before dawn.  When the need to visit the outhouse superseded my desire to finish the last chapter of my book, I emerged from my sanctuary from mosquitoes to begin my last day in Brillo Nuevo.  I packed all the things I would need for the last days of this stint (hammock, blanket, toiletries and a change of socks and underwear) in the smaller duffel and everything else in the large one.

Bora artisan with tapete. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Yully and I finish about half of our breakfast before the stream of artisans and other visitors began.  Some brought their tapetes, belts and first rolls of dog leashes and collars for final inspection.  After a few rounds of feedback, most had worked out little kinks and were ready for us to accept.

Yully had already paid the fellows who worked with us on the copal survey in the week, but following a tradition I started a few years ago, Beder invited the team back to receive a gift of a baseball cap.

Bora men who did copal survey at Brillo Nuevo in July, 2011. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I had picked up a nice assortment from the Trash to Treasures event at Penn State University at the end of the term when the school sells off tons of items left in dormitory rooms to support the local United Way.

Bora man Brito Tilley and dog. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

When I shared my idea with them about training a dog to find copal resin, they thought it was intriguing.  Bora men routinely trained their dogs to find game animals – mostly by bringing a puppy with them when they went hunting and encouraging them to follow any scent.  Brito said he knew of a man who had trained his dog specifically to find cedro trees by the aroma of their roots.

Paraponera (tucandeira/isula) ant in Brazil. Photo by Campbell Plowden

While Yully efficiently took care of labeling the crafts and paying the artisans, I chatted with Beder and Robert about the relative perils of rainforest critters including the jergon pit-viper that accounts for most snake-bites in the area, a white spider whose bite hurts for hours and the infamous isula ant whose sting inflicts severe pain and incapacitation its victim for at least half a day.

Bora men doing traditional chant at Puca Urquillo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

While almost everyone in the village is bilingual, we pondered why so few Bora children know their traditional songs.  I had recorded Tembé chants at Tekohaw and made a book of the lyrics of these for their schools.  They liked the idea of asking half-dozen of their elders to sing their songs and put them on a CD and make booklets that could be given to families.  An annual contest with prizes for the best singing and costumes might provide a good incentive for parents to encourage their kids to reactivate this part of their culture.

Brillo Nuevo artisan Ines Chichaco and huito leaf patarashka. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

My morning adventure was having Ines dye my hair.  She had gathered the huito leaves earlier in the morning, simmered them with roasted patarashka leaves, and cured them in the sun for several hours.

Ines Chichaco dying Campbell Plowden hair with huito plant dye. Photo by Yully Rojas/CACE

I lay on the floor of her house with my head perched near the door next to a bent aluminum pot filled with the leafy stew.  Ines massaged one handful of the dark mash into my hair after another until my whole head was saturated.

Cascabel snake at Jenaro Herrera. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Ines Chichaco making cascabel snake model chambira dog leash. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I sat in the sun with her cat to let the first treatment dry while Ines resumed work on the cascabel snake model dog leash.

Many Brillo Nuevo artisans are highly skilled; Ines is also innovative and fast. She has cranked out four or five pieces in the time it takes most artisans to do one.

Some of this advantage comes from her ability to concentrate on craft-making without the need to care for young children (her older son in the army and younger one is self-sufficient).  She exudes an exuberance and frequent laughter, however, that seems to propel her no matter what she’s doing.

Yully Rojas consulting with Brillo Nuevo artisan about craft order. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Seeing how well Ines and others made the thin collars immediately suggested shorter versions would also make attractive bracelets. We promptly commissioned three women on the spot to make batches of bracelets with their signature snake designs.

Campbell Plowden and Manuel with huito hairdos. Photo by Yully Rojas/CACE

After finishing round two of my hair and her husband, Ines wrapped an old piece of fabric around our heads to contain the herbal dye.  A third round would have been better, but it was time to go.

Yully Rojas and Beder Tilley in peque-peque on Yaguasyacu River. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We loaded our heavy bags in Beder’s boat and wrapped them well in a tarp in case of rain.  Beder and his son took turns at the helm of the small engine for the three hour trip downstream to Nueva Esperanza.  Beder mentioned earlier that if Brillo Nuevo extended his contract as local project coordinator, he wanted to buy a 9 horse-power peque engine that would halve the time for these voyages up and down the Yaguasyacu river.  I didn’t mind the leisurely pace.  I got to see an iguana swimming across the river, glimpses of ripples made by pink dolphins, and flocks of squawking parrots flying against the pre-sunset pink sky.

Arriving in Nueva Esperanza in early evening, we carried our essential gear across a flat soggy area up the bank where we were greeted by Elieser – the only fellow who wasn’t attending the soccer match at Santa Lucia when we passed through the village on our way upriver.  He told us he had been replaced as president of the community at their last meeting, but the new official would convene our gathering in the morning.

I walked down to the stream and took a bucket bath off a small raft to wash some of the leaves out of my hair.  Yully commented that it looked much darker – as did parts of my ears, cheeks, neck and back. We hung our hammocks from the rafters of a house near the top of the hill, had a simple dinner of tuna fish and rice and retired for the night.

*************************************************************************

For more information about the programs of the Center for Amazon Community Ecology, please visit us on Facebook and our website at www.amazonecology.org.

