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.