Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance by Kenneth Kamler Page A
Authors: Kenneth Kamler
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wasn’t getting wet. Only after the tightly woven canopy was fully saturated did some of the rain start to drip through. As we neared the end of the trail, animal signs were becoming more obvious, at least once Antonio pointed them out. There were capybara tracks, peccary droppings, and even bark scratched by a jaguar. Antonio spotted an agouti, a rodent that resembles a big, tailless squirrel. As I turned to look, a raindrop washed some bug lotion into my eye. By the time I rubbed it out, the agouti was gone. I could, however, see some light through the trees. Though the leaves continued to drip, the rain had stopped and we were approaching a large clearing. The sun was out, and just ahead now there was a wide patch of blue sky. The green corridor ended. I stepped outside.
The village didn’t have a name. It was a grouping of five huts—probably a collection of related families. The dirt around the huts was smooth and cleared of all vegetation except for occasional patches of bright red flowers. Two women were sitting on the ground and skimming their machetes over the dirt, removing any irregular clumps as if preparing a clay court for a tennis match. Behind the huts were rows of banana trees and cornstalks that blended into the jungle. Children were playing with or chasing a menagerie of pigs, dogs, and chickens. There are many such settlements scattered across the Amazon. I wondered if there were any in which the Indians didn’t wear T-shirts.
Each neat, square wooden hut was built on a platform raised up on stilts. Chonta-wood poles at each corner supported a roof of thatched palm. Part of the platform had no walls, making it a porch, while the rest had walls of split bamboo rising only halfway up so that it was unnecessary to have windows for ventilation or light or to see an approaching stranger.
One was approaching now. The dogs barked and the children stopped playing, staring at me as if I were a zoo specimen. Antonioand I crossed under a rope strung between two huts on which laundry was drying and stopped at the base of the next hut. A pig was lying in the shade against one of the stilts. It had a festering sore in its side and four baby chicks sitting on its flank. As Antonio announced our arrival, I watched the chicks peck at the pig and eat off its fleas.
To get into the hut, we climbed up a thick log with sawtooth steps cut into it that was inclined against the porch. In the semidarkness within, a girl was sitting on the floor. I recognized her as the one who had listened carefully to the instructions I had given Berullio about his son, her brother. She smiled and offered us seats on tree trunk stools. While she spoke with Antonio, a four-year-old girl was feeding noodles to a two-year-old, and I glimpsed a boy balancing himself on the roof in order to add thatch. We were in the front or “guest” section of the hut, separated from the private living quarters by a bamboo wall. From behind that wall came an elderly woman holding a decorated clay bowl filled with a milky liquid. This was
chicha,
a traditional alcoholic welcoming drink made from manioc, a potatolike root vegetable that grows practically everywhere in this part of the world. I took a polite sip; it tasted like sour yogurt. The woman then took a drink herself, but instead of swallowing it, she spit it back into the bowl.
Chicha
is prepared by chewing the manioc to mash it up while adding spit to speed the fermentation. The woman did this continuously as we sat. I declined her offer of a second drink, though I convinced myself that the alcoholic content would kill the bacteria in the bowl and that my health risk was less than it would have been had I kissed the old woman on the lips.
The boy on the roof had been quietly weaving thatch the whole time we were drinking
chicha.
Now that we had finished, Antonio called him down. To my surprise, I discovered that he was my patient, Hermanigildo. No bandage, no splint, and apparently no problem.
The village didn’t have a name. It was a grouping of five huts—probably a collection of related families. The dirt around the huts was smooth and cleared of all vegetation except for occasional patches of bright red flowers. Two women were sitting on the ground and skimming their machetes over the dirt, removing any irregular clumps as if preparing a clay court for a tennis match. Behind the huts were rows of banana trees and cornstalks that blended into the jungle. Children were playing with or chasing a menagerie of pigs, dogs, and chickens. There are many such settlements scattered across the Amazon. I wondered if there were any in which the Indians didn’t wear T-shirts.
Each neat, square wooden hut was built on a platform raised up on stilts. Chonta-wood poles at each corner supported a roof of thatched palm. Part of the platform had no walls, making it a porch, while the rest had walls of split bamboo rising only halfway up so that it was unnecessary to have windows for ventilation or light or to see an approaching stranger.
One was approaching now. The dogs barked and the children stopped playing, staring at me as if I were a zoo specimen. Antonioand I crossed under a rope strung between two huts on which laundry was drying and stopped at the base of the next hut. A pig was lying in the shade against one of the stilts. It had a festering sore in its side and four baby chicks sitting on its flank. As Antonio announced our arrival, I watched the chicks peck at the pig and eat off its fleas.
To get into the hut, we climbed up a thick log with sawtooth steps cut into it that was inclined against the porch. In the semidarkness within, a girl was sitting on the floor. I recognized her as the one who had listened carefully to the instructions I had given Berullio about his son, her brother. She smiled and offered us seats on tree trunk stools. While she spoke with Antonio, a four-year-old girl was feeding noodles to a two-year-old, and I glimpsed a boy balancing himself on the roof in order to add thatch. We were in the front or “guest” section of the hut, separated from the private living quarters by a bamboo wall. From behind that wall came an elderly woman holding a decorated clay bowl filled with a milky liquid. This was
chicha,
a traditional alcoholic welcoming drink made from manioc, a potatolike root vegetable that grows practically everywhere in this part of the world. I took a polite sip; it tasted like sour yogurt. The woman then took a drink herself, but instead of swallowing it, she spit it back into the bowl.
Chicha
is prepared by chewing the manioc to mash it up while adding spit to speed the fermentation. The woman did this continuously as we sat. I declined her offer of a second drink, though I convinced myself that the alcoholic content would kill the bacteria in the bowl and that my health risk was less than it would have been had I kissed the old woman on the lips.
The boy on the roof had been quietly weaving thatch the whole time we were drinking
chicha.
Now that we had finished, Antonio called him down. To my surprise, I discovered that he was my patient, Hermanigildo. No bandage, no splint, and apparently no problem.
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