Five o'clock tea with a twist

I dream a lot in the jungle. The Achuar shaman would be proud of me. Even before I got here I thought that the Achuar life style fits me perfectly. They get up around 3:30 a.m. for a Wayusa drinking ceremony. This caffeinated tea is made from the leaves of the Wayus plant and is full of antioxidants. The women either make it the night before or brew it in the morning. Members of the community – often no more than an extended family - sit together by the fire drinking vast amounts of the tea which has a cleansing effect, especially since the Achuar purge themselves by vomiting.* It is done as a matter of course and the foreigners who come to visit the community can choose to follow their example or not.

Wayusa tea

This overnight experience is one of the activities offered by Kapawi Eco-Lodge to give the guests a glimpse of the communal life of the Achuar. The Japanese lady and the young German couple who I met when I arrived here four weeks ago visited one of the communities and took part in the ceremony. I was dying to learn if they tried the full works. They all did. “Years ago I couldn’t throw up, however hard I tried,” said Etsuko, “but now I do it quite easily.”

During the ceremony the community members discuss the dreams of the night before to discover what they might mean for the individual and the whole community. I wonder what they would have made of my dream last night: I met Jannat and her little boy of impossibly long eye-lashes, a sweet late child. I haven’t seen Jannat for about twenty-five years, but her presence and her smile was very vivid in the dream.

Male members of the Achuar community often drink ayahuasca tea which is made from a hallucinogenic plant to induce dreams. Apparently, in the 1980s Achuar elders and shamans started having visions about an imminent threat coming from the outside world. (This was roughly the time when the international oil companies caused a lot of damage to the Achuar communities living across the border in Peru.) They decided that they would take charge and set the rules of engagement with the outside world. They founded the National Federation of Indigenous People and were looking for opportunities to start sustainable economic enterprises.

The founder of an Ecuadorian tour company shared their vision. Carlos Perez Perasso was also a dreamer. He was prepared to invest a huge amount of money into building the eco-lodge and running it for about a decade before the Achuar took over full management of the jungle hotel in 2008. 

The cabins at the lodge were built following the construction principles of the Achuar, which meant that the builders used no nails and only very few metal parts. Palm fronds were used for the roof, wooden pegs and vines** keep the floor boards in place.

However, since everything is made of natural materials, the cabins and communal buildings are aging fast. The palm-thatched houses of the Achuar usually last about ten years. In the oval-shaped Achuar house the fire is always on: they push a couple of tree trunks together and light them. There are no big flames and the fire is quietly smouldering all day. 

 Logs arranged in star shape

There are no holes in the roof that is about 4 metres above so the smoke stays inside longer and impregnates the palm leaves. Even so, the thatched roof will start leaking and the houses may collapse after a decade.

When this happens, the community often leaves the village and starts a new settlement. The rain forest quickly takes over and in a few months’ time the man made structures rot away and decompose: there will be no trace left of the community apart from the memories they take with them. Since there are no rocks or stones in the rain forest, they cannot, and do not really wish to, erect monuments that will stand for hundreds of years.

In his book on flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentions that tribal chiefs and shamans sometimes decide that it is time for the community to move on, usually when they feel that its members have become apathetic and ran out of steam. The elders want to re-create the state of flow that is part of starting a new life and re-energize the community in the process.

Shamans are still very powerful. They are both respected and feared members of the community and their knowledge is often passed down from father to son. Last Friday, while I was teaching at the high school, a staff member at the lodge had a call from “outside” that his little girl was very sick. Fortunately, there was a flight that day and although passengers were coming in, no one was going out and he was able to fly to Shell. He took the long bus ride to the town where his wife lives with their three children. The whole family then went to Puyo to see a shaman friend there.

“What did he do?” I ask him. “He drank some ayahuasca***, and five minutes later he said that my daughter had a problem with her stomach. He started fanning her with a leaf to drive away the evil spirits. A little while later, he sucked the illness out of her stomach.” “Did she get better?” “Almost at once. The fever went down and the diarrhoea was gone.” 

What can I say? It looked like my earlier textbook question “And what happened at the hospital?” was completely out of place as well as totally inappropriate.

Good night.

*To tell the truth, I did not need any Wayus leaves the day I arrived. It was probably something I ate in a restaurant in Shell. The purging effect was drastic and lingered on for about a week until I decided taking an Immodium type medication left behind by some kind Austrian tourists. One pill and the diarrhoea was gone. Who can tell whether the stomach upset had just run its course or it was the Immodium that helped?

**lián

*** tea made from a hallucinogenic plant

We arrived in a tiny Cessna 182 that takes 3 passengers and the pilot. 
This plane is somewhat bigger.
 

Deep in the Amazonian Jungle

(In my last blog from Ethiopia, I said I was going to set up a community radio for street kids in Cuenca, Ecuador. It didn't quite turn out that way. It turned out better.) 

