Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (5 page)

When you are on the ground and can clearly see the plane overhead, all you want do is yell out, “Why can’t you see me? I’m right here!” But to them, you are, at best, a small speck on the ground. The smoke from your campfire may look just like the million other wisps of steam rising from pockets of water below. Your clothing is dirty and blends in with the forest, your shelter green, brown, and gray . . . the perfect camouflage. So unless you have a time-tested signal method at your disposal—bright colors, a huge, smoky fire, words spelled out in massive letters on the open ground, a signal mirror, or a perfectly timed shot from a flare gun—your chances of being seen are dependent on luck.

As the plane flew away, so did Yossi’s last bit of optimism. Finally, he cracked. He threw himself to the ground and prayed for death. But as he asked God to take him, a beautiful young woman appeared before him, weeping. Yossi knew it was his responsibility to comfort the woman and lead her to safety. Once again, he regrouped and forged ahead, determined to save the imaginary woman.

Yossi’s choice not to fight this hallucination and instead run with it could quite possibly be the most important one he had to make, and it speaks to Yossi’s greatest strength as a survivor: he made decisions. He never sat back and waited for things to happen to him. As a survivor, you must be willing to make a decision, right or wrong, and stick with it. Survival is a proactive undertaking; there is no room for passiveness. So you must make your own decisions, or, as the adage goes, the decision will be made for you. Making your own decisions is vital, even if it means following a hallucination.

I think the hallucination represents some kind of greater inner survival mechanism that most of us don’t ever tap into, let alone understand. It would seem that when Yossi had given up all hope, some part of his spirit rose to the forefront to push him along even farther. It created a focus and a purpose for him in otherwise intolerable circumstances. He was no longer fighting just for himself. He had a responsibility, if only to an imaginary girl.

He eventually made it back to the Tuichi, but there was no bank, only a bluff dropping twenty feet into the turbulent waters. Yossi decided to lead the girl back to a large beach he had rested upon a few days earlier. Here, he rightfully decided, he’d have the best chance of being seen by the plane. This is an important tactic in any survival situation, especially if you think that people are looking for you. In essence, you must always help them find you. Being rescued is not a one-way street, it’s an interactive undertaking. Your job is to do all you can to be visible to your rescuers. Finding a person lost in the Amazon jungle makes finding a needle in a haystack seem easy. On a very long drive through the jungles of Peru while shooting my series
Les Stroud Beyond Survival,
I looked out the side window of the Jeep 4x4 to a drop-off that was about a thousand feet down and completely thick with dark-green jungle foliage. This went on for hundreds of miles. If I had crashed off the road at any spot along the way, during the constant rain storms (and of course it was the middle of the night), I am confident that, without military-style infrared search-and-rescue abilities (an impossibility in the middle of Peru), I would have been lost forever.

The quest for the beach was a race against time. Yossi was physically drained, not much more than skin and bones, and his body was breaking down rapidly. His trench foot had worsened to the point where walking was almost unbearable. At times, he crawled on all fours to ease his suffering. But he continued on, determined to get the young woman to safety. As evening fell, Yossi came to a puddle of water in the mud and walked through it without thinking. In an instant, the puddle swallowed him and he began to sink. Yossi panicked and began to thrash around; that only made the quicksand take him more quickly. Now immersed to his waist, Yossi contemplated suicide, but yet another sense of determination took hold. He calmed down, regained his composure, and methodically wiggled his way to freedom. Clearly, Yossi’s great supply of the first additive force of survival, the will to live, was able to override the force of bad luck.

Half dead, Yossi curled up on the jungle floor for the evening, wrapping himself in his poncho and mosquito netting, convinced he would be rescued the next day. Sometime during the night, he realized he needed to urinate, but was too exhausted to get up. With no other choice, Yossi relieved himself in his pants. He enjoyed the feeling of warmth so much he did it twice more during the night.

