What are we doing here? (-Jess)

As some of you have recently pointed out, we haven’t explained very much about who we are working for, what we are hoping to accomplish, or why we are out in the villages or in Peru in the first place. That is partly because we’re not completely sure of those things ourselves, but I can still fill in a few more details.

Because I was not quite ready to enter graduate school and had no concrete plans beyond graduation, last September one of my professors put me in touch with his friend who knew about a new conservation project starting in the Peruvian Amazon. I frenziedly threw together a last minute proposal to work with them as a Fulbright scholar, and was shocked and, well, mildly unprepared and a bit anxious when I found out last summer that I would actually be going. Andrew was up for the challenge and thankfully agreed to come along and try it out as a team. So we made our best guesses at what things we might need for the next year and made the trip here at the beginning of October, hoping it would all work out.

The name of the conservation project is PROCREL, which stands for Program for Conservation in the Region of Loreto. They have the modest objective of preserving and protecting the enormous biodiversity of the region while bettering the quality of life for the region’s inhabitants and ensuring the health of ecosystems and communities in perpetuity. Who can argue with goals like those? On the other hand, how do you even start trying to meet goals like those? So far, I have been surprised and impressed by how seriously they are tackling these issues. The general idea is to create a network of regional conservation areas that will protect key natural areas of the region- headwaters of major watersheds, migration corridors, rich habitats still relatively undisturbed, etc. Then they work with the communities closest to these newly protected areas to try to figure out ways to make it easier for them to meet their needs without having to heavily extract any resources from the nearby protected area. However, they are allowed to use the area to some extent, under strict management plans, because the hope is that if the area is useful and valuable to them then they will help to protect it. This all sounds very good in theory but there are a myriad of issues to overcome in order to make it work in practice, but the PROCREL team is giving it their best shot.

We work primarily in the proposed Nanay-Mazan-Arabela Conservation Area, which is the watershed that provides water for the city of Iquitos. We go out with between one and five members of the team whenever anyone goes up the river to visit the communities in this area (so far, somewhere between a third and half of every month). Our role here is mostly to learn- both from the team and from the villagers. However, we are increasingly able to help with some of PROCREL’s activities in the villages and we do odd jobs around the office (like many interns) in when we are in Iquitos. We are developing some independent projects for our free-time in the villages; gathering stories and information about the way the community members use resources and how things are changing for them in the rapidly shifting reality of the Amazon region. Additionally, we’re trying to pick up more Spanish, stay healthy and sane, learn more about neotropical flora and fauna, get a better handle on what conservation means, decide what we want to be when we grow up, and master the art of the maracuya smoothie. Other goals may crop up over time, but those are keeping our hands full at the moment.

Welcome to the Belen, We've got fun 'n' games, We got everything you want, and Honey, we know the names...well, some of them (Andrew)

Happy New Year to you all! We hope that your holiday breaks haven’t been as star-crossed as ours. We got off to a rough start to the holiday with stomach illnesses, and then missed the Christmas Eve church service by changing our mind about which chapel to visit and showing up just as the crowd was letting out and the bells were chiming since the service was at a different time. Even worse, the next day we showed up for what we thought was the Christmas Day lunch we had been invited to at 11:30 am, only to find out that it had been the night before at 11:30 pm (how were we supposed to know that Christmas dinner is on Christmas eve?!). Fortunately, our hosts were very kind and invited us in for a delicious lunch of leftover turkey and stuffing, and we actually got to talk with them more than we probably would have at the real dinner. We’re hoping that we get to go back to trade English lessons for cooking lessons.

So with our remaining week and a half of the holiday break, we decided that we needed to take charge and engage more proactively with the city. One of our so-far unachieved goals was to see the Belen market, which is listed in the guidebooks as the main feature of Iquitos besides the jungle tours (we’d been stalling on this because we heard there is a good possibility of getting robbed). We called our friend Cesar, and he obliged by coming over with a friend early on Sunday morning to give us a tour. We tried not to make ourselves easy gringo targets- no wristwatches or cameras (except the FlipCam, so there are some videos), and everything else in interior zip pocks- although I was still warned that someone might take my UNC ball-cap (no!).

Belen is basically a huge section of the city along the floodplain of Iquitos’ eastern edge that is transformed into a market. We had made some brief forays into the edge of it for Christmas supplies, but never as deeply and never on a Sunday morning, apparently the busiest time. Thousands of people crowded the maze of tunnels created by all the tables and overhanging tarps. There are two separate parts- an upper area (on the same level as our apartment) where most of the tables and vendors are located, and a lower section in the floodplain below where people live and where some of the more illicit exchanges go on. This lower section is often flooded by water, so many of the houses are on stilts or on floating logs and the inhabitants get around in small boats. However, the river has apparently been unusually low, so we were able to walk around some on the concrete and mud pathways.

There were piles of foods, many of which we had seen before, but also many that were new to us. There were mounds of fruits and vegetables, some familiar (bananas, onions, potatoes, etc) and some not (coconas, copoazus, carambolas, camu camu and many other things that didn’t start with the letter C). There was one particularly cramped passageway with lots of bark shavings, vines, leaves, and other plant products, where the local shamans supposedly do a lot of their shopping. There was also an abundance of spices and sauces in tiny clear plastic bags. And whenever you bought something, even if it was already in a plastic bag, they made sure to give you another bag to put it in. Some tables had stacks and stacks of dried, salted fish while others had still living ones flopping around in baskets. Although we declined to go the section of the market where there were live animals for sale, we still saw plenty of turtles, giant snails, and poultry struggling to get free (not fun for Jess). Some of the less lively meat included rows and rows of chickens (with or without heads), hog heads and intestines (with or without flies), slabs of paiche (a threatened giant Amazon fish), and endangered turtle and caiman meat.

All this got us thinking about the amount of resources being harvested from the surrounding rainforest to supply consumers in Iquitos (and also to be shipped out to Lima and beyond). Jess wanted to purchase a turtle in order to set it free later (this is one reason we didn’t go to the main live-animal vending section), but we realized that paying someone for the turtle would just encourage them (and others) to go catch more. Even the plastic bags end up on the ground or in the river, or, in the best-case scenario, they’ll wind up in the unregulated landfill of the city that also leaks into the river. It’s not so much different from the big box grocery and electronic stores at home, just a little easier here to comprehend the route from collection to consumption and disposal. Plus, it isn’t obvious that the prices that they charge for the goods sold there really make the transfer of the stuff downriver to Iquitos worthwhile.

Throughout the market there were dogs and children running around in the mud and a distinctive, unpleasant smell that has stayed in our clothes after returning home. In the floodplain below, where there are a least several thousand houses on stilts, there is no running water and we have to assume that much of what is used comes from the well-polluted river. Most of the concrete below our feet was crumbling or covered in mud (and poop), and most of the food (and all of the meat) was sitting in the open air for all the passing humans and insects to touch (if you watch the youtube videos, you can see women flicking the flies off their meat). It makes you think about the things we take for granted in the United States- clean running water, food and safety regulations, sanitation, healthcare, and stray animal services- most of which haven’t actually been around very long and still seem to be continually under threat from someone. Life here still seems to exist in the small jungle village mentality, except on a much larger, denser scale which doesn’t logically seem like it can be supported for very long.

In the end, we decided to get just a few fruits to experiment with in our blender, a Christmas-present to ourselves. (Cesar and his friend were not incredibly knowledgeable about how to make refrescos, apparently it works the same way here where teenage boys rely on their moms to do most of the cooking). We chose fruits still safely packaged within skins and peels in the hopes that this might be enough to ward off unfriendly stomach bugs. So far we’ve only tried the cocona, which made a good refresco-juice, but we forgot we also need to find a colander to get out all the seeds. In spite of all our qualms with the market, it was a lively and authentic-feeling place and we are looking forward to diving in more in the future for spices and veggies and more crazy jungle fruits.

Nuestra Navidad en la Selva (Jess)

In our most recent trip to the field, Andrew and I were charged with a daunting but ultimately really enjoyable task: making sure that the children in the villages we are working with all had a fun Christmas festival. Due to some miscommunications and funding that didn’t come through, PROCREL wasn’t able to give small presents to all of the children as had been hoped (there are 5 villages and some have up to 80 kids under age 10). Fortunately, there is a great Christmas tradition here called a “Chocolatada”, and fruit-cake-things called Panetónes and hot-chocolate had already been arranged for everyone in the villages (adults included!). So, Andrew and I set to work coming up with ways to cheaply supplement this (our team decided to pay with our own money) with activities that the kids could do before and after their cake. We combed the market district of Iquitos and came up with a dozen yo-yos, jump-ropes, and wind-up cars, and some colored pencils and stickers for prizes. Toy trucks, plastic tea-sets, and puzzles were donated by one of the team member’s wives, and our leader Didi bought an unbelievable amount of candy. We got some water balloons for games, and had fun at home practicing how we might fill them up when the only source of water was the river (we settled on Gatorade bottles with squirt tops) and experimenting with the volume and air/water composition for optimal pop-ability. I also couldn’t resist and bought a bunch of (semi)washable paints to use for finger-painting murals (which we discovered were also useful for making the apparently popular red Rudolph noses).

