Jewel of the Jungle
- The Council
Jaya looked at the fuzzy faces around her: the leaders of her tribe were discussing the problems they faced and what to do about them. Until recently, things had been fine in their community, lost and all but unguessed at amid the endless South American rainforest, but a few months ago some of the women had complained of headaches, then unremittingly blurred vision. This had quickly spread to everyone within a few weeks, leaving them all with varying degrees of vision ranging from poor to near-useless: some of them had to be led around, and guided past trees they could only feel. Jaya had to do a lot of the guiding around: for some reason unbeknown to anyone, she had been blessed with only poor vision rather than perceiving the world as a useless blur, as did some of the young women thereabouts.
Of course, this meant that life in their village was now extremely hard. Nobody, including Jaya, could hunt in the least bit effectively, certainly not well enough to feed everyone; thus their lithe, voluptuous bodies were gradually showing the effects of lack of food. Some of them wanted Jaya to stay, saying that she could assist the hunting parties in their admittedly all but futile attempts to find food, but others declared that to be simply putting off the inevitable. Eventually the leader, whom Jaya identified more from her voice than her face, which she couldn’t hope to recognise more than a foot away, spoke regretfully, ‘we must send for help from the people down in the valley. They may be able to help us. If they could send a few clear-sighted hunters that would be good, if they know how to cure the fog-vision we all have to varying degrees, then that would be better.’ She groped forward, led by a girl with better vision than her, but still worse than Jaya’s. ‘Jaya, we must send you. We are desperate. You are our only hope. We need your vision to find the people down in the valley as quickly as you can.’
So a day later Jaya was send out into the Jungle alone, equipped with her bow and arrows, as much food as they could spare her, the good wishes of everyone else there, and the best vision - albeit limited - that the village now possessed.
- The Slave
I wandered around the small village at the end of the river valley, wondering what on earth had possessed me to come here: well, I was out here in the steamy hot rainforest looking for emeralds, but somehow fate had determined that I would find something far more valuable. One day I went into a Cantina and ordered a drink: as I sat waiting for it, I happened to see through the door into the back room someone dressed in tattered animal skins, a young woman of about 20 or 22, working away cleaning something. Naturally curious, I asked the owner who she was. He told me she was a savage girl they’d found wandering around at the edge of the village. He cursed her vilely and said, ‘she doesn’t understand Spanish, nor does she see very well. At least she costs me nothing but food and water to keep her going. Good fun in bed too… once you whack her around a bit.’ I kept my thoughts on that last bit to myself. From the few glimpses that I had of her, she appeared to be quite attractive, tall and slim, and probably unsurprisingly dark haired and brown skinned, which added to her distant half-seen allure. But the most important thing that rang through my mind was the fact that she couldn’t see very well.
Of course, I had to do what I then did: I asked, ‘can I buy her?’ The owner of the Cantina looked at me uncertainly, as if I were jesting with him. But then I asked, ‘can I see her then?’ He nodded, and had her pulled into the area beside the bar. She was quite tall for a woman, something like 5'9", slim from privation and also from the unkind treatment she’d received here. All that was of little consequence to me, being as all I could think of was that she couldn’t see clearly, and perhaps it could be that she required some sort of visual correction. She glared inaccurately at me with eyes that seemed to see nothing very much: I was hooked. I repeated my question, to which he blinked, then asked a steep price for her. I was able to pay then and there in a mixture of emeralds and dollars. And then she was mine. Oh, what delight it was, to see her looking at me with those fascinating dark eyes of hers, squinting mysteriously at the world. It was a pure and simple joy to witness!
Her name was Jaya, I learnt that soon enough. She had trouble saying “Puffin”, but I forgave her that. At times she gabbled away in some undecipherable language; at other times dropping into pidgin Spanish which I struggled to understand. Perhaps there was a better way. Taking her to my hotel room, I began the difficult task of teaching her English. Within a day or so she could say things like ‘I am Jaya’ and ‘Hello’, but rather more importantly than that, I formed the suspicion that instead of simply having poor vision, she was in fact deeply myopic. I resolved to get something done about that as soon as possible.
- Seeing Clearly
The next morning I went to the local doctor in order to gain access to some optical expertise. He wasn’t interested in testing her for me, but after some persuasion allowed me to borrow some of his equipment at an exorbitant price. I took them back to Jaya and began an impromptu eye test, trying to at least estimate the visual correction needed to give her clear vision. I measured the distance between the sofa and the desk in my hotel room, then pushed the sofa back a little till I was happy. Jaya asked, ‘what do? What you do?’ Between her severe myopia and feeble command of English, she had no idea what was going on.
