Version 2007.02.22

## “Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rainforest” - ©1982 by Florinda Donner-Grau

### Chapter 19

Whenever the sun pierced through the clouds, I went with the women and men to work in the gardens. The weeds were much easier to pull from the soaked ground, but I had little energy. Like old Kamosiwe, I just stood amidst the high blades of the manioc plants, and soaked up the light and warmth of the sun. Counting the birds, which had not appeared for days, crossing the sky, I wished for the hot rainless days. After so many weeks of rain, I longed for the sun to stay long enough to lift the mist.

One morning I felt so dizzy I could not get out of my hammock. I lowered my head toward my knees, and waited for the spell to pass. I did not have the strength to lift my head and answer Ritimi's anxious words which were lost in the loud persistent noise around me. It must be the river, I thought: It was not too far away.

But then I realized the noise came from another direction. Desperately, as if my life depended on it, I tried to think where the sound actually came from: It came from within me.

For days I heard nothing but drumming in my head. I wanted to open my eyes. I could not. Through my closed lids I saw the stars burn brighter instead of fading in the sky. Panic seized me at the thought that it would be night forever, that I was descending deeper and deeper into a world of shadows and disconnected dreams.

Waving from misty riverbanks, Ritimi, Tutemi, Etewa, Arasuwe, Iramamowe, Hayama, old Kamosiwe drifted by me. Sometimes they jumped from cloud to cloud, sweeping the mist with leafy brooms. Whenever I called them, they melted into the fog. Sometimes I could see the light of the sun, shining red and yellow, between branches and leaves. I forced my eyes to stay open, and realized it had only been the fire dancing on the palm-thatched roof.

"White people need food when they are sick," I distinctly heard Milagros's shouts. I felt his lips on mine as he pushed masticated meat into my mouth.

Another time I recognized the shapori Puriwariwe's voice. "Clothes make people ill." I felt him pull my blanket away. "I need to cool her down. Get me white mud from the river." I felt his hands coil around my body, covering me with mud from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. His lips left a trail of coldness on my skin as he sucked the evil spirits out of me. My hours of wakefulness and sleep were filled with his voice.

Wherever I focused my eyes in the darkness, Puriwariwe's face appeared. I heard the song of his hekura. I felt the sharp hummingbird's beak cut open my chest. The beak turned into light. Not the light of the sun or the light of the moon, but the dazzling radiance of the old shapori's eyes. He urged me to look into his deep pupils. His eyes appeared lidless, extending toward his temples. They were filled with dancing birds.

The eyes of a madman, I thought.

I saw his hekuras suspended in dewdrops, dancing in the shiny eyes of a jaguar, and I drank the watery tears of the epena. A violent tickling in my throat tightened my stomach until I vomited water. It flowed out of the hut, out of the shabono, and down the path to the river, melting with the night of smoke and chanting.

Opening my eyes, I sat up in my hammock. I distinctly saw Puriwariwe running outside the hut. He stretched his arms to the night, his fingers spread wide as if summoning the energy of the stars. Turning around, he looked at me. "You are going to live," he said. "The evil spirits have left your body." Then he disappeared into the shadows of the night.

After weeks of violent storms, the rains abated to an even, almost predictable pattern. Dawns would arrive opaque and misty, but by midmorning white fluffy clouds would drift across the sky. Hours later the clouds would gather above the shabono. They would hang so low that they appeared to be suspended from the trees, ominously darkening the afternoon sky. A heavy downpour would follow, fading to a light drizzle that often continued far into the night.

I did not work much in the gardens during those rainless mornings but usually accompanied the children into the swamps that had formed around the river. There we would catch frogs and pry out crabs from underneath stones.

The children, on all fours, eyes and ears alert to the slightest motion and sound, pounced with uncanny agility. on the unsuspecting frogs. With eyes that looked almost transparent because of the diffused light, the little girls and boys worked with the precision of evil gnomes as they pulled the fiber loops around the frogs' necks until the last croak died down. Smiling, with the candor only children have when unaware of their cruelty, they would cut open the frogs' feet so that all the blood, which was believed to be poisonous, could flow out. After the frogs had been skinned, each child would wrap his catch in pishaansi leaves and cook them over the fire. With manioc gruel, they tasted delicious.

Mostly, I just sat on a rock in the tall bamboo grass and watched rows of shiny black and yellow scarabs climb with careful, almost imperceptible slowness up and down the light green stems. They looked like creatures of another world, protected by their brilliant armor of obsidian and gold. On windless mornings it was so quiet in the bamboo grass that I could hear the beetles sucking sap from the tender shoots.

