A day in life - Friday, September 24th

So on my way to work today, got some scoop. I talked for a bit with Lola on the walk (to school for me, minga for her) - and Juan (her husband) was bitten yesterday afternoon at 3pm by a fat (her word) ocelot! It was going after a chicken, one of the dogs got involved and then Juan went in to try to save his animals. The chicken lost the battle (not Maggie el Pollo), the dog made it, and Juan ended up with a bite on his leg - so he needed to stay home. She did say that the cat was beautiful. I gave her some antibiotic ointment on a leaf to take home for him. Keep in mind that Spanish is a weak second language for us both and there was something about Wilson's dog and the ocelot too, but I missed that part.
Did I mention that we are neighbors? Most parcels are 250 meters of riverfront and then 2.5 km back. Long, skinny strips of primary rainforest which has never been cut, cleared or cultivated. The locals boast that 50% of insects here haven't been documented (Mari and I are convinced that the spider with hands is amongst the unrecorded) - and even if they are off by a lot, there is still a lot here waiting to be studied and named.
Privacy and being ok with being alone is a foreign concept here. People are rarely alone. Entire families sleep in the same space. When people find out I'm alone in the house the kids immediately invite themselves over because being alone is just not done. I felt better once I learned this because I thought it was because I was a silly gringa who was incapable of taking care of herself. Every time I write in my notebook and especially when I use my laptop I have an audience looking at me and what I'm writing. It's awkward for me when I'm writing about them, even if they don't know it.
It's a new day, so a new random kid toddles into class, hands me a football sized papaya and toddles out. Too young for school. Seriously the cutest thing ever.
Post grass-clearing minga with machetes (what a manal push mower could accomplish here) - time for a serious football (soccer) game. Socks vs. Wellies. Ok, it's actually shirts vs skins, but that's only because it's 80% socks, 15% wellies, a few tennis shoes and one pair of cleats. Socks never slipped on the grass, tennies did. 26 players. Self-ref'd, but official timekeeper gave minute and second updates.
I get to go to the lodge for the weekend - yippee - cold shower and toilet - and now lodge lessons begin. As soon as I get in the canoe until I can escape to my room I'm teaching English to the guys who work in the lodge - cooks, motoristas, guides, cleaners, barman - anyone who is interested. It's exhausting, exhilarating, and fun helping them learn and pronouce words. "V's" are my nemisis.
Good day.

Really the only thing that matters

Is whether it bites or not. I have a habit of asking "What kind of spider is this?" And if anyone has an answer, it's in Kichwa and I can't understand it anyway. Had one above my bed the other day, took a poll on peligroso or no (dangerous), decided to let it be and actually slept in my own bed. I was alone in -- or under-- the house, and I'm proud of myself for being able to sleep.

Picture this Amazonian Norman Rockwell scene - family gathered around the candle (me, 8 year old Nellie and 5 year old Robinson) playing Mexican bingo while dinner is cooking on the stove. Rice, of course. We have three square meals a day of rice. I'm packing my backpack for the weekend in case I get lucky and get to go to the lodge for the weekend. So I have my little backpack on my lap, we're laughing, since we really can't communicate with words, and lo and behold there is a mongo spider on my backpack...while it's on my lap. Quietly, but oh so quickly, I place the pack on the floor a few feet away and then my questioning begins. What kind of spider is it? Oh pleeeese. The real question, which the kids get immediately, is "pincha" - which means it bites. They don't care what kind of spider it is and I don't either. They go downstairs, get a board, beat it to death, push it over the edge of the house (look ma, no walls) and then it's back to bingo.

We saw a spider with hands the other night. Mari was closest but the camera is never around for the good stuff.

Mira Maggie Mira! (Look Maggie Look!)

Never have such simple words simultaneously filled me with conflicting emotions – trepidation and excitement. I don’t know what’s coming, but it’s going to be cool. I also am “it” when the boys race – so when I hear the approaching sprinters I brace myself (especially on a muddy hill) – wait for impact and then declare the winner. That’s what my walk to and sometimes from school is like with my “estudiantes”. Usually with 4 boys and 2 girls ages 6-12 – running all over, digging up special treats and laughing. I was happy to be able to say “I had a big, hairy ant at breakfast today, but thank you nonetheless for the offer” (not my exact translation). Flowers are given to me with almost every color of the rainbow (always teaching), creepy bugs, and cinnamon leaf to crunch up and chew on – amazingly yummy – especially since I carried my lunch to and from school that day without taking a bite. If the kids don’t eat, I can’t bring myself to.
My typical school day schedule is up 6 and out the “door” (there are no doors) at 6:45. Walk 30 min + to school. Teach different classes from 7:30-3:30ish. This includes a non-food lunch break (although I hear that food will be provided soon for the kids) when I’m usually playing card games with the kids – Sesame Street alphabet cards. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I have beginning adult classes and Wednesday I have an adult advanced conversation group (or person). We usually read out of National Geographic, F1 or Sports Illustrated. Then it’s to the river for bathing and laundry, and back home for dinner and planning to do it all over again the next day.
Best part of my day is when people ask for class to go longer or when the kids show up for the professors class to learn more.

