So I hate to drag this long convoluted story out even more...but I am going to anyway. Over the weekend, instead of typing up the dramatic conclusion of my latest tale, Jer and I went with some friends on a short hike to the Hola Vida waterfall. 
We also took a hike down to the Pastaza River where we saw some cool wildlife including monkeys, walking sticks, crazy cool spiders and beetles and this cute little guy.
We pick up today’s post where we left off yesterday…recounting my recent trip adentro with the Waorani Women’s Association. Our protagonist was stuck on the side of the Via Auca oil road with 30+ women waiting around for our ride (canoes) to the community of Quehueri’ono…. At some point in the morning a canoe finally pulled up to the bridge and the Waorani leader Moi gets out. Notice I said ONE canoe. After some negotiating with Moi (he claimed he didn’t know anything about our trip and only came to the bridge to make a phone call from the guard station…) he agreed to take a boatload of women to Quehueri’ono. Of course everyone was jockeying to get on the first canoe. They decided they would send all the women with babies first. “Hey, anyone want to lend me a kid for the day?” I joked. It turns out, there was one seat left on the baby boat. Manuela motioned for me to get in. I turned to my friend Noemi who I know really wanted to get moving and offered her the spot. Manuela then overrode her and said, “No, I send Susan.” Ok. She’s the boss. I quickly grabbed my backpack and slid down the slippery bank and into the front of the canoe loaded down with Waorani women, each with a baby in a sling around their shoulder or small child by their side. Although it didn’t feel like it at the time, I was really lucky to have got that last seat…
We ended up taking off around 10 a.m., leaving the other group behind to find their own way. The first half hour of the trip we motored past colono (colonists, mostly Shuar) settlements along the river. Although the houses weren’t visible from the river, I could tell that we were not in Waorani territory because of what was planted in their chacras (gardens). Finally we entered Wao territory, which was actually marked with a sign, part of a project to delineate the borders of their territory. Over the course of the next 5 hours or so, we motored up the 
When I wasn’t playing with them, I was scanning the banks for critters. I was excited to be able to see some cool wildlife, including a caiman, an agouti and a sunbittern. Always happy to see wildlife actually alive…rather than on a plate in front of me… It was slow going. The river level steadily dropped throughout the day and by the end of it we were having to go really slow to avoid hitting logs. One of our stops was at the new Huaorani eco-lodge outside of Quehueri’ono operated by TROPIC in cooperation with the Waorani community. I got to peek around a bit. It looked very nice, but it didn’t look very new. The wood had a time-worn look to it… a testament to how quickly things erode in the rainforest, I guess. We finally pulled up to the community in the late afternoon, unpacked our stuff and hung out in the school building waiting for the canoe to come back with some food that TROPIC had donated for our workshop. After we unloaded our stuff, one of the women said that there was a boa by one of the houses a
nd asked if I wanted to see it. YES, of course! As long as I can keep a distance… She led me through a wooded area to where some of the houses were located…and there in a grassy by the house was a huge
boa constrictor. And it was not happy. Evidently one of the men came across it while he was working in the chacra and brought it up near the house so others could gawk at it too. A group of kids kept throwing sticks at it, and one of the boys had a red t-shirt on the end of the stick and was taunting it. I got to witness the speed and the force of its jaws (and just how wide it can open its mouth) when it went after the t-shirt. I took another step backward. The comical part was watching the Waorani try to call a chicken that was wandering dangerously close to the boa. Meanwhile, one of the same boys came over to the house where I was loitering outside of, and showed me his gigantic pet rhino beetle. I know it was a pet and not just some straggler because he actually had a string around its leg. A beetle leash, so to speak.