Early one morning, Arasuwe sat at the head of my hammock. There was a cheerful glow on his face, extending from his high cheekbones to his lower lip, where a wad of tobacco protruded. The concentration of wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he grinned, adding a reassuring warmth to his expression. I fixed my gaze on his thick, ribbed nails as he cupped his brown hand to catch the last drops of honey from a calabash. He extended his hand toward me and I dipped my finger in his palm. "This is the best honey I've had for a long time," I said, licking my finger with relish.

"You can come with me downriver," Arasuwe said. He went on to explain that with two of his wives and his two youngest sons-in-law, one of which was Matuwe, he was going to an abandoned garden where months earlier they had felled several palm trees to harvest the tasty palm hearts. "Do you remember how much you liked the crisp, crunchy shoots?" he asked. "By now the decaying pith in the dead trunks must be filled with fat worms."

As I was pondering on how to express that I would not like the grubs as much as I had enjoyed the palm hearts, Ritimi came to sit beside me. "I will also go to the gardens," she said. "I have to watch over the white girl."

Arasuwe blew his nose, flicking the mucus away with his forefinger, then laughed. "My daughter, we are going by canoe. I thought you didn't like traveling on water."

"It's better than walking through a swampy forest," Ritimi said flippantly.

Ritimi came instead of Arasuwe's youngest wife. For a short distance we walked along the riverbank until we reached an embankment. Hidden underneath the thicket was a long canoe.

"It looks like one of the large troughs you use for making soup," I said, eyeing the bark contraption suspiciously.

Proudly, Arasuwe explained that both were made in exactly the same fashion. The bark of a large tree was loosened in one piece by pounding the trunk with clubs. Then the ends were heated over a fire to make them pliable enough to be folded back and pinched into a flat-nosed basin, and finally the ends were lashed together with vines. A crude framework of sticks Was added to give the boat its stability.

The men pushed the canoe into the water. Giggling, Arasuwe's second wife, Ritimi, and I climbed inside. Afraid to upset the tublike craft, I did not dare move from my crouching position. Arasuwe maneuvered the canoe with a pole into the middle of the river.

With their backs turned to their mother-in-law, the two young men sat as far away from her as they could. I wondered why Arasuwe had brought them at all. It was considered incestuous for a man to be familiar with his wife's mother, especially if the woman was still sexually active. Men usually avoided their mothers-in-law altogether, to the extent that they did not even look at them. And under no circumstances did they say their names aloud.

The current seized us, carrying us swiftly down the gurgling, muddy river. There were stretches when the waters were calm, reflecting the trees on either side of the bank with exaggerated intensity. Gazing at the mirrored leaves, I had the feeling we were ripping through an intricately laced veil. The forest was silent. From time to time we caught sight of a bird gliding across the sky. Without flapping its wings, it seemed to be flying asleep. The ride was over all too soon. Arasuwe beached the canoe in the sand amidst black basalt rocks.

"Now we have to walk," he said, looking at the dark forest ascending in front of us.

"What about the canoe?" I asked. "We should turn it upside down so the afternoon rain won't fill it with water."

Arasuwe scratched his head, then burst into laughter. He had mentioned on different occasions that I was far too opinionated- not necessarily because I was a woman, but because I was young. Old people, regardless of sex, were respected and held in esteem. Their advice was sought and followed. It was the young ones who were discouraged from voicing their judgments. "We will not use the boat to get back," Arasuwe said. "It's too hard to pole upriver."

"Who is going to take it back to the shahonof" I could not help asking, afraid we would have to carry it.

"No one," he assured me. "The boat is only good for going downstream." Grinning, Arasuwe turned the canoe upside down. "Maybe someone else will need it to go farther downriver."

It felt good to move my cramped legs. We walked silently through the wet, marshy forest. Matuwe was in front of me. He was thin and long legged. His quiver hung so low on his back that it bumped back and forth on his buttocks. I began to whistle a little tune. Matuwe turned around. His scowling face made me giggle. I had the overwhelming temptation to poke his buttocks with the quiver, but controlled my impulse. "Don't you like your mother-in-law?" I asked, unable to refrain myself from teasing him.

Grinning shyly, Matuwe blushed at my impudence for having spoken Arasuwe's wife's name aloud in front of him. "Don't you know that a man cannot look at, talk to, or be near his mother-in-law?"

His stricken tone made me feel guilty for having teased him. "I didn't know," I lied.

