Traveller Tales Darragh McManus talks to traveller Paddy Collins about his remarkable experiences in the rainforests of Brazil
Paddy Collins talks to Darragh McManus about the upcoming TV series, Traveller’s Guide and his time in the rainforest in Brazil with a tribe that made him feel very much at home
Paddy Collins lives in Finglas, Dublin and works in mental health services. It’s a far cry from the rainforest of central Brazil, where hunter-gatherer peoples live as they have done for millennia. Yet the 31-year-old describes his ten days with the Wouja tribe – as documented in the opening episode of Traveller’s Guide, a new two-part series on RTÉ – as “an incredible experience, a great opportunity, one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.”
e key, perhaps, lies in the title: as an Irish Traveller, living on a halting site with a large family, Paddy says that “a er a day or two, life with the Wouja tribe felt normal to me. All the doors are open, the huts are open, they have large families, lots of kids running around.”
It wasn’t all plain-sailing: Paddy admits that the language barrier was di cult at times; the smells and physical environment were obviously di erent. But, he says, “the surrounding sense of things was kind of the same as at home.”
It also helped that the Wouja were hugely welcoming to Paddy. He describes them as a people “I’ll always keep in my mind, and my heart”, adding, “With everything I got involved in, they were very welcoming. ere was nobody judging me at any stage, the way Travellers get judged in Ireland. In fairness, everyone gets judged: Traveller or settled, white or black, poor or middle-class or rich – people get jealous of them too. Everyone is judged for something. But these people don’t do that. ey just accept, and get on with life.”
e second part of the series sees Traveller, Selina, staying with the Nenet tribe in far- ung, frozen Siberia. For Paddy’s opener, he headed o to central Brazil for 10 days last August.
It turned out to be the trip of a lifetime, crammed with exotic and unique experiences. We see him biting the heads o sh to kill them, hunting monkeys in the rainforest, taking part in a wrestling tournament, observing the rites of passage for girls entering adolescence, and joking about piranha in the river.
rough it all, the likeable Dubliner is our friendly, garrulous guide, immersing himself in this alien culture. He seems like the kind of guy who’s willing to give anything a go.
“I didn’t know what to expect, but I found the whole thing ne,” Paddy says now. “I’m an outgoing person, and I wasn’t going to say no to anything over there. So whether carrying logs, going shing in the Amazon, playing with their kids: whatever it was, I was happy to do it. I think that’s why the producers picked me.
“I even did a sport, a form of sumo wrestling, which I hadn’t been told about beforehand – I was thrown into the deep end. But it was ne; I competed in a tournament and was proud to do it. Everything the Wouja took part in, I took part in. e chief of the village made sure I had access all areas. ey never excluded me in any way.” He communicated through a translator, who would work from English to Portuguese to Wouja, and back again. Body language helped too; a er a few days, Paddy could understand a lot of what people were saying. “It was tricky, but we got there!” he laughs. “And people are people wherever you go; that’s the marvellous part of life, that you can go to the other side of the world and communicate with someone and get on with them.”
He is full of praise for the Wouja, describing them as “very friendly, strong-minded, wellbalanced, connected to what they’re doing…and a good sense of humour. ere was great craic out there for the nine days too.”
As a mental health professional, Paddy was especially impressed by the Wouja’s ability to live in the moment and nd contentment and satisfaction there. “It’s day to day for them,” he explains. “ ere’s an absence of planning, which is so good for the mind, so freeing. Planning weddings or communions or con rmations, paying the mortgage – they have none of those worries. ey live in the moment and enjoy it. ey live today when it’s here and don’t worry about tomorrow, and that’s a great thing to have.
“Who’s to say that the big car and house and holiday is the right way to live? The Wouja were so happy, their mental health was really in balance. Whereas here we’re often regretting the past, worrying about the future, and not living in the present. And life goes by fast: your 20s, 30s, then suddenly you’re middle-aged and having some crisis, thinking, ‘What did I do for the last 30 years?’ Those people don’t think like that. They do so much in their lifespan, by the time it comes to their 50s, they’re happy and content, and that rubs onto their children and grandchildren.” There’s plenty of fun and humour in the documentary, such as the moment when Paddy learns that he’s to partake in a wrestling tournament against another tribe. “I lost one and drew one,” he says, “but with them, there’s no loss in it: everyone shakes hands afterwards. Win or lose, we all took part in it together, as a tribe.” The funniest scene is when, standing in the Amazon, Paddy goes “a bit overboard” in his method of killing fish they’ve caught. He explains, “Their way of doing it is to bite the fish by the neck and break the spine. I took the whole head off! But I didn’t get squeamish about it or anything. That’s just the type of personality I have, the way I would be – I throw myself into things, although I do think before I act.”
He loves wildlife; the opportunity to see the unique flora and fauna of the Amazon River couldn’t be passed up. And, he admits, it felt “a bit dull and grey back here in Ireland”, having spent a week-and-a-half in the Brazilian jungle.
He goes on, “You’d be saying to yourself, if I had the income or the know-how, I’d like to live out there for six months of the year with those people. When I was in Brazil, I never thought about one thing at home – apart from in the evening, when I’d think about my wife and family and how are they doing. But when I was taking part in things with the tribe, I was just going with the flow. No stress, no worries, just free-flowing through life: it’s a great thing.”
His own Travelling community has been, Paddy says, “in a period of transition for the last 30 or 40 years”, and that change is hard. They face a lot of problems, in a range of areas, which he’s striving to rectify through his job with Exchange House Ireland (National Traveller Service).
The Wouja, he feels, will inevitably face some of the same problems, as an ever-shrinking world forces change on them. “If you can’t live the way you want to live, it’s going to affect you as a person, your mental health, your community,” Paddy says. “And I think the tribe will change eventually.
“It’s already changed a bit. They’re getting motorbikes, a car, a TV. Some of the tribe wants to stay the way they are, but some are now looking outside the community and maybe wanting some of the things they don’t have.”
There’s a lovely line towards the end of the show, when Paddy says of his experience, “It was like the best dream ever – but it wasn’t a dream, it was reality.” He adds now, “It was the experience of a lifetime, and I’m very glad I took part in it.”
Who’s to say that the big car and house and holiday is the right way to live? The Wouja were so happy, their mental health was really in balance