After a night of swinging around and maneuvering to get
myself in the most possibly comfortable positions, I was awoken by the
return of the sun and humid heat of the Amazon. I looked out and saw a
wall of green with a lonely, rickety flight of stairs going up to the
top of the "wall". We got out of the boat wearing long pants and lots
of bug spray and walked up the never-ending staircase (PICTURE 1).
When we got to the top we saw a small shack with lots of supplies like
a coffee maker (not the type we know, the kind where you make it by
hand), a "pig pen" with live pigs, and another area with a bunch of
chickens and roosters. I didn't understand how these animals and all
those supplies were there since the area seemed so un-livable to me.
Then a man walked out of his home named Emanuel. Emanuel joined our
guide (Ananji) for the remainder of the day. We deemed this man the
most "hardcore" of anyone and I'll explain why throughout. To start
out, he hiked the rainforest with us for 4 hours while BAREFOOT!
After meeting Emanuel, we followed him and Ananji into
the rainforest. I have done many, many hikes before, and typically
with all of them, there is a clear laid of pathway with markers every
once in a while so that you know you're going the right way. This hike
we did was not at all like there…there was no distinct path, no
markers, no way (for me) to know where I was going. We stopped every
once in a while so that our guides to explain different parts of the
nature we were seeing (PICURE 2). We saw rubber trees, and learned
about all sorts of herbal remedies- for example, certain trees have
leaves that are used to heal wounds, and some trees the bark can be
used to reduce a fever. We learned that people in this part of the
world rely on the nature and the rainforest for their well-being, not
advil and supplement pills. The hike was amazing, I looked in every
direction and saw only wilderness and green (PICTURE 3). I thought,
"what if for some reason I was not with my guide right now? Would I
ever find my way out of here." A lot of the stories you hear about
people getting lost in the rainforest and suddenly their stories
became so much more understandable.
After nearly four hours we saw an opening in the
rainforest, we had made it to the end of our hike! We all cheered as
we saw the water of the Amazon and our boat waiting nicely there for
us (PICTURE 4). I quickly changed into a swim suite and jumped into
the water to cool off (PICTURE 5). We swam around in the not so clean,
brown waters of the Amazon and decided it was a good place to wash our
hair for the first time in a while. We laughed as we "washed" our
bodies in the dirty water (PICTURE 6). To my surprise, we got out of
the water, and I really did feel a bit cleaner…I guess at that point I
had come to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to be really clean
for a while, so some conditioned hair was pretty awesome for the time-
being. I was so thankful for our opportunity to experience the nature
and beauty of the Amazon during that hike, and even more thankful to
have had some locals that knew where they were going.
After "bathing" in the Amazon, we got back in our river-
boat and set off for our next destination. We pulled up to another
"wall of green with a stair-case" (PICTURE 7- by the way the two
people in this picture are our guide, Ananji, and his son Karish). As
we walked up the stairs I felt many little eyes peering out at me,
speaking in a language that neither I nor my guide spoke. The kids ran
around hiding behind trees as we walked up the staircase, observing
us. When we got to the top, I saw a lot of rustic homes surrounding a
field (PICTURE 8). On the field there was a group of young boys
running around and playing soccer…or football I should say (PICTURE
9). We all sat down and heard a few words from our guide as well as a
local from the village. The village is called "Terra Preta" meaning
black land in Portuguese. Each group of indigenous people speaks both
Portuguese and a local language, this group spoke a language called
Cookrano. Inside this small town there are two teachers, one to teach
in the local language and one to teach in Portuguese. Until secondary
school, all of the ages learn together, then when they get old enough
they take the "school-boat" to a school in another village. Once a
month, a doctor travels 4 and a half hours to the town from the larger
city of Manaus to do check-ups and such. I asked what if someone gets
hurt to the point that they cannot deal with it in the village? We
were told that if that is the case then they would have to take a boat
to the town over where they have a speed boat, then they would have to
take the speed boat to Manaus which would take about 4 hours. The way
of life in this village certainly seemed foreign- everything I ever
need…doctor, convenient store, food…etc has always been within a 5
minute drive of me! Then, a bunch of the boys joined the soccer game,
I walked up to a group of young girls and sat down. I tried
desperately to communicate with them…this reminded me SO much of my
first couple months on my gap year in Israel where I worked with kids.
Those were some of the greatest times in my life and equally
frustrating, it is so hard at first to interact and form relationships
when there is a language barrier. Those times taught me how to
communicate other ways and to my surprise a lot of them came back as
soon as I sat down with those indigenous children. I felt the same
emotions, same frustrated feeling, and same feeling of ignorance for
not being able to talk. It's SO easy to take something as simple as
communication for granted…especially if you never leave the place
where your language is spoken. The second you remove yourself from
that, something like just saying hello how are you seem like such a
respectable, difficult task. We are human and learn to adapt, so we
used pictures and body language- while this works, I have to say that
from my experience, there is nothing like actually talking, while it
seems so normal, it's actually such a personal, amazing thing.
