I’ve spent in total over a year in Tena during 3 trips here. I’ve done many things but one things that I have avoided is going shopping for meat. I would pass the butchers shop, their fronts open to the road, their racks hanging cows heads, tongues and chunks of meat covered in flies with someone ineffectively swatting them in a laidback fashion. Approaching a shop I would breathe in, hold my breath as I passed and breathe out further down the road.
On Saturday I organised a BBQ by the river. I needed meat. It would seem I needed to go to the butchers. It was a hot day, so much so that sweat was dripping from my forehead as I walk up the road.
It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I walk in. The butcher is sitting behind a very long largely empty ceramic counter, but he has in front of him a collection of different animal parts. There are hooves, bony bits, odd shapes of non descript meat…
“Is this all you have?” I ask tentatively.
“Want are you after?” he replies.
“Well, meat (beef) or pork or chicken”.
He goes over to a large chest freezer, opens it and removes a giant hunk of frozen meat.
“Pork?” he says. I nod.
He then proceeds to take the hunk of meat and cut it using a heavy duty band saw. I wince as he wipes the blade with a dirty rag. He adjusts the settings. I end up with 7 x 1.1mm thick pork chops. The man is also selling parrots - live parrots. We have our BBQ and having laced the meat with an incredible amount of salt, it turns out to be a delicious meal eaten off banana leaves by the river. I do not get stomach issues and I think it is a small miracle!
Friday, 19 February 2010
..ailment number 126…elephant ankle.!
The Amazon keeps amazing me with new ailments. After a trek through the forest for a weekend in a pair of wellington boots (official modern Kichwa dress) I am unsurprised to come away with a few blisters. I am proud of myself that I have not spent the hole weekend moaning about the state of my feet and that I seem to be more in control of the mind over matter principle of pain reduction.
Little prepares me for a day later. I awake on Monday with my ankle slightly swollen. By Monday afternoon I am in such pain that I cannot walk and return to the house in a taxi and I hop the final distance to my bed. I get it. I have got an infection and need to treat it. Even with a dislike of antibiotics I knock them back like sweets at the thought of being able to take away the pain.
Tuesday and I am working, I am teaching the teachers course. I try mind over matter but it doesn’t appear to be working. I do my best to hobble into class and arrange the tables in such a way that we can all sit and I can reach over to the board if needed. Tuesday afternoon my foot is beginning to look like a elephant foot. And I look like a wally. Every person I meet wants to have a look and has their own secret remedy to make it better.
Wednesday hallelujah I can walk again. However because someone up there likes to tease me, make my life as difficult as possible and see what I do with it – my one remaining pair of flip flops (after the river incident sent one packing) breaks as I walk through town. I then have the challenge of buying a new pair of shoes with one foot the size of an elephant. I cannot teach the next day with no shoes. I also have only come out with $6 and my feet are larger than the average women’s shoe size here. It’s obvious when I try on and fail to fit many of the flip flops that it’s clearly though I have freakily large feet for a girl. It’s a tall order. The result is the best of a bad bunch, certainly not what I would have chosen – brown, entirely plastic with diamante gems.
Thank you ailment 126 for teaching me that these things are sent to try us.
…a day in the finca..
I was very lucky as a child to be brought up with a garden on ¾ acre of land. It’s amazing what you can do in a garden of that size, the activities are endless and the excitement the same. It’s difficult to recapture that same excitement and yearning to jump out of bed and be the first one up. To pack yourself a lunchbox full of breakfast and depart on the days adventure.
But the offer of going to spend the day at the family’s finca (jungle farm) is very much like that. I jump at the chance; to get out of the town and wind my way down even narrower and bumpier tracks to the river and community at Puni. The day must start with the obligatory getting up at the crack of dawn. Then follows the bus ride where everyone falls asleep. You then all scramble off the bus, every man, child and chainsaw and get left in a cloud of dust on a road next to a cut path through the forest.
