From the Amazon to Quito: A little bit about Humanized Births

Well, after a long hiatus from the blogosphere, it's time I do a little updating about some of the exciting work I/we have been up to with Jungle Mamas. We are on our second round of birth apprenticeships with three Jungle Mamas participants at the fabulous Clinica la Primavera (the first round of participants are pictured above with Dr. Diego Alarcon, founder of the clinic). 


First, I would like to provide some contextual information about Clinica la Primavera. It was founded by Dr. Diego Alarcon and his wife (and an incredible doula), Lili Ruales.  They started the clinic because the existing westernized birth model is one that disempowers the lived experience of the mother, baby, and father, medicalizing a very natural process by placing all power into the hands of doctors and hospitals (who are so often bogged down by protocols and procedures that they forget the human element).  They work with mothers and fathers-to-be from early on in the pregnancy in establishing an emotional and loving connection among all individuals involved, with the primary goal to eliminate the mother's fear so that the birth process is safe and removes the possibility of trauma in the experience. Their approach is called "el parto humanizado" or the "humanized birth," and has garnered international attention from people as famous and revolutionary as Robbie Davis-Floyd. She has published an excellent and useful book known as _Birth Models that Work_ and will soon be following up with a second volume that includes a chapter featuring Clinica la Primavera. If I were to ever find myself pregnant in Ecuador (and may that not happen for a *very long* time), I would most certainly put my faith and birth experience in the hands of the doctors and doulas of Clinica la Primavera. I would most certainly (and have) recommend it to friends and colleagues who are/will be/have been pregnant here in Ecuador. 


So, having such a wonderful reputation both recognized at the local and global levels, the alliance between Clinica la Primavera and Jungle Mamas seems a perfect fit. One of the goals in the program I work for is to empower both Achuar men and women with the birth experience and to provide them with the information necessary to assure a safe birth and an informed response in the case of a birth emergency.  From the Safe Birth and Family Health workshops we have conducted in the Achuar communities, there have been a handfull of people who have stepped up to the plate and are actively attending to the births of the people in their communities. These people have shown commitment and an ability to attend births, hence we have been collaborating with Clinica la Primavera by sending these people to do birth apprenticeships (and to get more hands-on experience).

The Sounds of Home here and there

Sitting in the café with friends,
listening to the upbeat cadence of a Bird tune
pulsating through the room, whiskey's fiery tongue
tripling on the triplets of the sharp brassy jazz sound.
Tap
Tap
Tapping her foot on the floor,
ticking her nails against the icy glass
Right on the two and four.
Transported back to a time
When, as young children, 
Instead of kissing behind the bleachers
They inhaled their sandwiches
with great anticipation
of the collective groove they would soon create
Oh the room, how it percolated
with yeahs! And woos!
Bouncing off the foam walls
As each one ripped through their solo
That brass section is gassy!
Here comes the sax soli
And the rhythm section has the groove in the pocket
Traveling, winning awards, and infecting audiences
Giving them a grade-A soul vaccination
Every Tuesday after school,
the children made a maiden voyage to Oaktown
In search of a higher groove
To find hours and hours of harmonies
Among all ages all colors all religions
This voyage, though they did not know it then,
Would take them beyond their years and time together
Across oceans and through different foreign tongues
Sometimes in faraway places
yet always reminding them, bringing them back home
Back to the Bay


She sits and things - how marvelous it is
To be hearing the sounds of home faraway
here in this little enclave high in the Andes
She is caught up in nostalgic thoughts
and syncopated movements 
When someone opens the door,
causing the maroon mist of memory to disperse
She is transported forward to the present
Back within herself, hack to her foreign body,
Her foreign nationality
Who are you and where did you come from?
She wonders, half asking herself and half asking the newcomer,
Who has been caught up in the whirring frenzy of arrival
The tranquility of the dolphin's dance has rudely ceased
She looks into the glass, focusing on the rhythmic clinking
Tlink clink of the ice cubes along with the cymbals
The golden glow of the whiskey gleaming in unison with the horns
The room reharmonizes to incorporate the new stranger
and a new sound is born
Transforming, shifting, and undulating to somethin' else
A new feeling, a new affect that is easily read upon the face
Dissonance and resonance ring through
Hitting dep going beyond the boundaries of physical space
the right chord payed at the right moment,
with the right intention and the right feel
Can change a person forever
Can move across the cultural valleys flowing rivers of languages
Can fool you into thinking you are home
She sat listening and absorbing the waves
Strangely transfixed
Enchanted by the prelude to a memory
opening up countless possibilities
Countless places countless faces
Thanks to the maiden voyage of a dream
A dream that is fleeting and yet never dies. 
A dream of home near and far.

The Importance of Intuition in Jungle Work

Intuition. Are you listening to it? Oftentimes not. How can we, when we keep our world so full of preocupations - the internet, world events, social mundanities/obligations, work, stress, etc? It's somewhat akin to a little candle; sometimes we're able to keep it lit and other times it gets blown out by the winds of distraction. Sometimes it flares up and burns bright, reminding us -- "Hey! I'm here!" amidst the darkness of quotidian chaos and confusion. There are times when we willfully blow it out because the message it brings is far from what we desire. We force it to shine a certain way in order to bring light to shadows that shouldn't be revealed or to bring darkness to those that should be in the clear.

Last week, I was reminded just how strongly that little light can burn and how the choice to recognize its existence can potentially cost you your life. On Monday, I was going to canoe down the Copataza river with a co-worker, one carved out of a tree trunk to visit various indigenous communities along the river. It had been raining very hard throughout the province of Pastaza, causing many rivers and their estuaries to rise and shake their fluid fists at their shores and at the trees.

We drove to the community of Miraflores where we would lower ourselves into the canoe and navigate the river. A paved road led us to what seemed like the middle of nowhere and we suddenly come upon a community of Kichwas and mestizos (colonists or colonos). We walk to the iver and our jaws drop as we observe that the river has reached above the tree line, and not a single boulder or stone under the surface was visible. Looking at the river and its muddy texture reminds me of the chocolate river from the movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except not nearly as inviting or sweet. We all looked at each other: the gringa, the kichwa, the achuar, the mestizo and said "there's no way we're risking our lives in that!" The plan was to return at dawn the following morning to see if the level had gotten any lower.

On the drive back in the pouring rain, we discover a young indigenous leader had just passed away, and I was reminded of the time that I was trapped in Pumpuentsa for 30 hours because the airplane could not land in the community due to torrential rainstorms. We had given away all of our food and were going crazy with anticipation and doubt. I had never seen it rain so hard. Just that day, a young man had died in a neighboring community after taking floripondio (the plant datura), which is a plant often used for spiritual journeys and drowning in the river. A friend of mine from the community told me that whenever a strong person dies, it will usually downpour the next day to represent the energy of that person making its full circle from life to death.  The death of this indigenous leader must have been the cause of this rainstorm, one so powerful as to cost the lives of 14 other people and disappearance of 3 people in flash floods in Puyo, Pastaza. It was a day of reckoning with mother nature. The fluid forces of water had made its power and superiority known to everyone, and our excitement for the Amazon adventure was reduced to a desire to retreat back to the mountainous and welcoming cradle of Quito.

