Guest Post: Finding Myself in Seven Weeks: The Sweet Unknown in Oiapoque, Brasil

By Rebecca Pires Serata

Note: This article was written after Rebecca returned from spending seven weeks in the Brazilian amazon, where she worked with a major national park, alongside her uncle, who lives in the region. Here she shares a memoir of the life changing journey.

I feel so blessed, lucky, and grateful. Going to the Amazon, somewhere that I have been dreaming of going since I was 5 years old, was by far the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I am going down a new path and will never be the same. Some trips don’t really change you and don’t help you realize your privilege. Maybe you went somewhere where things are more “advanced”. Going to Oiapoque where people are at such a disadvantage; there are no sidewalks, or public transit, no paved streets, no internet, and low-quality education at all levels: you become truly grateful for everything you have. Every little detail about my life back at home stands out and made me want to take even more advantage of it all. People generally expect the culture shock to be the biggest once you arrive in a new place but coming back was the biggest shock. It honestly took a toll on me, trying to understand how two such different worlds can exist together on this planet, but in reality there are many more than two worlds. Accepting this “new” reality was and still is hard for me. It is strange how somewhere that I have been living for 3 years can become foreign to me.

I am really lucky that I was able to have such an immersive experience. While some people treated me like an outsider it was never in an offensive way, everyone was very generous, humble, and invited me to see into their lives.

I observed urban geography classes and participated in “trabalho de campo” or field trips at the federal university, UNIFAP. My home base was my cousin’s intern’s house in Oiapoque. While I did travel a lot, I lived with Thon and his boyfriend Eduardo which allowed me to attend birthday parties and Spiritism meetings. In spiritism, they believe that inside everyone’s body there is a spirit. They talk and watch videos about the connection with now and the afterlife. I hung out with Thon’s friends from the university at barbecues, watched their dance performances, and visited them at their workplaces. They kept telling me to find a boyfriend and get married so that I wouldn’t have to leave! I would run into my friend’s during my walks in the town. I loved to walk around the town even when it was scorching hot outside, frequently I would walk from ICMBio’s office (Instituto Chico Mendes de Biodversidade) at one end of the town and walk to Thon’s house on the other side of town which in a straight line would take 30 minutes but each time I would take a different route to see all parts of the town.

One evening, Thon and I were going to go out to find something to eat for dinner. We were going to find real food but we realized that most grocery stores or “Miniboxes” close early so we walked down the highway all the way past the bus terminal and down the hill to this beverage store where I bought my first alcoholic drink, a 51 Ice tangerine flavor. They did not card me, which I found amusing. I opened the bottle as I left the store and was walking in public drinking (which you can’t do in the US) in front of the Policia Federal’s office (the PF is equivalent to the FBI). When I finished the bottle we stopped at a minibox and I bought some chocolate wafer cookies and another bottle of 51 Ice in the passionfruit flavor. This was our dinner!

The best part of this trip for me was the week when I went by boat with my cousin Ricardo, the piloting/cooking crew and 5 local indigenous people. We had to leave at 3am when the tide was high so Ricardo, Decio (IEPE), and I slept in the office very close to the Chacara du Rona where we would get a “voadeira” or a motorized canoe to the big boat we would use to get to Vila Velha. I was so excited and it was easy for me to wake up at 2:30am. Getting to the boat we all talked for a bit but soon went to bed in the rooms with bunkbeds. Ricardo and I shared a room but soon in the later morning the rooms warmed up a lot and I was forced to wake. The trip by boat from Oiapoque to Vila Velha took about 17 hours. In the beginning of the trip the non-indigenous Brazilians kind of sat separate from the indigenous people which changed later, thankfully. There wasn’t visible tension but I noticed the separation, just like on my first boat trip with my cousin earlier, the Brazilians and French separated themselves. I think that most Brazilians aren’t too interested in the indigenous people’s cultures. But it was just so much more fun when the “boundaries” were broken!

Once we got to the ocean the water was that beautiful light green-blue water the same I had been dreaming of. I remember saying then that the water was so beautiful I wanted to swim in it but when Ricardo offered to stop the boat but I declined. Later on in the trip I definitely got more comfortable and adventurous! Now I regret not swimming in the ocean. A day after we got to the village we met up with researchers from IEPA and PUC-Rio and had a meeting with the local heads of households to inform them on what we were doing in their community. We explained why we were collecting fish, sediment and taking measurements of mercury levels in the water and air from the “garimpos” illegal goldmines upstream. They were grateful for our presence there and concerned about their family’s health because fish is the largest component of their diets.

During that week I participated in the sediment, water and air group. “Peixe Boi” or Manatee our boat was our home base and everyday when we went on short trips by voadeira to collect sediment in small streams and take measurements of mercury in the air (the measurements were always at dangerous levels). We went in one small stream that would lead to a lake and after some time another canoe with the fish group reached us and we had a little competition about which canoe group was best. They argued that they were the best because they were almost all female but I was in the sediment group so I argued that my group was just as good in that respect. They argued that they had the cacao fruit and water which made them superior, and my group contended that we had a small ice chest with water and coke as well as  cookies, so to us we were clearly the better group. This discussion ended in laughter, which felt magical considering the place we were in was beautiful.

