Watching a Bout of Street Soccer, a Boy Fell Asleep in a Statue's Arms

Brazil. Salvador. Central Square. 

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The Joys of Grandfathers

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Yanomami man and grandson.

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Where Hosts Push Drinks Down Guests' Throats

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. To help keep the peace with neighbors, a Yanomami clan invited another to come share plantain soup with them. Custom requires that hosts show much generosity and guests much delight with it, even  if it the soup must be pushed down their throats.  To keep up with the generosity, guests have no recourse but to also push a finger inside their throats once in a while to make room for more soup.  They get so bloated that  they end up looking high on drugs.

Brésil. Amazonie. Pour aider à conserver la paix avec des voisins, un clan yanomami en invita un autre à boire avec eux la soupe de plantain. La coutume requiert que les hôtes démontrent une grande générosité et les invités beaucoup de satisfaction, même s’il faut leur faire boire a la force. Et les hôtes font la queue devant chaque invité avec leurs pleines calebasses. Pour tenir le coup les invités n’ont d’autre recours, de temps en temps, que de s’enfoncer un doigt dans la gorge.

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Nothing Entertains Children like a Great Father's Story

Brazil. Salvador. A Fisherman tells four of his ten children about a funny adventure he lived.

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Amazon Indians Never Kill Young Animals

To eat, the Indians of the Amazon rain forest must hunt. However, they never take from the forest more than what they need. We, too, kill animals to eat. We kill cows, sheep, and pigs. And not always humanely. We also kill wild animals to grace our walls with their heads or use their skins or tusks. We even kill calves and lambs. The Indians never kill young animals. After hunting down their mothers, they adopt them as lifelong pets, never to end as food. Women will go as far as breast-feed the youngest animals. 

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Yanomami Indian brothers with pet opossums.

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Cursed in Peru

South America is my favorite continent. Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, I have visited them all, and all of them repeatedly. In many ways they are as different from each other as they are, in other ways, similar. Grandiose and varied landscapes, warm-hearted people, fascinating cultures, archaeology, they have them all, each in their own way.

Except for Colombia and Ecuador, Peru is the one I know best. I have travelled to Peru so many times since 1971 that I could not say how many if my life depended on it. I was there last in June 2007, when covering the pre-Inca Chachapoya culture for Archaeology magazine (Archaeology January-February 2008).

The number, variety, and grandeur of Peru’s archaeological sites have no match on the continent. And with Argentina, it also has the best food. I have eaten well there even in the most remote villages. So I was rather surprised the morning that an old lady in black served me dirty milk in a big grubby bowl.

I had spent the night on her farm while traveling horseback across parts of the Andes Mountains with a Morochuco cattle herder to guide me cross-country. He had lost his way, and when we had asked the old lady for help, she had told us to wait until the next morning, when her nephew would guide us out of there. It was late anyway.

The woman had served my friend a much smaller bowl of dirty milk, and as hot milk nauseates me, and my friend Jose could never get enough of it, I had suggested that we exchange bowls. That had enraged the woman, who had thrown us out and cursed me.

“Uneducated Gringo!” she shouted as Jose and I rode away, “May you get lost, suffer scorching thirst, and meet bandits.” Curiously, all her wishes came through within a few days.

To read the story, please go to my website (www.victorenglebert.com), and read the article titled (how else?) Cursed.

Not all Honey is Easy to Get

My wife hates to go to the supermarket. “It’s so boring,” she complains. Yes, but how convenient!

Martha did not always feel like that. When we moved here from Colombia, her country, 12 years ago, walking through a supermarket made her actually very happy. Somewhat like a kid walking through Toys R’ Us. At least a Colombian kid. She had used supermarkets before of course, but never that filled with so many small wonders. However, time wore off the novelty.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” I tell her.” Think instead of all the people worldwide who still have to hunt to get meat. Those who spend as much as a day to get a little firewood and dirty drinking water.

My mother herself, when I was growing up in my native Belgium, lost a whole morning every day getting our fresh food from the baker, the butcher, the charcutier, the fish shop, the vegetable and fruit shop, and the milk and cheese shop. And she had to lug her purchases on foot from place to place. And wait in line while some other customers engaged in small talk with the vendors.

Having shared the lives of more than 30 indigenous peoples in every kind of environment, from Africa to Asia and South America, I know why those people, who are as intelligent and resourceful as we are, have developed so slowly. They lose way too much time meeting their most basic needs.

Take for instance that old Yanomami Indian, about 65, of the Amazon rain forest. He craved the honey he had spotted about 40 meters up a tree perhaps 50 times as thick as he was.

”When you want honey,” Martha, “you make a trip to the supermarket. And you get the rest of the food you need right there. But that man literally risked his life to get his honey.”

First he cut two thick 30-feet saplings and rid them of their branches and tendrils. Then he yanked down some lianas, and tied them to the ends of the saplings and to a long heavy logger's ax to pull them after him as he climbed a thinner tree nearby. Some 30 meters up that tree, he placed one sapling against a fork of the forest giant, tied the bottom of the improvised ladder to the thinner tree, and pulled himself up on the sapling. Once at the fork of the big tree, he repeated the operation using the second sapling that he pulled up after him with the ax.

Now, standing at that scary height on top of the thick branch that held the bees’ nest, and using both hands to swing his heavy ax on that very branch, he got it down with the honey without falling down himself. The branch made such a racket crashing to the ones below that I briefly thought that it was him falling. But he got down fast enough.

Once on the ground, he and a grandson that had accompanied him stuck their arms inside the hollow branch and pulled from it handfuls of honey on which they gorged greedily. Living a life of constant exercise, those people can eat as much honey as they want without ever gaining a pound.

Are they happy? I swear that I never saw happier people, except among some other indigenous people.

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