Upon arriving at the site, Ritimi assured me that it was the same abandoned garden she and Tutemi had taken me to after our first encounter in the forest. I did not recognize the place. It was so overgrown with weeds, I had a hard time finding the temporary shelters I knew to stand around the plantain trees.

Slashing the weeds with their machetes, the men looked for the fallen palm tree trunks. After uncovering them, they dug out the decaying pith, then broke it open with their bare hands. Ritimi and Arasuwe's wife shrieked ecstatically as they saw the wriggling grubs, some as big as Ping-Pong balls. Squatting beside the men, they helped bite off each larva's head, pulling it away together with the intestines. The white torsos were collected in pishaansi leaves. Whenever Ritimi damaged a grub, which she did quite often, she ate it raw on the spot, smacking her lips in approval.

Despite their mocking pleas that I help them prepare the grubs, I could not bring myself to touch the squirming blobs, let alone to bite off their heads. Borrowing Matuwe's machete, I cut down banana fronds with which to cover the roofs of the badly weathered shelters.

Arasuwe called me as soon as some of the larvae were roasting on the fire. "Eat it," he urged, pushing one of the bundles in front of me. "You need the fat- you haven't had enough lately. That's why you have diarrhea," he added in a tone that begged no argument.

I grinned sheepishly. With a resoluteness I did not feel, I opened the tightly bound package. The shrunken, whitish grubs were swimming in fat; they smelled like burnt bacon. Watching the others, I first licked the pishaansi leaf, then carefully popped a grub into my mouth. It tasted wonderfully similar to the burned gristly fat around a New York steak.

At dusk, soon after we had settled into one of the repaired huts, Arasuwe announced in a solemn tone that we had to return to the shabono.

"You want to travel at night?" Matuwe asked incredulously. "What about the roots we wanted to dig up in the morning?"

"We cannot stay here," Arasuwe reiterated. "I can feel it in my legs that something is about to happen at the shabono." Closing his eyes, he swung his head to and fro as if the slow, rhythmic movement could provide him with an answer as to what he should do. "We have to reach the shabono by dawn," he said determinedly.

Ritimi distributed among our baskets the nearly forty pounds of grubs the men had recovered from the decaying palm trunks, placing the smallest amount into mine. Arasuwe and his two sons-in-law took the half-burned logs from the fire, then we set out in single file. To keep the makeshift torches glowing, the men blew on them periodically, dispersing a shower of sparks amidst the damp shadows.

At times the almost full moon cut through the leaves, casting an eerie, bluish-green light on the path. The tall tree trunks stood like columns of smoke dissolving in the humid air, as if intent on eluding the embrace of vines and parasitic growths hanging across space. Only the trees' crowns were perfectly outlined against the moving clouds.

Arasuwe stopped often, cocking his ear to the slightest sound, his eyes darting back and forth in the darkness. He breathed deeply, dilating his nostrils, as if he could detect something besides the smell of wetness and decay. When he looked at us women, his eyes appeared anxious. I wondered if the memories of raids, ambushes, and God knows what other dangers rushed through his mind. But I did not dwell for too long on the headman's worried expression. I was too concerned in making sure the exposed roots of the giant ceibas were not bulging anacondas digesting a tapir or a peccary.

Arasuwe waded into a shallow river. He cupped his hand behind his ear as if trying to catch the faintest sound. Ritimi whispered that her father was listening to the echoes of the current, to the murmur of the spirits that knew of the dangers lying ahead. Arasuwe placed his hands on the surface of the water, and for a moment held the reflected image of the moon.

As we walked on, the moon faded into a misty, barely discernible image. I wondered if the lonely clouds traversing the sky were trying to keep abreast of us in their journey toward morning. Little by little, the calls of monkeys and birds faded, the night breeze ceased, and I knew dawn was not far away.

We arrived at the shabono at that time of still indeterminate grayness when it is no longer night and not yet morning. Many of the Iticoteri were still asleep. Those who were up greeted us, surprised to see us back so soon.

Relieved that Arasuwe's fears had been unfounded, I lay down in my hammock.

I was awakened abruptly when Xotomi sat beside me. "Eat this quickly," she urged, handing me a baked plantain. "Yesterday I saw the kind of fish you and I like best." Without waiting to hear whether or not I was too tired to go, she handed me my small bow and short arrows. The thought of eating fish instead of grubs quickly dispelled my fatigue.

"I want to come too," little Sisiwe said, following us. We headed upriver, where the waters formed wide pools. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird or frog could be heard.

