The Amazon: Eden or Green Hell? It’s our Choice

Of all the many hundreds of children I have photographed around the world, those of the Yanomami Indians of the Amazon rain forest may well be the happiest and freest. They had no toys but for those they built themselves. Only the boys built them, and they were mostly bows and arrows. The children’s games copied their parents’ activities, though on a smaller scale. They learned by watching.

The boys hunted small game and fished. The girls painted each other with roucou or baked tiny manioc flat breads instead of the pancakes-sized ones their mothers prepared. All the kids climbed trees to pick wild fruits. They also climbed the tall posts of their yanos, or communal houses, pretending to flee from jaguars, played by other kids. They played many games and never got bored. They lived in a world of their own where I never saw adults intervene.

Boys and girls mimicked the presentation dances that a clan offers on arriving at a neighboring yano when invited to share in a harvest in the form of a plantain, or manioc, or peach palm soup. The boys rolled in mud or plunged down from high branches into the Tootobi River. Boys and girls occasionally played war too, but always in good humor. Never did I see a child beat another or even shout at one. On the contrary, the bigger children always cared for the younger ones.

The Yanomami had dogs, and they treated them well. The kids' pets included the young progeny of the animals their fathers had hunted for food--monkeys, sloths, opossums, parrots, and other colorful birds. Those animals would remain pets and die of old age, never to be eaten.

The children under four accompanied their mothers to the forest gardens. An older child sometimes followed them to watch over the younger sibling while the mother dug out manioc, slashed down plantain or bananas, used a long stick to bring down some papayas, or hacked wood for the fire. The younger children also went along on gathering expeditions. On those, several women joined to hunt frogs, sweet-water crabs, termites, grubs, or mushrooms.

The surrounding forest was like you would imagine the biblical Garden of Eden. It was nothing like the Green Hell of some authors. Unless, perhaps, you had wandered through it, lost and hungry for weeks, fearing you would die there alone, like a wounded animal, unable ever to find your way out of it. This happens, of course, But the Indians never get lost in the forest. And they live very comfortably in it, working only an average of two and a half hours a day. I lived comfortably in it myself while in their company.

That was a long time ago. Since then, the Yanomami have seen their land invaded by heavily armed gold miners who have polluted the rivers with mercury and caused many deaths by spreading diseases against which the Indians had no natural defenses. In that way, the Amazon could indeed become a green hell, as it once was, when Indians were enslaved by rubber barons.

For more pictures of Yanomami children, please go to http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/victorenglebert, click on Galleries, and then click on the picture of a Yanomami girl at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on the picture of a Yanomami woman at the top of the screen will open to you the world of the whole Yanomami society.

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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