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After my first couple of months in Payamino, I received a suggestion from HQ in Denmark that I should spend a few days upriver in the interior of the territory, staying with and getting to know some of the families that live there, and learning more about how they live. Staying in the community hub, as I was, was only giving me a limited insight into Payamino’s runa Kawsay, as the families that are resident there only remain so during term-time so that their children can get to school, or to gain access to the infrequent public transport that connects Payamino to the market town of Loreto. If there is no immediate need to be in the community hub, then the families retreat back to their fincas (Spanish for farm) in the forest.

The finca is the centre of family life in Payamino, where subsistence crops, such as manioc, plantain and a variety of fruits are cultivated, alongside those that they grow for sale, such as rice and maize. Crops are grown using swidden (slash and burn) methods that have been practiced throughout the Amazon basin since time immemorial: a small area of forest is cut down and burned to release nutrients into the poor forest soil, and then seeded with the crops of choice. Over time the soil loses its fertility and the struggle to prevent the jungle from reclaiming the cultivated land becomes increasingly difficult until, eventually, that area is abandoned (although the owners will continue to return to gather fruit from trees, which become part of the regrowth forest) and another patch of forest is cleared. The mosaic of mature forest, cultivated land and fallow areas provides food and habitat for birds and a variety of mammals, including paca, peccary, deer, agouti, monkeys and capybara, all of which are hunted to provide meat for the family.

Each family has a house in their finca, which is normally built from bamboo and palm thatch. Some families have started to use modern construction materials, such as wooden boards and corrugated zinc roofs, which, although expensive, last longer against the constant attacks from insects and the weather. The layout inside the house, however, has remained the same, with one end of the building used for cooking (on an open fire which is lit inside a structure that looks like a cross between a sand pit and a table) and eating, and the other end used for sleeping. If you grow up in a Kichwa family, you can forget about privacy: the houses rarely have any kind of internal walls, except occasionally for one to partition off the eating and the sleeping areas.

The most radical change in finca household design is the habit of building the houses on stilts. The families that founded San Jose de Payamino came from a community higher up the eastern slopes of the Andes, where huts were built at ground level, and this habit was still in practice within the community as recently as the mid-1980’s. However, living at ground level in the tropical lowlands - where all sorts of creepy-crawlies are wandering around at night time, and with a high chance that low-lying areas may be flooded after a few days’ heavy rain - is not practical, so the inhabitants of San Jose de Payamino have adopted the traditional Amazonian practice of raising houses off the ground.

At first I was little uncomfortable with the thought of just inviting myself to stay with people who I really didn’t know that well in such an intimate environment. I was also concerned about what we would talk about: many people in San Jose de Payamino speak good Spanish, but amongst themselves they prefer to use Kichwa, of which my understanding is still very basic, and people in Payamino are generally so shy that I had a feeling that even those who did have a good level of Spanish would hide behind their Kichwa if they found themselves having their domestic tranquillity invaded by the gringo in residence. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained; I put the idea out there and was finally able to get an invitation to go and stay a couple of nights with the Tusupa family in Pato Rumi, the most distant and isolated inhabited part of the Payamino territory.

Our journey up to Pato Rumi probably could have taken as little as an hour and a half if it weren’t for the fact that we were stopping the canoe every five minutes to pick someone up. The river level was high and still rising thanks to a low cloud that was depositing a steady stream of drizzle throughout the upper Payamino Valley. As the dugout ploughed its way through the clammy layer of mist, the ever-increasing number of passengers became soggier and colder until, by the time we reached Pato Rumi at about 9 am, the crew and passengers squelched shivering and dripping onto dry land, grateful for the chance to get under cover and change into some dry clothes. 

We started off proceedings with a meeting in the single classroom of Pato Rumi’s school (number of pupils: 9), in which we discussed issues to do with the project: future developments, what they wanted from it and so on. The meeting was surprisingly successful in many ways. Unlike the usual demands for booze for parties and outboard motors with a lifetime supply of free gasoline for every family’s canoe, there were some realistic, practical requests: a first aid kit and training to go with it, questions about what support we would be giving school children in the next academic year, and so on.

