Waorani School of Life
Hi all,
These are the notes I made on my one-week trip to the village of Bameno deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, when I had the opportunity to spend time with a few Waorani families. It´s a short blog of only 10 entries, some of them photos only. I´d love to receive your comments, so if you were going to post some on the bottom of each entry, please do!
[Note added after the conclusion of this blog:
If you don´t have a lot of time to spend on reading this blog, I think you should go to the last entry of this short blog "The Explorer and the Giant Otter", because for me, it is the most beautiful and important story that I noted down during my time in Bameno. Otherwise you are going to miss it, since it is in the end. If you want to go directly to this entry, hit this link:
http://anguaatyasuni.livejournal.com/3257.html ]
If you google Waorani or Huaorani, you get a glimpse of the extraordinary situation of their tribe. In short: after refusing contact with civilization since the 1950s and several violent (and fatal) confrontations with colons, wood and oil exploiters and even missionaires, the Waorani of Bameno have decided a few years ago that tourism would be a good way to promote their most important objective, the protection of their rain forest, especially the Yasuni National Park, in the East of Ecuador deep in the Amazon jungle.
Numa, our guide, had it all organized perfectly, he brought tents, he brought wonderful Maria from Coca to cook not only for us 3 participants, but always for all village inhabitants that were around at that moment, and he was the contact with Penti Baihua, spokesperson of the Waorani of Yasuni, and co-organizor of our trip.
But instead of focusing on the logistics on the trip, I want to share mostly opinions expressed by tribe members that I met. Since I am writing this down after the trip (no Internet, phone or cell phone networks that deep in the Amazon of course, things might not be in a chronological order. But everything was lived and noted down between August 11 and 17, 2010.
Loading the boat
First day of canoeing
Our travel companions - going back home to Bameno.