More random things (bits that I don’t want to forget)

Random photos - beautiful sunsets, complete with flying bug who needed to be in the photo & Maggie Mustard - who knew?

• Nit picking. It’s done here, oh yes. And I do mean picking nits (which are occasionally eaten when found). As it is a rather personal thing I hope I don’t have any nits since I don’t have an appropriate picker.





• At the last community meeting – putting in your two cents while you’re breast feeding. Very efficient.





• What would You say when you saw something that totally scared you? I apparently say “Whoa. Back up.” In a very calm and collected voice. Who knew? Actually am proud of myself.





• Why am I so attractive – to crickets?





• I’m assuming that an anaconda in the river is one of those “you’ll know it when you see it” kind of things.

The Tempest(s) aka It's Raining Buckets

The Rain in the Rainforest is mind boggling. When it starts it's a mad dash to put out every available bucket to collect water and any dirty dishes to get them washed. It falls fast and furious - no low flow here. What's even more amazing is the storm that usually accompanies the rain.
First the wind comes, usually from across the river, kicking up sand on the bank like a scene from The Mummy. In our wall-less abode, all furniture and items left out are blown out of the back of the house unless caught by the kitchen first. During the biggest storm to date Mari and Pato were home, which was comforting since trees were bending in half, I was blown over, and sticks were flying like spears. The roof was peeling back, but Pato, our shaman, stood facing the storm and ensured that no serious damage was sustained. Storm went directly overhead - simultaneous thunder and lightening. At least we didn't need to worry about anything electrical blowing up - the benefit of not having anything electrical in the house. Thinking about it I remember how scary it was.
Good news was - we were able to easily wash the floor, I was cool for a few hours, and I laughed out loud thinking of the lame weather alerts in San Francisco. "Storm Watch 2010".
With the first storm the biggest, all of the others I've weathered alone in the house have seemed relatively mild (but still enormous by CA storm standards). One morning at 4am I was woken by bright lights next to my "room" below the house. Flashlight perhaps? Nope. Lightning. Heard noises. Stomach grumbling again? Nope. Thunder in the distance but closing in. It rained over five inches in one hour - empty bucket measurement. Getting rained on in bed - truly a unique feeling. Clothes got soaked too. If you needed to dry everything and wash mud off of a lot of what you own a few times a month you would seriously "minimalize". Less is more.
Photos: The roof of the school bathroom was lost in the big storm. After the center passes and the floor has been washed there is usually a bit of time for an instant coffee and a read.
P.s. Everyone who sees my kindle gets a kick out of the "Amazon" label on the cover.

So How is Maggie (El Pollo) Doing?

Thanks for asking, Maggie the chicken is currently doing fine and having her own jungle adventures. The gossip in the hood for the week when we left her at the house was that a big hawk got her but our girl would have none of it and fought her way to freedom.
She also decided to move down the way to Juan and Lola’s house. She has other chicken peeps there. We are still laughing about when Mari, Pato and I went over to Juan & Lola’s house and I said “hey, there’s Maggie” and Mari & Pato said “no, it’s not, that’s not Maggie” and Juan and Lola confirmed my chicken id.
Maggie (the chicken’s) luck may be about to come to an end. A dinner party is in the works. All Maggies’ are invited, but only 1 will make it home that night. We confirmed one date for dinner – but then plans changed- saved once again. It’s only a matter of time before our schedules allow for another dinner party. It’s been a good run. Chicken run. Hee hee.
Photos: This is actually a claw from the type of hawk that lifted up Maggie the Pollo. Not sure what you are, but I think you're somebodies dinner.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Minga…