After the meeting we headed over to the nearest house, belonging to Reinando, elderly patriarch of the Tusupa clan. The house was built on a bamboo frame with a palm-thatch roof. There were wooden planks for walls, but instead of being nailed in place they were just resting on the frame, waiting for someone to put the finishing touches to the house. As we walked in, Reinando was flapping a bunch of nettle leaves over one of his younger granddaughters, blowing on them as he did so. The fact that the leaves were as big as dinner plates with stinging thorns like a kittens claws on the underside didn’t seem to bother either party. “Mal aire,” explained Raul – bad air – the child was suffering from some kind of respiratory infection, a common ailment amongst babies and toddlers in Payamino. This was the first time I’d seen this kind of traditional healing at work;, I’ve since seen, and even participated in a number of similar treatments, which make use of any of a number of different types of leaves, and frequently involve blowing cigarette smoke all over the baby as well. Once upon a time, they would have used dried tobacco leaves, rolled up inside a fresh one, but I guess times change and a ciggy makes things a touch simpler. Tobacco has a variety of uses in traditional healing, religious practices and other day-to-day applications, the most remarkable of which is to discipline ill-behaved children, particularly those who won’t stop crying: they stick dried, powdered tobacco up their nostrils as a punishment. An alternative is to put powdered chilli in the eye. However you may feel about the ethics of corporal punishment on children, it can’t be denied that the method works: you will vary rarely hear a Kichwa child cry for more than a couple of seconds at a time, if at all.

We ate lunch: smoked fish, boiled in water with plantain and manioc, after which a bowl of water was passed around for hand washing, followed by more bowls, this time with the obligatory gloopy chicha. The Tusupas sat and stared and giggled at me nervously. The house contained a few objects of interest: a blowpipe, which the Kichwas still sometimes use for hunting with poisoned darts for ammunition, if they can’t afford bullets for the shotgun, and a small flute made from the wing bone of an eagle. When I asked about this, Reinando kindly gave a demonstration that defied his absence of any formal musical tuition, whistling a bright melody on the flute, which played with the shrill insistence of a tin whistle.

Later on, we left Reinando’s house and followed a path through the forest for a couple of miles to Gilberto Tusupa’s house. Gilberto’s family is the largest in the Tusupa clan, with a sizeable tribe of offspring. At some point along the way they have managed to make a bit of money, judging by the presence of a chainsaw and a recently renovated house with a zinc roof, its walls and floor made from wooden boards (one of the benefits of owning a chainsaw) instead of the more usual – and less durable – split bamboo canes.

We were greeted by a couple of curassows: goose-sized, black jungle fowls that they had found in the forest as chicks and had brought home to keep as pets. In rural towns, where cock fighting is a popular pastime, they say that the hybrid offspring of a curassow and cockerel makes a particularly strong and savage fighting bird. We sat around the cooking fire and chatted as the afternoon drew to a close. With the light fading, the curassows made their way up the stairs and stood outside the door making their presence known with a call that fell somewhere between a whisper and a whistle – a whisple, if you like. Eventually, realising they weren’t going to be let in, they made their way around the overlap of the floor that jutted out from the walls to the opposite side of the house, where they hopped up onto the top of waist-high wall, and from there, after some further whispling, jumped up onto a stick that was suspended from the roof by two wires, evidently placed there for them to roost on. They whispled some more whilst pruning one another, before settling down to sleep.

A mechera was lit – an old medicine bottle filled with diesel, with a hole in the lid through which a wick of cotton had been threaded – and the family continued chatting as night fell until a consensus was reached regarding bed time. Gilberto’s second oldest son, Wilfrido, pulled out a tarpaulin for me to lay my sleeping bag on, while the rest of the family laid out a load blankets at the opposite end of the house into which they all piled in on top of each other. As I drifted off I was aware of four things: the mechera was still lit, but eventually got blown out at some point, something was crawling about inside the lining of my sleeping bag, just underneath my head (probably a cockroach), a battery powered radio was playing ever-so quietly and Gilberto Tusupa was muttering away to no one in particular.

At some point in the small hours of the morning I became aware of Gilberto muttering again – or was it still? There was some movement around the house, and the next thing I was aware of was the crackling and dim light of the cooking fire being built up. More movement and more voices joining in the muttering; the radio coming on once again. It must have been 3am: Radio Cumanda announced the start of Wayusa Upina, its early morning Kichwa language programme, the only form of mass media available in Payamino, and therefore a lifeline in terms of being able to get important messages and announcements out there. The relentlessly chirpy clanking grind of Kichwa synth pop music removed me further from sleep and a mechera was lit and placed near me.