One grasshopper goes a long way

Ayahuasca earrings. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Saturday morning began with a quick outing with Aurelio to collect samples of a few vines.  One popular kind of earrings is made from thin cross-sections of the ayahuasca vine.  Native Amazonians have long used this hallucinogenic plant to induce visions and healing.  Attracting visitors to participate in these ceremonies with shamans of varying pedigrees has become a huge business in parts of Peru and Brazil.  Aurelio told me that “clavo huasca” (which smells like clove), “unha de gato” (cat’s claw – used for medicinal purposes), and “huambé” (a plant whose fibers can be woven into wicker-type baskets) might be good candidates for other vines whose cross-sections might have interesting figures for jewelry.

Clavo huasca vine and leaf. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I had hoped I could get to these spots in my sandals since my boots were still wet in inside, but urged me to put them on anyway since we needed to walk on some muddy trails to find these plants. After whacking his way through various briar patches near his chacra (farm field), he found a nice-sized clavo huasca. Cutting through a thumb-sized section, though, I was disappointed.  It had a thin dark interior circle, but not much else distinguished it.  Unha de gato sounded more promising since Aurelio said its surface looked like a ring of capital “M”s.  His forays into the woods to find this plant on the way back, though, were not successful.

Aquaculture pond at Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

The highlight of the outing for me was going down a side trail to see a pond created by a mud dam.  This aquaculture project was carried out by kids from the village with technical assistance from IIAP (Institute for Investigations of the Peruvian Amazon) and financial help by the “Padres de familia” (male heads of households) and government money.  The pond was stocked with 3,000 young “gamitana” (a round omnivorous fish also known as tambaqui) and 4,000 sabalo (a long silver fish that is common in the area).  The students feed these a variety of left-over foods.  When these fish reach maturity in a few years, this pond should have an impressive amount of fish available for their lunches or possibly for selling.  There is another government program that is financing aquaculture on a larger scale in the village that almost 30 different families are participating in.  This number would probably be larger if it weren’t for lingering bad feelings and unpaid debts from the sacha inchi bean project mentioned earlier.

Going fishing in the river and finding more dye plants was my main mission of the morning.  After the usual start on Peruvian time (an hour or so after a designated time for doing anything), I went out with Aurelio and Beder in his “bote” equipped with a 5 horse-power peque-peque engine.  We landed on a bank and walked down to a damp wooded section.  They quickly found three “huacamayo caspi” trees by the creek.  Beder fashioned a hook from a tall sapling and snapped off a branch of the huacamayo sapling so we could pin down its scientific name.

Bora man Aurelio with diamond cuts in huacamayo caspi bark for dye. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We moved on to a larger trunk, and Aurelio used his machete to cut out four diamond-shaped pieces of bark in a vertical line.  He said you could remove an equal amount on the opposite side of the tree, but if you needed more (it takes about a pound to dye one cogollo of chambira), you would need to get some from another tree.  Seeping from the edge of the cut pieces was a line of scarlet liquid.  When boiled with fresh mashed bark, chambira turns a deep fushia.  While this tree is fairly common in these riparian forests, Aurelio later told me that it was also possible to collect the powder from scraping the bark and use this to dye the fiber – a method that clearly inflicts much less damage to the tree.

Armadillo hole near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We motored another fifteen minutes up the Yaguasyacu (literally meaning river of the Yaguas – the original native group in the area) and skidded the boat onto another mud landing.  I followed Aurelio up the bank and two steps farther I lurched down with a yelp as my entire left leg broke through a thin layer of dead leaves and sticks covering a deep foot-wide hole – probably a burrow made by a large armadillo.  I felt lucky to climb out with nothing more than dirty pants and a bruise on my arm.  It was an important reminder to pay more attention to where I was walking than where the person in front of me was going.

Huacamayo caspi bark and purple stain from pelejo caspi. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Aurelio quickly found his next quarry – a “pelejo caspi” (literally sloth tree).  He removed a branch of this and crushed some leaves.  His hand immediately turned a deep wine red – a contrast to the milder red of the huacamayo caspi bark.

Walking back to the boat (attentive to step around the armadillo hole), Beder plucked an inch-long grasshopper hiding between some brown dry leaves.  His search for worms and grubs in the soil yielded nothing.  While I had a sentimental flinch when he also clasped a rooster-tail cicada in his hand, I knew that if we were going to catch some fish we needed to start with something.

Tying the boat to a branch near a small backwater, the rooster tail dissolved before catching anything, but when our bait supply was reduced to a remnant of the grasshopper, Beder snapped his “barandilla” (five-foot long stick pole with about 8 feet of nylon line) up and pulled a tiny round silver fish into the boat.  He cut this into tiny pieces, and we were set.  I took my barandilla in hand and spent the next few hours fine tuning the art of waiting for the right amount of tug from a fish before pulling up my line.  Yanking too soon or too hard only whipped the line out of the water; waiting too long guaranteed the bait would be gone.

Cachorro fish near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Our next catch were catfish called “cunchi” and “shiripira”– Beder carefully snapped off a sharp spine from their dorsal and pectoral fins before removing the hook.  I landed a “cachorro” whose sharp teeth made it look like a miniature barracuda.

