Fauna in the field

When you're living in the Bolivian Amazon among a population that uses hunting as one of its primary modes of livelihood, you come upon some pretty awesome animals in your daily life. When Tsimane' go hunting, usually in the old-growth forest (which depending on the community and how far away it is from San Borja can be 1 hour or more than 5 hours away on foot), the main objective is to kill one of a variety of small animals for protein. However, many times, depending on the size of the animal and how much success they've had during the hunt, they will catch the animals and bring them back to the community. Many of the animals become somewhat domesticated with the Tsimane' feeding them and letting them grow before being eaten.

Here is a Wasu - or a forest deer. Vicente, one of the translators, picked up this deer and said "Bambi" while we were in one of the communities upriver.

Many Tsimane' come upon monkeys in the old-growth forest and will catch the babies and then raise them as pets for several years. Agustina in Campo Bello had caught this monkey.

Last summer when Asher was in Campo Bello, he was giving his introductory speech to the community, describing his study when one of the families had brought this monkey to the meeting. It caught him a little off guard as the monkey was playing the whole time with the girl's hair (pictured below) while he was giving his speech.

When we visited the family again this summer, the monkey was a year older and still was hanging out (he's 3 and a half years old now). He's really territorial of the family and apparently when they go fishing, he will go into the river and fish as well. We were warned that this monkey will bite, so we gave him some space.

They've since adopted another small, brown monkey (6 months old) that was pictured in our last blog post with Kelly. This one also liked to bite, but we think he was just playing.

Here he is playing with our first guide. He was really curious.

At another one of the families' houses, we encountered what they called a "mono del noche" or a nocturnal monkey. He was Asher's favorite. As Asher moved around, the little guy kept running after him and would stop when Asher stopped. This went on for a good 10 minutes (about the length of Asher's attention span when playing with animals).

He was also very camera friendly.

A few of the families also had Capybaras, who they caught in the pampas. Capybaras - the world's largest rodent (ROUS's) live in the water, but once you bring them to your household, surprisingly, they will hang out with you and not run away.

The kids like to put them on leashes and take them for walks, which the capybaras seem to enjoy as much as cats like going on walks.

The community also had a fair amount of exotic birds. One of the guys in particular had a ton of animals, including a capybara, more chickens and dogs than you could count, cows, and then a few birds. He also had an ostrich-like bird. Asher asked Enrique where he got the ostrich. Enrique told us that his son found an egg, brought it to him, and now he has a giant bird that others in the community joke is his girlfriend. Apparently several of the taxi drivers that come through have offered to buy it from him.

Enrique had so many different animals at his household, including this incredibly ugly bird that we haven't been able to identify. Anyone know what this is?

Several of the families also had parrots that talk.

Finally, here is a wild bird that one of the families found in the old-growth forest (ave del monte) that really loved the camera and people. The bird took an immediate affinity to Kelly.

In our next post, we'll talk about a typical day in our lives in the field. Maybe we'll share some funny stories, including one about a very unfortunate mouse.

First month in the field

We just got back to San Borja from our first three-week+ trip to the field. We spent this month in Campo Bello, a community of about 60 families and 300 people. It’s a large community and is located fairly close to San Borja – just under an hour by taxi in the dry season (right now) and a little further in canoe during the rainy season. Here are our things all packed and ready to go – we’ve got our awesome Lifesaver water filter, our stove and propane tank, buckets for water and washing, solar panels, electronics, and all of our things for sleeping and eating.

When we arrived at the community, there was a community meeting (a reunion) already underway. This gave Asher an opportunity to re-introduce himself to the community (he worked there last summer), introduce Kelly, and talk about his research project. The meeting went well, and people were happy to see that Asher bought a new soccer ball for the community. The children play soccer every day, and the men play on Sundays.

A side note, this ball lasted a week before it was kicked into a stick and punctured. Fortunately, they were able to fix it, so the games continue!

We spent the first day getting our house set up.  We’ll have a post soon chronicling a typical day in the field, so stay tuned, but here’s the house we’re renting plus our solar panels.

The next day, we got on a canoe to visit some of the houses on the other side of the river. The way the community is set up, the main part of the community is almost like a peninsula that the river meanders around. There are also houses on the other side of the river on both sides of the peninsula. As a result, we had to cross the river almost daily. 

Our trusty guide and translator Dino was an expert navigating the river and not tipping the canoe over. 

The nice thing about this community is that there are almost always canoes that you can use – people don’t mind if you borrow it for a bit.

In this part of the Amazon, a lot of the large trees have been cut down for logging so most of the growth is relatively new. This tree was a real site because of its age and size! There were only a few really big trees close to homesteads in the community.

For the first week, we visited each of the houses, verifying the census and introducing ourselves. On some days we were walking 6 to 8 or more miles a day. Some of the sites in between houses were incredible –

There are a lot of interesting pets in the community – some of them we aren’t really sure what they are, definitely a few we’ve never seen before (more on that in a later post). This guy looked familiar though. As we were talking with a family that had two monkeys, the baby monkey decided to come running over toward us. As he came over and was chewing on Asher’s bookbag, he lost interest suddenly and decided that he’d rather hang out with Kelly. He got really quite handsy.

After more than two months in Bolivia, we finally found some homemade chicha – a fermented beverage that the Tsimane make using corn, plantains, and yucca or a mix of those ingredients. While Tsimane’ don’t often share food with non-kin, Tsimane’ widely share chicha to any visitor that stops by a household (sobaqui) that has chicha. Chicha isn’t as common as it was in the past and especially in close communities, they tend to drink it before it has become completely fermented. The individuals drinking the chicha sit often in a circle or on benches and pass around a large tutuma (a gourd made from the fruit of a cresentia tree) and continue to drink until they’re sated, ready to go work in the fields, or they finish the chicha. During one of Asher’s sobaqui’s, a household had some plantain and corn mixed chicha. After Asher sat down, he was quickly offered some chicha. They passed the tutuma around and said “cheja shogdye’” (drink the chicha).

Chicha is a very work and time intensive pursuit. There are many steps involved, we’ll post a separate, detailed blog post on all of the steps involved later, but here is a big pot of chicha after it’s been prepared.

People work very hard here – it takes a long time to do things like washing clothes, getting water, taking a bath, and cooking. Often Tsimane’ use their dugout canoes as an extension of their homestead either on the river or on a stream. They sit in the canoe and either wash clothes, themselves, or even gut fish.

Tsimane’ practice swidden, or slash and burn agriculture. This time of year, the men are all cutting down the small trees in their chacos (fields) and burning the fields (to enrichen the soil) to get ready to plant again (plantains, corn, yucca, rice) before the rainy season starts in November.

The people in the community were incredibly welcoming – we’re picking up a little Tsimane, and they smile when we try to use it.  We spent the second half of our time in the community doing interviews and participant observation. We’ll write a little more about the data collection and research in an upcoming post as well, but the theme of the interviews was about where people get their water from, their perceptions of water and water quality, hydration, and health. Here’s Asher interviewing one of the men in the community.

The river was really beautiful, especially in the early morning. We often got up really early to enjoy the sunrise.

The trip was productive and a great start to Asher’s dissertation research. It was nice to get out into the jungle, live a little bit differently than we’re used to, and get to know what the rest of the year here will bring.