Squatting on a rock, we watched the early rays of the sun filter through the mist-enshrouded canopy of leaves. As if strained through a gauzy veil, the faint rays lit the dark waters of the pool.

"I heard something," little Sisiwe whispered, holding on to my arm. "I heard a branch snap."

"I heard it too," Xotomi said softly.

I was sure it was not an animal but the unmistakable sound of a human who steps with caution, then stops at the noise he has made.

"There he is," Sisiwe shouted, pointing across the river. "It's the enemy," he added, then fled toward the shabono.

Grabbing my arm, Xotomi pulled me to the side. I turned around. All I saw were the dewy ferns on the opposite bank. At that same instant Xotomi let out a piercing scream. An arrow had hit her in the leg. I dragged her into the bushes by the side of the path, insisting we crawl farther into the thicket until we were hidden completely.

"We will wait here until the Iticoteri come to rescue us," I said, examining her leg.

Xotomi wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "If it's a raid, the men will stay in the shabono to defend the women and children."

"They will come," I said with a confidence I was far from feeling. "Little Sisiwe went for help." The barbed point had pierced through her calf. I broke the arrow, pulled the head from the ghastly wound that was bleeding from both sides, then wrapped my torn underpants around her leg. Blood soaked through the thin cotton instantly. Worried that the arrow might have been poisoned, I carefully undid the makeshift bandage and examined the wound once again to see if the flesh around it was getting dark. Iramamowe had explained to me that a wound caused by a poisoned arrow invariably darkened. "I don't think the arrowhead was smeared with mamiicori," I said.

"Yes. I also noticed," she said, smiling faintly. Leaning her head to one side, she motioned me to be still.

"Do you think there is more than one man?" I whispered when I heard the sound of a twig snapping.

Xotomi looked at me, her eyes wide with fear. "There usually are."

"We can't wait here like frogs," I said, taking my bow and arrows. Quietly, I crawled toward the path. "Show your face, you coward, you monkey! You have shot at a woman!" I yelled in a voice that did not sound like my own. For good measure I added the words I knew an Iticoteri warrior would say: "I will kill you on the spot when I see you!"

No farther than twelve feet from where I stood a blackened face peeked from behind the leaves. His hair was wet. I had an irrational desire to laugh. I was sure he had not taken a bath, but had slipped crossing the river, for the water was only waist high.

I pointed my arrow at him. For an instant I was at a loss as to what to say next. "Drop your weapons on the path," I finally shouted. Then for good measure I added, "My arrows are poisoned with the best mamucori the Iticoteri make. Drop your weapons," I repeated. "I'm aiming at your stomach, right where death lies."

Wide-eyed, as if he were apprehending an apparition, the man stepped out on the trail. He was not much taller than I, but was powerfully built. His bow and arrows were clutched tightly in his hands.

"Drop your weapons on the ground," I repeated, stomping my right foot for emphasis.

With careful slowness, the man placed his bow and arrows on the path in front of him.

"Why did you shoot at my friend?" I asked as I saw Xotomi crawling out to the path.

"I did not want to shoot at her," he said, his eyes fixed on the torn, bloodied makeshift bandage wrapped around Xotomi's leg. "I wanted to shoot at you."

"At me!" I felt helpless in my anger. I opened and closed my mouth repeatedly, unable to utter a single word. When I finally regained my speech, I stammered insult upon insult in all the languages I knew, including Iticoteri, which had the most descriptive profanities of all.

Transfixed, the man stood in front of me, seemingly more surprised by my foul language than at the arrow I still held pointed at him. Neither one of us noticed Arasuwe and Etewa approach.

"A Mocototeri coward," Arasuwe said. "I ought to kill you on the spot."

"He wanted to kill me," I said in a cracking voice. I felt all my courage melt away, leaving me shaking. "He shot Xotomi in the leg."

"I didn't want to kill you," the Mocototeri said, eyeing me supplicantly. "I only wanted to hit your leg so as to prevent you from running away." He turned to Arasuwe. "You can be assured of my good intentions; my arrows are not poisoned." He looked at Xotomi. "I hit you accidentally when you dragged the white girl away," he mumbled, as if not fully accepting that he had missed.

"How many more of you are here?" Arasuwe asked, squatting beside his daughter. Not for a moment did he take his eyes from the Mocototeri as he ran his fingers over the wound. "It's not bad," he said, straightening up.