My group took sediment samples of two meters in mud banks in the middle of the river and on the side of rivers where our pilot nearly stepped on a stingray. This scared me, and while it is hard to run in thick mud that goes up to your kneecaps, I ran.

The places we went were far from the Peixe-Boi which allowed us to get to know each other and I had a fun time explaining my vegetarianism to my new friends, and that no, veganism is not the same as vegetarianism. Since there are very few vegetarians in that area of Brazil they didn’t have much experience with people with my eating habits. They didn’t understand the complexity of my reasoning because my problem with eating meat is not killing animals for food. We saw many beautiful birds, river dolphins “boto”, as well as little fish that would jump out of the water right as our voadeira would go by. I saw these fish jump a good 2 feet in the air!

By night we would all congregate on the Peixe-Boi for dinner where we would chat and talk about our day. Although the food wasn’t incredibly exciting due to my vegetarianism, these evenings were so much fun! Edival, who was from Kumenê a village in the indigenous territory Uaça, taught me some Palikur (his native language) and with his help I made a small dictionary translating things like “What’s your name?” from Palikur to English, which in Palikur is, “Mma piy?” He also told me mythical stories from his culture about the relationship between the sun and the moon, which was apparently incestuous. A creation story that almost all of the different ethnic groups in the territory share.

My friend Caviano from Kumarumã told me about this 3-headed snake that came out of the ocean millions of years ago. The snake called Uaça entered into the wilderness at the “Ponta do Mosquito” and formed the river that they all live off of. The existence of smaller rivers that branch off the main river occurred when the snake had babies. The babies went in the direction of the sunset, the size of the river depended on whether she was full or sick. Figure 2 is the story in Portuguese but translations can be found online.

 Figure 2

After hearing this, I wanted to know more about the indigenous cultures in the area. I made friends with all the indigenous people on the boat and that previous gap between the two groups closed. As I expressed interest in them I think they became more comfortable. Caviano taught me how to fish late at night on the boat. He taught me how to distinguish between the female and male “bandeirante” as well as how to take out the fishhook from their mouths in a way that wouldn’t hurt them. As a vegetarian I was concerned about this and while he reassured me that they would be fine, I am still not sure about this. I remember that night I started out by just reeling in the string but I couldn’t even do that without tangling the string into complex knots. He thought it was funny, as him and most others grew up fishing. That night the moon was full and the air was warm, I realized that this was paradise. I couldn’t imagine going back home, it felt worlds away, and in reality it kind of is. They grew up so differently from me but the fact that I was there in their world was something I hadn’t expected from this trip.

We laughed while I tried to translate American pop songs into Portuguese, they all speak Portuguese but at different levels of mastery. Their favorite songs were “Despacito” and “Faded” by Alan Walker. They also listened to lots of songs that were originally in English but covered in Brazilian Portuguese. To me the fact that I was listening to Alan Walker in this super remote area, on this boat with people from places so different from what I knew blew my mind. The impacts of globalization were clear to me. Still today, the fact that I can message my friends in their remote villages (4 hours by boat plus 30 minutes by car) while I am sitting in a tea shop in Davis, CA blows my mind.

My friend Rose from Santa Isabel invited me to her home in the indigenous territory, which was a truly special experience. While I wasn’t able to stay there more than one day and a night I learned a lot.  While I didn’t know much about the indigenous people in Brasil or that territory, I admit that I was not expecting them to have solar panels at their school. I bathed in the river with her two sisters and brother. We hid a canoe under the bridge so when these young girls came to the dock they were confused. They found it and with some struggling, all mounted their canoe and rowed away while splashing each other. A couple girls fell out of the canoe but got back in and made their way to their neighboring aldeia. We found this very amusing and watched them. The water was relatively clear but dark, almost reddish and when a voadeira went by we would prepare ourselves for the waves. What I really liked was that any cultural barriers or differences we might’ve had just didn’t matter; we had a good time. I wanted to be accommodating to their cultural practices so when we went to go bath in the river I had to wear shorts instead of just a bikini bottom.

While they were exceptionally polite to me because I was a guest from far away we chatted quite a bit and when I left they said they hoped I would come back. They were surprised when I told them I was 20 and almost 21, I guess I look a lot younger than I am! They must’ve been around my age and I could picture her 2 middle sisters who I bathed with, biking around the UCD campus. They dressed like any other 20 year-old might. I also walked around and chatted a lot with Rose’s younger sister who must’ve been 11 or 12 years old. In front of Rose’s parent’s house, which was made entirely of planks of wood, there was a large garden although not very structured, contained a huge variety of plants. And Daniella knew everything about each plant; which ones are for food, which one’s are medicinal, and which parts of those plants can kill you and which parts can cure illnesses. I was delightfully surprised and could not keep up at all! She showed me different flowers and picked a hibiscus flower so that I could put it in my hair. Later she gave me seeds to this plant that grew next to the back porch of her home. I still have some with me but unfortunately I have forgotten what illness that the leaves can cure.

