Kaieteur National Park is but a paradox
Here is a natural wonder of unparalleled distinction, one that invites reverential awe, but attracts a mere 200 visitors or so per month. Some of its teeming plant and animal life are rare and endangered. Its beauties include the rare Guiana Cock-of-the-rock, and the gold dart-poison, giant tank bromeliads and carnivorous plants.
As for the falls, Kaieteur, its distinction lies in the unique combination of great height and large volume.
It reflects a tumble of 741-feet in a single drop, rushing 45, 000 gallons of Potaro’s black water off the escarpment down to a magnificent gorge, making it one of the most powerful waterfalls in the world, rivaling even the Jog falls of India’s Karnataka state during the monsoon season.
In the western hemisphere, Kaieteur Falls is second in height only to Angel Falls, Venezuela (3012 feet), and is five times the height of Niagara Falls at the border of the US and Canada. Unlike Angel Falls, Kaieteur carries a large volume of water year round.
According to legend, the falls is named after Kaie, one of the great old chieftains of the Patamuna people, who inhabit the Pakaraima mountains in Guyana’s interior. He is said to have committed self sacrifice by paddling his canoe over the edge of the falls, to appease Makonaima, the great spirit god, in order to save the tribe from being destroyed by the savage Caribs.
However, as Shyam Nokta, the chairman of the Kaieteur National Park Board says, there is much to relish than the falls itself.
He says Kaieteur is a protected area since 1929, having been so designated by the colonial government, "out of recognition of its immense value" in terms of its landscape and ecological value.
"In 1929, it became perhaps one of first protective areas in this part of the hemisphere, and preceded Guyana becoming independent. This tells the extent to which Kaieteur has been recognised," he says.
When local tour company Rainforest Tours and the National Parks Commission decided to undertake an overland trip to Kaieteur to help boost its ratings, Shyam decided to take the trip.
In the four years he has been at the helm of the management body for the Park, he has not been satisfied with the visitor figures to Kaieteur. What’s more, he operates on a tight budget and there is only so much he can do to protect the biodiversity of Guyana’s best known, but least experienced natural wonder.
Usually, visitors are flown from the Ogle airport, on the outskirts of Georgetown, to the Falls. There they spend a mere two hours. Nokta says it is unfair to them to spend so much money, about US$200, about the same cost to a Caribbean island from Guyana, and experience so little.
The overland trip was decided upon not only to aggressively begin a marketing strategy that allows visitors to experience the rich biodiversity of the Park and the challenges of the landscape, but also to examine ways of restricting illegal activities and unauthorised entry to the park.
Nokta headed the team that included representatives from the National Parks Commission, the Guyana Forestry Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Hydromet Department, and myself, as the lone journalist.
The 11-member team departed on November 1. Our journey would take but two days. The team departed Georgetown and headed to Pamela Landing, Mahdia, where we then boarded speedboats for Amatuk, where Frank Singh of Rainforest Tours has a house and employs Amerindians to cooks meals for those he takes on expeditions to the Park. He has been doing it for years now.
From there, it was off to Waratuk, the station at the entrance to the Park. Here, Nokta has come to commission the monitoring station, which was completed at a cost of G$3.8M. Two wardens from the Amerindian community of Chenapau have been hired to conduct the monitoring exercise. They have been provided with a multi-frequency radio set, an electrical generator, a water pump and wooden boat.
Nokta tells members of the team that the station is ideally located as it allows for monitoring and enforcement of the rules governing the park, which details no mining or hunting.
He says too the station has facilities to provide overland visitors with accommodation for a night. We would know, we were able to sling our hammocks for a good night rest.
Nokta points out that the most difficult challenge he faces is being able to monitor the Park.
The 1929 law was effected "to provide for the control of the said park and for the preservation of natural scenery, fauna and flora of the said park".
It originally encompassed 44 square miles, but in the in the early 1970’s the park boundaries were reduced to 7.5 square miles around the falls to take advantage of the mineral resources of the area.
The Act has been amended over the years, the last being in March 1999, when the area of the Park was increased to 242 square miles with the hope of conserving the inherent natural beauty of Kaieteur for future generations.
Nokta says much of the Park is densely forested and much of it is inaccessible. Much activity, whether for tourism or research, is carried out in just about a five mile radius around the falls, as such Nokta says the challenge is being able to monitor the wider Kaieteur area, "being able to monitor the movement of people in and out, and to prevent illegal activities such as mining."
