Returning to the Rain Forest

I am back. The lagoon is still here, the cacique birds are just as noisy as before, the people are all familiar and by now I know whose children at the Lodge I am teaching at the High School. 

Cacique bird

I dragged back 30 small size dictionaries and some bigger ones hoping that staff at the Lodge will fall in love with the phonetic transcription system: some of them are already getting hooked.

Jungle classroom

Can I have some more?

”This is like breast feeding on demand,” I am muttering to myself with the secret pride of a mother watching her baby grow by the day when yet another staff member declares that the only time he can make it for English is at 12:30, that is right after lunch and before the resident manager wants his at 13:00 to be followed by the barman at 14:00 (by when I have done 3-4 other sessions in the morning). All this under the blazing rain forest sun where my skin feels like the inside of a freshly washed and never drying plastic bag.

So I teach whenever and wherever: in the hammock house, by the river, in the hut for English classes (when they are not watching DVDs there) the one for the wayusa tea ceremony (when they are), the staff canteen and the bar as well as while walking back to my cabin on the raised boardwalk to consolidate greetings and saying thanks. Am I complaining? Not really.

The language program has actually entered its second phase. I have started recording some of the dialogues I wrote up before, my favourite handyman, Julio is listening to his cassette with me every evening. I am hoping to get a new radio cassette player from the Quito office and it might just happen that I will have my own printer. I have spent Oliver’s money but got some more from my Masters students after they have seen the images from the jungle and spent a whole session comparing my classroom in the rain forest and theirs at the university as an observation exercise. Some of them actually decided that they preferred mine overlooking the river with only three students...

I even managed to get all of Daniela’s donations down here courtesy of the Quito office: loads of coloured paper, plasticine and sheets of coloured foam for artwork. I hope to use them to brighten up the classrooms with the posters and pictures we might create. I printed the photos of my students and will put them in plastic pockets before they go up on the wall.

A day out

This week has been quiet, the staff of the high school are away on training, so there are no classes. On Sunday people from the Lodge went over to Kusutkau for a minga*: they were joining forces to clear a jungle trail and repair the boat landing. It was the ideal time to get away for a day as there were only two guests around: a San Francisco based Indian couple, Rucha and Sai. And, of course, the world is small. Sai is originally from the state of Kerala that we know very well thanks to Arundhati Roy, the Goddess of Small Things. And Rucha is from Pune (Poona), where Alem went to school, in fact they might have even known each other as they belong to the same generation.

We went to the clay lick, a mud wall on the riverbank: birds and macaws eat a lot of fruits, seeds and flowers that contain natural toxins. The clay that the birds consume at the colpa contains chemicals that neutralize these harmful materials. I have no binoculars, but I could still spot the birds with their bright green and red feathers among the leaves. We were watching them from the motor boat for quite some time before starting on our walk to a lagoon.

Hoatzins

Wildlife is amazing around this remote spot in the rain forest. We saw loads of hoatzins (my favourites, because they are so peculiar with their prehistoric shape and the crown on their heads), as well as birds whose name I cannot care to remember, a family of capivaris, the biggest rodents in the world (they are like overgrown hamsters) and at least three caimans that looked exactly like pieces of logs thrown in the pond except they had eyes.

Capivari family

In the afternoon we visited one of the Achuar communities and stayed at the house of the village chief, who happens to be our resident manager’s father. As is the custom, we entered the oval, palm-thatched house and sat down in silence at a distance from Guido, who used to be a guide at Kapawi Lodge. The Achuar guide who was with us for the day is married to one of Guido’s daughters. They started chatting while Guido’s wife brought chicha for us to drink. This was the second or third time I tried the fermented manioc beer, and even though it’s an acquired taste, I am beginning to like the milky beverage that resembles yoghurt on the brink of going off. I presume in time I will miss it just as I have been missing injera, the Ethiopian sour pancake.

We all introduced ourselves to the head of the family. I said I have a special connection with his family since his son is my boss and his daughter, Maria is my student. Rucha and Sai talked about their work in San Francisco and then it was Guido’s turn. He said he was the community chief, but he was also the pastor holding mass on Saturdays and Sundays for those converted to the Catholic faith. Sai spotted some small crosses dug in the dirt floor of the house. ”We bury our dead in the house,” explained Guido, ”these are the children we lost.” I counted four. Altogether they had eleven.

One of our Achuar guides, Celestino

We were encouraged to ask questions and Sai wanted to know how life changed after the arrival of the missionaries. What is it that he misses from the old way of life? ”I can’t remember too well,” said Guido,”my father was killed when I was four, so he couldn’t teach me a lot of things that children learn from their fathers. But the missionaries told us to cultivate our language and treasure our traditions.”

Guido also asked us questions and they were by far not trivial. How do I see the future of my Achuar students? ”I am not British and I am not a native speaker of English, but all I can say is that education is a matter of life and death for the Achuar children,” I responded. ”I don’t know what will happen in twenty years’ time, but I want to prepare them for the best and the worst. Whether they manage to preserve their way of life or not, English will be useful for them.”

