Hanging on to the Past


Once in awhile I have something so serendipitous happen to me that I just know I have a guardian angel.  My poor angel used to be very overworked trying to either keep me out of trouble or to rescue me if I got away while he was on  his lunch break. Yes, I know it is a him. And I once knew him very well.


Now that he is flapping around where ever angels flap he has devoted more attention to me than he did while he was earthbound. But that is the subject of another posting.


This time it was not a life-threatening situation but it was something that will make me very happy. I hope. That is where the finger crossing thing comes in.


It started out like this. I ran into a friend who began talking about a book that she had just read, "End of The Spear" written by Steven Saint I believe.   Steven is the son of the missionary Nathan Saint who was killed in the Amazon basin of Ecuador many years ago.  


As she spoke it seemed that she could be talking about the Huaorani tribe that I knew and wrote about in a previous posting way back in October 2009 under the title "Poems and Stories from Another Life Part II - Moi."


That chance meeting started off a chain of events that has me so excited that I had to write about it.  I went home and went on the net to see if I could purchase the book. It was then that I discovered that it had been made into a movie so I ordered the DVD. 


There were other treasures that dealt with the most fascinating people I have ever met.  I ordered another movie "Beyond the Gates of Splendor" and a few books. The movies and one of the books arrived the other day.  What gorgeous photos of the tribe...some of whom I had met in 1996 when I travelled to the Shiripuno River to visit them.


Today I watched both movies, Gates was more of a documentary than the End of the Spear one.  I became totally engrossed in both of them even though they are a different branch of the Huaorani than the ones I knew. I also saw a different (slanted?) side of missionaries than I previously had been introduced to.


I am no fan of the kind of missionaries or other people who go in to "convert" (meaning tell them that everything they have been doing and believing for the past thousand years or so is wrong) people who are living in peace and harmony with nature. Especially when the word they are bringing crushes the beautiful innocence of these people, shames them into wearing clothing and seeks to obliterate their own rich and wondrous belief system.  I have heard too many stories first hand from various tribes regarding their treatment at the hands of various missionaries to be anything but sad when I hear of these encounters.


If these movies are true then, yes, the missionaries persuaded the tribes people not to kill each other and other tribes people, and brought them medicine. They also brought them diseases previously unknown to them which wiped them out quicker than the killing did!


In fact I just came across an entry in Wikipedia today regarding this missionary/tribal encounter.
"The deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world. Their work is still frequently remembered in evangelical publications, and in 2006 was the subject of the film production End of the Spear. Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While largely eliminating tribal violence, their efforts exposed the tribe to exploitation and increased influence from the outside. This has caused Huaorani culture to begin to disappear, but anthropologists argue over the ultimate effect—some view the missionary work as cultural imperialism, while others contend that the influence has been beneficial for the tribe."


In the book, "Spirit of the Huaorani" one of the tribe is quoted as saying of the missionaries something like this, " When  you came here I had my land and you had your bible. You taught me to close my eyes and pray. When I opened my eyes you had my land and I had your bible."


The next thing I knew I was rooting through a box of old VHS tapes wanting to immerse myself in the videos of my trip.  About 4 or 5 years ago, when my movie camera died,  I had them transferred from the original camera tapes to VHS. At the time I  was told that because I had not stored the movie camera tapes properly and the sound and date portion had been destroyed.  I said, go ahead anyway as at least I can see the places I visited.


I got the two VHS tapes out, put one in the machine and began watching.  Shock and sorrow were my only reaction. the tapes had deteriorated to the point where there were only tiny fragments of movie and the rest was blue or grey patches.


Something spurred me on to see if I could either buy a machine to transfer them - bad as they were - to disk.  I have a "thing" about preserving the past. Sometimes to my detriment since I tend to get stuck back there in often painful moments.


The software and instructions to hook up my VHS machine to my computer and thence to my DVD burner cost $80.00  Would I ever need it again? Was there another way to do this?  More calls and many price comparisons later I found what sounded like the right person for me and made an appointment to bring my tapes in.


I gathered up the tiny movie camera tapes (8 of them) and the bad VHS tapes they have been copied to. Plus about 3 that were 18 years old but still in better shape than the newer ones I had had copied "professionally". 


To make a long story short the movie camera tapes were intact! There was nothing wrong with the sound at all, nor the dates.  These will be copied once again but to a disk.


Obviously I had been lied to and cheated the first time around.  Now I am not the kind of person to take this lightly.  I will track down the SOB who almost made me lose a part of not just my history but the history of the disappearing Huaorani tribe.


