We realized that we have still posted more from our two-month trip in Patagonia than our 8 months here. That is partly because it's easy to stop writing about things once they seem normal and our life here in Iquitos seems full and busy and, well, normal now. Nevertheless, it might make more sense for you guys reading back at home if we filled out the picture a little bit with the less flashy parts of what we're doing these days (i.e. not just the trips out to the villages).
A lot of our time recently has been devoted to working with our friend Pam organizing a volunteer program for PROCREL where recent graduates from environmental programs at the university here in Iquitos get placed in the communities around our proposed conservation areas for 4-month stints. The idea is that they will get important experience working on conservation initiatives in the field and interacting with rural communities (a TOTALLY different world than the city of Iquitos that many Iquiteños don’t actually have much exposure to) and they will help strengthen PROCREL’s relationship with those buffer communities while learning about the communities’ needs and activities. This last part has been Andrew and my pet project since Christmas, though it has evolved a lot since then. We are trying to adapt and design a plan for gathering and storing information about what forest resources people use, what areas are economically or culturally important, what are people’s perceptions about their quality of life, where their income comes from, how they feel and what they know about “conservation”, what they consider to be the strengths and weaknesses of their communities, and a whole range of other themes. This kind of information will be important for PROCREL and any other organizations working in the area in the future as they try to make a master plan for how the conservation area will be zoned, what sorts of programs will be developed, what their priorities should be, and how they can include local people in the protection of the area’s resources. This has been fun and challenging since Andrew and I don’t have any anthropological training, only have a few months’ experience in the area, and have less than perfect Spanish. However, we’ve been able to explore the ways that other conservation organizations have approached the problem and have received generous help from people working on social assessments in Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul (we get to go visit and watch them in action next week!).
We are using focus groups, household surveys, interactive maps, and various other exercises to get villagers talking about these things, and the volunteers are documenting all their responses in this first pilot round to test out how well the questions Andrew and I have written and chosen work. Meanwhile we are trying to make a database where we can put all the information that they are gathering, and we’re also going out to check on them periodically to make sure that everything is going alright. Hopefully, when we end our time with PROCREL in early July, we will leave them with an accessible database, a field-tested set of tools, and an adaptable methodology that they can use for doing the social assessments in the rest of the buffer-zone communities. I have heard that some communities are just about sick of being socially assessed because every organization that comes to work in them does their own version and then they don't share the information with the other organizations, so we are trying to be sensitive to this and not re-invent the wheel and use any available information already collected and make our data accessible to others, but we are kind of new to this, so hopefully we won't make too many unfixable mistakes.
Getting this ball rolling, keeping up with the logistics of having six volunteers currently in the field, and lending a hand with the projects of other PROCREL staff members has led to some long days in the office recently. Weeks when we are teaching English classes at night are even busier (classes have been fun recently- we showed an episode of Planet Earth to an appreciative audience of biologist students and talked about the English "nature words" that are used in it.) Then there is also the time spent looking for and applying to and worrying about jobs and other opportunities for when we return home not too long from now. Fortunately for my stress level, there is an AWESOME juice stand on the way home where we stop for fresh delicious juice (I prefer cocona, maracuya, and sometimes uva, Andrew’s favorite is toronja) which comes in a plastic bag with a straw if you get it “to go”, and a giant piece of warm pound-cake. This costs 1$ for everything. I will miss it terribly when we leave.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Why Some Peruvians have Strange Opinions of Gringos
Here are two examples from recent weeks that have shed some light on the way light-skinned foreigners are perceived and treated here in Loreto.
On our last trip on the Rio Nanay, we came around a bend to see a canoe full of water with a man and a woman holding on to the side (There is a picture on the second of the 3 Flickr website links to the right). We pulled alongside and bailed out the canoe, helped the people on board our boat, and retrieved as much of their floating cargo as we could (lots of limes). The mother was hysterical until we found their young daughter hanging on to a tree on the side of the river upstream. It turned out that a large passing boat (which we could still see going around the next bend as we arrived) had swamped them with its passing wave. They had lost their peque-peque motor (costs several hundred soles) and most of the cargo they were traveling to Iquitos with to sell, and they probably would have lost the canoe if we hadn’t arrived. They were several days from home and had now lost their income and their transportation.
