Beginning

A few weeks ago in Quito I was walking down the street eating a donut. As I crossed the street, two thoughts went through my mind. 1) Can i really call myself a stranger in a strange land when i can easily encounter food and people from my homeland if i desire? 2) It would be highly undignified to hit by a car and die while stuffing my face with a donut. Run.

Today, as i rode the bus to Ibarra from Zuleta, I was the only woman on the bus absent a fedora, an embroidered shirt, a neckclace of glass beads dipped in gold, a colorful pleated skirt, and a very specific type of black shoe. As i am entering my work in Zuleta, I feel i have to be brave, and not shrink away from the challenges of being far outside my culture. Unlike the jungle, there is no guide, and as much I may want to hide in my new room, I have to reach outside my comfort zone and weather the awkward beginnings, the mistakes, and the reality of being the new kid in town, and yes, now i can call myself a stranger in a strange land.

Digi cameras

walking
Originally uploaded by Cameron/Duff.

Our digital camera was by far the biggest hit of our trip to the jungle. Two young mothers asked me to take a picture of their girls in traditional Hoarani headresses. After I took the picture, i asked them if they wanted to see it. After that, all of the young people of the village wanted their picture taken. I let Fabian take my camera, and he photographed many of his friends, then they all gathered around to watch it on the little screen. When we got back to Quito I made prints and dropped them off with our guide, Julio, who will take them to the village next month. I decided not to share these pictures on the internet, even though i treasure them. Really, those photos were for them. The more pictures we took, the more they wanted to take, and in the end even Vye, our hoarani guide, stripped into the buff, tied up his penis in the traditional way, grabbed his two grandsons, and asked me to take a picture. Most of the older generation did not want their picture taken, but by the end emjoyed looking at the images of babies and mothers, teenagers fishing, kids in trees. They are in such a time of change, with the younger generation speaking Spanish, wearing clothes, no longer marking themselves in the same way as the elders, wanting tourism, wanting money. The oil industry is near, and the cash economy has entered their culture. At this point you can look at the village and see the change through the generations. I feel priviledged that we were able to visit while thier traditional culture is still alive, in a time of peace, and absent other tourists.

Swimming with pyrannah

vie making a bag
Originally uploaded by Cameron/Duff.

Vye and his son Fabian were our Hoarani guides who made sure we didn´t get lost in la selva, although one morning Vye had to guide me back to camp with owl calls after I got turned around when going to the bathroom. In this picture he is making a bag which we eventually used to carry pyrannah back to camp after fishing in a lagoon (just for the record I took this picture). Pyrannah tastes really good, it just has a lot of bones. Contrary to movie images, they don't attack. Some say they attack when they smell blood, but i watched people cleaning pigs in the river turning the water red where they stood, and no one was bit. I swam in the river every day, and i watched five year olds swim across the whole river to visit the rest of the village on the other side mutiple times a day with confidence.

Video clips from El jungle

Check out a little video footage of some
leaf cutter ants
a beautiful little butterfly
the bus ride away from Coca

For best results- give the videos a good chunk of time to buffer, or you can watch the mini images at google video . This is new technology for us- hope you enjoy.

Seven wild pigs and a baby

It had been raining buckets, and Julio was hiding underneath the tarp covering our gear in the canoe when we saw a group of people in the water. They waved and we waved back, but then realized they were waving us over, not just saying hello. Cameron tried to wake up Julio, ¨We're meeting people, and their canoe has sunk¨. Julio emerged just as we pulled up and a naked elderly man with a shot gun climbed into our boat shouting instructions in a language that sounded like water stopping and starting, or maybe chinese, or possibly navajo- but of course was none of these. He gestured to Cameron to help him take his gun off. I was standing up out of the way, and once Julio emerged he started telling me to take pictures, but I couldn´t- didn´t want to. It seemed wrong. There was a very strong smell in the air, which I soon realized belonged to the three wild pigs tied to the log that were being hauled onto our boat. Once we were all settled, with people on pigs and chairs and gear and other people, the oldest man pointed to a tattoo on his arm that read Auwa. In our time of knowing him, we had many conversations with Auwa, although he spoke no Spanish and we no wow, the language of the Hoarani people. He was animated and sweet. We went down river and passed other logs and pigs. Fabian, a twelve year old who later camped with us deep in the selva for two days counted as we passed the logs and eventually came to the final count- siete. We could fit no more people or pigs on our loaded boat, so they had to float the rest of the hunt to the village, but we did pick up a screaming baby and her mother. We pulled up next to the log and Julio commanded me to get the baby, which I did, and there I was holding a screaming infant, just like any other baby, except that he had been in the water for over an hour riding a log weighed down with pigs. His little feet pumped hard against my legs and he belted his lungs out, until mama climbed on board, pulled the boob out, and his mouth moved to another occupation. That first day I felt so strange and different and voyeuristic- watching them clean the pigs in the river, feeding the entrails to the pyrannah, letting their kids play with the stretchy skin of the intestines and the little pig fetuses that came out of a pregnant sow. I couldn´t imagine connection emerging between our different worlds and languages, but it did, miraculously it did.