Minga’s are a great cooperative, collective work effort – day projects where everyone chips in to help complete a project. Kinda like helping a good friend move and then getting treated to pizza and beer afterwards – but in this case it’s chicha, chicken and rice. We’ve had a few mingas to build the Volunteers House – and still need a few more.
The greatest thing is that people just show up with whatever random tool they have – and it all seems to come together. As always it’s BYOM (Bring your own Machete). The chainsaw is a group effort – gas and oil need to be obtained from somewhere…
The first minga that I was at involved carrying all of the planks for the walls up from the river to the house which had a floor and a roof. The termite’s, however had been busy since the floor was constructed and the weight of the planks cracked one of the support beams. No worries – you just get enough guys to lift up the roof of the house a bit – slide out the bad piece of wood and slide the new one in.
It’s nice to be refreshed while working, so claro – chicha begins to be served at around 10am. I had a “OSHA” chuckle as I looked around and saw guys in sandals and no safety glasses or gloves with chainsaws & chicha & beer – and let’s just say that the chainsaw was not the only thing buzzing. Why use a handsaw to even out some edges when you have a chainsaw – it’s So much more fun.
The machete lawn-cutting technique is literally like poetry in motion. With the right arm swing and wrist snap, they trim the tall grasses down to the bare earth. I wonder if they ever get machete elbow and if my golf swing will be negatively impacted. I know, what golf swing you say.
Bottle of gas for the chainsaw looked dangerously close to the whisky (or whatever it was) we had to drink after the other minga.

Note: While I have special guest privileges – being able to refuse chicha and not insult the offerer – on the way to a minga one day with some neighbors we stopped by two other houses and of course had nice, refreshing bowls of chicha – before 9am. It’s only polite.

Roberto’s Rules of Order or How things are run in an Indigenous Community

The community here is run in a very inclusive and democratic if not most organized way. There is a monthly community meeting where business is discussed. I’ve now been to two of these. The community is made up of about 300 people, about 60 different family units – but it seems that there are about 4 large clans – think dozens of uncles and cousins.
The meeting is loosely scheduled to begin at 9 – so roll is taken starting at 9:30 to ensure that a quorum is represented. People continue to wander in and then the agenda items begin. Nothing is written down. They speak in a mixture of Spanish and Kichwa. People get up at different times (some people are impossible to hear) to make their thoughts known – only about 50% of the time does it seem that there is a conclusion of any type reached before they move to the next order of business. One of which was the official approval of me & volunteer English teachers to follow – that our house be complete and we be provided with basic foods – like oil, rice, bananas, salt, and eggs. Other items are luxuries and we take care of ourselves.
After 6.5 hours melting on a wooden bench (thank goodness they have new benches with backs – they are brand new) – in the hall with a hot metal roof, understanding very little, and getting bitten, no breaks – they reach an agenda item full of tension and controversy – management changes at the lodge. At that point, the president declares that we actually don’t have a quorum and the meeting is null and void and a new meeting will need to be held and all of the 6.5 hours of business will need to be re-addressed at that time.
Lovely. Can’t wait to do it all over again.

Photo: My high-stepping through the central community area

Otros Cosas / Other Things

The day after the wedding I went back with the early crew to help return the borrowed generator back to the house (aka bar) where it was taken from and do some other clean up activities. This also includes celebrating the return of the generator with some beer and dancing at…oh, 10am on a Wednesday.
· Another day we went to a lagoon called Panacocha where there used to be fresh water river dolphins and almost a guaranteed sighting (they like swimming with the canoes like ocean dolphins do with boats). Lately however, sighting have been few and far between (we were unsuccessful). We’ve initially heard it’s because some people have started to fish there—with dynamite. On our visit though we saw that another oil company started work very close to there about 3 months ago. Either way - there goes the neighborhood.
· I’ve learned not to ask a babies name—they usually don’t name kids for a few (or many) months. Name a kid and expensive paperwork is required – so you may as well wait a bit…
· It was interesting for me to consider that while we travel and are exposed to other cultures and try to honor and adjust to them, here they are actually less tolerant of differences because they haven’t seen as much.
· Speeding oil company boats leaving large wakes are increasing river bank erosion and occasionally tip little canoes (a family of 5 was tipped recently – all drowned – boat didn’t stop).
· All my paper products have absorbed water, expanded and are on their way to disintegration (including playing cards busting out of their box).

Goin’ to the Chapel (or community hall) [August 3rd]

Something must always go a little astray from the plan on wedding days…right? So here’s just some of what happened on their wedding day.
#1. Fruit juice in the petrol cans. Getting enough gas for the canoes is a big deal around here. If you buy more than about 3 gallons at a time you need to have an official explanation. Here in the land of gas – crazy. Anyway, they’ve been planning and stocking up for weeks to make sure that there was enough gas to do all of the canoe running around. And on the big day, it turns out there was fruit juice in a bunch of the petrol cans. Don’t ask because I don’t know.
#2. Due to the lack of gas, a lot of the people weren’t able to get to the central community area – including 40+ people on the other side of the river in full traditional dress and the folks who were going to cook the food for the wedding. So we (the western contingent jumped in and that’s where I peeled my first green banana). A huarani group was also kept away due to lack of petrol – who had brought spears, and were ready to do the needful.
#3. What? No generator? They were counting on a generator being available in the community hall since it would be full of people and for music and dancing afterwards. Alas, no generator. The only real house in the center has a bar as part of the house and a generator which is used on occasion to chill the beer. So, a team of guys goes and takes the generator out of the house and carries it over to the hall to set things up.

