Well, we all survived the second trip adentro with the Duke students. It, of course, was an adventure with a fair amount of outtakes, bloopers and of course a little bit of drama. It just wouldn’t be a trip to the jungle without these critical elements. I’ve debated how many of the details I will share to the world, and I guess I am still not quite sure how much will actually make it to the blog. It likely will depend on how much time I actually have to devote to chronicling all the craziness. So, strap yourself in, this is going to be a wild ride.
So, like every major trip, the adventure starts with loading the bus. We opted for a full sized bus for this trip because we were hauling in a lot of supplies, food, and of course gringos and their oversized backpacks. The student loaders showed up on time and we got the first round of loading done fairly smoothly. We were not hauling a concrete bathroom floor this trip, so that helped. However, my counterpart decided that we were going to haul the new outboard motor to power one of the canoes. A 40 horsepower outboard motor, I might mention. The thing was huge…and freaking heavy. It took at least three guys to haul it down the three flights of stairs and load it into the back storage compartment of the bus. After it was loaded we started bickering about whether it was necessary to take the stupid styrafoam that cushioned the engine in the box (my vote was vehemently no, as it would inevitably get destroyed en route and break off into a million pieces that would litter the road, community or river). Then someone realized that the cuerda roja was missing…basically the key to the damn motor. Meaning, without it, we couldn’t use the motor. This redirected attention from the Styrofoam to the fact that we couldn’t use the motor without the key. Accusations flew about what had happened…that the company that sold them the motor didn’t include it, that the guys who hauled the motor to the office took it…blah, blah. All the talk wasn’t getting us any closer to getting to the community. I direct the bus to go and pick up the gas for the motors and the food for the trip before swinging back by the office to pick up the Waorani stragglers. While the office was calling the company that sold it and other businesses around town who might have the part, I hedged our bets and called my friend Mary to see if she could help locate the part in her town of Tena. Two hours after starting the loading process, the bus swings by the hostal where the students were staying. And, of course they were not ready yet. Their stuff was strewn throughout several rooms and they were sitting around singing and playing guitar. At least one of the Waorani griped about the fact that they should have met everyone else at the office. Wow. That was a role reversal. Anyway, we waited around for them for a while, then had to circle the block downtown as they rushed around getting last minute things. In the meantime, I am passing my cell phone to our motorista (canoe driver) so that he can talk to a taxi guy in Tena who is driving my Peace Corps friend around looking for a red cord key to our motor. At one point a cheer went up at one point when we thought the Tena crew had found the cord key…but it turned out to be a false alarm. The store simply knew what they were talking about, they did not actually have the part in stock. So, almost exactly 3 hours after the bus loading began, we began our trip. 15 minutes out of Puyo and I lose my cellphone signal, and all contact with my cord key search crew. About 2 hours later, we arrive in Puerto Napo (aka choco-banana land) and meet up with the last two members of our crew, who were unsuccessful in finding the cord key. So, we go to plan C: drive to the town of Misahualli to see if they happen to have a cord key. My friend Mary happened to have a contact there who she thought might be able to hook us up. Sure enough, we find Carlos, and he happens to have the part we need. $15 and 15 minutes later, we were on our way again. Well, almost. We first had to herd the students away from the central park where monkeys were roaming around and get them back on the bus, only to go about 10 meters to where the bridge crosses the wide and high Napo River. It was there that we realized that our bus with the big 250 liter water tank on top was not going to clear the overhead electrical wires. We stop and some of the guys get out to eyeball the clearance. It was clearly not going to happen…so a couple of them climb on top of the bus to untie the water tank so we can carry it across the bridge, and then re-tie it. As they are doing this, a police car comes up and tells us that we all had to get off the bus and walk across the bridge, as it was overweight. Uh, no problem. I was already going to volunteer, as I was not entirely sure buses were even supposed to use this bridge. We scoot across the bridge before the bus and wait on the other side. The bus barely crosses onto the other side before it stops and the driver gets out and starts to re-tie the water tank. Meanwhile a truck is stuck behind the bus on the bridge, waiting for us circus clowns to get back on the bus. Then…all the sudden, the bus starts rolling backwards toward the bridge and the truck waiting on the bridge. The students start pouring off, clearly freaked out. The bus driver yells down, “put some rocks behind the tires.” Uh, yeah…as if some puny little pebble is going to stop this big bus and all its weight from rolling backwards… Then, quick as lightening, our friend Roger puts his skills as a former firetruck driver and schoolbus driver to work and sets the emergency break. Crisis averted. So, Mary helped saved the canoe motor and Roger saved the bus.
