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.