For those of you who might be interested in the Ethiopian story: 

http://ebekes.vso-stories.net

Kapawi Lodge

“I’ve found the perfect job for you,” says Agi in her e-mail. When I click on the link for Kapawi Ecolodge, I have a vague, familiar feeling. I have seen this place before when surfing the net and looking for voluntary placements in Ecuador. I remember being fascinated by the job: teaching English in a remote Amazonian village to members of the Achuar tribe and being able to spend every second weekend at their ecologically sustainable jungle lodge. The snag was that the organizers of the programme expected the volunteers to cover their air fares as well as make a contribution to the cost of their board and lodgings. A lot less favourable arrangement than what I had in Ethiopia with VSO… I looked longingly at the mysterious lagoon surrounded by the traditional, oval lodges covered by palm fronds and then forgot about it all.

But now I was already here in Ecuador and apart from the university module on Action Research that I was asked to run in November, I didn’t have much to do. Two hours after Agi’s e-mail hit my mailbox, my application form and my CV was on its way to the organizers. The following day I was sent some more information and on the third day I was offered the job. It possibly only happened, because the volunteer lined up for the job had to cancel in the last minute and the placement had to be re-advertised. My experience and the fact that I was available at short notice probably worked in my favour.

“Next you will be teaching English to Russian astronauts on the MIR space station,” said my brother when he heard about the new assignment. “Did you say your malaria pills had no side effects like nightmares and delusions when you took them in Ethiopia? I am not so sure…” says a friend jokingly when I tell him that I am going to the jungle and will need to start taking Lariam again.

And here I am. In a spacious bungalow with mosquito nets, a proper bathroom with shower and a flush toilet, a deck chair and other basic, but comfortable pieces of locally carved, wooden furniture. Drafting my first newsletter deep in the jungle from where it takes 10 days to walk back to civilization. Or a 50-minute flight in a tiny Cessna 182 that takes three passengers and the pilot.

That was Monday morning. The flights leave from Shell, a small frontier town that had its heyday in the 1970s when oil was discovered in the Amazon area and the oil companies scrambled for concessions. They are now gone but they left behind a civil aviation base, since most of the Amazonian communities can only be reached by plane. The Achuar community have their own airline with a fleet of 3 small planes, but this time round the young German couple and myself flew by another local company.

“Get in, sit down, shut up and hang on”, says the label stuck above the instruments next to the pilot. We were wearing earphones to block out the engine noise and did nothing but grin at each other with Liana and Daniel as the vast expanse of the Amazonian jungle and its slow, meandering rivers came into view. From above, the rainforest looks flat, but one of my students, an Achuar guide has already told me that when he takes his 24-day holiday entitlement after working without a break for 32 days, he walks for three days to get back home to his own community climbing mountains, crossing rivers and trudging swamps.

Arrival

We land in a community called Kusutkau. This is where the new community teacher, who is due to arrive soon from Britain, will live. And this is where I would be living had I… Right now I am glad that I will be the permanent fixture at the lodge, rather than the fortnightly visitor.

There is a breezy, palm covered hut next to the air strip; a group of Belgian tourists are sitting around drinking tropical fruit juice and water. Soon we are taken down to the motor-boat, a narrow canoe covered by plastic sheeting. It’s a 30-minute ride to the lodge where we are greeted by the Achuar manager. There is a wooden boardwalk that takes us from the river through the jungle to the cabins. We walk past the staff quarters; I have a quick, sideways look, because I was told that if the lodge gets very busy, I might be asked to move in there.

But right now it looks like low season. It’s just me, (and I am not considered to be a guest but a member of staff, anyway) the German couple and a Japanese lady whose status I cannot work out for days, because she is not staff, but neither is she a conventional guest, because she eats with us in the staff canteen and appears to be very much at home. “I’ve been coming to Ecuador for 20 years”, she tells me. I’ve known my guide for thirteen and I used to know the manager’s father as well. He was a guide before he retired, just like Angel.” Etsuko is fascinated by Ecuador. She is a pension fund manager back in Japan, but makes her escape from the treadmill of her life to Ecuador at least three times a year. It’s hard to judge how old she might be, but when I ask her if she would consider living here permanently after she retired, the look on her face says that it might not be imminent.

Yesterday

My three-month cycle starts exactly on 1st October. After lunch I have a meeting with the manager, Angel, who tells me about the staff and their daily schedule. It looks like I will be teaching either small groups of two or three people or have individual sessions. We decide that I will come to the staff meeting every morning and confirm my classes for the day. “And tomorrow we can go to Kapawi community,” says Angel, “so that you can get to know the school where you will be teaching on Mondays and Fridays.” “Can we go on Wednesday? I think it’s important to get started with the classes over here tomorrow. People have seen me today, so they expect me to start the lessons soonish.” He considers then nods.

“Teacher, when are we starting our lessons?” asks someone at dinnertime. “Yesterday”,* I reply without giving it a thought if this makes any sense to them. And there could be at least one person in the canteen who may think: “Good God, they’ve sent us an English teacher who doesn’t know the difference between “yesterday” and “tomorrow”.

And when it comes to getting started, I probably don’t.

*Implies urgency: “I need it yesterday.” = Mar tegnap is keso lett volna.

All images by courtesy of the Achuar language teaching programme 

Typical Achuar house - ovel shaped, no walls, covered by palm fronds