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April 2008

Excerpt from the short story 
"Change"
By J. Samia Mair 

Tupa is one of those rare individuals whom you immediately know you will never forget. I met him in the unusually sterile city of Brasilia at a protest against the deforestation of indigenous lands. Tupa was less than five feet tall with a stocky build. He had golden brown skin and jet black hair that glistened like the oil beneath the forest. His gentle dark eyes dominated his otherwise strong chiseled face. He was beautiful both to eye and heart.

Tupa told me the most amazing story--the story of his life. He was born deep in the Brazilian Amazon in a year that was remembered more for death than life. He belonged to a tribe that until recently had no contact with the outside world, living as they had for thousands of years. His village was built on a large patch of cleared forest near the banks of a winding river. He laughed when I told him that I had come all the way to Brazil to venture into the rainforest, whereas he exerted a great effort to get out. He explained that the forest was a dangerous place. He spent most of his time near or in the river, unconcerned with the piranhas and the other creatures that inhabit those murky waters.

When he was about twelve years old, an anthropologist from the United States began living with his tribe for the next several years. The contact changed his life forever. She grew especially fond of him and offered to send him to nursing school in Brasilia. Tupa accepted the invitation despite the disapproval of his father, the tribe’s only medicine man. After Tupa graduated, he visited the anthropologist in the United States and traveled across the country with some of her students. In just a few short years, Tupa went from living a primitive existence in a remote village deep in the Amazon basin to gallivanting around one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. That is a story for the movies.