Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
radio sessions held without fail at 8:00 a.m., noon, and 5:00 p.m. every
day. Sometimes it was the first sound I heard when waking and one of
the last before I slept. Plans to establish new settlements had been aban-
doned due to the lack of a radio set, or more precisely, the existence of
a village was explicitly predicated on this sound. In my memory, it has
become more than a constant backdrop muting the deeper essences of
everyday life. I think of it now as the typical sound of spirit and meaning
and becoming and the search for knowledge during days gone by in the
Place-Where-the-Black-Caiman-Walks.
It was no secret, no great discovery that this ambiguous and ephemeral
sound was the substance of a collective Ayoreo project that hovered like
a dust cloud or a mirage over the Chaco—one that emanated from the
cheap speakers of radios scattered across thirty-eight settlements and an
international border and 180,000 square miles, a haze that evaporated
back into the ether just as quickly as it poured out. What was unexpected
was the nature of this aural project and that it took me so long to realize
that I could not grasp its force through rational means and discursive
categories alone. I had no choice but to follow the sound, even though
this was not apparent at the beginning.
Jochade, the leader of Arocojnadi, was just as interested in radio as I was.
He agreed to teach me to listen to this sound and how to properly use
the radio. We sat around the flat Yaesu set wrapped carefully in a stained
cloth on top of a rude table in the school building. Cables ran from a
small solar panel on the roof to an old truck battery and from the battery
to the radio. Six of the
Disiode
children peered back at us, arms and heads
pushed through gaping holes in the windowscreen. He said the rules were
strict but simple.
To talk, everyone met first on the main channel, 6819.2 MHz. Less
public conversations were then moved to one of the other twenty-four
channel presets shared by all Ayoreo. If even more privacy was desired,
Totobiegosode had created three “hidden” presets or frequencies that
were only shared by Chaidi and Arocojnadi. No children or adolescents
were supposed to use the radio, and it wasn't seemly for a male leader to
talk too much on it. Jochade knew the usual radio operators in the other
villages, most of them senior high-ranking women. The primary rule of
radio was that conflictive topics were off-limits. He asked if I understood
and then he said:
“The radio is only for two things: the Word of God and for finding out
if anyone is sick.”