Anyashua fish near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

My favorite catch of the day was a slender mottled green “anyashua” fish with a spotted tail related to the well-known peacock bass known here as tucunare.

I would have been content to spend the whole afternoon fishing, but I was due to meet with the artisans back in the village.  In spite of local custom, I try to arrive at my appointments on time, but by the time we returned to Brillo Nuevo an hour late, many artisans had come and gone – fortunately with a charitable promise to return later in the afternoon.

Brillo Nuevo artisan Ena Chichaco with tapete. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

One person who hadn’t shown up at first was Ena.  She’s a very talented artisan, but she was reportedly pieved when I had sent it back a tapete (hot pad) she had a girl deliver because it had too many spaces in it compared to more tightly woven pads of the same design.  Someone then told Yully and me that Ena was having trouble with her eyes.  This seemed to be a logical explanation for why she was having a hard time with the fine details of making these crafts.

The village has a basic health clinic, but getting eye exams, glasses and attention from specialists requires spending more money than most people can afford.  We were happy to learn that a church-related group that provides free eye care to Amazon communities was going to visit Puca Urquillo in the next few weeks.  We hoped that Ena could get some help from them.

Campbell Plowden with Brillo Nuevo artisans. Photo by Yully Rojas/CACE

We gathered in the same school room where we had drawn our first designs of snake patterns on the aged blackboard two years.  The group discussed approaches to managing chambira palm trees, electing a new local coordinator, ways to improve their handicraft quality committee, experiments to find a natural color-fast green dye, and establishing prizes to promote different goals.  These ideas included most productive artisan, best service to the artisans, best adaption of a pattern from nature, chambira conservation prize, and best design to promote Bora culture.

Brillo Nuevo artisan Amalia Arirama with white boa chambira belt. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

While the women now seem comfortable expressing their support or disapproval for concrete proposals, asking them open-ended questions in a brainstorming mode often provokes nothing more than blank stares.  They know each other so well, but they still seem reluctant to put forward their ideas in these group settings.  Sometimes it’s clear my questions were too obtuse or poorly expressed in Spanish for them to understand.  When someone presented them in Bora, they often generated more discussion.

Afraninga snake model chambira Amazon guitar strap. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Our final agenda item dealt with Amalia’s concern about the use of the Bora logo on the Amazon guitar straps.  After I introduced my views on the topic and apologized for not consulting her first, she launched into a long explanation on the topic.  After an hour and a half of relative calm, the group latched onto this topic with passion; soon at least five were talking in Bora at once leaving Yully and me to ponder what they might be saying.  When the heat subsided, we pieced together that many in the group thought it wasn’t right for one person to claim exclusive rights or request payment for the use of a traditional design even if they had been the first to suggest its application to a particular product.  They could, however, win recognition for such an adaptation.

Brillo Nuevo artisan Monica Chichaco. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Perhaps in partial deference to Amalia or deciding that the original figure was too hard to weave, the group told us we could sell the most recent batch of guitar straps containing this logo, but they would come up with a new design they all agreed on to use in future models.  This process would never be confused with a Quaker mode of making decisions through attentive listening to different points of view and reflective periods of silence, but this Bora way clearly achieved what seemed to be a solid consensus on how to proceed.  It felt good to be given clear direction from the group on this point; I hope they will become equally engaged with other topics that will determine the success of this venture.

Harlequin beetle. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

While he hadn’t participated directly in the meeting, Aurelio had paid close attention.  Back in his house he showed me a harlequin beetle with a beautiful pattern on its outer wings that would be stunning design on some type of craft.

Bora man Gregorio with pucafisa dye plant. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Later Aurelio introduced me to his friend Gregorio who brought a whole plant with him called “pucafisa.”  He said that it grows wild in wet areas near Puca Urquillo where people use its leaves to prepare a blue (“celeste”) dye for chambira and llanchama bark paintings.  He had transplanted some near his home in Brillo Nuevo to experiment with.

Brillo Nuevo artisan Monica Chichaco with chambira dog leash. Photo by CACE

As the sun lost its power for the day, Monica and Kori came by to show us the progress they had made with the dog leashes and collars.  I was excited to see how quickly they had adapted the belt-making techniques to these products.  I can’t wait to have my dog Juno model one of them.

******************************************************************************************
For more information about the Center for Amazon Community Ecology, please visit us on Facebook and our website at www.amazonecology.org.

Searching for copal and other treats in the forest

My mosquito net did its job well last night but it provided no respite against the cacophony of roosters that began their competing calls before dawn.  I was at least spared spasms of cramps that sometimes also make it difficult to lazily enjoy the last hour of dozing before rising in the cool Amazon morning.

I got up around 6:00 am and spent the requisite 20 minutes stretching my right shoulder.  I had a towel to pull my hand up behind my back, and I have improvised other props common at my physical therapist office.  I used a heavy wooden pole in place of a cane and made like Bruce Lee moving my hand around in circles clutching a water bottle in clock-wise and counter clock-wise directions in place of a giant wheel mounted on a wall.  I didn’t have to worry today about not jogging as I normally do at home.  Walking through the forest for seven hours would be plenty of exercise.

