Asakiyume mita

It was a peak linguistic delight to listen to a presentation, given in Portuguese by a charismatic Colombian researcher named Mayra Ricardo Zuluaga, on a film she and a Tikuna scholar (meaning, in this case, a scholar who is Tikuna) named Sandra Fernández Sebastián had made about huito (in Tikuna, é), the fruit that's so important in Tikuna culture. It makes a deep, blue-black dye, and painting this on you confers protection and blessings. It's used on babies for this purpose, and in coming-of-age ceremonies and at other important events. (And/but it can be given more casually, too: I got to grate huito, squeeze the pulp, and dye my hands with it.) The film was in Spanish, with some phrases in Tikuna.

huito/é (screenshot from the film)


grated huito/é (my own photo)


I really loved both the film (which you can see here) and Mayra's talk (which you can see here). Mayra describes going to meet Sandra with all the focus of someone educated in the European-heritage way, and Sandra got her to slow. down. The two spent time together, got to know each other, and Mayra got to learn in a different way. "Reading for the Magütá (autonym for Tikuna) doesn't begin with books, it begins with the body," she said, and "a child reads the threads of the forest."

reading the threads of the forest (screenshot from the film)


And Sandra says about maintaining the Magütá/Tikuna language, "If one doesn't talk the language, well, one loses the land,** because our mother tongue is the way we communicate with those spirits who don't speak Spanish."

Sandra harvesting huito/é (screenshot from the film)


I found a PDF made in conjunction with the film which contained contact information, so I sent a thank-you email to the two creators, and Mayra wrote back! And she linked me to more language-learning materials, records from an online class offered a couple of years ago by a French researcher. Who of course conducts the class in French! I had laugh (and thank my lucky stars I learned French in high school). A bouquet of languages to learn another language.

The butterfly is a blue morpho--if it opened up its wings, you would see the brilliant blue. And the pink wall is one wall of the Museo Etnográfico in Leticia. (screenshot from the film)


...In the European-heritage way of learning things. While meanwhile, with my friend and tutor in Leticia, we go slow, and I learn through friendly conversation. We're a continent apart, so we're not walking together, but we ask each other, "What are you doing right now?" "Numa, tacu tai cu u?" (there should be bunches of diacritics on those vowels, but my teacher is pretty haphazard about them, and I'm not sure with my ears about what they represent, so... ) or "What are you cooking?" "Tacu tai cui feim?" And then we answer each other, and we get a big laugh if we're cooking the same thing, which has happened.

**she says "territorio," but she's meaning everything that goes with territory/land: connection, sense of self, tradition, way of living.

This is one thing I want to go back to the Amazon for: to join in in this (if there was a community that wouldn't mind that). The screenshots here are taken from a gorgeous 21-minute video made by the Department of Intangible Heritage of Peru's Ministry of Culture (the Tikuna/Ticuna/Magüta people's ancestral lands encompass portions of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil).

Here's a link to that video: Uí, preparación y vigencia de la fariña entre los ticuna

It starts by situating us in relation to the forest, to the trees and plants. An anthropologist says that for the Tikuna, "plants are the beings that possess all knowledge ... they are the most intelligent beings there are." I like it better when people are allowed to speak for themselves, and fortunately that's the case in the rest of the film. But I like this idea, and at least I could feel warmth and respect from this woman toward the Tikuna, and toward their respect for plants.

( screenshots of the flooded forest and a solo tree against the clouds )

It starts in a field, digging up the cassava tubers. You can see what the cassava plant looks like on the right, and you can get a sense of how big those tubers are! Coincidentally, in the story by Nando I'm currently (very slowly) translating from Tetun, a husband and wife are digging up a kind of yam, and it's a lot of work, and looking at this video, I can see the how and why of that.



Some peeling happens right out in the field. I took this screenshot because I was admiring the little kid, who, though it's not clear in the picture, is wielding a knife of his own: helping!



And I liked this image of everyone coming back to the community with the tubers they'd dug up because of the boy playing the drum and cradling a tuber like a phone between his shoulder and head.



Half of the peeled cassava is left in water to "ripen," and the other half is immediately grated (and then left to ripen... both portions are going to be mixed together in the end, and it all ends up grated, so I'm not understanding this step, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it).