"There are two more." The Mocototeri imitated the call of a bird, and was immediately answered by similar cries. "We wanted to take the white girl with us. Our people want her to stay at our shabono."

"How do you think I could have walked if I was injured?" I asked.

"We would have carried you in a hammock," the man said promptly, smiling at me.

Shortly, two other Mocototeri emerged from the thicket. Grinning, they stared at me, not in the least embarrassed or afraid for having been caught.

"How long have you been here?" Arasuwe asked.

"We have been watching the white girl for several days," one of the men said. "We know she likes to catch frogs with the children." The man smiled broadly as he turned toward me. "There are many frogs around our shabono."

"Why have you waited so long?" Arasuwe asked.

In the frankest manner the man observed that there had always been too many women and children around me. He had hoped to capture me at dawn when I went to relieve myself, for he had heard that I preferred going far into the forest by myself. "But we didn't see her go, not even once."

Grinning, Arasuwe and Etewa looked at me, as if waiting for me to elaborate on the matter. I stared back at them. Since the rains had started, I had noticed a lot more snakes around the usual places set aside for bodily functions, but I was not going to discuss with them where I went instead.

With the same enthusiasm as if he were telling a story, the Mocototeri went on to explain that they had not come to kill any of the Iticoteri, or to abduct any of their women. "All we wanted was to take the white girl with us." The man laughed, then uttered, "Wouldn't it have surprised you and your people if suddenly the white girl had disappeared without leaving a trace?"

Arasuwe conceded that indeed it would have been quite a feat. "But we would have known it was the Mocototeri who had taken her. You were careless enough to leave footprints in the mud. I saw plenty of evidence as I was scouting around the shabono that Mocototeri had been here. Last night I had the certainty something was amiss- that's why I returned so promptly from our trip to the old gardens." Arasuwe paused for a moment, as if giving the three men time for his words to sink in, then declared, "Had you taken the white girl with you, we would have raided your settlement and taken her back, as well as some of your women."

The man who had shot Xotomi in the leg picked up his bow and arrows from the ground. "Today was a good time, I thought. There was only one woman and a child with the white girl." He looked helplessly at me. "But I hit the wrong person. There must be powerful hekuras in your settlement protecting the white girl." He shook his head, as if full of doubt, then fixed his gaze on Arasuwe. "Why does she use a man's weapon? We saw her one morning at the river with the women, shooting fish like a man. We did not know what to think of her. That is why I failed to hit her. I no longer knew what she was."

Arasuwe commanded the three men to walk toward the shabono.

I was overwhelmed with the absurdity of the whole situation. Only the thought that Xotomi had been hurt kept me from laughing, yet a convulsive smile kept rising to my lips. I tried to keep a sober expression but I could feel my mouth twitching. I carried Xotomi piggyback, but she laughed so hard her leg started to bleed again.

"It will be easier if I lean against you," she said. "My leg doesn't hurt too much."

"Are the Mocototeri prisoners?" I asked.

She looked at me uncomprehendingly for an instant, then finally said, "No. Only women are taken captive."

"What will happen to them at the shabonof"

"They will be fed."

"But they are enemies," I said. "They shot you in the leg. They ought to be punished."

Xotomi looked at me, then shook her head as if knowing that it was beyond her to make me understand. She asked me if I would have killed the Mocototeri if he had not dropped his weapons on the ground.

"I would have shot him," I said loud enough for the men to hear. "I would have killed him with my poisoned arrows."

Arasuwe and Etewa glanced back. The stern expression on their faces relaxed into a smile. They knew my arrows were not poisoned. "Yes, she would have shot you," Arasuwe told the Mocototeri. "The white girl is not like our women. Whites kill very fast."

I wondered if I actually would have shot my arrow at the Mocototeri. I certainly would have kicked him in the groin or stomach had he not dropped his bow and arrows. I was aware of the folly of trying to overpower a stronger opponent, but I saw no reason a small person could not startle an unsuspecting assailant with a quick punch or kick. That, I was sure, would have given me enough time to run away. A kick would certainly have shocked the unaware Mocototeri even more than my bow and arrows. That thought gave me much comfort.

Arriving at the shabono, we were met by the Iticoteri men staring at us down the shaft of their drawn arrows. The women and children were hiding inside the huts. Ritimi came running toward me. "I knew you would be fine," she said, helping me carry her half-sister into old Hayama's hut.

Ritimi's grandmother washed Xotorni's leg with warm water, then poured epena powder into the wound. "Don't get out of your hammock," she admonished the girl. "I will get some leaves to wrap around your calf."

