Can You Sleep in a Hammock?
And a Few Other Questions that Never Came up in Field Methods Class

Kristine Stenzel

I should warn you at the onset that this is not an academic paper. There won't be any footnotes or a bibliography at the end. It will never be quoted or referenced as 'science,' because what you'll find here is not exactly science, but rather a personal account of how one becomes a scientist-specifically, of how I have come to be (or to be more accurate, am still in the process of becoming) a field researcher.

This 'becoming something' never happens all at once, at least not for me, though I do admit the possibility that there exist people who wake up each and every morning knowing exactly what they want to do and then proceed to do it. But if you're anything at all like I am, life consists of a series of flowerings of different kinds of seeds, planted in earlier experiences, which suddenly begin to grow.

Fieldwork seeds are nourished by input from fantastic teachers and articles you read. Then you talk to someone, and the phrase begins something like: "I hear that there are 3 or 15 or 200 languages spoken in Alabama or Alaska or the Amazon; wouldn't it be interested to study one of them . . . ?" And so it begins, one step leading to another, until one day you find yourself in the middle of a jungle somewhere and you stop to wonder just how it was that you got there.

In my case, the whole process seems very logical. I lived in Brazil for 20 years, returned to the States to get a degree in Linguistics, discovered that the Amazon Basin is one of the most linguistically rich places on the planet and that scores of languages are virtually undescribed and in danger of eminent extinction; so, I decided to study one of them.

The language I study is Wanano. It's a Tucano language spoken by about 1,500 people who live along the Vaupés River in northwestern Brazil where it borders Colombia. I confess that I currently think of Wanano as 'my language' because fieldwork leads to certain proprietal feelings. In fact, I think of the Wanano as 'my Indians' and am pleased to say that they are beginning to think of me as 'their linguist,' though, admittedly, they had far less choice in the matter than I did. But that comes later in the story, and I should really start at the beginning.

Choices

One of the things I am frequently asked is: "How did you come to choose the language you study?" I think it's a perfectly normal question, but in fact, my involvement with Wanano was determined so much more by circumstance and luck than by deliberate selection that, in a way, I feel as though it was the language that chose me.

It all began with a talk I had with David Rood about my interest in studying an Amazonian language, given that there are so many of them (somewhere around 200 - we don't know for sure) plus the fact that I have this long-time association with Brazil (spanning basically all my adult life, and including such things as a husband, in-laws, and an apartment in Rio where my 16-year-old deaf Siamese cat reigns). His response was to give me the name of the person who directs the Linguistics Division of the Museu Goeldi in Belém, Pará, one of the oldest research institutes in Brazil. The Museu coordinates all kinds of environmental and anthropological research on the Amazon, as well as much of the descriptive research done by non-missionary linguists. This linguistic research is under the direction of Dr. Denny Moore, an American who has lived and worked in Brazil for several decades and who received of one of those 'genius' awards (like our own Dan Jurafsky) for his work on indigenous languages. So, I wrote him about my interest in working on an Amazonian language, and include here a few excerpts from our initial correspondence:

12/12/99
Dear Kristine,
. . . Lemme try to explain a little about our program. In spite of being fairly respected and active, we have few people who are actually hired-- only 2, one of whom is not a linguist and is against linguistics. I myself am temporary after 13 years . . . We have a lot of students scattered around the world and work in progress, but we don't have a graduate program. (Nothing is ever easy in Brazil.) Instead we recruit the heavy talents, give them research experience and field guidance, and send them off to the best graduate schools. 17 have gone on to graduate school, 11 of these abroad . . . How often do you get to Brazil? Have you ever been to the forest or worked with indigenous groups? What sort of linguistics are you interested in, and what are your future plans?Thanks for your interest. Amazonian languages are a nifty research area.
Abraços,
Denny

12/26/99
Dear Dr. Moore,
. . . To answer your questions about my field work experience, I wish I could tell you that I have already had lots of it, but in fact I haven't. Although I do have a background in social sciences and did some fieldwork when I was doing graduate work in sociology at IUPERJ, it was in an urban setting and probably didn't prepare me much for the kind of work I hope to do in the future. I have taken a fieldwork course here at the University of Colorado which, although obviously not the real thing, was undoubtedly the most interesting and exciting course I have taken, and I believe revealed that my interestsand talents lie in this area. I have only been to the forest once, as a tourist, so that doesn't qualify me for much either. However, I do feel that my life experiences of living and adapting to different cultures, my social science background, my growing intuition for linguistic research, and my love for all things Brazilian are a good starting point. As for how often I get to Brazil, my husband and I are planning to be there in May-June 2000, and I would like to be very bold and ask if I could visit you in Belem to explore the possibilities of work in this area; as you said, it's pretty nifty, and I agree.Thanks so much again for your attention.
Happy New Year!
Kristine Stenzel

2/8/00
Dear Kristine,
. . . By all means it would be good to see you while you are in Brazil and we can see what might be useful for you . . . There are truckloads of interesting languages in Brazil that have no one working on them. You are in the right place!
Abraços,
Denny

Well, I have to confess that I'm intrigued by anybody who still uses the word nifty, so in June, 2000 I found myself on a plane to Belém to meet Denny. Two friends of mine who were visiting Brazil took the opportunity to travel with me in order to see the Amazon, and we spent our first night in town camping out at Denny's house, they on the living room floor, and I in the guest room. It was on this first night of our visit that Denny asked me:

Can you sleep in a hammock?

