Meet Elvira

Elvira likes to sing.

In her native Bora tongue, she sings about an anaconda that transforms into a school of fish. According to a Bora legend, these fish cling to other anacondas like lice to hair, Elvira´s husband, Sergio, explains. "We do not know why," Elvira adds. "The story is part of Bora tradition."

Elvira Pena Saldano, 55, was born in Brillo Nuevo, a village of about eighty families on a tributary of the Amazon River in Peru. Elvira grew up in Brillo Nuevo. This is where she learned both Bora and Spanish. (And where her 11 year-old pet parrot, Maruja, learned both Bora and Spanish.) It is where she dreamed of becoming a teacher, and where she pocketed her dreams when she met Sergio. "Back in those days I was so independent," Elvira says and giggles. "I did not want to get married and have kids."

Elvira´s four children have inherited her independence. Three of them now live in the city. Her eldest daughter is a teacher in Iquitos, a city about 16 hours away by launch. Her youngest daughter, Lisbet, is a dreamer. After she finishes school this year, Lisbet wants to go to university. She wants to be a scientist or an engineer. "I am going to learn English," she says. "And I am going to travel around the world."

Lisbet is watching her mother weave a hammock from chambira fiber. She is learning to make her own hammock.

Things are changing in Brillo Nuevo, Elvira says, as her fingers dance around the chambira. The community used to have ten or eleven traditional festivals every year, she says. Now they hardly have one.

"Now most of us are more interested in making money than singing and dancing and being together. And that is why I tell my Lisbet my stories. And why I teach her to work with chambira. In this way, we are still Bora."

Elvira´s favorite pastime is making handicrafts. Elvira designs bags, hammocks and belts out of chambira. It takes her two to three days to weave one bag. But it is not hard work, she says. "I weave while I wait for the water to boil, or while I listen to the rain on the river."