Rats and Snakes and Machetes, Oh My! (Andrew)

Jess and I should have suspected that our most recent trip to the field would be interesting after its inauspicious beginning. We arrived at the Huequito (“the little hole”) port on Friday afternoon, to find our driver Gerard looking frustrated, and the “Kori & Candy” sitting lower in the water than usual. We found the boat already overloaded with gear for our crew as well as food to drop for another group in the middle of a two-week excursion, so we shoved our own bags and boxes of food on board and wedged ourselves into a seat. We then waited as two more people squeezed their gear on board. Jess and I were pretty nervous at this point, but the boat driver decided to make a go of it. We probably made it a couple hundred yards before the boat started having trouble, and we ended up paddling slowly back to port (with only one paddle and an extremely heavy boat, this didn’t work so well, so another boat eventually came out to tow us in). Jess and I had been debating about giving up our seats to reduce weight in the boat and avoid having to make the trip anyway, so we gratefully jumped out and waited as the engine trouble was diagnosed. Since it was getting late in the afternoon (meaning we wouldn’t have arrived until after dark), the group made the decision to postpone the trip until the next morning. Jess and I quickly agreed and went out for a pizza dinner to celebrate.

The next morning, with a new propeller on the engine, we set out again, this time with more success. I saw a quick flash of a grey dolphin on the swollen waters of the Amazon, which is still increasing in size with the Andes snow melt-off. The Pintuyacu River we are working on does not start in the mountains, however, so it is rapidly decreasing due to the recent hot dry weather. We didn’t notice this very much on our way in, but over the following days in San Antonio we watched the clay rim around the river increase each day. Over the next two days we held a couple community workdays (mingas) to help local women lay out grids to plant Chambira (a type of palm), which they use to make traditional crafts. The first evening, the members of our team held a meeting to give gifts of boots and machetes to the women involved (most of whom would have otherwise had to use their husbands’ tools).

During the course of the week, we came to realize that the lower water levels meant not only a farther walk to bathe, but also an abundance of wildlife (for the same reason). Because the river is down and many of the creeks are dry (it didn’t rain all week), animals have to work much harder to find water and have to come out onto the exposed mud banks. This makes them much easier pickings for the men of the village to hunt. Jess discovered in her conversations with our host family that pretty much all animals are killed, either because they are (perceived to be) dangerous or because they are good to eat. A couple children in the village had their own monkeys on strings, the parents of which had probably already been eaten, just as these pets would be when they got big enough. We were also served huangana, a medium sized peccary, and majaz, a large rodent. They were both pretty tasty. We also saw some men kill what turned out to be a very beautiful coral snake that made the mistake of traveling across open ground in the village (which led to many more interesting stories about all the dangerous snakes in the area), and a small dead caiman was brought in by one of the hunters on Tuesday morning. Probably the most interesting incident for me occurred when a man showed up in front of our house holding a medium sized snake which he called a “water boa”. He put it down on the sidewalk and a crowd soon gathered, and soon began urging me to try to pick it up. It didn’t look very happy, and even though constrictors aren’t poisonous, it still attempted to bite anything that came near it, so I wasn’t too excited. Jess was talking with one of our hosts who, perhaps sensing that we were not excited about the fates of all the other animals we had seen, assured us that they were eventually going to set it free. Soon after, the boys started throwing rocks and sticks at the snake and it turned out that they actually very much intended to kill it, which upset Jess quite a bit. So I decided to play the hero, and after pinning the snake’s head with a stick and grabbing it with two hands, I took the snake down to the water and threw it in. This did not please the people around me, who informed me that it was going to eat their ducks. Jess tried to convince them that they had scared it so much it would flee as far as it could, but I think it would be fair enough if it took out some domestic poultry. It was only when we got back home that I realized that what I had spontaneously decided to grab was also known as a green anaconda (there are pictures on the flickr website), which can grow to be very large and which, in retrospect, I probably would have been a little more nervous about handling. So add that to the good story pile. To cap off the wildlife experiences, on this trip we were subjected to more scampering and chewing noises of rats in the rafters (perhaps because they kill all the snakes?) than we had heard on any of our previous trips. This, along with the very serious ghost stories told to us by our hosts, made for some long, sleepless nights.

The most interesting day for me (and for Jess as well) came on Wednesday. I was invited to go out with a group of men to do some work with a plant called Camu Camu, which has small fruits that are very high in vitamin C and are increasingly valuable for export. Procrel is working with the men to establish new harvest sites of the plants and maintain existing ones to increase their incomes. For this workday we were traveling about 2 hours up the river to a small lake with overgrown camu camu plants around the edges. Our work involved cutting back all the surrounding plants to allow more light to get to the camu camu in order to increase their production and the ease of getting to them. It was pretty hard work and involved a lot of wading in waist deep water, hot sun, and a lot of difficult cutting with machetes. It didn’t take long before I was extremely tired.

This was my second day using a machete (after a chambira minga) and I had gotten some instruction about how to use it safely- swinging at an angle instead of chopping straight down, using a safety stick in front of my left leg, keeping the blade sharp. Unfortunately, working within heavy brush reduced the choices for cutting angles. So, at around 1pm, I brought the machete down, sliced completely through a 4 inch diameter piece of palm, and went straight into my right knee. It didn’t actually hurt at the time, it felt like a dull blow, and my first thought was actually, “Man, I’m glad I didn’t hurt myself”. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that simple. The guy next to me had stopped his cutting and I looked down to see that there was a rip in my pants and a growing red spot. Fortunately, the men had dealt with this before, so they knew what to do. They all stopped their work and had me sit down and tie the wound. They helped me get back to the boat (through the forest instead of through the water) where I had my first aid kit and could bandage myself up better on the way back to San Antonio. It only took us about an hour and half to go downstream, and they sent a faster 1-person boat ahead to let the doctor know we were coming. Unfortunately, this meant Jess also heard slight details about my injury well before we got there, so she was very upset. (I told one of the men in the boat that the machete didn’t hurt me but Jess probably would). The nurse in the one room hospital washed out the wound with soap and water, put three stitches in my leg to hold the cut together (she wanted to do 4, but apparently my skin was too tough), and gave me a course of antibiotibics and painkillers- they charged us $8 for the whole thing. Needless to say, we were happy to pay and may try to send a gift of medical supplies for Christmas. Afterwards the men of the village were all happy to show me their own machete scars, so I seem to have joined a large club. (We may have some pictures of the wound and stitches later on, if you’re interested)

The last two days were much less interesting, as I was confined to a rocking chair and hammock while Jess led another chambira minga. On Saturday we returned in a much lighter boat to Iquitos, where we cleaned up and took a short trip to the Adventist hospital (yes, open on a Saturday). Again, unlike anything I’ve experienced in the US (where I had to wait for 4 hours to be examined for chest pains), there was no wait to have my knee cleaned and reexamined and the whole thing cost about $15. The nurse tightened one of the stitches, but said that otherwise it looked clean, uninfected, and just needed a couple more days of rest to heal. So here I am, typing up blog entries and loading pictures, giving my knee a rest and enjoying the fan and lack of rats and snakes.