We hailed some kids passing by in a canoe and paid them with soda and crackers to tow the bailed out canoe to their community nearby to be retrieved later. We then took the family and caught up with the offending large boat which had not stopped or slowed down (Also a picture on Flickr). Jess and I realized as we pulled up that there was a big red cross on the side and the words “Chosen Vessel.” When we pulled up alongside (they refused to stop), we could clearly see white people inside the cabin. We assume that these people were either missionaries or on some sort of religious tour. Either way, they were very reluctant to deal with our group and didn’t want to take any responsibility for the damage caused by their waves. Eventually the family just got off our boat and forced their way onto the “Chosen Vessel” with their stuff and we drove away, leaving them to negotiate some sort of compromise, but we felt quite embarrassed for the behavior of our fellow Americans.
The second story comes from within the city. There is a construction going up on the water just outside the La Pascana hostel, where we spent our first couple weeks in Iquitos. Our friend Nick (a fellow Fulbrighter) is visiting this week and we were walking along the waterfront boulevard when we stopped to look at the construction. We noticed a sign on the front that had a website address so we decided to check it out when we got back to the apartment. It turns out that this is a project to build a giant Egyptian-modeled floating pyramid. There are lots of pictures on the website, as well as a seemingly stream-of-consciousness description. Our favorite section is this one:
“I believe that Ayahuasca sets up a channel between ourselves and higher intelligences so I do not claim the architectural creativity is mine - I consider the project a blueprint from the Gods, or certainly higher alien intelligence. I have no architectural or engineering training or experience. Often I'd take some Ayahuasca and ask it questions like how do I join this piece of wood to this piece of wood? The Ayahuasca always provided the answers.”
May be the Indiana Jones movie wasn’t too far off with its aliens and pyramids in the Amazon. After he builds the pyramid, this guy intends to float it to the far side of the river (if he can finish in 2 weeks before the river drops!), anchor it, and turn it into a meditation/spirituality/ayahuasca retreat complex. With coffee, a gym, and wireless internet of course. There is a British Flag on top of the structure, so it doesn’t seem to be an American production.
Nick noticed the same thing we’ve seen with Iquitos tourists- there are two distinct crowds. One is the older, wealthier travels, here for an ecotour in the “Jungle”. The other is the young, dreadlocked ayahuasca crowd, usually as part of the next step in their experimental drug use. Out on the river, you’re more likely to run into a missionary or a businessman. So people tend to be confused when we introduce ourselves as interns with a Peruvian governmental organization.
On our last trip on the Rio Nanay, we came around a bend to see a canoe full of water with a man and a woman holding on to the side (There is a picture on the second of the 3 Flickr website links to the right). We pulled alongside and bailed out the canoe, helped the people on board our boat, and retrieved as much of their floating cargo as we could (lots of limes). The mother was hysterical until we found their young daughter hanging on to a tree on the side of the river upstream. It turned out that a large passing boat (which we could still see going around the next bend as we arrived) had swamped them with its passing wave. They had lost their peque-peque motor (costs several hundred soles) and most of the cargo they were traveling to Iquitos with to sell, and they probably would have lost the canoe if we hadn’t arrived. They were several days from home and had now lost their income and their transportation.
We hailed some kids passing by in a canoe and paid them with soda and crackers to tow the bailed out canoe to their community nearby to be retrieved later. We then took the family and caught up with the offending large boat which had not stopped or slowed down (Also a picture on Flickr). Jess and I realized as we pulled up that there was a big red cross on the side and the words “Chosen Vessel.” When we pulled up alongside (they refused to stop), we could clearly see white people inside the cabin. We assume that these people were either missionaries or on some sort of religious tour. Either way, they were very reluctant to deal with our group and didn’t want to take any responsibility for the damage caused by their waves. Eventually the family just got off our boat and forced their way onto the “Chosen Vessel” with their stuff and we drove away, leaving them to negotiate some sort of compromise, but we felt quite embarrassed for the behavior of our fellow Americans.