La Selva

My mind worked hard to find a place for the jungle in its knowledge. First in the truck, then on the motorized canoe images flew past. Vines, flowers, soccer balls, suits, bare feet, distended little kid tummies, hammocks, blue butterflies, GREEN, burning oil, pipeline, heat, my bum bouncing hard on the seat, scarlet macaws, bright yellow on black bird (cseke?), nests shaped like tear drops, red crumbly soil, mud, brown river. When we arrived at the bridge we ate and quiet faces watched us from a distance. When I could eat no more, Julio, our guide, stretched out his hand to a little boy ¨Tome¨. He did. As we travelled down stream, leaving the bridge people behind, my mind kept skipping back to the Chattooga River, finding similarities in so many aspects, even the screen and wood candle lit room we passed the night in at Bataboro lodge, but really there was little pecedence for the extreme foliage, insects, and diversity that surrounded us.

Oil politics, Ecuador, SA

amazonia
Originally uploaded by Cameron/Duff.

Translation: To fight for a life with dignity in El Oriente is to be a terrorist. Long live the fight.

So, oil is being harvested a rapid pace from the jungle, El Oriente, in Ecuador. There are many mixed feelings around this. The oil is generally being exported to the US, from what I understand, and a much more common graffiti states "El petroleo es del pueblo"- the Oil belongs to the people. In talking to people, some people think the oil exportation is good because it has helped the country get out of debt and provided jobs. Others feel very strongly against it, as the oil mining is having seriously detrimental affects on the rainforest and its native inhabitants. Vamos a ver. We´ll see what its like as we are going to go through some of the oil territory (as soon as Camdog recovers).

Looking like a Chow Chow

Cameron and I both woke up with black tongues this morning to add to our list of physical upsets (up to this point, the list had only included vomitting, diarreah, and fever. Thank god we opted for the baño privado). Being the healthier of the two, I went out to change the plan ticket to Coca and post pone the advent of our 8 day canoe trip down the Rio Napo. I have just completed a little interent research on black tongues. This fellow sums up the general consensus succinctly:

Tom (34) -- 03.26.2004

Did you take Pepto Bismol? That will turn your crap blue or black and give you a black tounge. It says so on the box.

What a relief- not having the box of our little chewable pink friends, I thought we might be dying.

For California

The day after Cameron discovered the stove top espresso machine I woke up to rain. It felt familiar and cozy to hear the whish of water spray flying off tires on concrete five floors below. I crawled out of bed blurry eyed and smelled coffee- real coffee, not nescafe. I put on my sweater and jeans, slid into pace at the family table for bread, margarine, jam, and a big hunk of papaya. As I sipped my good strong coffee and dug into the fruit, I thought of Jeff, the math teacher in Pescadero where I taught for three years. I spent many a rainy morning comforted by his in classroom espresso machine and his ever ready solution to a sour face or big yawn- "coffee?" I could just see him eyeing over the breakfast in front of me and chastizing its high carb count. I was caught by a stab of homesickness and a deep fondness for the relationshps and routines I had with my fellow teachers there. I went to brush my teeth and found Cameron´s Ipod lying on the bed. I popped on the earphones and let myself be lulled by the languid voice of Jolie Holland. I thought of Megan who has just moved back to San Francisco from Germny and how much she likes the second track (black stars- we coudn´t remember and tried so desperately to sing it with the few lines we could remember in the desert). I hope she is well in California.

The bus ride to Zuleta

Cameron sat on a bag of rice, and I sat in the front seat after much shifting of shopping bags and cartons. We lumbered along the bumpy road, every seat full, and only a few people standing (fairly spacious by trole standards), and then we picked up about twenty little kids in uniform, just released from school, then about fiften more from another school. An older woman stretched her disembodied hand through the crowd and handed a five spot to the guy who hangs out the door announcing the bus´s destination. He started to make change for her, but then her head appeared and asked him if he he would pick up a bag for her. She indicated where and the bus shuddered to a hault. The guy hopped down and ran to a window, and almost the whole front of the bus yelled no the other one. He paid four dollars and then laboriosly hoisted a 40 lb. sack of potatoes onto the bus. He gave the lady her change, and onward we lurched, gradually dropping off children, families with boxes and bags scattered over the bus, and finally, us at the doorstep of Hacienda Zuleta.

Un Concurso

My dictionary describes concurso as a competition or contest. If only I had known this beforehand, I could have saved myself a little bit of shame. As it was, I thought maybe it meant scavenger hunt, and I innocently followed two frantic teenagers to a gazebo at the local pool pumping reggaeton thinking that they needed check off their list someone in a bikini, and just had to show me to someone official. This belief was fueled by an earlier scene of fifty teenagers running up a hill wildly screaming and then breaking off in all directions searching for something. I inadvertantly found myself a participant in a bikini contest in which all the other particpants were at least a decade younger than me. Once I realized what was happening, I tried to find a way out, but to no avail. I stood on stage in my sneakers and bikini, clutching an old beach towel from my mom's house around my shoulders. When it was my turn I opened up the towel briefly to be greeted by shouts of "No!" and por fin, they helped me down from the stage.