White-collared peccary on Tembe boy in Brazil. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I joined the copal team that Yully and Beder had assembled yesterday that included two older fellows Aurelio (Marcelina’s husband) and Carlos, Beder’s brother Brito, and the older teen Claudio.  Our agreed departure time was 7 am so we felt good about leaving the village an hour later.  One minor delay was stopping to buy some sagino (collared peccary) meat from someone who had had a successful hunting trip last night.  People share game meat bounty with family members and sell excess to others for a reasonable price.

Bora man on log at Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Yully and I shared the wooden seat in the middle of the fifteen foot long wooden boat while the rest of our crew perched on the gunnels.  Within minutes after motoring out of the village and heading up the Yaguasyacu River, we were passed by a fully loaded but more powerful boat holding about seven Bora men and one smiling man who was obviously not a native.  Yully said that he was a logger or more precisely a log buyer.  In recent years some Bora men have hired small teams of their compatriots to go a full day upriver to cut trees of certain high value species.  In the rainy season they bring these downriver and sell them to one or more timber buyers based in Pebas.  This can be a lucrative venture for the organizers of such trips allowing them to make hundreds to thousands of soles.  Even the fellows they hire to help with this hard work can make a decent wage of 30 soles (just over $10) per day for their labors.

The designation of the zone to the north of the designated native territories as a regional conservation area (ACR in Spanish) is radically changing this enterprise since logging is strictly prohibited in ACRs.  Many Bora who have profited from this activity are upset by the imminent loss of this income.  The native federation that represents all 14 communities in the watershed (FECONA) proposed that its members should be allowed to take out all of the logs that have been cut in the recent season by the end of July.  A few who argued that this unauthorized extraction of valuable natural resources should have stopped immediately when the area achieved protected status were harshly criticized – particularly by fellows still in debt to the loggers for advances on their expenses.

The management committee that has been set up to regulate the affairs of the ACR is going to have a thorny task of sorting out this controversial issue.  I been long aware of the negative impacts of illegal logging around the world and helped document its practices.  Since CACE is a member of this management committee, we are going to need to tread carefully to advocate for sound conservation while being sensitive to the realities of the communities where we work.  I wish we could offer the sale of sustainably harvested copal oil as an immediate substitute for logging income, but this is not yet possible.

Earrings made from Huicungo palm seeds. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We landed our boat at a site called Hueco de Huacamayo – an area mostly visited by men from Brillo Nuevo to hunt and gather sundry forest products.  Beder stopped to show me a few seeds of a huicungo palm tree.  A few artisans from Jenaro Herrera have used cross-sections of this hard pointed seed to make some unusual earrings.

Cashapona palm seeds. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I asked Beder to gather a few of these to bring back to the village to see if the artisans had any ideas about how they might make use of this durable raw material.  Close by he gathered another handful of hard seeds from a cashapona palm that were the size of large acorns that might also make nice jewelry.

Not far from our landing spot, the forest opened up to an area bathed in sun.  Large blackened kidney-shaped beans draped from haphazard wires and poles were a reminder of an ill-fated development scheme. Two years ago the regional government launched an ambitious plan to stimulate the production of thousands of tons of a legume called “sacha inchi” based on the promise of a Japanese company to build an edible oil extraction plant in Iquitos.  It loaned money to rural people all over Loreto to meet this anticipated demand.

Sacha inchi plants on wire at Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Unfortunately the venture followed many other grandiose ones into failed obscurity.  Project participants were given minimal technical assistance to grow the crop; the factory was never built, and local demand for the beans wasn’t large enough to provide a market for the vast numbers of people who had signed on.  I was sorry to hear that some Bora families were now left with debts to the government for a project that seemed to have almost no chance of success.

"Rooster tail cicada." Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Walking along the trail, my eyes tracked a tiny blur of swirling white feathers that alighted on a small trunk.  I was pleased to recognize this beautiful insect with a white speckled black body, bright red eyes, and upward curving “rooster” tail “feathers.” I vividly remember seeing this same outstanding cicada-like creature walking through a forest with the Tembé Indians in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. When that one alighted on a tree, three of the men began singing a song to it in their language that I had only heard before in chants in the village – “Tira a he, tira a he, a e a e ha, e a he ha”.

Our trail was not hard to follow, but we soon came to the first of many spots we would cross and recross the same stream.  Beder strode across the five inch wide log and pushed back a tall pole stuck in the middle for Yully to grasp as an aid while she carefully crossed.  This was my first time being out in the forest with this group and felt 12 concerned eyes focused on me as I approached the narrow timber.  Noting that slipping off this span would only involve a four to five foot fall onto a patch of dry streambed, I confidently walked across and hopped onto the other side.  I was pleased to hear Beder’s brother Brito exclaim, “El doctor es un tigrillo!” (The doctor is a jungle cat!).

Campbell Plowden crossing stream near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Natalya Stanko/CACE

Another quarter-mile farther, however, we reached a spot where getting to the log bridge required some bush-whacking. I opted to follow Brito directly across the stream, sliding down one bank and hopping across the stream.  My momentum, however, wasn’t enough to carry me up the other side, and I started to slide backwards.  Responding quickly to my call, Brito reached down and pulled me up.  The third crossing truly gave me pause.  It was a decent-sized log, but it crossed a section of stream that was deep and wide.  I took some deep breathes, opted for caution over pride and entrusted my camera to Brito.  I angled my feet outward and took one slow step after another using both poles to keep my balance.  My proper humility was restored when the rest of our crew crossed as casually without the aides as they would walk across their own living room.

