Free Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett

hammocks.
    “Hammocks?” I asked, confused. I guess I had thought we would sleep in beds or on the floor.
    “We only sleep in hammocks here, Mr. Daniel, even the priest. People here don’t use beds,” Cesária answered. She went on to explain to me how everyone, even people traveling in boats on the rivers, slept in hammocks.
    “We have no hammocks.” I was growing more depressed with the situation and my lack of planning. The hammocks that Shannon and Keren had been carried in belonged to people, I didn’t even know who, from Santa Luzia.
    Cesária left immediately and came back in about half an hour with five hammocks borrowed from neighbors. She started dinner and told me she’d watch Keren while I took the children to bathe in the Madeira. Now, the Madeira is not like the small, clear Maici. It is a muddy behemoth, rivaling the Mississippi, perhaps more than a mile across at the Auxiliadora at high water. The riverbank was some three hundred yards from Godofredo’s house and the bank was roughly sixty yards high, the highest of any settlement I had seen. I waded in to knee depth and washed off. I didn’t care that there were alligators (black caimans) in it and that you could not see them in the river’s muddy water. I didn’t care that there were candirus, tiny fish that would swim up any bodily orifice. I didn’t even care that there were piranhas, anacondas, stingrays, electric eels, and other denizens of the murky Madeira, because I was dirty. But in recognition of the potential danger, I washed Caleb and Kristene by pouring water over them and soaping them up and then dipping them quickly in and out of the river. We were somewhat clean at the end of this, but got muddy and sweaty as we walked back up the steep bank and then to the house. It was nearly dark. Unlike the Maici, the banks of the Madeira swarm with mosquitoes. They were buzzing throughout Godo’s home. We had no bug repellent, no long pants, nothing to protect us. Cesária borrowed a room-size mosquito net for us, though, and put it up in her living room, so we could sit inside this netting (which made the room much hotter because it cut out all breezes) and avoid the mosquitoes. But I couldn’t avail myself of this protection, because Godo wanted to talk. We sat on his steps and talked, I trying to appear unconcerned and at ease. I was slapping at biting mosquitoes without stop, my skin welting up under every bite.
    “The mosquitoes are really horrible here,” I complained.
    “Really? There are hardly any out tonight” came Godo’s reply, tinged with a bit of defensiveness about his town. But I noticed that he held his T-shirt in his hands to slap regularly at his back, front, and sides.
    We settled down for a dinner of beans heavily flavored with onions, salt, oil, and cilantro, accompanied by rice and some fish. I had very little money to pay for this food. We were living on the charity of the poor.
    Men inquired and reported to me that the next boat to Humaitá would pass by in two or three days. This was a letdown. We would be stranded in this place. But at least Keren and Shannon could rest and we had help washing clothes and getting food. And we had hope that we would make it to a doctor.
    “How will I know when the boat is coming?” I asked.
    “A gente vai escutar de longe, seu Daniel”
(We will hear it from afar, Mr. Daniel) was the enigmatic reply.
    How could they hear it from enough distance for me to get my family and things together in time to reach the riverbank and flag it down?I again wondered whether I had made the right decision to leave rather than wait for the plane.
    Keren called me to her hammock and said that she wanted to go back to the village and wait for the plane. She seemed so much stronger and clearheaded that I considered returning after another night’s sleep. In any case, before the next morning when I might have returned to the Maici, Godofredo woke me up. It was about 2 a.m.
    “O recreio já