Our first encounter with the Matis made me shake with fear. We had not seen a
single human being for 2½ days when we spotted two canoes ahead. Four Matis
men were paddling across the river in front of us: we had reached the Jaguar
People’s village. I was still in a state of near apoplexy at that first
sight of them as we climbed the mud slope to their community. I heard the
grunting first and looked nervously at my companions. Instinctively, we drew
closer together.
From the forest tree line, at the edge of the village, a human wall of Matis
warriors emerged. Their faces and naked torsos were covered with grey mud.
Wearing some kind of palm leaves around their waists, all of them were
making deep guttural grunts as they stamped their feet, raising dust,
quickly moving towards us. It was so menacing. Eventually we discovered it
was a prehunt ritual called Dance of the Peccary, but I still wonder if it
had been intentionally scary – or simply an indigenous leg-pull.
Living in any of the remote forest communities is extremely difficult for us
outsiders. Used to our sanitised and pampered way of life, it is hard to
imagine a more extraordinary, uncomfortable or unhealthy existence than
theirs. Once they were accustomed to our living among them, I could handle
being constantly stared at and followed, even going into the forest to
defecate. I could deal with 20 or more Matis in the hut sifting through our
bags and cases. But I never came to terms with the black fly. Despite the
constant village din during the daytime, mainly from women screaming at men
and the incessant barking of dogs, if you closed your eyes and just
listened, one sound emerged above all others: hands slapping flesh.
Wherever you stop along the river, the dreadful things descend upon you
immediately and suck your blood. This would not be so bad if their bites
didn’t leave the most dreadful itch you can imagine. The only time I ever
witnessed humour regarding the fly was when Makur, a hunter, was bitten on
his penis and misjudged a swipe with his hand. His painful expletives
reduced everyone within earshot to tears of laughter.
All men are hunters, until they become too old. From the time they learn to
walk, boys carry miniature bows and arrows. They are toys with a vital
purpose, and only the boys use them. Makur was one of the Matis’s most
respected hunters and, for some unfathomable reason, he took a curious
interest in my camera and me. Gone was the initial wariness and reticence
when he led me into the molluca, or communal hut, five days after our
arrival, to show me his preparations for the hunt ahead.
Twenty-three families lived in it, each with their own patch for their
hammocks and a fire. Smoke constantly drifted up into the roof, blackening
the thatch and slowly seeping away. The air was thick and caught the back of
my throat. It was too dark to see until our eyes adjusted, and then we could
make out people, their faces decorated like cats, staring at us from the
shadows.
Just inside the small entrance, two men were whittling blow darts from
palm-frond spines. Makur squatted next to them. He picked up a small gourd
and, using a little stick, scraped some thick, black, tar-like substance
from it. On a small wooden dish he mixed it with a few drops of river water
and stirred it into a paste. This was curare, the toxic substance they paint
their darts and arrowheads with.
Curare (Curarea toxifera) is made from the bark of a vine. It’s a powerful
muscle relaxant that can drop a heavy monkey from the treetops in seconds.
First knowledge of it came to Europe from Sir Walter Raleigh, who brought
news of its existence to Elizabeth I. During the 19th century, various
experiments were carried out using curare, and at the turn of the 20th
century, Rudolf Boehm, of Leipzig University, produced curarin, the
synthetic equivalent commonly used as an anaesthetic worldwide today. I
often wonder what other medical miracles exist in the forest – or, because
of man’s stupidity and greed, have been lost before we have even had a
chance to discover them.
The whole community was becoming excited by the prospect of the hunt. They
knew that in a few days the men would return with a lot of fresh meat – a
vital boost of protein for them. Even the smallest children were more
animated than usual, running about mimicking the hunters firing bows or
using blowpipes.
During our first week there, all of our food supplies had been taken. This
presented us with a serious concern, as we would have to rely on our hosts
for provisions. Our foreign digestive systems are, compared with the Matis,
delicate and prone to bacterial infections, while they, of course, have
resistance. Now, it seemed, the approaching hunt was going to be as
important to us as it would be for them.
At dawn on the day the men were to leave for the hunt, Makur and two women
were sitting outside the side entrance to the communal hut. Between them,
some smouldering fire embers were being fanned, as a man arrived and handed
a huge, bright-green tree frog to Makur. The previous year we had filmed
this wonderfully large nocturnal frog, as big as my hand, mating in the
forest next to our camp. Its common name is the monkey frog (Phyllomedusa
bicolor).
The chorus of the males as they try to attract a female is a very impressive
sound in the dead of night.
