Growing up with respiratory devices.

The main picture shows a child carrying a respiratory device, the latter is shown in the smaller picture at the right-hand bottom. It is hard to imagine that children living in the Amazon basin might need to use respiratory devices, but in this Amazonian village along oil roads, children are used to these respiratory masks which are connected to a machine at the local health post for treating breathing problems. 

As an ethnographer, the sight of these respiratory devices and daily swallowing of dust along the oil road became part of my life with the Waorani people. While my Waorani friends praise the fresh air from the deep forest, they say, they have to remain along this oil roads to defend their territory. These oil frontiers, where children grow up getting used to respiratory devices are also places were the Waorani have easier access to external resources that are nowadays part of their livelihoods. 

It seemed to me that the use of these respiratory devices was a tangible sight of what elderly Waorani say: 'we are becoming weaker' along oil roads.