The rest of the bus trip was mostly uneventful, save for the surreal showing of the movie on the bus about the Waorani made by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Once we unloaded the mountain of stuff in the community where we would be spending the night we realized that we had too much crap to fit into two canoes and would thus have to make one extra trip to send our stuff downriver to the community where we would be working. This meant we had to load a bunch of our stuff BACK onto the bus (much to the bus driver’s delight) and take it to the bridge over the Dayuno River and load it into a long dugout canoe. The whole process was labor intensive. The Peace Corps crew did the bulk of the heavy lifting while the Duke crew set up camp and started the arduous task of cooking over a wood fire. We then took a field trip to survey our work sites to see how they fared during the intervening week (conclusion: it rained a LOT this last week). After dinner the crew hung out together and munched on chocolate bars (we learned the hard way after the first trip to bring more sweets) and listened to the guys sing and play guitar before calling it a night.
I was on breakfast duty the next morning which involved boiling water for hard boiled eggs, coffee and oatmeal. Getting the big aluminum pot of water to boil over the wood fire takes at least an hour. In the meantime, the president of the community invited us over to at first see, and then later taste his catch from his late night fishing expedition en route back from dropping off our supplies. When the cry first rose up to see a caiman, I had naively, but genuinely hoped to see a live caiman. But, like so many other rare animals I’ve seen in Waorani territory, this one was not viewed from a safe distance in its natural habitat…rather, it was very dead and being prepared to be consumed. The group was both intrigued and grossed out. But not enough to not at least try a piece, which one of the students described as “ficken,” meaning sort of like fish and sort of like chicken. From snout to tail, it was probably two meters long. First the caiman was placed intact on the fire. Later it was chopped up and boiled and then served on leaves with plantain and manioc (yucca). Some of the guys went back for seconds. Others ate one bite just for bragging rights. Like so many times over the past year, I felt a little conflicted. On one hand, the Waorani (and in this case Kichwa) are hunting to eat and essentially survive. On the other hand, I don’t want to encourage overhunting or killing any species that is threatened by consuming it myself…and then there is the cultural element where it is considered rude to refuse to eat at least a little bit of what we are offered… Ahhhhh the conflicts in my cabeza….
We loaded up the canoes and got off on the river without any major hitches. I was worried that the river was high, but the Waorani actually prefer to travel when the river is high, as it means you don’t have to worry as much about logjams because they are all submerged. It started to rain just about the time we pushed off. Sarita, one of the women from Meñepare sat in front of me, a plastic bag covering her infant boy that she held in her arms. At one point, I worried that she had it on too tight and that the makeshift poncho would suffocate the poor baby. Incredibly during the entire two weeks we were around her and her baby, I can’t ever remember hearing him cry. He was constantly at her side. She traveled with him, worked with him, cooked with him while he was tucked in a sheet that crossed her body and tied at her shoulder.
The trip to Tepapare in motorized dugout canoe took under two hours. It was relatively quick, yet still enough time for our asses to go numb from the pieces of wood or plastic buckets we were sitting on. Tepapare sits on the banks of the Dayuno River (as the Wao call it) and is made up of just a handful of thatched roof houses, a one room school building and a small wooden, tin roofed house for the teacher. The community is the epitome of tranquilo. This trip definitely confirmed it as my favorite Waorani community I have visited. One of the reasons I like it so much is because the centerpiece of the community is not a noisy oil road or the imposing gap of a long pista (runway) carved out of the jungle: its “centerpiece” is a bend in the river.
The Dukies took over the schoolhouse and the PC crew took over the profe’s house. Sadly, the teacher (or profesor, as they call them here) had not shown up, so, there just weren’t any classes this school year. It is hard for all of us to fathom this fact. That these kids would lose an entire year of education because the teacher simply didn’t show up. Pero, asi es la vida en la selva.
The rain had cleared out and we had a beautiful partly-cloudy afternoon to set up camp. Some of the Dukies started to work on the installation of the water tank that would hopefully capture the rainwater for drinking purposes. In the meantime, we had to haul a lot of water from the little stream to the kitchen area for cooking purposes. We also had a bucket brigade to haul a lot of water from the big river to a tank by the school’s bathroom, which consisted of a porcelain god, but no water source, thus the need to have water in order to flush…likely right back to the river, as who knows if any type of treatment or septic system was installed in the clayey soils of the amazon…
We also scoped out the area where we would like to build the composting toilet and traditional Wao house. We found the perfect spot where a house used to be, so it already had a flat cleared area. It even had a small live fence of bright red plants framing the back part of the site. It was absolutely perfect, as it was just off the main path to the small stream and would require little to no clearing (which is what was so labor and time intensive—and controversial in Meñepare the week before). The women showed me where they had started a seed bed for the nursery. It was a little far removed from the construction site, but not a bad start.