That night I helped make dinner for our group, which consisted of rice, pasta and tuna. For breakfast the next morning we made rice with sardines and oatmeal drink. That’s all we had to work with. Cooking took forever because it required wood fire cooking…which required walking really far to get firewood. The women gave me a huge basket of wood to carry. I think they did it just to watch me struggle with it. The basket had a strap to put across your forehead, with the basket balanced on the small of your back. I walked like that for a couple hundred meters until it felt like a vertebrae was going to be compacted and crushed in my neck. I then grabbed the straps to take the pressure off my neck and continued walking until I saw some teenage boys who were willing to carry the wood for me. Whew! Quite a workout, really. The next challenge to the cooking spree was the fact that we did not have any spoons OR cups. Like any good Peace Corps Volunteer I improvised. I made a makeshift spoon out of a drink box, while the women just used their hands. For cups, I washed out the sardine cans and then filled them with the oatmeal drink to offer to the women, yelling “sardine juice, sardine juice, get your sardine juice for only 25 cents,” which they thought was hilarious. (They are an easy audience.) We made an extra large batch of rice and sardines in anticipation for the other group to come. They never came. So for lunch, we ate MORE rice and sardines and drank more oatmeal drink out of sardine cans. For dinner we ate m
ore rice and canned seafood, again making extra in hopes that the other group would show up. They still did not show up. I was starting to get very worried about them.
During the day, I had tried to organize the “baby boat” group to have at least a mini-workshop (the trainers were among the group that were left behind waiting for the other canoes). I led what I thought was a good session with them where we talked about the importance of good quality handicrafts and we rated some of the things they had made. I also worked with them to collect information for a project I’m doing to document the natural materials (bark, leaves, roots and nuts) they use to dye the fiber. Interestingly, I have often found that my Spanish flows when I am talking among other non-native Spanish speakers for some reason. I am embarrassed to say that my wao-terero is still non-existent, however.
So, despite the transportation challenges in getting to the community, and the fact that we didn’t have much food or utensils… and the fact that I did not having any of the materials I needed, nor were the trainers there… despite all this…I was actually having a good time.
But things changed the following day (to be continued).
(continued from my previous post, below. Read it first if you haven’t already. It is more entertaining, anyway.) After the worst movie ever made ended, we stopped in the community of Meñepare in order to pick up women who had walked from other villages to this meeting point. This was the same community where we had built the plant nursery. The plan was to take advantage of the little time we would be there to do some maintenance on the nursery by installing special screening to block some of the harsh rays of the ecuatorial sun. Plus, I was anxious to see how many of the seeds we planted were still alive. Of course when we get there it is during a seriously hard downpour. I threw on my rubber boots and jumped out of the bus and made my way to the nursery and was pleasantly surprised to see that almost all of the seeds we planted were sprouting and had grown quite a bit. Only a very few seedlings that we transplanted had bit the dust. Success! It was raining so hard that we couldn’t really do much of anything. So, we basically looked around, then headed back to the bus. Our hour-long stop to do a little work turned into a 20 minute pit stop. It was a little surreal…leaving BEFORE we had scheduled to. I was starting to get a little dizzy. This never happens.
