The Yequana Indians do not make pitying noises when a child is hurt. They’re waiting for him to get up and catch up with them, if that’s all it takes. In the event of a serious illness or injury, they do everything in their power to help him recover: they give medicines or resort to the services of a shaman, sometimes they sing day and night, referring to the evil spirits that have entered the body of the patient, but do not express any compassion for him. . The patient, to the best of his ability, tries to survive the disease and not disturb anyone unnecessarily.
Our children, children of civilization, bear the constant burden of longing for lost love and receive hugs, kisses and gentle words for the slightest bruises. It may not be much help for their torn knees to heal, but the care they receive reduces the overall burden of pain when the child gets really down.
It is possible that the expectation of sympathy is largely a learned behavior. I don’t doubt it at all, but the confidence in themselves and in those around them (in this case, in a stranger in general), characteristic of children who came to me for help, spoke of something much deeper than just the lack of expectation of excessive tenderness on the part of adults. .
During one of the first expeditions to the Yekuana in the village of Anchu called Wananya, a boy of four years old approached me. He approached shyly, afraid to interrupt me. Our eyes met, we smiled encouragingly at each other, and then he gave me a thumbs up. On his face, except for a sincere smile, there was no pity for himself, no request to be pitied. The top of his finger and part of his nail were pierced through, and the fingertip shifted to the side rested only on the skin and semi-caked blood. As I began to clean my finger and put the tip back in its place, tears welled up in his big, doe-like eyes; sometimes his tiny hand stretched out to me trembled, but he did not withdraw it; in the most difficult moments he sobbed, at the rest of the time he was relaxed and his face kept calm. After bandaging my finger, I pointed to it and said: “Tu-unah ahkey!” (“Keep dry!”) and he melodiously repeated: “Too-unah ahkey!” I also added: “Khvaynama ehta” (“Come tomorrow”), and he left. His behavior completely contradicted my ideas about the behavior of children, about the treatment of them in emergency situations, the need for kind words as part of treatment, etc. I could hardly believe what I saw.
During another expedition, one morning I was awakened by the voice of a two-year-old child, repeating in a soft, thin voice: “Si! Si!” It was a close approximation of «Shi» — my name among the Yekuan, which he could pronounce. I leaned out of my hammock and saw Kananasi, all alone, with a cut in need of treatment. He did not cry at all and did not require support or comfort.
Another incident helped me a lot to understand, although it happened many months after I got used to the calm and relaxed attitude of the Yekuan to treatment. Awadahu, the second son of Anchu, a boy about nine years old, came to my hut with a wound in his stomach. Upon examination, it turned out that the wound was not deep and not at all dangerous, but at first glance I was afraid that the internal organs might have been severely damaged.
— Nehkuhmuhduh? (What is it?) I asked.
«Shimada (Arrow),» he replied politely.
— Amahdai? (Yours?) I asked.
«Katavehu,» he said the name of his ten-year-old brother, showing no more emotion than if he were talking about a flower.
I was already tending to his terrible wound when Katavehu and several other boys came in to see what I was doing. There was no trace of guilt in Katavehu, and no anger in Avadahu. It was a real accident. Their mother came up and asked what happened. She was briefly told that her eldest son had been shot by an arrow at the second son on the river bank.
— Yeheduhmuh? (Really?) she said calmly.
She left to do her business before I finished treating the wound. Her son was assisted; he did not call her; she had no reason to stay. The only one who was excited was me. What’s done can’t be taken back; the best treatment possible under those conditions was provided, and even the other boys did not need to stay. They were back to their games before I had finished. Awadah didn’t need any moral support, and when I applied the last plaster, he went back to the river, to his friends.
His mother proceeded from the fact that if he needed her support, he would come to her, and she was always ready to receive him.
I was able to notice how different the perception of labor is between a European and an Indian. We traded our not very roomy aluminum boat for a huge canoe, hollowed out of a single tree trunk. Once in this vessel, besides us, seventeen Indians traveled with all their luggage, and I am sure it could have accommodated as many more. When it came to dragging this pirogue, with the help of only four or five Indians, through almost a kilometer long strip of boulders and cobblestones around the falls, we were a sad sight. We had to lay logs and roll the canoe centimeter by centimeter under the scorching sun. The boat was constantly out of balance, pushing us into the crevices between the boulders, and we were tearing our shins and ankles bloody. We had to drag our former aluminum boat before, and each time, knowing what awaited us, we spoiled our nerves in advance with the anticipation of hard work and bloody legs. And so, having reached the Arepuchi waterfall, we tuned in to suffering and, with mournful faces, began to drag the damn vessel over the stones.
The boat often capsized on its side, at the same time crushing one of us. The poor fellow found himself between stones heated in the sun and a heavy colossus of pirogue, impatiently awaiting the help of other, more successful companions. We hadn’t even made it a quarter of the way, and everyone’s ankles were already torn to the point of blood. On the pretext that I needed to go away for a minute, I climbed onto a rock to capture this scene on film. Looking unbiasedly at what was happening below, I saw an interesting picture. Several people seemed to be engaged in a common task — they dragged the boat. But two of them, the Italians, were tense, sullen, irritable; they were constantly cursing, as befits a real Tuscan. The rest, the Indians, seemed to have a good time and even found entertainment in it. They were relaxed, making fun of the clumsy canoe and their bruises, but a pirogue that fell on one of their fellow tribesmen was especially joyful. Surprisingly, the latter, pressed with his bare back against the hot granite, invariably laughed the loudest with relief, of course, after he was pulled out from under the boat and he could breathe freely.
Everyone did the same work, it was hard and painful for everyone. The wounds of the Indians hurt no less than ours. However, from the point of view our culture, such work is considered absolutely unpleasant, and it would not even occur to us to treat it in any other way.
On the other hand, the Indians also did not know that hard work could be treated differently: they were friendly and in a good mood; they had no fear, no bad mood accumulated over the previous days. Each Step forward was a small victory for them. After I finished taking pictures and returned to the others, I tried to put aside my civilized view of what was happening and was completely sincerely happy for the rest of the transition. Even bruises and scratches no longer caused much pain and became what they really were: quickly healing small skin lesions. It turned out that you can not worry about any abrasions at all, and even more so get angry, feel sorry for yourself and count bruises until the end of carrying the boat. On the contrary, I was glad that the body is able to heal its sores without any help from me.
See the book online: Jean Ledloff. How to raise a happy child. The principle of succession