Version 2007.02.13

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

### Chapter 12

The sun had barely taken the chill off the morning air when we set out with baskets stocked with plantains, calabashes, hammocks, the paraphernalia for decorating ourselves, and the items for trade: thick bundles of undyed cotton yarn, newly fashioned arrowheads, bamboo containers filled with epena and onoto. With their own hammocks slung around their necks, the older children walked close behind their mothers. The men, closing up the rear of each family unit, carried nothing but their bows and arrows.

There were twenty-three of us. For four days we walked silently through the forest at a relaxed pace set by the old people and children. Whenever they became aware of the slightest movement or sound in the thicket, the women stood still, pointing with their chins in the direction of the disturbance. Swiftly the men disappeared in the specified direction. More often than not, they returned with an agouti- a rabbit-like rodent- or a peccary, or a bird, which was cooked as soon as we made camp in the afternoon. The children were forever on the lookout for wild fruit. Their keen eyes would follow the flight of bees until they reached their hives in a hollow tree trunk. While the insects were still in flight, they were able to accurately identify whether they belonged to the stinging or nonstinging variety.

Hayama, Kamosiwe, and several of the old people wrapped strips of the fibrous bast of a tree around their thorax and abdomen. They claimed it restored their energy and made walking easier. I tried it too, but the tightly wrapped bast only gave me a rash.

As we climbed up and down hills, I wondered if it was a different route from the one I had been on with Milagros. There was not a tree, rock, or stretch of river I could recall. Neither did I remember having encountered mosquitoes and other insects hovering above the marshes. Attracted by our sweaty bodies, they buzzed around us with a maddening persistence. I, who had never been bothered by them, could not decide which part of my body to scratch first. My torn T-shirt offered no protection. Even Iramamowe, who initially had been oblivious to their unrelenting bites, occasionally acknowledged the inconvenience by slapping his neck, his arm, or by lifting his leg to scratch his ankle.

Around noon of the fifth day we made camp at the edge of the Mocototeri's gardens. The cleared-out undergrowth made the giant ceibas appear even more monumental than in the forest. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the leaves, illuminating and shadowing the dark ground.

We bathed in the nearby river, where red flowers, suspended from lianas overhanging the water, swayed with sensuous grace to the rhythm of the breeze. Iramamowe and three other young men were the first to don their festive attire and to paint themselves with onoto before heading toward the host's shabono. Iramamowe returned shortly, carrying a basket filled with roasted meat and baked plantains.

"Ohooo, the Mocototeri have so much more," he said, distributing the food among us.

Before the women began to beautify themselves they assisted their men with the pasting of white down on their hair, and tying feathers and monkey fur around their arms and heads. I was given the task of decorating the children's faces and bodies with the prescribed onoto designs.

Our laughter and chatter were interrupted by the shouts of an approaching Mocototeri.

"He looks like a monkey," Ritimi whispered.

I nodded in agreement, barely able to conceal my giggles. The man's short bowed legs and long disproportionate arms seemed even more pronounced as he stood next to Etewa and Iramamowe, who looked imposing with their white down-covered heads, the long multicolored macaw feathers streaming from their armbands, and their bright-red waist belts.

"Our headman wants to start the feast. He wants you to come soon," the Mocototeri said in the same formal high-pitched voice as the man who had come to the shabono to invite us to the feast. "If you take too long to prepare yourselves, there will be no time to talk."

With their heads held high, their chins slightly pushed up, Etewa, Iramamowe, and three young men, also properly painted and decorated, followed the Mocototeri. Although they pretended indifference, the men were aware of the admiring glances of the rest of us as they strutted toward the shabono.

Overcome by last-minute nervousness, the women hurried through the last touches of their toilette, adding a flower or feather here, a dab of onoto there. How they looked was entirely up to the judgment of the others, for there were no mirrors.

Ritimi fastened the waist belt around me, making sure the wide fringe was centered properly. "You're still so thin," she said, touching my breasts, "even though you eat so much. Don't eat today the way you eat at our shabono or the Mocototeri will think we don't give you enough."