When we arrive at the river it has been raining. There is no way we can walk across, especially with a child and baby in tow. One man from the community strips off down to his pants and wades across the river. He returns shortly in a wooden dugout canoe. (We chat to his family, Maria says later so we can get a ride!) Six of us wobble the distance across the river and climb out. Ten minutes walk later we arrive at the family’s hut. We collect wood and make a fire. We construct a makeshift hammock for the baby from a sheet and old clothes. But the baby is not content to be left alone in the hammock and trying food and milk similarly does not work. The baby wants to be washed. We go to the river, collect water, lightly heat it and sit the baby in a pot and pour water over it. Breakfast is delayed until said baby is contently swinging in the hammock. We make a pan of hot chocolate and hierba luisa and chicken soup and stand around a giant table slurping off spoons.
Maria is planting platano and yucca and I am searching for seeds in the forest. Margarita gets the help of the couple that live ‘next door’ in the forest. They help to carry the platano through the forest into the canoe and up to the road ready to take back to Tena. Their children stay with us and sit silently. They eat and drink everything they are given. They are the polar opposite to my godson! My godson who has come with us to the forest is a four year old tantrum waiting to happen. He is obsessed by Spiderman, Power rangers, computers games and smashing things up. I’m hoping it’s just a phase!
The afternoon is defined by a mad scramble up the river for forty-five minutes on a dug out canoe. Tarquino wants to show me the community tourism project so I can take some photos. There are seven of us in the canoe and it sits about 3-4 inches proud of the water. It is extremely tippy. We are racing to get the bus back to Tena, there is only one a day .
We keep taking in water on the rapids coming back down the river and it’s all hands to the pump as the canoe fills half way up with water. Wellingtons are removed and used as bailers. The baby plays contently in the bottom of the canoe in a giant water bath. After unloading the canoe we race through the forest, a baby (fantastically heavy beast!) in my arms. We arrive at the road just in time. We arrive back in Tena. I am completely filthy, tired but very happy… the kind of happiness you rarely get as an adult, the kind that reminds you of spending a day making dens, mud pies and floral perfumes from rose petals.
But the offer of going to spend the day at the family’s finca (jungle farm) is very much like that. I jump at the chance; to get out of the town and wind my way down even narrower and bumpier tracks to the river and community at Puni. The day must start with the obligatory getting up at the crack of dawn. Then follows the bus ride where everyone falls asleep. You then all scramble off the bus, every man, child and chainsaw and get left in a cloud of dust on a road next to a cut path through the forest.
When we arrive at the river it has been raining. There is no way we can walk across, especially with a child and baby in tow. One man from the community strips off down to his pants and wades across the river. He returns shortly in a wooden dugout canoe. (We chat to his family, Maria says later so we can get a ride!) Six of us wobble the distance across the river and climb out. Ten minutes walk later we arrive at the family’s hut. We collect wood and make a fire. We construct a makeshift hammock for the baby from a sheet and old clothes. But the baby is not content to be left alone in the hammock and trying food and milk similarly does not work. The baby wants to be washed. We go to the river, collect water, lightly heat it and sit the baby in a pot and pour water over it. Breakfast is delayed until said baby is contently swinging in the hammock. We make a pan of hot chocolate and hierba luisa and chicken soup and stand around a giant table slurping off spoons.
Maria is planting platano and yucca and I am searching for seeds in the forest. Margarita gets the help of the couple that live ‘next door’ in the forest. They help to carry the platano through the forest into the canoe and up to the road ready to take back to Tena. Their children stay with us and sit silently. They eat and drink everything they are given. They are the polar opposite to my godson! My godson who has come with us to the forest is a four year old tantrum waiting to happen. He is obsessed by Spiderman, Power rangers, computers games and smashing things up. I’m hoping it’s just a phase!
The afternoon is defined by a mad scramble up the river for forty-five minutes on a dug out canoe. Tarquino wants to show me the community tourism project so I can take some photos. There are seven of us in the canoe and it sits about 3-4 inches proud of the water. It is extremely tippy. We are racing to get the bus back to Tena, there is only one a day .
