[fable]

Originally Posted by jopperm2

First off, I don't have the same bias as O'Rourke, we differ on a lot of issues.

And you still have the same general political biases and approach to welfare: make a joke, let 'em die, it's not your concern. Am I wrong in this?

Second, you say you know he's full of it because you have been to nearby countries "a couple of times" which is just as worthwhile as his experience.

This contradicts what you say below in this same post of yours: "They were using a moter bot to get from a semi-major city to theri loge that was a ten minute hike through jungle. That means they were probably all but five miles into the forest. Any legitimate trip would be more detailed than that." So what you're saying is that his few days' experience, taking a motor boat to get from a semi-major city to lodge and a ten minute wallk to the "jungle," is comparable to my wife taking a week, flying in on a 6-seater to a small airlot, next to a village about a day's travel by canoe to the nearest Indian settlement. Sure, that makes sense.

Atually I said that in my 19 years living in Iow I rarely saw any. Anyway it's not a lie at all. You may think 19,000 is a lot, but I'll gladly tell it to their faces that it's an insignificant number.

The question wasn't whether you'd seen any homeless. The point was that you said there weren't any in Iowa. You could have simply checked at anytime by picking up the phone to call your state government, or checked in a library, or even looked for Iowa Department of Housing documents online. I don't really know what purpose would be served by telling an 8-year-old homeless child that they're part of an insignificant number of people in your old home state. Each of us feels the pain of ourselves, first; when we mature as human beings, we begin to understand the pain of others, as well. If we don't progress along this route, we're borderline sociopaths, in my opinion.

I can't provide any detailed accounts of trips from my friends because I no longer associate with those people. When I moved away I lost touch. I knew I think three people that went on them and two were dissatisfied. One went on a trip that was basically extended camping. He was satisfied, but it wasn't exactly what he expect. They just trapsed around in the jungle for a week or so. The other two went together on something that from their descriptions could have been the same trip O'Rourke went on. They said there were "fake Indians" (not that they weren't real indians, but they didn't live in anything that could be considered traditional), caged wildlife, and a motorboat that was loud and had a wake that would likely be damaging any wildlife in the water.

This account actually sounds far more genuine than O'Rourke's. It still amazes me that people who would only buy a used car after bringing it in to their favorite auto mechanic for a checkup will nonetheless invest a good deal of money in something like this. You should always check ahead of time to get answers on every question you could possibly have about such matters. We did, and we never regretted the experience, though at the time it certainly wasn't labeled an eco-anything.

What that means is that I agree with PJ that some of these trips are not at all helpful to the rain forest and in fact are harmful. I doubt that even some of the better trips are helpful really. I would be interested in knowing what you did on yours.

The one trip was almost entirely spent in hollowed out tree trunk canoes, traveling down the Canaima. We would occasionally spy a "contact hut," a home whose inhabitants didn't mind occasionally greeting outsiders, though they always controlled the frequency with which they visits occurred. Typically, they were still a mile or more away from the river. They didn't even want to be in view of non-Indians. Our guide on that trip was a post-WWII Italian emigre who "went native" literally: he joined a small local tribe, married into it, and had a family of 6 kids and a wife. He was their social speaker, their contact with the outside world when one was needed. They shunned all other contact with us. We did slip in netted hammocks, identical to the ones the local tribes used, and made by them. We ate fish and fruits (well, the others ate the local fruits; I couldn't, being allergic), and we drank the water from the river. No one suffered any problems: it had a high tannic content, and had no life in it.

The other trip was quite different. There we stayed about 30 miles from a small village, and several hours from a local tribe. The latter did give us a privileged view not just of the outside of their living quarters (they used round straw-and-mud-dawb huts, with low-sloping conical roofs), but also a view of the main hall, which also doubled as the chief's living quarters: it was simply a larger hut, and probably not above 1500 sq ft. The tribe had arranged to permit these visits in exchange for a gift a year to the chief--and his son, about 15, came out to show us the latest annual gift: a nylon polar coat, complete with "Ohio" stenciled on the back! This was a prize possession, so it was not worn regularly--good thing, too, since the temperature was about 80 F with a 95 percent humidity most of the time. We saw all the steps involved in their breadmaking (which curiously mirrored what I knew of the production of naan, the bread of the Indian subcontinent), and I looked closely at the clothing (all handmade) and the weaponry (very, very sharp) used to clear back the rain forest each day and to kill whatever needed killing. They had a few metal implements, like a kettle and pole combination, which were given as a gift, but had and desired no contact with the outside world. They were hunter/gatherers, and were in a system that provided for all their needs. They also lost their teeth very early in life, and didn't live long. I was told the chief was about 35. He looked about 60, though not unhealthy or stressed. He just looked like he'd done a lot of living outdoors in those years he'd had, as you might expect. I've seen the same weathering effect on Viet vets who can't readjust to US culture, though there, many complicating factors lead to internal problems, too (and be damned the US governments that have repeatedly refused to help them).

Perhaps the greatest lesson I came away from all this with was the knowledge that despite what US museums regularly show about "stone age" and "bronze age" life exhibits, some parts of the globe still exist within various niches of these "ages" as living traditions. They are not "50,000 years ago," as we're told; they're an omnipresent now. From that, I realized that many people in any society don't necessarily exist in the same period; that rural and urban cultures are distinct, and frequently exist in different periods; that it is possible to live off the material objects of a technologically advaned culture, without exhibiting any comprehension of matters beyond that of the early Middle Ages; that geography and climate can determine the parameters of culture as much as economy; etc. Of course, I had a lot of research to do to investigate my theories, but that was only fun, and this got me thinking. It was fascinating.

I really wanted to find out more details about their worship systems, but that was obviously out of the question. Hell, the locals were even cagey about Santeria, which obviously has a much bigger following than the Catholic Church will let on. In the local village we saw a display of cardboard artworks said to celebrate the Christ Child; and what struck me from the first was that Mary was at the center, and that she was surrounded by a number of figures which included the Christ Child, Baron Samadi, and one of the first doctors in Venezuela to treat the poor (he died around the turn of the 20th century in the country's first reputed auto accident). When I asked about these figures, the local guide's English, which had been excellent, suddenly became very poor. I can understand why they fear sharing with outsiders. At the moment they need the RCC on their side; we were told numerous specifics about Protestant missionaries (the Southern Baptists were named repeatedly) who had tried to gain political clout by getting on the side of the wealthier regional elements. Since the RCC in South America traditionally favors the poor (despite the Vatican's attempts to tone that down), these locals were not going to cut the feet out from under the Catholic religious establishment. Too bad. We could have talked shop.

I could go on, there was a great deal more we saw, and some we experienced. Both trips were exhausting, and we definitely didn't live off the fat of any land. But we looked for culture shock, and we got it. I can post more about those experiences if you'd like, anytime.