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.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
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.
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.
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