Guébi
Raindrop
A drop of rain that took on human form and became a boy:
A man from long ago was in the jungle, hunting honey, when suddenly he came upon a little boy and he was afraid of him. He would start toward the boy, and then back away. He looked different than a normal child, he thought, and that is when he started to think he might be dangerous.
The man took hold of his pony tail and tied it up, because he was anxious to find out who and what this child was, but he still was afraid. He went back into the jungle to gather up his things, and when he’d found them, he went back to look for the child. He looked all over until he found him again.
He saw him asleep in the shadows of the trees. There was no doubt at all in his mind that he must have fallen there sometime back, and now he was resting on his little elbows on the ground. Having located the boy, the man knelt beside him and spoke to him. “Be my son, and go with me wherever I go,” he said.
The boy whose name was Guébi (Little rain) answered. But the hunter noticed that the little boy couldn’t talk clearly. “I will go with you,” he responded hesitantly. It was because he’d been on the ground asleep so long, but the man could tell that he was happy now. The boy tied his hair in a pony tail like an Ayoréi so that the people he feared couldn’t discover who he was.
All the people thought that Guébi was just another Ayoré boy. But when they were nearing the camp Guébi started crying.
He stayed back from the Ayoreos because of their fires. The camp was too warm for him; rain needs to be cold. That was why Guébi stayed far away from the fires.
He also stayed away from the place where they had stored water, that was because Guébi had water in his hair; but still, he kept crying. Finally he got nearer to the people despite the campfires the Ayoreos had made, making it too warm for him. The man who had discovered him took hold of his little arm to comfort him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You are my little son and no one can hurt you.” And in this way he encouraged him to go into the camp; but he wasn’t comfortable because of the heat, for rain must be cool to feel right.
But the next day they went to hunt for honey, and little Guébi was very happy to be with the man who had discovered him.
The man climbed a tree and started chopping into the trunk of it to get the honey out, and it was hard work, so after a while he became thirsty. He sent his little companion to bring back the plant called chicṍri to quench his thirst. The little one brought a plant, but it was very small.
The man looked at it and said: “That little plant won’t give enough water to quench my thirst.” He said this because he was very, very thirsty from chopping the tree.
At first he didn’t know what the boy was doing. Confident that he was just squeezing water from the plant, he didn’t watch when he was twisting his hair to get water. It sounded like: ¡sooooo, sooooo! When he had enough, the boy invited the man to come down and drink. He said: “Come down, drink what I have squeezed; the gourd bowl is full of water.”
His adoptive father thought the water had come from the plant, but when he drank it he found it to be very cold. He gave no thought to the idea that it had come from another source other than the chicṍri plant. That is because the boy had quickly tied up his hair after getting the water by twisting it. The man’s adopted son had gotten the water from his hair, but the father didn’t know that yet.
The father said: “The water you gave me was very cold, my son. The plant was very small, but what a lot of water came from it!”
But Guébi said nothing. He knew exactly where the water had come from and how he’d gotten such a lot of it, but he didn’t tell his father.
The next day they went hunting again. The man said: “My son, come with me.”
Guébi said: “I’ll go with you, Iapá (Father).”
The same thing happened. The father climbed the tree and was chopping into the trunk to get honey, and he told his son that he was thirsty. As he was cutting a hole in the tree he started to suspect that perhaps the water from the day before had not come from the plant. He wasn’t sure, but he said to himself: ‘This time, my son, I’m going to observe carefully to learn where you get the water.”
He called to his son: “Bring me a chicṍri plant and squeeze out the water. I’m thirsty.”
The same thing happened. The plant that he brought was small. When the boy got back to the tree, his father stole glances at his son down on the ground to discover where he would get the water. When he saw his son twisting his hair, he knew, and at that moment he began to fear his son.
He said to himself: ‘My son is something supernatural! When he takes down his hair, water pours out of it – he’s full of water!’
He drank the water that his son held up to him, and again he found it very cold. He spoke to his son and asked: “Are you supernatural, my son? Are you hiding something from me?”
But his little son didn’t say a word. Afterwards, the boy took off running. I don’t know why, because now he was an Ayoréi and had lived among them a long time.
Finally, the boy returned, and some time later the father went off to hunt with the other men. He didn’t think of taking the boy, however, and he left him in the camp.
But then he started thinking about his son and he said: “Oh, no, I have forgotten my little son. The other children will probably mistreat him. Probably he is crying right now and will run off and hide again.”
Back in the camp the sons of the men who lived long ago invited Guébi to come out and play with them. They said: “Come here. Let’s kick each other and play together.”
And then, the children started kicking each other and playing. But Guébi began to make a house. He said to them: “I’ll play with you after I finish my house.”
It was hot and he made the house for shade. The other children didn’t know that very soon Guébi’s heavenly parents were coming to get him. Guébi didn’t want to play, but the other children really wanted him to play.
He worked on his house and it turned out very well. When it was finished, he went off to play with the children, but first he put his adoptive father’s things in his house.
But soon one of the children kicked Guébi’s arm and he got mad. It really hurt him when the boy kicked him.
He raised one of his arms, and it was strange, for immediately a flash of lightning went out from his armpit. He did it so that his people up in the sky would hear it.
The doors of heaven were opened at the moment when Guébi alerted them about what was happening. He knew his people would come for him. For a long time something strange fell from the sky. But the men from ancient times didn’t know what it was – they thought it had to do with rain.
I don’t know if it was Jesus at that moment, but Guébi’s countrymen came down and took Guébi back up to heaven. There was a torrential rain when he left. When they came for him and took him back up with them, the people on earth watched him go.
Guébi had told the people: “My Father and the others are coming,” but the people in the camp were not afraid. They thought the boy was referring to his earthly father. They didn’t know that Guébi’s true father was the rain. He wasn’t speaking of a human or of his father on earth.
He warned them not to enter his house. He said: “You have treated me cruelly, and that is why I don’t want you to enter my house.”
When he first mentioned to the children that it was going to rain, they made fun of him and said: “It’s not going to rain!” But at that moment it started raining and it rained hard. The clouds came down and surrounded them and it was as dark as night.
There was a lot of rain, but he didn’t want the bad children to take shelter in his house. He didn’t want the bad men and women to find refuge there either. He refused to protect them. He only wanted good people to enter his house to get out of the rain that his heavenly parents had sent down upon them.
All of the children died because the water covered the trees and you couldn’t see the earth below.
But Guébi’s house floated and no water entered it. His adoptive father and his family were in the jungle when the rain started, and Guébi waited for them because he didn’t want them to drown. When they arrived at the camp they started running to Guébi’s house. Guébi threw them into his house; his father, his wife and all of his children. He did this because he loved them. And then he left.
But he said to his father, don’t let any bad people into my house. And he did what Guébi told him to do, and he didn’t let anyone in.
The rain lasted a long time and they didn’t have anything to eat, but they had some provisions inside the house – a few turtles. They were inside the house two moons and then they saw leaves.
The leaves gave them hope. For five moons Guébi’s adoptive father was in the house and then they left it. There were no doors so they went out through the roof.
Samané – Tobité, Bolivia – 1965.
Transcribed by: Joyce Davis Buchegger.
Translated to English by: Maxine Morarie.
