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In Amazonas - 1998
In Amazonas - 1998
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-18 22:36:03
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www.palkiewicz.com
The landing strip of rolled red earth cut the gloomy green of the jungle in two. It looked like a wound, but it represented the only contact with civilization this outpost on the edge of the world possessed.
The little white Fokker was about to be put to the test once more. The thin, sweaty man who owned it wheeled it calmly round, chewing upon a fat cigar butt, which was half-hidden by his huge bushy moustache.
Nearby, there were two roughly-built brick houses, with roofs of palm fronds and a hole in place of a door. A small group of Indians was loitering around them. The few men smoked in silence with their backs propped up against the walls. The women, dressed in light, coloured material sat weaving rush matting. Nude, filthy children palyed quietly with a few empty milk cans and a rusty old bicycle wheel. Strenge games, without the joyfulness we associate with children. It seemed very unusual to watch Infants moving so slowly, never running with enthusiasm for their games, as if they were little adults.
The pilot started filling a number of jerry cans, sucking upon a tube immersed in a large petrol tank, some distance away from the Fokker. When the petrol arrived, he took the tube from his mouth, spat a mouthful out and then cleaned his mouth with the back of his hand. He then began pouring the petrol into the jerry cans, stopping off every now and again to fetch a bottle of warm beer from underneath the cockpit seat of his aeroplane. He opened the bottles with his teeth.
He was wearing a shirt with a pattern of shocking pink and purple stripes which stuck to him like a second skin. His trousers were, or had once been, white and they tailed off into a pair of huge bell-bottoms without any pretence of fashion. But should anyone bother about fashion hundreds of miles from the nearest town in the heart of the Amazon basin?
I went up to him, eager to talk to the only other man of European
...
See photographs from:
Brazil Gallery
