http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btNuIE90oxs
So what I failed to tell you last post when I talked about the amazing time we had at the local school in Cuti meeting the teachers and students that one of our party was missing. No surprises for guessing that it was Matthias, this was after the sheer exhaustion and the meteoric euphoria of the hunting episode. Matthias seemed quite ill probably down to tiredness, heat, dehydration and perhaps a little fear of being left in the rainforest with a bleeding dead Aguti in the dark possibly as Jaguar bate! In addition to all this it hadn’t been a good start to the day for poor Matthias like myself as mentioned in Part 6 he had what I will only call as a toilet issue. Apparently according to him it was one of the worst moments of his life and was completed by him throwing something off the balcony of the hut deep into the rainforest. (That is all I am allowed to say about that)
So at around midday we started to trek to our next destination for a few days the village of Tinkerani we even managed to pack Matthias up and bring him with us. We weren’t sure if he would make it so we planned to stop at a small primary school a 20 minute walk away. The primary school was on the site of an old missionary post that still has a tiny very basic clinic; we were told of an amazing story about the founder of the mission who helped the Ashaninka fight off the Shining Path years before.
As we walked there it was extremely hot and as we arrived we reached for the shade and were once again given an extremely warm welcome from the teachers and students. Have a look at the video below of Daniel the Headteacher and some of the children performing. (You may be able to see what he is wearing round his neck which was given to me as a gift)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVUF3TLq9zA
Once we saw some performances it was then obviously our turn to do a performance, well it is only fair mmm if only we had some talent. Well actually we didn’t need to worry they had already planned it. They asked for 3 of the teachers to take part in an egg and spoon race! Well easy so myself, Clover and Emily stepped forward, I started to feel that this could be like the Olympics it wasn’t just about entertaining the children it was a matter of national pride, it was simply UK vs USA.
Obviously there was no contest Gold/first place went to me! Check out the photo by Clover:
Next up was slightly a little more embarrassing fortunately we had already done something and so Jemma and Stephen had to step up to the plate, quite literally! This is brilliant and you will love watching it! Once again a contest between USA & England:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMFIWhM5XQ
Actually I should also now say that I had to do my own eating contest next which wasn’t planned and not everyone may have noticed. This is because we were all given bowls of fruit and for some reason mine was completely infested with huge ants. I tried to get rid of them but I had no chance within seconds they were all up my arms and I couldn’t just say I wouldn’t eat it so I struggled and ate 5 or 6 pieces before I gave up. I thing I ingested perhaps 71 ants that is a rough guestimate! You may notice that Matthias wasn’t around he was put in the clinic and not surprisingly ended up staying there over night and of course out of that came another amazing story which you will hear in later posts. (I was then reminded of my first conversation with Matthias as we woke up next to each other on our first morning in Lima without ever meeting as he had arrived in the middle of the night. He said that ‘if anything bad or stupid will happen to anyone on the trip then it would be him’ and you know he was right! Well actually probably the only thing he did say that was right.) After the fun the kids were allowed to go home early and we spoke to the teachers about what they needed etc once again there was a massive need for fundraising. I will talk about all this in a future post.
We then started to leave for Tinkerani – on the way through we stopped at Cesar’s house and met his wife who had just given birth to their twelfth child at 48 years old and she looked fantastic! The trek through rainforest was amazing! (I seem to be saying that too often in these posts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17JXMiByeR4
After two hours we arrived in the village and we were greeted by Noami who is the community elder and around 80 years old and we also met our host Haimi. I also had a bizarre moment when we saw about ten people sat around watching a DVD player – which was a really strange sight. They were being shown a documentary that they starred in for Channel 4.
We then ran off to the river to have a swim this was lovely compared to previous rivers very slow and quite clear, however after a swim and a wash we had to rush back to put up our tents before it got dark and before we got soaked as big grey clouds began to appear.
Make sure you check out the next post to hear about a proper tropical storm.