Denim World Championship - SuFu Division

[summ3rhays]

Great back story to your selection BF.  Can't wait to see how they turn out.

[karanimal]

Anyone going to be doing their own repairs for this contest?

I've been reading up on sashiko stitching and watching some videos. I think I'll try to stick with sashiko repairs done by myself for this contest. Waiting on a few items to come in, I'm in need of a crotch repair and a back pocket patching already

If anyone has any really good tutorials for sashiko I would love to see them. I'm thinking I'll just stick with the standard horizontal (Yoko-jima) stitching to keep it simple and looking good

[KrisB]

I thought of doing that, but I recently tore a big hole open from skating.

It's too big for sashiko stitching to be effective or for it to endure the amount of activity I do, so I'll be sending them to SESF within this month.

In contrast, when the knee blow outs and back pocket tears start fleshing out I'll most likely resort to some DIY repairs

[Blue Nemo]

Anyone going to be doing their own repairs for this contest?

I've been reading up on sashiko stitching and watching some videos. I think I'll try to stick with sashiko repairs done by myself for this contest. Waiting on a few items to come in, I'm in need of a crotch repair and a back pocket patching already

If anyone has any really good tutorials for sashiko I would love to see them. I'm thinking I'll just stick with the standard horizontal (Yoko-jima) stitching to keep it simple and looking good

 

 

i thought about sashiko repairs too, honestly I don't think its long lasting, especially not in areas of high tension, pressure, friction, whatever.

anyway, i repair all of my stuff by myself, replacing broken threads and patching up holes. maybe i would patch my knees in sashiko style, dunno.

[chicote]

Hi everyone!

After a long time away, I'm back in North America.. a bit earlier than scheduled, but that just gives me an excuse to come back!   Anyway, here are some photos from my last couple of months. I realize now that I forgot to document a lot of things- big, obvious things that prove my inadequacy as an amateur ethnographer- but I'll try and explain some of what I was able to document.



This was my first good look at Suwa after arriving via motor-canoe (peque) from a community a couple of hours downriver. A couple of houses, a football field, and the river… yep, that’s pretty much it for the town center.



In the above photo you can make out a community (not one that I’ve been to) in a clearing in the forest below… many communities are not much bigger than this, just a few houses and some cleared land for farming. Suwa is different: the main communal area only houses three families, but there are five more families living spread out throughout the forest. The population is around 60.



Almost all life in the community revolves around water. The Pastaza River ran right outside of my house, and is the primary means of transportation of goods and people between communities. Starting around now and continuing through August is fishing season in the Pastaza, and the Achuar subsist almost entirely on the enormous catfish that run the river during this month. Using a combination of hooks, wooden harpoons and, eventually, underwater wrestling, the men will collectively hunt one or two a day to feed the entire community. Walter, the leader of Suwa and my mentor of sorts during my work, told me he came across one last year that was taller and heavier than he was.



Though less exciting, I went fishing on several occasions in the various rivers that run through the jungle a couple of hours out from the community’s center. On my first time out, I had expected a lazy day by the river tying bait and swatting flies, and trudged out unprepared to the border house where we were all meeting up. As it turned out, fishing line wouldn’t be needed; as usual, the Achuar have their own way of going about things.



When I got to the border house, the men were standing in a circle, taking turns smashing this pile of leaves and berries with the trunk of a young plantain tree. It was a few minutes before somebody explained to me  (The guy in the above photo was also working in the community, but was on his way out as I was coming in.)

After about an hour, when everything was sufficiently crushed, we began loading a basket, making sure to prevent any of the plant matter falling  between the holes. By the time we were done, the basket was full and enormously heavy, more than I could comfortably carry on flat ground, much less the muddy and treacherous paths deeper in the jungle. While we sat around deciding what to do, a thirteen-year-old girl from the neighboring house came over, picked up the basket, and laid the strap across her forehead without much more than a slight grunt. “Wiñítie," (Come on!) she called, and set off down the trail. In the commotion that followed, our group swelled to well over 10 people, including two six-year-olds, and three dogs.

It was nearly an hour before we reached the river. Endemic to every journey in the jungle, this one included, were the swamps of sucking mud and knee-deep water; ravine crossings atop uneven, mossy logs; jogs over fields of ants and fallen beehives; and abrupt stops and starts to listen for birds or monkeys, hack through lianas and spiny shrubs, or scale trees for edible leaves and fruit. We kept a hurried pace, unabated by the occasional swing of a machete or vault of a log, and nobody complained, not the young kids nor the girl carrying the basket.