Back in Puyo, we visited the Achuar federation's offices (NAE) and conversed briefly with one of the leaders. He says: "It's not worth it. One shouldn't force trips in frog season" (aka don't have grand expectations for plans into the jungle when it's rainy season). That stuck with us. And so the great adventure was suspended for another season, one where the frogs would not come out to mock us as we struggle through the current.  I was incredibly disappointed. Our adventure was going to be fantastic - we were going to Achuar communities to talk about sustainable fish farming and the social impacts of oil extraction and exploitation, in addition to hunting peccary (and eating it!); truly a different type of jungle adventure. But thinking back to the Achuar leader, it really is necessary to not have high expectations in the jungle of your plans carrying through. You never know what kind of curve ball nature is going to throw you, and it's best to be finely attuned to your intuition and to pay attention to the signs around you. Fir this trip, all signs were pointing to "do not enter," and thankfully we were listening.

Working in the jungle requires patience, flexibility, and a keen sense of intuition. If you don't have one, you certainly learn to cultivate it, because not listening to it could mean an extra several days trapped in a community without food, or worse, trying to rush flying out of that community in bad weather and risking a plane or canoe crash. And if some sort of a complication results in your plans getting destroyed, you have to just shrug "oh well, that's nature." This is the general attitude that people have and it's a pretty good one; for if you don't have high expectations and if you pay attention to your intuition, perhaps you will be able to negate disappointment altogether. A valuable lesson learned indeed.

The Nightmare of Deforestation, Oil, and Toucans

I just have to write down this one dream because it left me feeling quite unsettled this morning.

I dreamt that my colleagues, some friends, and I went on a brief trip to some very remote part of the jungle. It wasn't too remote in the sense that you had to get there by airplane, but there was a road, that once you walked a bit off the pavement, you could see the most beautiful primary forest. It was a preserve of some kind and I was here with these people specifically with the purpose of enjoying it's rare beauty.

We all stayed in a hostel (kind of ironic) and woke up the next day to go get bus tickets back to Quito. I decided to go for a run down the road to buy the group tickets. It was easy at first, I was running with great ease and speed, but then I came upon the choking traffic of dump trucks, logging trucks, and oil rigs whose exhaust affected me so much that I nearly passed out and almost got hit by a truck. I finally reached the place to buy tickets (which looked a lot like the main street for this suburb of Quito called Cumbayá). I had to search for the tickets in between music records (curiously, I found the tickets in an album recorded with John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders called "Meditations" which in real life, I've been listening to). I run back to the people in the hostel and we all decide to walk to the bus station, which is probably a mile away from the hostel. The group sort of separates, and I'm walking with an unfamiliar person when we come upon this beautiful little plot of semi-deforested land. We are sad, but all of the sudden we see that there are two beautiful toucans and two puffins (totally not found in the Amazon, but whatever). They are sitting there, disaffected by the seemingly recent absence of trees. It was almost as if they were saying: "so what if our trees were cut down, we are still beautiful." I continued to walk with the stranger and we finally caught up with the rest of the group, still somewhat reeling from the beautiful and extremely rare sight we had stumbled upon (where I work in the jungle, you don't see toucans because they have gone so deep into the jungle. Someone told me that dreaming of toucans is a sign that some very positive change will happen, usually having to do with the heart).

The group is walking when suddenly the road forks off and ends in a chain-link fence with barbed wire. We continue along the non-fenced-in path and realize we are lost. The path ends and the view at the end of it is terrifying. We are standing on a small mountain (el monte) and overlook what should be beautiful and untouched primary forest. As we look down into the valley, we see bubbling pits and men digging with machines to create new ones. Illegal oil excavation and extraction. We realize that these men are "oil poachers" (that's what we called them in the dream) and if they realized a bunch of environmentally-conscious Ecuadorians and gringos were watching them, they would probably shoot us on the spot. We keep walking until we reach another dead end with yet another group of oil poachers. This happens several times until we reach a different fork in the road, where there are a bunch of gringo children playing with a piñata and having a picnic with their wealthy parents. By this time we are exhausted and fearing for our lives, so seeing these people brings us great relief. Two little girls run up to us and we ask for help. In their seemingly unaware and naive state, they point us to another path that will get us back on the road. It is blocked and we must climb over the tall barbed wire fence. When it is my turn, I almost cross it, when suddenly a gigantic purple and venomous centipede jumps out at the place where I am putting my leg and I narrowly escape a very sad ending.

We make it back to the bus station, silenced by the shock of seeing so many oil poachers. I just kept thinking: "what the hell do we do about what we just saw?" This was a place that was supposed to be legally protected by the government as un-excavatable territory, and yet, it was clearly being destroyed. I think it has to do with an underlying fear that once this road called the Trans-Cutucu comes into Achuar territory (an area that has decidedly kept out oil excavation and extraction) and very very close to the communities I work in, people are going to have to think of new ways to prevent "oil poaching" from happening, and to not get blinded by the short-term wealth that comes along with deforestation and oil extraction. Ugh. What a curious way to start wednesday.

The Other Other

27/1/11
Enter the Other.
One is overtaken by green. An awkward duck couple waddles by, cautiously approaching the anxious and paranoid parrot who is walking sideways. He's struggling to use his beak to grasp hold of a wooden stump. The smell of fresh rain moisture moss curls into one's nose amidst the constant churtling of birds. There's a flash of yellow that catches the eye - maybe it's a parrot that's passing by. The flash and click and behind it there is a pallid and portly German tourist.

Under the tweets and crackling tree and animal life, the muffled lull of a vallenato song can be heard - a sensitive and lonesome male is calling out to his mate for her to return to him. His call is one of remorse, a tone distinct and unique to his species - "I may have wronged you, but you are my everything." The female joins him in his call in a harmony a third above his tone and eventually gives in to the call of her unfaithful mate, thus committing themselves to an endless cycle of betrayal. Such is the mating pattern of this human species.

By maintaining a most quiet and disaffected disposition - careful to not give up one's camouflaged position,  one can distinguish the rare, high-pitched call of Western German dialects. The volume is high and seems to be one of great enthusiasm, as the males seem to be discussing the wild birds they have seen and the women proceed to torture the awkward duck couple by chasing them around in circles.  It becomes apparent that this group is about to engage in ritual of exchange and fraternization, which takes place in a wooden container full of hot water - an act that can only take place when actors are partially nude.

Upon entering this heated space, their weathered and travel-torn bodies are transformed into steamy and red fleshy masses. The volume and pitch of their calls becomes noticeably lowered and they discuss about how they are feeling "grounded," "rooted", and "at peace" with this concept they seem to call "the self." Once their transformation has finished, their tendency to chase semi-domestic waterfowl appears to diminish significantly. For what reason has these rare and foreign species migrated to this land? Perhaps they are in search of something: another mate, to accumulate a set of exotic experiences, objects, and stories to recount to their people, or perhaps it is to find this misplaced "self" (note for further investigation: look into the existence of "self trees").

Exit Other. Enter the Other Other. The Other Other smashes the fourth wall of the Other's stage.