The Park board has adopted a zero tolerance policy towards mining, and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, the EPA, the Forestry Commission and the Police conduct a coordinated exercises at least twice a year to ensure that this policy is not being violated.
For all of the Park, there are but four wardens, and another is currently being trained. Nokta says the Park board is looking to strengthen its relationship with the various agencies to be able to better monitor Kaieteur. He envisages a permanent police presence at Kaieteur.
The challenge he faces is that the Board does not benefit from a government subvention and so primarily depends on the landing fee it collects from visitors. This is a mere US$10, but this might soon increase to US$15. The rest of the revenue comes from that charged for overnight visitors who occupy the guest house for a measly US$12.5 each. Further, little revenue comes in from a newly erected souvenir shop which lies just off the airstrip.
As such, much development of the area depends on this minimal funding and the behest of the National Parks Commission which has to budget funds for Kaieteur and the country’s other parks.
BIODIVERSITY
Kaieteur National Park supports abundant plants and animal life but Nokta says a comprehensive biodiversity assessment has not been conducted. All the research done, has concentrated just around the falls, and he says that’s just "scratching the surface.
According to the EPA, in addition to outstanding geophysical features, the Potaro Plateau in which Kaieteur nestles, supports many different habitats. In some areas the forest opens into a wide shrub-herb "Guiana" type savannah. Absent of all but a few trees, the pink sands support scattered shrubs and a dense mat of small herbaceous plants that appear in the wet seasons. Numerous species of lichens and delicate herbs spring out of tiny cracks and on the surface of the rock.
Along the river, white sand forests are composed of numerous tree species, such as Wallaba (Eperua), Brazilnut (lecythidaseae) and the coffee family (Rubiaceae).
At night, a group of us decide to take a walk on the airstrip. Intimately, we are covered with the mist from the falls. With all but white in view, its like if we are walking in clouds. It’s a beautiful feeling that speaks to the majesty of the natural giant nearby.
Gibson explains that as the mist rises from the gorge, a cloud forest habitat is created at the top of the falls along the riparian forest which supports more epiphytes than a typical rain forest, yielding tree branches covered with mosses, orchids, ferns and aroids.
There are several endemic species of plants found in Kaieteur area including a member of the family Rapateaceae, endemic to the Guiana shield and a recently described fern, Hecistopteris kaieteurensis.
Little is known about the animal species of the Potaro Plateau, according to documents supplied by the EPA. Preliminary studies from recent visits by specialists have indicated that this area is particularly rich in animal life, and that the presence of previously unidentified species is probable.
Historically, agouti, paca, tapir, red brocket deer, collared peccary, bushmaster, labaria, jaguarundi, raccoon, golden frogs and tegu have been recorded for this area.
Although the fauna inventories for the area are incomplete, there are a number of animals considered under the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) to be extremely rare, in broad geographic range.
Important species known to be in the area are the cock-of-the-rock bird, as well as bush dogs (Speothos venaticus), listed by CITES as extremely rare.
The avifauna of the area attracts interest and enthusiasm. Several of the species are new to Guyana and others and considered to be rare or endangered. The Plateau has a number of larger mammals of international conservation importance, including the giant otter and bush dog. Jaguar is said to be present and is reported not to be hunted, and small wild cats are known.
The presence of these large mammalian predators, combined with such large avian predators as the harpy eagle, as well as the abundance of smaller species of hawks and falcons, suggest that both the Plateau’s aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem are probably healthy, each with a large volume of prey species, the EPA points out.
The number of primate species is high for the region, and the list includes a number of species that are elsewhere rare in the country, such as Spider monkeys. The presence of Cebus albifrons, the EPA says, means that the Plateau has three species of capuchin monkey in the same area, a very rare occurrence.
Recent studies have recorded 187 species of bird and 53 or 54 species of mammal. The area’s topography means that the plateau has the potential for exceptional biological diversity due to the enhancing effects of altitudinal zonation of flora and fauna.
However, at Kaieteur, an overnight night tourists’ delight and that of the overland team, is being able to see the golden dart-posion frog and the Guiana cock-of-the-rock, the dance of the swifts and the giant tank bromeliads.
Gibson boasts that the Cock-of-the-Rock, called so because they build their nests on faces of cliffs, large boulders, caves or steep gorges, knows his call. Maybe so, he has worked here for over a decade, both as warden and tour guide. We were not able to see one as he claimed from the bottom of mount Tekuit, from where we had to climb 1, 800 feet up and then 300 feet down to the falls. But as he conducted the tour of the falls’ immediate environs, we did catch site of the beauty.