”How did your grandfather die?” I asked Angel the following day. ”He was a shaman and word got around that he was a bad shaman who harmed people. One day when he was alone in the jungle, someone followed him and shot him dead.”

People in the Achuar communities are still in awe of their shamans and believe that they are able to kill someone without physical contact. However, once a shaman is held responsible for an otherwise unexplained death, his own life will be in danger and killing him will be seen as justified.

I am walking down the raised boardwalk to look for our boat driver, Mauro. ”Teacher, I am sorry. I just heard that my wife is unwell. I need to go and tell her that tomorrow afternoon we are going to see the shaman.”

Over my forty years of teaching I have been given numerous reasons for cancelling a class. Having to go to the shaman is a first.

Good night.

*kaláka 

At the Lodge outside the bar

 

Back in town

I am experiencing a reverse culture shock. I'm dazed by the traffic, the shops, the variety of goods on offer, the sophistication of city life including a perfect perm by an American hair stylist who lives here and uses American hair products.

Cuenca is noisy during the day and quiet at night (except for the cockerel next door that I hoped the neighbours would have eaten by now). The jungle is the opposite: it is at night that nature comes alive. At first, I couldn't sleep much at all. The wooden cabin felt exposed. Although it is covered by wooden planks behind the bed, more than half of the oval shaped structure would be completely open if it wasn't for the mosquito nets. 

As a result, you can hear everything: the rats, the bats, the frogs, the night birds and the howler monkeys that sound like a wind machine at five in the morning. The bats can get quite fierce. I remember how one night two of them started not just swishing around the room (which was scary enough), but actually fighting, so that drops of blood landed on top of the canopy of my bed. I am quite sure that a whole family of bats lives right on the other side of the cabin behind the headboard. 

It could be mice or rats, but I am happier assuming they aren't. Getting into the cabin is a challenge as well, as wild bees are buzzing around: it looks like some of them are nestling in the door frame. In the evening, when I turn on the light, I find tiny lizards and small frogs hanging onto the mosquito netting, moths and butterflies are flapping around. I hate cockroaches but I have become resigned to their presence and routinely check my slippers for the odd scorpion.

The air is humid, and even though the sun shines fiercely during the day, come morning and all your clothes are damp. It feels exactly like when you didn't have time to dry your stuff and still have to put them on after a good spin. However, your clothes are soon dry and you actually wish they were still wet. I take a shower two or three times a day. The water in the bathroom is not even lukewarm (the solar panels need replacing, but the new ones are stuck with the customs authorities in Guayaquil), so I often hang up one of the solar showers when I want to wash my hair. 

So, back in Cuenca, it is a treat that I can have a hot shower anytime I like. I am also enjoying my bread. In the jungle there was none, or only for the guests and I didn't want to be treated differently from the staff with whom I had the meals in the staff dining room. I have just had a cholesterol test and I think the diet without bread, butter, milk and cheese, a lot less potatoes and sugar will probably prolong my life if I can stick with it when I return.

Still, it was a bit of a challenge at the beginning to have a cooked breakfast of rice and chicken or plantain and beef at 6 in the morning. But I get up early, often before 5 am as my cabin is next to the one that houses the kitchen. I can hear the chef on duty prepare our meal and the food for the guests who might be taking a picnic lunch on one of their outings. So by the time I wander over to the staff canteen, I'm quite hungry.

"Jó reggelt. Hogy aludtál?" says the chef, Joffre. In Hungarian. Right in the middle of the jungle. He is from Quito (not an Achuar), but he used to work in London where he got to know his Hungarian wife, Boglarka, who now teaches English in the capital city. When we set up the English classes, Joffre decided he didn't need any, but could he have some Hungarian classes with me? I didn't mind at all, so we had good fun when, as a role play exercise, he went shopping for rétes (Hungarian strudel) in Tatabánya where his in-laws live and chose ten of the "meggyes-mákos" (the ones with sour cherry and poppy seed filling). 

All of us are trying to improve our language skills. Joffre often corrects my Spanish (he is the only one who has the confidence to do so), while I'm relentlessly flexible when holding English classes at 7 in the morning or at 8 in the evening to go through grammar structures that are surely very different from Quichua and Achuar. I already know that in Achuar, just like in Hungarian, you don't use the plural form once you have mentioned the number. What's the point, when "two" or "three" already marks that it's more than one...

At the high school too, we did a bit of revision before I left and I gave all my students enough homework to do for the three weeks while I'm away. Among others, I compiled a vocabulary of all the words we learnt asking the students to translate them into Spanish and Achuar. In one of my classes we actually started filling in the columns together. "I'm going to ask you to be my Achuar teachers when I come back", I told them and suddenly everybody got very excited about the prospect. So we started practising some Achuar straight away.

The words "boat" and "community" were both long and tricky to pronounce. Raul pinched his ear between his thumb and index finger and leaned forward saying: "Otra vez, teacher". "Once again, teacher." The gesture and the intonation was exactly like mine.

Sure enough, they have learnt something from me already.