Sitting in this hammock makes me realize just how sunburned and exposed I am to getting eaten alive by mosquitos.  It's been a long day and I've had a lot of time to reflect (that happens here, in "nature") and I think I'll treat myself to a hot tub in the hostel later. It's been a long day - we woke up at 2:30 am to meet with the intercultural health leader of the ministry of health in Macas, the first city founded in the Ecuadorian Amazon - and it's time to relax. I sometimes find myself sitting in a still moment and listening to the sounds of my surroundings. Not living in the jungle or subjungle areas (aka the city of Puyo) on a regular basis, I can't help but find myself exoticizing my environment: insects, birds, and plant sounds - you just can't help but become more AWARE.  I get seduced by the "jungleyness" and forget about the actual context sometimes. It's easy to lose yourself in the little created environments - hostels or parks that are clearly urbanized yet manage to elude you into thinking you're in THE JUNGLE (the Jungle where tigers, toucans, and snakes live) and then you look over to the right and see some tourists taking pictures. For a moment, I had this immediate reaction of "silly foreign people, taking pictures of the 'wild' macaw parrot in the hostel garden, this seemingly 'unauthentic' space of jungleness" and then I remember that *I* am a silly foreigner sitting in the weird jungle space, taking it all in. Even when I'm somewhere else in Ecuador and I see a particularly gringo-ized group of tourists, I tend to think "wow, look at those funny gringos. They stick out like sore thumbs." And I immediately remind myself of the fact that I am a relatively pale-skinned blonde gringa and every time I step into a cab, I hear: "Are you here on vacation? How long? Your spanish is good! What country are you from? Do you have a boyfriend? That'll be $5 [when it should only be 2.50]." Sometimes the "Jungle" makes you forget where you are. Oh well.

Exit Other [somewhat disgruntled] Other.

From the Concrete Jungle to the Cinnamon City

Well, I am back in Puyo, after taking a long [unwanted] jungle hiatus in Quito for over 2 months. I have to say that Quito is one of those places where after spending too much time within the city limits, you viscerally feel it eating away at you.  Some attribute it to constant lead poisoning in the air, the notion that it is at the center of volcanic energy [or vortices for the woo-woo of heart], or that most of its population never leave the city so it's just full of people ready to burst at the seams. I've heard some sayings and seen some graffiti around Quito (largely diffused by some young and creative Quiteños I've come to know as of late) that addresses this sense of latent locura lingering in the Andean city air. "Some are born with luck, others are born in Quito" or "After I kill myself, I wake up in Quito."

This is not to totally cast a negative light on Quito, it most certainly has it's secrets and treasures, but it is so easy to feel trapped by life within the little Andean city and to become blind to the beauty, complications, and different little worlds that exist within the country. For example, it's easy to get in a tizzy over petty social life yet once you leave the reality of the city and become immersed into another, (where, for example, people struggle on a daily basis to not have their children get gravely ill and to keep them properly nourished), you begin to put things into perspective. Not to say that one must feel guilty, but sometimes certain issues become frivolous by comparison. As aware as I have to be on a constant basis about these different spaces, realities, and dreams, I must say that it is difficult at times to keep them in perspective. Spending so much time in Quito somehow left me feeling disconnected with the work I do in the jungle, with the Achuar, despite the fact that I work on planning, organization, and coodinating for this program every day.

So as fate should so thankfully have it, I find myself in Puyo again, embarking on another leg of the Jungle Mama's journey (when I say Jungle Mamas or Ikiama Nukuri, I am referring to the intercultural women and community health program I am working on with the Achuar of Morona-Santiago aka the driving force for being down here...see other entries).  We are here to make alliances with the Ministry of Public Health, specifically their intercultural health branch and to broaden the collaboration with community health and safe birth workshops. This trip will be an exciting one for making alliances and taking important steps forward, so I should be writing with more frequency!

Notes from the Jungle-ground: monkeys, cockroaches, and Achuar viagra

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, but I did do some writing while I was in Pumpuentsa last time (Nov.). Most of it is huevada (nothing), but eh.

Nov. 5th, 2010
I am sitting in my mosquito net sanctuary writing by candlelight. I hear the creak crack squeak scrak of the jungle outside. No matter how many times I douse my body in the cool water I brought up from the creek, I am still covered in a layer of sweat. There are tiny bugs flying into my face, small enough to fly through the net and get stuck to my sticky skin.

We are here and it feels like always. Normal jungle green hot life. Yet whenever I come here, I am always hit hard by the hum and buzz of life - fertility makes itself known to the five senses.   The mother creation is here, in effect, her name is Nunkui - she is a Shuar/Achuar goddess entity that protects over the garden and blesses it with her fertility.  I am here to work on a maternal health program and am around beautiful mothers and babies all the time, so it is out of my control at times when the greeness and ache of fertility makes its presence known to me. Plants are growing, bugs chirp endlessly - I am surrounded by the reproduction of life.

The yuca plants were singing to me today as I walked through the huerta - a melody that made me aware of the heat and stickiness.

Thunder rolls in the distance now punctuated by bugs and I am slowly melting into my sleeping bag and mosquito net, trying to fend off the heat in order to fall asleep...

Nov. 6th, 2010

We went to my friend's in-law's farm in the jungle. They chopped down a palm tree and gave us the pollen to eat. It was delicious and crunchy...imagine hearts of palm but crunchier! After I stuffed my face with nearly the entire bunch, I asked what is it called and my friend giggled as she said "it's Achuar Viagra.  The Viagra of the jungle! You better watch out this next week!" I nervously shrugged and hoped that she was wrong...if not, Dear God help me.

Nov. 7th, 2010

A green hum
chirp
crack. trrrrrrrrreeeep!
These are the sounds of the jungle.
A flustered chicken walks by, picking fiercely at a discarded termite nest.
My legs are marked with little red spicy bites.
When I come home, will you kiss each one?

Writing by candlelight again
the crickets and cicadas and monkeys make greater poetry
than I ever will
they sing to you of a place
So wet with green
Better than I ever could
I sit here listening to them in my little salty sanctuary
hotter than they will ever be

Where will that little grasshopper jump to?
Upon what branch rests mi mono amiguito?
Is that a bird calling or a bug?
I think if I were a grasshopper, I might jump to you - right into your web.
And become stuck in your glistening net.
It certainly is a better fate than that of the cockroach I just killed -
smote with great precision by the bottom of my flashlight
rigor mortis sets in the pool of cockroach milk.
as the little ants await their midnight gala.
yes, there is creation, birth, and death here!
But this heat is unbearable.
I really must try to sleep.

Puyo Birth Ponderings

I am currently spending my time in Puyo, a small jungle city that has been the launchpad for entry into Amazonian communities for hundreds of years.  On tuesday, I'm leaving early in the morning with the Jungle Mamas team to go back to Pumpuentsa, where we will be giving a workshop on Safe Birthing and Family Health with the women and men we have been working with over the past two years.  The goal has always been to train people locally in being able to identify birth emergencies, attendance and delivery, and illness prevention in mothers and babies, with the objective of reducing the need to travel outside of the community to seek health attention (traveling outside of the community for medical attention means either an expensive airplane flight or a 3 hour hike through think primary forest to a hospital).

