How to Walk a Puma (17 page)

At the airstrip we said farewell to Quiet Chris, Mute Elizabeth and Stinky Fred, and hello to two new arrivals. Then we got naked.

Or at least three of us did, including me. In full Huaorani regalia—that is, nothing but a string, which I plan on wearing until it drops off (at the time of writing it still resolutely circles my waist)—we met the whole village, before making our way to the house of Omagewe’s father-in-law Quempere, the jaguar shaman. Among the Huaorani he is considered one of the most powerful spiritual leaders, and is believed to have access to spiritual realms and an ability to change into a jaguar at will. ‘I’d love to see that,’ I said to Otobo.

‘It doesn’t happen every day now like it used to,’ he explained.

‘Why not?’

‘He looks after his grandkids a lot now, and they piss on him.’

‘Oh,’ I said, not really sure what else to say.

Otobo sensed my confusion. ‘The jaguar spirit doesn’t like the smell, so stays away.’

‘Oh,’ I said again, and left it at that.

Despite his inability to shape shift, Quempere did give me the heartening news that he would send the spirit of a jaguar to the river’s edge, or somewhere in the forest where I would see it.

Then, being me, I dived into the Cononaco River which flows past the village, and swam about a kilometre. There was no real reason why I did it, but public nakedness had fostered a certain delirium, making me forget what I was offering as bait in waters that hold caiman, piranhas and the dreaded candiru.

That night we camped downstream, accompanied by several of the village elders. The new tourists included American Allan, an aspiring television presenter, and his cameraman Fernando, who delighted in the playful nature of the Huaorani men, particularly Otobo’s father. I had begun to think of the old man as the Amazing Omagewe. Despite his age he climbed trees as if they were ladders,
laughing all the way, while I watched in admiration below, wanting to join in but fearing abrasions on areas that were already sensitive due to being sunburnt for the very first time.

That night we took a cruise in the canoe to look for caiman. I sat in the bow with a hefty Maglite, and eventually I made out a reasonable-sized caiman on a bank (Marcello would have undoubtedly called it ‘huge!’). On the way back I continued to shine the torch on the banks, and not far from our camp I hit eyeshine.

‘
Tigre!
’ shouted Otobo.

When the Spanish arrived in South America they decided that the large spotted cat they encountered was somehow the same as the huge striped one in Asia, so they called it ‘
tigre
’, though of course it wasn’t a tiger. So confusingly in South America
tigre
means jaguar. At Otobo’s shout I almost fell out of the canoe in excitement, peering with eye-straining intensity down the flashlight’s beam.

But this was not a jaguar. It was an ocelot. Roughly twice the size of a housecat with an intricately patterned coat and large eyes suited to nocturnal hunting, it blinked briefly at us then melted into the undergrowth. I felt momentarily deflated, before the optimism I’d learnt in the Pantanal with Marcello came straight back. It was a thrill to see the ocelot as it was the first truly wild cat I’d seen in South America. More would come, surely.

Even Huaorani Fear Someone

I had a fitful night after seeing the ocelot, a fever plaguing my sleep, making me shake under the thin sheet I used as a cover. Tom had suffered dengue fever the year before and said my symptoms were consistent with that disease, something that would require an evacuation, as the Huaorani had no facilities to care for me. I did not want to leave, and in the morning I felt well enough to go out with a group of Huaorani, including the Amazing Omagewe. Probably the happiest man I had ever met, he never stopped laughing or smiling, even when his more aged father-in-law, the jaguar shaman, wandered off into the forest that afternoon after a vision. Tom had explained to me that Quempere was showing signs of senility, so finding him was a priority.

‘Quempere! Woo hoo!’ Omagewe shouted, then laughed. ‘Quempere!’

I joined in with the calling, which for some reason Omagewe found hilarious, all four foot ten of him doubled over with laughter.

‘Woo hoo!’ we shouted together, and then we both cracked up. It reminded me how much communication can be done without language. Until that day I thought the sound of a champagne cork popping was the happiest sound on earth—now I know it is a group of Huaorani laughing.

We eventually found Quempere back at the canoe, baffled at our concern, using a palm frond as an umbrella against the rain, which was once more lashing down in diagonal streaks, so thick it was blinding. Back at the campsite we gathered at the fire, those of us who were naked standing closer than the others in a communal huddle, laughing at each other’s chattering teeth.

That night my fever came back, slow-roasting me for unknown hours until it broke and rivers of sweat soaked my skin. Then, after finally falling asleep (and dribbling into my pillow), I was woken by horrific wailing.

