CAMOPI,
FRENCH GUYANA
from september 2004 to august 2005
We are
back on the net for a huge updating as we have to cover one year!
Our English practice hasn't been very important recently and as
you know: languages are unfaithful if they are not practiced…
We hope it won't prevent you to enjoy this page.
We left Brazil
and the sweetness of Rio's bay to go back to French Guyana, as
teachers once again… but this time in a native village right
in the so called "forbidden zone" as one needs an authorisation
from the French government to get in.
A strange decision as we were more likely to move on at this time,
to continue our travel. Whatever, we accepted this new position
because it appeared like a unique chance to meet native people
of Amazonia, to share their life and be an actor in their community.
In French
Guyana most of the population lives along the coast. It is not
the case of Camopi, the village where we have been working. It
is located in the Interior of French Guyana, a wild area, covered
entirely by the Amazonian forest and scarcely populated. The village
stands at the confluence of two rivers: the Camopi and the Oyapock.
The latter one is the natural boundary between France and Brazil.
Flying over the Amazonian forest and the border river Oyapock.
There
is no road to join Camopi. You need to travel by bush plane or
canoe and it's not always easy to organize as there is no regular
connection. The canoe is the cheapest and the easiest to plan.
Time isn't so important here. We can spend hours waiting by
the river for a canoe to come.
We
flew to Camopi in September 2005. A 30 minutes travel before landing
in the forest, on a dirt road built by the Army.
We arrive in Camopi. Our stuff is on the ground and the plane
about to leave.
" Downtown " Camopi.
About 800 people live in Camopi. There are two different tribes
with their own language: the Wayampis and the Emérillons.
Most of the inhabitants live in the surrounding area, along the
rivers in small villages with a familial structure. Only a few
hundreds of people live in the central area where the waters of
the Camopi and Oyapock rivers melt.
When we arrived we settled in a flat built over the grocery store
-used as a bar for most of its customers.
Next to our flat lies the Emérillon village with its
wooden houses by the river. A young girl is washing the clothes
of it's family in the Camopi river.
Concerning
our job, we changed a little bit as we left the young kids for
the teenagers. For them, there was no official school in Camopi.
If they were to follow a normal way, they would have to leave
their home to join the closest high school, 100 km away by the
river. Lack of money, worries about delinquency pushed many parents
to choose another way for their kids: subscribing to the CNED,
a French institution that delivers lessons by mail. Thanks to
the CNED, the teenagers where able to stay in the village. Thus,
we had to help our students to find their way in the complexity
of this system which, unfortunately, hasn't been created for native
people.
Our students were between 12 and 18 years old. Here one of
our two classroom. The first day, we had the surprise to discover
that some of the girls were studying topless or with a bra. Far
from Harvard and Cambridge!
Quickly,
we were to be very upset by this system. First because of the
mails: we often had to wait an answer, a correction, a lesson,
for months. The first lessons arrived four months after the beginning
of the class! But the worse were the subjects of the lessons:
everything was centred on continental France: history, culture,
geology… The best way to prevent students from being interested,
involved and more than this: the best way to deny their existence.
Our boss came to visit our school… and agreed with our demonstration.
Thus we started to work on the reform of the school system in
the isolated villages of the whole French Guyana.
Thus, a new kind of school is going to open this year, a school
were native arts, history, Guyana's geology… will have their
place.
At morning, most of our student come to school on their canoe.
French
is often the third, the fourth or the fifth language of our students.
Thus, language is the major problem they encounter at school.
Why France is still in this part of the world? What for? Relations
between continental France and French Guyana are very complex
and not so easy to judge. It's not our purpose here… but
to talk about the native people of French Guyana in particular,
we had the feeling to do something useful.
Nowadays, native people are very few compare to the other groups
who live in French Guyana and among them the Creoles (children
of the former slaves) who roughly dominate the society. Native
people are almost unknown on the political scene. They suffer
of discrimination and lack of consideration. They are powerless.
All the native nations are experiencing tremendous evolutions.
Actually, none of the inhabitants of Camopi seems able to help
out this situation. Too cast away: physically, morally, …
French might be a way to exist among the other groups, to access
to an amount of information and reach the political scene at the
national level and join the international wakening of the native
nations. In French Guyana, the Kali'na native nation is the most
advanced in its process of revival and the skills they got in
French is surely helping out.
