Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
In Amazonas - 1998
In Amazonas - 1998
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-18 22:36:03
Displayed times (last time: )
a Spanish-Yanomami dictionary. The first thing he does when he goes into the jungle to meet the tribes, is to take a pinch of epena powder and inhale it as if it were snuff. The Indians laugh because this powder, which derives from the locust tree, is a powerful hallucinogenic which transports anyone who takes it into a world of heightened sensibility and imagination. It is not, however, habit-forming. It is used by the Indians themselves during religious rituals, being sniffed up a straw to ensure that the drug shoots directly to the brain. The practice is not considered dangerous, however, since the forest provides an antidote which eliminates any negative effect the drug may have. The sensations it provokes can also be terminated by plunging one's head into water.
Nowadays the native population numbers only a few thousand people. The white man's invasion of the Amazon jungle has been slow, but devastating. Violence, massacres, abuse of power and illnesses have slaughtered the Indians. The Indians die of measles, malaria and even the common cold, since they do not have the same genetic make-up as us, and are unable to resist what are, for them, strange new dideases. They must also survive the perils of their own environment. There is often not enough to eat, three are more than 50 types of poisonous snakes, insects whose bites provoke infections and disease and fierce inter-tribal wars, fought using darts tipped with curare. Every now and then they fall victim to big cats. We were told a horrifying story of how a South-American tiger, which is like the Asian one, had ripped apart a child under the eyes of a group of helpless adults. Many children die young, there are almost no old people and the average life span reamins very low.
Walking around Puerto Ayacucho, I noticed something which my mind at first refused to register: a barefooted Indian of the Panare tribe wearing a loin cloth with a bow and a quiver of arrows slung over his back,
...
See photographs from:
Brazil Gallery
