Horse back riding, spear fishing and bat killing

This weekend I visited Alan at an Embera site. WHAT A WEEKEND!
This indigneous group was relocated when a major hydroelectric dam was built about 20 years ago and flooded out there community. The government cleared a bunch of land and told them that this was to be there new town. These people did not used to live in communities but rather as large family groups in the jungle. Anyways now to the exciting part.

I showed up friday afternoon and pretty much hung out. Saturday after breakfast we had a matanza de mursialagos (bat killing) Alan just moved into a really nice house that is up about a meter off the ground with a roof made of palm fronds (pencha) His problem is that bats also live in his pencha. Now we checked and they are not vampire bats but its still very unerving to wake up and have bat shit on top of your mosquito net. His roof covers his porch and part of the porch is not finished. So we built a small fire under the unfinished part to smoke the bats out. We got up in his rafters with broom handels. There were also a a handful of kids around with small clublike sticks. We started shaking the rafters and bats just start flying out. It was just like hitting a whiffle ball, they fly pretty straight but curve a bit. All in all I smacked about 7 bats out of the air.

Later that day Alans house mom painted me up with jugua, which is a fruit that stains your skin kinda like iodine. Right now i have a design covering nearly my whole body, and once again i have several pictures but no way to get them off my camera. The jagua is used in Embera festivals, and holidays. The paint goes right up to my upper lip and all the way down to my toes. I thought I stuck out as a gringo before, but now i really feel like it. I´m in the bus terminal/massive mall and people literally are stopping in place to see the blue gringo.
Saturday Alan and I also built a worm box for his new house. A worm box is alot like a composte pile except you add california redworms and a small amount horse shit. This makes aparentlly the illest fertilizer ever. Alan was going to use it for his aloe plant.

Sunday we woke up early because we were going spear fishing. We had procurred some horses which were allegedly the nicest horses in town. On a whole animals and pets are treated horrible here, and often are in a constant state of starvation or sickness. The main reason is because none of them are neutored or castrated, so yea i´ve seen my of dogs going at it.
So i got on the horse for my first time, not having any idea how to make it go or stear it. (not actually that hard) As soon as we left town i was glad i had it because we were riding through mud that was a bout knee deep and full of roots. We rode for about an hour, crossing 3 rivers.

Thisreminded me of that scene from Sleeping Beauty were then knight is being chased through the thorn forest by the dragon. Now there was no dragon, but anyone that has ever cleared land using a machete knows that when you cut a branch you cut it at and angle. This means that they are like spears or vietnamese punji stakes. Besides the pointy things i was constantly having to push away huge palm fronds or platano leaves. Lastly I was rolling with a machete in my own saddle so If I wanted to be a badass i could have unsheathed my sword.

I had 2 close calls. At one point we had just crossed a river and were about to go up the steep acent back to the other side. The other two horses did this without much problem. My horse started up and then decided to leep forward. I wasn´t ready at all and almost fell off the back.
When had finally got back my horse got a little riled up by another male horse and started bucking a bit. Luckily i got the guy under control a little bit.

The story is that when the lake was created, the missionary name Padre Pablo through about 15 Tilapia (some asian white fish) into the pond, and now they are everywhere. They can grow easily over a foot and are tasty.

We had finally arived a a marshland (the beginings of the flooded out river valley) and we got off the horses and into a dug out canoe that i can´t believe floated. We road in the canoe for about 45 minutes and finally found a spot. Using a chuso ,which is a long straight peace of metal about an eight of and inch thick. At one end there is a sharp point the other has a really think rubber band. You hold it just like a pool stick and put you thumb through a loop in the rubber band. This allows you to hold it like a pencil and just let go with one hand. The actual spear fishing is an art I don´t have a knack for. You need to exhale your breath underwater so you sink to the bottom then push yourself around on the bottom looking for a tilapia house. There are tons of plants everywhere and the water was dirty from the recent rain so visibility was way down. The native guy we were with speared about 5, and we ended up catching more with the help of someone elses gill net. We ended up riding back with about 10 Tilapia and gave all but 2 away to the neighbors.