The program has indeed been successful - we have seen that the majority of births have been attended to and assisted by the people we have been working with over the past year. However, I have been thinking deeply about what we are doing in the broader context of cultural change.  Previously, women have always gone deep into the forest to give birth by themselves, without the assistance of a mother or a traditional birth attendant or midwife.  If a baby is born irregular-looking, small, or "anormal", it has been the custom to let it die, or leave it in the jungle.  Of course, according to our western ideas about when personhood begins at birth (or somewhere in utero), this sounds unacceptable.  But imagine what the life of a child would be like in an area where there was no reasonable hope of maintaining a good quality of life, or any type of medical attention (western or 'traditional'). Especially from a culture where people literally explain death as "a cause of nature," (so and so couldn't be saved because nature killed them...essentially a cause of nature).  A life where death, like birth, is viewed as a natural process as something that can't necessarily be prevented or intervened with.

As a westerner, myself, engaging in a project that hopes to eliminate maternal and child mortality, there is a lot I have to learn about life and death. Not only how to engage with it on a personal level, but also in an on-the-ground level.  I'm working with people who "traditionally" gave birth alone and by themselves, because it is so sacred, no one (not even family) should look at it. And as any person working in development, community organizing, activism, social change (whatever you choose to call it), you should always be aware and open to learning about traditions and what people practice locally while thinking about how your actions will contribute to "change." However, I am working in a community that is literally amidst the process of change. We're talking about change in the sense that the very first road EVER to enter the territory is already under construction.  There is enough involvement with community leaders moving in and out of the community that new materials, jobs, ideas, medicines, and illnesses are in constant movement.  I'm not working with a stereotypically "traditional" community, but one that has been in the process of grappling with change for years.

My work was made possible by the fact that men and women in the community wanted change - they wanted to learn more about western ways of intervention in birthing - specifically midwifery and illness prevention.  Yet there are still times where I feel like I know nothing. It pains me to hear about the very small select women who continue to hide when they give birth, or hearing about a baby dying of diarrhea, despite all that we have taught.  Change takes time. Also when we think about how different life conditions are in the jungle from the city, we also need to take into account the different logics behind it, instead of writing these situations of as products of "underdeveloped" or "poverty-stricken" societies.

I am reminded of a chapter I read from an ethnography (perhaps one of the most formative in my early life as a student of anthro) in my Introduction to Anthropology class at Reed College. We read Ana Lowenhaupt Tsing's  _In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place_ (you should really read it!) called "Family Planning." As an ethnographer, Tsing encountered a moment where she was forced to recognize her cultural differences and concepts of birth in relation to the Meratus people with whom she was working.  After the premature birth of a child, the mother didn't recognize her child for various reasons, such as not being ready (too young), etc and it eventually died.  As an outsider, this was incredibly difficult for Tsing to deal with - she wanted to (and eventually did) intervene, but was not necessarily conscious of the implications of her actions.  She wanted to save the child, to rescue it, but was not prepared to take responsibility for it's life.  Tsing goes into more depth about the deep cultural differences, but it made me think about my role in intervention.  Yes, culture plays a  huge role in if/how/when/why my intervention is successful.  It is extremely difficult at times for me to understand how death can be seen as so natural, yet I also see that the people I am working with are changing the ways in which they think about life and death. That illness and abrupt death is preventable - it is their right.  So there is some kind of change at work, a change that I am both participating in/facilitating and a change that the people I am working with are participating in/facilitating.  It is change from the outside AND the inside.  And that is simultaneously the most beautiful and most challenging element of my work.

Agua y Vida: Water as a Limitation and Key to Improving Maternal/Community Health

I ask those of you reading this to take a moment and reflect upon your daily relationship with water. Where did your last cup come from? Do you remember the last time you went to a restaurant and they provided you with a nice glass of ice water, free of charge, or even drank from a public water fountain? Or how about the time you came home after a long run and you just grab a cup and fill it with tap water?  If you did this in Quito, Ecuador, you would run the risk of infecting yourself with all types of water-born diseases and parasites. If you live in various parts of the Amazon Rainforest, such as the communities of Pumpuentsa and Kurintsa, and drink the water, you ARE ingesting harmful water organisms.  But isn't the Amazon one of the last places in the world where the air is still fresh, the soil is pure, and the water exists in a pure abundance, you might ask?


Unfortunately, as discussed in the previous post, river water in most parts of the jungle is dangerous.  When it doesn't rain, women often go to the river early in the day to collect water to be used for drinking, cooking, and washing.  Both Kurintsa and Pumpuentsa have a water pump system built by the municipal government years ago. They are systems that require diesel oil to power a motor that pumps water from an underground source and delivers it via pipes to only half of the families in each community. Due to a lack of capacity building and education about the systems, people do not know how to repair the system should it get damaged.   Last April, a branch fell and damaged a pipe connecting the system. It has not been fixed since then, meaning that 271 people have been without pumped water and thus forced to go to the river to collect it from the stream. At 4 pm, families usually make the journey to bathe and wash clothes in the river. Much of this washing is done with soap full of chemicals, making the water foggy and full of suds. Not to mention the contact made with various human and animal wastes.

A comparison of various water collected from the river. The bottle on the far right is purified water brought from outside, or what most people drink in towns and cities. The water in the pots is collected from the river at one of the cleanest times of day.

This water was collected from the river at 1:30, before people bathe, wash clothes, etc. in the afternoon.

Bottled and potable water from "outside" the jungle in comparison to its river counterpart.

In the rainy season, this spring provides people with water in Kurintsa. It is unclear as to how clean it is, as the soil could possibly be contaminated with human waste. In the drier seasons, this spring dries up.

 An abandoned and broken water pump, installed by who knows what development organization in the 90s. It hasn't worked for years, largely due to the fact that no one taught people in the community how to fix the system.

 Local [temporary] solutions for local problems. When we were in Pumpuentsa in early June, we discovered that the community water pumping system had been broken since around the last time we were in the community (April...we didn't break it, btw). The municipal govt has not taught people how to fix the system, so many families have had to collect from the river, OR if they're "lucky" and have tin roofs, they have fashioned systems similar to the one I replicated for us in the community.

It is nearly impossible to improve maternal and child health (let alone health in general) when contaminated water causes so many basic health problems that are easily preventable and treatable. Water is a right. But it appears that some people have more access to these rights than others. Whether they live in the cities and can buy bottled water, have the water truck make weekly deliveries, own filters, or tin roofs, clean water is a scarce resource.  Which in the case of the Amazon Rainforest, seems quite ironic, as water itself exists in abundance. As a part of the Jungle Mamas/Ikiama Nukuri women's health program I'm working on at Fundacion Pachamama, our fabulous team is currently working with the communities of Kurintsa and Pumpuentsa to empower them to come up with long-term solutions to these issues. We have been working with people in the trained birth attendant workshops in teaching them about prevention, treating diarrhea (e.g. oral rehydration prep.), prevention, while simultaneously recognizing the interconnectedness with water.  In July, we have a community grant proposal writing workshop planned, to arm community members (both men and women) with the capacities necessary to create project plan(s) and seek funds to actively search for their own solutions.  Stay tuned for updates!

Organic Dry Toilets in Pumpuentsa

Well, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. I had started this blog entry way back in March, and have decided to finish it, keeping in mind that I have much more updating to do. In the meantime, enjoy!