The second story comes from within the city. There is a construction going up on the water just outside the La Pascana hostel, where we spent our first couple weeks in Iquitos. Our friend Nick (a fellow Fulbrighter) is visiting this week and we were walking along the waterfront boulevard when we stopped to look at the construction. We noticed a sign on the front that had a website address so we decided to check it out when we got back to the apartment. It turns out that this is a project to build a giant Egyptian-modeled floating pyramid. There are lots of pictures on the website, as well as a seemingly stream-of-consciousness description. Our favorite section is this one:
“I believe that Ayahuasca sets up a channel between ourselves and higher intelligences so I do not claim the architectural creativity is mine - I consider the project a blueprint from the Gods, or certainly higher alien intelligence. I have no architectural or engineering training or experience. Often I'd take some Ayahuasca and ask it questions like how do I join this piece of wood to this piece of wood? The Ayahuasca always provided the answers.”
May be the Indiana Jones movie wasn’t too far off with its aliens and pyramids in the Amazon. After he builds the pyramid, this guy intends to float it to the far side of the river (if he can finish in 2 weeks before the river drops!), anchor it, and turn it into a meditation/spirituality/ayahuasca retreat complex. With coffee, a gym, and wireless internet of course. There is a British Flag on top of the structure, so it doesn’t seem to be an American production.
Nick noticed the same thing we’ve seen with Iquitos tourists- there are two distinct crowds. One is the older, wealthier travels, here for an ecotour in the “Jungle”. The other is the young, dreadlocked ayahuasca crowd, usually as part of the next step in their experimental drug use. Out on the river, you’re more likely to run into a missionary or a businessman. So people tend to be confused when we introduce ourselves as interns with a Peruvian governmental organization.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Indiana Jones... in the Amazon! (-Andrew)
The first was in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” when the theater was full of Asian Americans who provided running commentary throughout the movie.
The second was watching “Bend it Like Beckham” in
The third was last night in the
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Some Memorable and Favorite Moments from a recent trip to the Communities (-Jess)
When Mariela or Eblis Jr. or Jose would get in the hammock and snuggle with me, and show me Cat’s Cradle games, or play with my hair, or tell me stories about their day, or just wiggle around until they’d eventually fall asleep on me.
Watching Candy (an otherwise relaxed pup) romp around from one side of the trail to the other just like my dog Sassy when she gets to go for a walk in the woods when Freddie and his dad took us out to their chacra to show us all the things that they grow (yucca, corn, sugar cane, plants for fiber, strange fruits that I don’t remember the name of but were pretty tasty, medicinal plants, and lots of other stuff) and Freddie cut us some sugar cane while Eblis dug yucca. I am definitely going to have a garden if I ever end up owning any land.
Finding myself alone in the forest after the rest of the group had moved off to another part of the chambira plot, walking a row of marker-sticks and painting the tips red and listening to the quiet and the forest noises and feeling the changes in temperature as I moved under different kinds of trees.
Listening to happy squeals from ever-growing groups of kids as we’d pull out the next game or activity (Red Rover, Frisbee, making cards, doing origami, playing Crazy 8’s or Old Maid or Memory, singing silly songs, Andrew flinging them into the river almost as fast as they could rush back and climb up on him again). Spending the afternoons playing, and realizing that even when we go back home to the States, there will be a village out there in the Amazon where a generation of kids know our names.
Watching the silhouette of a rat tight-rope-walk on a clothes line directly above my mosquito net and hoping he would not fall.
Going out to cut and measure rows with Don Uber and Doña Emma and 40 or so other people and trying to figure out how to manage my 15-foot measuring stick in the undergrowth without whacking into trees or people while they highly entertained themselves teaching us naughty words in Iquito. Now, despite the fact that there are only 20 or so people left in the world that speak this almost extinct language, Andrew and I can now say moderately obscene things. (Isn't that always one of the first things you're taught when learning a new language?) They taught us some other useful stuff too; “I’m cold” is one of my favorites because it sounds something like “Keeshy-mooshy”.
Coming home from working in the community work day and being tired enough and comfortable enough to fall deeply asleep in the hammock on the porch in the early afternoon and waking up to see 5 other people asleep in hammocks on the porch with me.