Eventually we came to the base of a small waterfall, and everyone happily cooled off in the pool, drank chicha and shared the berries and things we picked up along the way. Then someone called for everyone to clear out of the pool, and hefting the basket, waded in themselves. They lowered it into the water, shaking the leaf mixture we’d made, until the entire pool was a murky green. (The water had earlier been clear enough to see through to the bottom.)



We sat waiting. The dark surface of the water broke and a sausage-sized fish went flying through the air, clear across to the other side of the pool. More fish began convulsing downriver, flopping onto the muddy banks, and everyone sprang into action chasing them down before the current carried them away. For the next four hours we waded downriver, sometimes up to our waists in green water, filling our bags with fish.



I learned a bit more about barbasco from one of the men who had been lectured about its chemical properties from a scientist he met in Puyo. Apparently, something in the juice of the leaves and berries traps the oxygen in the water, lowering it to levels that most fish can’t tolerate. Asphyxiated, the fish thrash as if they were above water, and become much easier targets for a pair of hands than they would be otherwise, even in clear water. Because barbasco doesn’t eliminate all the oxygen from the water, very young/small fish aren’t affected, which shelters their populations from any long-term damage. Nevertheless, we came away with well over a hundred fish that day. This is about a third of our total:



All eaten by the next morning, as is the Achuar custom.

 

(cont.)

Edited August 6, 2015 by chicote

[chicote]

Our hunting trips were considerably more difficult: they usually involved hiking for 6-10 hours in the jungle, chasing monkeys and birds, and sometimes coming back empty-handed. But the quality and variety of meats that we encountered was often worth the tradeoff. Here are a few of the more common meats:

Sahino (peccary) - a small boar-looking mammal with incredible meat, maybe the best meat I’ve ever had, certainly the top of the ones in the jungle.



Wanta (?) - a giant, fleshy rodent that is almost always encountered at night. The Achuar get really excited about wanta, especially because of the meat on their feet, although I couldn’t tell why.



Monkey - yeah, yeah, I know. I was a little unsure about eating monkey, but sometimes it’s all that we had, and the meat is very good. It’s not a comparable taste to any other meat I’ve tried, but it’s tender and surprisingly flavorful.

 

To go hunting, you have three options: go with dogs and a machete—this would usually limit you to small ground creatures, like wanta and armadillo; go with a rifle, although bullets were rare and extraordinarily expensive; or use an umm (pron. oom), a two-meter long blowgun that takes poison-tipped arrows. On one of my last days in Suwa, I went out with Walter and his oldest son to try out a new batch of curare, a plant-derived poison that will kill most animals (including humans) in seconds.



To make the arrows for the umm, we had to start with a piece of a species of bamboo that only grows near certain parts of the river. Its wood is extremely light, like balsa, but very hard, and thus makes for ideal arrows.



Walter used a machete to split and whittle each arrow to a point; it took him about five minutes from start to finish, and he spent all afternoon working to make enough for a day’s hunt. The finished arrows were then dipped in curare and dried over the fire. Walter applied the curare in the early morning after an ayahuasca ceremony, and I was too wiped out to document that part of the process. Maybe this was intentional—curare recipes and applications are very well-kept secrets among Achuar hunters, and traditionally they prepared for an umm hunt without anybody else’s knowledge, for to have somebody see you making or using curare would curse your hunt.



Anyway, the quiver in the above photo contained about thirty arrows, wrapped carefully in a mat made of a similar light wood. The ball at the bottom contains a cotton-like substance which is put onto the back end of the arrow in order to give it some friction when being fired. And I assumed the the piranha tooth was for last-minute whittling of arrows, but Walter quickly corrected me: “It’s for style.â€

We headed out in the early morning and made for a trail Walter had made some weeks before. Like most things that are left alone for more than a week, it had completely grown over, and we spent a lot of time hacking at branches and vines:



Around seven hours after we set out, we finally came across something. Walter stopped us and spent about ten minutes making monkey sounds as slowly a trio of shadows made their way towards us from faraway trees. I managed to get a sound recording of the striking of one of them with an umm arrow:

 

https://soundcloud.com/ia_n/cojiendo-un-mono

 

And Wenchi very proudly carried back what would be dinner, for us, Walter’s wife and their other six kids:



The kids saw me looking through photos while the monkey was cooking and insisted on a portrait. That doll was a gift from a passing missionary just the week before… nobody knows where the rest of it has gone!



--

Outside of the fish and meat, the food was really pretty bland: mostly plantains and cassava, and nothing to drink but chicha.



Looks good, huh? Even if it doesn’t, you have no choice but to drink it, not only because it’s cultural taboo not to but also because you have no other options.

