By Jess McGlothlin
There’s no way to get away from the storm… not really, in our thatch-roofed quarters with mesh screens for windows. The wind blows cool rain inside, and the little frog that’s taken up residence in my shower hops gleefully into the growing puddle. I grin, buckle my laptop and second camera into the Pelican where they’ll stay dry, and step outside into the storm.
The boys are already here. It feels like a misnomer, calling them boys. But they are, in reality, most of them in the early end of their 20s. A mishmash collection of fishing guides: Argentines, Brazilians, and indigenous Kayapó. And one American, one female: me. We’ve spent the past few weeks pushing boats up and down the mighty Iriri River along the southern borders of the Brazilian Amazon, where the jungle begins to slowly give way to the savanna. It’s been hot, it’s been sunny, and we’ve all made the most of our swims in the 90-degree river water several times a day. We’ve been mission focused as we chase various jungle fish species with fly rods, and long ago we all learned to just sweat through our days.
But today, on the two-hour ride back upriver from the far lower beat, something magical had happened. Thunder rolled, lightning cracked, and the sky opened up. It rained. Poured, in fact, in that way it only does in tropical climes. Suddenly I was sticking my hands in that bathtub-warm water in an effort to stop shivering in the cool, soaking rain. It had been a cold boat ride home to camp.
Shouting at the Amazon Sky
But now we’re here, slowly warming up and—judging from the shouts coming from up and down the beach—yelling at the storm. The staccato barks the Kayapó favor sound from both our anglers’ camp as well as the Kayapó encampment just down the beach. Each snap of lightning is greeted with gleeful yells to the sky, often drowned out by the violent rumble of thunder over the jungle.
We stand in the rain and shout at the sky.
And somehow that completely encompasses life at Kendjam.
We’re all pretty much living together in cozy quarters here at this jungle outpost. Kendjam Lodge lies in Kayapó Indigenous Lands and is run in conjunction with the Kayapó village of Kendjam, located about three hours downriver by boat. Here at the lodge life is simple and good: the rooms have no shutters, only cloth blinds, and it gets mighty hot when they’re closed. So we all just leave the blinds up, living in the shared space and stopping for conversation through each other’s mesh window barriers at any time of day or night. I’m lucky enough to be housed away from the eight fishing guests that are here at the moment; staying over with some of the guides on the far side of the compound. I prefer it that way.
Hooting at the storm is prime entertainment at Kendjam. So are nighttime expeditions by headlamp to try and catch caiman with our hands, fly tying on the communal porch after the fishing day, and seeing who can be the first to get to the pão de queijo as they come out of the oven each morning.
The Way of the Kayapó
The young Kayapó guides like to hang out on the porch too, and I’m in Kendjam less than a week before I’m offered to be painted. The Kayapó wear bold, graphic designs in black and red paint, a stain derived from the genipapo fruit, and each pattern has a meaning. I trust the village woman who’s doing my painting to give me something suitable, and end up with a facial design reserved for the young women of the tribe (I never quite get the details of what it means, but there’s a lot of chatter from the Kayapó guys), and a turtle shell pattern on my arm for protection. The shell suits; it’s like she knows my propensity for getting hurt on jobs, though maybe the old scars dotting my shoulders tell that story clearly enough.
The Kayapó run the boats; it’s low water this time of year and they know their river best. Every day we bob and weave through the rocky paths and the phrase, “Hooper runs the boat, chief” keeps popping into my mind. The “pro” fishing guides are often seen as the heroes of any fishing lodge, but here it’s really the Kayapó who shine. They run the boats, they know the fishiest spots, and they spot the jaguars before we do, every time.
They also shout loudest at the sky. And maybe there’s a life lesson in that… maybe we all need to stand out in the middle of a thunderstorm and shout at the sky, just because we can.