Exhausted, I went to rest in my hammock. Hoping to fall asleep, I pulled the sides over me. But I was awakened shortly by Ritimi's laughter. Leaning over me, she covered my face with resounding kisses. "I heard how you scared the Mocototeri."

"Why did only Arasuwe and Etewa come to rescue us?" I asked. "There might have been many Mocototeri men."

"But my father and husband didn't come to rescue you," Ritimi informed me candidly. She made herself comfortable in my hammock, then explained that no one in the shabono had realized I had gone with Xotomi and little Sisiwe to catch fish. It was purely accidental that Arasuwe and Etewa had found Xotomi and myself.

Arasuwe, following his premonitions, had gone to scout the shabono's surroundings upon returning from our night-long trek. Although he suspected that something was amiss, he had not actually known there were Mocototeri outside.

Her father, Ritimi declared, was only performing his headman's duty and checking to see if there was evidence of intruders. It was a task a headman had to perform by himself, for usually no one was willing to accompany him on such a dangerous mission. No one was expected to.

Only lately had I come to realize that although Arasuwe had been introduced to me by Milagros as the headman of the Iticoteri, it was an uncertain title. The powers of a headman were limited. He wore no special insignia to distinguish him from the other men, and all adult males were involved in important decisions. Even if a judgment had been reached, each man was still free to do what he pleased.

Arasuwe's importance stemmed from his kinship following. His brothers, numerous sons, and sons-in-law gave him power and support. As long as his decisions satisfied the people of his shabono, there was little dispute as to his authority.

"How come Etewa was with him?"

"That was totally unforeseen," Ritimi said, laughing. "He was probably returning from a clandestine rendezvous with one of the women of the shabono when he stumbled upon his father-in-law."

"You mean no one would have come to rescue us?" I asked incredulously.

"Once the men know that the enemy is around, they will not purposely go outside. It's too easy to be ambushed."

"But we could have been killed!"

"Women are hardly ever killed," Ritimi stated with utter conviction. "They would have captured you. But our men would have raided the Mocototeri settlement and brought you back," she argued with astounding simplicity, as if it were the most natural course of events.

"But they shot Xotomi's leg." I felt like crying. "They intended to maim me."

"That's only because they didn't know how to capture you," Ritimi said, putting her arms around my neck. "They know how to deal with Indian women. We are easy to abduct. The Mocototeri must have been at their wits' end with you. You should be happy. You are as brave as a warrior. Iramamowe is certain you have special hekuras protecting you, so powerful they even deviated the arrow intended for you into Xotomi's leg."

"What will happen to the Mocototeri?" I asked, looking into Arasuwe's hut. The three men were sitting in hammocks, eating baked plantains as if they were guests. "It is strange how you treat the enemy."

"Strange?" Ritimi looked at me, puzzled. "We treat them right. Didn't they reveal their plan? Arasuwe is glad they didn't succeed." Ritimi mentioned that the three men would probably stay with the Iticoteri for some time- especially if they suspected that there was a good chance their settlement was to be raided by the Iticoteri. The two shabonos had been raiding back and forth for many years- as far back as her grandfather's and great-grandfather's time, and even before.

Ritimi pulled my head toward her and whispered in my ear, "Etewa has been wishing to take revenge on the Mocototeri for a long time."

"Etewa! But he was so happy to go to their feast," I said, bewildered. "I thought he liked them. I know Arasuwe believes they are a treacherous lot- even Iramamowe. But Etewa! I was sure he was delighted to dance and sing at their party."

"I told you once that one doesn't go to a feast only to dance and sing but to find out what other people's plans are," Ritimi whispered. She looked at me anxiously. "Etewa wants his enemy to think that he has no intention of avenging his father."

"Was his father killed by the Mocototeri?"

Ritimi put her hand to my lips. "Let us not talk about it. It's bad luck to mention a person who has been killed in a raid."

"Is there going to be a raid?" I managed to ask before Ritimi pushed a piece of baked plantain in my mouth.

She only smiled at me but did not answer. The thought of a raid made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I had a hard time swallowing the plantain. Somehow I had associated raids with the past. The few times I had asked Milagros about them, he had been vague with his answers. Only now did I wonder if there had been regret in Milagros's voice when he stated that the missionaries had been quite successful in their attempt to put an end to intervillage feuding.

"Is there going to be a raid?" I asked Etewa as he entered the hut.

He looked at me, his face set in a scowl. "That's not a question for a woman to ask."