Armed with these supplies, Andrew’s experience as a summer-camp counselor, and my family traditions of silly games during holiday get-togethers, we put on a couple of chaotic but mostly-successful festivals (Aunt Juanita, I needed your bull-horn). One of my favorite moments was when, after a rocky and reluctant start, the children in San Antonio really got into the finger painting and we needed to bring out more paper and tables so that the mothers and older kids of the village could join in too. A couple of older grizzled men walked up because they were curious and I asked them if they would like to paint; one guy shyly said yes so I asked him what color paint he would like and he took the whole palette- Andrew walked by later and caught him painting red hearts. The water balloon games were a smash-hit; both for the on-lookers and for the kids. Another of my favorite moments was when we switched it up and had the Mamas (several of whom are our age) play a round of water-balloon toss to win prizes for the kids too young to compete. There were some spectacular splashes, much to the hooting delight of their kids and husbands. Passing the balloon down the line using only your chin got the most giggles. Three-legged racing relays were a bit too complicated, we never got around to playing red-rover, and occasionally a kid would get upset if he got stuck with a clumsy partner in the balloon toss, but overall I was amazed by how smoothly things went given my ability to give directions in Spanish. Mostly I think this was because we gave out lots of candy every time someone lost (and the winners got to choose a prize).

However, it made me wonder whether or not I would ever do well with the responsibility of having kids full-time because of the amount of time we spent wondering: What kind of prizes should we buy them? Plastic toy trucks? But they don’t have trucks here, and we don’t want to encourage them to move away to cities or promote oil exploitation. And what if someone strangles their self with a yo-yo string or chokes on a puzzle piece? And what about the kids who won’t win prizes- we don’t want them to fight or encourage them to think that plastic things will make them happier. And what do you do with the kids who want to play but they are too young and can’t follow directions and just stand in the way with their finger in their nose? And what about the candy- do we want to contribute to the sorry dental state of the village? Plus, every time they eat a piece of candy, even if you’ve given it to them for picking up trash after the event, they throw the wrapper on the ground. (One time, Didi had all the kids yell “I will not throw trash on the ground” repeatedly in order to get lollipops. In response to her next question, “And where will you put the trash instead?” the unwavering earnest yell was “In the river!” Yikes!) Teaching kids is a big job. As the day progressed and most of the adult population turned their attention to the village soccer tournament, we occupied the kids with gel pen “tattoos” of birds, butterflies, snakes and scorpions. Go to the video and picture links for some snippets from these events (including a look at Andrew as a tropical Santa Claus!).

Meanwhile, back in Iquitos, we are getting ready to have our first Christmas away from home (boooo). We have been pleased to discover that, thanks to new-fangled inventions like wireless internet and YouTube, we can watch favorite nostalgic holiday specials like Charlie Brown Christmas and Claymation Christmas Carols. I am also getting over my latest bout of stomach catastrophe, hopefully in time to have a tasty Christmas dinner with Sergio’s family (one of the guys on our team whose wife is said to be a terrific cook). Andrew is particularly excited about one of the presents we’ve decided to give ourselves this Christmas- a toaster oven- so now we might be able to do simple baking and make things like biscuits! We have borrowed a medium-sized potted plant from the courtyard at our apartment complex and covered it with blinking colored lights, flagging tape bows (thanks to Andrew’s mom), and some origami Moravian stars that Andrew found a website to refresh himself on how to make. It is actually very lovely- we might try to keep it as a permanent apartment fixture. We are planning to go to a 10 pm Christmas Eve service at one of the churches in town, and we are hoping to touch base via Skype with the family gatherings that we are missing.

Christmas in Iquitos is kind of an odd thing because, for one, it is the same temperature as it is the whole rest of the year- HOT! For two, there are no coniferous trees around here. Despite this, the city is covered in the same decorations that we have at home in the northern hemisphere- furry-coated Anglo-Saxon white-bearded Santas, snowflakes, plastic fir trees, and songs like Jingle Bells. It really makes no sense. Plus, there is the same prevailing “Buy Buy Buy!” message that we have in the states, which makes even less sense to me in light of the fact that many people here don’t exactly have tons of extra cash. Since it was probably pretty hot and non-coniferous in Jerusalem too, I am wondering where most of our traditional Christmas imagery comes from. It is very interesting to see what parts of our culture really take off in the more remote places in the world. On the other hand, I am a big fan of the Chocolatadas, and it will certainly be new to share a copoazu-flavored ice cream cone on Christmas day. We miss you guys, and we hope that everyone has a great holiday season!

Rats and Snakes and Machetes, Oh My! (Andrew)

Jess and I should have suspected that our most recent trip to the field would be interesting after its inauspicious beginning. We arrived at the Huequito (“the little hole”) port on Friday afternoon, to find our driver Gerard looking frustrated, and the “Kori & Candy” sitting lower in the water than usual. We found the boat already overloaded with gear for our crew as well as food to drop for another group in the middle of a two-week excursion, so we shoved our own bags and boxes of food on board and wedged ourselves into a seat. We then waited as two more people squeezed their gear on board. Jess and I were pretty nervous at this point, but the boat driver decided to make a go of it. We probably made it a couple hundred yards before the boat started having trouble, and we ended up paddling slowly back to port (with only one paddle and an extremely heavy boat, this didn’t work so well, so another boat eventually came out to tow us in). Jess and I had been debating about giving up our seats to reduce weight in the boat and avoid having to make the trip anyway, so we gratefully jumped out and waited as the engine trouble was diagnosed. Since it was getting late in the afternoon (meaning we wouldn’t have arrived until after dark), the group made the decision to postpone the trip until the next morning. Jess and I quickly agreed and went out for a pizza dinner to celebrate.

The next morning, with a new propeller on the engine, we set out again, this time with more success. I saw a quick flash of a grey dolphin on the swollen waters of the Amazon, which is still increasing in size with the Andes snow melt-off. The Pintuyacu River we are working on does not start in the mountains, however, so it is rapidly decreasing due to the recent hot dry weather. We didn’t notice this very much on our way in, but over the following days in San Antonio we watched the clay rim around the river increase each day. Over the next two days we held a couple community workdays (mingas) to help local women lay out grids to plant Chambira (a type of palm), which they use to make traditional crafts. The first evening, the members of our team held a meeting to give gifts of boots and machetes to the women involved (most of whom would have otherwise had to use their husbands’ tools).

During the course of the week, we came to realize that the lower water levels meant not only a farther walk to bathe, but also an abundance of wildlife (for the same reason). Because the river is down and many of the creeks are dry (it didn’t rain all week), animals have to work much harder to find water and have to come out onto the exposed mud banks. This makes them much easier pickings for the men of the village to hunt. Jess discovered in her conversations with our host family that pretty much all animals are killed, either because they are (perceived to be) dangerous or because they are good to eat. A couple children in the village had their own monkeys on strings, the parents of which had probably already been eaten, just as these pets would be when they got big enough. We were also served huangana, a medium sized peccary, and majaz, a large rodent. They were both pretty tasty. We also saw some men kill what turned out to be a very beautiful coral snake that made the mistake of traveling across open ground in the village (which led to many more interesting stories about all the dangerous snakes in the area), and a small dead caiman was brought in by one of the hunters on Tuesday morning. Probably the most interesting incident for me occurred when a man showed up in front of our house holding a medium sized snake which he called a “water boa”. He put it down on the sidewalk and a crowd soon gathered, and soon began urging me to try to pick it up. It didn’t look very happy, and even though constrictors aren’t poisonous, it still attempted to bite anything that came near it, so I wasn’t too excited. Jess was talking with one of our hosts who, perhaps sensing that we were not excited about the fates of all the other animals we had seen, assured us that they were eventually going to set it free. Soon after, the boys started throwing rocks and sticks at the snake and it turned out that they actually very much intended to kill it, which upset Jess quite a bit. So I decided to play the hero, and after pinning the snake’s head with a stick and grabbing it with two hands, I took the snake down to the water and threw it in. This did not please the people around me, who informed me that it was going to eat their ducks. Jess tried to convince them that they had scared it so much it would flee as far as it could, but I think it would be fair enough if it took out some domestic poultry. It was only when we got back home that I realized that what I had spontaneously decided to grab was also known as a green anaconda (there are pictures on the flickr website), which can grow to be very large and which, in retrospect, I probably would have been a little more nervous about handling. So add that to the good story pile. To cap off the wildlife experiences, on this trip we were subjected to more scampering and chewing noises of rats in the rafters (perhaps because they kill all the snakes?) than we had heard on any of our previous trips. This, along with the very serious ghost stories told to us by our hosts, made for some long, sleepless nights.