After almost an hour and a half of hiking we got to the large copal tree that attracted me to this trek.  As we’d often found in the past two years of studying copal around Brillo Nuevo, this one was the near the top of a ridge.  Unlike most of these, this one seemed to have more a hundred resin lumps attached to its trunk – all of them at least fifteen feet above the ground.

Bora man Carlos counting resin lumps in copal tree. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We counted twelve lumps that were easily accessible.  Lumps can be easily dislodged with a firm poke from a sharpened pole, but we wanted to harvest these carefully so they would stay intact as possible.  Claudio volunteered to free climb the sturdy small tree right next to its senior copal neighbor.  He had already grabbed a few lumps with his hand and tossed them to the ground before I was ready to capture his action on video.

Catching resin lumps being harvested from copal tree. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Aurelio and Brito then held a fariña sack out to catch the pieces he picked off.  While we limit our harvest to half of the accessible lumps, we try to avoid harvesting fresh resin lumps that likely contain young weevils.  Inspecting the catch on the grain sack, however, we saw that two of the black lumps presumed to be old dry ones were still pliable.

One of these contained a large weevil larva.  While some weevils seem to prefer attaching themselves close to the ground, it seems that harvesting some fresh lumps poses no threat to the weevils that thrive in the upper reaches of their host tree.

Bora man Brito climbing copal tree with "pato de loro" spikes. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

The next task of collecting leaves from this copal giant reminded me I am quite comfortable not venturing too far from the ground.  Brito stepped into and firmly buckled the climbing harness around his waist and then strapped on the pair of long-curved irons with four teeth on their inner rim.  It made him look like some tall mutated crab whose claws had been displaced from their front to their rear.  Conventional tree-climbing spikes have a single point that a climber jabs into wood as he can virtually walk up a tree.  This is very efficient for ascending telephone poles, but these spikes inflict deep wounds on live trees.  The curved “pato de loro” (parrots feet) spikes allow a skilled climber to gain enough leverage to climb a tree with minimal damage to the bark.

Bora man Aurelio with trimmer head for collecting copal leaves. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Brito went up a tree that pointed straight up to a large overhanging branch of the copal tree.  Back on the ground, Carlos and Beder assembled four sections of aluminum tubes with branch trimmer head.  They secured this to a rope that dangled from Brito’s harness – now 40 feet above them.

Brito collecting copal leaves with pole trimmer. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Brito extended the cutter and poles farther above him, notched it onto a one-inch thick branch and gave the rope attached to the top part of the trimmer head a sharp tug.

Bora man Aurelio and copal leaves. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We heard a crack and then a three-foot long section of dark green leaves sashayed its way down.  It was briefly hung up on the lower branches of sapling, but after Aurelio gave it a firm shake, the copal branch floated into his hands.

It takes a lot of time, resources and some risk to gather a bunch of leaves, particularly when the team finds mostly trees without any resin lumps, but the effort is essential to figure out which species of copal trees are favored by the weevils and which ones they avoid.  One important clue to their choice seems to be the quality and quantity of resin that exudes from the particular copal tree.

Bora man Brito smelling bark chip to identify tree. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

As the team walked through the search area, they would occasionally stop and cut off a small piece of bark to smell to detect the tree’s identity.  One copal tree had a familiar pattern of disfigured bark that looked like a weevil’s attempt to get established, but it clearly had not progressed very far.

Yully and I noticed that the little wound was filled with a hard gummy substance instead of the typical fragrant white resin.  While this resin defense works very well against most would-be attackers, it seems that the highly specialized resin weevils can only survive if the host tree they attack releases a sufficient quantity of resin to form a lump large enough to protect them through their years of development.  The few species of copal trees that produce an exudate more like latex than resin, therefore, seem largely immune to attacks by the resin weevils.  It also makes them less useful to forest residents as a source of this material.

Bora man Aurelio and Yully Rojas picking larva out of copal resin lumps. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We broke for lunch in early afternoon.  I have to admit that a late-morning growling of my stomach led to discretely munch on one of my precious peanut Cliff Bars.  I still joined the others to share our typical forest buffet of fariña, crackers, and tuna fish in a leaf bowl.  While the group merrily chatted in Bora, I silently noted that more and more large black stingless bees were buzzing around our dirty bag of resin lumps.

Trigona stingless bee nest at Jenaro Herrera, Peru. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Aurelio said that this bee called “arambaçu” (probably a member of the genus Trigona) makes a nest that surrounds the trunk of its host tree – often a chambira tree in wet areas.  These oblong structures reminiscent of some termite nests can be a meter high and contain thick honey.  Like many other forest bees, the “arambaçu”  it uses copal and the liquid exudates from other trees such as caucho, caucho macho, leche caspi (literally milk bark), pichirin, and siringa (rubber) to make all or part of its nest.

Bora men measuring copal tree with buttress roots. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

We finished our inventory of the first section that included a large copal tree that had to be measured above its broad base.  We marched through another section that didn’t have a single copal tree.  The team could have kept going, but knowing I faced an hour and a half hike and ten slippery log bridges with a lot less energy and alertness than I’d had in the morning, it seemed like a good time to call it a day.