We continued on to Tena to stop for a late lunch. More than 30 women, approximately half of which carried babies in sheets slung across one shoulder, got off the bus and piled into our usual spot, the Galpón (which means, literally, chicken coop) restaurant for an overpriced lunch (now $2.50—previously $1.50---and it didn’t even come with soup!!!Yikes!). After lunch I slipped away to stock up on some supplies for the long trip that still lay ahead. Chocolate bar, chocolate cookies and peanuts. Check. Once we got back on the bus and started to pull away I realized that I had meant to buy a couple DVDs for the next leg of the trip lest we tempt fate and let anyone put the worst movie ever made on for an encore. Against my own rules, I made the driver stop the bus. Two of the other women jumped out and helped me pick out movies. We wanted a comedy. The lady at the store made a few recommendations and we made a hurried decision and walked away with Game Plan and What Happens in Vegas. Because we were rushed, we didn’t try the DVDs out before hand, as is normal custom (to make sure they worked). By some stroke of strange luck (for me that is), both movies were good quality and ONLY in English. Not even Spanish subtitles. The Waorani were disappointed. Meanwhile, I was trying to disguise my glee. So, I sat back, munched on my cookies and watched two not-great-but-not-awful (and thus good enough for me) movies. It made time fly by. I didn’t even hardly notice that we had to stop twice because of tire problems. Once to inflate…the other to completely change the tire. I also was so absorbed in my little world that I didn’t notice that we evidently kept driving into gas stations, but not stopping for gas. As I said, I was engrossed in my movies and didn’t pay much attention. Before we knew it, we were in the city of
As we sat down for yet another plate of chicken and rice and French fries, I was told of our newest transportation challenge: we needed to get gas (for the bus) and none of the gas stations in Coca had any, hence the reason we went to all those gas stations but were waved on because there wasn’t any gas. Huh? Oh. Coca, of course, is one of the bigger oil towns in
Once back on the road around 11 p.m. or so, I drifted off to sleep…and then woke up when we the bus was stopped and the lights went on. I looked at my watch: it was 1:20 a.m. We had arrived at the bridge. Early. Very early. The trip that used to take 3.5 hours had been dramatically reduced to a little over 2 hours because of this crazy thing called asphalt that had been put on the road. We weren’t supposed to leave in the canoes (that would take us to the community where the workshop was to be held) until around 6 a.m. But instead of sitting in the bus and catching some zzzzzz’s until sunrise, the bus driver kicked us out of the bus. Yep, he dumped us and all our stuff on the side of the road by the
It was cold and damp and awkward. No one knew what to do. It basically sucked. The only good thing was that it wasn’t raining. I donned my headlamp and started to put up my tent. As relieved as I was to have a tent and a foam mat, I simultaneously felt bad for the women, because they didn’t have anything but a change of clothes. I started digging around my stuff trying to find plastic bags at least for them to sit on and invited a couple of them to stay in my tent. Even with a foam mat the ground was bumpy and uneven with rocks and not comfortable at all, but I would never think to breathe a word of complaint. At 6:30 or so, we finally crawled out of the tent and looked at the scene around us. Hungry faces, big bags of food, but no way to cook the food. Oh, and no canoes. So, there we were, more than
30 people standing by the bridge, tons of supplies and gear, the sky threatening rain… and no canoes. (to be continued)
(typed Saturday) I’m reclined on pillows, relaxing, eating bonbons in bed as I type this. It is true. Now before you start getting grandiose ideas about the rough life of a Peace Corps Volunteer, let me explain. I am “relaxing” in bed because I have no energy. I am eating chocolate Ecua bon-bons because I am hungry...and mostly because I am trying to get this awful taste out of my mouth. You see, I have giardia. Yep, I ate or drank something very contaminated recently and those nasty little protozoa have attacked my intestines. Before I received this diagnosis, I was convinced I had worms. More like a colony of worms. I was certain that two opposing factions were warring over who was going to take over my small intestine. Let’s just say that there were many strange sensations, sounds and odors emanating from my body. But, it turns out I don’t have worms...I have giardia. Whew. That’s a relief... I think. Actually, I don’t know which would be worse.
Okay, so I have been putting off my telling of the story of my latest trip adentro. I have been living in Procrastination Nation this week. Not that I am obligated to share with the world my misadventures... I just don’t want to disappoint the three of you that are actually interested in what I am doing and the other two of you that are just killing time surfing the web while on the clock.
So...here goes. Last week I was travelling with the Waorani Women’s Association to the community of Quehueri’ono (also sometimes spelled Keweriuno...and pronounced roughly “Kay-where-eee-uuu--no” ) where we were to have the last in a series of workshops aimed at improving the quality and consistency of handicrafts made by the women. Quehueri’ono is home to arguably the most famous Waorani, Moi, who’s photograph is on the cover of the book Savages by Joe Kane and he once graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine (I think that was the one) in the 1990’s when the Waorani were fighting against U.S.-based Maxus oil company. (Fast forward 17 years and you find Moi still living and working in Quehueri’ono on a recently opened Eco-lodge...for details check out www.huaorani.com).