Now, I figured this was some kind of test to see if I had jungle survival potential, but it turned out to be just a simple question, given that the only sleeping instrument in the guest room was a hammock, (most of Denny's visitors are Indians). But the question stuck with me and has come to be symbolic of the whole process of becoming a fieldworker. It is a question that hints at changes to life-long and intimate habits. Ultimately, it boils down to: How far are you really willing to stretch your own limits? How far are you prepared to go-emotionally, intellectually, and even physically-in order to do this kind of research?

These were the kinds of questions that dogged me over the three exhilarating and exhausting days I spent with Denny. It was an amazing visit. Denny's energy runs at the same elevated level as his knowledge and he is amazingly focused on work. He literally overwhelmed me with his encyclopedic knowledge of the state of linguistic study of Amazonian languages, giving me so much information that I ended each day with a headache. He also guided me toward a recognition of the kind of locations and languages that might be right for me, instructed me on how to get started, and then basically booted me out the door in the right direction. Through it all, he was extremely helpful and encouraging.

I had told Denny in our correspondence that as much as I was enamoured with the idea of doing descriptive work, I couldn't just go traipsing off into the jungle to do research. There were aspects of my life that I had to take into consideration if I was going to be able to do fieldwork, among them a child and husband I simply wasn't willing to be away from for months at a time. Plus there's the unfortunate fact that I'm no spring chicken anymore and can't do things with my body that folks a couple of decades younger can! In other words, I wanted to do the work, but I was also scared of some of the risks and implications. Denny assured me, though, that there were languages and situations that would fit my lifestyle and that we'd come up with something that would be right for me.

Denny's initial suggestion was that I work on a language with speakers in or around Manaus, the capital city of the state of Amazonas, located a thousand miles upriver from Belém. His reasoning was that Manaus is an easy place to get to, and because it attracts indigenous people from the entire western part of the forest, it would probably be a good place for me to make contacts and find a language with speakers either in town or nearby. It is also part of Amazonia where there are relatively few academic linguists doing descriptive work.

So he sat me in a room with a map of language families and gave me an inventory of languages and estimated numbers of speakers. It was my task to make a list of possibilities, and after a few hours I had come up with at least 25 candidates.

As I read my list back to Denny, he was able to tell me which languages already had linguists working on them and which were still 'available, ' and in the end, we had narrowed down the list to a dozen or so languages. The next step would be to go to Manaus and try to make contact with some of the groups to see which ones might be looking for a linguist. The place to start, he said, was at COIAB, the Council of Indigenous Organizations of Brazilian Amazonia, which has its headquarters in Manaus. Apparently, a good number of the indigenous groups in Brazil have grassroots organizations and want to develop language preservation or revitalization projects, so they're on the lookout for linguists to help them. Well, that sounded great to me-I figured that the more desperate they were, the greater the chance they'd accept me as their linguist! Denny provided me with contact names, telephone numbers, a letter of introduction, a wordlist used by linguists working on Amazonian language, and more general information than I was able to remember or even take note of, and off I went on a plane to Manaus.

The stomach aches I have come to associate with fieldwork started that first week in Manaus. I now know that they have nothing to do with bad water or weird food: they are just what happens whenever I force myself out of my emotional or intellectual comfort zone in some way. Not being exactly an outgoing person, to find myself in a situation like the one I faced in Manaus, where I had to go out and deliberately introduce and sell myself to a bunch of folks, well, it's not exactly my cup of tea. So, every day in Manaus, I'd wake up and start the ritual of getting ready while I stared at the phone, dreading the calls I'd have to make in order to schedule appointments with people, stomach churning all the while. But then I'd muster the nerve to make the calls, and by the time I was headed out the door with my list for the day, my stomach problems were usually fading.

As I look through my notes from that week in Manaus, I see that I spoke with some twenty different people, not only folks from COIAB, but also Indian students from the university, workers from the Catholic Church involved in education projects, researchers from different NGOs, and organizers of specific indigenous projects already underway. I wrote down names, collected books and pamphlets, and kept checking the things I was hearing with the information I had gotten from Denny. There seemed to be several good language possibilities for me and I was encouraged, though nothing concrete had actually been set up.