Myself and a few others ended up bringing out some water
color paints and drawing with the girls. This started out with drawing
pictures to each other. Then I made the mistake of letting one girl
draw a butterfly on my arm, before I knew it, my arms and legs were
completely covered in butterflies, hearts, and just plain dots and
lines (PICTURES 10, 11, 12 and 13). A couple of girls- shtiel, Erica,
Marie, and Natalya also got ahold of my camera for a while and would
not stop taking pictures of one another and then looking at the
product and laughing. When first sitting down with these children all
I could see were our immense differences. Their childhoods are worlds
away from what mine was like…in theory. Then, I saw some of the
pictures they drew, the smiles, giggles, secrets whispered from one
ear to the next, the hand-clap games with different words but similar
motions that I used to do in elementary school and realized how much
we truly have in common. I think that kids are the best way to learn
about the true essence of a place and culture, their innocence and
unknowing makes it possible to see past all of the problems and just
see. About 10 minutes before we were scheduled to leave the village, a
boat arrived with some deliveries for the town…the boys from our group
ran down to help bring them up all of the stairs to the village. When
it came time for us to leave all of the kids ran down the stairs and
jumped in the water. They swam around and grabbed onto the rope that
was anchoring our boat to the ground as if to not let us leave
(PICTURE 14). Just as we were about to leave the school boat pulled up
(PICTURE 15) and we saw the younger siblings embrace their older ones.
We pulled away and yelled Ciao and blew kisses. I heard one of the
girls yell out "BYE SHTEFANI". I felt an intense feeling of not
wanting to leave…if I could I would have stayed there for days, gotten
to know the language, the people, the culture…that is one of the
largest tradeoffs with this adventure around the world, I get to see
so much, but for so little time….though no amount of time is never
enough time, so I am SO thankful for what I have.
When we got back on our riverboat we all put on our long
pants, long sleeves and even more bug-spray. We took down our hammocks
and packed them up for night…we weren't sleeping on the boat that
night. We got to another "wall of green" and stairs…we walked up as
the sun was going down and watched the sun-set from the top (PICTURE
16). Then, we walked with our hammocks, water-bottles, and yes, more
bug-spray back into the rainforest. We walked for about 30 minutes,
constantly yelling things like "LOG! BRANCH! ROCK!" since we couldn't
see much at all. We finally arrived to our site for the night, it was
a small clearing with a small area to hang out hammocks from (PICTURE
17). Ananji and Emanuel then impressively started a fire with the wet
wood we could find. Then it was dinner time. These guys are so
amazing, they took sticks they found in the rainforest, turned them
into spears and began to cook chicken (PICTURE 18). While the chicken
was cooking, Emanuel disappeared for a few minutes into the dark.
Then, our of nowhere he reappears with live Cayman in his hands…keep
in mind he had no supplies on him to help catch this thing…and, he was
BAREFOOT (PICTURE 19). He let us hold the Cayman and then eventually
let it go. Once dinner was ready we all went out and found these large
leaves to use as plates…don't worry, we sanitized them by passing them
through the fire (PICTURE 20). It was truuuuly an Amazonian
experience. Sleeping that night was not so bad at first, I was
surrounded by friends and felt pretty safe. I made myself into a
cocoon with my hammock so that nothing would be able to get in. As I
drifted off to sleep, I felt an intense feeling of separation. I
thought about how far I was from any type of familiar, or comfortable
place. I thought about how not only was I unable to connect to the
outside world, but if someone had wanted to reach me, they were not
able to. Situations like this today are truly rare, and I tried to put
my feelings of discomfort aside and just enjoy the experience. I felt
pretty comfortable throughout the night, and slept much better than
expected. I woke up once though in the middle of the night…what I
heard was not silence, but sounds of lots of animals out there. I was
completely surrounded by nature, there were millions more animals than
myself and friends which was almost too overwhelming to comprehend. I
could feel them out there. Lots of thoughts ran through my head about
where I was and my surroundings and it took me a bit to fall back
asleep. When I had been walking into the rainforest the night before
in the dark with my hammock in hand I looked at a friend and said
"Wow, this is one of those experiences that I will be so glad to say I
had, but right now I'd probably fast-forward to the morning if I
could." Well, the next morning I did not feel that way anymore. I
enjoyed my evening in the rainforest so much…and being able to say
that I did it is only an added plus.
If you're still reading, good-job! I know this was a long
post, I can't express how nearly impossible it is to sum up my
experiences into a blog post. There are just so many feelings and
emotions that go into these new memories. I hope you enjoyed, I will
write about day 3 later…that entry will be a lot shorter (day 2 was
definitely the most packed).
Missing everyone at home…and by the way, we are turning
off all internet and outside connections on the ship tomorrow (other
than navigation I'm sure) because we are going to try and use
everything to stream the super bowl, and show it in the student union…
I'm rooting for the Giants!
Missing everyone at home!
Steph
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