He informs us of the dance the males perform to win over the attention of the females. Their courtship leks include loud noises, brilliant coloured plumage and active display.
Unfortunately, such conspicuous advertising also attracts predators to Cock-of-the-Rock leks. In Suriname, Trail (1987) found that the calls of Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock males displaying at leks could be heard several hundred meters through the forest and a diverse group of predators was attracted to the leks studied.
The golden dart-poison frog, called Colostethus beebei, Gibson informs, has toxins 1, 600 times that of cocaine. It’s a scary but amazing revelation for us. You know we aren’t going close to that thing, except with our cameras of course.
The bright yellow/orange frog spends its entire life-cycle inside the micro-ecosystem of the cloud forest's bromeliads. It is an opportunistic sit-and-wait predator whose diet includes many small arthropods, but especially mosquitoes and midges.
The most eye-catching plant in Kaieteur National Park is Brocchinia micrantha, a thick-stalked terrestrial Bromeliad that can grow to 12 feet high. Gibson actually knows these by their scientific name. He says it comes from the years he has spent at Kaieteur and his privilege of interacting with the different researchers that come.
The bromeliads grow through the unique microclimate the falls has created. It collects water in a "tank" formed by the base of its leaves.
Unlike tourists who fly in to Kaieteur for a two hour stay, those who stay overnight are able to see the dance of the swifts, either at sunset or sunrise.
The white-chinned and white-collared swifts are easily recognized by their rapid, fluttering flight, and long, narrow wings.
They make their home on the nearby cliffs of the plateau as well as behind the falls itself. These insect-eating birds fill the air at dawn and dusk, and they spend most of their waking time in the air, skimming around the falls and feeding on flying insects.
At night they sweep down at amazing speed to settle in their roosts. The roar of the torrent is immense, yet these tiny birds dive through the raging water to safety behind.
PLANS
There currently exists no management plan for the environmental conservation and protection of the Kaieteur National Park although a master plan for ecotourism development of the Park has been produced with support and assistance from the Organisation of American States.
The Government of Guyana is pursuing the establishment of a Protected Areas System and is currently advancing this objective through the National Biodiversity Advisory Committee, with the implementation of the National Biodiversity Action Plan, which was approved by the Cabinet in November 1999.
However, with his limited funding, Nokta looks at improving the infrastructure at Kaieteur, not just for tourism, but for managing the Park.
The plan is to develop eco-lodges to encourage more overnight visitors. Ideally, it would be located next to a stream, in an open area, so as not to interrupt the vegetation in the immediate area of the falls. The walk to the falls would be under 10 minutes.
Also, the plan includes establishing a center for visitors, which would provide washroom facilities, basic interpretation, and refreshments.
Nokta is currently "shopping" around for donor funding to realise the plan. He also wants to see an administrative centre that would house the wardens. He also wants to see a health worker based at Kaieteur.
He sees a continuing role for the two communities closest to the falls and it immediate environs. Chenapau is most important.
It is located outside the boundaries of the Park, but two of its representatives, including the Patamuna village captain sit on the Kaieteur board.
The community has but 500 inhabitants, and over half of the workers at Kaieteur are from Chenapau. The people speak their traditional Patamuna dialect, but they understand speak English as well.
For a living, they engage in hunting, farming, fishing and small-scale mining. They use bow and arrow to catch birds, animals and fish. Warishi, a traditional backpack made of vines, is used to transport their produce and during their spare time they knit fishing nets, hammocks and slings used to carry their babies.
Their traditional meals include cassava bread, pepper pot, fish, and wild meat such as labba, wild hog, wild deer, agouti, and birds such as marudi and powis.
With the establishment of the souvenir shop at Kaieteur, Nokta says a new door is opened to the Patamuna people. He wants to help the community to go into craft production to supply to the shop, so that they can have another source of income.
Nokta points out that the eco-tourism project of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is important to the community. A guest house is on its way to completion and an airstrip is underway.
Nokta says this will open up the community to tourism. It will give outsiders a change to indulge in the traditions and history of the Patamuna people, who have over the centuries mastered the art of living off the mountains.
However, while Chenapau rests outside the Park, Menzies Landing, a community of coast Landers rests within the Park.
According to Nokta, it has existed for over a decade now and was formed to facilitate the movement of goods to the miners in the greater area. Menzies Landing came into existence because of the fact that the only airstrip for the area was at Kaieteur.