In the community where this video was made, they have a machine for grating the cassava:





(Some cassava is also pounded. Again, not clear on how this figures in to the process. I thought I was understanding the Spanish fairly well, but I could have missed something.)
( strong arms )

The video also shows women making the sieves that will be used to strain the grated cassava, and also making the tipiti, a long, woven tube into which the grated cassava is packed.



Once the cassava's packed, the tipiti is hung from a tree and a heavy stick is inserted at the bottom of the tube. Then someone sits on it, and the tube contracts and the moisture is squeezed out of the mash!



The person speaking says if you don't want to sit on the stick, you can just use one that's very heavy that'll do the squeezing for you.

And beneath the cut you can see the mash coming out of the tipiti and being strained:

( three photos )

Next comes toasting it. You start early in the morning and go through into the afternoon, or even, if you want, to the following day:



"If there's no fish, there's fariña. What's important is to never lose the cultivation of cassava because in it is the people's way of life,” says one man.



( two photos of fariña in meals )

¡Gracias por acompañarme en esta história de fariña!

When we were in Letícia, I bought a bar of soap (and a beautiful green plastic bucket) to wash out socks and underwear and things. The soap was just a bar of Dove soap, but it's not soap I buy at home, so the scent was new to me, and so it became the scent of vacation, a scent of Letícia. We brought it home with us (along with the bucket), and every time I use it, the scent takes me back there.

Now, though, it's mooshed together with some fragments of old soap. Familiar everyday soap fragrance and faraway holiday soap fragrance, mixed together. It feels like the perfect symbol for how all the intense, striking, unique experiences of the trip smoosh together with the rest of my past experiences, and with what I'm thinking and feeling and doing right now.

So for example I brought home roasted, coarsely ground cassava (Manihot esculenta, aka manioc, aka, in Spanish, yuca, sometimes spelled yucca, but not to be confused with this plant, which is not cassava)...



because we had had some in a Tikuna/Magüta meal, and it was very tasty...



And now I cook it like couscous or with rice and serve it with stir fry or omelets. I haven't found a way to cook it that preserves its crunch and yet doesn't threaten to break our teeth (the meal we were served managed that trick).

(A little extra about the ground, roasted cassava: it's sold in plastic bags thicker than my arm. In this picture you can see piles of the plastic bags stacked on a wooden crate, and you can see raw cassava stacked like kindling by the blue striped bag. There are two sorts of cassava: sweet, which you can just cook and eat, and bitter, which needs lots of processing to get out the cyanide. All cassava has cyanide in it--sorry, I should say "cyanogenic glycosides"--but the sweet cassava has less and it disappears with cooking. The bitter needs more processing, and that's what they grow in the Amazon. You soak it and dry it and roast it and grind it. It can take days. I love that it's grown locally, processed locally, and sold and bought locally--except when someone like me buys a bag and carries it home.)



(Here's a photo from my guides' website, showing it being roasted.)

I promised wayfaringwordhack some pictures of the giant water lilies. My husband-and-wife guide team told me they are bigger during the rainy season, but they were fine and big! They were originally called Victoria regia but apparently now are called Victoria amazonica:



Unfortunately there's nothing for scale, but this one, from my guides' website, shows their son supported by one (he seems like he's ready to be done with the experience at this point).

ETA: How much weight can a leaf hold? About 30 kg, if it's well distributed! And in comments I thought of other things I wanted to share (read here)

I have a new story out: "New Day Dawning."

A novel cyanobacterium is threatening ocean fish stocks, and Winna and Tomás are at an international conference convened to address the problem. Also at the conference is Káurë New Day, a participant from the Solimões Sodality whose presence warrants an FAQ and causes some strife.

Káurë New Day is named after Cacicus cela, called káurë in the Magüta language, and photographed here by Flickr user Francisco Piedrahita.



It's a pretty bird!

"Magüta" is an autonym for the people more commonly known to outsiders as the Tikuna or Ticuna. I am very excited to be--God willing--traveling to their ancestral lands in a few weeks, and I've been in contact with a Magüta tour guide who offers walks where you get to learn about plants and things. ... I may have overwhelmed him with a firehose of too much English and enthusiasm, but if I do get to meet up with him, I will be sure to write about it.

Here's that story link again ;-) "New Day Dawning"