While the PC guys started to mix some concrete to pour the floor of the composting toilet, we had a little community meeting to introduce the students to the community and to explain more about what all we would be doing during our minga work trip. The students had hauled a bunch of wooden desks out of the school building to make room for their tents, so we moved the desks into a circle on the grass outside the school for our discussion. It was a cool scene: a mix of wide-eyed gringo students and wide-eyed waoranis. One of the things I love about the Waorani is their ability to laugh. They are laughing, and seemingly happy, all the time. This of course cuts both ways, as sometimes that means that they are laughing at us. But, even so it is refreshing (and to be fair, we do some stuff that I am sure is ridiculously funny to them).
One of the best things I did for this trip that I had wished I had done for our previous trip in Meñepare, was to make a kitchen duty list. We quickly found out in Meñepare that some people bore the brunt of the cooking duties, while others skated by without helping prepare food or clean up. There were more than a few food tensions in Meñepare. As I have mentioned before, cooking in the campo is freakin’ hard. It easily takes two full hours from start to finish to make enough food for around 40 people using a wood fire. It kind of sucks, actually. But, we were working up serious appetites, and nothing is worse than a hungry, grumpy gringo. So, the kitchen duty list helped to spread the responsibilities around more equitably and ensure that food was actually prepared.
The first full day of our minga started a little slow. It was sort of like herding cats. No one could stay in the same general location long enough to get instructions and get organized. Tensions briefly flared between my counterpart and me, but we eventually worked through them by essentially working separately. She led a team that was transplanting palm seedlings. I led the team that was working on preparing the beds for the plant nursery. It required clearing a little space, hauling sand from the stream, scraping topsoil and digging organic matter from composting treetrunks, mixing the soil, filling the bags for the chambira palm seeds. I had a good team of Waorani women working with me and we had a good time. I really enjoyed hearing all the parrots and other birds flying overhead and flittering around the trees while we worked. It was hard, but gratifying work. I led them in a made-up cheer-chant: “equipo vivero! ¡equipo vivero!” that we belted out periodically, often after small victories, like finishing off another bag of nursery bags. The women were funny, they joked around and flirted with my PC pal, Jeff, who was suddenly Ñahuare’s boyfriend. Ñahuare is a grandma, and Jeff is in his early 20’s, but whatever.
Jer led a team that was constructing the composting toilet. He had modified the design so as to be able to pour the concrete in the community, allow it to dry several days while he built an alternative bamboo base where the floor would later be placed. That team struggled a bit with locating wood pieces that the Waorani would let them use or cut…and that they would not later say that it wasn’t good wood that would rot easily.
Another minidrama was the fact that one of the Waorani guys was hurt and required a trip to the hospital. We weren’t sure what he had…his arm had tensed up and his hand was clenched in a fist and he was in excruciating pain. It was a difficult situation to be in, because the students wanted to help him and just collect vital stats, but we knew we had to be careful, as despite basic EMT and wilderness first aid training, we couldn’t treat him for a variety of complicated cultural reasons. So, we sent him on a canoe with a couple other Waorani guys to seek professional or shamanic medical care. Watching the only canoe with a motor pull away from the banks of Tepapare made me a little nervous. The canoe would be coming right back---with the back up gas---but it still was a little unnerving. I cautioned the kids to be careful wielding their machetes over the next few hours. After observing them over the last few weeks, I concluded that they were definitely more susceptible to self-inflicted injury than anything a snake or the widely feared (at least among the Duke guys) “penis fish” could do to them.
