Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett Read Free Book Online Page B

words in order to borrow a word from another language, this suggests that the language had no word for this species of monkey because it wasn’t found in their homeland, wherever that might have been.
    Since Pirahã is not related to any other known living language, I came to realize that we had not been assigned to work merely with a difficult language, but with a unique language.
    We adjusted as a family to life in the Amazon, completely on our own, with no one but ourselves to turn to for help. We became closer than we had ever been, taking great satisfaction and enjoyment in family companionship. We thought that we were in control of our lives as we had never been before. But the Amazon was about to remind us who was boss.

3                  The Cost of Discipleship
    W e went as disciples of Christ to the Pirahãs. And the Bible warns disciples that service is fraught with dangers. So we began to discover. One late afternoon Keren began to complain that the Pirahãs were making her tense. She was frying the meat from an anteater that Kóhoi had killed. She was surrounded as usual by about a dozen Pirahãs, curious about our cooking and eating habits (and hungry for some anteater steak). She asked me to walk with her on our airstrip. The airstrip was like our personal park. It didn’t just serve as a landing site for the plane, it gave us a place to walk, to jog, and to escape the village once in a while.
    “I can’t take this anymore,” Keren reported in a shaky voice.
    “What’s bothering you?” I asked. It was common for me to complain about how difficult the constant scrutiny of the Pirahãs was. But Keren rarely noticed it. And when she did notice that she was surrounded by staring, curious Pirahãs, she didn’t seem to mind at all; she’d just amicably talk to them.
    I told her I would finish cooking dinner and that she should try to get some rest. As we walked back on the path to our hut, she mentioned that her back was aching and that she was starting to get a headache. We didn’t understand the significance of these symptoms at the time, though, and chalked them up to tension.
    That night, Keren’s head was aching even more. Her spine was hurting so that she frequently arched her back. Then she began to feel hot and feverish. I got out our medical manual and started to read about her symptoms. As I was reading, our older daughter, Shannon, began to complain that her head was hurting too. I felt her forehead with the back of my hand. She radiated heat.
    We had medicine enough for any common Amazonian health problem, I thought. I was sure that all I needed to do was to read about the different sets of symptoms in my missionary medical book and the diagnosis would be easy. As I looked through the symptoms, I concluded that Keren and Shannon had typhoid fever. I believed this because I had contracted typhoid during our jungle training in Mexico and their symptoms were like mine had been.
    I began antibiotic treatment for typhoid fever. Neither one improved at all. They were both getting very ill very quickly, and Keren’s decline in health was dangerously fast. She stopped eating. She did not want to drink anything, though occasionally she would take some water. I tried to record her temperature with a thermometer, but the mercury rose to the end and never fell, no matter how many times I took it. Shannon’s fever hovered between 103 and 104 degrees.
    The hot tropical sun was not helping. While I cared (ineptly) for Keren and Shannon, I also had to cook and clean for Caleb (then only two) and Kris, four years old. I was unable to sleep. Keren and Shannon had diarrhea, so I had to help them on and off the chamber pot at night, empty and clean the pot, and help them back to bed.
    At the head of our bed we had given ourselves a small bit of privacy by putting up a wall of
paxiuba
palm slats. The Pirahãs crowded close and peered in through the slats. They knew something was wrong. I later