by Daniel Emmerson, Poland

The young boy grappled patiently with the hem of my trouser leg. The sweltering heat was forever present as my milky shins greeted the light of day behind their mask of rugged denim. It was then that I realised what all the shouting had been about.

I was sitting on a rock in the middle of the Mahayangana jungle, Sri Lanka, surrounded by tribesmen as a brave young boy peeled land leeches from my skin. His head bobbed up and down as to inspect the condition of my ravaged limbs before he went to pluck the insidious annelids head first with his fingernails. Spiked leech tongues disgorged into my thighs and calves as they sucked incalculable amounts of blood from my legs. I felt a surge of weakness. It wasn’t until we had started walking through the long grass that I began to feel a tingling beneath my trouser legs. I imagined it to be sweat as we were no longer wading through the protective shade provided by the plentiful Ceylon Ironwoods and Indian Rose Chestnuts. The tribesmen started to shout and ushered me to a large rock once they realised we were trekking in leech territory. The young boy tugged, ripping the jagged tongue of the first leech from just below my kneecap, blood trickled afterwards.

I pulled my video camera from the bag strapped to my shoulder and hit record in time to capture the second and third leeches as they were pulled from my flesh. This was by no means the tone of my documentary film, but I thought it might prove interesting footage later on. My bag was worn and stuffed with mini DV tapes, cables and sound recording gear. This was my first solo documentary film adventure and an attempt to gain insight into the lives of the Vedda tribe in Sri Lanka. Thus far it was proving extremely successful and I planned on acquiring as much footage as possible, with or without invertebrate parasites.

Once the final bloodsucker had been disposed of, I was advised to remove my shoes and socks, or at least that is how I interpreted the Sinhalese syllables and abrupt pointing. One of the tribesmen rolled up my trouser legs to the knee and coated my skin in a sticky sweet sepia paste. It smelt of rich tobacco. I tied my shoelaces together and onto my bag as we made our way deeper into the jungle. The tribe spoke a dialect of Sinhalese, so in order to communicate my feelings, ideas and gratitude to the tribesmen, I required the use of two translators; one from the tribal dialect to Sinhalese, the second from Sinhalese to English. Both translators had decided to skip this particular escapade into the deep jungle as we needed to be few in number, we were looking for wild elephants and needed to be as quiet as possible.

An apparent formation occurred just after the leech incident. The Shaman’s son marched up front, cutting down rogue branches and scouting the land for snakes; the largest Vedda, a chubby tribesman with a huge beard and sagging nipples, followed behind him. I was next, and the small boy followed with his father, a thin, brutish fellow with long black straggly hair. Each tribesmen wore a dress constructed of bark, leaves and very little else against their naturally bronze skin. We moved hastily through furrows of long grass and reached an area of thick jungle where the Shaman’s son signaled for us to be very quiet. My camera continued to whir.

Before the night sky closed in, we located a wooden shelter. My feet were cut and raw, my leg hair mangled in a sloppy mixture and I understood none of the dialogue that surrounded me. The Veddas spoke in whisper, pointing and gesturing at the dazzling stars above our heads. The brutish fellow joked with his son and I, playing games with his hands, something like pat-a-cake-pat-a-cake. His palms slapped together rhythmically and I began to doze. The panoply of stars overhead was nothing short of exquisite and I felt guilty for being so tired. It wasn’t long before I drifted into a deep and soothing sleep.

Thud. Thud. Thud. My eyes opened. Thud. Wail. Thud. The wooden shelter was moving. Thud. Wail. Thud. It was still dark. Thud. I was alone. Thud. Wail. Thud. I sifted around the floor of the shelter and found my camera; I stuffed it quickly into my bag. Thud. Thud. Thud. Before I knew what was happening, the brutish Vedda stormed into the shelter. He grabbed me by the arm in a tenacious grip, dragged me towards the entrance and pulled. The moment my bare, blooded feet touched the ground, the apparent source of the thudding became clear. A huge wild elephant was walking in our direction at some speed.

I froze, stricken with panic before being flung at full strength by the Vedda, his eyes remained calm but I could make out beads of sweat upon his brow in the moonlight. We began to move. I was hurled through the air with the Vedda in front of me, pulling as though I weighed little more than a helium balloon. My feet snagged and cracked against the ground. Thud. Thud. Thud. The elephant was not far behind us. Wail. The Vedda turned his head in my direction, he flung his right arm forward and pushed me, pointing straight ahead. Wail. His son was still back at the shelter.

I had to make a decision and I had no more than a few split seconds to do so. Either I turn back with the Vedda and help him, or I run in the direction in which he pointed. The elephant stopped still and I caught sight of the chubby tribesman in the distance. I made my decision and ran towards him, leaving the brutish Vedda in almost certain peril, for he was now long gone in the direction from which we had come. As I ran, gashed left foot over right, I thought about how cowardly I was. I could have helped couldn’t I? Despite there being a linguistic communication barrier and me being in the state I was in, I could have surely done something… so why did I continue to run in the opposite direction? It took me no more than a few minutes to catch up with the rest of the tribe, there was no turning back. I felt bruised, battered and broken, a useless pseudo member of the collective.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could mutter to the Vedda who caught me as I tumbled towards the soil below.

Daniel Emmerson is a documentary filmmaker and writer from the UK who lives in Poland. His latest project is a documentary film series on how people learn English throughout the world. Learn more about his varied endeavors at danielemmerson.com.