Then, toward the end of the week, I met a Wanano woman at COIAB who told me that the Wananos wanted very much to know how to read and write their language and that she didn't know of any linguists working on the language. She also indicated that some of the members of her family in Manaus might be willing to do some work as consultants. She told me that her sister, who had a crafts stand in an Indian market close to my hotel, might even be available to do a little work before I left. It seemed to be a breakthrough.

Unfortunately, though I did set up several meetings with the sister, we never managed to do any work. So, when I left Manaus, I was still not really sure if things would work out for me to begin studying Wanano on my next visit, or whether I'd end up opting for another one of the possibilities. But I returned to the States convinced that something would work out; that I'd be able to find a language and do descriptive research in a way I could handle. I had a notebook full of business cards, contacts, and notations. I could see the grapevine starting to grow. It was very exciting.

Then about a month after I got back to Colorado, I got an e-mail from Denny saying that he'd mentioned me to Janet Chernela, an anthropologist who'd worked with the Wananos.

8/9/00
Dear Dr. Chernela,
I am a doctoral student in linguistics at the University of Colorado, and your name was given to me by Denny Moore. I was recently in both Belém (with Denny) and Manaus, trying to make initial contacts for future linguistic field research and I met with some people at COIAB and at CIMI. One of the interesting contacts I made was with a Wanano family, one of whom, Carlota, works at COIAB. Her sister, Maria do Carmo, has an artisan stand downtown, and said that she had met and done some work with you. They both said that as far as they knew, little work had been done on the Wanano language, so I thought it might be an interesting opportunity. I have since found that there is indeed work being done on Wanano by an SIL linguist, Nathan Waltz, in Colombia. In fact, it seems that in terms of Tucano languages, there is much more happening on the Colombian side than the Brazilian side. I'm trying to get a hold of some of his materials, but it's very difficult. As a researcher who has a much greater knowledge of the area than I do, I was wondering what your view on the study of Tucano languages is right now and where you feel someone just starting out would be able to do the most good. I am not "fixed" on any specific language at this point, though I will probably spend next semester studying the structures of Tucano languages in general, to start familiarizing myself with the characteristics of the family. I'm also reading whatever I can get my hands on in terms of anthropological studies (including your book). There are so many possibilities and so much to be done that I feel rather overwhelmed at this point, so any advice or information that you might be able to share would be a great help. I thank you in advance and hope to hear from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Kristine Stenzel

A few days later I received the following incredible message:

8/21/00
Dear Kris,
I just returned from Brazil. The family you met in Manaus are not actually Wanano. The mother of Maria do Carmo and Carlota is herself Wanano and Maria and Carlota speak Wanano as a second language. But you may be quite lucky, as there is a Wanano -- both a speaker and a member of the linguistico-descent group -- living in Colorado. His name is Mateus Cabral. He will most likely be very happy to work with you. His telephone number is . . . . Please let me know if you reach him and how you have decided to proceed. We can speak electronically again after this first step.
Best wishes,
Janet Chernela, ProfessorDept. of Sociology and Anthropology
Florida International University

Well, I've never actually been struck by lightening, but getting that e-mail must be a close approximation. I mean, who could imagine that out of 1,500 speakers (in the highest estimates) of a language spoken in the middle of the Amazon forest, ONE would be living close by in Colorado and would be willing and able to work with me?

It took me a week to call him because the whole thing just seemed too good to be true. I was sure that it couldn't possibly work out-Mateus wouldn't be around anymore, or he wouldn't be interested in the work, or something else would go wrong . . . But when I did finally get up the nerve to call, I found that Mateus was indeed a fluent Wanano speaker, was living nearby in Ft. Lupton, and was quite willing to work with me. I'd won the linguistics lottery.

Mateus and I began meeting right away and have worked together on a regular basis ever since. Despite my inexperience, having direct and constant access to a native speaker provided me with an incredible head start on my research. And, in the process, Mateus and I became both friends and co-investigators, since Mateus is extremely curious about his own language and infinitely patient with me. My debt to him is enormous.

Through Mateus, I began to feel more comfortable with the idea of doing research not in Manaus, but further up the Rio Negro, in a town called São Gabriel da Cachoeira. He assured me there were lots of Wananos living there, including most of his brothers and sisters, and that though remote, São Gabriel was a comfortable and accessible town. He also said that it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, but I figured everybody says that about the place they come from.

So, with help from the Endangered Languages Fund, I set off on a three-week research trip in May/June 2001 to São Gabriel, which is located in the extreme north-western part of the state of Amazonas, about a hundred miles from both the Colombian and Venezuelan borders. I was more than a little nervous about going, I admit. The little town of São Gabriel is a far cry from the big city of Manaus. Still, it is a real town and it seemed a very promising place to do research on Wanano.