We keep taking in water on the rapids coming back down the river and it’s all hands to the pump as the canoe fills half way up with water. Wellingtons are removed and used as bailers. The baby plays contently in the bottom of the canoe in a giant water bath. After unloading the canoe we race through the forest, a baby (fantastically heavy beast!) in my arms. We arrive at the road just in time. We arrive back in Tena. I am completely filthy, tired but very happy… the kind of happiness you rarely get as an adult, the kind that reminds you of spending a day making dens, mud pies and floral perfumes from rose petals.
…a now… I can breathe a sigh of relief!
Here is a picture of me in a rarer proud moment. I thought I’d share it. I have just completed teaching my first private adult English course to a group of English teachers. It really was a challenge but also great experience!
I was approached in an internet café by an English teacher. She wanted a course in pronunciation and idiomatic English. “Oh hell”, I thought! Just the two things I feel least confident about teaching! And pray, tell me why I left my teaching resource folder in the UK!
So thereon in followed a frantic week researching and preparing materials only to arrive at the night before and find myself in a power cut. I watched in despair as my computer battery became lower and lower. I switched off with 9% battery left on my laptop crossing all my fingers and toes that I may wake up the next day with electricity in order to print my materials.
Worse was the morning when I awoke to an eerie silence. I realised the electric was still off and I couldn’t even start up my computer. I don’t know how but I managed to get through the first day! We were only jinxed once more. On the final day I invited an American English teacher friend of mine to my class so my students could experience both accents. No sooner as we started then the children outside our open air classroom started band practice with the loudest drums imaginable. After moving classrooms and a good deal of time deliberating about what to do we managed to sustain some kind of class. I couldn’t quite believe this was classed as music! These things are sent to try us but I say bring on the next course…only leave the drums at home!
.. The life and times of proyecto central
I’ve talked and listened, noted and observed. I’ve met many different people here and it seems a word that crops up with unnerving frequency is ‘proyecto’ – (‘project’). It is impossible to live here and not have at least one project on the go. Especially as a foreigner here for obviously more than a week or so, it’s naturally presumed you have projects. It’s also quite inspiring in way. This country needs projects.
A couple of weeks ago I went to visit the school I used to work in. After an awkward realisation that no-one recognised me, I laughed nervously. I was then recognised, and later told it was my laugh they recognised, which is a nice thought at least! And so followed an interesting few hours spent with the headmaster of the school.
He started the school 14 years ago as an antidote to the bad education he saw in the schools he taught at. He wanted to get kids living in the sheltered confines of Tena city to experience nature. Rather than just on National Nature day he dreamt of a school where the children would be studying within nature every day. His project has not been an easy one.
Every thing he wanted to do differently, people said he couldn’t do. He introduced the idea of having a bathroom for each classroom, of peer mentoring and a more relaxed learning environment. He takes on students that no other schools will take. The general mix is good for the students as a whole, he says. I can’t say that I agreed with everything they did at the school when I was there or by any means it was perfect but his vision, in the backdrop of educational institutions here, is exemplary.
We go on a tour of the school. How the children have grown up! The classes here were always small – about 12 maximum but some of the classes appear very small. I have sympathy for headmaster who explains the current political situation and how it’s affected the school. He is essentially explaining to me a very familiar debate which is state versus private schools. Rafael Correa, the current president and best friend of Hugo Chavez, came into power just as I was leaving in 2006. Most of the changes I have noticed here are down to his government’s policies.
The president has changed wages. Teachers now get paid according to experience but perhaps $800 a month. Before it was likely to be around $250. A minimum wage, for example for a house helper, is now $250 a month. However this policy, which sounds excellent on the surface, has had some unwelcome side effects. Most people cannot afford to pay someone $250 to help in the house or with children so there are less jobs. Many jobs have gone underground and so are not regulated at all and so people get taken advantage of. Because there are less jobs there is more crime and Tena is a less safe place because of it. The president has introduced free education for all. But this means that the state needs more money and is depending more than ever on the petrol companies and exploitation of natural resources in the Amazon. The president does not live in the communities affected by this.