The most interesting day for me (and for Jess as well) came on Wednesday. I was invited to go out with a group of men to do some work with a plant called Camu Camu, which has small fruits that are very high in vitamin C and are increasingly valuable for export. Procrel is working with the men to establish new harvest sites of the plants and maintain existing ones to increase their incomes. For this workday we were traveling about 2 hours up the river to a small lake with overgrown camu camu plants around the edges. Our work involved cutting back all the surrounding plants to allow more light to get to the camu camu in order to increase their production and the ease of getting to them. It was pretty hard work and involved a lot of wading in waist deep water, hot sun, and a lot of difficult cutting with machetes. It didn’t take long before I was extremely tired.

This was my second day using a machete (after a chambira minga) and I had gotten some instruction about how to use it safely- swinging at an angle instead of chopping straight down, using a safety stick in front of my left leg, keeping the blade sharp. Unfortunately, working within heavy brush reduced the choices for cutting angles. So, at around 1pm, I brought the machete down, sliced completely through a 4 inch diameter piece of palm, and went straight into my right knee. It didn’t actually hurt at the time, it felt like a dull blow, and my first thought was actually, “Man, I’m glad I didn’t hurt myself”. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that simple. The guy next to me had stopped his cutting and I looked down to see that there was a rip in my pants and a growing red spot. Fortunately, the men had dealt with this before, so they knew what to do. They all stopped their work and had me sit down and tie the wound. They helped me get back to the boat (through the forest instead of through the water) where I had my first aid kit and could bandage myself up better on the way back to San Antonio. It only took us about an hour and half to go downstream, and they sent a faster 1-person boat ahead to let the doctor know we were coming. Unfortunately, this meant Jess also heard slight details about my injury well before we got there, so she was very upset. (I told one of the men in the boat that the machete didn’t hurt me but Jess probably would). The nurse in the one room hospital washed out the wound with soap and water, put three stitches in my leg to hold the cut together (she wanted to do 4, but apparently my skin was too tough), and gave me a course of antibiotibics and painkillers- they charged us $8 for the whole thing. Needless to say, we were happy to pay and may try to send a gift of medical supplies for Christmas. Afterwards the men of the village were all happy to show me their own machete scars, so I seem to have joined a large club. (We may have some pictures of the wound and stitches later on, if you’re interested)

The last two days were much less interesting, as I was confined to a rocking chair and hammock while Jess led another chambira minga. On Saturday we returned in a much lighter boat to Iquitos, where we cleaned up and took a short trip to the Adventist hospital (yes, open on a Saturday). Again, unlike anything I’ve experienced in the US (where I had to wait for 4 hours to be examined for chest pains), there was no wait to have my knee cleaned and reexamined and the whole thing cost about $15. The nurse tightened one of the stitches, but said that otherwise it looked clean, uninfected, and just needed a couple more days of rest to heal. So here I am, typing up blog entries and loading pictures, giving my knee a rest and enjoying the fan and lack of rats and snakes.

The Jungle Kids go to the Big City (Andrew)

So last Thursday, as you were all sitting down to nice turkey dinners, we were boarding a plane to cross the Andes. We didn’t actually see the mountains until the end of the trip as we dropped down to Lima- in fact, besides a brief glimpse of the river as we took off, we saw almost nothing but a bright heavenly glow in the clouds. We arrived at the capital city around mid-day and found ourselves much more comfortable than the last time we were here. It may have been due to the fact that we knew where we were going and that we had a taxi waiting for us, or that we arrived at the domestic terminal and didn’t have to go through customs with giant bags to eventually be launched into a giant crowd of hustling taxi-drivers, but things seemed a lot more relaxed. Our taxi ride took us through the same bustling, industrial neighborhoods we had passed through before (Lima is running out of water, so everything is very dusty) and down to the road along the strip between the cliffs and the ocean (this area has been augmented by multiple jetties to catch the sediment). We got to our hostel and made a few familial phone calls and inquiries to the hostel owner about activities (yes, there was someone who could look at Jess’s computer, no, there wasn’t a bullfight for Andrew to go to). The most pleasant surprise were blankets (2!!) on the beds and hot water heaters in the bathrooms (Sidenote: You might not believe me, but little two foot tall electric water heaters that you have to flip on half an hour before you get a hot shower are fantastic! I’m just not sure if they are code-worthy in the States…). Needless to say, we don’t have any of these amenities in Iquitos because coldness is a foreign concept here. We met a couple other Fulbright scholars already at the hostel, including a biologist studying birds in the cloud forest and an anthropologist (along with her husband) studying the role of children in Cusco’s tourist industry. It was great to get to know them, and, even better for me, to realize that I was not the only one crazy enough to jump into a year-long trip with my significant other when you don’t actually speak the language.

On Friday we had a late Thanksgiving lunch at the Fulbright Commission, and I am happy to admit that it was delicious (although nothing like home): turkey, mashed and sweet potatoes, green salad, and of course, cranberry sauce. It was probably one of the best Friday Thanksgivings I’ve ever had. Along with the cold weather, it made us very nostalgic. We met lots of new people, including a Peruvian piano player who studied at Bloomington, a diplomat from the Embassy who had worked with US senators on the recent free trade agreement (and was very interested in discussing mining issues, and Jared Diamond books), as well as most of the rest of the other Fulbright scholars: another biologist working in the cloud forest (although this time with beetles, and she is from Asheville/Wake Forest!), a political geographer studying the relationships between an Andean mining operation and the local communities, an economist studying the informal economy of Lima, a linguist documenting a nearly extinct language in the jungle (her spouse was also visiting, but only for a month), and a photographer retracing the route of the conquistadors. They were all very interesting projects, many of which were somewhat related to each other and we enjoyed sharing stories and project difficulties.

On Saturday we met Leonor Unger, the mother of a friend of ours who is a member of Binkley Baptist in Chapel Hill. She took us on a drive to see the neighborhood of Miraflores and the National Anthropology Museum in Magdalena. She told us many interesting stories from her lifetime, as she had watched the multiple towns around Lima merge into a vast metropolis, growing in population from a half million to nearly 8 million. At the museum we learned some fascinating things about the amazingly diverse cultures of Peru (for those of you interested, read Charles Mann’s book, “1491”), including the Chavin, Moche, Wari, and Inka. For us, it was very interesting to see many aspects of these cultures illustrated through what appeared to be teapots. There were pots with animals, pots with vegetables, pots with faces of people with different jobs, even pots showing different diseases. After several hours admiring the artwork, we realized that we had not even started to see the half of the museum documenting the Spanish colonial period, so we raced through that before finding a delicious set-menu café for lunch.

The next day, in between Jess’s attempts to put together her Fulbright presentation, we had lunch with Leonor’s husband, Tomás Unger, who is a famous science writer and artist (our cab driver back to the airport knew who he was). After seeing their beautiful home in one of the older neighborhoods of Lima (which included not one, but two interior courtyards and a backdoor that opened into a city park!), we set off for lunch on the coast. Unfortunately, there was some construction work being done on the house and Leonor had to stay behind, but Tomás treated us to some delicious seafood at a restaurant on the coast (see the youtube video), and did some sketches of the seabirds diving just outside the windows. We returned to our hostel and Jess spent most of the afternoon completing her presentation.

On Monday morning, the Fulbright scholars and partners piled into a couple cabs (ours got lost on the way) to make our way to the Fulbright Commission for the project presentations. These were meant to share the things we were doing and the difficulties we had experienced, but at this point we had discussed most of the projects with each other, so we had a pretty good idea of what was coming. We did meet the final scholars of the group, who were staying in Lima, and learned about their projects studying the development impacts of Machu Picchu and 16th century negotiations between the Spanish empire and some of the native people in Peru. All of the presentations were fascinating and it was nice to hear them fleshed out with more details and goals. Logistically, however, the presentations were a bit of a disappointment. Afterwards, the sun came out for the first time, and we were able to see mountains behind the city, so we enjoyed the brief period of sunlight to explore our local neighborhood of Barranco before a final dinner together (pictures on Flickr).

On Tuesday we were the last Americans left at the hostel as our new friends left for their respective corners of the country. We were sad to say goodbye to the city with its refreshing temperatures, low humidity, and excellent food. And I wish I could say that we were overjoyed to be going back to Iquitos, but the prospect of the upcoming hot/mosquito season didn’t seem completely appealing to us. We were rejuvenated by the excursion, and feeling more confident about our projects here, but we’re already planning trips in April to visit Cusco and hopefully Machu Picchu!

Healthiness (Jess)

We were a bit worried about going out to the villages this second time because we seem to have picked up some sort of intestinal parasites and we were in disharmony with them for most of the week in Iquitos. Fortunately, we reached a temporary peace accord during the majority of the field excursion so we were able to think about things beyond our stomach sensations. However, we’ve been sick enough so far to get a more than theoretical understanding of how much one’s health affects everything. Even if one is not sick enough to be incapacitated but only sick enough to be uncomfortable, it’s really hard to be productive and considerate and clear-headed and all those other things one generally hopes to be. This, in combination with some of what we saw in the villages this time around, brings me to a whole new level of appreciation of the value of sanitation, healthcare, and some of the other social services I’ve never thought too hard about.