Though Mateus didn't know how to contact his brothers and sisters from the states, through other contacts, I managed to set up work in advance with another Wanano man living in São Gabriel. Luckily, I again had a friend, Jenn, who wanted to tag along as a tourist and keep me company when I wasn't working. Our plan was to fly to Manaus and then take a boat to São Gabriel. It's a four-day trip going upriver, but Mateus assured us that the trip was not only beautiful, but also a nice way to ease into the rhythm of life in the Amazon. Plus, it's fun, you get to meet a lot of nice folks, and you get to practice your 'hammock-sleeping' skills since that's how you travel.

It was stomachache time for both Jenn and me the day we left. The day before, we'd managed to locate the captain of the Tanaka, the boat we had been told was the best one to take (meaning that it was the safest, cleanest, had guaranteed edible food, and a good supply of toilet paper). It took us the better part of a day to actually find the boat, since it's not primarily a passenger line and therefore doesn't leave from the port where all the other passenger boats can be found. As it turned out, we learned from the captain that the Tanakas (there are four boats in the fleet) are first and foremost cargo boats, but they do have decks that human travelers can occupy on a first-come-first-hang basis. So, he advised us to arrive early the next day to stake out a good place to put up our hammocks. He assured us that after lunch, say 2 p.m., would be a good time to get there. The boat would leave a couple of hours later.

Like good little gringas, we arrived at the appointed hour, established our territory, and proceeded to wait while truck after truck arrived and unloaded cargo onto the boat. (We later learned that the Tanaka boats carry 240 tons of cargo each way, everything from eggs to crackers to tropical fish to cars!). Over the next few hours people slowly filled up the passenger deck. The projected departure time came and went. By 6 p.m. when the sun went down we had at least 60 neighbors. The boat finally left at about 9 p.m., with Jenn and I each wondering what we'd gotten ourselves into. They served soup as we headed away from the city and everybody climbed into their hammocks and went to sleep.

Now, hammock sleeping may sound easy, but there is, in fact, a science to it. First of all, though you can lounge around length-wise in your hammock, you never sleep all night that way because then your back is curved for too long and it hurts. To sleep, what you have to do is stretch out diagonally so that the cloth is as flat as possible underneath you. Then you sort of fold any leftover hammock edges over your body to make a kind of cocoon. Now, of course, this diagonal occupation takes up quite a lot of space, and how everyone manages to do it when one's hammock neighbors are only about ten inches away is where the science part comes in. I'm still not sure just how it all works out, but somehow it does, though you end up with bodies crisscrossing each other in stacks up to four hammocks high. I swear, though, I never saw anyone fall out nor did I get jammed by knees, elbows or any other pointy body parts in the middle of the night. Tanaka physics at work.

I'm sure that all boat trips in the Amazon share a few common features. It's hot. You spend hours and hours staring at the water or at the margins in hopes of seeing some sort of exotic wildlife. At some point it will rain so hard you think the boat will sink. Our trip of course had all these elements, but it was also nothing short of magical. Take the first morning, for example.

I woke up just after sunrise and when I emerged from my cocoon, Jenn was already awake next to me, her eyes gleaming. "Look," she said and pointed toward the side of the boat. And there it was, not ten feet from the rail-the jungle, all green and lush and painted in the early morning light. It was so beautiful I couldn't breathe. Magic.

Then there was the mirror effect of the waters of the Rio Negro. Unlike the Amazon proper, which has muddy water, the water of the Rio Negro is transparent-tea-colored, but clear. And because we were traveling during the high-water season, it was almost always as smooth as glass. During the day, I'd stare for hours at the margin, then turn my head so that my view was vertical; the effect being that it looked like a long green tower climbing away as far as I could see into the sky. Magic.

Kris on the Tanaka

But the most magical thing of all happened at night, because we were fortunate enough to travel during a new moon. After dinner we'd wait for the sun to go down and then find a spot at the front of the boat where there was only the open water before us. The darker it got, the more stars would appear, both in the sky and reflected in the water below, until it got so dark we couldn't tell where the sky ended and the water began and we felt like we were flying through space.

We arrived in São Gabriel on the fourth day, as scheduled, and found that Mateus was right. São Gabriel has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It must be one of the hottest, too, but what can you expect when you're only 40 miles from the Equator? The town has about 18,000 inhabitants, some 90% of whom are indigenous people who come from the 'areas indígenas' (lands set aside and protected by the government for use by the indigenous populations) that completely surround the town. There are twenty-two languages spoken in São Gabriel, not counting Portuguese!