Small snail on leaf in forest near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

After designing a workable survey method and empowering Yully to carry it out with able-bodied and some quick-study Bora men, I am content that my prime role in the forest is to take photos and video and learn as much about the natural history of these systems as I can without slowing the team down.

On the way back, Beder spotted a tall ungarahui palm tree with two panicles bursting with ripe black fruit.  He donned his climbing harness, wrapped a four-foot long “pretina” (rough fabric strap) around the trunk and scaled with machete in hand.  Obscured in the foliage, we heard one loud thwack after another.

Bora men gathering fruits from ungarahui palm. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I moved farther away from the base when the seeds that each weighed more than a giant marble began raining down from above.  A minute after a creaking sound indicated Beder was succeeding in prying off the panicle, it crashed to the ground.  All five Bora men squatted around the landing spot and with split second recognition, left the bad and unripe green seeds on the ground and tossed the black ripe ones into a sack.

Tree fungus near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Pausing with me I as I stopped to shoot a leaf with a golden patch of light shining through a patch chewed by some insect, Aurelio commented that he had never seen the particular kind of lacy fungus growing out of rotten tree that lay across the trail.  When Brito joined us, he, too, said this was a first for him.  Even these men who had spent their whole lives in intimate contact with this forest enjoyed making new observations about its plants and animals.

The final tidbit of natural history for the outing for me was spotting a patch of half-inch wide white petaled flowers whose inverted U-shaped stems pointed them toward the ground.

Inverted white flower near Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I was pondering what kind of insect or other pollinator might favor this unusual orientation.  The guys had no particular thoughts on this esoteric question (understandably of greater interest to plant ecologists than most people), but Aurelio volunteered an ethnobotanical tidbit that this plant has been used for contraceptive purposes.

It was just as well that we didn’t attempt to do another survey parcel that afternoon because as soon as we got back in the boat, grey clouds darkened and a hard rain that pulsed with ever greater intensity saturated us in less than a minute.  I stowed my backpack with camera gear behind me while Yully and I each gripped a corner of my poncho to shield us as best as possible.  Our colleagues just stoically bore the downpour that is part of everyday life for our twenty minute ride to Brillo Nuevo.

Back in the village we peeled off our drenched clothes and hung them over rafters and inserted our boots upside-down onto stakes outside to begin drying the insides.  Yully and I borrowed a bucket and a round tupper-ware container from Marcelina to scoop water from a barrel overflowing with rainwater siphoned from the roof of the school.  I used up the rest of the courtesy soap bar from the Hotel Marañon I had diligently put back into its little paper wrapper after each bath.

Jesus mirror by telephone in Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

I normally carry a tiny mirror in my toilet kit to shave every other day or so in the field, but it had broken during a moment of rushed packing.  I could crane my neck at different angles well enough to comb a reasonably straight part in a mirror-border frame of a picture of Jesus hanging near the public telephone in Marcelina’s front room.  My faith, however, wasn’t strong to think I could shave myself in this reflection.

Campbell Plowden getting haircut at Jenaro Herrera. Photo by Marissa Plowden/CACE

I had seen her son Robert giving a few fellows a haircut so I was much refreshed when he carefully removed my week-old incipient and itchy beard without cutting me.  The one other time I had someone shave me was two years ago in Iquitos when I went to a barber whose working space adjoined a kindergarten.  I was genuinely scared then that one of the kids running back and forth in the large room might bump into the barber just as his hand was guiding a razor across my carotid artery.  It’s hard to beat the price of a basic haircut in some parts of the Amazon – I had one at Jenaro Herrera a few years ago that cost 2 soles (about 60 cents).

While the core items of dinner were our usual rice and spaghetti, I was happy that our canned tuna was replaced by a few hunks of fresh sagino (white-collared peccary – a kind of wild pig) and half of a blackened turushuqui.  This is an armoured fish with formidable pectoral fins that make it seem like it could amble across flat ground.  I had given my son Luke a dried specimen of one of these as a coming-home present years ago, but this was the first time I had seen one closer to its natural state.  The taste was non-descript but pleasantly bone-free.

I was tired after a long-day but stayed up writing for a while.  One new gizmo that has worked really well on this trip has been a 30 lumen lamp built into a case with a battery recharged with a solar panel the size of a Blackberry.  It cost about $40 at Lowes.  Staking it outside during a good day of sun provides a whole evening’s worth of light.  Aurelio sat in greater darkness in the other side of the room with his make-shift headlamp (a full-sized flash-light with D-size batteries strapped to the side of his head) pointing at his patient weaving of a “loro machaco” (green tree pit viper) belt he and Marcelina were making for us.

My fatigue got the better of me before my computer battery gave out so I brushed my teeth and climbed into my hammock.  It was a difficult night for sleeping though since there was no lack of energy in the church that was only a hundred yards away.  This evangelical church (one of two in Brillo Nuevo) had been founded some 42 years earlier on this day – the eve of the festival of San Juan (named after John the Baptist).  They had invited guests from members of their sister church in the village of Nuevo Peru to celebrate their anniversary.  Their non-stop joyous singing lasted until 5 in the morning.

