Science à la Carte 3logs and low-hanging branches. The other faint silhouettes on the
water, the driver informed me, were likely crocodiles.
By midday, we had arrived at our base and stored our gear. Later
we boarded canoes and then ventured up smaller river arteries. The
thick vegetation acted like curtains that nature had drawn around us,
blocking civilization out and locking us in. Gone were signs of people
bustling about stores and businesses, the noise of busy streets, edifices
with corrugated roofs, concrete walls, and glass windows. This was a
world cut off from civilization.
Yet every so often, as our canoes rounded a bend in the river’s artery,
a thatched roof poking up near the bank came into view. Beneath the
roof was a simple platform perched on stilts reaching a few feet above
ground. For the indigenous family who lived there, the structure’s
open sides and its floors suspended with ropes from the tops of poles
offered minimal protection from heavy rains and winds. In the open
space underneath the floor, a few chickens pecked at the ground, while
a pig, sometimes two, rooted in the dirt. Off to one side was a small
plot of land growing cassava, plantains, and bananas.
Periodically, we would stop and talk, listening for stories of infected
animals in the area, looking for signs of disease. This remote area acted
as a buffer zone. Because pigs were particularly susceptible to foot-
and-mouth, they served as sentinels. If evidence of infection in any
pigs were to be discovered, their low numbers made it easier to take
action and arrest further spread.
At one stop, as two others in our team conversed with the residents,
I walked about and tried to take in such unfamiliar surroundings. The
absence of food, the remoteness from any towns, and the residents’
simple existence were all powerful reminders of how life existed for
thousands of generations. The small number of dwellings, scattered
across long stretches of river, bore witness to the limited food that
such an environment offered up for each household and their animals
to live on.
Subsistence dominated their lives. Growing food, let alone sufficient
food, was not easy. Before any tubers or plantains could be harvested,
a patch of land needed to be cleared of its thick green foliage only to
reveal a cruel irony—the soil beneath these dense tropical canopies