I promised to eat very sparingly, then burst into laughter as I remembered that this was the same advice my mother used to give me as a child whenever I was invited to spend the weekend with friends. She too had been embarrassed by my voracious appetite, thinking that people might believe I was not properly fed at home or, worse yet, that they might think I had a tapeworm.

Just before we set out toward the Mocototeri shabono, old Hayama admonished her great-grandchildren, Texoma and Sisiwe, to behave properly. Raising her voice so that the other children who had come with us could also hear her, she stressed how important it was to minimize any chance for the Mocototeri women to criticize them once they had departed. Old Hayama insisted the children try to urinate and defecate for one last time behind the bushes, for once inside the shabono no one would clean up after them or take them outside if they had to go.

Upon reaching the Mocototeri clearing, the men formed a line, holding their weapons vertically to their upraised haughty faces. We stood behind them with the children.

A group of shouting women ran out of the huts as soon as they saw me. I was neither afraid nor repelled as they touched, kissed, and licked my face and body. But Ritimi seemed to have forgotten how the Iticoteri had first greeted me when I arrived at their settlement, for she kept mumbling under her breath that she would have to retrace the onoto designs on my skin.

Holding my arm in a strong grip, one of the Mocototeri women pushed Ritimi aside. "Come with me, white girl," she said.

"No," Ritimi shouted, pulling me closer to her. Her smile did not detract from the sharp angry tone of her voice. "I've brought the white girl for you to look at. No one must take her away from me. We are like each other's shadows. I go where she goes. She goes where I go." Trying to outstare her opponent, Ritimi's eyes held the woman's fixed gaze, daring her to challenge her words.

The woman opened her tobacco-filled mouth in gaping laughter. "If you have brought the white girl to visit, you must let her come into my hut."

Someone from behind the group of women approached us. With arms crossed over his chest, he pushed his hips forward with a little swagger as he came to stand beside me. "I'm the headman of the Mocototeri," he said. As he smiled, his eyes were but two shining slits amidst the red designs of his deeply wrinkled face. "Is the white girl your sister that you protect her so?" he asked Ritimi.

"Yes," she said forcefully. "She is my sister." .

Shaking his head in disbelief, the headman studied me. He seemed totally unimpressed. "I can see that she is white, but she doesn't look like a real white woman," he finally said. "Her feet are bare like ours: She does not wear strange clothes on her body except for this." He pulled at my torn, loose underpants. "Why does she wear this under an Indian waist belt?"

"Pantiis," Ritimi said importantly: She liked the English word better than the Spanish, which she had also learned. "That's what white people call it. She has two more of them. She wears pantiis because she is afraid that spiders at night and centipedes during the day might crawl inside her body."

Nodding as if he understood my fear, the headman touched my short hair, and rubbed his fleshy palm over my shaven tonsure. "It's the color of the young assai palm fronds." He moved his face close to mine until our noses touched. "What strange eyes- they are the color of rain." His scowl disappeared in a smile of delight. "Yes, she must be white; and if you call her sister, then no one will take her away from you," he said to Ritimi.

"How can you call her sister?" the woman who still held my arm asked. There was earnest perplexity written all over her painted face as she gazed at me.

"I call her sister because she is like us," Ritimi said, putting her arm around my waist.

"I want her to come and stay in my hut," the woman said. "I want her to touch my children."

We followed the woman into one of the huts. Bows and arrows were leaning against the sloping roof. Bananas, gourds, and bundles of meat wrapped in leaves were strung from the rafters. Machetes, axes, and an assortment of clubs lay in the corners. The ground was littered with twigs, branches, fruit skins, and shards of earthenware vessels.

Ritimi sat with me in the same cotton hammock. As soon as I had finished the juice made from soaked palm fruit the woman had given me, she placed a small baby in my lap. "Caress him."