It's also a place where news apparently travels at the speed of light, because before I could track down Mateus's family, they already knew that I had arrived and were looking for me. In fact, they were waiting for me when I arrived at my consultant's house to begin our work, so suddenly I was in contact with more Wananos than I had anticipated, and was being welcomed as an emissary from someone in their family, not just as an interested outsider.

So, my time in São Gabriel was divided between working with my official consultant, Agostinho Ferraz, a friendly man from whom I learned the valuable lesson that part of the job of a fieldworker is to find the key to working with each individual consultant, and the extra-official work I ended up doing with members of Mateus's family.

Kris and Agostinho Ferraz

It was, undoubtedly, a great trip that far exceeded my expectations. But it was not all a bed of roses. Excerpts from my fieldwork journal reflect the roller-coaster ride of emotions I felt during those weeks:

May 22, 2001 (the first day in SG)
. . . I made contact with Agostinho and he seems like a really nice person. I was so scared to go and look for him, but Jenn went along with me for moral support and after wandering around his neighborhood for a while, we finally managed to locate his house. Once we found him I felt so much better-relieved that he seemed to be such a promising consultant . . . I'm hyped that things are going so well so far.

May 23
. . . I'm feeling a little culture shock, I have to admit, and several times today I just wondered why I'm doing this and how I'm going to be able to pull it off. It seems like such a hard and long path, and I wonder if I'm truly up to it over the long haul. What if I just can't hack it? What if what I'm doing doesn't help anybody but me? I want to do this for the right reasons, but I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark a little.

May 26
An interesting day yesterday. My session working on the text with Agostinho went better in terms of my finally being able to explain that I needed him to tell me what he said in Wanano and then in Portuguese, but, on the other hand, it was pouring rain and there was such a racket from the rain on his metal roof that I could hardly hear what he was saying . . .

May 28
. . . Yesterday I was ready to pack up and head home on the first canoe. Today I think I can stick it out.

May 29
The last two days have been busy and eventful. Yesterday I met Miguel (one of Mateus's brothers) in the morning and we went to talk to Marta, the person who coordinates education projects at ISA - the Socioeconomic Institute. She spent a long time with us, talking about three projects they're involved in, with the Baniwa, the Tariana and the Tuyuca. It was good to hear somebody talking about grassroots projects that can be and are originated and carried out by the Indians, where linguists are consultants but not running the show. I don't want and don't feel it's at all my place to run anybody's show, so I was pleased and relieved to talk with her, and I think it was good for Miguel too. Now he has an idea to get the seven Wanano teachers together at the next teacher training session in July to discuss a project which I can take part in, but don't need to be the mother of. We talked about my coming back in January and perhaps going to the villages. Ah, I can't think about that now. One step at a time.

May 31
. . . In the afternoon we went to Emilia's house (one of Mateus's sisters). It wasn't at all clear what was going to happen. I had talked to Emilia and Ricardo (another brother) about working with me a little-really it was Emilia I was most interested in, but Ricardo seemed anxious to work with me as well. Emilia is more reserved, but she agreed to the meeting, so we set it up for 3 p.m. When we arrived, Emilia, Ricardo, Helena (Mateus's mother) and another aunt were there, as were an assortment of nephews. We decided to videotape some messages for Mateus and one by one they sent him short messages. Then we took some pictures and sat around a little without really knowing what would happen next. I didn't know if they really wanted to work with me or not, and I didn't want to force the issue. Then, Ricardo said he wanted to tell a story, so we set up the equipment and he began speaking. What happened then was extraordinary. The whole family was sitting around listening to the story and then they all stayed throughout the next three hours of work on the text, offering help with the transcription, talking among themselves, whispering back and forth, people all gathered around, leaning in to hear what was happening and putting in their two-cent's worth. As we worked, the afternoon grew dark and when we were finally done, it was night. My whole body ached from sitting in the same position and writing for so many hours. Plus, my mind was numb. I just couldn't process what had happened . . . between this material and the tapes from my sessions with Agostinho, I have more data to work with than I could have imagined.June 1 . . . Today I went for my final session with Agostinho. It's been interesting to work with him. I don't know how interesting it was for him, but it was a very good experience for me as a fieldworker to see that not every consultant is going to be a Mateus, but that doesn't mean I can't work with them and learn a lot from them.. On the personal side, I have to say that Agostinho and his family have truly touched my heart . . .

