David Good \u201911, an ESU graduate biology student, is one-fourth Italian and one-fourth German. The other half of his familial blood flows from the Amazon Rainforest, directly through his mother, a full-blooded member of the Yanomami tribe. It was with his Amazon family that David discovered confirmation of his dream to bridge two worlds.<\/p>\n
Good\u2019s father, Dr. Kenneth Good, an anthropologist, had lived among the Yanomami for 12 years. Somewhere in that time he fell in love with a young Yanomami woman and married her according to tribal customs; marriage vows they repeated later in the United States. Eventually, Dr. Good asked his wife, Yarima, to return to New Jersey and live with him \u201cin his village.\u201d Yarima, perhaps a bit nervously, since she had never ventured much farther than the next village, accepted. Dr. and Mrs. Good did not make the plane flight alone, however, for Yarima was pregnant, and just a few months shy of giving birth to David.<\/p>\n
Family life was happy though; Dr. Good was teaching, and eventually the couple added two more children to their small tribe. David spent his childhood, at least it\u2019s first five years, with feet in two cultures, playing stick-ball with his American friends one month and toting his bow and arrow through the jungle to hunt lizards with his Yanomami cousins the next. The family made four or five lengthy visits to Yarima\u2019s village; but eventually homesickness became too much and David\u2019s mother made the heartrending decision to return to the jungle, alone, to stay.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 19 years to July, 2011. David is now an ESU grad, with his bachelor\u2019s degree in biology. He is also a young man who, though for a long time struggled with what he saw as \u201cabandonment,\u201d has come to terms with his mother\u2019s need to return to life in the jungle and her vastly different culture; one she had known for nearly 45 years.<\/p>\n
But the need to see her again was all-consuming and David, with much training and a bit of help, embarked on a journey down Venezuela\u2019s Orinoco River to his mother\u2019s village. \u201cI love my mother with all my heart,\u201d says David. \u201cWhen we were finally together we held each other and wept. I knew the cultural barrier could not dissolve our bonds. The past is in the past. I’m completely at peace with this now.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the three months he spent with his relatives, David never felt treated as an outsider, or \u201cnabuh,\u201d in the Yanomami language. \u201cI was one of them,\u201d he says. \u201cI felt a deep connection with my people.\u201d Perhaps that feeling of belonging reinforced David Good\u2019s decision to continue on for his master\u2019s degree in biology, for which he is already in his first year at ESU\u2019s graduate school. His goal is to return to the Rainforest to live and work among his people.<\/p>\n
Those who feel the outside world\u2019s influences most keenly are the young. One concern David has is that western culture could completely smother the Yanomami way of life. During his stay, many of the tribe\u2019s teenagers asked David why he would come to the jungle when he lives in America, which they view as a kind of wonderland. \u201cI told them,\u201d he says, \u201cthat \u2018the Yanomami are a proud and great people, and I come here because I am half Yanomami and am proud of that.\u2019 I was happy to see their faces light up.\u201d<\/p>\n
But modern civilization does spread change \u2013 not all of it bad, of course. Although, doctors sometimes do clash with the Yanomami health system, a system based on shamanism. \u201cThe doctors have a real need to communicate and to gain my people\u2019s trust,\u201d David says. \u201cThere are lives at stake. My dream, like my dad\u2019s, is to live in two worlds for extended periods. I’m just a novice now, but when I’m a bit older and have this education, I believe I can serve as a bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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