I for one never can understand why a person will lie to you for the sake of a few bucks.  All he had to say was I am sorry I do not have the equipment to copy these properly. 


Perhaps I am not the only dissatisfied customer for his shop is closed  and he now operates out of his home.  I can't find it in the phone book now.  Lucky him because  I was thinking to give him a piece of my mind.  Lucky me too as I have so little left to spare!


He would probably like to tell you that he lost his business because Wal-Mart came to town. I wonder.


Hanging on to the past, even when some people think it is damaged can be a good thing sometimes.

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

Moi
Part 3 of 4
story and photos by E.J. Brunton

Soon we were at the clearing where we would stay for the duration of our trip. The handsome palm frond huts stood up on stilts. Even the floors were woven palm. They were airy and surprisingly cool. There was a fresh latrine out back.

We laid out our sleeping bags and stripped for a dip in the river. Moi warned us to make lots of noise and splash to scare away the piranha and cayman. That went against everything that I had ever heard but, “When in Rome” I thought. The water was warm but still refreshing and no sign of piranha.

When we got back, there was a fire going and the smell of singed hair assaulted my nostrils. A whole small deer, complete with fur and hoofs was draped over the coals. Only the intestines had been removed.

We weren’t supposed to partake of their food. Already there was a dilemma. Well, we reasoned, we could share some of our food with them. It was just too tempting to taste what to us were delicacies, perhaps never to be savored again.

During that week we were treated to monkey, capybara (the world’s largest rodent) and turtle eggs as the Huaorani smacked their lips over our tinned sardines and ham, cereal with cartons of milk, cookies and granola bars.

Moi took us two girls out cayman hunting by the light of the full moon in a dugout. We didn’t see any caymans but it was a wonderful evening. We beached the canoe on the silky-white sand, leaned up against a log and just soaked in the awesome jungle night. Frogs boomed and night birds called. I was exhilarated and as we talked I found myself impressed by the intelligence of this young man.

Moi is a radical. An activist who was well known to the oil companies for his vigorous campaigns against them. He wore a tee shirt that said “Get the $hell out of Ecuador” and sported the familiar scallop shell emblem of Shell oil. Through his contact with Joe Kane and the auspices of the Sierra Club he had even managed to go to Washington D.C. in 1993.

In his book “Savages” Joe Kane quotes Moi as he stared in awe at the Washington traffic “There are so many cars,” he said. “How long have they been here? A million years?”

“Much less.”

"A thousand years?”
“No. Eighty perhaps.”
He was silent then, and after a while he asked, “What will you do in ten more years? In ten years, your world will be pure metal. Did your god do this?”

When Moi took a shower in the hotel bathroom Joe says, “I heard the water go on and off several times. Finally he emerged wearing only his shorts, his skin red as a boiled lobster.

“Tomorrow I would like a new hotel room,” Moi said.
“Why?”

“I would like a room that also has cold water.”

He dressed himself completely and had me tie his tie. Then, fully clothed he got into bed. Like many Huaorani he drew no hard distinction between day and night."

Next day we went for a 5 hour hike up hill under the steamy canopy. Moi walked barefoot, encumbered only by his gleaming machete. We guinea pigs were laden down with all the trappings of civilization that we couldn’t be separated from: rubber boots, back packs filled with water bottles, toilet paper, cellophane- wrapped snacks, movie and still cameras.

I looked and felt ridiculous. I also looked apoplectic. My face purple, my shirt soaked, I stumbled over roots, vines slapped me in the face, my rubber boots, sucked off in mud holes, deserted me.

We crawled under logs, skipped dizzily across fat fallen trees that forded streams and thankfully plunged up to our armpits in cool jungle rivers holding our burdens over our heads. I loved it!

Finally we were back at the Shiripuno River. A tribesman was putting the finishing touches on a balsa wood raft. He had hacked down the small trees and lashed them with vines to form our craft. We climbed aboard, or rather astraddle. They were only 2 logs wide and our legs hung down into the water on either side. My rubber boots were now full of water and my shorts soaked as the raft rode low in the water with our weight. Thus we made the ½ hour trip down river to our settlement. I had been damp for so long that diaper rash was imminent.

Our days were filled with hikes where Moi identified the flora and fauna and told us fascinating stories. He pointed out toucans and monkeys and undergrowth-rustling jaguars but our city eyes could rarely see what he was pointing at. He politely never mentioned our exceeding stupidity.