June 2
What a difference a week makes, especially a life-changing week like the one I've had . . . I spent the afternoon with Emilia, Ricardo, Maria (another sister) and the kids. We finished up transcription and translations of the texts and I finally had the feeling that there was harmony among us. Not that there was any sort of conflict before, but it was hard for me to read their reactions and tell if they were with me or not. But between yesterday and today, when I see the whole family involved in this process of writing down the texts, searching for the right word, the correct translation, checking, double-checking, discussing among themselves, I can see that they do realize what it is that we're doing-probably more than I do when you get right down to it-and I had my first true feeling of the long-term commitment I am making to these people, to this project. It's not a small promise that I'm making to them, nor one to be taken lightly, and even though whatever is to be done will be done by many people working together, I cannot take my role lightly; I cannot forget that I must keep my word. This is a test of whether I can be the kind of person I would like to be, if I can be what I say I want to be. A week ago, I wasn't sure even if I could take the first step. Today, I realize that it's already been taken.

I returned to Boulder relieved, inspired, and transformed. I was hooked.

You're it!

My second trip to the Amazon took place in January, 2002. It was a quick, 10-day trip squeezed in between semesters, and the main objective of the trip was just to show my face again. One of the things I had felt during my first visit was that while people were very nice and willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, there was also a certain degree of reserve. I can imagine that they've had experience with researchers who show up with a project in mind, start work and make plans to return, and then, for what I'm sure are very legitimate reasons, never show up again. I wanted them to see that I was in for the long haul, so I didn't want to let too much time go by before I went back. I figured that even a few days were better than nothing. As it turned out, it was a very productive trip.
First of all, in terms of my own fieldwork, the second time around was a lot more comfortable both for me and for my consultants. Everybody sort of knew what to expect, though I have to admit that I was so nervous the very first session that I forgot to attach the microphone to the tape recorder! But we all had a good laugh about it, and after that everybody relaxed. In addition to collecting more data for my own studies, showing up the second time when I did was a key element in opening doors to the 'applied' side of the research.

January is the summer school break in Brazil, and for the past four years, indigenous teachers from all over the region had been participating in a teacher certification course, spending every vacation in São Gabriel studying for their certification. The January I was there was actually the last summer of the course; they were getting ready to graduate in February.

Part of the political orientation of the course had been to encourage each tribe, or etnia, the word they prefer, to develop an education program in their language, the main goal being native language literacy. Culturally differentiated, bilingual education was guaranteed to all indigenous groups in Brazil by the 1988 Constitution, but the creation and implementation of such programs is a slow process and depends, to a great extent, on the leadership of the teachers and the availability of linguists. Groups who have had or who currently have linguists working on the language are in a better position to start the process. The rest of the groups are begging for linguists to come and study their languages, but implicit in the deal is that the linguist must be available to work with the group in these applied projects. It doesn't really matter whether or not you've done that kind of work before. There just aren't enough linguists or pedagogues to go around, so if you're what they've got, you're it, you're expected to be available to help with whatever they need.

And so, one night in January I found myself in a meeting with the eight Wanano teachers taking the course. It had been organized by Miguel, Mateus's brother and a teacher himself. The formal objective of the meeting was to discuss the beginnings of a Wanano education project, but I knew they also wanted to check me out. So, for me, it was a kind of job interview and I really wanted to make a good impression. For them, the meeting represented the first official step in the development of their project, which to a certain extent depended on me, the new official linguist.

Mostly, they wanted to discuss their goals for the language/education project and to think about dates and places for a community language workshop that I would be invited to participate in. The Socioenvironmental Institute had already promised financing for the workshop, but the Wananos needed to come up with a proposal for a date and location.

Questions and comments directed to me personally were in Portuguese; otherwise, the discussion was mostly in Wanano, of course, so I didn't understand much beyond the occasional pronoun or borrowed word from Portuguese. Still, it was great. It was the first time I'd seen that kind of interaction in Wanano and I loved just being there, even though I had no clue about 99% of what was actually being said. I should probably say that I supposed they were talking about dates and places for the workshop, because in the end, they hadn't come to any firm conclusions, either about the workshop or, as far as I knew, about me. I wondered, in fact, if I had actually gotten 'the job,' though being the only candidate, I figured my chances were pretty good.

My gut feeling was that the meeting had gone well, but you never know if you're reading the signs correctly when you're dealing with a different set of cultural norms. In any case, we talked some, laughed some, ate dinner together (which I happily financed), and took group pictures in which everybody was smiling (a good sign). They would talk with the ISA people; we'd all be in touch.

Five months later we were still trying to figure out when the workshop would take place. Then, my life changed in dramatic ways. My husband got a professorship at a Brazilian university and we decided to move back to Brazil. Our plan was to move in August, so I told the Wananos I was available any time from September on. They wrote me back with definite dates in September and the news that the workshop would take place in the Wanano village Mateus had been born in, Caruru Cachoeira.

The crazy chicken and other jungle discoveries ...

Yes, I do remember what I said about not being able to go traipsing off into the jungle and working in a place that was easily accessible, but that was then and, well, this is now. For me, one of the great things about fieldwork is that each phase has taken me just a little further away from what I swore were my absolute limits. With each trip, I've discovered that things I never thought I'd do are indeed within my capabilities.

