Achuar Territory - Pumpuentsa, Part I.

I have just returned to Quito from spending the past week in an Achuar community called Pumpuentsa. It is so deep "inside" the Amazon, that the only way to feasibly enter it is to board a Cessna plane and fly 30 minutes south from a small aerospace town called Shell. Yes, it's called Shell because of the company. The airline, Aerotsentsak, is an Achuar-run cooperative that serves as the main form of transportation for people living inside Achuar territory and those coming from "outside." I put quotations around these words because in Ecuadorian Spanish, they refer to going "adentro" (inside) upon entering the Amazon, or spending time "afuera" (outside). While many Achuar people have indeed been outside of the jungle in surrounding urban areas (the closest is the barter town of Puyo), one definitely gets a sense of a permeable border; something akin to a membrane. I don't want to imply at all that these communities are bounded, as so many stereotypes of what indigenous communities are like tend to stem from assumptions that they are somehow "primitive," "untouched," "pure," "care-free to the corruptions and problems of the 'modern' world," but it definitely takes a lot of effort to get into and out of the jungle.

We met with the local government and discussed their priorities and exactly why were were there and what we hoped to do while we were in the community. This program has been around for about a year and a half, working with local community members in workshops that trained people in what's called "Home-based life-saving skills." There was great interest and participation last year in the workshops, except for the fundamental issue was that the last resort always required access to a clinic, hospital, or a reliable form of health care infrastructure. The community is located near a river, which serves as their main source of water. The unfortunate problem is that the water is heavily contaminated with human waste, diapers, cans, batteries, and waste from dead animals. Families do not have latrines, so they eliminate their waste in their gardens. When it rains heavily, the waste washes down the hill. We went to visit the community to do individual family interviews to get people's opinions and perceptions of why the water is contaminated, what it is like to be sick in the community, and how people treat themselves with local plants and healing techniques. We visited about 20 families and learned a great deal about the state of health in the community and how people negotiate illness within and outside the community.

The most common and alarming illness and cause of death in both adults and children (mostly children) is diarrhea. In one month alone, two children died of diarrhea. Many families do not know how to prepare oral rehydration solution, or seem to think that giving their child food or water during violent periods of diarrhea will only make things worse. When discussing water contamination, most people do identify water as one direct cause of diarrhea. When asked about whether people treat or boil their water before drinking it, most women say that it takes too much time to boil when they have so many house-related responsibilities, and most men argue that its taste is inferior to that of the river. It is easy for development workers to say "well, you should just boil your water then," but this has so far not convinced people to start boiling water. People often explain away causes of illness due to diarrhea as a result of shamanismo, witchcraft, and/or malaire, all pertaining to the idea of the source of illness as an agentive human force. I'll provide a more in-depth discussion of shamanismo and malaire in an upcoming post...

There will be more soon! There is so much for me to digest and put into coherent and concrete descriptions, so I will be tackling this in chunks.

Be well!