But for the headmaster these policies affect him on a daily basis. The state only pays the wages of state school teachers. Less parents can afford the fees at his school. He can’t pay competitive rates on the salaries and so it’s difficult to attract good teachers. The government is taxing the school so much that it is struggling to survive. He looks at me and he looks tired. He is 58 and a man of significant life experience. He has three degrees and still has plans to add to it with a PhD in Psychology. He plans to never retire. He has a passion for what he does. He cares for each of the children and they wander freely in and out of the open door of his office. He’s more likely to give the badly behaved ones sweets from his drawer. He knows there’s always a reason behind it.
So what’s my project he asks? “Well”, I answer, “it’s an idea in progress”. I’ve been trying to get a sense of what teachers feel about my idea. I’ve always agreed with an ethos that applies itself here as follows. External help should be given in the form of training, not as direct teaching. They have thousands of teachers here. If you can train teachers to teach better, they can then go and teach others and potentially have a far greater effect than an external person teaching only one group of children for the same amount of time. The effect is longer term. I would love to set up a centre of English language training, to train teachers to teach English in more didactic ways in schools.
The teachers I worked with on pronunciation and idiomatic language were really excited about learning more methodology and activities. I take for granted that I have had the benefit of being taught by some brilliant teachers and that without realising I have learnt from them. It was one of the English teachers I worked with that made me realise that I take it for granted that I am a native English speaker and that for a sum of money I can access what here is a prized qualification, mostly unattainable due to the high statutory entry requirements. The same group of people, whilst not perhaps being at the level ready to take the certificate, could benefit significantly from being trained with the methodology of TEFL. In this way they could make their classes didactic and language usage more real and appropriate for the students.
The centre would have training facilities, a library of resources and as a separate wing, connecting volunteers to community schools who need language assistants. It would also provide training for them. I am constantly asked here to teach and it appears that English is much needed for tourism and further study. It’s an idea. Bureaucracy often dictates these projects untenable.. perhaps it’s a pipe dream.
Before I leave the school we pass the old teachers staffroom. It is full from floor to ceiling with uniforms. This is incredible. The kids now have regulation socks, T-shirts and school bags. It’s fantastic to see. As I take the old familiar school bus home I sit opposite a kid of 7 years old listening to an Ipod. I take a photo of a child I used to teach. He doesn’t remember me. Ironic really. The kids wander round every day in the uniforms I designed. So the photo is a memento and a reminder that everything is possible if you put your mind to it, but things should not done with the expectation of recognition… you could be waiting along time!
.. fumigation take 2
It’s true to say that I’m absolutely petrified of cockroaches, beyond, in all honesty what is reasonable. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself I’m not scared – I scream like a true wimp. All I can see in my head in the mock up of a kitchen in London Zoo overrun with cockroaches.
9am in the morning. I am frantically preparing my class, when a man dressed in a white suit and mask knocks on my door. We are being fumigated for mosquitoes again and must vacate the house. We spend 20 minutes camped out on the pavement out front whilst the insecticide lessens its noxious presence in our rooms.
As a last nod to fumigating, the man leaves the property spraying his insecticide wand down a crack in the manhole cover on the pavement in front of the house. After he walks away, I see a cockroach or seven scurrying from the manhole. Then I see more. Then proceeds an exodus of biblical proportions. All headed towards the house. And so we suffer several hours of cockroaches raining from the ceilings in our rooms. But should I be grateful there was only one episode of a cockroach running up my trousers?!
Standing in the doorway to my room I suddenly have a light tickling sensation shooting up my leg. With razor sharp reflexes (they call me razor hands Niki!) I manage to catch the cockroach round about the front of my thigh and trap it in a fold of material. But then what to do?
