I’m walking through Chazuta, Peru on a baking Wednesday afternoon. I’m making my way towards the bodega on the other end of town. Most days, a cold coconut bought from the bodega owner is my feeble attempt to stay hydrated in the Amazonian heat. I stop to chat with a few shopkeepers and farmers I’ve become friendly with in the past couple of months. Nobody is in a rush to get anywhere, and nothing can’t wait until the sun goes down. This makes getting anywhere in town a drawn-out experience. A 10-year-old kid kicks me a soccer ball from across the street. He gives me a look like “where’ve you been?” It’s been a few days since I’ve shown up to play soccer with my little buddies and I can feel their disappointment. I use my sunburn as an excuse and kick the ball back while promising that I’ll return tonight when it’s cooler. At the bodega, the owner is taking a siesta in his rocking chair under the shade of a banana tree. Like many Latin Americans, Chazutinos rise early to start working before the heat. Collective drowsiness drapes the town during the scorching afternoon hours before it springs to life again in the evening. The liveliness of Latin American towns at night is something I first recognized (and learned to love) in Mexico. The streets are filled with the sounds of cumbia and the smell of roasting meat as multigenerational families sit and laugh together. It’s a pace I’m getting used to. I usually doze off on our mid-afternoon boat rides returning from field sites. I don’t have the heart to wake the bodega owner, and I’m not too thirsty anyway.
Some chocolate sounds nice, so I decide to visit my friend Maria Elena. I met Maria Elena when I saw her drying cacao in the sun outside her home. We started chatting about her and her husband’s chacra (small farm) and the cacao and other medicinal plants they grow there. She told me that her husband Eriberto is from a small indigenous village down the Rio Huallaga called Yucallanayacu. He’s trained as a shaman, and he later invited me to take ayahuasca in a ceremony on their chacra. The Ph.D. student I’m working with, Andrew, always jokes that while I was under the influence, Eriberto cast a spell on me to make me addicted to their chocolate. Although I have never identified strongly with my Swiss roots, when I first tasted Maria Elena’s chocolate, I suddenly imagined my great great great grandfather as a master Swiss chocolatier. I mourned the fact that this secret knowledge was apparently lost when the Bieri’s relocated to Michigan. The chocolate feels chalky as it melts in your mouth, and it tastes like someone took the richest earth in the world and churned it with cinnamon, vanilla, and coffee before slow roasting it for hours. Eating it gives you a noticeable “cacao buzz” that has added to my addiction. Maybe I’ll return to Chazuta to learn the craft one day. Maria Elena is just one of the dozens of women in Chazuta who make the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted.
This newfound embrace of my Swiss heritage was reinforced on the night of a grand fiesta in Chazuta. The town was celebrating the completion of its first paved road, and funds were pooled to decorate the town and hire a cumbia band. On the day of the party, everyone had pre-fiesta energy. Women cleaned their restaurant a little deeper and men opened their first beer a little earlier. If you know me, you know that I’m highly susceptible to this type of energy. I half-walked, half-danced to the corner store where I bought a cold six-pack of Cusquenos. Food was cooking, and the sun was setting behind the Cordillera Escalera range. Things were right in the world. I sat on the curb sipping beer and making small talk with everyone who cared to chat. Back at our hotel, I noticed that a blonde girl had moved into the room across from us. We started chatting about her Master’s work. She’s part of a Swiss-Peruvian research group and she’s studying the role of women in cacao cooperatives in Peru. She was born in Bern, and her next-door neighbor is named Bieri. I abhor metaphysical thinking, but this one seemed strange. We hit it off immediately, and in minutes were walking around Chazuta talking about world politics. Soon the six-pack had disappeared and as the beers flowed the conversation seemed to cover every important topic. Within hours of meeting her, I knew her stance on policing in the U.S. and her insecurities about not finding someone she wants to have kids with. The streets were beginning to fill with friends, old couples, and strangers like us. The ting-ting-ting of the steel drum meant the band was warming up and this was shaping up to be one of those rare, perfect nights. Another hour later I found myself sitting at a table with two Frenchmen, a Japanese woman, the Swiss girl, a couple of beekeepers from Lima, and an ex-pat American surfer. Remember that this was in a town where I hadn’t seen another extranjero in the two months that I’ve been working here. I’ve since become good friends with all of them. The party continued to heat up outside, and I watched as the Swiss girl competently and thoughtlessly flowed between Spanish, French, and English in the same conversation. None of which are her first language. At that moment, I felt very, very American. The beers kept finding their way to me. We danced until our legs hurt.