Chicha is made exclusively by women, and is one of the more important parts of many cultures in this part of the Amazon. It’s made, roughly (I wasn’t allowed to observe the specifics) by boiling a large pot of cassava and camote (an Amazonian sweet potato) for several hours, until the mixture turns a soft yellow. The pot is drained and then the women of a family will sit around it, taking handfuls of the boiled roots, chewing them carefully, and spitting them back out into the pot. Enzymes in the saliva will begin to ferment what’s left, and when all has been chewed the women will seal the pot for a pre-determined amount of time: one day for “dulceâ€, which is very lightly alcoholic and commonly drank during conversations, meetings, and meals; three days or five days for parties and certain ceremonies (the three-day is a bit sour and about the strength of a light beer, and the five-day is strongly bitter and similar to wine). The fermented mixture is about the consistency of butter and must be mixed with water to create chicha proper; otherwise it can be carried and eaten solid, which makes it useful to bring along on trips into the jungle.

When you go to anybody’s house, the first thing you do is drink a bowl of chicha. It was formerly considered impolite to speak of any serious matter until everyone had consumed a full bowl, but this seems to have been relaxed. At any sort of communal gathering, the women are tasked with walking around between the men carrying bowls of their chicha, and proffering it to men to drink. It’s not really possible to say no, and the women determine how much you drink before they move on.  Every chicha has a different taste, and there were some that were really gnarly, but by the end of my time I found myself really enjoying it—I think, objectively (or maybe not), the taste of most chicha dulce is actually very good.

(cont.)

Edited August 6, 2015 by chicote

[chicote]

Just as important as chicha are the bowls it is drunk out of. I got to see a lot of these bowls being made and found the process really fascinating. This is the fount of Achuar art, and is a completely natural process: clay scraped from the sides of rivers to the northwest, the red and black pigments found by chance in other parts of the jungle, and a combination of hair and lianas used as paintbrushes. Many of the women would create elaborate bowls that mimicked different animals, usually birds.



The process of making a bowl starts by rolling out a bunch of clay into pencil-width “snakes†and making a small disc for the base. By wrapping the snakes around the base, the bowl’s shape is created—the Achuar have a particular shape for their bowls that I found very difficult to recreate (mine is on the bottom in this photo):



Also pictured there are the red and black pigments used to paint the bowls. Both are mixed with water and then painted with brushes made of a few cut human hairs, which I found ridiculously hard to use. The linear style of their art just doesn’t work well with how curved the hairs are, but somehow they make it work.

The dried and painted bowls are placed inside a larger piece of pottery, then covered in ashes before being cooked.



After cooking, while the clay is still hot, a resin-like tree sap is rubbed on the surface to seal and strengthen the bowl. Jaqui used a red clay and a special resin for this one, which gave it an incredible depth of color:



—

I need to get back to my actual work, but hopefully this provides a nice overview of some aspects of life in the jungle! Thanks for sticking through such a long post :~)

[beautiful_FrEaK]

amaaaaazing pictures!

will read all the info later

[Blue Nemo]

thanks a lot for sharing, I appreciate it!

[chicote]

Oh, forgot to post some pictures of my jeans.. The Tenders are going into storage until I gain 10 kilos, but the Sugar Canes are gonna be stickin' it out. Both have been worn about two months each. I only wore the Sugar Canes regularly once I entered the jungle, and they were handwashed around 10 times while I was there. They're not gonna win any contrast contest, that's for sure!

 

 

 

 

Okay, thanks everyone!

Edited August 6, 2015 by chicote

[DhaDha]

quality quality post these, i enjoyed them thoroughly and learned something new. thank you.

 

may i ask are you a researcher? years back when i did my bachelor in cultural geography this was exactly the thing i had a mind for. strange how things been turning out for me and now i'm still toiling away the days in big bad bangkok haha. 

[Blue Nemo]

 

 

AWESOME

[louisbosco]

it's a really interesting write up. good read mate!

[chicote]

Thanks everyone! It's great to get such a positive response to this, gives me ideas of how I should structure all the articles I need to write to try and cover my expenditures

 

may i ask are you a researcher? years back when i did my bachelor in cultural geography this was exactly the thing i had a mind for. strange how things been turning out for me and now i'm still toiling away the days in big bad bangkok haha. 