Consider this scenario: you are 19 years old, you have a 1 year old who has a combination of malaria and a persistent cough, and your husband got drunk last night and beat you so badly that both your eyes are black and blue and swollen almost shut. You and your husband share the other room of the two room hut that you live in with your parents. Your parents know that he beat you but it is apparently not that unusual, in fact your father used to beat your mother back in his more rowdy drinking days, and though she is worried sick and he is disapproving, boys will be boys, right? And so you stay in your 7 x 7 foot room for two straight days waiting for the swelling to go down because you are ashamed and don’t want anyone to see you that way and there is nothing else you can do. Meanwhile your toddler wanders in and out of the room crying. Your husband also wanders in and out of the room, embarrassed at first, but then back to life as usual. There will almost certainly be a next time.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. One of the first things that I was asked when we had set up our tent was whether I had any cream for “golpes”. I knew this word meant “blows” but that made no sense to me so I was horrified after I had to have them spell out why they needed this cream. We didn’t have any with us, but I gave the anxious mother some Ibuprofen for her daughter’s pain and swelling which was all I had and anyway that’s about the extent of my medical knowledge. The next morning the mother gave me a bracelet that the daughter had made for me, but I couldn’t thank the daughter because she was still shut in her room. The Ibuprofen did help though, so later they asked for more Ibuprofen for a grandfather’s aching shoulder, and then for more for various other ailments among the family. We gave them our whole bottle, wanting to feel helpful to this family who was generously sharing their house and food and daily life with us.

Andrew and I didn’t have too much time to feel good about this plan of solving the problems of San Antonio with Ibuprofen because things got more complicated. They started asking if we had any medicine for arthritis, giant shoulder tumors, and something that sounded like it could be uterine cancer. Another kid in the family was diagnosed with a complicated case of the more dangerous kind malaria. Several other children and women we met were also in the process of being treated for malaria. We talked with a woman who had just lost her newborn because the cut for the umbilical cord had gotten infected. These towns are not bad off for small isolated villages- San Antonio has a little medical building supplied with antibiotics and general clinical supplies and the other villages at least have caches of basic medicines. However, think about how many times you or someone in your family has had to go to the hospital for something more serious or complicated. They have cancer here too, and heart problems, and diabetes, and all those things that we struggle with in the states except that the nearest hospital is over a day away down the river, and they can’t leave their 6 children very easily to go to Iquitos to get a test done or have some sort of treatment or therapy. Be that as it may, sickness and death are just as real and just as devastating here as they are in our churches and families in the U.S. It’s not an easy thing to think about. I stick by my earlier statement that these are for the most part happy people, but their realities can be extremely harsh, which makes their happiness all the more moving and humbling. At one point, when the mother of the family we were staying with was telling me about some of the hardships that she has dealt with and about her Christianity and about how she worries for her children, I was having kind of a what-to-do-with-myself crisis. I was wishing I was a doctor, or a teacher, or even a minister, or some other profession that has the instant gratification of being able to address other people’s urgent needs. One of the things about working in conservation biology is that most of the time, meeting the urgent needs of individuals is exactly not what you are doing. You are trying to look out for the needs of beings that are not people, you are trying to look out for the needs of whole communities of people, on a global scale, and you are talking about meeting needs in the long term. I am sure that this is just as important work, but it doesn’t have the straightforward satisfaction of being able to make a mother’s baby not sick anymore.

Hmm... I have gotten off on a tangent. I’ll try to post more on other aspects of the trip in another post very soon. (Don’t worry, it isn’t all this heavy.)

The Road to San Antonio (Andrew)

So it’s been another long, hot week in the field (although not nearly as long or as hot as the last one). We visited some new villages and ate/drank some new foods, met some new people, and overcame some new challenges. (We also survived an earthquake)

We left town on Monday, in our now familiar speed boat, the red and white “Kori & Candy”. With just the two of us and our project leader Janet, we were a smaller group this time than our last adventure. The boat sped up the river to San Antonio and the winding, three and a half hour trip passed rather quickly as we admired the vines and forests of the passing scenery.

Over the next two days, we enjoyed life in San Antonio, where we are feeling more at home, and where the people are starting to adjust to us. We resumed our familiar place on the porch of our hosts (although we used a tent this time, rather than just mosquito nets- better at keeping cockroaches out, but also better at keeping heat in) and caught up on the family news, which, unfortunately was not good. Two of the smallest children had fevers and malaria, and one of their daughters was recovering from an assault from her drunk husband only a day or two earlier. This put us in some interesting positions and conversations, in which we were asked for medicine for bruises, pain relief, and fevers. We offered some ibuprofen, but are resisting becoming the medical supply source for the village, although it is hard to say no to the family which has been hosting us.

During the days, we set out with a dozen or so local women (and a few men) armed with boots, compasses and machetes (we had the compasses, they had machetes) in an attempt to measure and delineate 100 by 100 meter plots of recently cut-over rainforest in order to plant Chambira trees, to ensure a long-lasting supply of material for handicraft production. It was hot and tiring, but fun (at least retrospectively) and we felt like we were helping a lot. We discovered that two dozen people armed with giant metal blades can do a lot of work in a morning, and that Jess is better at making a straight line through the forest than Andrew.

Later in the week, we continued up the nearby rivers, to the tiny villages of Atalaya and Buena Vista for more meetings with the local women. In Atalaya we spent the night sleeping on pews in the Evangelical Church before an early morning meeting. Although smaller, Atalaya is cleaner and nicer looking than several other villages we have been to. Buena Vista was a few minutes further up the river (after a stop for a meal of fish, platanos, and fermented pineapple), where we heard some frightening stories about past experiences with foreigners. In both Buena Vista and later in San Antonio, I made the mistake of mentioning that my stomach felt bad (both times in attempts to avoid eating another questionable dish), and was offered a drink that included something we think was called “aguardiente”, which is a type of hard liquor, along with different types of fermented bark and leaves that was a bit like dark purple scotch. It’s not the most appealing stuff, but when the bottle was retrieved especially for me and everyone was watching, I couldn’t say no (kind of like the grub- which was actually not that bad, probably better than raw cow tongue, John). After a game of soccer with some small children and watching the adults play volleyball or get their nails done, we headed for dinner (a spam/cheese/rice/noodle mixture requested by Jess) and the last meeting of our trip.

After a little trouble getting the generator started, the meeting went well, although sometimes it is hard for us to tell how well the information is received by the locals. Unfortunately, at the end of it, there was still gas left in the generator, so as we were just getting into our tent, someone in our house decided to turn on a stereo full blast, to take advantage of the electricity. We’ve posted a video so you can see exactly what our feelings were at the time. We put in ear plugs, threw bags of clothes over our heads, and tried to go to sleep anyway- we were so exhausted, that it didn’t take long. The next day, as we headed back down the river with a villager headed for Iquitos, we found out that there had been a 6.7 magnitude earthquake, centered on the Peru-Ecuador border (not very far from us) and we noticed that several large pieces of river banks had slipped into the water. Later we found out that it was felt pretty strongly in Iquitos too, making buildings shake and furniture move across rooms. We, however, missed it completely. Whether because we were so tired already, or because the music was so loud and shaking the house by itself, we had absolutely no inkling that anything odd had occurred. It kind of makes me wonder about all the other things that we might have failed to notice.

Nevertheless, we have seen a lot, and it looks like I will be returning by myself to the villages on Monday for more adventures, this time without the safety net of Jess’s Spanish. Vamos a ver...

How I learned to love the Grub (-Andrew)

Imagine, if you will, that it is a dark, Halloween night and you are way outside your comfort zone. You're standing on a wide-planked wooden floor that sags ominously when you step, under a high palm thatched roof but with no walls, in a shelter on the banks of a slow dark river that feeds into the Amazon. There are ducks, random dogs, and goodness only knows how many chickens moving around your feet, occasionally brushing your chigger-bitten legs or letting out a sudden unearthly wail. You're helping photograph and videotape a horde of young children who just converged on the only place you're even slightly comfortably being in in the entire village and are now wielding a small flaming gourd, while you pray that they don't burn the whole place down. Suddenly, the woman who has been your host for the last 3 days and will be for the next 3, who has been cooking dinners for you, letting you sleep on her porch, and letting you keep your stupid mosquito nets hanging for 24 hours a day in her already fairly limited space turns to you. She holds out her hand to offer you a small dark something about the size of a golfball that you can't actually see in the flickering gourd light. You can't tell what is in her hand, but when she also gives you a piece of yuca to go along with it, presumably to make it go down easier, and yuca isn't that good by itself, you know that at the very least, it will be interesting. Especially when you look down and see that the gourd passing has stopped, and a dozen children, several adults, and your loving girlfriend are all looking at you expectantly, with little smiles on their faces that are not at all comforting. Keep in mind that only one of these people actually speaks a language that you understand, and that one doesn't look like she's about to offer any helpful advice. You imagine a variety of gruesome tastes and textures, all the horror stories you've ever heard and the lessons your parents taught you about accepting things from strangers, compounded by the fact that you're in one of the last great wildernesses on the face of the planet, which has more than enough diseases/parasites/viruses to subdue a multitude of explorers, all of whom were a hundred times tougher than your puny little gringo self.