The second full day in Tepapare, one of the students woke up feeling sick. He had been feeling crappy for a few days, but he had basically said he had had enough and wanted to leave. Given that we had made two extra unplanned trips in the canoe (one for delivering supplies, the other for getting the Woarani guy out). We had bought lots of extra gas for such potential unanticipated issues… but another round trip meant we would be cutting it uncomfortably close on gas supplies for when the entire group was to leave on Monday. This was complicated by the fact that when the first medvac left, the Waorani couldn’t open up my lock that was guarding the gas reserve in Meñepare. I guess it entirely wasn’t surprising. The guy had never used a combination lock before that. I had explained the process slowly two or three times and wrote the numbers on a piece of paper, but he didn’t get it. I had flashbacks to seventh grade and the sweaty hands and elevated heart rate when trying to quickly open the narrow hallway lockers in the three minutes between lunch and Ohio history class. The canoe had returned without the extra gas, meaning there was enough for one more round trip in one canoe, not two. Meanwhile, the radio in the community wasn’t working…and the kid wasn’t grave enough to warrant trying the emergency satellite signal. So, the options left basically boiled down to: A) everyone leaving with the gas we had left, ditching our unfinished projects and cutting short a trip that the students had been planning for more than six months; or B) me leaving with the student in the one canoe, traveling to Meñepare to unlock the combination lock, sending the canoe back to Tepapare with the reserve gas, hitching a ride from Meñepare past the oil company control gate to the first bus stop, riding the bus back to Tena (2 hours) or Puyo-Shell (4 hours), cabbing it to a hospital, translating for the student, getting him settled and then buying more gas and supplies, contracting a truck to haul them back to the river, hiring a canoe driver to take me back to Tepapare…just in time for the group to pack up and leave to come back out.
There really wasn’t much debate. I chose Option B. So, we mobilized quickly to get the student’s stuff packed up and the canoe ready to go. I steeled myself for the long, arduous trip ahead of me and bid farewell to my pals. I checked my watch. It was 9:32 a.m.
The canoe seemed so empty. It was just four of us: the student, me, the motorista Nenquimo, and a boy about 10 years old who was serving as the puntero spotter at the front of the canoe. The water level had dropped dramatically and it became immediately obvious that getting back to Meñepare was going to be very slow going. Once we decided on plan B, we had rushed around to load the canoe in hopes we could make it to Meñepare in time for the oil company truck to pass through at noon. Once we were on the river, however, those hopes were quickly dashed, as Nenquimo had to slow the motor every other minute to navigate the canoe to avoid hitting a log or other tree snag. At several points he had to hump the motor up out of the water to avoid hitting the rocky streambed. We were going against the current, and as soon as the motor was cut, the canoe stopped its forward progress and sometimes started floating back downstream. At a particularly shallow point, Nenquimo got out and started to push the big, heavy canoe and its 40 horsepower engine and passengers against the shallow yet swift current. At the same time, the boy in front got out a long pole and dug it into the riverbed, putting all 60 pounds of his body weight against the flow, lurching the canoe ahead a few inches. We were going nowhere fast, so I grabbed the other pole, braced my bare feet against either side of the canoe, balanced myself, and then plunged the pole into the riverbed. I leaned into the pole with all of my strength, inching us forward. It was no small miracle that this normally clumsy, gangly gringa didn’t fall in. I think I actually helped get us through not one, but two very shallow runs on the river. After each effort, I collapsed on my seat, out of breath and exhausted. It was incredibly hard work to move the boat a few meters upstream. Oh what a photo moment it was…but we left the freelance photographer back in Tepapare. Oh well, the memory will be forever etched in my brain.
I think we all breathed a big sigh of relief once we had our feet on dry land. We got off the river around 12:30, too late for the 12 noon truck. But as I was climbing out of the canoe, I hear an engine. I scramble up the riverbank and flag down a beat up purple chevy nova-like car that somehow survived the 1970’s. The guy was not eager to give me a ride, but I charmed my way into getting him to drop me off at Fausto’s house (president of the community, aka caiman killer) at the end of the oilroad. Fausto wasn’t there, but was going to be back ya mismo. Great. The creepy guy in the purple car disappeared. Then, before I could freak out, a big truck comes by carrying Fausto, his wife, and a truckload of lumber. It just so happened that the truck would be driving past the first public bus stop on the oil road and we could catch a ride and I wouldn’t have to try to make a one-bar signal cell phone call in order for this same dude to make an hour long round trip taxi ride to pick us up and take us to the bus stop. We were crazy lucky with our timing. Days could go by without any cars driving by. Two vehicles on the road within 5 minutes of each other meant a veritable traffic jam in Meñepare. As the men unloaded the wood, I did some quick thinking and plotted my return trip. I negotiated for the same truck driver to bring me back to Meñepare on Sunday morning, and then for Fausto to give me a ride in his canoe from Meñepare to Tepapare. It was going to cost a pretty penny for one person, but it was at least doable. The student and I hopped into the truck and we were off. Ricardo, the truck driver, was somewhat aloof at first, but warmed up once we got chatting. I had a lot of adrenaline flowing which made my Spanish flow, too. It turns out, Ricardo knew some former Peace Corps Volunteers back in the day. In fact, a volunteer named Daniel is the godfather to one of his kids. Wow… just another one of those crazy cool small world things. He turned out to be very nice and very insightful. We had a very interesting conversation on our ride. He drives the truck every Friday into the Wao territory and takes them to the market in Santa Rosa. The Waorani men usually carne de monte (bushmeat, including endangered species) they have hunted to sell at the market where they can also buy a variety of food. The Waorani have few other sources of income. That’s why the artesania project is so important, as the women at least have some way of making some money—mostly for medical treatment and clothes for their kids. Meanwhile, the men too often proceed to spend all their money from bushmeat sales to buy a bunch of booze, get wasted, then (as some of the Waorani women will attest) go back in the same company-sponsored truck to the community and proceed to be belligerent and sometimes beat their wives and kids. This is another big difference between the Waorani communities near the oil installations, and those that are still fairly remote, like Tepapare.