**************************************************************************

For more information about the Center for Amazon Community Ecology, please visit us on Facebook and our homepage at www.amazonecology.org.

Plants to dye with

I was originally going to go out with Yully and the copal team for a full day of searching for the resin trees in a new area of forest, but I was both tired and wanted to get photos of as many of the dye plants as possible to accompany our description of crafts in the online store.  As ever forthcoming with her willingness to help and equally generous laugh heard clear across a soccer field, Ines offered to show me some plants in her yard and purma.

Guisador plant root used to dye chambira yellow. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Right next to her house, Ines dug up a few carrot colored rhizomes of a plant in the ginger family called guisador.  These roots are ground up to dye chambira a pleasing yellow; it’s also used to give the same color and slight ginger flavor to rice.

Jangua plant with green pods. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Ten yards away were a few two-foot tall “jangua” plants.  Its tiny green kidney-shaped pods immediately identified it as a legume (bean family).  Ines said she needed about a pound of “jangua” leaves to dye one “cogollo” of chambira a dark green.  Although these plants had grown quickly in a month, there was not yet anywhere near enough leaves on these small specimens to harvest.  This past rainy season was unusually rainy (as the previous dry season was extremely dry) and Ines yard along with almost the entire upper field of the village was flooded.  People needed their canoes to go from house to house.  This inundation had killed most of the herbaceous plants in Ines’ yard that were not adapted to standing water.

Sisa leaf and dark red chambira. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

While her mature “sisa” vines had survived, the younger plants whose leaves are boiled with chambira to turn the fiber a dark red also succumbed to the high water.  New ones were just growing back.

Achiote pod with oily red seeds. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Our dye plant tour next passed on to several small and medium-sized “achiote” trees.  Ines broke open a few of the prickly pods of two kinds she had in her yard.  The seeds are coated with an oily red substance that readily transfers to fingers, fiber and food.  It’s better known as annatto in western cooking, but it is one of the most common face and body paints among native Amazonians and also turns chambira a beautiful orange-red.  One downside of this plant as a fiber dye is that it tends to lose its color when wet unless fixed with other materials.

Mishquipanga fruits and leaf. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Ines, her husband Manuel and I then headed off to their recently fallowed purma.  En route we passed by a dense patch of a tall herbaceous plant called “mishquipanga.”  It has oblong fruits are about the size of a large pecan, but the easily cracked shell of a ripe pod turns one’s fingers a deep wine red.

Brillo Nuevo artisan daughter mashing mishquipanga pods for chambira dye. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

The pumpkin-colored pulp and seeds are discarded, and the shell is crushed and boiled with chambira to turn it a slate blue.

Another few hundred yards down the trail led us to a “rifari” tree whose leaves are also boiled with chambira fiber to turn it black.

Nearby was a plant that Ines call “huito.”  I was first confused, because this is the common name for a tree also called genipapo whose fruit rinds are ground up to produce a dye that turns chambira a dark grey.  It’s also used as a body paint throughout the Amazon that turns the skin dark purple to black for several weeks.

Ines Chichaco with huito leaves in her purma. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

This “huito” of the purma, however, was different.  Ines said it spread more by sprouting than dispersing any fruits.  More importantly, it was not used to dye chambira.  Its’ leaves are crushed and boiled and applied to people’s hair to heal the scalp (from afflictions such as dandruff and possibly head lice) and turn the hair black.  This process needed to be done with some care to avoid dying the person’s face black as well.

Tembé headwoman Veronica painting Campbell with genipapo (huito) dye in 1997. Photo by Bruce Hoeft

Looking back at photos of me with Tembé colleagues in the summer of 1996, my hair was still mostly dark brown with a small shock of white.  Fifteen years later, it’s now almost entirely silver.  I think my family and friends would agree that vanity is not one of my major weaknesses, but I am strongly considering accepting Ines’ to apply this native treatment to my hair since I have not been drawn to an expensive application of chemical dyes in a U.S. salon.

Chambira drying at Ines' house in Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Returning to Ines’ house where chambira was drying outside, she showed me the one regular huito tree in her back yard, but even though it had grown to well over fifteen feet, it had not yet borne any fruit.  She had planted it from a seed acquired elsewhere, and I didn’t know enough about the tree to know if it was still too young to fruit or was lacking some important biological requirement.

Suelda con suelda dye plant vine in Ines Chichaco's hand. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Manuel got a long pole and pulled down a long strand of a slender vine called “suelda con suelda.”  Its leaves serve as a decent but less common way to dye chambira black when mixed with mud.  It’s mostly considered a nuisance plant because it can wrap itself around and envelope a variety of fruit and other useful trees to the point of killing them.

Manuel next to huitillo tree on the Yaguasyacu River. Photo by Campbell Plowden

Manuel led us on our final foray down to the river to point out a “huitillo” trunk by the edge of the water.  Its fruits are commonly used as another natural dye to turn chambira black.  Like some tropical trees, “huitillo” produces a flush of leaves, flowers and fruits in the months leading up to and during the rainy season.  Once it has finished its reproductive cycle for the year, it drops all of these.  Manuel pointed across the river to many other bare trunks that were all the same species.  Since “huitillo” fruits like many other fruits in the region are only available in a certain season, the Bora and other artisans need to have multiple sources for certain colors to make their crafts with a full palette year-round.