Here are some photos of the latest trip we made to Pumpuentsa to build one dry composting toilet as a pilot project. This project wouldn't have been possible without the technical expertise and creativity of Chris Canaday, Conservation Biologist and Promoter of EcoSan. For more information on dry toilets and the work he does, please visit his blog here.  There have been great sanitation problems in Pumpuentsa, largely due to an increase in population and thus contamination of natural resources: largely water and soil.  In the past, Achuar families lived farther away from each other and more dispersed throughout the land, but since the creation of airstrips, the spatial organization in the community has concentrated people around the strip.  This puts greater pressure on their land, especially when it comes to the elimination of human waste.  There are no (functioning) toilets or outhouses, so most people deposit their waste beyond their gardens, which contaminates the soil and then the water they drink from the river.  Some years ago, the municipal government installed flushing toilets for some families, but these systems relied on water pumping, which the community did not have. So, many of these toilet systems have been used as storage rooms. Thanks local government, for the infrastructure-without-education-or-capacity-building!

In March, we worked with Chris to install a pilot organic dry toilet, which separates human waste into two parts: urine is redirected through a funnel to create a nitrogen-rich fertilizer while fecal matter is deposited into a rice sack and covered with ash or dry material, which prevents flies from laying eggs and creating an unpleasant smell. After 6 months of resting in a dry location, the contents of the rice sack are completely converted to re-usable soil material! Seriously, check out Chris' site linked earlier in this entry to see some of the cool projects he has done!

Marta stands before the finished dry organic toilet product! She is happy and she and her family have been using it ever since! Hopefully the rest of the community shows interest in this pilot project enough to create a proposal for it! (to be explored further).

A spiritual model of healing or: why doctors should learn about culture

There are so many things we take for granted living as men and women in the United States. Does your health insurance cover birth control? In Ecuador, most insurance policies will not cover oral contraceptives even if it is for a properly diagnosed medical condition. Perhaps you or a loved one has had to use emergency contraception, Plan B? In Ecuador, you cannot find it. The closest thing that comes to plan B here is the rigorous prescription of progestin pills (and this is only used by the most "rogue" of doctors). It seems that the heavy influence of Catholicism in Latin America has put restrictions on the access to certain levels of family planning. Enter machismo. I have spoken to many women who have had difficulties with their boyfriends, husbands, and lovers because they refuse to wear condoms; largely having something to do with the idea that condoms take away your virility. Because of this, the incidence of early pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is particularly high in Ecuador (if you see any sort of STD statistics in Ecuador, you should assume it's higher because most cases go unreported and just as condoms are looked down upon, so are getting blood tests).

At one point since I've been here, I found myself serving as an ally to a young woman (I will refer to her as "Rosa" throughout this entry, which is obviously not her real name) who became pregnant due to a condom malfunction. Living in an extremely traditional and machista family, Rosa feared that her family would beat her and disown her for getting pregnant out of wedlock. The partner was out of the picture as a supportive figure as he preferred to be unfaithful and verbally abusive. If this type of situation were to arise in the US, an abortion would be a feasible option. In Ecuador, however, such procedures are illegal. This forces many women to go underground in search of "rogue" doctors and in some cases people unqualified to perform such procedures. This woman was determined to go to a doctor and have a "procedure." This put me in a difficult position because I wanted to be supportive of her, yet I was concerned about the doctor she was going to visit, so we went together to have a consultation before any procedure. The doctor had excellent bedside manner, was responsible, and most of all, knowledgeable in practice.

Despite knowing what to expect from the procedure, Rosa was very nervous. The procedure went smoothly and she went under with anesthesia. It usually takes approximately 30 minutes for someone to come out from anesthesia, typically experiencing nausea and hallucinations. Rosa had a particularly strong reaction to the anesthesia, and it took her nearly 3 hours to come out. As she was coming out of the anesthesia and could begin to talk again, she was complaining of the inability to see, that she had "gone blind." It was at this moment that I was unfamiliar of how people respond differently to medicine (the doctor had to leave the room to release a patient from the hospital), so I used my privilige to the best of its ability and called my doctor father in the United States. He mentioned that often when people undergo traumatic procedures, they often experience psychological symptoms, such as temporary blindness. He told me briefly of a patient of his who lost a child while giving birth and subsequently lost her ability to see. My father knew that she was very religious, so he asked her to look out in the direction of the window and try to focus on seeing Jesus. After several moments of intense focus and prayer, the woman was able to see again.

I made sure to check to see if Rosa's eyes constricted by flashing a light into her pupils. Sure enough, they constricted, indicating that physiologically, she was "fine." When one is coming out of anesthesia, they often do not have the ability to show much emotion, it is what is typically called "la indifference," so the emotions one would feel about having had an abortion (coming from a machista and Evangelical family) were suppressed. Rosa is a very devout Evangelical Christian (Pentecostal), and I had known from previous conversations that she would often talk of experiences of going to Church and becoming healed by just a touch or a breath of air in prayer. I was left with no choice; either allow Rosa to continue feeling like she was going blind, or to "puppet" an Evangelical laying of hands and prayer healing moment. I should mention here that I do not identify myself as religious at all, perhaps slightly spiritual in that I believe in the power of energy (yes, somewhat woo-woo) and I respect people's various religious beliefs, especially when they are used in healing contexts. So, I felt rather uncomfortable at first with the idea of praying and talking to Jesus. But it was clear that this would hopefully help Rosa in her process.

So I took a deep breath, trying my best to recall some charismatic healing techniques I had read about in various anthropology texts and using what woo-woo knowledge I have grown up with regarding energy healing and meditation, and I put my hand on her heart and her forehead. I have to stray for a moment and mention that I have spent the majority of my academic life reading and problematizing the so-called boundary between anthropologists studying religion and the idea of "belief;" it is a very tricky line to cross. There have been many anthropologists who have indeed "crossed that line," (lines of 'objectivity' are overrated) and have actually had moments of belief or embodied experiences (Michael Taussig and Ayahuasca, Roy Wagner and the human hologram, Thomas Csordas and charismatic healing, to name a few off the top of my head). But at this point, I was not playing the anthropologist role (however this does not stop me from trying to make sense of this experience using what I know, which is anthropology). I was a concerned ally and willing to do whatever it took to make Rosa feel comfortable.

I began to speak to her, asking her to remember that God and Jesus were with her, that they will always be with her and will never stop loving her. I had her focus on each part of her body, starting at her toes, and I asked Jesus to fill her toes with love, strength, and health. I repeated this little phrase for each part of her body, something like this: "Imagine Jesus filling your toes, now your toes and your feet, now your toes, your feet, and your legs with the warmest love, strength, and health. He will always live inside of you. Feel the warmth of love radiating from your heart." I have to say that while I was focusing on helping her through this prayer exercise, my discomfort with "acting" like I was speaking in tongues (because I myself am not Evangelical, nor a "believer") totally disappeared. It was a meditative exercise, so I found myself actually being embodied by a warm sensation - it actually felt like my energy was different. After finishing this prayer/meditative exercise, I asked if Rosa could see. And to my surprise (or not), she regained her vision AND was talking with improved clarity.

Certainly, this is not a technique they teach you at medical school. I did find it interesting, however, that catering the healing process to this woman's identity as a devout Evangelical Christian actually helped her when conventional medicine or treatment would have failed. I am not claiming myself to be an energy healer nor an evangelical one at that, but definitely having an understanding of her religious and cultural background helped make her experience in the clinic a less traumatic one. Even if you're not a believer or a practitioner, reading a little bit about other cultures and belief systems could indeed come in handy one day! So go out and do some reading or better yet, learn from and listen to the people around you!