As the night wore on, Yossi was startled by something pinching hard into his thigh. He reached down to the spot to find that what he thought was an ant had dug into his flesh and would not let go. Yossi killed the creature, but was startled by more bites down his legs. He began to fight like a madman, but the biting continued incessantly. All night long, he was overwhelmed by what he thought were ants. They came at him from all sides. They bit his face, the back of his neck, his chest, waist, and legs. One even took several bites of flesh from his rotting foot before Yossi was able to kill it.

As morning dawned, Yossi pulled himself to a sitting position and was horrified to find that the earth around him was teeming with thousands of swarming red termites. They had been attracted to Yossi’s urine, eaten through the mosquito netting and poncho, and latched themselves onto anything they could find, including Yossi’s flesh. Horrified, he shot up and ran from the spot, crunching termites under his feet. This is a perfect example of how just one brief moment of giving in (urinating in his pants) can snowball into something quite horrible. In a survival situation, you must measure every action carefully to make sure that it won’t turn into something you’ll regret later.

Yossi stumbled and crawled through the jungle, determined to make it to the beach, where he would either die or be rescued. Later that day, he came across a beach, though not the one he had been seeking. Nevertheless, it had a hut in the middle of it, in which Yossi collapsed. After an hour of rest, he explored the beach, and was shocked to find that he was back in Curiplaya. The place was radically different than when Yossi had last rested there, though, as the floodwaters had washed away most of the huts. He spread his poncho out as a signal and set to the task of tending to his rotting feet, an agonizing task given that they were little more than festering, skinless flesh at this point.

Yossi lay in the hut, contemplating his fate. Death was certainly an option, but having survived nineteen days alone in the jungle, he began to realize that perhaps he could do more, particularly if he stayed put. Maybe, just maybe, he could survive an entire season until the San Jose residents returned to camp in Curiplaya.

He was roused from his plans by a distant drone. He did not get excited, though, as he was convinced he was hallucinating yet again. But when the drone grew louder, Yossi could ignore it no longer. He got up and staggered out of the hut. Getting out of a canoe on the beach were four figures. One of them was Kevin. And while Yossi may have hallucinated the young lady who accompanied him on the trip back to the beach, Kevin was 100-percent real.

After their separation at the Mal Paso San Pedro, Kevin had scoured the banks of the Tuichi for a couple of days looking for Yossi. With no sign of his friend, he floated down the river on a dried balsa log. He floated past Curiplaya and was on his way to San Jose when he spotted two men hunting in a tributary stream. They led him back to San Jose, where Kevin hoped to find Yossi. Nobody in San Jose had seen Yossi, so Kevin hired raftsmen to take him down the Tuichi to Rurrenabaque, where he again hoped to find his friend. People there told him Yossi had no chance of surviving the waterfall over the Mal Paso San Pedro, and even if he did, he would have starved in the jungle.

Undaunted, Kevin took a flight to La Paz, where he began to work the bureaucratic machinery of the Israeli embassy and Bolivian government. Precious days later, he finally convinced government officials to begin a plane search for Yossi. Every step of the way, officials assured Kevin there was little, if any, chance of finding Yossi alive. The plane search proved futile, but Kevin pressed on. He returned to Rurrenabaque, where he hired a local man, Tico, to boat up the Tuichi as far as the Mal Paso San Pedro in search of Yossi. The going was slow because of all the debris that now floated down the river, but Tico was a master navigator.

Day turned to evening, but there was still no sign of Yossi. Tico was disappointed, but he informed Kevin that they had to turn around at the next suitable beach and head back to Rurrenabaque. As the boat began to turn around, Kevin was astounded to see what seemed like a corpse emerge from a dilapidated hut: Yossi Ghinsberg.

Chapter 2 - With the Waorani

My introduction to jungles
came through classic Tarzan movies. Those films may have been black and white, but in my imagination the jungle glowed in Technicolor: thick, green leaves drooping everywhere, steamy jungle vistas shrouded in gray fog, the echoes of multicolored birds ringing through the canopy high overhead—that’s my version of paradise. This time, though, the jungle will be my reality. For the next seven days, I’m going to try to survive alone in the Amazon.