My friend Rose had invited me to her village because there was going to be a three day celebration with a lot of dancing for a Catholic saint. I do not know how to dance, and will only make attempts under the influence, but Daniella insisted on showing me her moves. I remember she said that she knew some stuff but that she was still learning. So we went to the upstairs of Rose’s home and found some music on Rose’s phone to dance to. That was a very fun experience but it also felt intimate to me. We smiled and although I was sure I would feel awkward, the non-American side of me showed through a little. She also introduced me to a simple version of tacacá a dish consisting of tucupi which is the liquid from the yucca or manioc root that is made into a hot sauce with other ingredients and cidra, a citrus fruit. It was really spicy but I liked it; we kept chugging water and laughing at each other. When I got acquainted with Rose we were on the boat and she was always joking, but at the aldeia she was much more “motherlike” towards me, probably because she had to keep an eye on her son. She kept reminding me to put the andiroba oil on my body because I was covered in tick bites. The ticks stay in your skin but the oil makes them leave (scratching also does this but it leaves scars of which I have many).

I had bought food for my trip in Oiapoque because I knew that they would not be vegetarian. So I prepared my food alongside them. They seemed very intrigued by what I was eating. I cooked some texturized soy protein, broccoli (which I rarely saw anyone eat during this trip), and couve which is like kale but better. When they had rice and beans I also had some and we all sat down together at their dinner table outside. They generally did all their food preparation like beheading the egrets and plucking their feathers outside though they had a stove for cooking things like porridge and beans.

My last day there I talked to the chief of the village and walking to his home I felt martyr-like. I wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to stay but I didn’t have a good feeling about it. I ended up being right. After that small ordeal we all had lunch and they were eating fried and grilled fish. I decided to try some as I felt that this would by only chance and a symbol of my time there. I took a small piece and I knew all eyes were on me. The idea of eating animal, flesh was so foreign to me. It had been at least four years since I had eaten meat. I struggled to eat it, I wanted to eat it and I did but I kept almost eating it and then putting my fork down. They thought this was hilarious; don’t forget they eat fish basically everyday. I remember that it was tasty but I realized it wasn’t something I needed back in my life.

I remember that while I was waiting for the news I was sitting at the table and when someone would come by we assumed they were coming with news from the “cacique” or chief and I would say, “Okay, bye everyone it was a pleasure to stay here”. They would laugh and later tell someone who hadn’t been there at the moment what I said. To leave from Santa Isabel I had to take a voadeira to Manga another aldeia where I would have to wait for a car that was bringing people in to take me back to Oiapoque. Her parents and Daniella who had been in the town shopping came back while we were waiting so I was able to thank her parents and say goodbye. They gave me hugs and said they were sorry that I had to go but they hoped I would understand that rules are rules. I was sad but I understood.

While I was on the Peixe-Boi I remember Caviano indirectly calling me “branca”, or white, which to me felt so weird because I have never considered myself white to any degree. I realize that their definition is very different, and is probably used to classify anyone who isn’t indigenous, but the fact that during WW2 my family was put in internment camps in Utah because they were Japanese among other things made me feel confused. I remember looking down at my skin and hair which to me was not white and asked something along the lines of, “You think I’m white?” But I was being very literal and after doing some reading on their history I realized just how deep and painful the history between their people and outsiders has been for hundreds and hundreds of years. That being said, while interacting directly with Rose or her nuclear family I never felt unwanted. They were very generous, one thing that really stood out to me was before I went to Santa Isabel I stayed at Rose’s sister’s house in Oiapoque. She was very inviting and since I was going to sleep over I had brought a hammock but she insisted that I should take the big bed she would usually share with her son. I insisted that it didn’t make sense but she laughed and said that, “Just tell people that you are a “gringa” and they will be very generous with you”. I laughed because so far it had been kind of true but I didn’t really want to be seen as a gringa or “white” American. I have always felt mostly Brasileira with varying degrees of Japaneseness and Americaness.

While I could honestly write a whole book about my experience, what I have written just scratches the surface and leaves out so much. Go find somewhere that you feel that you, honestly belong, yet so far outside your comfort zone. It could be closer than a day by plane and another day of driving but no matter what go out of your comfort zone. Different is wonderful and can be very humbling. I can say that because of this trip and the people I met, I am more outgoing, more positive, and more curious about the worlds that I don’t know. I feel drive to make a difference for life on the planet. I feel connected. My priorities are much bigger than me and closer to my heart. I am so grateful that I didn’t take my life when I was 15 because I would have never found my favorite place.