Achuar Territory - Pumpuentsa, Part I.

I have just returned to Quito from spending the past week in an Achuar community called Pumpuentsa. It is so deep "inside" the Amazon, that the only way to feasibly enter it is to board a Cessna plane and fly 30 minutes south from a small aerospace town called Shell. Yes, it's called Shell because of the company. The airline, Aerotsentsak, is an Achuar-run cooperative that serves as the main form of transportation for people living inside Achuar territory and those coming from "outside." I put quotations around these words because in Ecuadorian Spanish, they refer to going "adentro" (inside) upon entering the Amazon, or spending time "afuera" (outside). While many Achuar people have indeed been outside of the jungle in surrounding urban areas (the closest is the barter town of Puyo), one definitely gets a sense of a permeable border; something akin to a membrane. I don't want to imply at all that these communities are bounded, as so many stereotypes of what indigenous communities are like tend to stem from assumptions that they are somehow "primitive," "untouched," "pure," "care-free to the corruptions and problems of the 'modern' world," but it definitely takes a lot of effort to get into and out of the jungle.

We met with the local government and discussed their priorities and exactly why were were there and what we hoped to do while we were in the community. This program has been around for about a year and a half, working with local community members in workshops that trained people in what's called "Home-based life-saving skills." There was great interest and participation last year in the workshops, except for the fundamental issue was that the last resort always required access to a clinic, hospital, or a reliable form of health care infrastructure. The community is located near a river, which serves as their main source of water. The unfortunate problem is that the water is heavily contaminated with human waste, diapers, cans, batteries, and waste from dead animals. Families do not have latrines, so they eliminate their waste in their gardens. When it rains heavily, the waste washes down the hill. We went to visit the community to do individual family interviews to get people's opinions and perceptions of why the water is contaminated, what it is like to be sick in the community, and how people treat themselves with local plants and healing techniques. We visited about 20 families and learned a great deal about the state of health in the community and how people negotiate illness within and outside the community.

The most common and alarming illness and cause of death in both adults and children (mostly children) is diarrhea. In one month alone, two children died of diarrhea. Many families do not know how to prepare oral rehydration solution, or seem to think that giving their child food or water during violent periods of diarrhea will only make things worse. When discussing water contamination, most people do identify water as one direct cause of diarrhea. When asked about whether people treat or boil their water before drinking it, most women say that it takes too much time to boil when they have so many house-related responsibilities, and most men argue that its taste is inferior to that of the river. It is easy for development workers to say "well, you should just boil your water then," but this has so far not convinced people to start boiling water. People often explain away causes of illness due to diarrhea as a result of shamanismo, witchcraft, and/or malaire, all pertaining to the idea of the source of illness as an agentive human force. I'll provide a more in-depth discussion of shamanismo and malaire in an upcoming post...

There will be more soon! There is so much for me to digest and put into coherent and concrete descriptions, so I will be tackling this in chunks.

Be well!

Putting James Cameron's "Avatar" in dialogue with the indigenous Amazonian struggle against oil extraction

A few weeks ago, I helped ( (I was the sound girl! And helped with various photography and script transcription/translation elements...aka production monkey) to document a trip from Puyo, an amazonian barter town, to Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. This trip consisted of various indigenous leaders from Andoa, Huaorani, Shuar, and Achuar nationalities of Ecuador.

We left in a bus early in the morning and interviewed people on the bus about their personal and collective experiences fighting for the rights of their territories that are at risk and currently being exploited by oil extraction companies.

Listen to the radio piece and watch the video (listen to the video carefully and you might recognize a familiar voice!) here!

Overdue Updates

I can't even begin to recant all that has gone on here in just over a month. I apologize for not being as diligent as I had promised with these updates, but things have been both insanely busy and emotionally intense. Now for the mundane details of my life here:

I am sharing a beautiful house in a barrio in Quito called Bellavista. It is located on the eastern part of the city valley, and it overlooks Mt. Pichincha and the whole of downtown Quito. It's very safe, and most people would say it's a barrio where you can find many pelucones (Ecuadorian slang for uppercrusties). I'm sharing a house officially with 4 other people (all from the US), though the house is beginning to feel a little bit like a hostel (we will see how long this lasts). My room is very tiny, fitting a double bed, a dresser, and one nightstand, yet despite the size, I am paying a ridiculously low rent. It's a 15 minute walk and busride downhill to work (about 25 minutes coming from work because it is steep and uphill). The house is also an office for a green business that works with Kichwa communities to produce Guayusa tea (pronounced way-you-suh), which is an herb that boosts energy.

Work at Pachamama is excellent; there is never a dull moment or activity. I will dedicate an entire blog entry to the work I'm doing and going to be starting this year, because it is really interesting and covers all sorts of interesting issues. To be brief, I will be working primarily on two projects: Jungle Mamas, which will blossom into a health program for indigenous Achuar women in a community called Pumpuentsa in the Amazonian province of Pastaza. This program was started by a midwife from Berkeley, California, who upon having many discussions about childbearing with the women in the community, found that there was a huge interest in learning about midwifery and non-local birthing techniques. The traditional way women have been giving birth in this community has been by themselves; when it is time to give birth, the pregnant woman walks into the jungle by herself and comes back a day or two later with her child, oftentimes still connected to the umbilical cord. Last year, the project consisted of training women in these communities in Home-Based life-saving skills techniques that also incorporated local knowledge. The problem with this form of treatment was that the last resort in the treatment process always required visiting a healthcare professional or a clinic. The only way to access or leave Pumpuentsa is via airplane, which makes it difficult to leave the community if you don't have the resources to do so. So the training was taken off as a priority (however there are people in the community who have been trained and do actually serve as health providers).

My role in this project will be developing over the next month or so, but for the time being, I will be conducting a lit review of health-related projects conducted among the Achuar people and in the Amazon region in general. I have already made contacts with anthropologists who have conducted medical anthropology-related fieldwork in the area, and have even met some who have collaborated on public health programs among the Achuar. From this lit review and list of contacts, we will be able to not only have a better idea of how projects like these have been received and carried out among the Achuar, but it will also serve as a useful way of informing people in our network of partnerships. Unfortunately, it is not often that the Achuar get to use the information collected about them in studies for themselves, which is one of the reasons why the NAE (Nacionalidad Achuar de Ecuador, Achuar Nationality of Ecuador) have been increasingly opposed to social science investigation in their territories.

After the lit review and meeting with the project coordinators from the community in the jungle (and the community itself), we will be doing some fieldwork and interviewing families about their general perceptions of illness and health, numbers of deaths, births, etc. in the community, among other interesting information that will be useful in the design and implementation of an intercultural health program. I am especially excited about this aspect of the work, because it is very rare that people talk with individuals and families about identifying local needs and healing techniques when creating sound healthcare programs. There is going to be a lot to learn, and I still have much reading and relationship-building to do before everything magically turns into a health program, but I am working with such a wonderful team of people that the collaboration will be fruitful.