We rose early the next morning. It hadn’t rained the night before, so we weren’t finding many frogs with our guide, Manuel. We’ve been recording mating calls and taking genetic samples (toes) from different populations along the Huallaga River to identify the gene responsible for variations in calls between populations. I’ve also been collecting males from some of the sites to run experiments back at our house in Tarapoto. I want to know if males are equally aggressive towards males from other populations. We know that Ranitomeya imitator females form mate preferences based on the colors of males, so I’m wondering if male aggression is also mediated by color. My experiments consist of me pitting two male frogs against each other and filming their territorial responses. I sort of feel like the Michael Vick of frogs. Luckily, the frogs don't have claws or teeth and can't really hurt each other. The experiments are going well, and I’m hoping that I’ll start seeing patterns in the data soon.
Manuel and I have developed quite the frog-catching system. He records a call, then motions me over to help locate it. We communicate with whistles and sign language to avoid spooking the frog in question. We systematically search promising plants until one of us finds la ranita. Nobody will write this about me, so I’ll have to write it about myself. I’ll do so shamelessly. I’m the best frog catcher in the world. I had this realization today after I dove over a log, crashing through branches and vines while gently securing a dime-sized imitator as it flew through the air. It’s just natural for me. Always has been. I understand frogs. I know where they like to hide and I know where they’ll jump next. Frog catching is an art that I’ve been refining for years. Today I probably caught 10 of the 12 frogs we captured and I wasn’t even walking in front. The numbers don’t lie. Bullfrog, tree frog, poison frog, doesn’t matter. If frog-catching were a sport I would be the Kelly Slater of it.
Manuel is quite the character. Latino to the core and tough as nails. Last week, we were working in a jungle that’s a three-hour boat ride from Chazuta. Early in the day, Manuel brushed his arm against a tree and got stung by a bullet ant. Supposedly the most painful insect sting in the world, it gets the highest score on Schmidt’s pain scale (I imagine Schmidt was a fucking sociopath). I smoked a cig with Manuel in solidarity and then we kept working… I could tell that he was in extreme pain, but he insisted on working while holding his throbbing arm. He didn’t complain once, despite the fact that the pain spread to his chest and abdomen and lasted for 24 hours. It was maybe the most hardcore thing I’ve ever seen someone do. Everyone in Chazuta seems to have a different opinion of Manuel. When we drive around town in his mototaxi (a passenger cart that’s welded to a motorcycle) his friends whistle at him and laugh while his enemies scowl. I’m not sure what he’s done to polarize the opinion of his fellow Chazutinos, but there’s a story there I’m sure. Manuel has some redeeming qualities. Like his propensity for stealing fruit from farms. This is a trait that I admire in a man. Especially on days when it yields fresh pineapples and bananas.
Andrew and I had been telling Manuel that we wanted to try cuy (guinea pig) and he assured us that he knew a guy. We went to this gentleman’s house, but he didn’t want to sell any of his assets. After some asking around, we finally found a family that was willing to part with three of their treasured cuys for 50 soles each. We brought them back to Manuel’s house, still alive, and he efficiently dispatched them by hitting them on the head with an unripe plantain, then slitting their throats over the sink. We dropped them in boiling water and meticulously pulled off their fur before gutting them. The owner of our hotel agreed to roast them whole for us if we gave her the third cuy. They tasted like the most flavorful chicken I’ve ever had.
We’re only working in Chazuta a handful of more times in the next two weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be back, but I notice myself clinging to the idea of Chazuta. Maybe tourism will take hold of it or some engineer will find oil nearby and the culture of the place will forever change. That thought scares me. It lives in my mind as a perfect little refuge from the modern world. Shit, if it had a wave to surf, I don’t think I could justify living anywhere else. In my memory, Chazuta will be a place of eternally smiling cacao farmers, fishermen, potters, and barefoot kids. When I think of Chazuta, I’ll always smell a chocolate breeze and hear the love songs of magical rainbow-colored frogs.