I got her to sit down and look at the eyechart I had photocopied: predictably she couldn’t read anything on it. I’d got her to the stage where she could at least recognize the alphabet, even if she couldn’t remember all the names, sounds and all the rest of it. But her inability to read the letters had nothing whatsoever to do with lack of knowledge: she just couldn’t see them. I handed her one of the test lenses - minus 6 in strength, whilst hoping that this would be about right, and perhaps oddly, that this was only the start of the correction she needed.
She held it to her right eye, and gasped in surprise at the world thus revealed to her: I could tell it was a drastic improvement, being as she gazed around in wonder, then at me, then at the eyechart. She then inspected closely the lens I’d given her. I presumed she’d never before seen such a thing. I got her to look through it again, this time at the eyechart. With some hope I pointed at the topmost letter, and asked, ‘can you read this? What letter?’ She squinted, much as she had done before, although with more effect, but alas not enough. She shook her head gently.
I took a much stronger lens from the battered box containing all the doctor’s test lenses: it was a minus 10. Upon trying it in front of each eye, Jaya was able to start reading the eyechart, at least until about halfway down. This was delightful, miraculous as far as she and I were concerned. And there was more to come: the next hour or so was a revelation for both of us. I thought I had her myopia pinned down somewhere around the minus 12 mark, then, upon finding that increasing the lens power didn’t help, deduced that perhaps she had a bit of astigmatism too. I then wrote down a sort of rough prescription: minus 12 each eye, minus 1.5 of astigmatism in something like the 180 mark. With that I found she could read down to the 20/30 line, something I felt quite proud of.
But then without the trial lenses, she was back to her uncorrected, fuzzy vision. I felt sorry for her, having to take them away and deprive her of the clarity she’d briefly enjoyed, but I had to give the test equipment back to the Doctor. I carried it all back, guiding Jaya as I went, returned it and asked him how long it would take to get her prescription down here. He said it would take a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t prepared to make Jaya wait that long, so I then asked him if he had any spare lenses, frames, or anything else that could be made into something close to Jaya’s prescription. It took a bit of financial persuasion to get him to look, but eventually he turned up some roundish lenses which looked thick enough to be close to what was required, and incidentally, thick enough to get me going. The thought of those over half inch thick lenses in a frame… and it wasn’t a dream either. I had a small group of five lenses that seemed to be about right-ish, and a pair of metal frames that would fit her head and the lenses with a little grinding and pushing. I had Jaya try each lens in front of each eye. It was difficult for her to express what the result of each one was except in her own language, of which I had not a clue. But we got it down to a pair of lenses which she seemed happiest with. The left one was a little thicker than the right, and neither could be described as thin. There followed a good deal of grinding, pushing and cursing as I got the lenses into the frames, and then… there they were, two lovely thick shiny glinty things, ready to help Jaya see. I then had the honour and pleasure of putting them on her face for the first time.
Her eyes seemed to shrink behind the lenses; as she blinked she soon got used to the much clarified image they offered to her. Her left eye seemed slightly smaller than the right, and as she looked around, I saw her narrow her eyes a little. Had I got near enough to her prescription? Would they just give her a headache? She blinked and smiled, then said, ‘good!’ In my opinion that was excellent news.
- Back to the Jungle
It turned out that Jaya’s temporary glasses were off by a dioptre or so in each eye, and the astigmatism correction in her left eye was at the wrong angle. She complained, ‘head… hurts!’ I suppose I should have expected that: when she looked at things close up, she covered her left eye to help alleviate the strain. But she had to get her full, correct prescription pretty soon or I feared her eyes would get worse, not better, in general terms at least. But with a pair of lenses in front of her eyes that were pretty near to her real prescription, it was a lot easier pinning it down exactly. It was R: -12.75, 175 x 1.75, L: -12.5 , 180 x 2. I sent off for it as soon as I was sure of it.
But the most interesting thing was what happened in the couple of weeks it took to get her new prescription shipped down here. I was steadily teaching her English: perversely she was learning that faster than she did Spanish, perhaps because I was teaching her rather than just expecting her to understand. Anyway she came up to me one day and said something along the lines of, ‘me people not seeing good. You help?’ It took a while to figure out what she meant, but it seemed to me that Jaya’s myopia was not confined to herself: instead, her whole tribe was thus afflicted. It appeared that they’d sent her to civilisation to get help. Now, forgive me, but I found the thought of a bunch of myopic dark-skinned women interesting, to put it mildly. I had to help, so I “rented” the doctor’s eyechart and test equipment. Well, he thought it was easy money. I would have to lug all this out into the jungle and work out their prescriptions too.