I crawled out of my sleeping bag, put some clothes on and went over to the fire. Gilberto offered me a seat and one of his daughters dipped a bowl into a large pot that was sat on the fire and handed it to me to drink. Gilberto explained that it was wayusa, a bitter tea-like brew, sweetened with sugar, that is made from the leaves of a plant called Ilex wayusa, a member of the holly family, which, much like its better known sister, mate (a popular drink in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and the south of Chile), is endowed with a generous dose of caffeine, guaranteed to wake you up, perk you up and keep hunger at bay. Another member of the same family, the unappetisingly named Ilex vomitoria is used in ceremonies by some North American natives; its name is derived from the fact that they use it as a purgative, drinking it in sufficient quantities to make themselves sick. Whether or not this is an effect of caffeine poisoning, or just taking in too much fluid, is something I’ve not yet been able to find out.

The Payameanies claim that drinking wayusa repels snakes. I once asked Lucio if this was true. “I’ve seen it happen loads of times,” he replied, “I’ve been out in the forest after drinking wayusa and come across a snake and its gone just as soon as I’ve seen it.” I decided against pointing out that, in my experience, any snake that sticks around in the presence of humans for long enough to be seen, fleeing or not, is actually behaving in an uncommonly un-repelled fashion.

Drinking wayusa before dawn is an important part of the day in a Kichwa household. They normally use this time to discuss the dreams that they have had the night before. When the Jesuits were active in the area towards the end of the 19^th Century, they made use of this custom by instructing the fathers of each family to deliver the catechism at wayusa time. When the Josephine missionaries made their first contact with the Amazonian Kichwas, three decades after the Jesuits had been expelled from the country by President Eloy Alfaro, they found that many communities had maintained the delivery of evangelical teachings through this syncretic ritual, despite the absence of any formal Christian presence in the area. Even the Radio Cumanda show is nod to the importance of this family time: its title, Wayusa Upina, translates as drink wayusa.

I sat, drank my wayusa and listened to the family chatting away in Kichwa, challenging myself to try and recognise some of the Kichwa words I had learned so far from amongst the rapid flow of unintelligible syllables. Tinny Kichwa music continued to blare from the radio, peppered with a series of announcements in Kichwa and Spanish. A shuffling and whispling from just over my right shoulder announced the curassows’ waking, and as light appeared, round about 6am, a plate of paca meat and plantain was placed in front of me.

The plan for the day was to have a minga – a work party, to which the whole community is invited to help in exchange for a meal – to fell a half hectare of forest making space for a maize plantation. It became quite clear that things weren’t going to go according to plan, however, when a torrential downpour arrived shortly after dawn, so instead I was treated to a morning of Kichwa downtime. The other Tusupa males, Raul and Carlin turned up, Raul bringing his wife and children in tow. We sat and drank a variety of different chichas: fermented, unfermented and warapo, which is made with banana (the extra sugar gives the fermentation process an added boost); it tastes a little like rhubarb when it’s fresh and  tastes a lot like vinegar once it’s had a couple of days to stew.

Gilberto, Raul and Wilfrido all went about their morning ablutions, including shaving, which amused me greatly. Kichwas, like other native Latin Americans, are blessed with a near absence of facial hair, which makes my beard a source of constant wonder amongst the children, who will sit next to me, reach out and thoughtfully stroke it with an expression that says “yup, there’s definitely hair there.” This is normally followed by a quick stroke on top of the head, with an expression that says, “Nope, definitely not any there,” followed by a look of curious bewilderment, which is then followed by the child running away shrieking to his friends in Kichwa, presumably hollering something along the lines of, “Look! The gringo’s got his head on upside down!” The Tusupas prepared to shave by gathering together a selection of hand mirrors and cutting implements: machetes, kitchen knives and scissors, then diligently proceeded with identifying and snipping off each precocious hair individually. It took them about three minutes.

Eventually the rain stopped and we were finally able to get out to begin work. The area that was to be felled was identified, and everyone – men, women, children – set to hacking away at the vegetation with machetes and axes. I did my best to copy, picking a tree that looked manageably thin, swinging my machete and failing completely to do any more than scratch it. I swung again, and this time hit the bark about half a foot further up the tree from where I had previously made contact. I soon found myself working with an attentive audience of Kichwas, who were clearly taking great amusement from my utter incompetence with a tool that they had all probably learned to master before they could even walk. Eventually my machete was confiscated for everyone’s safety and given to one of the Tusupa girls who had snapped the blade of hers.