Learning a language is not acculturation if their own culture
is respected, alive. We wish to integrate next year the study
of their mother tongue. This is not yet done… Thus, we are
going to stay one more year to dwell and adjust the new system
and to follow a little bit more, for a short time in their life,
the surprising and marvellous student we had this year.
OUR
DAILY LIFE IN CAMOPI
Breakfast in our flat. View on the Camopi river.
Electricity is provided by a generator. It should
produce energy 10 or 12 hours a day. Unfortunately, the man in
charge of the machine makes it work according to its fantasy.
Thus we might have sometime energy until 4 o'clock in the morning
when we just need to sleep and some other times, Friday or Saturday
night for example, we might know a black out till 7 pm…
Water adduction is linked to electricity… so we often have
to face a shortage of water.
A day without water. The river becomes a bathtub and a laundry.
What about the food? We have a grocery store but
we can't depend on it. We have to buy everything in Cayenne or
in Brazil and carry it to Camopi on a canoe. It's sometimes exhausting.
We are traveling in huge wooden canoe. They can carry many
tons of weight. Travel can last 4 hours during the wet season
to two days during the dry season. Here we are passing thru one
of the numerous rapids of the river. Some of them are amazingly
strong during the rainy season. That particular day, we were to
sink in a rapid and spend the all night on a rock in the middle
of the water… Not always easy to work in the forest.
This is what is called in French Guyana a " saut "
(a jump). Passing thru it with a canoe demands lots of skills.
Native people are famous for that.
Daily
we go to school for a little bit less than 6 hours and then we
have hour lunch. The afternoon starts usually with a nap in the
hammock.
The holly equatorial nap… by the river.
After
we set our work for the day after, we often go swimming in the
river or play volley-ball.
During the dry season, the level of the rivers goes down.
Rocks and sandbeaches appear. Here is one of our natural swimming
pool. A true paradise if one manage to forget the anacondas…
For
the week-ends we often cross the river to go dancing in the little
Brazilian village in front of Camopi, Vila Brasil. Its construction
was linked to the illegal gold extraction in the area and to the
beginning
View from the French bank, the wooden houses of Vila Brasil.
A Saturday night in a bar of Vila Brazil, our only dance club
! We have been spending nights there dancing the Bregga, the Pagode…
all the sounds of Northern and Northeastern Brazil. Sometimes
we are not more then 10 people but it happen that we can be more
than 80 when all the teachers, the policemen, the doctors, the
nurses, the legionaires, the native people, the brasilians who
dig for gold in the area and a few prostitutes! An unbelievable
patchwork.
Very often, the kids of the surrounding houses came to visit
us and to enjoy our table where they can draw for hours.
Thru its history, French Guyana kept its sad reputation, the
green hell. For us, in our daily life, we feel it more like a
paradise. Among the frightening animals a city guy can have of
French Guyana there are not too much of them we get to see. This
one, a boa, one of the few we get to encounter, is armless.
LIFE
OF THE VILLAGE
Before, the roofs of the habitations used to be made with
palm leafs. Here you can see the traditional clothe of the men:
the "Calimbé ", a red peace of clothe, perfect
to stand heat, humidity and rain.
If some of the villagers begin to have jobs with salary (mail
office, administration, canoe pilot…) most of the others
are involved in a sustainable kind of economy: hunting, fishing,
gathering.
Fruits and vegetables are cultivated in what is
called an " abattis ": a peace of jungle that as been
cut and where the dead wood as been burned to fertilize the soil.
Unlike rice, their food cannot feed a numerous population. But
it has the advantage of being very respectful for the environment.
The " abattis " of a brazilian guy by the Oyapock
river.
Cupuaçu and Graviola, two exotic fruits cultivated
in the abattis.
When
native people harvest the " manioc " they always prepare
a kind of beer with low alcohol. Families make huge pot of that
beer called "cachiri" and enjoy to share it with their
friends.
A night a tour neighboor place enjoying the cachiri.
Traditionally, during a cachiri, men and women are separated.
Historically, cachiri was a time when people widespread along
the banks of the rivers used to be altogether, sharing their stories.
Nowadays, cachiris might know some evolution: music playing so
strong that nobody can talk, strong alcohol…
Motorized
canoe and rifles have been changing traditional fishing and hunting.
They make it easier and thus more people can live in the same
area. As a consequence, the area of the village is almost without
a fish or an animal and now, men need to go sometimes far away
on their canoe to bring back the daily food for their family.