We came upon a naked hunter. He carried a 10 foot blow gun made of “chonta”, and a bamboo case of poisoned darts. Moi negotiated rapidly with him for some meat which he had cached in the undergrowth when he heard us coming. There was a large black bird called a “paucar” about the size of a small child. There was also a spaniel-sized deer.

Moi told us that the Huaorani language only has numbers up to 5. He gave me a book in Huaorani that some Missionaries had printed up for the school children. He taught me some Huaorani words and constantly asked me how to say and write things in English. He already spoke Spanish and Quichua (the Quechua are the largest jungle tribe and most other tribes speak their language) and was learning French. He had a voracious curiosity and rapier intelligence. In addition Moi gave me lessons in blowgun wizardry.

Back home at the hut one of the women was making a basket out of palm leaves. It was done in a flash and was handy for carrying any fruits or grubs you might find as you traveled. My friends looked on from their double wide hammocks.

In the afternoon he took me by canoe over to his father’s compound on the other side of the river. I expected to see his father the shaman on some sort of throne but he was squatting over two lengths of chonta gouging out a trough in the middle of each. These two halves would be lashed together and glued with tree resin to form the blow gun. His long pierced ear lobes dangled flaccidly without the aid of the wooden plugs worn for dress up occasions.

Moi dug out a bag full of colorful feathers that he used to make ceremonial head dresses. He gave me some as we enjoyed more chicha, made this time from fermented bananas. Pet monkeys and parrots performed acrobatics on the ceiling beams.

Continued in part 4 of 4

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

MOI


Part 1 of  4
Story and photos by E.J Brunton

 I had heard a lot about Moi (pronounced MOY) before I ever met him. Finally the day came when I found myself face to face with this young legend. We had just alighted from the 4 passenger bush plane and there he was, standing on the grassy air strip.

Below I am standing with the pilot before take off from Shell Mera airstrip.

I was disappointed to see that Moi had cut the flowing black hair he sported in his picture on the cover of Joe Kane’s book “Savages”. His brown body was still perfectly muscled and smooth. He had a wide smile and shy brown eyes. His name, Moi, (pronounced MOY) is the Huaorani word for dream or vision.

Some of the Huaorani, Moi’s tribe, were unloading supplies from the belly of the plane. Then they pushed it back from the precipice we had narrowly missed, turning it around for its return flight.

The tiny craft would glide once more over the serpentine brown rivers that writhed through the sea of greenery. Sudden winds would buffet it and torrential downpours batter its silver skin on its 45 minute flight back to Shell Mera from this outpost deep in the interior, near the north east border of Peru.


We would spend several days here in the rainforest of the Amazon basin on the Shiripuno River in this settlement called Qu’Hueri Ono. This day was sunny and humid; the vegetation lush. Vines, dripping with bright flowers, crawled everywhere.

Moi led us up the dirt path past the latrines and the yucca patch to the communal palm frond hut in the center of the village. A small group was inside enjoying a lazy afternoon chat or making implements for their homes.

Several women rolled white palm fibers on their thighs; preparing string for knitting into bags, fish nets and hammocks. Others were already engaged in knitting the fibre, which they did with their fingers only.

In spite of the heat a small cook fire glowed in the center surrounded by log benches. Wide hammocks decorated with monkey bones hung haphazardly. Whole Huaorani families sleep crosswise on these knitted palm fibre hammocks. Sun-bleached skulls of jaguar and peccary decorated the walls. Thick black curare dripped slowly into a gourd in a corner.

One woman prepared a welcoming drink of chicha (mildly alcoholic beverage) for us. She stirred the contents of a large clay pot with her hand and then pulled out some white fibers which she squeezed and threw to one side. They were hungrily devoured by the dogs. A lumpy white concoction filled the bowl that was passed to me.

I knew how this was prepared. The women boiled up manioc root (yucca) and then chewed it and spit it into a clay pot. They added water from the river and then let this ferment for several days. It resulted in a cloudy, mildly alcoholic beverage. I also knew that if we refused it would be a grave insult. It went against the grain of every thing that I knew but I swallowed it down and passed the pot to my friends.

This drink, along with boiled manioc, plantain, grubs and whatever meat in the form of monkey, deer, peccary or fish they procured formed their staple diet.

For an updated view of where we stayed check out this slideshow circa 2010. We never had it so good but I am glad to see them prosper. I liked it the way it was! Here is the link below

 Huaorani Ecolodge Slideshow & Video

tripwow.tripadvisor.com

www.huaorani.com

Continued in part 2 of 4