DPA/Manaus
A few miles upriver on the mighty Rio Negra from the Amazon city of Manaus, some members of an indigenous tribe are painting their faces.
Usually this tribe daub their faces and bodies with red and black paint in intricate geometric designs. But on this bright afternoon, the designs are different: the red, green and white of the Italian flag.
Here in Brazil, World Cup fever reaches deep into the Amazon jungle, and the locals do everything they can to watch every game, even though the village generator works for only four hours a day.
In this case, the task is made easier by the fact that a German man lives in the village. Christian Blankenhorn, 41, moved there in September 2010 after he met Gisselle Umussy, the daughter of the chief, while visiting as a tourist.
Now he spends three months a year there with his wife and two-year-old daughter Luna Whissu. The rest of the year he travels the world as an engineer for Airbus. The village is primitive, but Blankenhorn has built a primitive hut complete with 2kw solar panels and a flat screen TV, which he insists is only used to watch the Copa.
“I don’t want her watching those crappy adverts,” he says, pointing to his daughter. She already speaks three languages, Portugese, Tucana, the local Indian dialect, and also understands English. She is also fluent in handling a smartphone, which she casually plays with as her dad talks.
When the tourist boats come many of the villagers still wear their traditional grass skirts and headdresses, and the women and young girls don’t wear shirts and paint their breasts.
The setting is idyllic. Huts made of crudely sawn lumber, and a few of brick dot a green hillside above the rust-coloured waters of the Rio Negra, where the river is more than 10km wide. Behind the village, and across a dirt patch which serves as a football pitch, a network of this trails lead into the thick jungle.
Locals never venture in without a good machete for protection. The jungle is filled with monkeys, wild boar, snakes and jaguars and even if you step in just a few metres the sound of birds fills the air. The river and lagoon have crocodiles, but Blankenhorn has never heard of them attacking anyone. There’s more danger of stepping on a nail or a piece of glass, he says, adding that the streets of Berlin are more dangerous than the jungle. In a large thatched roof communal building the tribespeople perform traditional dances for the visitors and sell them headdresses and bead necklaces. In the final dance the tribesmen invite the lady tourists to join them, and the indigenous women take the hands of the male tourists. It sounds corny but it creates an unforgettable moment for the visitors and forms a strong bond.
Some outsiders might lament that the traditional ways are disappearing. But it’s hard to begrudge these people the minimal comforts that western technology can bring.
Blankenhorn is also torn by the seeming contradiction in his life, and struggles with how he will educate his young daughter. He wants her to be educated, he says, but most important “she must have her roots fixed here. She is an Indian and she must always know that.” He is charmed by the simple ways of the village, the unwritten laws that govern the community, and the simple way of life.
“You are married when the chief says you are. The Indian law is not written. It’s protected by the people. It’s in their mind.” But he also recognizes that some villagers find it hard to adapt to modern ways, littering the jungle with their trash, and outstaying their welcome at his house if he offers them food.
But Blankenhorn knows that he must help them deal with the modern world after thousands of years in which such simple concepts as money were not known to them. He has taught them how to save money by organizing their shopping trips so that they can share a river taxi to the city every two weeks.
An Italian woman who is married to the chief’s son is doing her doctorate on cataloguing the designs of their handicrafts, recording Chief Raymondo’s stories and medicines, and helping organize their economy so that they can integrate tourism with their traditional way of life.
She sits with her husband and extended family in Blankenhorn’s hut as Italy play Costa Rica. She is working on her dissertation on her MacBook, while her husband chops a small piece of wood with a machete for a headdress and chief Raymondo sits in a hammock chair and saws another piece of wood.
It’s a typical family scene. It’s the World Cup in paradise.