Amazonas

AMAZONAS

MADS NISSEN

AF

I had walked for days through the rain forest when I reached a clearing. There are probably numerous

clearings like this one in the Amazon, but the feeling which, back then, made my knees buckle under me was unknown to me. The rain forest lay there as a dense green wall around the clearing.

All of the plants – those at the top and those at the bottom – fought for light and for nourishment.

Thick lianas, juicy leaves in every shape imaginable and small delicate flowers hoping not to be devoured. Bugs crawling under every single leaf. That was the rain forest. And I had seen all of it before. But then again – maybe I hadn’t. Because something happened inside of me at that exact spot in the clearing. For one moment the humidity of the air swallowed all sounds. They simply disappeared.

The air encapsulated them so that they never reached my ears. I stood there, isolated and silent.

Part of a greater being. I felt dissolved. I sat down on a tree trunk and let go. I was nothing anymore, and I felt that if I died right then and there it would be okay. Beautiful even.

That was seven years ago. I have gone back to the Amazon many times since then. Coming from different countries, but more often than that travelling in my mind. I close my eyes, hold my breath, taste the thick hot air and fly over my big green friend. I try not to let it worry me that we are

destroying it. Because I know it will win in the end.

I’ve seen its plants rise from greasy oil puddles, and I know that cockroaches can survive more plutonium than any human. That eases my mind.

This book is my journey into the Amazon. From the former cocaine capital Leticia in Colombia where a blind, paved road leads into the jungle – past the place where a plane crashed recently.

Where the pilot’s foot is still stuck in the mud.

To one of Peru’s biggest cities, Iquitos, where hard-working people are forced to use the river as both their drinking water and as their lavatory in a floating shantytown. Iquitos, which – isolated in jungle – is also a place of exile for homosexuals who have fled murder and machismo further inland.

And right in the middle of all this is Walter Morales. A Huitoto Indian who with the aid of ‘mambe’ – a green powder, home-made from coca leaves – tries to find a balance between his life in the rain forest, his 14’’ TV-set and the culture he must pass on to his three sons. Otherwise it will die.

This is a return to the Amazon which stole my heart seven years ago.

The Amazon which I admire, fear and fear for.

Mads Nissen, January 2007

CAPTIONS

ABOUT THE AMAZON On its long journey from the Peruvian Andes to its mouth in the Atlantic, the Amazon takes up an area as large as that of Australia. It is the largest river in the world and it is 65 kilometres wide. On, between and under the rain forest’s 40,000 species of plants crawl over 30 million kinds of insects.

And no place on Earth has a fauna or flora as rich as that of the Amazon.

This is the home of every fifth bird on the planet. And while there has been found no more than 150 species of fish in the rivers of Europe, over 2,000 have been discovered here even though vast areas remain unexplored.

The first people came here 12,000 years ago, but their lives changed when the Spanish arrived. In 1542 Francisco De Orellana succeeded in penetrating the jungle by travelling from the Andes, through the Amazon River all the way to the Atlantic.

Despite his – and other explorers’ – tales of man-eating Indian tribes, ‘the green hell’ and people with inverted feet, more and more travelled into the

wilderness. A greedy hunt had begun.

A hunt for natural rubber, timber, oil and, not least, ‘El Dorado’. The place where gold flows endlessly.

The diseases that Europeans brought with them to the Amazon killed a large number of the Amazon Indians while another hundred thousand died as slaves in rubber estates. There used to be around seven million Amazon Indians; today that number has been reduced to under a million. When the Europeans arrived there were around 2,000 Indian tribes. Today there are less than 400. A very small number live an isolated life in protected reservations, but most of them head for the city hoping to find growth, prosperity and employment.

As the supply of Indians ran out, African slaves were shipped in, and today 26 million people in eight countries populate the Amazon.

A diverse crowd with one thing in common – the rain forest.

The houses in the shantytown of Belen Bajo in Peru are built on rafts or tall poles because of the everchanging water levels of the Amazon, which floods the area by several metres for four months every year.

Iquitos, Peru Many homosexuals have fled to Iquitos, an isolated city in the Peruvian part of the Amazon. They have run to escape persecution, violence and threats of murder from people in the more conservative mountain regions of Peru.

Iquitos, Peru Missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

Leticia, Colombia The following page: Members of Assembléia de Deus prays for forgiveness.

Tabatinga, Brazil

Gold Digger.

Near Santa Elena, Venezuela

A crashed air freighter. Six people died in the crash, which was caused by a combination of technical difficulties in the plane and bad weather. Hundreds of locals have come to the area to gather pieces of wreckage that could be of use to them.

San Sebastian de los Lagos, Colombia Walter Morales, a Huitoto Indian, fishes with the help of small balls of poisonous leaves. When the fish eat the balls, they get sick and therefore easy for the fisherman to pick up from the water and eat.

Km. 11, Colombia.

Third Edition.

Copyright 2007 (text and photo) Mads Nissen www.madsnissen.com info@madsnissen.com Special thanks to Walter Morales, John Willer and Aleykita Dosantes in the Amazon. And to Lene Winther, K책re Viemose, Casper Balslev, Christian Als and Per Folkver in Denmark.