From the logbook:
Thursday, February 25
The Yagua people are a healthy lot. They perform some dances for us, but I got the feeling this is done mostly for tourism now. Yagua means red; they paint their faces red from the seed pods of some tree.
I get chosen as a dance partner by a young boy, perhaps 12 years old. Every time we circled around the hut Bob took a picture!
After the dances it was trading time. There was a real feeding frenzy when I brought out my bag of goods, which I collected that morning by going through my suitcase:
T shirt
sleeveless shirt
bandanna
crayons
sewing kit
new towel
new bar of soap
In a heartbeat all were gone and I was clutching a handful of masks, necklaces and dolls, a dazed look on my face. The only thing left was the soap and that I gave away to a woman who needed it for her baby.
Bob traded for some belts, necklaces, and paintings on bark cloth. (Twenty-five years later, we are enjoying this artwork from the Peruvian Amazon.)
As we walked to the boat the kids kept trying for that last minute sale, or trade. Then, on the water, we were surrounded by the boat people with their floating stores, a paparazzi of peddlers, pushing their wares.
“Amiga! Amigo!”
After trading with the Yagua we went to see the artist Francisco Grippa in his studio in Pebas. The first thing he did was to serve us refreshment — locally brewed beer.
Francisco Grippa, artist
His work over the years has been inspired by Cubism, Impressionism, Modern Art. He even had a period of political satire art — The Last Supper with Richard Nixon at the table, was one example.
Afternoon River Dreams
We stopped for swimming and canoeing, near a small settlement on a black water tributary. Children waited in dugout canoes, to take us up the river for a dollar.
A big girl, 9 or 10, in a white dress, her name was Lydia, took Marilyn and me. A young girl of 7 or 8 took Bill, a young boy took Pat; soon the procession of canoes plied up the tributary along the far bank where the current is less.
It was that time of day between afternoon and evening, the time of telling light and moving air and silken water. The children picked flowers for us from the bow of the dugout canoes, brilliant reds and whites, and they taught us to pick up floating seed pods and skip them like stones across the river.
And I see white-haired Bill lying in the back in his dugout, fingers trailing in the water, giggling like a child and I realize I am dreaming. Or maybe we are in heaven or someplace not of this world…
Floating islands of water lettuce and hyacinth, miniature worlds populated by spiders, beetles, visited by butterflies, each a reality of its own, drifting on the current of time.
Copyright Linda Collison; 1999, 2024