Audemars Piguet - A school-boat on the Amazon
A new boat is crisscrossing the Amazon region of Peru. Funded by the Audemars Piguet Foundation, the Selma Viva (a name that means 'living forest') is dedicated to serving the Indian populations living along the river and who are the best guardians of the Amazonian forest.
This summer, a group composed of representatives of the French non-governmental organization ARUTAM which will operate the Selva Viva, and of the Audemars Piguet Foundation which is backing the project, tested the boat before it performed its first missions. Eight days of navigation along the Amazon and two of its tributaries, the Marañon and the Samiria, enlivened by encounters with the Cocama Indias living along its banks, served to highlight both the qualities of the boat and the villagers' expectations regarding its future missions.
A traditional boat equipped with state-of-the-art technologies
The story of the Selva Viva began in Belem, a poor district of Iquitos, the capital of the Peruvian Amazon region. Amid the floating houses, jobless workers built a large wooden boat of the kind that existed when the city was the hub of the rubber trade.
Inside it throbs a sturdy second-hand engine, while the upper deck is equipped with cutting-edge technologies such as GPS, sonar, satellite phone and laboratory instruments, all indispensable means that will enable it to safely accomplish its future missions.
Living along the river
As the natural guardians of the forest, Indians will find it easier to resist the lure of the city shanty towns if they are better trained in their home villages and can gain additional income from the sale of medicinal plants for which there is b demand in the city.
In this part of the Amazon region where there are no roads, villagers travel to the city once a year to sell their harvest, drifting with the current on hand-made rafts in a journey that can take several weeks, before returning by an expensive taxi-boat service.
Training
The main mission of the boat will be educational. With its three decks, four two-bed cabins, a kitchen, a dining room, toilets, laboratory and a study, the Selva Viva will enable specially trained shamans to help the villagers perfect their knowledge and practice of traditional medicine and to safeguard the biodiversity of the Amazonian medicinal plants.
Research
Researchers will regularly use the boat for missions serving to make an inventory of the Amazonian flora, in order to help in its conservation. They will also facilitate exchanges of knowledge between villages and will enable villagers, who have few opportunities to meet each other due to the extremely long journeys by dugout canoe from one village to another, to exchange their experiences and their needs.
Sustainable eco-tourism
The boat is also available to small groups wishing to experience an adventure far removed from traditional tourist circuits. This aspect of the activity of the Selva Vita will serve to fund the boat's scientific missions while also facilitating respectful encounters between Indians and tourists.
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