Woodworking, Katoka, and Balata

Yupukari Day 3

March 9,2013

Posted by Mary Voytek

Woke up to a surround-sound choral ensemble of howler monkeys, yellow crowned parrots, village roosters, with cicadas maintaining the steady beat. Our days are extremely long and overflowing with experiences that are causing all of our senses to fire like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Today was no exception. It started with a wakeup call at 4:30, AM that is. Can you imagine getting a troop of college students up at 4:30 AM on a Saturday morning? Not a problem with this crew, in fact they were just as effervescent as I was for this early morning workshop with the village artist and woodcarver, Combrencent Ernest. While the dew was still dripping from the trees and the skies were starting to light up with pastel washes we found ourselves outside under the thatched gazebo in awe of the beautiful leopard wood log we were instructed to cut into smaller usable slabs that would be then be chopped into nuggets using a machete. Leopard wood has an amazing deep reddish color that is reminiscent of the local red clay earth and black hieroglyphic type markings that truly resemble a leopard’s coat. We all dove into the process of sanding and shaping our treasured tidbits absolutely surprised when the breakfast call came at 7:30. I heard a few students pipe up that they would gladly skip breakfast in order to continue their carvings and I have to admit it was mighty tempting. Knowing we needed our strength for the day ahead, Tricia and I encouraged everyone to take a break and come inside.

Breakfast consisted of hot porridge, eggs, Brazilian sausage, fresh baked bread, local peanut butter, guava jelly and green mango juice. Has anyone told you yet, the food here is divine? When I walked into the breakfast room which is also command central as it houses the open kitchen, work tables for the never ending and always changing projects, internet couches, and general informal meeting arena, I overheard a conversation about the research efforts with the black caiman. “We’re not catching caiman for the tourists”, Mike explains, “we have a variety of ongoing studies, we are publishing our research and you are observing this research in action….” Made me think how fortunate I would be when my turn came to observe the research team in action the following night. Wondered how it would compare to the other research efforts I have participated in.

After breakfast, a 20 minute walk though the village of Yupukari to the Rupununi River brought us to the flats boats that transported us upriver to the neighboring village of Katoka. The hour long boat ride and 45 minute walk through the savannah to the village provided us with a wide variety of nature sightings: osprey, egret, striated little blue heron, white wing swallow, banded swallow, giant river otter, caiman, cormorant, many types of hummingbirds, rusty-margined king bird, tiger heron, black cap heron, ring kingfisher, stork, yellow footed tortoise, and of course mosquitoes.
Our first stop in outskirts of Katoka was at the house of Guy Marco’s relatives.  They were all so happy to see Tricia again. (Guy - everyone is doing great, and Tricia will send lots of pictures after we get home. We saw Loretta, Gibson, Geoff, Nathalie, your mother, Annette, and her sister Susanne - it was great !) We then proceeded to Katoka’s main village compound where we were greeted by the village dignitaries: The Toushau, the school headmaster, the health officer and microscopist.  Of course we were offered  the ceremonial juice. This time it was passion fruit and my tribe from FGCU all agreed there is never too much passion.  We spent the next two hours working with a local sculptural material, balata. It is a caramel colored rubbery material that comes from local bulletwood trees. This material is heated over a wood fire in a hot cauldron of boiling water in order to reach a consistency that is pliable enough to shape it. I found it very difficult to work with but the local villagers whipped out all sorts of items such as bowls and little figurines.

We toured the village and primary school and headed back to our boats to make our way back home to Yupukari. We counted 38 caiman on our return trip and those were only the ones we happen to spot. Tired and hungry we arrived back to a delicious meal of fried tiger fish, pumpkin, steamed greens, rice and of course more juice. This time it was Jamon juice, made from a small purple fruit that is sweet-sour. Yum!

Combrencent cutting leopard wood