433 Chapter Seven Cosmos For the Matsigenka of Shimaa, kameti ...

“You must spin now,” her mother said. “You must work.” She was shut up in there [her menarchy
seclusion] a long, long time ago.
“Je je,” the girl replied. She spun until late, then she slept. The next day her mother called to wake
her before dawn,
“Now, wake up. You have to spin. Don’t sleep.” Her mother squeezed mash through a strainer,
kavuse, kavuse. She gave her daughter the fibers to suck, of that which was cooking, that stuff-likemanioc.
The girl gulped it down, she finished it off. Her father said, “I’m off to get food.” His wife
helped him get heart-of-earth. She carried a caña brava torch for light--it was dim, like moonlight. He
built a dam, they fished for materi. They brought the food home with them. They cooked materi. They
roasted the “manioc” in the ashes. They gulped their food.
They drank beer. Her mother gave her some in a large gourd. [P.: “You realize it was soil. She
drank it. It was soil, but she thought it was manioc”] She drank it all and gave the cup back to her
mother. “Give me back some of the materi, also,” her mother said. “Otherwise, when you marry you
will be like one who never gives generously. You must give a portion back.” The girl only ate a bit of
the plump belly of the materi. She gave the rest back to her mother. Her mother said, “Eat manioc. You
must eat in order to get plump, so that you will grow.”
[P.’s sister, Teodora, interrupted at this point to ask, “When they eat that earth, can they get
plump?” P.: “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Perhaps when you suck the mash of earth you will be thin
and weak. Maybe we are plump today because we don’t eat earth.”]
Anyway, she sucked that mash, tsose, tsose, tsose.... She finished it. “You must spin,” her
mother said. “You must first-spin and second-spin. When you have finished, when I allow you to
come out of seclusion, I will teach you how to set up the loom. If you don’t know how to loom before I
die, you will not learn.” The girl wound the thread into balls. She filled her basket. She gave it to her
mother. Her mother helped her wind the thread.
Her mother and father went fishing, leaving her with her little sister to spin. Around noon, she heard
the sound of a man walking, tin, tin, tin. Her little sister had gone out somewhere. The man [Kashiri]
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