6th UPDATE
Wednesday 7th April.
We got up in pouring rain, giving us the excuse to start up the day a bit more calmly. We had breakfast at the touchau’s house (sweet coffee and bakes, delicious Guyanese fried flour buns) and soon afterwards we walked around the village to film a variety of Amerindian daily life activities.
Some women were processing cassava (the main staple Amerindian food), which is hard and laborious work. Briefly, cassava processing involves grating the cassava tubers on special graters made with wood and thousands of small embedded stones, squeezing the poisonous liquid that is stored in its roots in a matapi (how much the cassava is squeezed depends on whether farine or cassava bread is the intended final product) and parching the resulting pulp on a big fire pan for several hours. Farine is the most commonly used cassava product and it is consumed in stews or spiced and fried, often mixed with meat and shallots. Farine has a cous-cous type of consistency and a fermented and slightly smoked taste. Unfortunately, although it stops hunger for several hours, cassava is nutritionally very poor, providing mainly a source of carbohydrates but lacking in vitamins.
There were also several women separating cotton from its seeds and spinning it with incredible skill and speed. To most of us the process of turning cotton bundles into fine and strong threads remains a sort of magic. The spindles are made by men with land turtle shells. The cotton to make the magnificent Wapishana hammocks is grown in the villages that we are visiting in the south savannahs. The villagers have a long established tradition of growing cotton to make their own hammocks, but many are trying to increase cotton production in order to trade it with the Rupununi Weavers Society. Spun cotton can be traded for cash or goods. Some women explained to me that they prefer goods (such as clothes, kitchen utensils, soap and food stuffs) because their husbands would appropriate the money and spend it on less needed things, often on drink. Elderly women also prefer to be paid in goods because it is difficult for them to travel to Brazil or Lethem in order to buy goods. Women who preferred to be paid in cash mentioned that they like having the choice to buy what they need. The spinning is almost exclusively done by women in between primary domestic activities. All the women involved that I spoke to were very happy to have the opportunity to sell some of their cotton and were hoping that the demand for hammocks would increase, so that they could benefit more extensively from trading cotton.
In the afternoon we went to Meriwau, which is situated in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains. Here we visited Steven Ignacio, the old village touchau, who showed as how he was making a matapi (cassava squeezer). We chatted to some of his family members under the shade of a benab, while one of his daughters was making cassava bread and his grandchildren were observing us with great interest.
Back in Potarinau we spent a relaxing evening and enjoyed a colourful sunset. Some of us lazed around, some were a bit more active: Sharla played volley-ball with a group of kids and Jurgen, who managed to borrow a mountain bike, disappeared for a while. After more farine and beef, we jumped to our ready hanging hammocks, a great relief!
Thursday 8th of April.
Today we left were early in the morning and we were fortunate to witness a bright pink sunrise behind the deep blue Takutu mountains.
At about 8.30 am we arrived in Dadanawa, the largest ranch in the world, after Jason’s attempt to drawn us all. To reach Dadanawa from the north, one has to cross the Rupununi river, a tributary of the Essequibo, one of the main Guyana’s rivers. During the dry season it is possible to drive across the river basin, but during the rainy season one needs to cross on a pontoon. As the rainy season is early this year, the water was quite high. Nevertheless, after crossing the river on foot, Jason decided that Lena could just about make it…Jurgen, Sherwin and Ray opted for crossing on foot, Sharla, Terry and I fully trusted Jason and remained in the car. There were a few moments of tension, especially when half way, there was water pouring in right up to our knees, but Jason was right after all: a few minutes later we were safely on the other side of the river, having only lost the car’s front left wing, which had to be rescued from the water.
Dadanawa is reputedly the largest ranch in the world in terms of size. Unlike Karanambo, which has more the feel of an eco-tourism resort, Dadanawa comprises big wooden houses that resemble those of Tom Sawyer’s films and novels: it has much more the feel of a busy working ranch, which it is. There is also a tall windmill which you can easily glimpse from a considerable distance as you approach the ranch on foot. The ranch is a true self-contained community. Surrounded by vast fields where thousands of head of cattle pace and where wild life bursts, sits a compound of wooden buildings which include living accommodation, guest houses, a tannery, a shop, a garage, and barracks where seasonal labour and the families of contracted vaqueiros live. The view from the guest houses is superb and its vastness confers a real sense of calm: large green fields with cattle and horses and the Kanuku mountains at the background. In addition, both at sunrise and sunset, one can admire the most beautiful skies, real living "sky-landscapes". Dadanawa is also remarkable in that its people have a true community spirit, living and working together without class and racial barriers or distinctions. This is yet more remarkable given the long racial and class division that predominates in most of Guyana.