I sat up in shock. My first thought was that our campsite was under attack by the truly wild tribes of Ecuador: the Tagaeri and the Taromenane. The shadow of the two uncontacted tribes loomed over most conversations with Huaorani; they were spoken of with a mix of mythology, curiosity and fear. Everyone had a story about these two tribes that have no contact with the outside world at all; while most of the stories tell of harmless encounters, occasionally meetings can result in great violence. Some years earlier, Huaorani had killed twenty-three Tagaeri in revenge for deaths in their community, even though it turned out the Tagaeri were not responsible. The Huaorani believe that someone is responsible for every death, be it from illness, old age or an attack, and so all deaths must be avenged.

The Tagaeri are close relatives of the Huaorani, but Otobo’s family believe the Taromenane are not. As much as the Huaorani seemed completely at one with the forest, they described the Taromenane as being more adept than them in jungle craft, and spoke with a reverence of their abilities. Not long before my visit, Omagewe went hunting for several days, and left his wife alone at their hut in
Boanamo. One night she went outside and saw a group of Taromenane standing at the edge of the field. According to her, they were tall and pale—‘as tall and white as you,’ she said in Huao, pointing at me. When they spoke she couldn’t understand them; she shouted back that they could take what they wanted from the field, then went back inside and waited, hoping not to be speared.

Hearing the screams, my first thought was that surely we were under attack, and in my fevered state my only defence would be to appear so weak I might be spared. The wailing though was short lived, not cut off, and faded to the muttering of someone in a dream state. It had been a nightmare, no more, and while the screamer mumbled themselves back to sleep I lay awake, adrenalin coursing for some time, wondering how close the nearest Tagaeri or Taromenane might be.

Normally I would be excited by the level of mystery surrounding these peoples, but in the pitch black of a jungle night it was just intimidating and I was glad to have the many spears of my new Huaorani friends close by.

As a rule I don’t believe that any race has more smart or dumb people than any other, or good or bad, and it irritates me when people say things like, ‘Oh, you must just love the people in Africa!’ as I think it is a sign of covert racism. But among the Huaorani I met more extraordinary people than in any other small group I had ever encountered.

Otobo was a natural host and guide. He effortlessly switched between the demands of the elderly English bird watchers and the more culturally interested Americans, reading their needs as neatly
as if he had been to the finest tourism management school. His father was a god in the forest, a hunter of note, capable of turning invisible when he wanted to. Omagewe might also be the most dangerous man I have ever met, with a significant body count of
petroleros
and illegal loggers to his name, yet his good humour and constant laughter made it almost impossible for me to imagine him as a spear-wielding killer.

Then there was Penti, who I met in Bameno. Unlike most Huaorani, who are a stocky people, Penti was slender, and sported a natty Clark Gable moustache. But it was what he said that made him stand out. For more than twenty years he had fought to protect his home from oil companies, and he was articulate and knowledgeable about the challenges the Huaorani face from those who would take their land. Recently, illegal oil exploration had taken place; Penti told me that if he couldn’t stop this through legal means it would be solved the Huaorani way, with a spear. He explained that twice before oil companies had been allowed to extract oil from within the national park, and both times it was disastrous. Texaco spilled more oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon than the
Exxon Valdez
did in Alaska in 1989, and the roads that were built through the forest to facilitate the extraction are like leukaemia, spreading the poison of illegal logging and poaching, along with the colonists who move illegally in from outside areas and whom the government has no will to move. These invaders continue to make their way deeper into the park, sullying once pristine blocks of wilderness and encroaching ever more into Huaorani territory.

Many of the Huaorani came to visit our campsite, downstream from Bameno, in canoes, and we travelled back to visit them in Bameno, a torturous journey for me as my fever returned with a
vengeance. The sunlight off the water was like spears in my eyes, the roar of the motor deafening. When we arrived in Bameno, Tom, Mariela, Allan and Fernando would fly out, and with some trepidation, but mainly enthusiasm for adventures ahead, I would be left alone with the Huaorani for two weeks.

‘Did I scream out last night?’ Fernando asked on the canoe. ‘I think I was having a nightmare.’

That explained the scream that had woken me the night before. I wasn’t surprised Fernando had experienced a nightmare: the very air in this place felt hallucinogenic, or maybe it was just my fever. As soon as we made it to Bameno I curled up to rest in a hammock in Otobo’s Bameno home. The house was made of palm poles and thatched with leaves, which offered some respite from the blinding heat outside.

I was woken some time later by a squawking macaw that wandered in, screeched at me several times, then ambled back out. Through gaps in the rough walls I could see village life as it puttered all around, some people cooking, some snoozing, and a desultory soccer game being played so lazily I almost felt well enough to join in. People in various states of undress walked in and out, some shaking me awake to ask questions like: ‘In the United States how many wives do you have?’ (It didn’t matter how many times I said I was Australian, all foreign
cowodes
are from America.)