As soon as Jaya’s full prescription glasses came, she put them on. Oh, the effect was just as glorious as before: the slight differences in thickness between old and new being almost unnoticeable. She touched them with her fingertips, feeling the flat fronted lenses, her face suffused with pleasure and gratitude. Her dark eyes fluttered at me from somewhere deep behind them. But I had to tear my eyes and thoughts from this delightful picture of loveliness. Jaya said, ‘you help me people, like this? With glasses?’ I nodded, and agreed. The cost of such a venture would be high, but the reward… well that was beyond measure!
We set off into the jungle. It took a couple of days to find Jaya’s village: I understood that the journey here took a day or two longer, she couldn’t remember. She said ‘when I come from here, it takes longer. I not see well.’ She seemed absolutely delighted with her new glasses. I was too, but I wasn’t the one wearing them, just the lucky one who was alone with this lovely slender GWG. The other thing that soon became apparent was just how lithe and quick she was, moving with a grace and speed that she didn’t show back when she couldn’t see. I was wondering how fast she could run, and betting she could run faster than me when she waved me on, into the village that I had somehow not seen amongst the trees. There were a couple of dozen round huts with walls made of twisted branches plastered with mud, and the roofs were covered with bundles of leaves tied with lianas. But that was all: nothing stirred. There was nobody about. Jaya called out something incomprehensible in her language. I called out, just for the sake of it, ‘hello! Anyone there?!’
She ran lightly over to the nearest hut and peered in. She talked some more, but then she turned to me and fixed her shrunken but perfect gaze onto me, saying, ‘where is people? I went to another hut, chosen at random. Flies buzzed in and out of it, and the smell wafting from within forewarned me: inside was an emaciated body, quite evidently dead and thus far beyond anyone’s help with visual problems, or any other troubles they might have once had. I told Jaya not to go in, but she did anyway, then quickly came out upset and on the point of retching.
After she’d recovered, we searched around a bit. The rest of the houses were empty: Jaya said ‘I think they take some… things with them.’ At times she had to search for words in her ever-growing vocabulary, as she did now. Then after some more searching I heard her call ‘Puffin! Come! Look!’ I went and looked: she was holding something that looked like a metal disk on a rope. When I examined it closer, it seemed to be quite finely worked in an abstract design. She exclaimed, ‘it is the leader’s… Hat? Crown?’ She shrugged, not knowing the right word. I understood, not needing her mime of putting it over her head. Simply on intuition, she said, ‘we search this way. This is… trail? Sign?’ I nodded: indeed it was. I couldn’t really imagine the leader of the tribe just casually dropping it. I put it in my bag without any particular reverence, and we started off into the jungle again.
- Searching
We had to travel another couple of days before we found the first body. She had quite obviously starved to death, and in my estimation had only died a day or two ago. That implied that the rest couldn’t be far away; and it also meant that they must be in a terrible state. I looked at Jaya sympathetically, hoping that what I feared wouldn’t be what we would find.
A few hours later we heard a faint cry. Jaya cocked up her head, and cried out something in her language. She said to me excitedly, ‘it’s someone from me people… Come, Puffin! Following me!’ She beckoned me on, then darted and sprinted through the trees like a forest spirit toward the apparently disembodied voice.
I was breathless by the time I caught up with her, whereupon I saw that the voice did indeed have a body: it was a woman of about 30, propped awkwardly against a tree, still possessing something of the innate vitality and elegance of Jaya despite the effects of severe starvation. She was shorter than Jaya, and painfully thin. Her animal-skin clothes hung loosely from her. She gazed up at Jaya rather blindly, apparently only dimly aware someone was nearby. Jaya said to her ‘Media… Media!’ I took that to be her name. She responded weakly, her expression puzzled ‘Jaya?’ The two of them carried on a brief conversation, then Jaya said to me, ’they are nearby, she is thinking. She not walk more. Others too weak for to carry her.’ I crouched over Media, and waved a hand in front of her eyes: they didn’t blink nor move. Obviously she was worse off than Jaya in visual terms. I was obliged to pick her up, being as she was too far gone to walk: she seemed light as a feather in my arms, despite being a grown woman.
Within half an hour we came upon a group of such wretches as I wish I’d never seen. There were, all told, fourteen of them, nine adults and five children of varying ages, all female. The one at the front seemed to have better vision than the rest, but certainly worse than Jaya’s was, and thus the job of leading the rest fell to her. All of them were badly emaciated and slowed by hunger. I stopped and stared in shock as they came into view. Jaya called out to them, so they stopped. One of the children plopped down and cried out. When they realised it was Jaya, some of them seemed to get quite excited: they were all over her and there was a jabbering of conversation between them as she related what had transpired in “civilisation”, especially while trying on her glasses, although these didn’t seem to help them half as much they did Jaya. Then she told me, pointing at the girl called Hania who had led the survivors so far, ‘she thinking she sees something with these… Puffin, you help, please?’ I nodded: of course I had to help, if I could.