And that was how I came to find myself in a 20-foot boat, traveling with Jose, a Wanano teacher and skilled boatman, heading out of São Gabriel for a three-day trip 200 miles into the heart of protected indigenous lands. Caruru is located on the upper Vaupés River, where it forms the border between Brazil and Colombia. Getting there entails traveling from dawn to dusk for three days, camping in Indian villages along the way, and at several points, maneuvering the boat through quite perilous rapids (though yours truly opted for the alternative foot paths whenever possible).

Jose and the boat

I confess that I hadn't expected to be the lone passenger on the trip. I thought that Mateus's brothers or some of the teachers I already knew would be traveling with me. As it turned out, though, one of the teachers, Beth, was already in Caruru because she lives and teaches there, and the others were unable to go. I also confess that I was extremely nervous about the trip and think that were I a little less bullheaded, I would have chickened out.

From my journal on the first day of the journey:

Sept. 11, 2002
OK, so I'm awake at 4 am because there are a thousand things going through my mind at this point. We're supposed to leave in a few hours and already things are not quite as I expected. The most unexpected thing is that none of the teachers I thought would be going to Caruru with me can go. So, I'll be going up with Jose, another of the teachers from Caruru. I know he'll take care of me, though I have to admit my comfort level is not too high at this point. My fears: Is Jose a good pilot or are we going to sink in some rapids along the way? Will I be able to figure out the mosquito net/hammock thing or will I choke myself rolling around at night? Will I be eaten alive by mosquitoes? Will the Wanano think I have anything to offer them by way of help with their project? Will I be able to say anything? Am I crazy for doing this? Then I remember that the ISA people have organized dozens of these trips, that people do this all the time, that our equipment is sound, that there are telephones along the way, that Jose was born on this river and knows it well, that the Wananos want the workshop to take place and will be careful with me, that I can sleep in a hammock and probably will survive and laugh about all these fears. But, at this point, my stomach hurts and I could use a hug. It's beginning to get light. São Gabriel, the most exotic place I had ever been to up to now, seems so comfortable and familiar compared to whatever is ahead of me the next two weeks.9:40 a.m. We're twenty minutes into the trip, one more curve and São Gabriel will be out of sight. I have the boat to myself - Jose is driving from the back and I'm quite comfortably set up in front; my legs up on my pack, plus a life preserver cushion and back rest to keep me from getting a 'square ass' too quickly. I'm like Cleopatra in my own private barge.

The view from up front

11:20 a.m. We just made the turn into the Vaupés and the water is calmer here. I've been dozing on and off for an hour. Each time I open my eyes I realize, "Yep, you're still on a boat in the middle of the Amazon jungle" and wonder what I'm doing this for.2 p.m. Problem: where does one 'make water' with nothing but water all around? Solution: Look for a spot of dry land where you can crawl out of the boat and make your way through the mud to some semi-secluded spot. Without the noise of the motor, the insect noises appear - things buzz by your ear, gangs of butterflies mosey by, some sort of creature rustles away underneath the leaves - a typical trip to the jungle potty.4:30 p.m. Well, the world was so much better after our pit stop in the forest and the sun finally came out, which made me happy despite the heat. Now it's the loveliest time of day - what beautiful colors. Soon, we'll have to find a place to stop for the night and I don't think I'm going to have any trouble sleeping this night. It's been a very long day, but I'm OK now. I think I'll make it.

Three days in a little boat is definitely somewhat of an adventure. The scenery is pretty much the same most of the time: water and a shoreline full of wacky trees that reminded me of the ones I used to laugh at in Dr. Seuss books. Occasionally there is a village; a big one will have eight or ten houses, a chapel, a school and a community center. A small one will consist of one or two solitary houses. Sometimes we see a fisherman or two in a canoe, a woman washing clothes or children swimming in the river. Mostly, it's just us.

There are some surprises, though. We pass through the bigger towns of Taracuá and Iuareté, each containing an incongruous mix of mud huts alongside huge 18th century churches built from the missionary days. They remind me that I'm certainly not the first white person in these remote parts. Then, when we reach the border, we are ordered to stop by machinegun-toting soldiers from the Brazilian military. They check our documents, look over the boat, and send us on our way. It's an unsettling reminder that I am now entering territory occupied by FARC troops and drug traffickers.

Taracuá

The sun is out most of the time, and while the boat is moving the heat isn't a problem. When we stop for some reason, though, it's like a physical weight on my shoulders that takes my breath away. Over the course of the three days, we are caught in several rainstorms. There's no place to stop, so we just keep going. There is no way to describe this kind of rain, it's just a solid world of wet all around. The awning of the boat and even rain clothes don't help much. You get wet anyway, and, unbelievably, it's cold!

