Washington is our tour guide from Guiana (near suriname). He is 55 years old and says that he has been working since age 9. He married at age 15 to a 14 year old girl. They had two children together, but unfortunately she died giving birth to the second one. At this time, he was working in the mineral minds and was not there for her when she died. He currently claims to have two wives in Guiana (who aren’t technically his wives, he just calls them that), he has one “wife” in Manaus that he visits from time to time, and he has his current “wife” that lives in the village near our hotel where he lives. He says he has been with her for 6 years, the longest he’s ever been with any of them.
He told us a lot of stories about when he worked in the mineral mines. He said that people would literally just drop them off in these mines and leave them there. He said that there was a lot of prostitution that occurred there, and that girls would come to “work” in the mines, but just actually to sleep with the workers. He said that the people would offer the girls a sum to sleep with them, and one person even offerred a girl 2 KILOS of gold for one night. The girls actually got rich being prostitutes, many of them stayed and there were the smart girls who ran away with their money. The ones that stayed most likely died. He said that in the mines he got Malaria 18x and that in his village he has gotten it 4 more times. That’s 22 times of Malaria..
When he lived in Guiana, he lived with tribes and he talks a lot about the indians. He really knows a lot about their lifestyle. He said that the men typically sleep all day, and hunt/fish all night while the women actually have the hard work of taking care of everything and all the children at home.
He talked about these indians that were found in the amazon that Vanessa had mentioned to us. They are very tall, like all 6 ft, and blonde hair, blues, white skin. They are also cannibals. Cannabalism is not uncommon to the indians, but Washington said that nowadays you don’t see it as much. Many indians believe that when you eat a piece of another person who inherit their strengths and that’s why they will eat prisoner’s of war. It’s crazy to think that people are still finding new tribes in the amazon that are completely uncivilized.
He said that he came to the hotel to work as a carpenter, but since he speaks English he was hired on to work as a guide. He said that he also works doing domestic housework, making pizza, anything and everything.
Many of our hotel workers live in the villages near our hotel in the jungle. Because of the floods, many of them lost everything-their homes, their jobs. The hotel was closed for 3 months & they were all out of work. These workers only make about 10R a day, or $5 dollars. It’s really sad but that’s life here.
Francisco.
We had heard many stories about Francisco prior to actually meeting him. Apparently, he had eaten into the screen of the boys room and ate their wooden chair. Crazy bird. Franciscos name is actually Cabecao (big head), but the boys gave him the nickname of Francisco. He is about 8 years old, and Washington has known him since he was a baby. Francisco had a “wife” (parrots mate for life) who was eaten by a boa constrictor and Francisco was so sad for about 3 months after that. I asked Washington how he could possibly know that and he said that there was a boa constrictor in the tree for about a week next to the hotel, and one night at about 3AM they heard Francisco’s wife screeching because she was being eaten. Now Francisco is a little crazy. He hates loud noises and a lot of movement so when some of the girls were exercising upstairs, he freaked out and flew and bit two of them on their ankles. This was AFTER he apparently was pacing around with his beak rubbing the floor. Weird bird! He is not the nicest bird. But he loves Washington. He goes to him because he knows his voice. Washington hand feeds him and snuggles with him. It’s really cute. We met Francisco the day after we arrived and he was entertaining to have around. He made me want to have a parrot because they have such a funny personality..but I don’t think I would want an animal that lived to be 70 years old. :P
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