It’s the eve of the tainha season and the long and narrow tainha boats — like oversized dug-out canoes — are lined up at intervals along the beaches of the island, nets loaded in readiness should a shoal be spotted.
The fishermen are busy erecting temporary shelters; some are elaborate constructions with stoves and cooking facilities, others little more than shacks cobbled together from found materials. Nevertheless — they provide a base in which to sit, play cards, and no doubt drink some Cachaça as they while away the hours of waiting.
Further along the beach there’s a pack of vultures pecking away at something on the sand. When I get closer I see several chicken heads, pieces of water melon and other fruits, bread and confectionary strewn around — an offering to Iemanja, goddess of the sea and mother of the waters.
The vultures flap their wings and hop lazily away as I approach; some take off and circle round until I pass. Returning a short while later, what little flesh that was on the chicken heads has been stripped away and only the skulls remain, eye sockets void, the fruit, bread and confectionary have been tossed about in the scramble of legs claws and wings.
The vultures flap their wings and hop lazily away as I approach; some take off and circle round until I pass. Returning a short while later, what little flesh that was on the chicken heads has been stripped away and only the skulls remain, eye sockets void, the fruit, bread and confectionary have been tossed about in the scramble of legs claws and wings.
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| Llama foetuses at The Canch Market, Cochabamba, Bolivia. |
Meanwhile, the llama foetus I brought back from Cochabamba — I thought it would make an unusual gift — has started to deteriorate. At 2600 metres above sea level in the dry mountain air the llama foetuses are plentiful, hundreds of them hanging from hooks above the market stalls, all shapes and sizes, and all dried in individual sculptural forms. But in the damp island air it has started to smell bad, causing its recipient (amigo Jim) to throw it away before he could burn it as an offering to Pachamama, or bury it under the new extension for good luck.
Returning to sea level from the high altitude of Cochabamba has also had an effect upon me. I haven’t started to deteriorate, or smell bad, in fact quite the reverse. My appetite, which strangely abandoned me in Bolivia, returns to normal, and I am quite literally full of beans.I plunge into the sea at the first opportunity, reluctantly returning to land some time later, where I soon find myself running along the beach filling my lungs with air, and unusually for me, I am able to keep going beyond my usual cut off point (a hundred metres or so) and practically run the length of the entire beach.