The other project I am helping out with is called the RED transfronteriza de territorios indigenas (the transborder network for indigenous territories). Pachamama is currently working with transborder indigenous nationalities from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brasil to work for the right to libre de transito, or the right of free border crossing to indigenous peoples whose territories are separated by national borders. It is a long and complicated process to get governments to recognize the territorial rights of these people to cross borders (especially when you have border "safety" issues, like the border between Colombia and Ecuador). Feel free to check out the website and radioprograms here and here.

I've been sitting on a really powerful and intense experience about women's health I had to advocate for on New Year's. I hope to have it ready in a few days. Please stay tuned, because it is one of the experiences I have had here so far over the last four years that I think has impacted me the most on a personal and professional basis.

Putting Life into a Box

My 12-VIII volunteer visa was approved today. I picked it up from the Ecuadorian consulate in San Francisco today, with it's shiny holographic stickers and stamped seals indicating I have a legal pass to live the next two years of my life in Ecuador. I doubt I'll stay two years, because reality, student loans, and the job market wait for me on the homefront, but I am rapidly preparing myself for perhaps the biggest and most significant moves of my life. I've always gone to Ecuador, it's kind of become "what I do," but this time, I'm going on my own terms, totally on my own, and I will have to survive. This is both exhilirating and mortifying. I've always had the security deadline of coming back home to start school in the fall, but this time my life to come back to resides on the Equator.

It's been an interesting process trying to deal with student loans, navigating health insurance policy changes (and what type of coverage I will get down there), and trying to figure out how much money I will be living off of for the next year. Most of my expenses will be paid by the organization I'm working with, but everything else is coming out of my pocket (savings). It's a gamble. I'm taking this experience because I know it will ultimately provide me with the direction and experience I need to keep pursuing my passion for being a conscious and active human being in the fight for global health equality. I'm leaving in less than a week from now and I already feel that I am a completely different person from who I was the last time I was about to leave for a two month trip to Ecuador. Ecuador, it's people, and the many life-altering, beautiful, and intense experiences I've had over the years has left a permanent and lasting mark on who I am. I physically carry a little bit of Ecuador with me wherever I go, within my body and my heart. I am getting an overwhelming feeling that this trip will provide simultaneous senses of completion and beginning; helping me to come full circle on all of the ways it has shaped me in the past in order for me to make new and big things happen.

I feel as if I am placing life at home in the US and the Bay Area into a little box, tying it up, and putting it on a shelf for awhile. I might get to open it up and share its contents, but for the most part, it is on hold. There is another one waiting to be filled in Ecuador, so that I can bring it back home with me to share with others.

Machismo in Ecuador, Part I.

I have spent much time living on and off in Ecuador over the past four years. If there’s one thing that I am constantly reminded of when I am here is my existence as a woman. I’m not just talking about the common cat calls and intensely inappropriate things said to women walking down the street on a daily basis, but I am also highly aware of my status as a gringa foreigner and how my experience of machismo in Ecuador, while uncomfortable, is quite different and (yes) privileged compared to what Ecuadorian women face in their daily lives. Earlier in the year, I wrote a blog entry about my experiences of machismo, which at that point, only really consisted of cat calls and the fact that it is unsafe to walk around alone at night. This blog entry turns away from my own personal encounters with machismo and more directly focuses on the machismo that is experienced regularly by Ecuadorian women and how my position as a gringa in a machismo society presents several ironies and inequalities for women living in Ecuador. I will discuss this issue over a series of entries, as it would be hard to digest in one sitting. Bare with me, as these are relatively rough thoughts and rants. By no means am I claiming to be an expert on this issue, but living in a social climate where it is so prevalent forces me to think about it constantly. Please feel free to comment, disagree, or add something.

To give some back ground as from where I am making my claims. I have worked in the Kichwa community of Esperanza and surrounding communities in the province of Chimborazo with the NGOs, Ayuda Directa and CEMOPLAF (Center for Medical Orientation and Family Planning). Over the past several years, I have also worked and interned with doctors and public health workers in the areas of family planning and agronomy. I have learned quite a bit about the different alternatives to family planning, especially since we work in an area with highly religious populations. Hence, in order to maintain cultural competence in medicine, healthcare providers have had to recommend various types of birth control to accommodate their patients religious beliefs while simultaneously serving as a useful form of family planning. Sounds great, right? Covering cultural competence in healing practices. You would think that this would seriously help families who want to have less children (the average family size is about 5-7, though some number up to 12) and potentially help those who are living in poverty. The problem, however, is a bigger cultural phenomenon. In order for CEMOPLAF to provide a family planning program that is efficacious, both partners must be willing to engage. Enter machismo. A generalized family situation usually consists of the men and fathers working out of the community in cities (rural-urban migration) during the day or for parts of the week, while the women and children work the land (currently, almost all farming done in agricultural communities is done by women), raise their children, cook, and maintain the house. Trying to do this when you have six children of different ages to take care of without the help of a spouse gets tiring. I’m not saying that men don’t help their wives take care of children, but it is typical for the women to do all the work (‘la casa es su hogar’).

I can’t begin to count how many women have come up to me in the communities I have been working in asking me if I could provide them with some form of pill that would keep them from having children. These questions come in secrecy and usually start out with “I am tired of having so many children. It’s just that my husband wants to keep having children. He doesn’t want to use control. I am so tired. Can you help me?” If a woman wants to use a condom, or receive a depo provera shot and her partner/spouse does not agree with it, birth control is typically out of the question.

This brings up a difficult issue for public health workers and their female patients. How do you work towards changing this culture of machismo, that doesn’t give space for womens voices over their bodies? Not to mention the ethical issues and questions of power that would be brought up if an organization or institution attempted to change the culture. It’s difficult and highly problematic to mandate birth control in families (look at China, for example, in source list below), so how do you get men to become more open to listening to their wives when they say they are tired of giving birth to so many children? If you have any ideas, please comment below. Seriously, I’m quite interested. The best thing solution I can think of, which CEMOPLAF is currently working on, is to educate upcoming generations about sex and family planning. CEMOPLAF is working with a group of adolescents (PROGRAMA Adolescentes Indigenas) weekly to dispense information and to get youth more comfortable talking about sex. These youth then move out to other communities and teach other adolescents about family planning and sex. The point is to get people more comfortable open to discussing relationships, which could potentially effect the future of machismo.

My next entry will cover machismo in the domestic environment, the various ironies and inequalities experienced by young women and men growing up in the same house, and how it is complicated when a gringa is thrown in the mix.

Interesting factoid: 63.1% of indigenous women in Chimborazo experience their first pregnancy between the ages of 15-19. (CEMOPLAF 2008).

Additional sources if you are interested in healthcare, power, politics, and where women and their bodies are placed among these three topics:

Davis-Floyd, Robbie E. Birth as an American Rite of Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Greenhalgh, Susan. “Controlling Births and Bodies in Village China”. American Ethnologist 21.1 (1994): 3-30.

Thesis Reveries

I'm going to take a risk today. While I think the blogosphere often serves as a space for annoying rants and discussions that go nowhere, I remain somewhat in awe of the ability to create an accessible space for sharing information, engaging in productive discussions, and pushing the limits. I sit here as a recent college graduate who, for the past three weeks, has been thinking about the ways in which I can continue putting the fruits of my education into [some/good] use. Having emerged from a liberal arts education into the midst of an economic recession has a tendency to produce much anxiety within me and many of my peers. I have spent numerous hours searching job postings on and extending the feelers through personal networking and the interweb.