I put on the traditional outfit I rented – lil’ Ocelot top, feathered crown, beads & little woven skirt – but then we found out that the dancers in the wedding couldn’t get their costumes (see #1 above) and so I (and others) passed ours on. So I only had a very short time to ask “would you like to touch my ocelot?” [see photo on a previous post]

The nun with the guitar, and the “vicar” with the Kichwa hymnbooks did make it. Typically the grooms family and the brides godfather come from their house in full dress (& facepaint) and dance their way over to the brides house and then the families dance together and then all dance back to the grooms. We followed the same process in the community with the hall being Patricios house and another house in the community being Mari’s.

And then like most weddings – ceremony, eating, dancing and drinking followed.

A trip in the Way Back Machine [August 2nd]

At the beginning of August (it feels like forever ago to me), there was the wedding of Mari and Patricio. This was the first wedding of a Kichwa and a westerner in history and the first traditional wedding in the community in decades. Preparations were extensive – including finding people who actually remember the traditional dances and ceremony. An uncle traveled 10 hours on a bus to deliver some old cups (clay) that are used without even knowing he was really invited to the wedding – so he bought another pair of socks & undies and stayed.
One of the most heartfelt and moving experiences I’ve ever had was actually the day before the wedding – a ceremony called a Pedida. It is a ceremony between the two families where the grooms family one by one gets on their knees (which is never done here) and asks the brides family one by one for her hand while she sits in the middle of the room. They had arranged for two translators – Kichwa and English so that the two families could actually communicate. After each dialogue, the family members sealed the deal with a drink of something that was delicious and strong (I was given some drinks afterwards). And then a shared meal, complete with bbq’d grubs.
As a non-family member I was able to witness this as I took some videos and then set up mosquito nets for the visitors that were going to spend the night that at their house before the wedding.

Getting from Point A to Point B

Simple things can get complicated very quickly here. Back when this adventure started – 11 of us flew from Quito to Coca – a contingent of Mari’s friends and family (mostly from the UK). We thought we had some adventures getting our flight – but her story is so much better – so here it is.
The day before our flight to Coca, Mari planned a day trip to Coca with Patricio and her family members who were able to get there earlier to do more shopping for the wedding. It sounded simple enough – pay for a canoe and go.
Canoe #1 – the outboard motor fell off the canoe and they couldn’t find it. Transfer to canoe #2 (which happened to have gas – oh happy day). Canoe #2 broke down. At this point the rest of the family with Pato turned back to the lodge (don’t even know their adventures in getting back) and Mari pressed forward. She was able to get to a road and take a bus to a town that was on the way. Next she talked her way into a ride in a private car since there was nothing else heading to Coca. Power lines were down over the road – the owner of that land blockaded the road with trees so the power company would pay for the damage of the downed lines. Mari then left the car, jumped over the downed lines to the other side of the blockade and talked her way into a ride in an oil company truck that was heading to the next town. Finally a taxi to Coca. Makes my 7 hour canoe/2 bus trip here to Coca seem like a piece of cake.
Good news for the 11 of us who flew down from Quito that next morning, because she was able to meet us herself.
We ran around and did shopping for the wedding (what Mari was hoping to do the day before) and then all of the ATM’s and bank systems went down – so she had to run back around to the shops and tell them that she would pay them the next time she was in town. All was ok. Imagine doing that in the states…

P.s. I've scheduled posts to be published from 9/21-9/28. I'll be tucked back in the jungle at this time,

24 by 7

I have about 24 hours in Coca until another possible 2 week+ stint in the jungle - after taking 7 hours to get here (canoe ride on a wooden plank) and two bus rides (including the dash across a busy road to catch bus #2) - I'm going to try to do some catch up posting - complete with future dating so you won't be innundated (aka bored) all at one time. Alas, no fresh photos are available - I forgot my card reader in the jungle - but I'll dig up some previous ones for your viewing pleasure. Photos: A shot of me and Edwin, Margarita, Lola & Edwin, and other types of new friends (the camera is never handy for the OMG big ones)