Linguist Takes a Waorani Man From the Remote Amazon Jungle on a Trip to Visit Bustling Hong Kong

Linguist Xiaomanyc (Arieh Smith), a practicing polyglot, shared his incredible experience of befriending his host Wareka, an indigenous Waorani hunter-gatherer, while traveling deep in the Amazon jungle of eastern Ecuador.

The Waorani people who live deep in the Amazon jungle of eastern Ecuador are one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in the world. Having first made contact with the rest of humanity only a few decades ago, there are currently less than 5,000 of them, and many still live deep in the jungle, subsisting off wild monkeys they hunt themselves with handmade blowguns.

The pair stayed in close touch afterward, and Smith invited Wareka to visit his hometown of New York City to share his own experience. Unfortunately, Wareka was not granted a visa to the United States, so they went to the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong instead.

Because he had taken me to visit his hometown and family I knew I wanted to return the favor by inviting him to visit my hometown of New York City. So I spent 12 months helping him apply for a visa to visit the U.S., which had always been a dream of his to visit, but this was sadly denied. But I found a loophole. Apparently Hong Kong, a city even more skyscraper-packed than New York, does not require visas for Ecuadorean citizens.

Wareka was quite amazed by the modern conveniences and the variety of food available to him on demand, highlighting the stark contrast between his life deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the bustling, hyper-modern urban environment of Hong Kong.

Wareka was amazed to experience things for the first time that we take for granted that are indeed kind of miraculous when you think about it, and it gave me a new perspective as well.