Makur had put four short sticks into the ground at the corner of a tiny
smoking fire. He used strips of palm leaf to secure the frog’s limbs, which
he then gently stretched out and tied to the sticks. The frog began to ooze
a thick, whitish liquid from its skin – a highly toxic defence mechanism.
One woman gently scraped the toxin off and put it on a small piece of wood,
while her companion concentrated on burning the end of a stick in the fire.
As the frog was untied and released – seemingly none the worse for its ordeal
– the stick was pulled out of the fire. The woman blew on the end,
extinguishing the flame, and then stabbed Makur in his bicep with it. He
winced and uttered something, but smiled at me. The two women hooted with
laughter.
One of them dabbed a drop of the frog toxin onto the open wound. The same was
done to the second man, who had provided the frog. Within seconds, both
looked pale and ill. Several women now arrived carrying huge pots of water
from the river. As they continually doused the men with water, to keep their
body temperature down, Makur and the other man started projectile vomiting.
Thirty minutes later they were moaning, retching and unable to stand. One
hour later they sat in a trance-like state, eyes unfocused and staring
wildly.
Bina, the Matis chief, explained to me that this ritual was to clear the
hunters’ bodies and minds of food and liquid, which would sharpen their
physical and spiritual senses while they hunted. In this heightened state of
awareness, they would be much more alert to prey and danger. It was at times
like this that I used to realise just how fundamentally different two human
beings could be. Although Makur and I were a similar age and, in one sense,
lived in the same world, we might as well have come from different planets.
Makur was going out to get food from his forest, a necessity for him as
normal as brushing my teeth is for me. Yet if we were to swap environments,
he would survive the change, whereas I most certainly would not.
It was always a humbling thought. With the men away hunting, the village
seemed unnaturally quiet. That all changed early one morning, five days
after the men had set out. Children and women ran past us towards the river:
the men were back.
Five canoes were pulled onto the dried mud at the river’s edge and 15 men, all
smiling, came up the hill. They carried eight dead spider and woolly
monkeys, all fully grown adults. The kids touched them as they ran and
skipped alongside the men. Wild pig and deer, a favourite food, had also
been killed and were being carried over the hill, shouldered by young men. A
mood of feast and celebration infected everyone. That night, in the communal
hut, many different families prepared the banquet. It was a gruesome sight
to our eyes. Large bowls were filled with what looked like dead human
babies; primates’ hands and arms protruded from the cloudy, boiling water. I
told Neil that there was no way I could eat spider monkey, but he was so
hungry he would try anything.
That, it turned out, was his downfall. I was suffering from malaria, but Neil
had become seriously ill, with what turned out to be an ulcerated intestine.
I needed to get him to hospital as quickly as possible. Tabatinga was three
days away along the Itui River, and so we organised a boat journey and made
ourselves as comfortable as we could. Frustrated and disappointed after just
two weeks with the Matis, we had to leave.
The river was flanked by tall forest for most of the journey back. Apart from
bird life, there was little else to look at until our second afternoon
afloat. Then our boatman, Didi, pointed to something in the water some 220yd
ahead. “Capybara,” he said confidently. Through the binoculars, I could
already see that he was wrong.
The Itui was about 550yd wide at this point, and the jaguar was only halfway
across. As we approached it, I asked Didi not to get too close, but he
ignored me. The head turned and snarled at us. It was so close I could have
touched it with the paddle. Despite our presence, the jaguar’s powerful
swimming rhythm didn’t change at all. The current bobbed us away from him,
and we watched as he reached the river bank. He clambered into a thick
tangle of branches and then shook the water off himself. He was a big cat;
an adult male can weigh 330lb, and this one must have been close to that. As
we sat in the boat, sick and awestruck, he disappeared into the forest
without so much as a backward glance.
Extracted from Wild Amazon: A Photographer’s Incredible Journey by Nick Gordon
(Evans Mitchell £25). The publisher will donate 50p per book sold to Fauna
and Flora, a conservation organisation
Nick Gordon
One of Britain’s most successful natural-history film-makers and
photographers, Gordon began his career as a news cameraman for the BBC. His
films have been shown in more than 100 countries around the world, and he
has won more than 20 international awards for his photography. He is best
know for his television film Jaguar – Eater of Souls, which was the result
of seven years filming one of the world’s most elusive cats.
In life, Gordon lived dangerously, suffering bouts of malaria, dengue fever
and hepatitis; he was bitten by an alligator and snakes, and was shot at in
Sierra Leone. His illnesses caused a heart weakness that led to his untimely
death in 2004. He was 51.
