The Great Journey

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[ Where is "Tamagawa"? ]

It's been 23 years since I started visiting Machigenga tribe who lives in the jungle where the Peruvian Amazon originates. When they saw me for the first time, they asked with a friendly smile on their faces, "Which river did you come from?" "Tamagawa," I answered. Then they started asking me questions one after another. "Is Tamagawa big? Can you catch many fish? Are there many birds and animals?"
They use rafts to go up and down the stream. They can make two of them in 3 hours from the balsa and palm trees nearby. For them, it takes a few days to visit their relatives by raft. The further you go down the stream, the more civilized people's lives are. Even within a family, some easily get used to the life downstream while the others find it difficult and return to upstream. Even if you try to live in the innermost depths of the jungle avoiding contact with civilization, traces of civilization, in a form of flashlight, aluminum pan, radio with tape recorder and so on, will intrude whether you like it or not. I am not any exception of this intrusive civilization. Am I allowed to keep coming back to their village? After hesitating about this, I decided saying to myself, "Well, I still like them and enjoy my company with them. I try not to interrupt their lives, so hope they let me stay here."