June 7th - Day Five

In the morning we visited a family that lives on the Amazon river and takes care of several Amazonian river dolphins. These dolphins are generally pink or grey in color and most have a long beak. In Amazon River folklore, at night, an Amazon river dolphin becomes a handsome young man who seduces girls, impregnates them, and then returns to the river in the morning to become a dolphin again. This dolphin shapeshifter is called an encantado. It has been suggested that the myth arose partly because dolphin genitalia bear a resemblance to those of humans. Others believe the myth served (and still serves) as a way of hiding the incestuous relations which are quite common in some small, isolated communities along the river.

We had an opportunity to swim with these dolphins and to watch the family feed them. They were playful but I think that they were mostly interested in the fish that the family had. I am curious as to how these dolphins can protect themselves from piranhas and caiman. Along with spending time with the dolphins, we also went fishing for piranhas. I did not have any luck but Austin was able to catch one and we had a good look at its teeth.

Today we visited a small native community that had received help from the Brazilian government. Because the village has a school, a church, and a medical center, the Brazilian government has been providing medical equipment and supplies. The government is also helping them build a larger school. The leader of the community is an old woman and has been with the community her whole life. She was the one who lead them to the new village site after a flood drove them from their old one. She will be replaced by a young man who grew up in the village and went to college. Many young people who leave the community to go to school often do not return; however, this soon-to-be leader wanted to come back to his village and help.

His main focus is to educate the people in his community and advocates for other villages to send their children to their school. However, he is also helping the community deal with their trash and waste issues. While we were visiting their community we inquired about the ways in which the community deals with their waste. He told us that some things like paper, cardboard, and other non-toxic waste are burned. A short walk away from the village, he showed us the pits that each family digs and fills with trash that cannot be burned. Because mosquitoes are such a huge problem in the Amazon River, the community cannot dig a large pit for the whole village to dup their trash in due to the accumulation of water in a larger waste pit. Each pit can hold enough trash for about a months worth of a single families trash. These pits are then covered and new pits are dug somewhere else around the village. This is not a very sustainable way of dealing with the waste. 

One of the things that bothered me was the way in which they filled these pits. The village would have a clean up day once a month and gather all the trash. This was evident in that there were no trashcans anywhere and that as the children at the candy that we brought them, they just tossed the wrappers on the ground. The community needs to educate their children on how to dispose of their waste. However, if the community does a good job of waste management then the government steps in and provides further assistance.


The people here are given help by the government but they also receive help from missionaries. I tend to think that missionaries stifle the native culture and traditions but that they also provide valuable supplies that many of these communities need. Much like Rondon in The River of Doubt, I believe in a positivist approach to dealing with natives in the sense that this approach is very humanistic. Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that information derived from logical and mathematical treatments and reports of sensory experience is the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge, and that there is valid knowledge only in scientific knowledge. Verified data received from the senses are known as empirical evidence. This view holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, the modern sense of the approach was developed by the philosopher and founding sociologist Auguste Comte in the early 19th century. Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so also does society.