That night, the rains pound my tin roof with Tyson fists. I don't sleep much, but awake with my ears intact. Twenty minutes downstream from the camp, swooped by kingfishers and heron, lies a small Yekwana settlement. As we arrive, a group of curious children scurry off to hide behind trees and giggle. The thatched roofs of mud huts poke up in the clearing like witch's hats.
All Indian housing is made with earth packed into a flexible wood structure.
It's a relief not to see the rusting zinc roofs which often supplant thatch in some parts of Venezuela. Manioc is to the Indians of Amazonas what tea and biscuits are to country parsons. It's a root vegetable, about the size of a marrow, though narrower. The Indians sow it with gusto in their forest clearings, providing communities with their main source of carbohydrate. The root is first peeled, then left to soak.