Laura Tattiana Areiza Serna Descriptive Essay 1

Laura Tattiana Areiza Serna

Blaine Hunt

ABE75&94/Social Studies

First Dream

One day, during my life in the Amazon jungle, a minika (uitoto) young man and wise,
singer and hunter, was bitten by a snake in the middle of the forest. In his poisoned state he
screamed, while the people sang deep water songs to heal him. Water is the first world. All
things come from the water such as fruits, tubers, ball games, and prayers; all abundance. We
come to the surface when we are born and return underwater when we are gone. He removed his
clothes, bit his fingers, and cried in deep, disconsolate pain. His father and brother prayed and
gave him medicine for relief, but nothing worked. His cries echoed into the night contrasting
with the beauty of the sky’s plethora of stars. The soft wind and the constant hum of the animals
in the forest surrounded his screams.

The forest music never stopped: insects, plants, and growling beasts layered the
foreground to a symphony death. Suddenly, the poisoned man rose and used his final moment to
extinguish the fire, the light, the life. Then, the darkness embraced the whole space, and the
laments ceased. I waited in the corner of the ananeko (traditional house), silenced and scared.
Yet, the earth grunted and brought fierce winds. Despite all efforts, indolent death did not wait.
The snake took him away. My reminiscences had taken me to The Little Prince when the snake
transporting the prince, during daybreak, to his asteroid B-612. The snake as a spaceship
through beyond the life and riddles “I know that he did go back to his planet, because I did not
find his body”. I never have thought of a snake like this day, imagining the form, the size, the
moment when it bit him. People said that it would be a “cuatro narices” the most dangerous
viper. Besides, people strongly believed in spelling, bad life, bad wife, ominus place.

It was my first night with the native family, I was nineteen and holding my recently grief
from my mom death. Far away from my home, in the middle of nowhere. However, I did not
Laura Tattiana Areiza Serna Descriptive Essay 1

have a home, just my heart was my home. The jungle welcomed me in that way, unarmed to
against the moment. I took three air flies and sailed in a canoe on the river for 12 hours to face
death. I had had a few encounters with death, my dad and my mom passed away, but I did not
see their agony. In the city, everything is hidden. But there has no death industry, no funerary, no
crematoriums, no hospitals, no autopsies, no morticians or thanatopraxy.

When it got daylight, every single person had a duty. The body stinks and becomes
double for swelling, so we did not have much time to do the funeral ritual. Men dug the
graveyard and built caskets with wood. The sound of sawmills and shovels could be heard
everywhere. Women worked to recollect flowers and medicine plants. The ritual began at the end
of the day. The elders raised throat chants while women and children wept. Everybody hugged,
they embraced me for helping with the funeral preparations, for being there. At the end, the
people gone, and father, brother and me we were left alone.

That night I had nightmares, and I could not wake up properly. I almost died in my deep
dream. Songs came to me from the ocean, songs from underwaters, which transformed the death
of the wise young man. The distance between the sea and the jungle did not matter when one
giant killer whale approached me in my dream as if I were their prey. The elder attempted to
wake me up, in the middle of my sweating, I could not return to this plane.

I am alive. At that point, I understood what communion is. Everything clicks in perfect
balance, from a dream and how they allow me to participate in this crucial moment. As an
orphan, they adopted me as their niece for this critical moment. We connected through
mourning, intimacy, and caring to give the most precious gift: belonging.