Having never really paid attention to high school geography (after all, they made us study iron ore extraction in Pittsburgh!), I’ve lived with two assumptions about jungles. One: you have to be wealthy to consider going to the jungle. Two: wherever they are, they are a lifetime away. It never occurred to me that so many vast, thick rainforest ecosystems could exist so close to my home in North America. The Amazon basin stretches from the northern part of South America to central Brazil in the south, with the Andes on the west and the Atlantic coast on the east. The Amazon River is the epicenter. I’m headed to the eastern Andes of Ecuador, the headwaters of the Amazon.

It’s a six-hour taxi ride through the eastern Andes from Quito to the small, edge-of-the-jungle air base in Shell. Flying out of Shell is a risky venture. The only safety-conscious and experienced pilots are the missionaries, but they’re not permitted to fly anyone who isn’t associated with their missions. Enter anthropologist and linguist Jim Yost. He lived with the natives in this area for ten years and is one of only half a dozen people in the outside world that can speak their language. He also has connections with the missionaries, so he helps me arrange a flight deep into the headwaters of the Amazon River, where I will be a guest of the Waorani.

The Waorani are considered one of the most violent peoples in the history of civilization. In former times, sixty percent of adult male deaths were homicides, mostly revenge killings. Most of the killings came at the end of a spear, often in the dead of night. The perpetrators will sneak up on a hut, burst through the thatched grass walls, and drive a spear into someone’s chest as he sleeps. In the 1950s, this remote area of the Amazon became infamous when five missionaries were massacred by the Waorani.

What happened after the massacre makes for an even more incredible story. The wife and sister of one of the slain missionaries moved in with their relative’s killers and brought them Christianity. The Waorani were profoundly moved, and the tribe embraced the concept of forgiveness. Since then, that concept has spread and the entire culture has begun to evolve from one of violence to one of understanding. As I contemplate my stay with this tribe, I realize it’s still a relatively new development for them.

It takes only a few minutes in the air to leave what, to me, looks just like northern Ontario: large expanses of untrammeled bush broken up by roads, dwellings, and mines. But we are soon flying over a vast expanse of dark green jungle that stretches quite literally as far as the eye can see. Somewhere down there, I’ll be left alone for a week.

Our destination is the Waorani village of Snake River. From the sky, I can make out a tiny grass airstrip in the middle of the dense forest. Jim Yost, photographer Laura Bombier, and I are about to enter a land lost in time.

The entire village comprises eight huts peppered over two acres of barely tamed rainforest encircled by a chain-link fence that was freed from an abandoned oil company camp and now serves as protection from jaguars. Most of the huts here were made with milled wood, courtesy of the Norwood sawmill shared by this and five other villages in the area. Eight families inhabit the eight buildings. The roofs are made of corrugated tin, also liberated from abandoned oil camps. The ground is a combination of hard-packed mud and rooster and dog droppings. Beyond the chain-link fence lie hundreds of miles of mosquito-filled, snake-slithering, jaguar-prowling, spider-crawling, ant-infested, wasp-buzzing jungle heaven!

Waorani etiquette dictates that, after disembarking the plane, you wait on the edge of the village until you are invited to enter, even though the huts are a mere ninety yards from the airstrip. This tradition could see you standing there for many hours, if not all day, until some elder decides to give you the thumbs-up. Fortunately for us, they are excited to have visitors and to see their old friend Jim, whom they call Warika.

Six Waorani help us with our gear, and we walk across a small wet area where we are cautioned to watch for snakes. Over ninety percent of all adult Waorani have been bitten by snakes—deadly snakes. We look down often.

The only sanitation in the village is a lone outhouse situated right in the middle of the village, the only spot not protected by fences. Unbelievably, it actually has a flush toilet, courtesy of a hose tapped into a distant stream. In anticipation of our arrival, the villagers have built a traditional hut with a thatched roof. Once the mangy dogs and the rooster are kicked out, it becomes our home.

