Last Weeks in Iquitos and Moving On (Andrew)

After getting back from our last trip to San Antonio and Atalaya, we launched into our last 2 weeks in Iquiotos with all the frantic energy, strategic planning, and stress brought on by a swiftly approaching deadline. We gave the voluteers from the program we were helping organize a little time off, before dragging them to the office to talk about their experiences living in communities for 2 months, figure out the details of their independent projects for the next 2 months, order their food and supplies for the field, and (most importantly for us) clean up and difçgitally store the information from their interviews in the communities. This last step ended up taking longer than expected, both from database technical difficulties and the sheer amount of data, so we found ourselves staying later and later each evening.


In addition to overseeing the data entry and answering questions (while struggling to keep them focused), Jess and I each had our own projecs to wrap up. Jess´s spare moments were consumed with writing up a plan (in Spanish) to modify the interview system we sent the volunteers with into a shortened, dividable form that would be easier both for future voluteers to carry out in 2 months and for the PROCREL feild team to piece together during short trips to other communities. I was usually found converting the volunteers´ hand-drawn resource use maps to digital forms, and overlaying their GPS points and written information on top of it for PROCREL to use in their master planning.


On the second-to-last Saturday we had a small going-away lunch at our friends Sergio and Maghali´s house. It was a nice way to share anticuchos, presents, and silly Long-family "tail" races before most of the team headed out for a long trip to the field. We worked increasingly frantically over the last week, eating delicious lunches prepared by the wonderful Elsa in the office kitchen, and tking over vacant computers for the volunteers. In the blank spaces between tasks, Jess and I took ourselves out for juice and cake breaks and delivered the furniture and cooking equipment from our apartment that we had silent-auctioned off. After work we packed up our other things and realized that they had been reproducing on their own when we weren´t looking. Our bags packed to the brim, we had to send a box by mail to meet us in Lima (the mail gets out of Iquitos a lot faster than it comes in- the box arrived before we sent the Fulbright commission an email to let them know it was on its way!)


After a sleepless Friday night, we "finished" our work (or at least got it to a place where we felt we could leave it) late Saturday. At that point we were ready for a good night of sleep, but we were convinced by our friends Pam and Cesar to go out to some of the bars and dance clubs that we had successfully avoided to that point. After several never-ending pitchers of less than stellar "jungle drinks" and an only slightly better drag show, we staggered home for a few hours sleep and a miserable-feeling morning finishing the packing. We did have a nice late lunc with Pam and Cesar befoire checking out of the apartment, taking some last-minute photos and making our last trip to the Iquitos airport. It was a little heart-wrenching to pass by familiar places for the last time, but we´ve promised ourselves that we´ll come back. This was a little surprising for me, because, as I told Jess, there were some points in the trip where I was pretty sure I wouldn´t be sad to go.


Pam and Cesar saw us off at the airport and as we waited in the departure lounge teh sun went down over the palm trees and rusted hulks of old planes along the runway. A fresh group got off our plane as it arrived, and we smiled t the gringos taking pictures of themselves and then we listened patiently to American high schoolers talking about the wonders of playing soccer and seeing monkeys during their week-long trip to an area we worked in.


We passed through our comfortable stand-by hostel in Lima before dropping off half our stuff at the Fulbright Commission and catching a bus to Huaraz, where we find ourselves now. It feels like we´ve just finished a long 2 weeks of final exams and are settling in for a cold Christmas break. Except it´s early July. There are ice-capped peaks to the east of us and we are using ALL of our warm-weather clothing. We´re going to spend a couple days adjusting to the altitude, catching up with a fellow Fulbrighter doing research here, and getting our gear in order before heading out to the mountians for some backpacking.


In some ways it´s a difficult transition. Even though we had several weeks winding down, it felt like we left abruptly and just as we were really getting involved in the meat of our work. It´s hard not to judge everything in these new cities against Iquitos (it really is a completely different culture here) or compare ourselves to the multitudes of gringo backpackers passing through, but we´re going to make the most of our last weeks in Peru and take it all in. We´re really looking forward to getting back to see family and enjoy the end of the tomato season. For those of you who haven´t heard, we both got jobs in the Asheville/Hendersonville area, Jess with the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy and me with the Nature Conservancy, which we´ll be starting after Labor Day.