On
a week-end, we went fishing and hunting with two of our students.
One of them smelled the wild boar from the canoe. He jumped in
the forest and killed 3 of them! Here, the animals are in the
canoe with the young Lili
.
That day we have been travelling for 6 hours. As it's very hot
and humid, the meat as to be prepared quickly. Here, Betty is
cleaning one head.
Once the meat is ready, native people used to smoke it and
they'll be able to keep it many for days.
Going silently down the river, looking for monkeys, birds,
… we collect " sweet peas " in the trees to pass
time.
Hunting, fishing… moving means a canoe. The river is
deeply in their life … and in ours.
The Miso family hanging around. Boys listen to drive very
young.
In Camopi there no overdose of modern games. The river and
the forest provide natural playground. A stick of wood help to
collect the mangoes, half a barrel can teach without thinking
about it the essential of the what cruising in the flood of the
river is all about.
DIGING FOR GOLD
It's
an old history in french Guyana. Nowadays, this activity seems
to be out of control. Camopi lies in a protected area. Whatever:
there might be not less than 140 camps where 2.500 brazilians,
the poorest, are diging for gold in the close area of Camopi.
Those people are working in clandestinity and suffer of conditions
not worse than pure slavery.
Diging the bed of the river, using lead, they are polluting the
rivers and among them the Camopi river whose waters changed of
color…
Where the Oyapock and the Camopi river meet : the Oyapock
is dark, natural, unlike the Camopi river which shows yellowish
colors, sign of its pollution.
Use of the lead in the production of gold introduce
an armful form of this metal in the food chain. Native people
are directly concerned.
On one of the small island of the river stands a hub for the
gold activity : gas, food, alcohol… Gold camps are like
small town in the deep forest with their saloon, dance club, supermarket,
churches and brothels. We work for the French government but nothing
is planed to bring us to our village. Thus, we often have to use
the network of Brazilian workers who live in clandestinity…
CHRISMAS 2004
Working as a teacher means also having lots of holydays ! For
Christmas we went back in continental France to visit friends
and family. First return for Guillaume after 3,5 years. Coldness
of the winter, warmness of the meetings and 6 kg more.
FEBRUARY 2005
For 2 weeks we travelled in French Guyana with one of our student.
14 years old at this time he never went out of the villages of
the Oyapock River. An important travel for him, discovering the
sea, the towns….
At Kourou, on the beach, we have seen a launch of Ariane 5
rocket.
Eddy, our student learns how to ride a bike for its first
time. It took him only 20 minutes.
EASTER 2005
During easter hollydays we went … in an isolated place !
The island of Marajo, in the mouth of the Amazon river. This island
as the size of Switzerland.
Brazil is very huge. To reach the island of Marajo we had
to travel on a canoe for 5 hours than take a bus for 16 hours
(540 km), take a plane for 1 hour, a boat for 2 hours and another
bus for 1 hour.
The Marajo island is a sanctuary for the buffalos. There are
many millions of them. Meat and cheese are easy to find in the
restaurant.
During the rainy season, the island is swampy. In this huge
fazenda, the sweat water of the Amazon meets the salted water
of the Atlantic.
The village of Soure in the eastern part of the island. Sweetness
of the Brazilian way of life and sun between two showers.
Miles of deserted beaches
JUNY : TRAVEL TO THE VILLAGE OF TROIS SAUTS (TREE JUMP)
Pictures with other teachers and a carpenter.
With two native families we went to the remote village of Trois
Sauts. It's one of the most isolated village of french guyana.
It took us two days on a canoe to reach the village.
After one day of canoe, we set the camp by the river. Catherine
and Jean-Marie Yapoke are preparing their dinner.
Trois Sauts looks like the end of the world and
a travel thru time. Camopi looks like a modern city compare to
it !
The rapids that gave the name to the village. On the other
bank : Brazil.
One of the frequent activity we had there : cachiri, a way
for the inhabitants to welcome us.
Travelling back to Camopi with the young Rosalie. Over the
year we spent in Camopi we got to know her better and to have
friendly relationship with her parents. That's why we accepter
to go to France for 2 months with her.
SUMMER
2005 : TRAVEL IN FRANCE WITH ROSALIE
This will be the subject of the next update.
This
year we are thus going to work one more year in French Guyana.
We are still going to be isolated. We'll manage to connect every
two months.
Whishing you the best.
Guillaume
and Betty
The 25th of August 2005