Watching Angela’s family dye their chambira fibers: Freddy was sent to pick normal-looking leaves from their backyard, Eblis Jr. ground them into a pulp that turned bright red, Angela got the water boiling and Freddy added some salt, Mariela kept stealing spoonfuls of soup that had been moved aside to make room for the dye on the fire, little Jose walked around pointing up to indicate he'd heard an airplane pass overhead, Juan Carlos worked on a stitching a basket, Eblis Sr. cleaned and sorted his fishing gear for a trip up to the lake that afternoon, and Andrew and I watched wishing that we knew how to do things too.
Watching from the bridge as the tiniest little sliver of thumbnail moon set over palm trees and the river below, while a cool breeze was blowing and I could hear everyone greeting each other as they passed on their way home from playing soccer or talking with neighbors, while little candle lights started popping out of the deepening dusk to light thatched houses where families were gathering for the night.
Watching Candy (an otherwise relaxed pup) romp around from one side of the trail to the other just like my dog Sassy when she gets to go for a walk in the woods when Freddie and his dad took us out to their chacra to show us all the things that they grow (yucca, corn, sugar cane, plants for fiber, strange fruits that I don’t remember the name of but were pretty tasty, medicinal plants, and lots of other stuff) and Freddie cut us some sugar cane while Eblis dug yucca. I am definitely going to have a garden if I ever end up owning any land.
Finding myself alone in the forest after the rest of the group had moved off to another part of the chambira plot, walking a row of marker-sticks and painting the tips red and listening to the quiet and the forest noises and feeling the changes in temperature as I moved under different kinds of trees.
Listening to happy squeals from ever-growing groups of kids as we’d pull out the next game or activity (Red Rover, Frisbee, making cards, doing origami, playing Crazy 8’s or Old Maid or Memory, singing silly songs, Andrew flinging them into the river almost as fast as they could rush back and climb up on him again). Spending the afternoons playing, and realizing that even when we go back home to the States, there will be a village out there in the Amazon where a generation of kids know our names.
Watching the silhouette of a rat tight-rope-walk on a clothes line directly above my mosquito net and hoping he would not fall.
Going out to cut and measure rows with Don Uber and Doña Emma and 40 or so other people and trying to figure out how to manage my 15-foot measuring stick in the undergrowth without whacking into trees or people while they highly entertained themselves teaching us naughty words in Iquito. Now, despite the fact that there are only 20 or so people left in the world that speak this almost extinct language, Andrew and I can now say moderately obscene things. (Isn't that always one of the first things you're taught when learning a new language?) They taught us some other useful stuff too; “I’m cold” is one of my favorites because it sounds something like “Keeshy-mooshy”.
Coming home from working in the community work day and being tired enough and comfortable enough to fall deeply asleep in the hammock on the porch in the early afternoon and waking up to see 5 other people asleep in hammocks on the porch with me.
Watching Angela’s family dye their chambira fibers: Freddy was sent to pick normal-looking leaves from their backyard, Eblis Jr. ground them into a pulp that turned bright red, Angela got the water boiling and Freddy added some salt, Mariela kept stealing spoonfuls of soup that had been moved aside to make room for the dye on the fire, little Jose walked around pointing up to indicate he'd heard an airplane pass overhead, Juan Carlos worked on a stitching a basket, Eblis Sr. cleaned and sorted his fishing gear for a trip up to the lake that afternoon, and Andrew and I watched wishing that we knew how to do things too.
Watching from the bridge as the tiniest little sliver of thumbnail moon set over palm trees and the river below, while a cool breeze was blowing and I could hear everyone greeting each other as they passed on their way home from playing soccer or talking with neighbors, while little candle lights started popping out of the deepening dusk to light thatched houses where families were gathering for the night.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Haikus for San Antonio (-Jess)
Andrew says I'll do anything to get out of writing a blog post. I have resorted to bad poetry. We've put up a bunch of pictures and videos from this past trip at the links on the right, and those will probably help fill out the story if these expertly penned Haikus leave something to be desired. :-)
Ode to My Hammock
Soft, swinging hammock
Fit me, 3 kids, a monkey,
Until someone peed.
Upon teaching a new game
30 jungle kids
Squealing during Red Rover-
“Send the big Gringo”
The worst part
Approached by drunk men,
Peaceful moment smashed- lost, and
nothing can be done?