Nokta has had his share of problems with this "transient community".
"We work closely with them, they know they are residents in park and they have to abide by the regulations. When we noted activities to the contray, we have had to take firm action," he says.
What happens to Menzies Landing in the long run, is beyond the jurisdiction of the Park board which Nokta heads.
He wants to see no activity that troubles with the biodiversity of Kaieteur. His ultimate goal is to see an increase in visitors to Kaieteur, not those who spend only two hours, but those want to spend longer.
As such, Nokta would like to see much more of the overland expeditions to Kaieteur.
"The true experience lies in being able to visit areas much beyond the falls - the experience of camping out in the rainforest, interacting in an intimate way with biodiversity, being able to visit Chenapau, and other communities. It is much more that experiencing the natural beauty of Kaieteur, but the culture and rich history of the Patamuna people," he says.
And why, he doesn’t leave out the self accomplishment of being able to traverse the same terrain of Charles Barrington Brown, who became the first European visitor to discover the falls on April 24, 1870. Along the Potaro river, a feeling of euphoria envelopes your entire being as you spot the falls from a distance, with forest covered mountains surrounding you, each painting a new picture of the world beautiful. When you see waters from Kaieteur gushing at the bottom of mount Tukeit, the climb ahead seems no more daunting.
When you trek up the "Oh, my god!" mountain and the falls opens to your eyes, you know you have accomplished no ordinary feet. And what a trophy the view is for the effort!
As it is, Kaieteur is but a sleeping giant, waiting to be awakened and to be explored by the world over.
The Pakaraimas speak of the legendary Old Kai whose name identifies Kaieteur Falls. Here, the great Makanaima breathes life for his mountain people, said to be the most prolific at living in the jungle. And then, there is the mystery of the contradictory powers of the medicinal Piaiman and the deadly Kanaima.
However, and perhaps more significantly, the Pakaraimas also speak of the Patamuna people, whose traditional way of life now borders on extinction.
"It's glaring," says Desrey Caesar-Fox, curator of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, of the loss of the Patamuna culture.
"Sure it makes me sad, because you don't get the essence of who you are," laments Tony Melville, a Patamuna, who has been chief of his village Chenapau, and chief of chiefs for the villages of the Pakaraimas.
The Patamunas, like the Akawaios, have little written in history about them. The 19th century European explorer, William Hillhouse, is among the first believed to have spotted them, recognising them as great mountaineers.
They are known archaeologically from pottery collections in the Yawong Valley and the upper Siparuni River. These collections suggest an affiliation with Akawaio groups. The burial urn, guarded by a serpent, is a characteristic artifact of Patamuna pottery.
The Pakaraimas, interestingly, means "really huge testicles." Dr. Fox, who is also Coordinator of the Amerindian Research Unit at the University of Guyana, jokes that you could put it as "XXX testicles."
Believed to have been formed 300 million years ago, the Pakaraimas have unique fauna and flora consisting of grasses, bushes, flowers, insects, and small amphibians
The largest of Guyana's three geographical regions is the interior highlands, a series of plateaus, flat-topped mountains, and savannahs that extend from the white sand belt to the country's southern borders. The Pakaraima mountains dominate the western part of the interior highlands. In this region are found some of the oldest sedimentary rocks in the Western Hemisphere.
LEGENDS
One of the most famous Patamuna stories is the legend of Kaieteur, which is very often told, though in different ways.
Bill Pilgrim's legend is that an old Patamuna man named Kai chose not to be a burden to his people in his old age and asked his people in desperation to sacrifice him over the 741 feet waterfall. He saw this as an act of freeing his people from all the bad times they were having.
His people thus said a haunting goodbye and pushed Kai over the falls that is today described as `Kai's mountain house', meaning Kaieteur.
Kaieteur Falls is considered the crown jewel of Guyana's tourism product.
To the present time, Dr. Fox says, the Patamunas still believe that Old Kai lives within the huge cave over which the falls cascade. The mist emanating from the falls is sometimes explained as the smoke from which Old Kai is cooking his food. The belief is that Old Kai still lives and is happier where he is.
"It was this belief that made Kaieteur a special spiritual place for the Patamuna people and is therefore their spiritual shrine," Dr. Fox explains.
She believes too this has been their mainstay long before British explorer and geologist Charles Barrington Browne was said to have discovered the Falls in 1870.