Campbell Plowden eating guaba fruit. Photo by Ines Chichaco/CACE

Ines handed me a two-foot long bean pod called “guaba” as a midday snack.  It came from a legume tree also known as “inga” in Brazil.  Cracking open the pod along the seam revealed a dozen large kidney shaped seeds surrounded by succulent white flesh.

A bit later, I was hoping I could muster the energy to interview artisans who had recently joined our project group, but decided I most wanted to just relax a bit with my book.  Before I got far, though, one of the teachers came into the house and asked me if I would serve as a judge in the “juanes” competition for classes in the village school.  I had a passing acquaintance with this regional dish of Loreto in years past, but got to know it better recently when I asked Yully and Angel to send me some recipes of typical Peruvian food we could serve at our Spirit of the Amazon party.  My friend Judy who is a professional cook followed one recipe for the preparation of the rice with chicken, boiled eggs, olives and some spices, but she had to substitute corn leaves typically used for making tamales because banana leaves were nowhere to be found in State College, Pennsylvania.

There was certainly no lack of banana leaves in Brillo Nuevo.  I made my way to the conical thatched roof open shelter near the edge of the soccer field where every child and teacher in the village had gathered around.  The two entries from the primary school and four entries from the secondary school were all laid out on a big table.  I was reminded again that Peruvians can turn almost any occasion into a formal one when the convener of the event called for the group to gather in silence and then rise to sing the national anthem.  He then introduced all of the judges and dignitaries and explained that juane was the traditional provincial food associated with the festival of San Juan – an important day to mark here because it was a celebration dedicated to campesinos (rural people).

Juane dish entry in Brillo Nuevo school competition. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

My three fellow judges and I each then went to work.  The director solemnly asked to rate each dish according to its presentation, contents and taste on a composite scale of 0 to 10.  A few entries were very simple; they consisted of a juane formed in the shape of a giant Hershey’s kiss except it was a green banana leaf tied off at the top.  Other entries included side dishes like cooked bananas, red onion sauce, and roasted macambo nuts.

Judging juane dish in Brillo Nuevo competition. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Unsure that I was an appropriate judge of a food I had not tasted in its authentic form, I nonetheless tried a spoonful of every item trusting that all of the hands that touched these many dishes had been clean.  Most of the rice tasted about the same to me except for one batch that was too crunchy while a yellow batch had a nice spicy flavor (probably from being cooked with some guisador).  My favorite entries had yummy plaintains and a fresh juice (“kawana”) made from aguaje fruit.

Winning secondary school class in juanes competition at Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Not wanting my uncultured vote to carry too much sway, I assigned scores ranging from 6 to 8.  I recorded the scores of my fellow judges and was pleased or perhaps relieved that my relative scores matched theirs quite closely.  I reported our results to the director who announced them with appropriate fanfare and awarded the top prize (3 large bottles of soda) to the winner of the primary and secondary school groups.

After a few other people had spoken, he turned to me and asked if I would like to address the group.  It wasn’t the finest impromptu speech ever delivered, but I thanked the group for the honor of serving as a judge at this important cultural event and hoped I could have some aguaje kawana later.  After four or five more speeches (which were both sincere and blessedly brief), the director released us.  I truly felt like a member of a jury who had just been thanked by a judge for their service to the community.

Band practice at Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

Shortly after the juane competition was finished, many of the older kids returned to the field with their instruments including trumpets and both large and small drums.  As they revved up the song they are going to play in a competition in Pebas on Peruvian Independence Day (July 28), they marched a bit to a cadence set by their leader and girls periodically tossed a tambourine into the air.

I sincerely appreciated being asked to participate in a community event like the juane competition (even though I was recruited about 20 minutes before it started), but I couldn’t help thinking so much of the education offered in the village is geared toward building their identity and allegiance as citizens of Peru and Loreto with little or no teaching or recognition of them as unique indigenous people.  It’s fortunate that most people in Brillo Nuevo still speak their native language, but as the influence of evangelical Christianity and consumerism becomes more and more ingrained in daily life here, the celebration of Bora festivals has become increasingly rare.  Our friend Beder said he saw no conflict between the church and their traditions.  It was the responsibility of the curaca to convene these festivals.

Volleyball at Brillo Nuevo. Photo by Campbell Plowden/CACE

While it is not unique to this particular culture, one of the things that I most appreciate about being in Brillo Nuevo is the strong sense of community here.  There isn’t perfect social harmony, but day after day I’ve men and women gathering to play vigorous games of volleyball over threadbare nets strung on wooden poles.  Kids love to play soccer almost any time they are not in school – particularly while it’s raining when they can slide for their body length in the mud.  Family members are in and out of each other’s home all day long, and friends have seamless contact with each other as they wander from one end of the village to the other carrying water, share songs in church, or pass each other in their boats going fishing.  Our life in a small city in the U.S. where social etiquette requires that parents call parents to arrange for their children to play together for two hours five days hence would seem unbearably strange to my friends here.

***************************************************************************

For more information about the Center for Amazon Community Ecology, please visit us on Facebook and our homepage at www.amazonecology.org.