hey everyone,
as the subject indicates, this will be the last installment of these emails, pretty much because i can tell you right now what my final two and a half weeks here is going to look like: writing, transcribing, translating, more writing, a little bit of travel, and even more writing. these directed-independent study projects are a little overwhelming. at least i´m a good way in already and its a topic i enjoy (indigenous medicine for a refresher). 30 pages in spanish here i come!
on to more important and actually interesting things: these past two weeks have been life-changing.
the first was our rural homestay in Cotacachi. i was staying in a town called Morochos, about the size of a couple football fields. there were six people from our group staying in this tiny town. the rest of the group wass staying in towns in the surrounding area. we had our own little house with its own bathroom, shower, and 3 really comfy beds and covers, facing the house that belonged to the family. our family´s house (Vincent Chen was staying in the same place as me, though he spent a majority of his time with Lan who was at another house, just down the road) had four rooms: bathroom, living room (which was also home to the family´s only bedframe, no mattress, just a couple of straw mats, i guess the whole family cuddled up in there to sleep), dining room, and kitchen. all that blatant inequality was pretty wack, but i guess if those are the furnishings that tourists like ourselves sometimes depend on to actually go visit a that place, i can´t really argue. i would have been fine with a mat myself, but i know thats not most people.
the family was very very nice, though we often had communication problems. our host-father and eldest host-sister were the only two that spoke conversationlevel spanish, about at the same level as mine, depending on the subject. amongst themselves they spoke Quichua, which was fun at times because modern Quichua is a mix of spanish and quichua, because there are a lot of concepts that quichua just never invented (or needed to have) words for. our host-father worked in construction, and pretty much drops everything when there are guests so that he can be tour guide, etc. this made the initiative totally and utterly ours, which is why this part of the program is difficult for a lot of people. the hosting families are very shy, especially ours, because of language and cultural barriers, and they don´t want to feel like they´re imposing on us, because we´re the guests. but most of our group was really proactive and jumped at every opportunity they gave us. i got to work in the garden, hoing up renegade weeds and kinoa, i got to shepherd which meant going out with the four cows, one burro, and handfuls of goats and sheep, and chase them around in the hills, making sure they didn´t eat the neighbors´ corn. then i got really sick. i think i finally figured out that it was the kinoa which they put in almost every soup (every meal except breakfast, but probably that too if you let them, included a soup and a main plate, it was a lot of food!) maybe i´m allergic? finally threw up in the shower, because my butt was occupying the toilet. it was gross. atatai = how gross! in Quichua. that was Monday, by Wednesday i was finally feeling a little better, had my appetite back even if i couldnt keep anything down, so my host-father hands me this cup of clear liquid, says: "here! herbal remedy!" well, no better way to work on a project that with first hand experience. it was about two shots worth of the purest alcohol i´ve ever had. the first meal i had had all week came back up about ten seconds later. "feel better?" he asked... kinda... finally started taking the Traveller´s Diahrria pills my doctor had given me before i left. turns out thats all it was and it cleared right up. while being sick sucked, it still gave me tons of time for rest, reading (i started "A Force More Powerful: a century of nonviolent conflict" heady stuff), and more writing than i´ve done in ages. it was great.
we got back on Thanksgiving Day to Quito. we went out to our favorite falafel bar. we all went around and said what we were thankful for. it was precious. i felt a little sacreligious not eating meat on Turkey Day, but we at least got the gluttony part down.