The first order of business is to hang our hammocks. Now, I can totally relate to the comfort and beauty of sleeping in my hammock at the cottage on a lazy weekend afternoon, but the thought of spending more than twenty nights curled up in one makes me wonder if I will get any sleep at all.

After settling in, Jim climbs into his hammock and waits. For what, I’m not really sure, but Laura and I do the same. Perhaps it is hammock practice time? The only activity for the next few hours—other than trying to get comfortable on a thin piece of nylon stretched between poles—is trying to relate to the three little girls who will become our constant companions during our stay in the village. They dare each other to inch closer to me to see if they can poke this odd-looking stranger from behind. They are all under age seven; two of them have never been out of the jungle.

There are 1,700 Waorani living in an area covering more than eight thousand square miles of thick jungle. Most of the villages are slowly becoming modernized. A few of them have electricity from diesel generators; some even have sanitation and running water. Each village is a hard one-to-four-day hike from the next.

But a stay in a fully equipped village doesn’t make for a great survival story, so I’ve elected to go primitive and stay with a splinter group of a few families that, believe it or not, long for the old days. No, they don’t want a return to the violence and killings, but they do want to return to jungle ways, where days are spent hunting for monkeys with a blowgun or wading in the streams with fishnets in hand.

There is yet another splinter group that was somewhat less inviting. Years ago, a group of Waorani natives took off into the jungle, just over a day’s paddle downstream. The Tagaedi, as they are now called, are one of nearly seventy tribes that live deep (much deeper than I currently am) in the Amazon. No one who has tried to contact them has ever come back alive. To make matters even more intimidating for me, only three weeks before our visit, some of the Waorani from another village went down and killed sixteen Tagaedi. Hostility and tension fill the already thick jungle air. I realize I am about to be alone for a week in a territory rife with retribution.

Our village is a much different story. We have a number of hosts, none of whom speak English. Badiana is a thirty-year-old woman with a wonderfully sweet disposition. Kinta and Ippa, both about fifty, are the main organizers of the village. Tomo and his wife, Anna, both over sixty, have come up from their own, even smaller, village farther downstream to be here for Jim. And then there is Duey. He is one of the Waorani who massacred the five missionaries by spear. I could be greatly intimidated, even afraid, but before my time here is finished, I will find it as gut-wrenching to leave these people as I would my own family.

As my guide, Tomo will become like a brother. His appearance is striking. His skin is like leather and his toes are splayed out wide from walking barefoot in the jungle his entire life. In fact, the Waorani only started wearing clothes because outsiders were uncomfortable with their nakedness and they had grown weary of the staring. Clothing in the jungle rots quickly, and not much will last beyond a few weeks. Nakedness wasn’t simply an aesthetic choice, it was a practical matter. For the Waorani, to wear one lone string around the waist is to be considered dressed; the absence of the string is shameful nudity. Men tie the string to their foreskins to pull their penises up and out of the way when tromping through the jungle.

In the jungle, the night closes in quickly. There are no sunsets, no big skies. Some would find it claustrophobic, even creepy. Not me. For me, the night lies heavy, like a thick blanket, and the sounds are amplified, even ear-piercing. Over there, a frog croaks. Behind me, a night bird calls. Not far off, a puma growls. Somewhere out there, probably within a stone’s throw, a jaguar’s large paws tramp the jungle floor.

Jim, Laura, and I are mellowing out as we lie in our hammocks, waiting for the Waorani evening meal to begin. Not many people visit the Waorani. Missionaries, anthropologists, and the odd magazine writer will go to the effort to come this deep into the heart of the Amazon. But we are different. The Waorani know I want to survive a week alone in their jungle, a desire that prompts ongoing jests about what a great meal I’ll be for the jaguar. I tentatively join the laughter, until I am told that the Waorani will do anything to avoid being caught alone in the jungle at night.

Okay, so they consider us crazy. But we also have a woman in our group, something the Waorani find even more fascinating. Few females venture this far into the jungle. Badiana thinks Laura is absolutely beautiful and is so happy to have another woman to connect with, if only through hand signals.

