Living dangerously

Newsletter from the Rainforest No 9
(This is the text of my last blog post on the VSO site)

Last try

“VSO International decided to take this site off-line,” came the polite message from an obscure Dutch website that claimed to be linked to the Netherlands arm of Voluntary Service Overseas. I could not easily decide what was going on, because the whole site was in Dutch (therefore, sounded like double Dutch to me*) and was full of advertisements, so it more or less looked like an unpalatable example of outsourcing.

Anyway, I said to myself, I should count myself lucky that the site for my blog that was initially set up for the Ethiopia Experience lasted as long as it lasted, and kindly let me post my messages from Ecuador about a placement that was voluntary, alright, but not exactly linked to VSO. Frankly speaking, not at all.

Although it seemed that the posts were read by thousands, the completely unrelated and annoying reactions in Chinese and Russian made me realize long ago that it was not only my extended circle of friends who visited the site, but there must have been automatic message postings as well.

Last day at the Lodge

 Even so I have been feeling a little emotional about this site being closed down and decided to live dangerously and leave one last message for you.

Sunset

I left the rain forest less than four weeks ago and have withdrawal symptoms. I daydream about pottering around in my palm fronded hut at the Lodge and taking the short boat ride to the high school. 

I keep in touch with mostly everyone and was looking at the image of the Lodge posted by one of the boat drivers (reflecting a time when the lagoon was larger) with a longing sigh this morning.

The Lodge from the air

I remember one of the last teacher training sessions when, as a language task, my colleagues had to introduce themselves in a teacher training workshop giving their Spanish and Achuar first names. Not everyone had an Achuar name so the question “Do you have an Achuar name?” necessarily came up. When it was my turn to reply, I said “You know what? Give me an Achuar name.” I could hear names suggested and discarded and then Luis said: “We decided on your Achuar name. You will be called Suwa.”

Suwa

I felt my heart skip a beat. It is a lovely sounding name and I know it means a tree in Achuar whose seeds they use for face painting. But it is also the name of a community that I was fascinated by for the whole of my stay in the jungle, in fact, even before I arrived there.

The book

It was Lucy Wendell Thorpe’s “Into the Rain Forest: Living the Achuar Way at Suwa” that originally gave me an insight into what I was letting myself in for. When I arrived I found a copy of the book, duly signed by the author, on a bookshelf in the bar and having read passages on the Internet, I now sat down and devoured the whole book from cover to cover. The language was to the point, I learnt words like “raised boardwalk” and “outboard engine” and a lot more; all linked to the everyday experience I was having. These vocabulary items were real gems, because the staff at the Lodge needed them to describe the physical environment.

 

A rain forest tree in bloom

During my first return to Cuenca I had the book photocopied and then put the original back on the shelf; I could often see tourists leafing through it. By then I was hooked: I discovered some of my present day students in the photos and the face of the founder’s wife got etched in my mind. So much so that when, on one occasion, Veneranda was walking down the “raised boardwalk” to the boat landing just as I came back from the high school, I thought I was seeing a ghost. But it was Veneranda alright, only looking a couple of years older and now a widow. It was one of those situations when you know a lot more about someone than they know about you, which is practically nothing.

Veneranda's son and his family

I started teaching passages from the book to some of my more advanced students and I often gazed at Lucy Wendell-Thorpe’s photo, too, trying to figure out what brought this rather plain looking, large-boned, bespectacled woman to the jungle. So you can imagine how excited I got when I was asked to act as an interpreter for a group of tourists who were visiting Suwa. We were received by one of Veneranda’s sons whom I knew well from the photos in the book, while Veneranda and her grandchildren were watching us from a safe distance.

Veneranda offering chicha

Before we left, the women brought out the handcrafted items for sale. I made sure I bought a ceramic bowl from Veneranda’s lot, and a necklace from my student, Ximena’s family. I could feel Veneranda’s gaze on me. I went up to her and said, “I read so much about you in Lucy’s book. Do you remember her?” “Of course, I do. And you know what? All along you were doing the translating for the tourists, I was telling my son: look at the striking resemblance - she looks exactly like Lucy.”


Good night or, rather, farewell.

*Double Dutch: unintelligible gibberish, meaningless talk or writing

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.

Sleepless in the Amazon

Newsletter from the Rainforest No 7

3:22 am. I’ve been awake for an hour and a half trying to go back to sleep. The usual method of reading the monolingual Spanish dictionary didn’t help; it only reinforced my impression that English and Spanish are the same languages, you only pronounce the words differently. Not true, of course, these days I am painfully aware that my knowledge of verb conjugations is still rudimentary at best. (How many Spanish words in the above paragraph, you may ask. I counted 21 including the word “counted”.)

Being up in this ungodly hour reminds me of a similar spell of sleeplessness in Ethiopia. It lasted for about six months in my first placement and then repeated itself in Aksum. Over here in the rain forest, it is the fact that I will be leaving soon that makes me restless. I have about six weeks at best to give the programme a big push and hand over to Geraldine, who is arriving at the end of March.