Once we get to the first bus stop where there also happened to be a strong cell signal, I called my Volunteer friend in Tena to see if I could crash at her place, and at least give the truck driver a specific location in which to pick me up on Sunday morning. Done. The bus stop had a small store by it, and the student and I bought refreshingly ice cold water and then baked in the hot Amazonian sun waiting for the bus. We must have been quite a sight. My Crocs and lower pantlegs were covered with mud and my arms were adorned with black painted designs that the women did…war paint, so to speak. The student had no less than 3 big bags and I had 3 big empty gas cans. When the bus rolled up, it was overloaded with people and cargo, a common occurrence along these campo routes. They tied the gas cans on top of a pile of other goods headed to the Tena market. The bags were piled on a bunch of produce in the front part of the bus. Thankfully, and no less than miraculously, the student got a seat. I was forced to stand for the first hour of the long and bumpy journey, which I was okay with. As I said, I had steeled myself to deal with a long, uncomfortable trip. I have found that I have adapted the ability to put myself in a zone to just deal with whatever comes my way…well, sometimes. There are a few notable exceptions, which I’ll get to later.
Around 4:30 or so, we arrive at the bus station in Tena. We debated going to the so-so hospital in Archidona, just outside of town or to get on another bus to go another 2.5 hours to Puyo to the good hospital in Shell. We decided to go to the closer one and see how it was, and if we didn’t feel comfortable with the care there, we would head back to P-town. Oh, if only there was a camera to chronicle us pulling up to this hospital with all our bags and gas cans. I left my gas cans outside the entrance to the hospital. Okay I just cracked myself up after typing that last sentence. I laughed so hard I have tears in my eyes. Who in the history of the world has ever written that, much less lived it too? If I tried to do something like that in the U.S. I would have been arrested on terrorism charges or something.
Okay, so the hospital felt eerily like a movie set of a hospital in 1967. Metal hand crank hospital beds. Mercury thermometers. Nuns in full habit roaming the halls. Nurses still wearing white hats, skirts and shoes rather than colorful kittycat and balloon patterned scrubs. It was surreal. The student got immediate care by both a nurse and a doctor. The doctor suggested that he stay and get an IV put in because of his dehydration. Rather than immediately go that route, the kid decides to call his parents, and I call the PC medical office to get some advice. Peace Corps said unequivocally to go to the Shell hospital, as it was the best in the region…which basically left us to fill in the blanks as to how stellar this particular hospital was. The ‘rents concurred. So, we got our bags and our gas cans and left. Incredibly, we were in and out of the hospital in less than 45 minutes, and were not charged a penny for the “services.” Now that is something would never happen stateside.