Friday morning we got to the airport, flew to Coca (half hour flight), total petrol town, then got onto a chiva (these huge buses that are open on either side and fit as many people as you can squeeze onto each bench, they have seating on top too, but thats where our luggage went) which took us to the Rio Napo, got on a boat for two hours, another chiva for another two, and another boat on the Rio Tiputini for an unmeasurable amount of time. the whole process took the whole day and we finally got to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon jungle after it got dark. what an incredible place. apparently its one of THE most biologically diverse spots on the planet. other than the occasional sounds of helicopters going in and out of oildrilling spots, and the generator which went on only to prepare lunch and then again for dinner, you´re surrounded by constant nature sounds. i am even more of a believer now that the Amazon invented everything first. there were so many sounds that should have been coming from a DJ´s board or a synthesizer or some other computerized thingamajig, but they were birds! or poison tree frogs! or monkeys! it literally got to the point that we would be walking along one of the many trails and say casually "oh it´s just more monkeys" it was sooo cool! i quickly figured out that this would be an awesome place to stay and talk to someone about medicinal plants that could be found there. so after wrestling with our director (grrr), i got to stay until the next boat left, the next friday. i got up early with everyone else (breakfast was served daily at 630... not that you could sleep much past that with all the birds heralding the sun) on monday, watched them pack up and waved to them from the dock. while our whole group was there (both the university and cultural exchange programs from Pitzer) there was another group from BU of bio students who had been there for a month, but they left on monday with our groups. this meant that once they were gone, it was only me on our side of camp. the nicer cabins on the other side still held two primatologists, and three researchers working on insect substrate-communication. it was so much more quiet. especially since our cabins were essentially wallless, having screens facing out, and the walls that separated the two cabins per building were so thin that you could almost hear people breathing through them. gone from filled with college kids, to just me. it was weird. every morning i went out with one of the guides, who was a local guy of the Quichua people (who had actually only been in the jungle for about 400 years, so their knowledge of the surrounding plants were not as vast as, say the Huaorani, but knowledgeable nonetheless), i got about an hour and a half worth of video footage of him talking about plants. disp? yeah, i did that. we´d return for lunch, after which i would take a nap to sleep through the hottest part of the day. reminded me of it when you said that tara. its so humid there that we had to keep our electronics in a dry box in the library which was the only building at the station with electricity 24hrs a day, except when we had generator problems... that was almost a disaster) woke up whenever (or when the heat woke me up) continue reading, and get up to go on a hike by myself, coming back in time to watch the sunset over the Rio Tiputini. tried my damnedest to get that on film, but it just does not compare. we got to see tons of monkeys (woolies, howlers, spidermonkeys, squirrelmonkeys, and capuchins) when the whole group was there because they were as curious of the racket that we were making down on the ground as we were of their racket up in the trees. but once people left and it was quieter, i got to see a giant ant eater (so big! and it has these really long fingernails that it can use to kill jaguars if it wants cuz they´re made for ripping trees open to find the termites, so we had to be wary of its short-sightedness), squirrels (ooo, squirrels... how nice... they´re actually pretty rare in the Amazon), an aguti (pretty much a giant guinea pig), a weasle thing, and two snakes (called wind snakes because they´re so fast). i didnt get to see any big cats, mostly because they nocturnal, but they have a bunch of motionsensor cameras around the trails that pick up all the wildlife, so we got to see those photos, for a lot of these animals its the first time they´ve been photographed in their natural habitat. funded by national geographic. amazing amazing amazing place. if you go to one place in ecuador go to the galapagos, if you go to two, go to tiputini. there´s something magical about being that isolated (you could travel for days in any direction (except the one we came in) and not find another human being or sign of "civilization"), in the center of nature´s biggest metropolis, there´s just such a feeling of living things all around you. oh yeah and the ants suck! some are as long as my finger, and pretty much all of them bite, a stinging sensation that lasts for hours. you don´t touch anything you havent inspected first, and even then, only when you need to to not fall down in the mud. the galoshes that they provide for everyone are really fun, makes you want to romp through the puddles. unfortunately i had to refrain because i had only packed enough clothing for the weekend... not an entire week. on wednesday i finally asked one of the directors if they had any tshirts for sale because i was out of clean ones... he said "oh yeah, i thought you might have that problem. did you want us to do some laundry for you?" i have never been more thankful. now i´ve seen everything, washers and dryers in the Amazon. i bought the shirt anyway.
still haven´t heard back from the study abroad office about china, so its becoming less and less a possibility. which means i´ll be returning to Pitzerland in the spring. but a lot can change in two weeks. even if i do go to china, the program doesnt start until midfebruary, so i´m planning on spending some time at pitzer in the interim (stupid major declaration form...).
alright i´ll let you guys get back to your finals studying, you procrastinators. and if you left this for after finals, you have more selfcontrol than i would. cheers.
miss ya. hope to hear from ya. see ya soon!
smiles
Ben