It was going to be a long trip to get to the community. We were scheduled to meet at the Women’s Assoc office at 7 a.m. As per usual, I was the first one there and the only one on time. Despite this, we managed to get the gas and the food without much delay and we left town within 15 minutes of the ETD. Remarkable. The average delay prior to this trip was easily 1.5 hours. I had a glimmer of hope that things maybe, just maybe, would go according to plan...
Once we were on the road, the bus driver put in a movie. As the opening credits began to roll I had this sinking feeling. “No! It couldn’t be... I CAN’T be... Please tell me you’re joking!!” Oh, no. My worst fears were realized. The bus driver put on the worst movie ever made: Little Man. I have ranted about this movie in previous posts. It is just inexplicably popular on Ecuadorian buses. I just don’t get it. I have seen it no less than 5 times here. Wait. Correction: It has been played on no less than 5 buses in which I happened to be a passenger. It is kind of comical, really. Every volunteer has a movie that they claim they’ve seen many multiple times on Ecua-buses. My friend Elliot once told me that he had seen the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlburg no less than a dozen times on buses. He proceeded on telling me where he was going on each of these bus rides to prove it to me. He was so outraged by it. Meanwhile I was just incredulous to the fact that he a) had been travelling so much; and b) was complaining about watching Markie Mark. Then again, I have a mini-crush on Mark too (right SMK?). I also had the bad luck of sitting below one of the speakers and had to really concentrate on not being distracted by the bad-dubbing job. Instead I focused on reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It was a book that my RPCV friend sent to me...saying that it is something that should be read in Peace Corps or something like that. Thankfully I was only about 400 pages into the 1069 page behemoth when it was still moderately interesting and before it teemed with anti-government and anti-public service rants. To be continued...
I am totally, utterly distracted. I can’t get any work done…and it is not just because I now have internet access at the office and can finally catch up on emails, friends’ blogs, the news, and get distracted into other time-sucks on the web….although that is largely the case. I’m distraught….because I just learned that my fellow Peace Corps volunteers in Bolivia have been evacuated as a precautionary measure in response to the recent political unrest and violence there. I understand that some of the volunteers will be sent here to Ecuador, others to Peru, but most will be sent home. I am really kind of freaked out about it. I never wanted my paranoia about U.S.-Bolivian relations to actually be prophetic...
You see, Jer and I were originally invited by Peace Corps to serve in Bolivia. Despite the fact I wanted to serve in Latin America, my initial reaction was disappointment. We contemplated the invitation for almost a week. Peace Corps put a lot of pressure on us to accept the invitation, alluding to the fact that there was no guarantee we would get another…or that it may further delay our already extremely long application process. In the end, we made the very difficult decision of declining. We did so for a variety of reasons, but largely because in my gut-I had serious doubts about the relations between the current occupant of the White House and Evo Morales, the first Indigenous President of Bolivia. I remember saying to Jer something like “But…of all the countries in Latin America where Peace Corps serves, I believe Bolivia is the one that is at the greatest risk of being booted.” I just didn’t want to go through the whole process of quitting my job, selling the house, selling the car…and going off to Bolivia and not be able to finish my service…. But now, for whatever reason, I feel bad for saying that…
I’ve already received a text from a friend congratulating me on making the right decision. Yet, why is it I feel like crap? On top of the outrage I feel about the recent killings there and feeling exasperated by what sounds like a bungled job by the U.S. diplomatic corps, I just keep thinking about all those volunteers I was originally invited to serve alongside…and trying to imagine what they must be going through...by being told to leave their communities abruptly without much chance to say goodbye to anyone…to not have any type of closure… I feel like I need to apologize or something. So, to my compañeros who served in Bolivia, I want to say: I’m sorry that you were forced to leave the country you love. I’m sorry that violence and war interrupted your service in the name of peace. I’m sorry I can’t do more to help. I’m just so sorry….