Back at the Tena bus station, I have the brilliant idea of leaving my beloved gas cans with one of the companies in order to pick back up tomorrow. I buy tickets from the same company and then make my way to the bus. The student throws two of his bags in the storage compartment then says he has to hit the john. I hesitate because the bus was to leave any minute, but because the kid was sick and I would be sharing the adjacent seat over the next 2.5-3 hours, I tell him to go, but “run like the wind.” I climb the stairs to the bus and find that the bus is totally packed with people. Every seat is taken and there are people in the aisle from front to back. I had bought a ticket, which is supposed to entitle me to a seat…which happened to be the next to last row. I immediately feel cheated, as sometimes bus companies have the less than cool practice of double selling seats. I take a chance, and push my way through the aisle to the back of the bus, earning quite a few scornful looks and spiteful comments. I get to seat 34 and ask the guy in it if he had a ticket. He didn’t. He reluctantly gets up and gives me my seat. I sit down and then the bus revs its engine and takes off. Shit!!! Where is the student? I yell towards the front of the bus asking if anyone sees a gringo…he’s tall, pale, probably looks lost. I freak out and worry that he is still in the bathroom and will miss the bus with all his stuff and his translator. Then I worry that he is hanging onto the door at the entrance to the bus wondering if he has a seat and too timid to push his way back. Eventually someone spots him, and he makes his way past the same disgruntled people to his seat beside me. Whew. Made it. In an effort to make peace with some of the displaced riders, I offer some up some of the student’s snacks (100 calorie packs of Lorna Doone!?!? Never heard of ‘em. Been gone too long I guess). The bus ride was long, stuffy and bumpy—especially since we were in the back. We roll into Puyo around 9 p.m. and then jump into a cab to the Shell hospital. We roll up to the darkened building and ring the bell to the ER and a nurse opens the door to let us in. I had managed to be patient during this whole 12-plus hour travel adventure, but it was waiting in the ER where I started to become a little unraveled. A tiny old woman was gravely ill across the hall. She was vomiting and moaning and crying. The door to her room was open and every sound that came from her room echoed down the empty hallway. I heard the doctor come in and deliver the bad news: that she had something seriously wrong with her pancreas…that she needed surgery immediately…that they couldn’t do it there…that she would need to go to Quito…that it would probably cost over $2,000…easily the life’s savings of this poor woman. It was excruciating to hear all this go down. As this is going on, a nurse is fending off a drunk from entering the ER. She tells him to go sober up. Then an entire family comes in with a little girl who had fallen and cracked the back of her head open. They barged in the room where we were waiting for test results. I got an up close look at the bloody matted back of the head of this poor little girls. She was clearly in worse shape than my guy. Eventually, the medical staff ushered the student and his bags out of the room, handed him his prescription, and then brought the crying girl in. The hospital kindly called a cab for us, and before the student could take a bathroom break the cab was waiting for us. I offered the kid our extra bedroom, but he opted to stay at a hostal. Probably for the best. I get to the apartment and am greeted by two extra large cockroackes in the kitchen. I smash them with a force that was clearly excessive, undoubtedly waking my downstairs neighbors. I pour myself a big glass of wine and go to fill up a pot of water to heat up to bathe, and… surprise, no water! I stare down at my mud encrusted bare feet and the mysterious jungle fungus that has spread across my left hand and I belt out a cynical laugh. I grab a bucket and trapse down to the water spigot near the street. No water. Ahhhhh…the cruelty. I go back upstairs and take another big gulp of wine and start to cry out of frustration and exhaustion. And then I pass out…but at least it was in my own bed.
I slept like a rock that night and woke up refreshed and ready to tackle the tasks at hand. I took a long, hot wonderful bucket bath and then I jumped on my bike and pedaled into town in search of miscellaneous supplies that we needed, including a multimeter, and big water bottle top that we would use for the composting toilet urinal (that the students, incidentally, forgot to buy), I stopped to get cash from the ATM, updated my PC bosses on my status, stopped by to see the patient, brought him food and juice, and bought some treats to take back to the workers in Tepapare. After several hours of hurried errand-running, I was a sweaty mess, so I took another shower. It was cold, but I didn’t care because at least there was water available.
I caught a 1:30 bus back to Tena. The road between Puyo and Tena is still my least favorite road in all of Ecuador. No, make that my least favorite in the entire world. The fact that I would have to travel it 6 times in a span of two weeks did not make my ass happy. Once in Tena, I was reunited with my beloved gas cans, talked with a guy with a glass eye until the rain let up, then grabbed a cab to the nearest gas station where I bought 30 gallons of gas, 4 bottles of oil and then went to my friend Mary’s house. We treated her to a nice dinner and then she helped me buy some more water and supplies to take back to Tepapare. I divided stuff into different bags---some stuff for the students, some stuff for my Peace Corps pals (Rocklets and Grants!) and some stuff to bribe people if I had too. It was actually just a bag of salt, candles, soap and matches to give to Fausto’s wife. It felt like a bribe though, and, well it makes for a better story.
