7. Morning ritual and meal rhythms, July, 2006

Jenaro Herrera - week 2 - July, 2006

I’m starting to establish a good morning ritual at the station. I get up around 6 am, brush my teeth, and then do about twenty minutes of stretches of my neck, back and right ankle. I was a bit worried how this ankle would hold up walking around the forest since I had sprained it two months ago playing basketball with some fifth graders on the Friends School camping trip. The bi-weekly physical therapy sessions and twice-daily exercises, however, have definitely paid off. I’ve been able to walk normally on it, but there have been a few painful reminders that it still tender when I have overextended it propelling myself out of swampy depression or climbing over a downed log.

Our typical breakfast at Dona Susana’s house includes bread, margarine, jam, fried plantains, one or two side dishes and a “refresco.” This drink is made mostly from water, sugar and juice from fruits such as lemons, camu camu (super rich in vitamin C), tapereba, or cocona (a member of the tomato family – but its juice is clear). We’ve also had fresh fruit including taronja (a tart cross between an orange and a grapefruit), bananas, papaya (my favorite), and tapereba (tasty but very fibrous in the core). Other side dishes have included fried yucca (sweet manioc called macaxeira in Brazil), fried eggs, mixed vegetable omelet (called “tortilla” here), fried fish, and fried spam.

We had carried our lunch with us into the field a few days in bulky Tupperware containers, but when we were working in the plantation, we found that it was just as easy and a lot more relaxing to walk the short distance back to the station to eat. Lunch is traditionally the largest meal of the day that starts with a tasty broth soup with some vegetables and occasional chunks of chicken or meat. The main dish is a plate heaped with rice, beans, a little salad, and usually some locally caught fish, chicken or red meat. Our fish have been boiled tucunari (the spotted tail “peacock” bass known as tucunaré in Brazil), sabalo, corbina, bocachico (“small mouth”), and various types of catfish such as doncelia and bagre. The chicken is often pretty tough through no fault of the cook. These birds have built up their muscles roaming around more than their tender factory-farmed counterparts who spend their short life in cages.

We’ve had a little meat from paca (a rather large rainforest rodent) and a few other game animals such as peccary (locally called “sagino”). Walking back from town, we’ve regularly passed a one to three men carrying a well-worn shotgun and sometimes a thatched backpack with black fur sticking out the top or a black and brown monkey tied to the side. They hunt mostly for their families, but sometimes sell surplus meat in town. Although there are water buffalo in many pastures, we haven’t been served their meat since they are raised as dairy animals to produce cheese instead of meat.

While most of tired crew relishes these midday feasts, Susanna has finally acceded to Marissa and my requests to reduce the scale of our lunch since we could never finish the hungry sized portions she was serving everyone else. After sweating hard in the forest all morning I usually just craved two or three glasses of cool refresco that I could gulp down in rapid succession.

Our supper served around 7:30 pm has been the simplest. It usually consists of bread, jam, something crunchy and buffalo milk cheese. While lunch focuses more on food than conversation, our evening meal is richer in laughter and stories. We have covered the gamut of politics in Peru and the U.S., Angel’s contorted faces, Nestor’s tales of snakes and work with various scientists in Peru for 25 years. He collected leaf samples for the legendary Amazon botanist Al Gentry who died during a mission for Conservation International in a small plane crash in Peru in the mid-1990’s. Nestor once climbed with a mask and protective clothing to spray a powerful insecticide into the canopies of some 20 trees for the Smithsonian’s Terry Erwin. It was Erwin’s discovery of the huge number of unidentified insects that lived in the upper reaches of tropical forest trees that led to raising the estimate of the number of species on earth from five or six million to a figure between thirty and fifty million. It reinforced the critical need to preserve tropical forests as the most important strategy for preserving the earth’s biodiversity. I wish I had recorded his stories because it would make a fascinating account worthy of a PBS documentary.