There are many other stories associated with the legend of Kaieteur. There is one which talks about the last two extinct tribes of Guyana, the Parguaza and the Amacao, who reportedly committed mass suicide by leaping over the cliffs above Kaieteur because an oracle proved false. And there is but another that tells of Kaieteur Falls, being named for a long-gone Patamunas chief who, by legend, paddled himself in a dugout over the scarp to win the favour of the gods in a war against the ferocious Caribs.
As Dr. Fox posits, we will never know which one of the varying legends of Kaieteur is true. The place to look for the history lies with the Patamuna people. However, their own identity is now barely recognisable among the present generation.
Before the fourth Pakaraimas Mountain safari revved off, my own curiosity was that of meeting the Patamuna people, one of the last nine remaining tribes of Amerindians in Guyana. Their traditional dress, their body markings (or what we call tattoos), their revered Piai man, and albeit hesitantly, the Kanaima, were registered in my mind.
I first got a hint that none of what I expected to discover would materialise at the Morabaiko creek, where the team from the 16-vehicle safari camped for the night.
As he fastened his hammock rope to retire for the night, Chairman of Region Eight, Senor Bell, sounded the alarm. Patamunas were becoming more and more interested in the coastland way of life.
When Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Harripersaud Nokta commissioned the safari team across the Echilibar River crossing from Region Nine into Region Eight, therefore, the Pakaraimas beckoned a different invitation. To me, it was a call to see how its people had changed.
At Bamboo Creek, even the welcome was tainted. The Amerindians traditionally serve drink, in this case, mango drink. Everyone is expected to sip from the same portion as a friendship gesture. However, it was not served in the customary calabash, it was plastic bowl!
The Patamunas no longer cling to their culture and Dr. Fox believes this is because the spirituality of these "people of the sky" was uprooted by Christian missionaries.
"It's glaring. The root of our culture, our spirituality, was cut down very early by the Christian invasion," Fox declares.
RULES OF THE FOREST
Before, the missionaries, the Patamunas practised a nature religion of sorts. They believed in strong contact with the environment.
"We actually lived in an environment where we abided by the rules of nature. We respected the environment and it somehow respected us," she says.
That bonding with the forest and mountains meant there were rules and regulations that governed their way of life.
Before going into a forest, it was customary to chant a prayer, more or less a password, to appease the spirits for passing through their territory. If not, problems could arise.
"You could get lost in the forest. You would go hunting and get no game. You could get into an accident," Dr. Fox explains.
And once into the forest, there were rules to follow.
"You shouldn't be laughing and screaming aloud. If you cook food with pepper, you don't throw it in the water. You don't urinate in the water in these areas," Dr. Fox informs. This, however, has changed completely.
"Some people don't even know that this existed," she asserts.
Among the natures giants that was revered by the Patamunas is the sun. They called him Father Sun, portraying him as the very source of vitality, and of life itself.
In fact, the way the Patamunas and other Amerindians built their houses represented the spiritual value they placed on the sun. But even this aspect of their life has been transformed.
The benab houses that are representative of Amerindian dwellings, usually allowed a sun roof, in that, a small portion of the dome roof would be exposed to allow the sun to shine through into the house. That part of the house where the sun penetrated was believed be to be sacred ground. In fact, the whole idea of building a house was of deep spiritual significance.
One such significance is of it being a fertility symbol, a body metaphor.
The dome, or cone shape of the house signifies the vagina of the female and the centre pole that keeps it up portrays the male phallic symbol.
Dr. Fox agrees, saying this signifies continuity of life basically.
"Of course, it doesn't happen like that now because they don't live in houses like that anymore," she quickly adds. The Amerindians now build some of their houses coastland-style, abandoning the benab style.
DRESS
The clothes the indigenous peoples developed were tailored to suit Guyana's tropical climate. The women wore bead aprons, made out of seeds, just to cover the front, and, in the initial stages, wore nothing anything at all.
In that period, body painting was very important. If the "tattoo" as it is called today, is applied properly, you really didn't see "anything." However, unlike today's tattoo craze, you couldn't just tattoo your body willy-nilly.
"Everything had a meaning. Certain groups had distinct markings," Dr Fox says.
"The oldest woman in Chenapau died two years ago. She had tattoo whiskers. This told you that she was a brewer. She could make the strongest drinks," Melville adds.
In a similar vein, different markings meant different things, and the men were known to dress more elaborately than the women.
The men once used a `penis sheet', "so if you go fishing or hunting, or running around the place you would not get injured," Dr. Fox laughs.