Adapted Quote from Andrew W. Roe
“could this be heaven;
they treat us like we're special
but don’t expect much”
Philosophical moments in the Mosquito Net
Frisky rats tonight.
Lying awake I wonder
what will happen next.
Modern evangelism
New TV next door
Shows U.S. movies loudly
Now kids play war games
Family time after dinner in San Antonio
After dark we sit
talking, singing by candles.
I want life like this.
Thoughts on Culture
What does it mean when
a teenage boy is thrilled by
a coloring book?
Thoughts on Societies
When all that you have
is the Land and your neighbors
living gets more real.
Who is this Woman and Why should You Care? (by Andrew)
The lady in this picture is Marina Silva, until recently the head of Brazil’s environmental agency. The BBC and NPR reported last week that she had resigned from her post in protest of the government’s environmental policies. She has been the head of the agency since the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) took office in 2003 and has been a staunch defender of the Amazon rainforest. Many people involved in environmental protection are saying that her resignation is a major setback for the rainforest in Brazil and that the country is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment.Marina Silva grew up in a wood-plank house built on stilts (like the ones we stay in) without electricity, phones or health care in the Amazonian state of Acre. She never attended school and helped her father, a rubber tapper.In the mid-1970’s, the government land agency divided the land and gave small plots to rubber tappers, forcing her family to become subsistence farmers. As a girl she suffered from malaria (at least 5 times), hepatitis, and mercury poisoning. She was sent to the city of Rio Branco for treatment at age 14 and eventually moved into a convent, where she learned to read, write, and was influenced by the sense of social justice of the nuns. She became involved with organizing sit-ins on unclaimed land and articulating an agenda to “Save the Amazon”- providing security both for the forest and for the people who lived there and engaged in nondestructive economic activities. She won election to the state legislature in 1990 on a platform of advocating sustainable development, then the federal Senate in 1994. She was a national heroine and when she became Minister of the Environment after Lula won election, she was a symbol that anyone could achieve anything in Brazil.
However, it quickly became obvious that President Lula was more concerned with economic development than conservation or environmental protection, and Silva was often frustrated by more powerful ministries and didn’t get funding to enforce existing laws, much less implement new policies. In recent years she has been overruled in her opposition to genetically modified grains, the construction of a new nuclear power plant as well as several government infrastructure projects in the Amazon rainforest, including two big hydroelectric dams on the River Madeira, and a major new road. She was also believed to be dismayed at the recent appointment of another minister to act as a coordinator for the government's newly announced strategy for the Amazon. In January, the Brazilian government announced a huge rise in the rate of Amazon deforestation. Satellite imaging revealed that in the last five months of 2007, 3,235 sq km (1,250 sq miles) were lost., because rising commodity prices are encouraging farmers to clear more land to plant crops such as soya. Marina Silva has blamed the increasing deforestation across the Brazilian Amazon on cattle ranchers and farmers.
Meanwhile, a founder of Brazil's Green Party, Carlos Minc, has been named as the country's new environment minister from the state of Rio de Janeiro (not in the Amazon). However, senior officials in the government say they are determined to stick with the “Sustainable” Amazon Plan - based on large-scale development of roads, waterways and dams (the quotes are mine). The resignation of Mariana Silva is a very bad sign for environmental advocacy within Brazil and the development path it appears to be taking.
The area shown in squares below represents the 4.1 million square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon and shows how much has been cleared or is at risk. Each square measures 2,500 square kilometers.
- Light brown is land cleared by deforestation 1970-2007
- Dark brown is land likely to be lost by deforestation and drought by 2030 (WWF 2007)
- Green is untouched forest
- (the black box shows the size of California)
Information Sources:
“The Last Forest” by Mark London and Brian Kelly (2007)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7399715.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7402254.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7206165.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7360258.stm
Monday, May 12, 2008
Check out the Latest Batch of Photos!
We've just returned from what might be our last extended trip to the villages and have put up a bunch of new pictures. We're still working on the videos and blog entry (stay tuned), but we wanted to let you know where to find the photos since we had to make yet another site for them. (We keep running into our quota.) The top link under "Pictures on Flickr" in the side bar to the right goes to the most recent pictures.
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