That night it rained and rained and rained. I woke up around 12:15 a.m. and never went back to sleep. The mephloquine –the malaria prophylaxis meds-- mixed with my over-active imagination made me a little manic. Okay, a lot manic. I tossed and turned, sweating and panicking about my return trip to Tepapare. My imagination went into hyper-drive and mixed with a quasi -nightmare induced semi-sleep made me panic. My mind went over every worse-case scenario in painful detail. That the truck driver wouldn’t pick me up. That the road would be out. That the river was too high to travel. That the students would be trapped there and miss their flight to the states. That the group all got sick from drinking river water because their filters weren’t working. That they ran out of food. That someone got hurt while Nenquimo was taking us to Meñepare. That I would get to Meñepare and Fausto wouldn’t be able to take me to Tepapare. That I would get stuck there. That the canoe would tip. Oh, how my imagination went wild. I couldn’t turn my brain off and just rest. I just sat up and worried. At 4:33 a.m. I got out of bed, got dressed and started taking all my supplies down to the street where the truck was to pick me up. It was still pouring down rain. At 4:55 I called Ricardo to confirm that he was picking me up. He was 10 minutes away. Wow. On time. Cool. I put on my brave face, said bye to Mary and climbed into the truck with Ricardo and his whole family. I guessed that his wife must not trust him driving some random gringa around by himself. About 15 minutes outside of Tena we see a truck that had wrecked into the side of a bridge, hanging precipitously off the edge of the bridge and partially blocking passage. Ricardo stops and we all stare in silence, not sure what to do. We weren’t sure if this was something that just happened and maybe the driver was still in the cab…maybe alive, maybe dead. We inch across the bridge and stop on the other side. As Ricardo moves to get out of the truck, a guy approaches us and says he is the owner of the truck, that he fell asleep and wrecked and that he was fine. He asked us for a ride back to town. Ricardo said that he had a job, then looked at me. The guy pleaded for a ride back to Tena, offering Ricardo $20. Ricardo looked at me again and I signaled that it was ok. The guy gets in the back of the truck and we drive back to Tena and drop him off. I didn’t feel right leaving the poor guy on the side of the road in the rain, especially if he might be minorly injured. After the detour we were back on the road to Meñepare once again. It continued to rain. With each bridge we crossed I grew more anxious, as the rivers were running at flood levels. Several small streams had already breached their banks. At one point we were driving behind an oil company pickup truck. Suddenly, the pickup stopped and a group of 4 men in yellow rubber boots and ponchos jumped out and started to move some rocks off the road in front of their vehicle, as the bossman in clean clothes and boots looked on. Then, all the sudden, we see this huge rock the size of a car come tumbling down a hill toward the road in front of them. Landslide!!!!!!!!!!! Holy shit!!!!!!!!! To our left was a steep cliff face covered with lush vegetation. To our right was a driveway toward one of the oil camps…but the pickup truck was blocking our passage to this higher ground. Ricardo was clearly nervous and wanted to move the truck out of harms way as quickly as possible. As we waited for the oilmen to get a clue and get in their truck, we see a big tree fall down the hillside toward the road, followed by a constant stream of rocks and mud. I have to say, it was one of the scarier moments in my life…watching this freaking landslide in action. Finally, the pickup moved and we were able to drive to a safe spot. We got out of truck and just stared at the landslide in silence. These crazy oil workers kept running out to and moving rocks, then run back when it looked like the next wave would roll down the hill. It was absolutely nuts. Crazy dangerous. We waited for a little while, but not that long in the big scheme of things. Ricardo’s mujer and kids and I walk past the affected area and down the road. When the oil workers got a path cleared and the rockslide seemed to subside for awhile, Ricardo zipped through, we jumped in and were off down the road again. Once in Meñepare, I find Fausto’s wife, give her the “bribe bag” and wait for them to pack up to hit the river. I asked them if they thought the river was too high to go and they seemed to think that was a silly question. That was the way they prefer to go. Before we loaded up, Fausto asked me if I could help him with something. I laughed to myself thinking that there was little I would be able to do to help this dude. “I need help loading a cartridge into my printer.” Say WHAT? “You have a printer?” “Yep. Here I’ll show you. Let me fire up the generator, first” I climb the stairs to a small wooden barn-like building and there in the center is a brand new LG computer with a printer, scanner and a flat screen monitor. Whoahhh. So, with the whir of the generator in the background, we fired up the computer, inserted the print cartridge (which still didn’t work for some reason) and then I showed him a few features of Microsoft Word…and Solitaire. Yes, there we were in the jungle playing freaking computer solitaire. It was freaking bizarre! Absolutely surreal. I was afraid to ask him how he got the money to buy it, because I probably didn’t want to know. I asked him if it was for his business (not sure what that is, thus offering an opening), for his kids, or to write his memoir. He laughed at this latter idea and said he got it so that his kids could learn to use it. I warned him that solitaire could be very addictive, so be careful. He could waste a whole gas can of gas playing that game without realizing it.
The whole situation was just plain bizarre. It just seemed so weird having a computer in BFE without regular access to electricity. Getting gas to run the damn generator to power the computer was a chore in and of itself. Buying printer cartridges or getting any technical help when he inevitably will get stuck by some feature… fuggedaboutit.