Turning and twisting in my arms, the infant almost fell to the ground. And when he stared into my face he began to bawl.

"You better take him," I said, handing the woman the child. "Babies are afraid of me. They first have to get to know me before I can touch them."

"Is that so?" the woman asked, eyeing Ritimi suspiciously as she rocked the baby in her arms.

"Our babies don't scream." Ritimi cast contemptuous glances at the infant. "My own and my father's children even sleep with her in the same hammock."

"I'll call the older children," the woman said, gesturing toward the little girls and boys peeking from behind the bundles of plantains stacked against the sloping roof.

"Don't," I said. I knew that they would be frightened too. "If you force them to come, they too will cry."

"Yes," said one of the women who had followed us into the hut. "The children will sit with the white girl as soon as they see that their mothers are not afraid to touch her palm-fiber hair and pale body."

Several women had gathered around us. Tentatively at first, their hands explored my face, then my neck, arms, breasts, stomach, thighs, knees, calves, toes: There was not a part of me they left unexamined. Whenever they discovered a mosquito bite or a scratch, they spat on it, then rubbed the spot with their thumbs. If the bite was recent, they sucked out the poison.

Although I had become accustomed to Ritimi's, Tutemi's, and the Iticoteri's children's lavish shows of affection, which never lasted more than a moment, I felt uncomfortable under the exploring touch of so many hands on my body. "What are they doing?" I asked, pointing to a group of men squatting outside the hut next to us.

"They are preparing the assai leaves for the dance," said the woman who had placed the baby in my lap. "Do you want to look at that?"

"Yes," I said emphatically, wanting to shift the attention away from myself.

"Does Ritimi have to accompany you everywhere you go?" the woman asked as Ritimi got up from the hammock with me.

"Yes," I said. "Had it not been for her I would not be visiting your shabono. Ritimi has taken care of me since I arrived in the forest."

Ritimi beamed at me. I wished I had expressed words to that effect sooner. Not once during the rest of our stay did any of the Mocototeri women question Ritimi's proprietary manner toward me.

The men outside the hut were separating the still closed, pale yellow leaves of the young assai palm with sharp little sticks. One of the men rose from his squatting position as we approached. Taking the tobacco wad from his mouth, he wiped the dribbling juice from his chin with the back of his hand and held the palm frond over my head. Smiling, he pointed to the fine gold veins in the leaf, barely visible against the light of the setting sun. He touched my hair, replaced the wad in his mouth, and without saying a word, continued separating the leaves.

Fires were lit in the middle of the clearing as soon as it was dark. The Iticoteri men touched off an explosion of wild cheering from their hosts as they lined up, weapons in hand, around the fires. Two at a time, the Iticoteri danced around the clearing, slowing down in front of each hut, so all could admire their attire and their dancing steps.

Etewa and Iramamowe made up the last pair. Shouts reached a higher pitch as they moved in perfectly matched steps. They did not dance around the huts but stayed close to the fires, wheeling and spinning at an ever accelerating speed, their rhythm dictated by the leaping flames. Etewa and Iramamowe stopped abruptly in their tracks, held their bows and arrows vertically next to their faces, then aimed them at the Mocototeri men standing in front of their huts. Laughing uproariously, the two men resumed their dance while the onlookers broke out in exultant, approving shouts.

The Iticoteri men were invited by their hosts to rest in their hammocks. While food was served, a group of Mocototeri burst into the clearing. "Hail, ham, haiiii," they shouted, moving to the clacking of their bows and arrows, to the swishing sound of the fringed, undulating assai palm fronds.

I could hardly make out the dancing figures. At times they seemed fused together, then they leapt apart, fragments of dancing arms, legs, and feet visible from between the swaying palm fronds- black, birdlike silhouettes with giant wings as they moved away from the light of the fires, blazing copper figures, no longer man or bird, as their bodies glistening with sweat glowed in the flames.

"We want to dance with your women," the Mocototeri demanded. When there was no response from the Iticoteri, they jeered. "You are jealous of them. Why don't you let your poor women dance? Don't you remember we let you dance with our women at your feast?"

