The Spirit of the Jungle

The Ecuadorian Amazon

Newsletter from the Rainforest No 8

“If you don’t get better by Monday, we will take you to Sumpa, the shaman,” says Joffre at breakfast hearing me cough and sneeze. There is a lot of laughter when he adds in Spanish, “He can then suck the bad spirits out of your body”. I have no doubt about the sexual innuendo involved, but since there are only two women around (a tiny, wafer-thin single mother and myself) you can’t blame the guys for this kind of banter. And they’ve been good.

“I have to leave in ten minutes,” I was grumbling on Friday when, after a slow start to the day, it looked like I would be late for my first class at 7:15. The boat ride is at least 15 minutes (although the head of our maintenance team managed to cover the distance in 7 minutes last week when, on account of a long briefing in the manager’s office, we left after 7). “I must be at the High School on time even if I have to swim,” I am declaring, which is silly, of course, but has the desired effect. Someone offers to take me if my assigned boat driver doesn’t turn up, and then it transpires that he is already waiting for me at the boat landing quite prepared to not have breakfast until he returns.

The cabins and the lagoon in the rainy season

What have I achieved, I am asking myself when I take stock of the past six months. Staff members at the Lodge are now able to introduce themselves in English when the new guests arrive and we have a “beauty pageant line-up” in the evening. All of them can give a simple account of their lives and their work at the hotel. Some of them have started an examination course with me while others were given a bit of help with how they could teach English to young learners in their own communities.

Planting palm trees at the college

My students at the high school can also offer personal information about themselves, their families and the community they come from. They are now better at looking me in the eye and most of them are able to give a proper, firm handshake. They are still extremely soft spoken and there is a limit to how many times I can play the trick which goes like: “Listen guys, there’s a lady/gentleman in the group that is coming to meet you later today who is hard of hearing. Practically deaf. Can you please shout?”

One to one with guests from the Lodge

They have certainly enjoyed the school visits and being observed. Many of the tourists were happy to engage with them, several contributed to the dictionary project as well as to the refurbishing of the English classroom, and Silke from Germany has just made the buying of the new batteries a reality rather than a pipe dream. We don’t have the money for the whole lot, but the purchase is now within reach.

The language teaching programme is now well kitted out with the printer and the surge protector among the most prized possessions. I often say jokingly that the Peruvian merchant has fewer stationery items in his boat than I do in my cabin, which is just as well as there is always a need for pens and the DIY exercise books that I make by folding the A4 sheets in half, adding a thicker, coloured sheet as a cover page, stapling the whole lot together and sticking scotch tape to the spine so that fingers don’t get caught.

The snake

What am I taking away? Probably a deeper understanding of a culture in which the dreams you dream give you more than just guidance – they actually map out your everyday activities as well as shape your future. The appreciation of a lifestyle that is largely in tune with nature. A realization that I probably came in the eleventh hour. A hope that whether my students stay in the jungle or leave it behind, the skills I have taught them language- and otherwise, will serve them well.

Monkey meat

I don’t know how much English the Achuar have learnt from me, but my Spanish has definitely improved. Of course, I am borrowing words all the time like when I explain to Ines that concerning the work experience that the students are supposed to be doing at the Lodge, we have to “focusar” on this, that and the other. After using the word several times (in my usual, authoritative manner), Ines at last asks me: “What exactly do you mean when you say ‘focusar’ ”? “Well, you know, we have to pay a lot of attention to how we set up the work experience and make sure the kids don’t end up wielding a machete all day while working in maintenance rather than engaging with the tourists.” “I see. I think you mean “centrar” or “enfocar”. And Ines promises to teach me more Spanish when I come back.

Do you mean you’re going back, I can hear you ask. You bet.

Good night.