"It doesn't happen anymore. They know how to do it. We still know older people who know certain things, but we have to act quickly before they die out," she adds.
Apart from the penis sheet, males wore beaded aprons and donned an Awino, a special upper body crossing, designed in an X-shape. It was a macho thing to be dressed like that. Added to that were the cacique crown, arm and anklet bands and special feather across the nose.
The females just wore beaded aprons to cover the front.
"I laugh today because people are so fond of thongs, but that is what Amerindian women used to wear," Dr. Fox says. Added to that, the women painted their bodies.
Consistent too with the way of dressing were distinct hairstyles, for both the males and the females.
However, the Pataumas and most other Amerindian groups do not dress traditionally anymore.
Melville speaks of the people of Monkey Creek, situated within the village of Kaibarupai, 50 miles from Orinduik, who try very hard to preserve their culture. He says there the older people still wear traditional loin cloth.
He remembers back in 2001, when he was head captain, receiving a lot of complaints that Christians had tried to move in and were condemning the people for their way of life and inferring that they are "punishing" because their culture was not right.
Tony says he wrote the authorities in Georgetown to register the concerns of the people
"At Monkey Creek, they perhaps still hold the cream of traditional knowledge," he says.
Dr. Fox contends that Christianity shares majority blame for the loss of Amerindian culture.
"They were told they look like animals. Christianity told them that this kind of living is not good, its paganism. So they brought them clothes and groomed their hair, gave them shoes to wear. They really said it was not good, they were told you look like savages," Dr. Fox asserts.
Why were the Amerindians brainwashed?
"Because they were told they can't go to heaven like that. Amerindian culture was outlawed and is still outlawed in some communities like Waramadong and Kako. Everybody ise now Seventh Day Adventists. You can't have medicine man in the villages to cure people - that's being sinful," she contends.
"The Wai Wais were thought to be the most unadulterated group. That is not so. I was there last October. Wai Wais are Christian brethren. They dress like you and I. These were the people who dressed the way you see them in pictures. They no longer do that," Dr. Fox asserts.
"When we asked them why they cut their hair and so, they said the missionaries told them it was not good, they have to stop doing that," she adds.
She says the only time they do that now is on holidays, when they keep people out of their community to practice their traditions.
"Imagine that, now they have to hide to do that!"
"They were totally brainwashed. It is a case of a dominant culture wiping out the culture of other people. They say if you do this and do that, you would be accepted as normal people. That has not happened," Dr. Fox says.
"No matter how high and low you climb, you are still an Amerindian. In the eyes of people, you are still an Amerindian. And the kind of ways in which they define you and look at you, it's still the same way. It doesn't matter if you have a Doctorate behind your name, the discrimination continues, I'm sorry to say, but it happens," Dr. Fox posits.
LANGUAGE - A SAVIOUR
The Patamuna language is the most dominant element of their original way of life that remains, but this too is being tainted by the English Language.
"That is why we are still Amerindians. Language is something that defines people. That is the saviour to us. Through your language you can express and interpret your world. That is the element of our culture that we have retained in some instances that has kept us," Dr. Fox asserts.
"We speak our language, it's part of our identity, it's who we are as against other people. It has kept us as a people," she adds.
It is common to hear Patamuna people speak their own language. But it is being changed a little bit, with English slowly seeping in.
"That is the first indication towards language death," Dr. Fox posits.
She says part of the problem may be that native Amerindian language is not used as medium for instruction in schools.
"It is something we should seriously look at or else we would loose the language in small populations," she suggests.
"Sure it makes me sad, because you don't get the essence of who you are," Melville says of his lack of ability to communicate fully in his own language.
"People say times change, but in the Pakaraimas, you see beauty and life. You know you can live with nature, animals, water, but because of losing your language, you loose what your real traditional culture is. You must feel sad," he says.
Tony says he cannot speak fluently in his native Patamuna language, but he can understand when he hears his elders speak.
'But you feel sad when you can't rattle and prattle like they do," he says.
Melville wants to see action fast to preserve the Patamuna tongue. He would like to see something similar to what is happening in the Rupununi region, where Makushi is being taught in schools.
He feels the Government should play the most important role in this preservation.
Christians are now translating the Bible from English to Patamuna. Melville doesn't like that.
BURNT HOUSES; NO CAMERAS PLEASE
As the safari team passed through some Patamuna villages, there is evidence of houses burnt to the ground. Safari leader Frank Singh informs that it is a custom when someone dies for the house to be burnt to the ground.