While all of this is to be expected, I can't help but reminisce over the conference-style settings of my college classroom experience, where the success of the class and intellectual pursuit is contingent upon everyone bringing something (be it a question, a critique, or in some cases, a hands on experience) to the table. That, and the fact that I spent an entire year (more than that actually), researching and writing a thesis that is currently bound and collecting dust in a brick tower in Portland, Oregon (all allusions toward an ivory tower intended). While there is hope in the future that I will chop it up into pamphlets and essays that are accessible to diverse communities, I am feeling like I would like to revisit it and put it into the web 2.0 context.

As I will be going back down to Ecuador early July, I think it might serve as a way to put some of this material to use and up for discussion. While travel writing is often successful at describing a place, people and is easily accessible, yet much of the time, it tends to lack direction and a focus. Writing a thesis (we hope) has direction, but is often inaccessible. What I'd like to do here is to continue exploring themes that came up in my thesis, while simultaneously making some of that information accessible. I realize that this exercise might just be a shot in the dark as a way of resisting post-college stagnance, but if there's a small chance that people read it and do learn something, then it's worth it to me.

I'm going to get the ball rolling by posting the title and abstract to my thesis:

Title:
Fuera de la Oscuridad: Shifting Subjectivities among Evangelical and Catholic Kichwa through Discourses of Illness and Modernity

Abstract:

In this study, I argue that indigenous Kichwa in Ecuador use both illness and conversion narratives as practices and ways of understanding a new type of subjectivity that emerges from discourses of modernity and medical pluralism. Drawn from fieldwork and library research over the course of two and a half years in the Highland community of La Esperanza, this project explores how social change is largely understood in terms of religious transformation, and how the resulting conversion to Evangelical Christianity has produced a shift in the ways in which people conceptualize and approach healing alternatives as a medically plural system of values. This thesis examines the ways in which structural inequalities and power asymmetries are inscribed onto and experienced within Kichwa bodies through illness, and how these experiences are influenced by and rearticulated through religious language and metaphors of social and self-transformation.

New Beginnings

Having recently become a part of the ever-increasing pool of [f]unemployed college graduates, I have decided to put some time and energy into blogging again. This time, it won't just be about travels and working with NGOs, but ponderings, rants, and things generally pertaining to Ecuador and its many social movements. This might even become a space for further exploring concepts I didn't get to address in my thesis.
I'll keep you posted!

New Years in Quito

New Years is arguably one of the most celebrated holidays in Ecuador. And of course, as a person who studies a discipline fascinated with rituals, I felt like a little kid in a candy store. Those who don't immediately take off for a 4 day vacation to the beach in Las Esmeraldas (Northern coast of Ecuador) have plenty of things to keep themselves busy with in preparation for the New Year. Most things either shut or slow down during the days leading up to the holiday, so that people can work on preparing their viejos: life-sized dummies that serve as representations of themselves and the aspects they dislike about their lives. People usually put them outside of their houses or businesses, in clothes they typically wear. Sometimes you see them sitting in cars, lying in the street, or tied up to the hood of the vehicle. As soon as the clock strikes midnight, they then light the viejos on fire and stuff them with firecrackers. As the fire diminishes slightly in size, people jump through the fire (I've seen this before for Saint days throughout the year) as an action that brings good luck.

If you want to have a good New Year, there are a few things you should do. If you wish for wealth, you must wear yellow underwear. If you wish for love, you should wear red underwear. If you want to travel, you need to run around your house (or jump up and down) while carrying suitcases. Eating 12 grapes at midnight is also a must. All throughout the day, people were selling imense quantities of grapes, masks, and viejos at nearly every street corner.

My personal favorite was seeing men dress up as viudas, widows. It's long been a tradition for men and boys to dress up like women and to go out begging in the streets for money from people walking down the street or driving in their cars. They're supposed to be raising money to support their families because their husbands just died, but often its to raise funds for the night's portion of booze. I visited a friend of mine in Cumbaya, a suburb in the valley just outside Quito, who was hosting a viuda-fest. He told me to meet him on a street corner by a store called "Rose". When I arrived via taxi, I could see about 50 young people hanging out on the corner of a busy, traffic-congested street (picture a drag race kind of gathering only with reggaeton blasting from all cars...all puns intended). There were about 10 young guys dressed up as promiscuous girls running between oncoming traffic to knock on drivers windows and ask for change. Usually they did a little dance and blew kisses at the drivers, saying something like "Happy New Years, precious." Usually the women and girls stand on the sidelines and cackle hysterically as the viudas put on their hilarious act. The best men dressed in drag are usually the ones who get more money. You don't usually see the women going from car to car asking for money, because it's supposed to be a moment for the unordinary (i.e men dressed in drag), not that women routinely go from car to car, but it's supposed to be absurd. My friend grabbed me and said that I should ask for money with him (of course! How absurd! A white woman from the United States in Ecuador asking for loose change from strangers!!). I certainly felt ridiculous running from car to car asking for change, recognizing the hilarity/awkwardness of my position, but it was ultimately very fun, especially running and grabbing onto an 18-wheeler with 10 guys dressed in drag. Priceless. In a country where homophobia runs especially high, it was really interesting to witness such a ritual where gender-bending is legitimized. Of course, there is the possibility that they're only performing for the sake of being absurd, but I'd like to leave a little more room for ambiguity.

After I get over this bug (hopefully it's not altitude sickness), I'll finally be off to Esperanza. I'm aiming to leave Quito by Sunday.

Happy New Years!

Fotos y Novedades

For most of you, these pictures are old news (from last summer). I cannot figure out how to connect my flickr photo set directly to the blog so you don't have to follow the link, but oh well.
I've spent the last couple days catching up with people here at Ayuda Directa and doing some website translations (the site is in four languages, so it's quite a bit of work keeping things updated once news of projects and communities rolls in).

Since I left Ecuador in late August, Ayuda Directa, Cemoplaf (Medical Center for Orientation and Family Planning), and DINEIB (National Direction of Intercultural and Bilingual Education in Chimborazo) have collaborated to extend the gardens project into 13 schools in the region (we have yet to make everything final, so it could be more or less, depending on the individual school). I want to make a semantic correction to my past posts. Before, I referred to the gardens as 'huertos', which only refer to the physical plants that are grown in a space. They are actually called Chakras (as mentioned briefly in another post). The chakra is a Kichwa concept that refers to an energy space where different organisms coexist (plants, animals, humans), all bound together by spiritual and sacred energy forces. The chakra is a place of great biodiversity, as it is divided into various sections. The chakras that have been created so far in Esperanza, Lupaxi Bajo, and Gahuijon include a natural fence made of native trees (with a temporary man-made fence), a section for tubers, medicinal plants, seed germination, greens, and a small green house area (for trying out new varieties).

The organizations and teachers met in September and December to start the process. When I head out to Esperanza in the next several days, I'll be looking forward to seeing the fruits of everyone's efforts (and maybe eat some fruit too). I'll also get to see who was elected to be on the cabildo (local government) in Esperanza. The elections were yesterday. Most of the men running are good friends of mine and a bunch of us at AD. They sent one of the AD coordinators a text announcing the elections, and invited him to come vote in the election. A very smart political strategy and a nice gesture; a way of letting this individual know that he is considered a part of the community.