So what do you do?

You MAN UP. (or WOMAN UP if you are one)

You take that little golfball along with the slice of yuca, smile confidently at the crowd, and raise whatever it is up to your mouth. Even when it gets two inches away, and you finally can see in the Jack-O-Lantern gourd light that it is a fat, bulging insect, with a little black face and slimy white sides (although thankfully not moving. yet.), you do not let the smile fade. You put it between your teeth (strategically placing the yuca between your tongue and the bug) and hope that first "Pop" doesn't trigger your gag reflex and cause you to regurgitate whatever's left of that afternoon's tuna-fish, rice and beans almuerzo.

You do it for America. You do it for the English language. You do it because, even though you actually like their version more, where you come from football is a sport where people hit each other and don't fall down for no reason. You do it because you will probably have to come back to this village and face these people in the daylight, and even if you don't, some other pale-face will, and they shouldn't be judged because of you. You do it because biologists are the toughest people on earth. You do it because you only get one chance to do something like this and because trick-or-treating, making small talk at parties, and stumbling down Franklin Street will always be there when you get home.

So you chew, and chew, and chew, and after a longer amount of time than you would like, you swallow. And it actually doesn't taste that bad.

Highlights and Lowlights from our first Field Trip (-Jess)

Man, has it been a whopper of a week. We tagged along on a PROCREL excursion to a few of the villages up-river and decided that, overall, the experience made us want to be here in Peru more rather than less, but it had plenty of extreme ups and downs. I came down with a nasty cold as of 6:00 am the morning that we left, but at the start I was feeling good anyway because the dawn was beautiful and relatively cool and we were on a boat heading away from the city into the great unknown and I had rediscovered the wonders of a handkerchief (it’s like an inexhaustible Kleenex!). Several hours later though, after we arrived at the village and started to set up for the night, most of the perkiness wore off. With my increasingly snot-filled brain, I understood less and less of the Spanish conversations happening around me, Andrew and I had no idea what to do with ourselves, we were going to be sleeping on a dirt floor that we were sharing with some of the ugliest chickens I have ever seen, it was HOT, and everyone in the village was staring at us. We didn’t know where/how we were supposed to go to the bathroom, get water, bathe, eat, or any of that useful information that we often take for granted. That night was one of the most miserable in my life as I lay there becoming more aware of all the places on me that itched because of the chiggers we’d gotten into that morning, waking up every few minutes because I was suffocating due to my clogged nose and head, listening to the 17 babies screaming and roosters crowing all night long, wondering what was crawling on me, and trying to figure out how I could diplomatically bail out of all of this.

So... now that we have gotten most of the downs out in the open, let’s move on to some of the good parts. The first is that I discovered that the Procrel team I’ll be working with is made up of really competent, clever, welcoming, fun people. We got to know them a lot better by sharing meals and sleeping areas and boat-rides and down-time and we also got to watch them in action during the workshops and meetings that they led. By the end of the week, I felt like I could understand most of what they were saying in Spanish (although several of them were working on their English as well) and both my and Andrew’s Spanish improved enough over the course of the week to start making jokes. We also got to know one of the village families pretty well after we slept on their floor (under mosquito nets) for 4 nights. We swapped hymns with the mother of the family and she made me a fan woven out of palm fronds. We took baths in the river under the stars. We ate chicken and rice for the most part, although Andrew tried a kind of roasted grubworm called Suli (see pics). We tried to learn to make handicrafts out of the Chambira palm with the women in the workshop but were more helpful as a source of amusement for the women than as an extra two pairs of hands. We got to learn about growing camu-came fruit trees, sustainable forestry, the process of forming women’s artisan co-ops, and how sustainable development projects can work hand-in-hand with conservation in practical and promising ways. (I’ll write another post later this week explaining more about how the PROCREL project works.) It is a really good feeling to go from cluelessness to understanding, strangers to friends, and we got to do that a lot last week.

We started enjoying ourselves more once we loosened up a little and got braver about interacting with people. For instance, on the day of Halloween, I was trying to explain to a group of villagers at one of the workshops about pumpkins, and from the blank stares I gathered that I wasn’t doing a very good job of communicating in Spanish. I walked away and a group of kids followed me so I tried to draw a Jack-o-Lantern in the dirt with a stick. More blank stares. So I said, thanks, bye, and was walking off to find Andrew when one little guy (named Elie) came running up behind me with a smallish green round thing. I asked if it was hollow inside. He said he thought so. A small crowd of chilluns began to form. I said we would need a knife and a spoon and various children went running off and came back with them. So we sat down on the side of the dirt road and carved a gourd-o-lantern right there on the spot. It was rock hard so it took much muttering and sawing and experiments with several knives, but they were amazingly attentive and patient and faithfully showed up at the house where we were staying that night with a candle to put inside it. To see how the rest of the pumpkin escapade unfolds, see the new You Tube videos and photos on Flickr. This gave us an “in” with the village children, so we also taught them several silly games from the States, were joined by hordes of them whenever we swam, and tried to answer their questions about why our skin was so white, what freckles were, which spots were freckles and which were bug-bites, whether we had moms, why they weren’t with us, etc. This quickly earned us a posse, which was both a good and bad thing.

After several days in El Campo, we realized that the villagers were, for the most part, happy people. It dawned on us that on the first night, when we were feeling sorry for them for being so poor and isolated, we were totally wrong (but they were not far from the mark for feeling sorry for us for being sick and incompetent). This brought up a lot of questions for me about what is needed to be happy- since, in the “haves & have-nots” way of looking at the world, the lives of the people in San Antonio and the people in the Raleigh suburbs where I come from couldn’t be more different. Example: the “master-bedroom” of the house where we stayed, owned by one of the more successful families in the village, was about 7x7 feet big, didn’t have a single piece of furniture, had a floor and walls made of partially rotten wooden slats that didn’t really meet, and was shared by at least 5 people. In other ways they seem to still have a lot of the same sorts of things that we do: a dog named Candy, spoiled youngest children, soccer practice in the afternoons, children’s games like 4-square, community politics, dirty jokes, crises, and celebrations. So... the question is, if we “first-world” inhabitants were to pare down all our things by about 90%, what would we really be losing? Another angle on the question is, which things do you have to lose to truly impact your ability to lead a happy life? Additionally, what is the role of “sustainable development” work in a place where the people are already doing okay? I think the “sustainable” part is much more of the issue than the “development” part since what is needed is protection of resources so the villagers can persist more or less as they are and not necessarily raise the standard of living to fancier master bedrooms (this is very different from the way things are often approached in the U.S.). A final bit of philosophizing that has been bumping around in my head because of this trip is that I realized that, not only can I always count my blessings (i.e. thank goodness for this handkerchief, this thermarest, this mosquito net, this person taking the time to talk to me, this sunset, this glass of water, that Andrew decided to come along and be a fellow bumbler, that this food isn’t monkey brain, etc.), but it makes a humongous difference to my overall sense of well-being if I focus on those blessings rather than all the things that are not what I would wish (itchiness, nausea, dirt, noise, poor Spanish, lonely, no plan, etc.), even when nothing else at all changes about the situation. It’s kind of empowering. And sometimes just changing my mentality does actually change the situation for the better, for instance by making me brave enough to open up to strangers and discover that they have cold medicine, or an outhouse. I hope I remember these things when I get back to the States, or even tomorrow for that matter. Meanwhile, we are back in Iquitos counting a different set of blessings and trying to de-emphasize a different set of problems, so at least things stay interesting. I hope you all are enjoying that lovely cool weather up there. Pronto, escribiré más. Also, we posted about 25 new photos and 11 new videos from the trip, so look for those on the Flickr and YouTube sites.

More on What’s Happening (-Jess and Andrew)

Jess’s work at PROCREL has developed slowly- there is not much space at the office and so she got handed several hundred pages of Spanish documents to read (eep!) in order to catch up on their past and present activities and try to start looking for a way to make herself useful.

Meanwhile, Andrew has gone a couple times to the IIAP field station (all by himself!) to help work on reproduction studies at the experimental farm for Amazon fish species, which mostly involved grabbing them out of big nets, squeezing them for gametes (i.e. sperm and eggs), and injecting a few with hormones to induce gamete release. (Fun fun!) One day, he even got to take the first trip up the Rio Nanay to scout out locations for water quality testing.

Andrew’s been watching the World Series on the Spanish ESPN channel and he played soccer again on Friday night (this time at the big fancy Iquitos city soccer stadium). We made a recent trip to the gym and were gifted(?) with the attention of the resident personal trainer who worked us both to the point of blacking out. Yay for sports.

