The white riverboat that carries twelve delegates to the Kamauira village is cruising upstream. Every part of the forest is richer here. The species, the chirping of the insects, the vibrant color of the birds, the intensity of the oxygen, and the deepness of the greenery.
Luuk is perching his ass on the stern of the boat, hugging a flashlight, aching for the sun to rise.
-Part 1-
Five days had pass.
Nothing worth mentioning happened on our journey to the village—unless almost killed by the indigenous while urinating is worth mentioning, then yes, something happened to me three days ago. But the arrow wasn't even targeting me; the target had been the two-hundred-pound arapaima a few inches from the boat. It would be an infelicitous, tragic death if it hit my manhood.
I also found out that I could scream two octaves higher that day.
The weather had been severe since the day we left the transition village. It only started getting better three days ago after we visited the nearest town to stock up on gasoline.
The river had been as capricious as my dear mother—she could drive the men in the house crazy. When the storm clobbered the boat, God knows we should cling to the seat and cement our asses on it if we didn't want to die. The boat had been on the verge of foundering, and everyone (besides Chaves and the boatmen who scooped up the water while laughing at each other's antics) was wound up tighter than a banjo string.
So today, after such a fluctuating pedestrian journey, the tributary flowed into the largest lake in the upper Amazonia. The Xingu National Park and Indigenous Peoples Preserve in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil.
I knew the dawn was here when sunbeams crept over the shallow, murky water. The horizon was a beachhead of orange light. Then I saw it. The jetty to the village.
"Hey, Luuk. Help me with this drum," Chaves said five minutes later, as soon as the boat docked at the jetty.
He kept calling me by the first name as if we were on an equal footing. Perhaps he was being delusional and thought the five-day journey had evolved our status from strangers to comrade-in-arms. Telling him off was as useless as spitting in the river.
We heaved the fuel drums for the generators, satellite dishes, and his research contrivances. Alicia who was in charge of the logistics said that we could get internet reception if we were to set up the satellite dish. I could only wish for that to happen. Putting too high of an expectation would hurt more if and when I couldn't contact my family.
Four tribesmen with heavy fractal geometric tattoos on their backs helped us load the research equipment onto their flatbed trucks. One of them had tragic-looking bite scars (that could only conceivably be inflected by caiman's teeth) on his right calf. They started chatting in an alien language, and my senses intensified. The lexicon seemed as if it was revealed from planet Makemake. I couldn't decipher it.
I patted the cold sweat on my neck with my shirt and peered at our interpreter. "Hey, Essien. Do que estão eles a falar?" [What are they saying?]
The stout middle-aged interpreter rubbed his left eye (it looked more habitual than an itch) for the tenth times ever since we stepped foot here. He then responded, "Falam da grande inundação da noite passada." [They're talking about the big flood last night.] He pointed to my mud-caked boots, then to the muddy riverbank.
"De certeza que é bom," [I'm sure it's a good thing,] I said because despite not understanding them, their face showed the look of joy.
"Não chovia há quase um ano," [It hadn't rained for almost a year,] he added and climbed into a yellow pickup. "Dizem que trazes bons presságios." [They say you bring good omen with you.]
"Um bom presságio vem comigo onde quer que eu vá." [Good omen comes with me wherever I go.]
"Não para ir à igreja," [Not to the church,] da Graça whispered as he passed me.
Look at this lil' shit. Thinks he's my pal too now.
His personality really threw me a curve. He was so polite when I first met him, reticent even. But knowing him for the past few days had proven me wrong. He wasn't rude, but he wasn't polite either. He didn't cuss when he talked with me, but he had his share of jokey comments when he talked to his boyfriend.
I swatted at a bloodsucker on my knee and walked to one of the Mitsubishi 4x4 pickups. One tribesman, the amiable-looking fellow, gestured for me to ride in his pickup. So I climbed into the other vehicle because the driver looked as if he didn't have a care in the world.
"This place looks bare of people," da Graça said a few minutes after the pickup bumped and bounced along the cutup dirt road. He rolled down the window a tad.
Tsk. He didn't read about this place before coming here.
"It's bare 'cause there is barely six hundred tribespeople settling here. The place is completely off the beaten track. The village has no public accommodations. Only houses with a basic livelihood."
"Is there a government basecamp around here? I saw something like a governmental organization's insignia on this truck's registration plate," he said.
