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The daily life of this people has changed a great deal since the first contact was made by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (S. I. L.). There are communities where the oil companies have entered and completely changed their lives. The families live in prefabricated houses and eat precooked meals that the company provides for them. Other communities have not allowed the oil companies or the loggers to enter. In these communities, their life patterns continue in a traditional manner
The communities influenced the most by the oil companies are suffering the worst consequences. Their members are experiencing a deceivingly wealthy life without realizing it will change drastically to extreme poverty as soon as the oil is gone. When this time comes there will be no oil company to give them free house and food and there will be no animals to hunt nor fruits to gather in a contaminated and deforested jungle. Neither will this be appealing to tourists. One of the saddest parts of this situation is there is no one educating them to be prepared for this disaster.
Even in the communities considered to be the “most traditional,” almost no one hunts with blowguns, opting for riffles as their replacement. The roofs of most of the houses are made out of plastic instead of palm leaves; therefore, the smoke of the fires stays inside of the houses. Of the houses that are still built with palm leaves, the roofs are so poorly made that rain water gets through the holes, something that had never happened before. Nowadays most of the people cook with propane, so the smoke of the fires does not waterproof the roofs nor does it keep the bugs away. In many communities the houses do not even maintain their traditional resemblance; instead, they are made of wood and have metal roofs.
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Nowadays the Waorani have great access to western products, however, are unaware of how to deal with the new kinds of wastes they are generating. They are used to throwing their wastes to the forest and wait for them to decompose but the plastics, gasoline, etc. do not disappear. What does appear, however, are new diseases caused by the contamination of the earth and water. Now that the Waorani are sedentary and come into contact with missionaries, settlers, oil workers, loggers, tourists, etc. disease spreads quickly and the Waorani have come to depend on the outside world to get their medicines and medical care. In most cases this must be provided by the missionaries and the oil companies, but in practice, a lot of times this does not happen.
Not many oil or logging companies have reached the most traditional communities, although some of the Waorani of these communities now and again deal with the loggers or oil workers. Instead, Ecotourism has reached them. When practiced conscientiously, the damages of Ecotourism are balanced by the profits that the communities receive. Nowadays, well understood ecotourism is the best option for the Waorani. It allows them to develop without over-exploiting their environment. But it also has disadvantages. the Waorani get used to the easy money and want for things that the tourist have, like jackknives, watches, sports caps, sunglasses, binoculars, etc. They ask for as much as $10 for every photograph taken, they abandon their traditional clothes for broken T-shirts and dirty pants and they emulate their traditional life only if the tourists pay.