A couple days ago, Noam Chany (the ornithologist who helped us find our apartment), invited us to meet with a student group called CANATURA (Club de Amigos de Natura). They are involved in a lot of environmental education activities and at the moment they are planning a big festival to celebrate the area’s biodiversity, with an emphasis on a newly discovered endemic bird. One of the most interesting things about the CANATURA program is that in return for their service, volunteers are supposed to receive free English lessons. On Wednesday night Noam had us signed up and scheduled for teaching classes everyday, starting immediately, so we got launched in fairly quickly. Andrew went to the first lesson by himself, and was thoroughly entertained as an Israeli man named Uri taught the alphabet song, some common conversation words, and then led the class in a round of “We Shall Overcome” which sounded surprisingly good. At the end of the class Uri asked Andrew to teach a song the next time, so he came home and racked his brain for things that would be appropriate. When we both showed up the next day, he asked us to teach not just one song, but a little over an hour’s worth of the class. So, we taught them the “Hokey Pokey” (with dance!) and went through the human body parts, then “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (in honor of the World Series), and a round with “When the Saints” and “Swing Low”. So, along those lines, WE NEED IDEAS FOR MORE SONGS (simple, well-known, easy to sing without accompaniment) to teach in our next classes. Since they’re all college-aged biology students who are very interested in learning Enlgish, it looks to be really enjoyable and rewarding, especially if we can get them to help us with our Spanish along the way and then we can all talk biology!

Tomorrow we leave on our first trip to the campo with Jess’s workgroup, up the river to three villages where we will be assisting with several community service projects. We’ll get back in a week, hopefully with tons of interesting stories and pictures and videos to share. In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

La Casa (-Andrew)

Well, we have finally found a place to live, so we thought we’d post a brief description of our apartment (and some illustrative videos on YouTube). The apartment complex itself is very bright and cozy and has about a dozen small units in addition to the house-area where the family of the owner lives. You enter from the street through a long hallway, which opens up into a plant-filled courtyard covered with multicolored broken tile pieces (a nice touch all throughout). From the second floor we can see out across the floodplain to the river. The neighbors have all been nice so far, though luckily we are at the end and only share walls with one other apartment, with a resident who teaches private English classes and plays very loud movies. Further down the hall, Jess has befriended some engineers (who ironically work for a petroleum company) that are trying to set up a wireless internet connection that will work on our laptops (Luxury!). There are two elderly ladies who are part of the family that own this place who have found in us a new outlet for their grandmotherly instincts and we are very grateful for all of their help figuring out how to do things around here.

Our apartment is basically one big long room, subdivided into different areas (think New Orleans style, not Raleigh) and came mostly furnished, although we have invested in some bookshelves and kitchenware. There’s a living area in the front, which eases into a kitchen area with a counter island. A bathroom-island in the middle forces you to go around to the right side to reach the bedroom, which has some nice big closets. The floor is covered with white tiles, which makes it easy to see the different types of ants that swarm any bit of food dropped on the floor and are constantly exploring the walls, cabinets, and any other surface (one learns to view these as free cleaning help). The walls are yellow with an occasional green column (which looks nicer than it sounds), but the interior walls (around the bathroom) don’t go all the way up to the ceiling (so it ventilates into the bedroom and kitchen). There are two ceiling fans to combat the heat and some windows looking out on the courtyard and across some nearby rooftops for lighting (skylights too!)

There are definitely some deficiencies – no hot or potable water, one of the bookshelves we bought smells really bad (we call it “The Troll”), and the cooking facilities are fairly limited. So, we’re putting the call out for TWO-BURNER RECIPES (ie. no oven or microwave). Keep in mind that we have two pots, a deep pan, a water boiler, a colander, a spatula and two knives (and we’re going to invest in a juice-maker for jungle fruits).

So far we’ve experimented with: spaghetti with various sauces, scrambled eggs and omelets, and oatmeal with bananas.
Some possible ingredients we’ve noticed at our neighborhood grocery store: eggs, potatoes, many types of fruits (especially bananas), less types of vegetables (few leafy greens), rice, chicken, bread, pasta, milk and juice, ham and cheese, butter and oil, sugar and spices, coffee and tea. (We hear there are more options at the bigger market, but we’ve also been told that we will be robbed if we go there. So we are waiting until we have a buddy to go with us.) We’re happy for any suggestions!

You can email or send things (like letters and packages!) to our new permanent address: Andrew and Jess, Calle Raimondi #358, Interior #11, Iquitos, Peru

Felíz Día de Censo! (-Andrew)

Today we got to witness one of those amazing, once in a lifetime events. This, of course, was the first ever single-day national Peruvian Census. The Rules: everything is closed (even the churches and casinos), and everyone has to stay home between the hours of 8am and 6pm so that pollsters, mostly high school aged kids, can come by to take your information. Victor, one of our hosts at La Pascana, played Christmas music (think: Silent Night) as we ate breakfast (I was hoping that the next people who showed up at our inn would be shown to the stable, but alas...) in celebration of the holiday atmosphere. The hostel is near a school, so we were one of the first places to get a knock on the door. It was a very brief interview, consisting of our first names, questions like whether we could read/write, our religion (choices: Catholic, Evangelical Christian, other, or nothing... Jess said "Protestant" and got put in the "nothing" category) and then we got a sticker above our door to show that we had participated (very biblical). While most Peruvians had to stay home all day, we Gringos were allowed to venture forth after being interviewed, and found ourselves in a new, eerily quiet world with very few motorcycles, mototaxis, blaring loudspeakers, or people on the streets (we posted a video of the Plaza de Armas). It was like a disaster had just struck without the anxiety and fear or long term consequences. Just a quiet, peaceful, nationwide pause. Sadly, things have now returned to their normal hectic and chaotic state. Jess has declared Census Day as her new favorite holiday.

More importantly, perhaps due to some of the magic of Census Day, we finally got in touch with the famous Israeli/Californian/Peruvian ornithologist, Noam Shany. He confirmed our fears that apartment possibilities are very limited in Iquitos- there are only about 4 options. He pointed us away from his own apartment complex next door to La Pascana (too expensive, hot, and..expensive) and away from the apartments across the street more popular with the drug tourism crowd, and towards a nearby building that just happened to have an opening (at about half the price). So we jumped on it and moved. Just like that. Keep in mind that this place has no sign or indication that there are apartments behind the gated facade, so there is no way besides word of mouth that we could have found out about it. We are quite grateful to Noam for the tip, and will now finally begin what Jess calls "nesting." We´ll post a better description and some videos of our new pad soon- but the best way to see it would be to come visit... any takers?

Español y Fútbol (Andrew)

In case you haven´t experienced it for yourself, learning Spanish is a slow and difficult process. More specifically, learning to hear and speak Spanish is a slow and difficult process. For me, it´s been a constant struggle to piece together the sounds coming out of peoples´ mouths, and most of the time it sounds like a continuous gurgle. I have gotten a couple lessons from our friend Raquel (a former Fulbright English teacher), which have been somewhat helpful. Yesterday, Jess and I got called in to help rehearse some students who were memorizing skits in English. We were actually pretty impressed, not only because some of them were able to concentrate with continuous traffic noise and the occasional school brass band outburst, but several of them spoke fairly understandably in English with a British accent. (This was also a little discouraging since they were only in middle school and could already speak well in two languages. Teach your kids Spanish from day one and save them a heck of a frustrating experience later on.) Most of the kids, however, were in and out of the classroom and chatting with each other, and it was not really possible to control them with my limited Spanish ability/authority (I think we´re going to be called in to be judges in the skit competition on Tuesday). But, things are progressing, slowly but surely and hopefully it won´t be too long before I can have at least a short conversation.

In more exciting news, I got to reach one of my life goals (not really, but I´m taking dramatic license) of playing futbol in a South American country. At 8pm Friday night, leaving Jess my faithful translator behind, I jumped on a motorcycle (also for the first time ever- although I wasn´t driving), grabbed on for dear life, and took off into the dark city. I didn´t really have any clue about where we were going, so when we pulled up next to a big barbed wire fence (all soccer fields have barbed wire around them here) and found myself at the power plant, I was intrigued. Turns out, the power plant is the only place in town that has field lights at night- so, unless you want to play in the heat of the day, it´s the place to go. It also cost 6 Soles (about $2) per person, so I got the feeling that not too many people played there. There was also actual grass, which one doesn´t normally see on regularly used fields. The game was fun, although I was definitely the worst player on the field by far. At least there were no injuries. Hopefully I´ll get some more chances to work on my moves. I´ll let you know how that goes.

Fish Copulation and "The Little Flying Furry Pig" (-Jess)

We´ve been pleasantly surprised thus far at how often people who have only known us for fifteen minutes or so invite us to sit in on activities that they are hosting or attending. We met with a woman who is in charge of the environmental education activities for IIAP (the major research institution for the Peruvian Amazon) in order to talk about the possibility of Andrew volunteering with her in the future and found ourselves on a school bus packed with kids at 7:30am the next morning, headed for who knows what.

