Eleftheros

The grey bearded hippie on my street used to be a Brazilian Army doctor in the Amazon. He told me about an expedition in t1998, maybe 99 when the Yanomami asked them to help a cousin tribe, whose members had never seen a white person before and were suffering from a malaria outbreak. Due to consanguinity and their isolation, every Yanomami has the same blood group. This means that any of them can be used as a blood donor to treat malaria caused anemia if you lay one of them on higher ground and use tubes to make his blood flow toward a sick Yanomami that is resting below. The expedition lasted more than 50 days. First, the food ran out, so they had to start hunting with a 20 caliber shotgun, the same gun a nurse tried to use to kill himself, pointing it at his head after weeks of jungle walking, but no one would pull the trigger for him, no matter how much he begged.Their catch impressed the Yanomami, who didn't know how to hunt at night using flashlights as white people did. But then the ammunition started running out, and they stopped hunting animals like pacas. Only antas and alligators had enough meat to be worth wasting a shot.The Yanomami were hardly any better. Weakened by malaria, they could no longer hunt or work their gardens. Starvation is a byproduct of disease in a forest society. In the end, they, along with MSF, decided that an evacuation was necessary, and the only available means was a Super Puma helicopter belonging to the Venezuelan Army, which they managed to contact by satellite phone.The Yanomami cut a clearing in the forest for a landing zone, but the helicopter's engine ate a vulture that sent it limping back, barely able to land safely. Venezuela had no helicopter repair capabilities, and a technician had to be flown in from France but against the odds, the Super Puma was airborne again within a couple of days. The evacuation was a success but the sick Yanomami had to be gently guided aboard the Super Puma, as they understandably huddled together and curled up in the fetal position when a giant metal bird descended from the skies, louder than any sound they had ever heard in their lives. Today, the doctor is just an old surfer on a forgotten beach in Rio, far from the tourist areas and almost on another planet from the equatorial forests of the Yanomami.He hates Bolsonaro for dismantling the Yanomami humanitarian programs, but he also complains about some of the new people Lula has brought in. People from the Southeast who passed the concurso don't want to go into the jungle. They prefer to stay at the base or in the city, and if things are bad enough for a Yanomami to leave his land and go to the city, it's usually too late to save him. Talking to him makes me wonder whether the choice I made to become a lawyer, trading a life of adventure and usefulness to others for status at the dinner table, was the right call, or whether I should have chosen another path.