The third day of the trip brings us into the upper Vaupés. We are finally in Wanano territory. The river is full of rapids and at three different points Jose takes the boat through the churning white water while I watch from the path on dry land. The rocks seem so large; the boat seems so small; Jose seems so young. But he makes it, I climb back in, and we continue. The rapids at Caruru are enormous, and as we approach, I'm completely petrified. Water is splashing into the boat and I think of the river rides at Water World, except the danger here is real; I've heard the stories. I'm thinking to myself: "There's no way we can make it through that" when at the last minute, Jose stops the boat next to some rocks and we climb out, water pounding all around us. We have arrived.

The next ten days are a profusion of emotions, activities, and questions. My report to ISA on the workshop is twenty-five pages long and includes only the official stuff. How does one relate the experiences of a different world? There is too much to even imagine writing it all down here, so I'll try to summarize the important stuff.

Basically, we worked hard, laughed a lot, and tried to understand each other. There were a few touchy moments when I needed help to remove the feet I'd stuck in my mouth. There was the unbelievable closing ceremony that included an entire day of traditional music, dancing and singing. I watched as they prepared and painted each other (and me) for the ritual, both unnerved and fascinated by the process of their becoming Indians before my eyes. There were other moments of pure, unadulterated fun.

Dancers

Like when the crazy chicken appeared at the river my first afternoon in Caruru. I was down at the shore cooling off when this black chicken wades into the water and starts taking a bath. Well, I'd never seen a chicken do that before and commented on it to a Wanano woman nearby. She promptly cracked up and explained that it was no chicken, but a Jacumi, a wild Amazonian bird that had been tamed by one of the women in the village. News of my ignorance spread, and soon everybody knew about the gringa and the crazy chicken, who then became the unofficial mascot of the workshop.

The crazy chicken

The workshop itself was a success and though I was the official teacher, I'm sure I learned much more than I taught. I discovered that when it comes to reflecting on what language is, LING1000 students and Wanano Indians ask exactly the same kinds of questions, though the Wananos are much more linguistically and politically savvy than most American college students and quickly reach more sophisticated conclusions. They also have an amazing ability to think about language due to the fact that they live in such a multilingual environment. Out of some 45 adult participants in the workshop, the only one who spoke fewer than five languages was me!

Group work

Group picture

As for my own Wanano abilities, while I still didn't have the courage to risk saying much, I did find myself understanding the occasional complete sentence and almost always had a pretty good notion of what the topic of conversation was. Next time, they warned me - no Portuguese!

I learned, overall, that most of my fears were indeed unfounded. Yes, everything is different, and there were scary or uncomfortable moments. But if you arm yourself with a sense of humor and don't go off the deep end, things turn out OK. An anthropologist friend of mine says that the basic truth about humanity is that we are all essentially the same yet we are all inherently different. I think that fieldwork brings you face to face with this ambiguity and that part of being successful is realizing that you have no choice but to live with it. The differences between us create frontiers you can approach but never cross, yet at the same time, you learn to savor those moments in which the sameness of our human condition is evident.

These are the lessons I learned in Caruru.

Wanano children

Houses in Caruru

Promises

Perhaps it is possible, depending on the culture and the situation in which one conducts fieldwork, to establish and maintain the kind of professional distance that is viewed as desirable for many kinds of research. But for me at least, fieldwork is essentially a different kind of scientific beast. In fieldwork, the lines between object and subject become fuzzy; one's involvement is of a different nature. In my fieldwork situation, I don't think it's possible to do the work without recognizing that it has a promise at its core. It is a promise made by an individual who represents knowledge and privilege and opportunity to a community of people who invest in that individual their trust and expectations that the promise is real.

It really hit me toward the end of my first trip to São Gabriel, and I wrote in a letter to my father-in-law:

. . . What I feel about the last few days is a certain weight of responsibility. It's one thing to talk from afar about a project of working with an indigenous population. It's another to sit face to face with people who are depositing their trust in your words. I feel the seriousness of the promises I'm making and the magnitude of the task at hand. I feel both honored and intimidated. I am afraid of my own limitations, am all too aware of my weaknesses and inexperience. I fear disappointing them because I know that I am, at least at this moment, one of their only allies . . .

And so goes fieldwork, full of ups and downs, questions and discoveries, successes and setbacks. What else can I tell you other than to go for it if you're at all intrigued.

Will it be scary? Yes. Will you feel insecure about what you know and are capable of learning? For sure. Will you be physically, emotionally, and intellectually challenged? Undoubtedly. Is it worth the trouble? Well, I can only answer for myself that it has been a transforming and indescribably rewarding experience so far, and I've only just begun.

Caruru at sunset

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 1 - June 2004