“This year I have been teaching two foreigners to make a canoe,” explains an Ecuadorian tribal elder to the British twosome who are filming him for their documentary DugOut.
Bay Nenquiwi and his family welcome the two Brits to their way of life
Hunter Bay Nenquiwi says it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for two Brits to join him and his family in the rainforest for two months in order to learn how to build their own canoe.
Behind said camera is one part of the British dynamic duo, filmmaker Benjamin Sadd and artist James Trundle, who aim to take the canoe on a journey down the river once completed, documenting the whole process in the film DugOut.
Ben Sadd (left) and James Trundle bring a playfulness to the hard existence of the Huaorani people
The adventurous types film each other along the way, revealing a likeable pair who are Englishly funny and self-deprecating, drily acknowledging their failings along the way.
The critters that surround the boys in the jungle, for example, include “ants that look like small dogs”, and spiders in their boots.
Sadd pokes about in his boot one morning trying to dislodge an eight-legged wonder. Shortly after said shoe was prodded, a giant tarantula emerges, making Sadd leap back like a rocket.
Culture shock
The cultural differences are an obvious comparison but Bay, who has been making boats with his grandfather since he was 10, is nevertheless “open-minded” about the duo.
Laughingly calling them “soft” as they battle to fell a giant tree with axes, from which they will make their canoe, Bay nevertheless concedes in DugOut that they are also “a little tough”. He recognises the boys are not used to the constant manual work of surviving in the harsh environment.
Sap from the plants is used for multiple purposes
Yet the boys bring a playfulness to the tribe, with Bay admitting he’s enjoying the forest like he did when he was a child, the trio swinging across a ditch on a vine, giggling with childlike abandon.
‘We live here totally at peace,’ says Bay ‘and have whatever we want to eat,’ as the film shows the boys tucking into big squashy grubs.
Other food includes small bananas mushed up with water, the carb-filled meal lasts them all day, the guys often aching with hunger. They sleep little with the constant need to evacuate loose bowels.
They have to be super careful, too. Poison arrows are used by the tribe to kill animals, such as monkeys, for food. At one point, pouring away their breakfast, unsure if they accidentally put poisonous plant in their food.
The boys attempt to reciprocate the hospitality by making the family some bread; however this ends up charred to within an inch of its life and is last seen being eaten by the family dog.
Push the boat out
The boat is made from scratch, starting with felling a tree. The weight of the tree means that the wood is hollowed out where the tree falls in the middle of the jungle. Even once it is ready, with days and days of sanding down with the simplest of tools, the canoe is too heavy to move easily.
The whole family is involved in the process of moving the canoe to the water’s edge once finished, using a transport process used for millenia, using the pyramid roller system. Some of the kids opt for a ride through the jungle to the water.
Primitive tools are used to hollow out the tree trunk in backbreaking work
Finishing the canoe is a sad moment, the boys feeling the family had such a big part in it, it’s their canoe too. The inaugural launch of the boat sees the whole family plus dog wedge into the craft.
DugOut
On leaving day the boys are shot. Tired from being up all night with upset stomachs for weeks on end, a ‘deep hunger’ and much physical work the boys are exhausted as they set off.
The tribe’s life is a harsh existence but Bay and his family love that the forest provides everything they need to live. Part of the deal prior to the whole experience is that the boys are ‘welcome to see how we live but please leave us in peace’, which makes the last update from the film super depressing.
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