After an invigorating full English breakfast with Brazilian sausages and guava jelly instead of bacon and marmalade, we wondered around the ranch to get a feeling of the place. We visited the tannery, the vaqueiros’ barracks, the garage and the shop. Apart from ensuring adequate provision of goods, one has to make sure that cars and tractors can be repaired if necessary. Surviving in the savannah is not an easy task; people must really know to be self-sufficient and be trained in a variety of skills, including emergency medical aid. There are also well institutionalised savannah rules, based on the motto that one has to help anybody who might need help because one day you will need it too. This natural and consequently social environment makes people forge very close links, as well as being always friendly and open to outsiders. Dadanawa ranch and the Rupununi savannahs are well worth a visit.
In the afternoon, Duane, one of the ranch managers, took us to film the vaqueiros crossing a herd of cattle through the river. This was fascinating, making one feel as part of a wild-west movie! The vaqueiros were incredibly fast at summoning the cows which were heading in different directions and were at first very reluctant to get into the water. At the end, one of the vaqueiros had to go back into the river to put a young calf that had been left behind on his horse (this was a very touching scene). After crossing the cows through the river, we filmed the vaqueiros conducting them to their corral. Once the cattle was enclosed in the corral, one bull was picked to be slaughtered. I felt sorry for the bull, which obviously knew what was awaiting him and resisted so much that the vaqueiros had to struggle hard in order to move it to the slaughter ground. I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to seeing animals being slaughtered, so together with Sharla, I abandoned the scene at this point. The bull was killed by cutting his throat wide open with a big sharp knife. A few minutes later he was dead and about two hours later the vaqueiros had taken off the skin, cleaned the insides of the animal and chopped it into pieces: to do this properly requires an incredible skill.
In the evening we had a delicious dinner: beef stew and fillets, roast potatoes, fried cassava with vegetables and salad. I have to say that although I find it unpleasant to witness a slaughtering, I do eat and like meat. It is cruel, but it is the reality behind every piece of meat that we eat. At least the animals in the savannahs live a good and free life for most of their lives until they are slaughtered, and every single part of them (leather, bones and meat) is used. Ranches are miniature cultures completely based upon cattle and an intimate relationship between the vaqueiros and the animals.
Friday 9th of April.
Early in the morning, while I was working on the reports, the rest of the team went to film the vaqueiros doing various ranching jobs: branding a pair of young calves, castrating a bull and catching cows with lassos.
While waiting for the team to arrive back at the ranch, Kayla, Duane and Sandy’s 11 year old daughter, gave me a complete guided tour around the ranch and showed me all the different animals and pets that they have: a stinking peccary, an ant-eater, a capuchin monkey and a saki-winki or squirrel monkey. Kayla is an amazing girl. She speaks both fluent English and Wapishana and has grown up almost as a Wapishana girl. She rides horses as if she had been born on one and does not have the slightest fear from the animals, even when one of the monkeys was trying to bite her badly!
The team then came back to the ranch and we all went to the tannery, where we filmed Uncle Cyril, the 70 year old vaqueiro that we interviewed at the rodeo. Outside the tannery, drying in the sun, was hanging the skin of the bull that had been slaughtered the day before. A group of vultures were flying around and picking at the meat left on it. Old Cyril was busy arranging finished skins into rolls and tanning new ones. The tanning takes place once the skins have been cleaned, dried in the sun for at least three days, and scraped (in order to remove unwanted fur) with a sharp stick. The skins are then put into a water tank where the bark from different types of bean trees has been soaked for about one month. The water has by then turned red, thus tinting and softening the leather. The skins have to be removed every day, at least once a day. Uncle Cyrel took them out one by one, removed the bark, took this out as well, and then put the skins back into the tank in between layers of the bark. Depending on the skin, the tanning process can take up to two or more weeks.
In the afternoon, we visited Araquai, one of Dadanawa’ s out-stations. The ranch has got a total of 5 out-stations, excluding Dadanawa. An out-station is a paddock which looks after the cattle contained in about 300 to 400 square miles of the ranch’s territory. The normal day of a vaqueiro in an out-station involves getting up early to milk the cows, looking for horses, repairing fences, cutting leaves and fetching firewood. Most of the time, the vaqueiros ride around the out-station to make sure that everything is all right. When something happens, for example a jaguar is around killing cattle or there is rustling, the out-station reports to Dadanawa. The vaqueiro of foreman in charge of the out-station usually lives with his family. During periods of more intensive work, the out-stations may house as many as thirty people.
Back in the ranch, we interviewed Duane, who told us about the history of the ranch, the Rupununi ranching industry and their recent move towards eco-tourism. Dadanawa, aside from its intrinsic interest, offers the visitor the opportunity to explore its surroundings, see wild-life and bird-watching.
After another big and delicious dinner, we all sat together on the veranda, drunk rum punch and talked until late in the evening under a sky bursting with stars.
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