Still don't feel like writing much, so instead I'll post another photo from my trip to Quehueri'ono. Enjoy.
I´m back from my lastest adventures in the Waorani territory...and it involved the usual mix of logistics blunders, drama and other random absurdities... ingredients included gas shortages, sardine juice, roadside camping, watching the worst movie ever made, and wildlife encounters. Will tell the full story later...but will post the following photo from the trip as a teaser....
Today, Monday September 8th 2008 will be a day in infamy. Okay, not really. But it is a big day for me. Today was the first day I was able to use that crazy newfangled concept called the "internet" from my computer at the Waorani Women's Association!!! As a bonus, I ALSO now have the ability to print documents, too! Que emocionante. Seriously, it is a big deal. For the past 17 months I have operated in my own little closed circuit system. Truly my own world. If I wanted to print anything (which I often do...crazy I know) I used to have to close all my documents, save the document to a flash drive, go to another office to boot someone off their computer, insert flash, print...blah, blah, blah. I realize this sounds kind of whiney, but it got really annoying really fast. I was always interrupting other people and causing problems. You see, my flash drive is pretty sleazy. It has been hooking up with dozens of internet cafe computers around town...and well because it didn't use protection, it now has viruses and worms (or ETD's as I call them). Well NOW I have "broad band" banda ancha (or "mancha ancha" as my counterpart calls it in her broken spanish....which translates to broad stain). It is fast for Ecuador, fo' sho.' Oooooohhhh I am so giddy with glee. I have internet access and printing ability!!!! Yippy skippy! This may even mean more frequent blog updates...or it may mean proivide major distraction and time suck (uh, hello, facebook?!?!?!). Only time will tell. And well, it will be at least a week until we know...because tomorrow I leave on a loooooooong trip adentro to the community of Quehueri'uno (home of Moi, of Savages fame) for a workshop with my women's group. Will be going on a looooooong bus ride then getting in a motorized canoe; will staying in a tent, bathing in the river. And no, definitely no internet access or printing ability there.
Camisetas en tella "strech" a solo $8.
Well, we´re back from a great R&R trip to the coast. Jer and I left the PH (sniff, sniff) on Saturday around 3 in the afternoon and rolled into Puyo at 7 a.m. on Sunday. Despite the fact that it was a looooong and annoying bus ride and despite the fact that our backpacks were wet and muddy (thanks to bus no. 2) and smelling like fish (thanks to bus no. 3) it was all worth it. Now we are working our tails off trying to make up for the time that we were gone...and we just got hit with the sudden realization that it is September already and ¡yikes! there is a lot of work we want to get done before the end of the year. Today I helped the Waorani Women´s Association put up a display of new T-shirts for sale, helped hang stuff from the hooks in the ceiling (because I´m always the tallest in the group) in the store...and drafted a 2 page workplan of all the stuff I want to do ---and think I can reasonably get done with the women here before the end of the year. We´ll see. La jefa viene mañana...y veamos...
In other mundane news, our new sitemate just arrived in town after swearing in as a volunteer on Friday. She is staying with us until her host family gets her housing situation worked out (lots of drama). Have had to turn down two other international couch surfers because we haven´t been around or couldn´t accomodate so many guests at the King International B&B. Am excited that my folks finally (!) pulled the trigger and bought tickets to Ecualand to visit us in December. Am SUPER stoked to show them around P-town and hear my dad use his 12 high school spanish phrases. : ) Sorry, don´t have anything very witty to post. For humor, I refer you to CT Go Bucks Blog (warning: for adult audiences only). I especially recommend the recent posting about top tailgating moments in history, which recants our mis-adventures in the parkinglot outside the greatest football game of all time. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants reading his post...and it really made me wonder if the government makes travel pee bags for women pilots or Peace Corps Volunteers (hey, I would argue that long latin american bus rides are equally--no, actuall more---arduous than the long flights of Air force pilots. ) Advice before reading: go to the bathroom first. : )
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