"Yes. FUNAI camp is just twenty minutes away by truck."
Hot air bled into the air-conditioned pickup and blew the hem of his short sleeve. His skin was a shade darker than ivory, but after five days, it was baked into revere pewter. He had spent most of his time traveling here under the oppressive sun. Throughout the cruise, he had also vomited several times. I realized that he was always struggling with his ochophobia—I would call it dystychiphobia, considering he adopted the fear after his accident.
I looked at the rear-view mirror when some brats screamed outside. The dirt track was deserted except for a group of naked kids who ran after us. The path was hedged with two-hundred-feet high, gigantic ficus trees. Vines crept to the top of the canopy, fighting for sunlight. Monkeys swung from one tree to another, catching up with us.
I hated kids and monkeys and apes. All species were buttinskies.
Looking ahead, I saw a throng of natives in the center of the village. "And the village isn't the only thing that's bare."
Da Graça glanced at me and followed my gaze. His eyes widened, and he was more than a little rubicund.
In the center of the village were half-naked Hansels and Gretels festooned with underwear made of colorful strings. Their necks and ankles were embellished with little golden bells and colorful beads. Two dozens or so women started to prance to each thud of the drum played by the men while singing in a chant-like song.
It was their welcoming dance. The song played was their kind of prayer. I remembered how Essien said they thought we bring good omens with us. Joking aside, I was religious, not superstitious. To think that heinous humans like us could bring others good omen was a religious fallacy, but this wasn't my place to dispute over their beliefs.
We climbed down from the pickup when it stopped beside a huge nondescript, oblong house made of dried leaves. Tens of the same houses surrounded the central plaza of packed dirt, creating one gigantic, round village. Inward, the place was virtually bare except for the villagers and two bicycles beside the house on my right. Outward, the forest surrounded the plaza. Banana trees grew intermittently at the edge of the village.
“Those are gigantic houses. Damn,” Zack, one of the forestry students said to his friend, Michael. “Are they like a dorm or something?”
I was just about to give a rundown about the place when Ethan answered: "I've read about their livelihood from a paper written in 2000. One house could accommodate fifty people from several families. They had their own system in each house and gathers and hunts their own food. Men get food, women cook. Each nuclear family works in the traditional archetypes of patriarchy." He then asked Essien, our interpreter. “Are we allowed to enter the house? Are we staying in one? Can't wait to see the interior. I wonder if they'll let us in.”
“The chief will invite you for a drink shortly,” Essien said.
At least Ethan does his homework.
William, my hand-me-down RA, took a video of the indigenous people. The ceremony probably involved mere fifty people or so. The rest of the villagers was standing either in their house, in front of their own houses, or danced independently around the main group. Most of the children and teenagers weren't giving any attention to the ceremony. They were either scampering around the plaza or climbing the mango trees with monkeys.
Jesus. The monkeys. Will I get to sleep at night? Will they attack me?
I shivered thinking about my near future. I looked at the dancing nudes to calibrate my focus.
After the welcoming festival, a wizened, sunlight-beaten old man welcomed us in accented Portuguese. He introduced himself as Koto, the tribe's chief. He wore a garishly feathered crown on his head and covered his balls with a piece of black patchwork. He was painted black all over, similar to the other men in the tribe. The chief obviously survived the severe measles epidemic in 1954. The epidemic had killed all but ninety-four tribesmen in this region that year. Now they were thriving with six hundred villagers—one of the most occupied villages in Xingu National Park.
"Isso é estranho." [This is awkward.] Da Graça stood beside me, scratching his scalp and looking everywhere but them. "I should've googled about this place before coming here."
"Because you're looking at bouncing tits? Outdoor naked dancers aren't an everyday scene to witness in America, no matter how liberal the people can be. So this is just a matter of exclusivity of perspective," I said. "For these people, their culture is the identity of who they are, who they belong to, and how they relate to one another. It seems like an anomaly to us, but it's their normalcy."
Chaves clasped his arm around the sensei's neck and said something I couldn't catch. The sensei pinched his arm. The couple was whispering to each other when a truck I saw at the berm earlier parked behind us. It carried dried leaves and planks.
The chief told me that two representatives from the basecamp of the National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, would come to welcome us, so we could wait inside his house.
Chaves patted my sweaty back. "Let's not take too long. We need to build our abode. It's past noon."
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