"They believe that if you burn the house, you let the spirit of the person go in peace," Dr. Fox adds.
The house is brunt along with all every single thing the person owned. If that doesn't happen, they believe his spirit would linger around. The custom applies to the death of anyone, young or old, male or female.
However, this practice too is facing extinction. With thatched roofs and mud houses, it was no big deal to observe this ritual, but now Dr. Fox points out some Amerindians build wooden houses, so they don't burn it down, they just move out and build another house.
Another belief of Amerindian new to me was that some of them do not like to have their picture taken, because they feel you could trap their spirit when you do that. This became clear at Karukubaru, the highest point we would reach in the safari, 3, 000 feet up in the mountains.
Some of them literally ran away when I attempted to take a picture of them sitting under their thatched roofed houses. They see it as spiritually detrimental. But not all Amerindians believe that and the majority are all the more too happy to have their photograph taken, and especially when they could see it right away from the digital cameras that almost all the adventurers possessed.
KANAIMA LIVES
The Kanaima is the most dreaded of what outsiders believed to be Amerindian folkflore. However, it is not a legend, attests Dr. Fox. They really still exist, mutilating and poisoning their victims as part of gruesome and highly ritualised murders. She describes them as belonging to a sacred society, more like a killer cult, targeting their enemies.
University of Wisconsin anthropologist Neil Whitehead never intended to study them until they came after him.
In the early 1990s, when Whitehead first travelled to Guyana, he had no interest in hearing about such stomach-turning practices, just to catalogue artifacts and sites of anthropological interest. On the first days of that research trip, Whitehead unknowingly triggered the ire of one or more Kanaimas. That, he believes, incited them to poison him, ultimately pushing him to understand what had happened.
And so, a few years later, Whitehead sat surrounded by men who presented him with a dilemma - one we might call an "invitation problem." As a rule, anthropologists try to immerse themselves in the cultures they study, and living among - even working with - research subjects is a consecrated habit.
However, he soon discovered that discussions about violence are surrounded by taboos. "Our attitude and knowledge about violence are where they were about sex, thirty to forty years ago," he says.
Indeed, Whitehead's new book, `Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death', contains descriptions of Kanaima horrendous enough to be taboo in many publications. This story, too, avoids some of the harsher details, but interested readers can consult the book for more explicit descriptions.
Kanaimas, Whitehead learned, usually didn't immediately kill their victims, preferring to first maim and intimidate by breaking victims' fingers or dislocating their necks. After the victim endured a few months or years of pain, the Kanaimas would mount a ferocious killing attack, piercing the victim's tongue with snake fangs, mutilating the mouth and anus with sharp objects, and inserting toxic plants into the anus.
"The sheer violence of the attack," Whitehead says, "is meant to drive out the life force of the person." Even with medical treatment, victims die an excruciating, lingering death.
The professor and his Patamuna associates entered a cave that held a solitary, ceramic urn containing several old bones. The Patamuna treated the urn with awe, and refused to touch it. Whitehead, however, not only moved the urn to take a photo, but also removed one of the bones. That action, as it turned out, sealed his fate, guaranteeing that he would soon have a deeply personal interest in Kanaima.
The Patamuna interpreted Whitehead's behaviour as an announcement that he was either a Kanaima himself or one of their enemies. His actions, he believes, motivated his new enemies - presumably directed by Kanaimas - to poison him. Their intent was not murder, Whitehead says, which they easily could have accomplished through their knowledge of natural poisons. Instead, he believes, their goal was to threaten him about being too nosy.
The attack, delivered in the form of a meal, caused several weeks of serious gastrointestinal problems. He revisited the area, talking with the families of victims and buying interviews with a few men who claimed to be Kanaimas. The work culminated with the publication of the chilling account of `Dark Shamans'.
Dr. Fox says the Kanaimas were essential to Amerindian warrior communities. They were the elite force to wipe out the enemy from other tribes.
"However, with the whole idea of Christianity, the whole body of language went underground," she says.
However, Dr. Fox notes it is the only aspect of the Amerindian culture that has not been infiltrated by anything else because people are so scared to investigate, letting it remain mysterious. But she warns it is not mambo jumbo. She likes to call it "a body of highly classified information."
She herself investigated the Kanaima for her university dissertation. According to her, when a Kanaima kills, they attack the two ways of how energy is distributed in body: through your mouth and anus.
When they attack they slit under your tongue because you might have seen or known the killer, she says. Even if they don't do that and you can talk you would never be able to say who exactly did it.