I took to spending the time wandering around examining the foliage of the felled trees for any interesting creatures that might turn up, always keeping an eye out for bullet ants – solitary, predatory ants who’s sting is reputed to leave a person in incapacitating pain for 24 hours, and who have an unfortunate habit of hanging about on tree trunks on the precise spot where you plan to place your hand or backside. The Tusupas were helpful in pointing out anything that might turn up: strange veil-like fungi; a hive of sweat bees, which don’t sting, but do like to dive bomb sweaty foreigners in maddening numbers; stick insects, anole lizards and a brown-eared woolly possum.

I was idly watching Carlin at work when I felt a strange sensation just below my left armpit, as if a tiny, pinhead-sized burning ember had landed there. I winced and it went away. Shortly after I felt it again, and then again. The pain continued repeating at fairly regular intervals over the course of a few minutes until I finally opened my shirt and had a look. I found a tiny bright orange ant, holding onto my skin with its jaws, its body sticking out at right angles to my arm and doubled up at the waist. The rear end was repeatedly stabbing a sting into my arm. I pinched it off between my thumb and forefinger, and flicked it away with an unrepeatable suggestion as to where it could shove it’s lancet, then looked up to see Carlin having a good laugh at me. “You’d better take your shirt off,” he advised, “there’ll be others in there; that tree’s full of them.” He pointed out a dead tree to my left which was crawling with the same kind of ant. I took my shirt off and found a few more lurking in there. I’d barely even brushed past the tree. Lucky for me I hadn’t leaned on it.

The job eventually got done and everyone sat down on a felled log. The inevitable bowls of chicha appeared, and then from somewhere some smoked fish and a pot of boiled plantain was magicked out of thin air. The food was dished out onto banana leaves and handed round. It started to rain again, so Carlin and Gilberto made a shelter out of palm leaves for me to sit under, while Raul used his machete to whittle an aeroplane out of balsa wood. Unbothered by the rain, the sweat bees continued to bombard me, while sand flies and mosquitoes crowded in for a drink at El Gringo’s blood bar. I was relieved when they finally called it a day and returned to the house.

The following morning the canoe turned up at 5:30 for a mercifully less wet journey back to the community hub. On the way back I found myself mulling over a conversation I had with Gilberto by the light of the mechera the previous night: we had got to chatting about monkeys. By describing them we were able to match each species to their common name in Kichwa: spider monkeys (bariso), howler monkeys (koto) and capuchin monkeys (machin). When I tried to show off my howler monkey impression he warned me against being disrespectful to monkeys, saying that there were demons in the forest called juri juris, who took revenge on people who laughed at monkeys. He told me the story or a hunting party who had gone into the forest once. One night they got drunk on chicha and took to using the hands of the monkeys that they had killed to pass the bowl around, telling each other that it was their wives who were offering the drink. That night the juri juris descended on the camp while they were all sleeping and removed their eyes. Only one person was unharmed: a deaf-mute called Upa Runa, who lay with his head face down in a hollow in the ground. No matter how much the juri juris poked and prodded him, he refused to turn over, and so was spared.

The next day everyone woke up to find they had lost their eyes, and they all began to cry. Upa Runa said he would be able to lead them back home. He tied them all by the waste with a rope, attaching himself to the front end, and marched them through the forest until they got to a pond, where he untied himself and attached a rotten log to the front of the rope and threw it into the water. His companions all thought that he had jumped in, so they followed. Upon falling in the water they were all transformed into toads, and remained trapped there forever. Upa Runa returned to the village, where he told everyone what happened, and apparently the toads dedicated themselves, somewhat inexplicably, to making clay pots. It is said that when Upa Runa finally made it back, he arrived at Pato Rumi. The Tusupa’s claim that their grandfather knew someone who witnessed his return.

One day a group of people organised an expedition to go and find the pond where Upa Runa’s companions had been converted into frogs. Sure enough, when they got there, they found that it was full of clay pots. The story ends there, leaving a number of questions unanswered: why didn’t the juri juri’s turn Upa Runa over and yank his eyes out as well, rather than just poking and prodding him? How did a deaf mute manage to communicate with a bunch of people who had collectively lost their ability to see? Why did Upa Runa fool his friends into jumping into the pond? How were they turned into toads, and why (and how) did the toads start making clay pots? And how did Upa Runa manage to communicate this whole remarkable series of events to his friends upon returning? A curious tale, for sure; if nothing else, I shall certainly think twice about laughing at a monkey in future.