Uneredaté chedo jnacare gáreode
Uneredaté sings about two young men:
I am going to sing:
I’m going to curse someone and make another father for them. But I’m not telling the truth.
I’ll make another one. When the men go to hunt honey, when they are way over there. They will return on another day and will see them. One of them will have intestinal gas and will die. The others will live.
And she is very sad because her husband has died and she looks down (in her sorrow).
When it was night she called to the young man named Guidábi.
She said to her children: “Stay here. I’m going to Guidábi. I’m going directly there. ¿Could a young man refuse me?”
Guidábi said to her: “Uneredaté, you know that I have a wife in the village, but you can sleep with me tonight.”
Another says: “I don’t want anything to do with Uneredaté, because I don’t want a wife.” Edoguesaide was tired of Uneredaté.
Uneredaté said: “Edoguesaide, you’re lying. There are none of you young men who can refuse me.”
As Uneredaté was singing she looked at her children. They were hungry so Uneredaté went to hunt honey. Her children stayed in the village. She found honey and some turtle, and carried them back to them. As she was on her way back to her children, she started missing her husband and began to cry, thinking to herself how women with husbands don’t have to hunt honey. They don’t go out hunting in the jungles. Then she started crying.
Unéredaté – Tobité, Bolivia – 1965
Transcribed by: Joyce Davis Buchegger
Translated to English by: Maxine Morarie