Though we have brought our own food, Anna and Ippa are only too happy to feed us—constantly, it seems. Mostly it’s manioc, a root much like potato, along with whatever is caught that day, usually some kind of fish or bird. But the treasured treat is manioc drink. First, the root is boiled and mashed by hand. Then the mash is chewed by female village elders before being spit back into the bowl. The saliva begins a process of fermentation, and the mixture is left to sit overnight. The next morning, it is mixed with hot water and ready to drink. You are expected to guzzle, not sip, your old-lady-chewed, slightly fermented drink, as sipping is considered an insult. It is also an insult to put down your food bowl once you have picked it up.

My concerns that it would be inconvenient for the Waorani to feed, house, and guide us are quickly put to rest when Jim explains that it is, in fact, their honor. They are thrilled that someone cares enough to want to learn and experience their traditional, and quickly disappearing, way of life. Jim himself is like a legend to them; some of the younger Waorani even come into the hut just to get a glimpse of the famous Warika. During the ten years that Jim and his wife, Kathy, spent living among the Waorani, he became an indispensable part of helping the Waorani achieve ownership of territory in the jungles of Ecuador. Tomo respects and cares for Jim greatly, but when Duey arrives later that evening, the love and friendship is even more evident.

Waorani don’t have words for hello or goodbye, so Duey simply sheds tears as he hugs Jim in greeting. Duey has walked for a day and a half through thick jungle just to see Jim. It was Duey who organized the men and women of the tribe to come into our hut to sing for us this first evening. It is by far the crudest, most rudimentary form of music I have ever heard. There is only the faintest hint of form or melody, and no pitch or tuning at all for the rustic percussion instruments and flutes. Each song is a repetitive chanting of one or two lines of lyric. It is beautiful. I sit in the firelight as seven Waorani treat us to their traditional storytelling songs. I breathe deep and hold back tears. The honor is purely ours. In the middle of the night, I am awakened by Duey chanting and praying in a loud voice. Jim explains that this is a holdover from his days of existing as part of a more violent culture. You stayed awake in shifts and talked and sang so that your enemy knew you were awake and couldn’t attack you by surprise.

The next day, after our breakfast of manioc, we wait patiently in the hut, hanging around, literally, in our hammocks while the rain falls. It rains nearly every day here, usually for many hours, and often as a downpour. Once the rain stops, the sun beats down through any small opening in the jungle canopy like a fiery hammer on your head. Before long, our hosts arrive; my training is about to begin. Kinta and Ippa wear traditional clothing on their upper bodies: leaves and feathers on their heads, woven plant fiber and decorations around their necks.

My first lesson is in the art of hunting by blowgun, a survival priority. If you can’t hunt or fish, you can’t survive. Village kids can point a two-yard-long blowgun heavenward and hit a hummingbird sixty yards away. I practice on coconuts, and Tomo cheers every time I hit my mark. Maybe I’ll survive in the jungle after all!

Tomo has his own near-death story to tell. He once hit a monkey with a dart from his blowgun. As it fell, the monkey got caught on a branch. Tomo climbed seventy feet up the tree to knock the monkey down. High up in the jungle canopy, he grazed a small poisonous caterpillar. The toxic shock was so powerful that his whole body was jolted out of the tree and he fell to the ground. He was taken to the village hospital, where he remained for three weeks. His entire body turned completely black from the caterpillar toxin. Things were looking grim when an entomologist was found in Brazil who not only recognized the poisoning but had developed an antidote. Tomo’s life was saved, and he hadn’t broken a single bone.

The Amazon is home to countless millions of poisonous snakes, spiders, frogs, ants, bees, wasps, fish, and caterpillars. Can I survive here? Many of the survival methods I teach in North America are backward in the jungle. In North America, for example, you never stand on or jump off a log for fear of breaking an ankle. In the jungle, however, you always stand on logs before you cross them, because most poisonous snakebites occur when you step over the log, oblivious to the snakes hiding on the underside. I also learn to tromp heavily, as the vibrations will often cause the snakes to slither out of your way.