"Whoever wants to dance with the Mocototeri, may do so," Iramamowe shouted, then admonished the men, "But you will not force any of our women to dance if they don't wish to do so."

"Haii, haiii, haiiii," the men yelled euphorically, welcoming the Iticoteri women as well as their own.

"Don't you want to dance?" I asked Ritimi. "I will go with you."

"No. I don't want to lose you in the crowd," she said. "I don't want anyone to hit you on the head."

"But that was an accident. Besides, the Mocototeri are not dancing with fire logs," I said. "What could they possibly do with palm fronds?"

Ritimi shrugged her shoulders. "My father said the Mocototeri are not to be trusted."

"I thought one only invites one's friends to a feast."

"Enemies too," Ritimi said, giggling. "Feasts are a good time to find out what people are planning to do."

"The Mocototeri are very friendly," I said. "They have fed us very well."

"They feed us well because they don't want anyone to say they are stingy," Ritimi said. "But as my father has told you, you are still ignorant. You obviously don't know what's going on if you think they are friendly." Ritimi patted my head as if I were a child, then continued, "Didn't you notice that our men didn't take epena this afternoon? Haven't you realized how watchful they are?"

I had not noticed, and was tempted to add that I thought the Iticoteri's behavior was not very friendly but remained quiet. After all, as Ritimi had pointed out, I did not understand what was going on. I observed the six Iticoteri men dancing around the fires. They were not moving with their usual abandon and their eyes kept darting back and forth, keenly watching all that went on around them. The rest of the Iticoteri men were not lounging in their host's hammocks but were standing outside the huts.

The dance had lost its enchantment for me. Shadows and voices took on a different mood. The night now seemed packed with an ominous darkness. I began to eat what had been served to me earlier. "This meat tastes bitter," I said, wondering if it was poisoned.

"It's bitter because of the mamucori," Ritimi said casually. "The spot where the poisoned arrow hit the monkey hasn't been washed properly."

I spat out the meat. Not only was I afraid of being poisoned, but I felt nauseous as I remembered the sight of the monkey boiling in the tall aluminum pot, a layer of fat and monkey hairs floating on the surface.

Ritimi put the piece of meat back on my calabash plate. "Eat it," she urged me. "It's good- even the bitter part. Your body will get used to the poison. Don't you know that fathers always give their sons the part where the arrow hit? If they are shot in a raid by a poisoned arrow they won't die because their bodies will be used to the mamucori."

"I'm afraid that before I get hit by a poisoned arrow, I will die from eating poisoned meat."

"No. One doesn't die from eating mamucori," Ritimi assured me. "It has to go through the skin." She took the already chewed piece from my calabash, bit off a chunk, then pushed the remaining half into my gaping mouth. Smiling mockingly, she exchanged her dish with mine. "I don't want you to choke," she said, eating the rest of the cooked monkey breast with exaggerated gusto. Still chewing, she pointed toward the clearing, and asked if I could see the woman with the round face dancing by the fire.

I nodded, but I did not recognize which one she meant. There were about ten women dancing close to the fire. They all had round faces, dark slanted eyes, voluptuous bodies the color of honey in the light of the flames.

"She is the one who had intercourse with Etewa at our feast," Ritimi said. "I've bewitched her already."

"When did you do that?"

"This afternoon," Ritimi said softly, and began to giggle. "I blew the oko-shiki I had collected from my garden on her hammock," she added with satisfaction.

"What if someone else sits in her hammock?"

"It makes no difference. The magic is only meant to harm her," Ritimi assured me.

I had no chance to find out more about the bewitching for at that moment the dancing ceased and the tired, smiling dancers returned to the various huts to rest and eat.

The women who joined us around the hearth were surprised Ritimi and I had not danced. Dancing was as important as painting the body with onoto- it kept one young and happy.

