Floating home and beyond

From the outside, floating houses in these parts are very basic, although some are painted with enthusiastic colors or have small frills (for example, trim). Some of the homes are meticulously clean, with scrubed floors and painted chairs. Josa’s place is not, but I find the inside fascinating.

The vertebrae of a large snake, and a dried jacaré tail are propped in one corner. Empty cans of Anglo brand beef product line the tops of the window sills, and plastic bottles, tops cut off, are strategically wired between rafters to catch water from the leaky roof. There is a propane-fueled stove, but as the propane tank is empty, food is cooked on the porch over a wood fire, lit with a piece of foam mat used as kindling. An old school book is used as a makeshift source of rolling papers for cigarettes. A procession of ants marches to and from the thermos, which must hold some coffee residue. Empty Nesafe tins abound at random, while Gury soda bottles and 51 liquor bottles are organized along one wall. Hammocks hang in each of the two rooms, four in each at the moment. As with all houses in these parts, all the wood used- framing, floor, walls- is beautiful and exotic (to my eyes), hard and oil-impregnated. Guayaba fruit, Nescafe, rice, beans, spagetti, sugar, salt, oil, and farina make up the entirely of the cupboard. There is no actual cupboard. Ingenious lamps have been created with just sardine cans, string, and vegetable oil; I’ve found four or five variations of these lamps. Of course, several machetes lie about the house. Each room has two doors and several windows, and each room has a four-foot by four-foot hole in the floor, providing interior access to the river. These holes are used for all sorts of functions: preparing food, cleaning fish, obtaining cooking water, bathing, washing clothes, as a trash receptacle, for going to the bathroom. There is current in this part of the river, but not much. The house is not unlike a scaled-up design of an ice fishing shack, for those northerners who may know what this is.

Along the outside of the house, clothes hang to dry. Clothes here are well-worn but are always spotlessly clean. A small canoe, tied up next to Antonio’s larger craft, looks like a shark has taken bite out of it’s gunwale. Beyond, lilypads six feet in diameter (and boasting thorns over an inch long on their undersides) are a buffer between the reeds on the bank and open river. Macaws fly high overhead. Piranhas swirl after the food scraps which drift from under the house. Kingfishers zip by, low and purposeful, only to stop in a tree at the opposite bank as if they forgot their purpose. Roosters callously interrupt the wild songbirds. Morning clouds, an indescribable blend of purples and grays and yellows, eventually flatten and dissipate into blue sky, and then in the afternoon a dark horizon forms under the complex thunderheads. The resulting rain frees large mats of vegetation, which drift and bump downstream, perhaps eventually all the way to the Pacific. With luck, after the rainstorm the fish will move, and a few of the fish will be caught by carefully set gillnets. This is the living fishery.