We were forced back to practicalities. I had expected to perform all the vision testing then and there, in the Amazon village in the middle of the jungle, then get the glasses made in the town and take them out to the villagers. Alas, the situation we found was too desperate for this plan to be feasible, far more so than I’d at first reckoned. We could hardly leave them here while we returned to the town, obtained glasses, gathered some food together, then brought all this back to them: by the time we’d done all that, I reckoned there’d be nobody left alive to help. So, we would have to take them to the town ourselves. All of them were weakened from hunger, all living in an indistinct world of fuzz and blur. I told Jaya about the new plan: she got the basic idea of what I was saying and explained it to them. I didn’t think they could survive out here long term even if supplied with glasses: they’d need to live nearby in order to get their glasses replaced as required, assuming we could keep them going long enough to get there.
What followed was a ghastly trek. The women were lovely people, invariably attractive and friendly, but their plight was utterly pitiable. We shared out our rations between them, and Jaya managed to hunt down some animals to supplement this overstretched food supply. Jaya helped me carry Media, but it seemed to me that they could all do with some carrying. After a day or so of this we found another of the tribe, just as far gone as the rest.
Four days later we arrived at the town in the valley. Several of the survivors had simply collapsed en route from exhaustion and hunger; despite the earnest attempts to assist, even carry them, two had died. There was just nothing that could be done for them. Two more succumbed once we arrived, being too far gone despite having adequate food available. Jaya attended to them all, translating for me as we got all the remaining members of her tribe out of immediate danger of starvation. Within a few days they were all learning a few halting words of English from me and Jaya, all these lovely half-blind girls from deep within the Jungle. Then came the task of getting their vision corrected. The girl Hania had myopia of around minus 16, and hers was the best. The next best was girl of about sixteen who had minus 22, and then it just went up and up to Media who had myopia of minus 38 each eye. Most of the rest of them, ten girls and women, had myopia between minus 25 and 32. With that kind of uncorrected myopia, it was little wonder that none of them could hunt.
- Aftermath
We soon had the required glasses shipped to us in fair-sized crate. Their faces were a joy to behold as they got their new glasses, especially the younger girls. I tried to tell them via Jaya that, apart from Hania, none of them would see quite as well they had beforehand. This wasn’t entirely successful, therefore a couple of the girls were not quite so delighted at the way the lenses corrected their vision so imperfectly. But what they now saw of the world, which was admittedly just the small town at that moment, was a lot better than it was recently, and thus they were very grateful.
I soon got used to the sight of these lovely dark-skinned, slim and pretty women wandering around with thick myodisk glasses, I hope you can picture it. Anyway, some of them wanted to go back to their village: it was, after all, what they knew best. But now all but Hania and Jaya were either effectively vision impaired or partially blind with VA’s ranging from 20/50 to 20/100 in the worst cases. It wasn’t a case of just getting used to the glasses and then going straight back into the jungle. Hania wanted to stay in the town, and as for Jaya, she wanted to be with me wherever I went. I had told her all about home and she wanted to see it.
After some discussion and argument it was decided, although reluctantly so on the part of several of them, that their life deep in the jungle was now impossible. There were only four that really wanted to go back, but they quickly recognized that trying to restart a village on that basis was a waste of time and effort. They were now dependent on civilisation for glasses, and two of those who wanted to return had such poor corrected vision they wouldn’t have been much use in the jungle anyway.
Jaya came back with me to England. She soon discovered that she really liked living here, and managed to persuade some of her village friends to settle here too. She became a great athlete, showing off her speed and agility on numerous tracks and regional events over the next few summers, always wearing her glasses as she ran: what a glorious sight she was, running past me and all her competitors, plano fronted lenses flashing! The bespectacled Queen of the Amazons, the Jewel of the Jungle, all mine! Her other friends stayed and married in parts of South America near the small town, thus a select group of lucky men got themselves beautiful dark-eyed high-myope women for wives.
After some years it became somewhat clearer what had transpired deep in the jungle: her tribe, being completely female, obviously depended on men lost in the jungle for procreation. Somehow they always had girls, I never found out how or why, and wasn’t keen to find out. An expedition a few years later came across the abandoned village, now much overgrown, and one of the women in the team had caught a virus that gave her high myopia. It was theorized that one of the stray men had inadvertently carried a mysterious virus into their village and caused the myopia, to which only females were susceptible.
And out there somewhere deep in the jungle the virus still lurked, ready and waiting to infect more unsuspecting females.