 

Officially no, as I'm still working towards my undergrad degree, but I suppose before and during this trip I was doing quite a lot of research--mainly assessing the development projects that are taking place here and in other communities along the Pastaza. The Achuar are a group known for their careful assessment of these projects, which in other parts of the Amazon have often had disastrous consequences: loss of land rights, full dependency on the money economy, radical shifts in lifestyle from which thousands of years of traditional culture are often unrecoverable. Despite this, they don't have many tools at their disposal when things really come to bear: they have no way of easily contacting the outside world (in the case that oil companies or paramilitaries enter their territory, as has happened with their neighbors, the Shuar and Huaorani); many adults and nearly all children that I met were illiterate; and no international NGOs that I found in my research had devoted any significant amount of time to understanding their particular struggle, save one group that seemed to have provided legal help during a victorious 2011 land-rights lawsuit against a Canadian oil company.

 

This particular area also offered a good look at the many stages of westernization that have made it into the Amazon. Suwa was about in the middle as far as development goes: they had gas motors for their canoes, rifles for hunting, and a small school that received food and government funds and had just begun to offer English classes. But only a couple of houses had electricity, in the form of solar-powered incandescent lights, and everybody seemed relatively content with living where and how they did. In another community I visited (Kapawi), that was completely another story. They had an airstrip, a large church with a number of permanent missionary positions, a doctor's office that flew in student doctors from the cities, and a colegio (high school) that served a couple hundred kids from surrounding communities and had a periodic Internet connection. The younger generation had smartphones and tablets, some wore hair gel and makeup, and many I spoke with seemed hell-bent on moving to cities after finishing their educations in the community.

 

The main purpose of my work was to examine this process: looking at all the forces that turn a place like Suwa into one like Kapawi, and looking at the pros and cons of such a change, as well as the outside powers that help to shape this development for better or worse (NGOs, governments, extractive industries and tourist companies, etc).

 

I don't really want to hijack the thread, but I would be really interested in hearing about what you are doing in Bangkok DhaDha. You've made some vague allusions to inspections and that sort of thing--seems very interesting, but yes different from cultural geography for sure!

[Megatron1505]

Officially post of the thread so far, that was INCREDIBLE. What an amazing adventure, I am completely jealous.

[nizzel55]

IH666SII

70 days

[ShootThePier]

Officially post of the thread so far, that was INCREDIBLE. What an amazing adventure, I am completely jealous.

+1

Thank you for sharing.

[saintkeat]

Chicote Mate thanks for sharing those photos and taking the effort with that incredible write up!

 

EDIT: oops you replied to a question I was just about to ask. 

Edited August 7, 2015 by saintkeat

[spitfiredealer]

 

59 days

[greathoudini]

Wow great story, and beautifull pictures.

Some nice advantures in this contest from the start

My oldblue co ultimate denim will be produced this week if I'm lucky. Can't wait to pull try their new 25oz denim and finally join in.

[KrisB]

@spitfiredealer Bapes on feet?

[spitfiredealer]

yes mate

[mpukas]

IH634-XHS. No idea how many days. I stopped wearing them for a while when it got really hot here. But surprisingly - especially to me - I started wearing them again, and even in hot weather. No idea why... Just had their 4th wash or so. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pudaspriest]

Quick update on what I have been doing in my jeans lately. Spent the last month building out our tasting room at work

 

We went from this

 

 

to this 

 

 

Excited to finally have this done, just in time to concentrate on the apple season 

 

bonus pic of me and my fancy new work boots, no more wet feet at the end of the day!

 

[DhaDha]

 

I don't really want to hijack the thread, but I would be really interested in hearing about what you are doing in Bangkok DhaDha. You've made some vague allusions to inspections and that sort of thing--seems very interesting, but yes different from cultural geography for sure!

 

oh man you are definitely not hijacking the thread. i for one would welcome a lot more post. when i have a story half as good as yours i will definitely be sharing them too!

 

can't wait to see your rainforest fades! 

[DhaDha]

my RC finally starting to fade 93 days in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

since i wear them business-casual most day, i have not been too hard on them yet. enjoying them dark and fluffy for the time being. alas, that period in these jeans' history will soon come to an end. they are starting to crock more and more indigo. 

[DhaDha]

damage report. Cotton threads are wearing out in places. the heavy denim really does a number on all-cotton stitching. I can foresee quite a few stitching repair in the near future.

 

 

 

Most worrying now is the fly. As with all mid-century detailed jeans, there is no reinforced stitching at fly stitching, and the heavier fabric means a lot of force when i pull the fly open, of which a mere single-line stitch eventually gave way and broke. i should get them fixed soon but then i would likely have to soak/wash these before sending them to a tailor so i'm putting that off until maybe another month. Right now i just keep the lowest button on all the time to prevent more thread breakages. 

 

[Lukenstein]

Edc descisions

New goods

[Blue Nemo]

what's your job discription, priest?

[spitfiredealer]

Morning hike with the dog.