bumping of the boat hitting the rough waters. After waking up we had a
very nice breakfast prepared by Ananji's wife as per usual. After
breakfast we got to a small village called Desana. As we were walking
up the stairs to the village I asked Ananji how he knew of all these
villages and had connections. He told me that he has lived on the
river his whole life and has simply explored and stumbled on different
places and made different connections throughout his life. It was
funny to me because I was assigned to write a paper for my writing
class and the only guidelines were "write your own interpretation of
considering Columbus." One thing that I considered writing about was
how there are no more explorers like Columbus and those times, but
Ananji made me think otherwise.
Ananji told us that these people have many rituals and
that we were going to observe some. As we got there we saw a large hut-
style looking awning. There was a man standing outside, dressed very
tribal-like. This man told us that he was he town's "healer", or as we
know it "the elder". He talked to us for a bit about their traditions
and informed us that we should come inside. As we entered there were
many more men dressed the same. Then, we saw the women. The women were
not wearing any tops and had lots of intricate drawings all over them.
They were only covered with skirts and jewelry. Their openness was a
bit overwhelming at first, they were so comfortable with their bodies…
one was even breast-feeding right there in front of us…it's so crazy
how something can be so taboo for us and so casual for them. Then,
they did a bunch of ritual dances involving lots of music and both the
men and women, and all ages. The last dance they invited us all up.
It was all a cool experience and I really enjoyed it, but
all I could think was that it was a show for us. I approached Ananji
and respectfully asked him these questions. He told me that yes, they
were putting on a show for us, but, during their real ritual
ceremonies they would be doing the same things, for over 24 hours.
After they were done we walked around and talked to the people,
naturally I made my way over to the children and started playing
games. At one point my friend and I were playing catch with a little
boy as he cackled and smiled my friend joked he's probably thinking
"why are these crazy white girls chasing me!?"
As we finished up with the indigenous people we got back
on our riverboat for one last time. We had an hour until we got to
Manaus. As we got on the boat, Ananji spoke a few words to us, telling
us how he had a great time, and would miss us, and he even gave me all
of his information…so if you're ever thinking about going to the
Amazon I have just the guy! We called out his wife and the crew and
gave them an overwhelming round of applause and tried our hardest to
show them how much we appreciated everything they did…though nothing
could ever show how much we really did appreciate it. Seeing the MV
Explorer (our ship) was bitter-sweet as we pulled into Manaus. A part
of me was SO happy to see it…it meant that I had a bed to sleep in,
and, after 4 days of not showering the shower was seeming pretty darn
nice. I looked forward to all the little things I usually take for
granted on a daily basis. The bitter part was when I thought about all
of the places we had been, Ananji and his boys Avinesh and Karish, and
his wife Carolina, Manuel, and all the other amazing people we had
met. I realized that while for us it was a 4 day experience of
"roughing it" and after 4 days we returned "home". They had been home
the whole time.
We had a few hours until we needed to be back on the ship
so a few of us set out to see a bit of Manaus. We walked around the
street markets and bought some local food. I went to a super-market
and bought 4 big bags of candies and lolli-pops to bring to the kids
in Ghana…then we said good-bye to Brazil and got back onto our
floating University.
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