I am lucky there is power at night. The head of our maintenance unit decided that he would not turn off the light in my cabin at 9:30 pm. “Elizabeth needs electricity at night. I know she gets up early and she is doing things for us”, he declared and our resident manager left it at that. Even though I got used to the unpredictable power cuts in Ethiopia and reach for the head torch or light the candles almost without thinking, it is a bliss to be able to turn on the computer and listen to the printer as it goes through the motions before it switches to standby mode.

And then I count my blessings: the radio cassette recorder that I got from the programme organizers so that we can listen to the audio recordings I make during the classes and the printer (only installed yesterday) that came as a donation and allows me to print, scan and photocopy without having to beg in the office or pray that the batteries at the high school have enough power in them to print when I go there in the morning and it is still overcast.

School assembly - grave faces, I think they were told off

“It’s got worse these past weeks”, says Ines. “There is no sun to feed the solar panels and the old batteries don’t store much energy any more even when the sun is out.” I know what a terrible bottleneck that is. The students cannot use the computer room, because even though there are a good number of new computers, there is no power. We would need to replace all fourteen batteries at the same time, each costing about 350 dollars. Other people count sheep when they are sleepless, I count money. My friends and family raised enough for one unit, Alan said he might be able to pay for one, Geraldine started fundraising and may have the money for another, that’s three. Out of fourteen.

But miracles do happen. One of the tourists who came to visit the college sends me great photos of me and my students and asks me to let her know if she could be of help. “Well, actually…” and there goes the story about the batteries. “You know what, I have just heard from my landlord in Germany. It looks like he will return my deposit after all. This is windfall money. I decided to give it to your school”, comes the reply and I can’t believe my eyes when I look at the figure: 1500 euros. I look for the currency converter on the Internet and there it is: about 2000 dollars. We may have enough money for ten units.

“Who produces or imports these blessed batteries?” I am asking the deputy head, Wilmer, who is also the ICT specialist. “I think they come from Spain, the importers are in Quito.” “Could you get in touch with them and explain that we have the money for ten batteries and would they be prepared to give us a discount or sell us the batteries at factory prices?” Ines and Wilmer agree it’s worth a try. They have become good at asking for things over the years. Only recently one of the major telecommunications companies has been persuaded to install satellite internet at the high school. “When exactly?” “Looks like the end of April. But we need the batteries for our ordinary, daily operations.”

This is a parasite growing on a tree trunk

Classes at the high school won’t start before next week, so I have more time to spend with my students at the Lodge and follow up an Achuar myth so that someone could include it in her forthcoming book on the Achuar. (The proceeds from the sales will be going to the 64 tribal communities. I think I argued convincingly when I said that channelling half of that money to the high school would, in a roundabout way, help all the communities by investing in their children’s education. Think batteries.)

JoAnne wanted to learn if there was a story about why Achuar women cannot have more than one husband while Achuar men are free to marry two or three women even today.

And the story goes like this.

In ancient times there were no people living on Earth. The Sun (Etsaa) and the Moon (Nantu) were brothers who lived together like good brothers do: they cared for and looked after each other. There were no people, but there was one single woman and both brothers fell in love with her. They could not decide who should marry her, so in the end both of them became her husbands. However, their peace of mind was gone and they were fighting with each other over the woman all the time. At last one of them said, “This won’t do. We cannot be fighting endlessly over a woman. We will have to go our separate ways.” So they both left the woman and decided that the Sun will work during the day (providing daylight for the world) and the Moon will be shining at night. In this way, they won’t ever meet again and will have no reason or occasion to fight. However, Nantu, the Moon put a curse on the woman for the loss of their brotherly love saying that in the future no woman shall have more than one husband.

The myth reflects the fact that in the close-knit Achuar communities men are very often brothers. Widows often marry their dead husband’s brother, who will then look after the children as well.

As in many traditional societies, extramarital affairs are not tolerated among the Achuar either. Starting such a relationship is an absolute taboo and should a woman violate it, both her and her lover will be killed by the husband or his friends or anyone the husband hires to do the job. “About twelve years ago a woman and her lover were killed in our province and five years ago another couple died in the neighbouring province, Morona Santiago”, says one of my students. “Even today, if two men are in love with the same woman, they will agree between themselves which one of them should leave in order to keep the peace and avoid temptation.”

The taboo is powerful even after an Achuar couple is separated (this does happen at times). Should the woman find another partner, her ex-husband may come back and demand money in order to let her get on with her life claiming that unless she pays for her freedom, she and her new partner will be killed.

There appears to be no myth regarding why men can take several wives. However, only few middle-aged Achuar men have more than one wife these days, even though it was quite customary in their grandparents’ generation. “The first wife needs to agree if I want to bring a second woman to the house and my wife is not keen on the idea at all”, says one of my students.

A myth would be helpful, though.

Good night.

Christmas Show about The Good and the Bad Shaman - another living story