Thursday, June 28, 2012

Stages of Huaorani/Waorani Life - by Dr. Breffní Lennon

THE FOUR STAGES OF HUAORANI/WAORANI LIFE
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 Birth
In traditional Huaorani communities, it is the mother who must teach her daughter about her body. However, it is the grandmother’s role to provide support and guidance to a woman when she is pregnant. To make the expectant mother strong, she will useortigo (a member of the nettle family) all through the pregnancy (over the body or in a tea). She will also make a tea from wild garlic to increase her strength. When it is time for the birth they will put up a hammock over a large bowl of water, so that the baby will fall into the water when born. When the baby is born, people from all other communities in the locality will come to visit the child. It is also the grandmother who gives the baby his or her name – usually the same name as the grandmother if the baby is a girl. In the old days, bad shamans would sometimes send evil spirits to an expectant mother if they did not wish the baby to be born. However, because they were essentially killing a new life, the shaman would usually die as well. Now, if the mother feels this is about to happen she will approach other people living in each community, so that they will go out and find the shaman and kill him before he can do any harm.
 Adolescence
The Huaorani have no special rites of passage to becoming an adult. The only difference in their day to day routine will be that their parents will stop telling them what to do and will no longer punish them for their mistakes. Today, the Huaorani consider someone a man at about the age of 20, but traditionally you were a man when you were able to hunt alone and build a good house.
Want to visit the Huaorani? Click on the Huaorani Lodge 
Marriage
Traditionally, the Huaorani led a nomadic lifestyle and did not welcome outsiders in their territory (even other Huaorani), so they would often marry late in life. Now that many of them live in settled communities, a complex system of rules for marriage has developed over the past 30 years or more. It is now seen as important to marry someone from another community, so they will often meet at fiestas. If a man meets a woman he likes, then it is expected of her to stay in the community and marry him, if that is what he decides. Once married the couple decide where to live – in her community or his. However, the eldest child must marry the eldest child of another family. Also, if someone’s brother gets married, then that person is expected to marry one of her sisters. This was seen as a solution to resolving the inter-community warfare that has plagued much of Huaorani history, since one will have family members living in all the other communities in the area – this is the reason given for women not having a choice in who she marries. In the past, when there was a lot of fighting, the ratio of men to women meant that there were far fewer women residing in each community, and so a woman may have many husbands. However, today only the men can have more than one partner. When they first began to settle it was often the norm to have as many as five wives so that one’s community could grow and expand. Moi claimed that his father had up to 14 wives, although today the norm is one, or occasionally two.
 Death
When a Huaorani person dies there is no standardised ritual or ceremony to mark his or her passing. They do not believe that the person’s spirit has died, just the body that housed it for a while. So, although they are sad, death is not considered to be the end of existence. The dead person is placed in a box, with two spears crossing his/her body, and then soil is piled over the top to form a mound. The person is buried with all his/her favourite possessions in life, in order to keep their spirit happy and therefore stay near the community. When the Hauorani were nomadic, moving from camp to camp, they would leave the person at the place where they died. Today they build cemeteries to keep all the bodies together, because they fear the spread of illnesses that have been brought in by outsiders. Only the shamans are buried far away from their communities. This is because the shamans are believed to have power in their bodies, even after death, and it may be possible for their spirit to still attack people. Therefore, they are buried far away from the villages to protect those still living. The Huaorani believe in the cyclical nature of life – when, for example, someone dies a baby is born to take the place of that person. Many Huaorani believe that the world’s population will soon all die off. People claim to have seen it in their dreams, and the older people feel it in the nature around them. People will be killed in catastrophes such as earthquakes and war, but then they will regenerate and complete the circle. The Huaorani will be the first to be reborn – and then they will again repopulate the world.

Want to visit the Huaorani? Click on the Huaorani Lodge 

Saturday, June 9, 2012

About the Huaorani Ecolodge


The Huaorani Lodge is unique because it gives travelers the rare opportunity to interact and learn from the Huaorani people.  Travelers learn about the typical lifestyle of the Huaorani people, their surrounding environment and the social issues surrounding their land rights.  


The profits from the Huaorani Lodge go directly back to funding education initiatives and health care costs for the communities. The Huaorani lodge is sustainably built with a just five comfortable cabins that resemble the architecture style of Huaorani houses. Each cabin uses bio-degradable soaps and electricity that is available 24/7 which is generated from solar panels.


The people from the Huaorani community take turns working at the Huaorani Lodge. They are trained by professional tourism groups in hospitality. From user reviews and my personal experience, the staff were extremely professional, nice and friendly. They were curious to learn and engage with us. Typically, people work about 1-2 weeks/month. The rest of their time is spent living sustainably off the land and maintaining the Huaorani traditions. 

Click on the following links to learn more: 

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Huaorani Ecolodge Adventure


Our plan touched down on the grass air strip in the middle of the Amazonian Jungle of Ecuador on a warm morning in March. Members of the Huaorani tribe came out of their palm thatched huts smiling and lead us to their elder’s hut that was just yards from the edge of the landing strip. They welcomed us in the traditional custom by painting our faces red and singing a traditional greeting song while the women and children dance. Our bilingual guide translated the song to English. Their native language, Wao, was  linguistically related to no other language on earth.  The Huaorani people  one of the most remote tribes in Ecuador. 
We then canoed to our comfortable Ecolodge where we took a refreshing shower and had a filling meal in the dinning room. That evening we joined our two guides on an exciting night hike around the lodge where we heard a symphony of sounds that our Huaorani guide, Paa, translated as to which animals were making what sounds. 
Over the next four days we would meet several Huaorani communities and have the opportunity to trek through the natural trails, canoe on the river and learn about the culture. It was truly an unforgettable experience and one of the most enriching travel experiences of my life. To learn more about this itinerary visit  Huaorani Itinerary  or to read reviews about the lodge click here on the Trip Advisor Reviews of the Huaorani Lodge. Feel free to look at Pictures of the Huaorani on our Flickr account.