Who-knows-what turned out to be an all day long draw-a-thon, in which middle and high schools all across the region send their three top artists and each kid is assigned one of three stories (the winners from the short-story contest) to illustrate with 8 to 12 drawings or paintings. All the illustrations had to be done on the spot, on officially stamped paper, within the 9 hour time limit. The kid with the best illustrations from each story is named the winner, and their work will be used with their respective story in three children´s books that IIAP will publish. (Other cool projects that the Evironmental Ed team sponsors include helping schools to start butterfly farms, orchid orchards, and artificial beaches where they transplant eggs of river turtles and guard them until they hatch in order to protect them from being... poached. They also teach them to make trash into paper which they decorate and sell as notecards, and work with some schools to give each kid a tiny plot of school yard where they can do whatever they like- plant a tree, grow medicinal herbs, make a flower garden, raise worms, you name it. This helps to foster care for land and creatures in a hands-on, interactive way. I´m a little jealous.)

Unfortunately, Andrew and I were only allowed to watch, even though all the art supplies were awfully tempting. The illustrations were amazing (we put up some videos)- all full of vivid color and beautiful depictions of the jungle. They gave us the stories to read and it was discouraging that it took us most of the morning to read 3 pages worth of children´s stories. They were all pretty depressing- in one a fish is separated from its mother and while looking for her he has to swim through oil spills and past commercial harpoons and deforested river banks, in another a little creature that was described to us as a little pig with more hair was slowly dying in a drought after his whole family was killed and right as he closed his eyes he dreamed he could fly, and the last was about a tree that went to the city to tell the people to stop their destruction but he was peed on by a sick and itchy dog. So. That was sobering. The children had amazing concentration, working almost non-stop from 8 till 5, meanwhile, Andrew and I were having trouble maintaining our attention spans and Andrew was threatening to give up on Spanish forever. Fortunately, we were introduced to a very friendly guy named Carlos who spoke English and gave us a tour of the whole campus.

IIAP has several biological stations. This one focused mainly on biotechnology (no tour of this part due to sensitive lab set-ups) and the farming and reintroduction of native fish species. We got to see the ponds and tanks where they raise and do experiments with Paiche- the giants of the Amazon that can grow to several hundred kilograms and maybe 10 feet long. We fed them little minnows and watched them suck them up (the food-fish themselves were pretty crazy looking actually), and heard about how, when they want the fish to spawn, they have to catch them, wrastle them down so they can give them a hormone shot, squeeze out the gametes, and then mix it up in buckets until they turn into little fish. Craziness! Andrew might go help with the process next week. We also saw giant snails that grow to several pounds in 6 months that people raise to sell to the French market. These somehow know when the river is about to rise, because their eggs have to sit out of the water for two weeks and then they need to be transferred to the water to continue developing, so the clever snail crawls out and lays its eggs a few feet up on the bank 2 weeks before the rainy season starts and the rivers rise. This is especially tricky since the start of the high-water season is supposed to be pretty unpredictable around Iquitos. Our tour concluded with a taxonomy room full of lots of weird fishy creatures in jars (I´m not so sure about this bathing in the Amazon thing), and a fish food making factory that was being throughly inspected by a small kitten. You just never know what sorts of things you might learn and do around here on any given day!

Quote of the Week:

“Was it Chesterton or Kipling who said that an adventure is just a misfortune correctly understood?”
-Dessinger to Peter while traveling in India in David James Duncan’s, “The Brothers K”

Birding at the Alpahuayu-Mishana Reserve, UNAP Section (-Jess)

Normally, given the squares that we are, we don’t ever have to factor things like “clubbing” into our sleep equation, especially on nights when we are going to get up at 4am to go birding. However, after several days of having to wrack our brains for things to fill our time with (while waiting for the people I am working with to get back from Argentina), we didn’t want to turn down the opportunity to hang out with other people besides each other and do real-life activities, so we were suckered in to staying out past midnight and then getting up at 4. Add to this the fact that it is hot as bejeezuz, that we were both pretty sore from our gym adventures the day before, and that we didn’t want to look like pansies and stop all the time for rest and food and water, and you’ll have a good sense of the mind-frame we were in at the times when the birding was slow.

We realized that our previous birding experiences haven’t really prepared us for birding in the rainforest- mostly because you generally never see the bird and there are about ten zillion possible species. We were very glad we’d decided to go with a guide, Dennis, who impressed us with his knowledge of calls and shared lots of good natural history information with us. For example, on the same 1km stretch of path, we went through 3 different kinds of forest that have their own characteristic plants and animals and it all depends on soil geography (Dave- cool huh?). Two of the kinds of forest (white sand forests, or “varillals") are relatively rare in the Amazon basin and have several endemic birds associated with them (several of which are new species discovered by one of the guys I will hopefully be working with). There are some video clips from the forest on the you-tube site to give you an idea of what it is like adentro de la selva.

So, since I have a habit of rambling on, here is a condensed version of the highlights of our seen & heard birds this morning, chronologically:
1. Little Blue-black Grassquits that kept hopping very comically a few vertical feet and landing in the same spot.
2. We heard and then saw a chachalaca and learned that if you cross-breed it with a rooster it becomes super aggressive and is good for cockfighting.
3. I spotted a male and female Swallow Tanager (google these, they are beautiful), which the guide said he’d never seen at this location before, and that he’d never seen a pair together, and that they were indicators that the forest was healing (we were in a secondary scrubby field at that point, on the edge of the reserve.
4. Also google yellow-rumped caciques, they are pretty common, but cool-looking, with hanging nest-sacs.
5. We passed under a Screaming Piha lek (place where the males all gather to show off for the ladies) and got a video (on you-tube site) of their loud screaming.
6. Then we walked through a lek for hummingbirds called Great-billed Hermits (google them), and got buzzed as they chirped and chased each other around.
7. Our guide entertained us with stories of things that could go wrong in the jungle, like his friend the researcher who got bitten by an ant and had a fever for four days and had to be evacuated, or his friend the researcher who got speared in the leg by a trap that hunters had set to catch armadillos and had to be flown to Lima (“you said you were planning to do research here?”)
8. On our way back, we walked right into a big group of little squirrel-like tamarin monkeys (this species has the female as boss, and the males care for the young’ns). It is almost possible to forget that the trail you are walking is in the Amazon, until you walk under a group of monkeys. Then you think- whoa. Google these too- they’re cute and look kind of like cats.
9. We also saw a tiny red-backed poison frog that our guide said is used for medicine during heart operations, and is fairly lucrative for the people to collect so they are studying its life-cycle to make a management plan. (Cool fact: males of this species have been found hopping vertically up trees carrying a couple tadpoles on their backs.)
10. Last, and best, when we were out of the jungle and walking back across the scrubby fields to the road, Andrew spotted a fat little owl sitting in a bare-branched tree. Turns out, this was a species the guide had never seen before in his life (Rufous-banded Owl), and he was really excited and told Andrew that he had a “muy buen ojo”. We got close enough to get a great look with our binoculars, and a bad picture with my camera (see photo site). [Correction: after talking with a few hardcore ornithologists, we have learned that this was most definitely NOT a Rufous-banded Owl, but was infact a Feruginous Pygmy Owl (still cool). Apologies for the confusion.]

Overall, despite sleepiness, sweaty sweaty heat, hunger, thirst, slight discouragement at our extensive ignorance, and Andrew having to deal with only Spanish the whole time, a good time was had by all and we are looking forward to future chances to get out of the city and into the green stuff.

Revelations from Iquitos (-Andrew)

We have a new favorite restaurant, on the recommendation of our lovely Hospedaje hosts. It’s named Hausai (apparently after a type of palm) and is the place where lots of local people go for lunch, so it’s always full (an excellent sign!). They have a different menu each day for an 8 sole lunch (about $3), with a choice of appetizers, main courses, and, most importantly, pitchers of juice!! We usually order completely different meal combinations in order to maximize our combined tasting potential. For example: Jess orders: appetizer- chicken tamale, main course- vegetable pie, juice- Guayaba, Andrew orders: appetizer- pork and giant corn soup, main course- fish with rice, juice- Tumbo. That makes 6 things to taste for a total of 5 dollars. It sure beats going to one of the ubiquitous Pollorias (1 choice- chicken with platanos or papas fritas) for dinner, although the big lunches definitely force an early afternoon siesta. We did find one good Pollería, called Pollos Panda, which is owned by the family of a friend of ours named Karina from the Language School. We met there for dinner on Saturday, along with Raquel and Rocio, and Jess got her first taste of Inka Cola- for those of you that are interested, there´s a new Peruvian restaurant near the Cary Mall where you can experience it for yourself! (The food there isn’t great though.)

After all our experimenting with food, taking siestas, and sitting around our hospedaje for several days, we felt a strong need to get our blood moving. So we asked our friends for recommendations for getting exercise, and found out that there are several little gyms tucked in between houses and stores. We decided to check Jully´s Spa, which is a very nice (albeit a little girly) facility with weight machines, a dance studio, and a small pool. Other than the usual awkwardness of being offered instructions by muscle-bound gym rats (compounded by language difficulties), and not realizing we were supposed to bring our own towels (it got a little oceanic), it went well and was quite rejuvenating. We´re hoping to make it a common occurrence. Jess is really excited about taking dance classes, mostly so she can take her moves to the Club (right.).