Shortly the headman stepped into the clearing and announced in a thunderous voice, "I want to hear the Iticoteri women sing. Their voices are pleasing to my ears. I want our women to learn their songs."

Giggling, the women nudged each other. "You go, Ritimi," one of Iramamowe's wives said. "Your voice is beautiful."

That was all the encouragement Ritimi needed. "Let's all go together," she said, standing up.

Silence spread over the shabono as we walked out into the clearing with our arms around each other's waists. Facing the headman's hut, Ritimi began to sing in a clear, melodious voice. The songs were very short: The last two lines were repeated as a chorus by the rest of us. The other women sang too, but it was Ritimi's songs, one in particular, that the Mocototeri headman insisted she repeat until his women had learned it.

When the wind blows the palm leaves,

I listen to their melancholy sound with the silent frogs.

High in the sky, the stars are all laughing,

But cry tears of sadness as the clouds cover them.

The headman walked toward us and, addressing me, said, "Now you must sing for us."

"But I don't know any songs," I said, unable to repress my giggles.

"You must know some," the headman insisted. "I've heard stories of how much the whites like to sing. They even have boxes that sing."

In the third grade in Caracas I had been told by the music teacher that besides having a dreadful voice I was also tone deaf. However, Professor Hans, as he expected to be addressed, was not insensitive to my desire to sing. He allowed me to remain in the class provided I stayed in the last row and sang very softly. Professor Hans did not bother much with the required religious and folk songs we were supposed to be learning, but taught us Argentinian tangos from the thirties. I had not forgotten those songs.

Looking at the expectant faces around me, I stepped closer to the fire. I cleared my throat and began to sing, oblivious to the jarring notes escaping my throat. For a moment I felt I was faithfully reproducing the passionate manner in which Professor Hans had sung his tangos. I clutched my hands to my breast, I closed my eyes as if transported with the sadness and tragedy of each line.

My audience was spellbound. The Mocototeri and Iticoteri had come out of their huts to watch my every gesture.

The headman stared at me for a long time, then finally said, "Our women cannot learn to sing in this strange manner."

The men sang next. Each singer stood alone in the middle of the clearing, both hands resting high on his upright bow. Sometimes a friend accompanied the performer: Then the singer rested his arm over his companion's shoulder. One song in particular, sung by a Mocototeri youth, was the favorite of the night.

When a monkey jumps from tree to tree

I shoot it with my arrow.

Only green leaves drop down.

Swirling around, they gather at my feet.

The Iticoteri men did not lie down in their hammocks but talked and sang with their hosts throughout the night. I slept with the women and children in the empty huts around the main entrance of the shabono.

In the morning I stuffed myself with the papayas and pineapples one of the Mocototeri girls had brought for me from her father's garden. Ritimi and I had discovered them earlier on our way into the bush. She had advised me not to ask for the fruit- not because it was not proper, but because the fruit was unripe. But I did not mind their sour taste or even the slight stomachache that followed. I had not eaten familiar fruits for months. Bananas and palm fruit were like vegetables to me.

"You had a wretched voice when you sang," a young man said, squatting next to me. "Ohoo, I didn't understand your song, but it sounded hideous."

Speechless, I glared at him. I did not know whether to laugh or insult him in turn.

Putting her arms around my neck, Ritimi burst into laughter. She looked at me askance, then whispered in my ear, "When you sang I thought the monkey meat had given you a bellyache."

Squatting on the same spot in the clearing where they had started out last night, a group of Iticoteri and Mocototeri men were still talking in the formal, ritualized manner proper to the wayamou. Bartering was a slow, involved affair during which equal importance was given to the items for trading and the exchange of information and gossip.

Close to noon, some Mocototeri women began criticizing their husbands for the items they had exchanged, stating that they needed the machetes, aluminum pots, and cotton hammocks themselves. "Poisoned arrowheads," one of the women shouted angrily. "You could make them yourself if you weren't so lazy." Without paying the slightest attention to the women's remarks, the men continued their hagglings.