The Maloca Has Dawned

To all our beautiful followers, philanthropists and fellow human beings, greetings with love.

Our message to you today comes with a mixed array of feelings.

Firstly, we give our whole-hearted thanks to every soul that dedicated their precious time, energy and attention to this budding cause. This was a collective manifestation of many mutually harmonized hearts and minds.

Along the journey for this cause, we focused our campaign around a word, a word that spread from mouth to many more mouths, a word that resonated and rallied a crowd into action and whose sound moved earth, bark and vine into a temple nurturing the values of a human community. That word has dawned, The Maloca has dawned! So thank you once again for taking part in this fulfilling process.

The spiritual shelter, that was once only an idea in the mind of a visionary medicine man, is finally standing, with its caring limbs embracing the rekindling culture of a resilient and deserving tribe.

But this journey was not without its fair share of sacrifice, for just after our project’s completion, that same medicine man, a visionary that brought us all together in this cause, passed away shortly after the Maloca was erected. May you RIP and continue guiding us from the spiritual world and beyond, our good friend, Taita Jesus Teteye.

In light of the news we were subjected to, we have taken some time to update our forum out of respect to the family and for our team to regroup. But the exciting news is that we are gathering once again to assemble the documentary that we promised you. A documentary that will hopefully give you all a taste of the culture and spiritual values of a people that help protect some 6 million hectares of the Amazonian rainforest.

Our Story in Short:

In February 2021, three intrepid Europeans (that’s us) boarded a chartered World War II aircraft at San Jose de Guaviare, Colombia, destination La Chorrera, an infamous indigenous settlement along the Igaraparana river in the lower Putumayo region of the Amazon rainforest.  The village is infamous for the horrendous atrocities that occurred during the rubber extraction fever and the evangelist fever of the early 1900s.

Our mission was utterly simple (drumroll for the impending run-on sentence): wait a few days for a canoe to arrive from down the river, then ride the canoe, with all of our expensive film equipment, back down the river for ten hours, through the thick mist and shards of broken trees that stuck out of the water, arrive at the Bora village, help collect all of the necessary materials from the surrounding forests (always on the lookout for ‘lions, tigers and bears, oh my!’) and film the construction of the Maloca, all the while keeping a continuous dialogue with the leading elders of the Bora tribe (who, mind you, do not work with the usual project management softwares like Slack or Asana but with plant medicines Coca and Tobacco in talking circles called mambeaderos), in order to harmonize the smooth execution of both the building and filming projects. We thought it would take us three weeks, but somehow it almost took us three months, go figure!

Our journey, although rewarding at large, was speckled with a series of eerie events: we were taken to a court (quite the theatrical display) by two clans (out of the 10 or so clans) within the Bora tribe that were opposed to the building and filming of the Maloca, a Bora abuelo (elder) drowned in the river whilst helping his grandsons transport goods for the construction of the Maloca and we were haunted by the black sorcery of some competing tribes (or so we were told).

But other than that, the journey was made of the textured sounds of tribal culture, the warmth of human sharing and the kind of celestial bliss found in spiritual understandings. Some 60 tribe members got together to build and celebrate their future and we are grateful to have been a part of that story.

The Story Continues and We Need Your Help:

Following this long trip, we are now in the final stage of the project; the making of the documentary. During our time with the tribe, we were fortunate enough to sit with many different characters to learn their particular way of life. We interviewed wise clan leaders to discuss how they work to protect the rainforest and maintain a slowly dying culture, mystic shamans to better understand how they see the natural world, crafty women to watch them weaving the baskets that carry their culture and a younger generation to hear what they had to say on living a traditional life vs living the ‘city dream’.

Now, more than ever, this documentary and brainchild of the late Taita Jesus Teteye is of utmost importance to us, to deliver the message of the Maloca to the world. However, given that the project took much longer than we had expected, we do not have sufficient finances to stay true to our word with Jesus Teteye, to finish and deliver the documentary to his tribe. This was Jesus’ last mission in life and so we want to be able to complete his vision. We are filled with excitement to be able to share all this rare content with the world.

If you feel connected to this cause and are curious to see what life is like for this tribe, please donate here, so we can make this a reality.

What we will do with your donation:

• Finish editing the documentary in a period of 10-12 weeks
• Go back to the Bora tribe to:
  • Financially support Jesus Teteye’s son and mother whom he was taking care of before he passed away
  • Install solar panels on the Maloca to further channel energy into the educational effort to revive their native language, culture and spiritual practices for the younger generation
  • Deliver and show the Bora tribe the finished documentary so that they can keep a copy of their history

Thank you all for your time and consideration.

With love,

Milto, Laura and Tim