Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1. My house in College Park, Maryland. Copperplate engraving on paper, 1967.
hours on my way from one village to the other. I wanted the big cat to leave so I could
head back home. The beast was startled and pawed the instrument around for a while
until it heard the cries of the Xavante looking for me and dashed away.
The Xavante community had warned me that I should be attentive to the “clicking
sound” of the jaguar's teeth when it is ready to attack. As hard as I tried, I was never
able to hear that sound. Perhaps I was distracted by everything else going on around
me. The cat sent me scrambling up a guava tree, next to a squatter's abandoned site,
which was too flimsy a tree for the big animal to climb. I first spotted it staring at me
from across a small creek where we both quenched our thirst. Perhaps the sound of
the running water erased the clicking, warning sound of its attack? Every morning at
6:00 am I walked 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) from my home village, Ri'tubre,
to the main village, Ubãwãwé, to turn on the radiophone and communicate with
Funai, the
Fundação Nacional do Índio
(National Indian Foundation) headquarters in
Barra do Garças. I mostly reported on the dire health situation of Xavante children in
Kuluene. Although I was hired by Funai as an elementary school teacher, my major
responsibilities soon included caring for sick Xavante people, who suffered mainly
from tuberculosis, and two severe kinds of life-threatening skin diseases transmitted by
mosquitoes: “fogo selvagem” (
Pemphigus foliaceus
)
, and “leishmaniasis” (
Leishmania
infantum
). This is how I became, along the years to follow and without any formal
training, a practical nurse. Every morning I did a round of houses in Ri'tubre, and