Speaking of which, we went to our first South American club on Saturday night (Jess made the mistake of mentioning to our friends that we were interested in learning to dance) and ended up about a block from our hostel at Club NOA (NOrte-Americanos?? No lOnger Audible?). It was not exactly traditional dancing- by which I mean once we got inside we could have been in any Americanized city in the world. There were lots of flashing lights, loud music with even louder base, TERRIBLE beer sold by scantily clad young women (our friends recognized a couple of their students from the Language Center), and only a few brave souls actually dancing. This was because it was only 10pm which is apparently way to early for respectable people to be at a Discoteca. Rocio dragged us onto the exposed dance floor and taught us a few moves (and seemed to be impressed that we could keep the beat... kind of... sometimes), while Karina cracked up every time she made eye contact with one of us. We ended up staying after midnight, after promising ourselves that we would get to bed early. But all in all, it was more fun than expected, and we learned a few moves to practice on our own, so next time we can really get down.

Pipintuwasi: House of the Butterflies (-Jess)

On our second day in Iquitos (we spent most of the first day cowering in our hostel room, staring at the whirly ceiling fan, reflecting on whose fault it was that we were here, wherever here was, and speculating on how long we would last), we decided to be more extroverted and call one of the ladies that the Fulbright folks in Lima had said to contact if we had questions. This was a good move, although it led to a crazy day so full of wild things to take in that it led to spending our third day mildly in shock and again mostly meditating on the ceiling fan. Ceiling-fan thoughts can go in another, more philosophical post, so for now I’ll write about the adventures of Day Two in Iquitos.

We conquered the public phone long enough to arrange a morning coffee date with Raquel Moscoso, a Peruvian woman who had recently been a Spanish teacher in Oregon as part of the Fulbright exchange program. She spoke perfect English, and she brought two other ladies (Rocio and Karina) who spoke perfect (British) English who are applying for similar Fulbright exchange positions in the U.S. Their super-friendliness and English answers to our already long list of questions could not have been more welcome. They took us to an authentic (joke) Iquitos restaurant “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, so that we could talk over glasses of delicious fresh-squeezed juice. I am crazy about the juice here by the way. So far, it is one of the best things about this city. These were pretty hilarious ladies actually, and we really enjoyed talking with them, so things began to look brighter. They took us to some cell phone stores and explained about models and plans and whatnot, and showed us which bank we could use for turning big bills into smaller usable ones, and all sorts of useful stuff like that. They offered to check on the possibility of Andrew teaching English in exchange for Spanish lessons at the Language Center where they work, asked if we would like to sit as “jurors” on an English talent show in their class, and they offered to take me to the gym and teach me how to dance. Pretty cool, huh? I hope that at least some of that pans out. But even more immediately, they offered to go with us to a butterfly sanctuary and jungle-animal-rescue-operation a little ways out of town that very afternoon since it was apparently a holiday.

So, we had our first ride on a mototaxi (we thought we were going to die) to get to a crowded muddy port, where we were swarmed by a horde of men trying to get us to take their various boats to various places, followed Raquel and Karina into whatever canoe they got in, and rode under gathering ominous clouds up the muddy Nanay river to the village of Padrecocha. They were selling plates piled high with turtle eggs at the port. No wonder the river turtle populations are crashing. It was a little like the state fair. (Worm-on-a-stick anyone?) When we got to the village, all four of us, plus the driver and his toddler daughter, plus the kid hanging off the back, got onto this half-motorcycle half-golfcart and drove extremely quickly on a semi-paved track through the village that reminded me of some of the roller coasters at Cedar Point (we really thought we were going to die) to get to the home of an Austrian woman who runs an animal orphanage and butterfly sanctuary. Because she happened to also work for Raquel Moscoso in Iquitos, she let us in off-hours and gave us a private tour. She met us with an endangered red-faced uakari monkey clinging to the back of her head. She explained that it was afraid because ever since they’d gotten the new baby howler monkey the two older howler monkeys had become jealous and were taking it out on this one because he was the weak one. I was instantly fascinated. She walked us around and showed us first the butterfly sanctuary where she cultivated all sorts of lepidopterans, collected their eggs, hatched them into wild looking caterpillars (see the picture link), and set them loose to chew each other up (I bet you didn’t know that butterflies could be vicious). Then she showed us her pet JAGUAR, Pedro, who had enormous paws with which he liked to fish and eat chicken. Then there was a tapir named Lucas that you could feed pineapples to, agoutis running around all over the place, caimans in the little lake, macaws in the trees, and a fluffy giant anteater that was using its really long tongue to lap up a plate of milk. These are all animals that you would be varying degrees of very lucky to even get a glimpse of in the wild, so it was pretty durn cool to be able to get so close to them. However, my favorite part was definitely when it started to pour and we went under a little pavilion, and a howler monkey came and sat down right next to me and put her hand on my knee while she howled away (apparently she had just learned how to). I spent several weeks while studying abroad in Ecuador walking around in the jungle just hoping to hear a howler monkey, much less see one, much less see it close enough to see its facial expressions, much less have it treat me like just another monkey. Then a capuchin crawled in my lap and started playing with my watch Velcro, and an uakari came over and very carefully checked my hair for anything tasty. I began to think that maybe it was not such a big mistake to come to Iquitos after all.  But the ride back through the village reminded me that there was a lot more to this than playing with monkeys, because the lifestyle gap is almost unfathomably large, and the animals are all there because they were really sick or their parents were killed and eaten, but the people in the villages have to kill and eat the animals because that is how they feed themselves, meanwhile I live in a bubble, and it is all very confusing and thought-provoking. So, things are getting more and more interesting here. Check out the videos of the monkeys and enjoy the state fair!

Let me tell you about Iquitos (-Andrew)

Iquitos is not a peaceful jungle town, where the Amazon drifts quietly by as we a sit under palm trees and sip on fruit drinks in the shade. It is a large, dirty, bustling city, with over a half million people running all over the place. The predominant form of transportation is the mototaxi (a motorcycle with its back wheel exchanged for a little covered cart, big enough for two people to ride in). These are very loud and don’t seem to obey many traffic laws. As a result, there is a constant, ominous rumble at all times, and crossing the street is an adventure. Not to mention, that every time you go out, a dozen drivers approach to offer a ride. Fortunately, our little hostel, La Pascana, is tucked at the bottom of a dead-end street pointed toward the Amazon, so it is relatively peaceful.
At the center of La Pascana is a long rectangular courtyard with fruit trees and other plants (none of which I recognize). Along the sides are 20 small rooms with bathrooms. You can’t drink the water though- we get it from a big bottle in the lobby- and eating without going to a restaurant is a little problematic. But, so far we have successfully overcome these minor difficulties and used cuarto numero dos as our base from which to explore the city. Our current projects include looking for furnished apartments (of which there is a shortage), cell phones (of which there is an abundance), and figuring out exactly what it is we are going to do here.

Getting to the largest city that you can’t get to from anywhere else by road (-Andrew)

Our trip started off well. Actually, it all went well. Our flights took us from RDU to Miami, then to Lima where we spent a day, and finally a short hop over the Andes to Iquitos. The most exciting part of the flights actually occurred in the US, when our pilot suddenly pulled up just before landing in Miami and did another ten minute loop before landing. (By “just before landing” I mean that we were looking out the window and expecting the bump of our wheels touching the ground) The pilot calmly informed us that another airplane had been moving out onto the runway. This was mildly disconcerting.
After hearing a lot of Spanish in the Miami airport, we flew to Lima, Peru, and made it through customs with very little difficulty. We even had a luggage cart and a driver waiting for us with a sign to take us to a hostel. Lima is a very large city, and like Buenos Aires, filled with insane drivers. If there are 3 lanes across, there will be 4 or 5 cars squeezed in them, not to mention cars passing on the shoulder and on the side of oncoming traffic. We stayed at a pleasant little place called Aquisito, which according to the sign in our room means “just around the corner” or “your goal is close, take heart, you will achieve it”.
The next morning took us to the Fulbright Commission office. The street was closed off a block down by a large crowd and the neighborhood celebration of a local Saint. We met the people at the Comission, who were all very kind and spoke English (very well) for Andrew´s sake. After a few more errands and a broken clutch, we got back to our hostel and explored the neighborhood a little. We ate lunch at a little place called the Canta Rana (Singing Frog), which wa decorated with all kinds of flags, soccer and celebrity pictures, and other random artifacts. We tried our first Anticucho (basically a kabob) and Tacu Tacu con Mariscos (large pile of rice with seafood) and were impressed and stuffed. We walked down to see the coast from the cliffs of Lima, then headed back to the hostel before dark.
The next morning we relaxed and did some reading (Andrew got to watch a little of the Rugby World Cup- unfortunately New Zealand lost to France, which will certainly lead to much heckling by certain French friends... Fortunately Australia lost too). Then it was off to brave the Lima highways to get to the airport, where we found very kind employees who let us bring overweight baggage, and more English-speaking gringos on our plane than the one in Miami. Off to the Jungle!!