ANTS! (Day Two)

Woke up to find an old naked man walking around outside my tent. And so, life is slowly becoming a little more bizzare. The man is Otobo´s father, Omallave, andhe is in climbing around the top of our house patching up the roof with leaves to keep the rain out. You think a little plumbers butt (or ¨builders bum¨ if you are from the UK) is an unwelcoming sight? Try having a fully naked handyman.
Annoyingly, the clothes that we laid out to dry yesterday, were now fully covered in ants. Little did we realize how much havoc these little creatures would reap on our lives during our stay.
Otobo arrived around 10 am with a shaved head---he explained that his wife had a baby girl the day before (day we arrived) and that he shaved his head because he was morning the birth of a girl since now he has two. I had read prior that the Huaorani used to practice infanticide in cases such as this, so I was relieved that a head shaving was the only reaction to the birth. After the birth, life apparently gets back to normal pretty quickly due to the fact that Otobo left wife and child back downriver to come and greet his volunteers. Everyone was eager to start working so with little discussion, most of the Huao men present start hacking away at the trees and foliage around our worksite. We would have preferred to have discussed a little strategy before we all jumped into a little land clearing but oh well. The work was a bit rough and I got my first taste of the biting ants. All over my neck and back--not fun but luckily they were not the conga ants that are also present at the jobsite. We have the man-power today and there were about 7 machetes chopping away at once--thought for sure someone was going to accidently lop off and ear--most likely us. During the day, my watch stopped, which I thought was pretty ironic, as time telling was no longer a necessary activity in my life now.
Had dinner of spaghetti sauce on rice made by Conan---the can of sauce had noodles pictured on the label and Conan was asking me where the noodes in the can were--my guess is that Conan´s culinary training may have slightly on the primitive side.