"They mess with your mind," she says. If they have targeted you, she says, they will lure you.
"They hit you with their hand behind your neck, break up your bones, slit your throat, pull out your rectum and put in a piece of wood and then feed you with all kinds of herbs. You get fever, hallucinations, vomit blood. You die in three days," Dr. Fox explains.
With Christianity, thankfully or not, the Kanaimas are slowly disappearing. Christian missionaries taught the Amerindians that the practice was evil and they would not win favour with the gods.
"When the Christians came, they realised this could tamper with spreading their message, and they started converting people," Melville pints out.
However, he knows of some Kanaimas existing now and some of those who have passed it on to their children.
Given its highly spiritualistic complex, he estimates that it takes some 15 years for a grandmaster to pass on the knowledge to his sons.
The Patamunas believed in the power of their Piai man to use his spiritual art to ward off attack, by the Kanaima, but they, too, are now in short supply.
PATAMUNA REVIVAL
With the Patamuna culture and that of other Amerindian tribes disappearing, is there hope of its revival? Dr. Fox feels so. So does Tony Melville.
"We believe in a circle of life and maybe we were caught in the middle, searching for identity. I know now the whole world is looking back at the indigenous world to learn something," Dr. Fox insists.
"I believe you take five generations to loose your culture and 25 years to retain it. We are about three and a half generations into losing our culture; it is now virtually extinct," Melville says.
He feels leaders in the communities have a major role to play in preserving Amerindian culture.
With the Pakaraimas becoming more and more opened up, the cultures of the Patamunas can disappear even faster.
"The Patamunas always respect their environment. They wouldn't destroy their environment, knowing they have to live with it. But now, they are seeing modernised equipment, like power saws. Now, they want to cut bigger farms," he says.
He is now into tour guiding and when he flies across the Pakaraimas, he notices more patches of land being cleared.
"The power saw makes work lighter, but it also clears away land much faster, and destroys the environment. Our leaders have to be more conscious," he says.
"Our actions now must be on answering this question first: If we do this, what will happen thirty, forty years from now?"
The safari to the Pakaraimas was made possible because of the completion of the road to Orinduik.
Roads linking the villages of Region Eight from Maikwak to Monkey Mountain never existed. Similarly, there were no access roads from Karasabai to Yurong Paru in Region Nine. The villages of the Pakaraimas were landlocked and the easy way to commute was by air.
The Patamunas and the Makushis (who inhabit but three of the villages in the Pakaraimas) traverse these mountains, rivers and plains for days and sometimes weeks to possible market places.
Men and women have no choice but to carry their belongings in traditional Warishees slung across their backs and tied to their foreheads.
It is said that these people, who primarily engage in farming, hunting and fishing, suffered social and economic stagnation due to a lack of market for their produce. They live and survive by eking out their own subsistence.
Recognising the need for an access road linking the villages of Regions Eight and Nine, the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development developed the project to cut a road through the Regions.
First, it was a rough pathway traversed only by two tractors and trailers. In December 2000, monies were made available to complete the last portion from Morabaiko creek in Region Nine, to its last village Young Peru.
As a result, the safari was able to travel from Karasabai in Region Nine to Orinduik in Region Eight.
Minister of Local Government Harripersaud Nokta answers the question of why a safari, by noting that it provides the opportunities for coastlanders to learn more about the way of life and the difficulties of the people. He says it is a way of promoting tourism and of garnering income for the communities.
More than that, he sees greater potential for agricultural development in the interior and opportunities for scientific research.
He feels with the road opened up, the Amerindians could have easier access to their land and it could also spur competition among those who sell goods from the coastland at exorbitant prices.
In terms of agriculture, Minister Nokta says the soil could provide yields of white potatoes, onion, garlic, teas and grapes because of the temperate climate and natural fertilisation.
With the coastland under threat to global warming and floods common, he sees an economic and social shift to the interior as an alternative that has to be seriously looked at.
Melville knows of the benefits of the road, but he is fearful of the adverse effects it could have.
"Tourism can be good and it can be detrimental also. Some people don't have the same respect for environment and what remains of the customs of our people," he says. Then there are other negative consequences that could follow, he worries.
Melville and Dr. Fox fear that soon the traditions of the Patamunas would be just a past-time for these people.
So if you go on the next safari to the Pakaraimas and you see the Patamunas perform their Humming Bird or Parishara dances, know you are getting a hint that they yearn for their culture to stay alive. What remains of it, that is.