‘I have only one,’ I said (they also make no distinction between a wife and girlfriend), ‘but she is in England.’

‘Huh,’ they scoffed, ‘you should get more,’ then they walked away, chasing out the chickens that came and went as freely as the people.

Otobo told me he needed more than just his current sole wife, but was too busy with his ecotourism business at the moment. The
two travelling bands of the last week were the first foreigners many of the Huaorani had seen in more than a year. ‘Yes, but I am the busiest tourism operator here!’ Otobo said proudly. ‘I have many more tourists than anyone else!’

As I sat down to write in my diary on the second-last day of 2010, I realised that and I had no idea what day of the week it was, nor any interest in finding out. Dates were becoming as irrelevant to me as they are to the Huaorani. Huao numbers only go as high as twenty; after that they simply use the words for ‘a lot’ (
nange
) and ‘many’ (
baco
). Even the numbers they do have are complicated to say—their count goes ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘two and one’, ‘two and two’, ‘five’, ‘five and one’, and so on. Technically you could go higher than twenty, so for example to give my age—thirty-six—I would say: ‘
Bototepenpoga go tepenpoga go tepenpoga go emempoke go arokai
.’ Or I could simply say ‘
Baco
.’

This complexity is probably why most Huaorani will tell you some patently absurd figure when you ask how old they are. When I asked Quempere’s age I was told, variously, ‘More than one hundred’, ‘Somewhere near sixty’, and one youngster gravely told me that he was ‘probably more than twenty’, clearly impressed at such longevity. (‘He’s probably in his eighties,’ Tom had said, ‘just based on the age of his children and their children.’)

The tribespeople jabbed at my notebook now as I wrote; only the youngest among them and the educated Penti were able to read (and even then they learnt Spanish, not English), but they were all fascinated by the marks I made on the page. It would have felt like
a breach of privacy anywhere else, but here it was not at all unpleasant or invasive.

As I wrote that morning the same macaw had walked into Otobo’s house again, spoken a few words, laughed, and walked out.

‘Great,’ I thought, ‘even a bloody parrot speaks more Huao than me.’

One of the few terms I had become proficient with was ‘
waponi
’, a versatile word that means ‘hello’, ‘thanks’ and ‘good’; when said with a smile it covered much of what needed to be said.

Earlier that morning I’d been woken up by the sound of voices. Looking out of my hammock I could see a gap in the wall; peering through this, straight at me, was the jaguar shaman.

‘
Waponi
, Quempere,’ I said, then added, ‘
Ibanoimi?
’ which means ‘How are you?’ In reply he laughed, walked in and sat beside me, his wife following. With clawed hands he picked up and studied my hair, teeth and palms, before clapping my hands together, laughing heartily once more.

As he chatted to me in soft tones, his wife (a sprightly sixty or so to Quempere’s estimated eighty) laughed at everything he said. The only person I’d felt sorry for in my time there was the aggressive man who on my very first night had spoken at us about his life, including his time with the missionaries, and all he had learnt from them. Throughout his diatribe he’d had his hands clasped in supplication, with the lightless eyes and forced grin of someone who has been told to be happy. Maybe it wasn’t the fault of the missionaries, but something was lost in him; he seemed to lack a brightness, a beauty, that the other Huaorani carried so casually.

That afternoon we made our way back upriver to Otobo’s place by canoe. After a short break we travelled another hour along the
river to an even smaller village than Otobo’s. This was the home of a friend Otobo employed to cook for tourists when they came through, who perhaps due to his muscular physique had chosen to go by the Western name of Conan. Many Huaorani used a Western name when dealing with outsiders, perhaps because they couldn’t bear the mangling of their native names. In Conan’s village, I was surprised to meet the man with the clasped hands from our first night, and to learn he was Conan’s brother. He went by the name of Joseph, and was, to his credit, very generous and while he and I practised throwing spears at a banana tree his wife cooked us manioc and fish, served on a palm leaf and eaten with the fingers. We all rinsed our hands in the same tea-coloured water first, and my already queasy stomach initially rebelled. I ate it all though, with a smile as credible as our host’s, and had not a single ill effect afterwards.

I began to change my judgement of the man, as his
spear-throwing
lesson had been a patient and gentle one, despite my obvious ineptitude. He had also pointed out to me some monk sakis in nearby trees, a beautiful woolly-coated species of monkey I’d only seen once before. Joseph was Huaorani, just different, more exposed to the outside world but retaining a generosity common to them all. Maybe this is what all Huaorani would become as the world closed in, maybe not.