So, after the great jungle solitaire game, we load into the canoe and buzzed downstream. Five minutes after taking off, it started to sprinkle, so Fausto spun the canoe around and pulled up alongside the bank so that his teenage daughter could pluck a couple huge leaves to use as natural umbrellas for her mom and to cover our bags. Another incredibly memorable moment.
The trip went really smoothly and really quickly. We got there in just over an hour. I am now a convert to motorized canoeing the river at flood level, as it was a helluvalot easier (and yet, no matter how illogical it sounds, it somehow seemed safer) than at low level… I got to do some birding en route. Saw some really cool toucans and toucanettes as well as a bunch of birds I could not identify…as in most of them.
When we pulled up to the banks of Tepapare, I was greeted almost like a hero, even though I did nothing heroic at all. Everyone hugged me like it had been a year since they had seen me, even though it had been only two days. None of my nightmare fears were realized. They had plenty of food. They didn’t run out of water. They made a decent amount of progress on the projects. No fights broke out. No one was sick. Everything was fine. It was such a relief.
As soon as I got there with the gas and supplies, the Waorani wanted to take a field trip. We all piled back into the canoes and went further downstream to one of their hunting grounds that also featured a big black lagoon. They wanted to go piranha fishing, but they forgot the fishing line. Duh. Instead we walked around a little bit…and then all chaos broke out when a Waorani spotted a monkey. They all started running through the forest tracking it, with a wild bunch of gringos following suit. It was really exciting. I really, really, really wanted to see the monkey. Though, I was also realistic in that if any megafauna is around, I would be in the group that would miss it (see spectacled bear blog entry). The Waorani said that it was a female monkey and that it had a baby on her back. I did get a glimpse of the leaves moving and a flash of fur, but not enough to know what it was. I didn’t understand what species they were saying it was…I likely wouldn’t recognize it in any of the three languages being spoken there in the forest. I had followed one of the women, Crazy Dayo to another area of the forest where she claimed the monkey had gone. We were all craning our necks to scan the canopy…then I see something furry moving. Dayo yelled something that I thought meant monkey (she doesn’t speak Spanish). I looked through my binoculars towards the moving leaves and see clearly that it was not a monkey…it was a sloth! I had an awesome view of it moving oh so slowly along a branch before stopping and being obscured by leaves and taking cover from the wild Waorani that were beating on the trunk of the tree trying to get it to move for us. Nothing like a little wildlife harassment… Anyway, I was super psyched to have been the first to spot and identify the sloth. Maybe my luck really is changing…
The mini-hike and canoe ride was a definite highlight of the trip. It was beautiful….and it was a lot of fun. Lots of laughs. I got caught up on all the mini-dramas of the last few days on the canoe ride…lots of chisme that is not fit to print. But oh how good it felt to laugh.
We had a late lunch that ended up being our dinner. I watched Jer and Kris put the finishing touches on the composting toilet, as the community brought out their artesania to sell or trade things for (clothes, tools, food). It was an entertaining process. We then had a short community meeting where we explained the construction, use and maintenance of the composting toilet and water capture and solar purification systems that were installed. It was cool to see some of the women explain it to each other in their own words. A couple of the men said that they were going to build their own toilets just like the one the group built with the community. If that is actually happens, that is a huge success in this wild, difficult world of development.
The PC crew chilled out in the profe’s house until it was time for the despedida—farewell sendoff—dance. The Waorani had roped the three female students to put their traditional dress on (over bathing suits). The girls were such great sports about it and totally got into it. The Waorani women sang and danced and the gringas (who towered over them) followed along. Then they called the guys up…ALL the guys. They peer pressured them into at least taking their shirts off (but not going totally tipica) and dance around. Everyone was roaring laughing. Some of the guys got really into it. It was pretty funny.
Okay, I´m out of time and out of steam...If you read this far, you are either truly bored, a serious blogstalker, or a family member that feels obligated to read my missives. In that case, you know today is my birthday and so if you haven´t already sent me a carepack, here’s a wish list of things I need-want. : )
- water filter for next adentro trip. Something small..only need it to filter what I will be imbibing. Have heard good things about the UV light types. Have no idea how much these things costs, so feel free to blow me off and make me drink bichos if it is super spendy.
- pocket knife. Mine was appropriated from me and I miss it. Doesn’t have to be very fancy.
- Granola bars or protein bars.
- Blister bandaids. I have normal bandaids, but those specialty blister ones are better...and boy could I use them today. I got some serious rubberboot rub going on.
- More candy. Can never have enough. Reeces and Take 5 porfa.
Thanks in advance for your generosity/pity.
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