I am paralysed with fear and can’t bring myself to let it up or down. A small crowd gathers round me but there isn’t consensus. Some shout for me to let go of my trousers and jump. The other camp shout for me to take off my trousers! I can’t quite bring myself to take my trousers off in front of everyone so I hyperventilate a little more and then I take an especially deep breathe and dive off the 50ft diving board and let go of my trousers and jump. Luckily the cockroach falls to the floor and scuttles away rather than scuttling to my nether regions.
Suffice to say we were not fans of the fumigation man!
… carnival Tena style…
It’s Wednesday the 16th of February and after a week of fiestas and 4 days of carnival, Tena sleeps. Well relatively; strictly speaking it’s back to work and school.
I’m sitting on the pavement out the front of our house, (something I’ve not been able to do for days for fear of being ambushed!) and I reflect as breathe in a wiff of rotten egg. A dog wanders past with a distinctly blue tinge to its coat, even it has not escaped the carnival.
Carnival in Tena is a crazy affair. Once school breaks for holiday on Thursday lunchtime, it’s full steam ahead for a long weekend of crazies. The kids cover each other’s school uniforms with water, flour, eggs and coloured spray foam. The fiestas reconvene in the evening and you’re mistaken if you think there’s ever a choice in participation in carnival antics! Standing watching the Miss Tourism presentation, my ‘friend’ turns round and sprays coloured foam in my face, followed by water, beer and the rest!
For 4 days walking anywhere requires all valuables, books etc. to be tightly wrapped in plastic bags, as buckets of water are poured from roof tops on unsuspecting passers by. It seems whenever I’ve just had a shower and gotten dry I’m stung another time by mad carnavaleras. Even travelling in taxi or bus you are pelted with homemade water canons. The premise of war is integrally understood. If you are not armed with at the very least a water bomb in your hand, you are a prime target! So if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em!
Suffice to say after 4 days of wandering around in wet clothes, however hot it is, everyone has a cold. Just another carnival in Tena! As I write I wipe my dripping nose but luckily on unscented toilet paper!
I’m sitting on the pavement out the front of our house, (something I’ve not been able to do for days for fear of being ambushed!) and I reflect as breathe in a wiff of rotten egg. A dog wanders past with a distinctly blue tinge to its coat, even it has not escaped the carnival.
Carnival in Tena is a crazy affair. Once school breaks for holiday on Thursday lunchtime, it’s full steam ahead for a long weekend of crazies. The kids cover each other’s school uniforms with water, flour, eggs and coloured spray foam. The fiestas reconvene in the evening and you’re mistaken if you think there’s ever a choice in participation in carnival antics! Standing watching the Miss Tourism presentation, my ‘friend’ turns round and sprays coloured foam in my face, followed by water, beer and the rest!
For 4 days walking anywhere requires all valuables, books etc. to be tightly wrapped in plastic bags, as buckets of water are poured from roof tops on unsuspecting passers by. It seems whenever I’ve just had a shower and gotten dry I’m stung another time by mad carnavaleras. Even travelling in taxi or bus you are pelted with homemade water canons. The premise of war is integrally understood. If you are not armed with at the very least a water bomb in your hand, you are a prime target! So if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em!
Suffice to say after 4 days of wandering around in wet clothes, however hot it is, everyone has a cold. Just another carnival in Tena! As I write I wipe my dripping nose but luckily on unscented toilet paper!
….think of your life as a jungle
Spending twenty-four hours walking through the jungle with two people of few words, gives you the time and space to think. Indeed to experience all the senses, but above all the time to reflect. Sometimes it’s the very fact that you are spending the majority of your time on survival alimentary tasks that leads you to think, at the very least, that all that other stuff you were thinking you had to think about, you actually don’t.
I’ve always been incredibly intrigued by people who don’t make lists (as similarly as I get incredibly excited when I meet someone who is just as frenetic a list maker as I am!) How do some people get through life so well without them?!
My life has always been very list centric, but increasingly I’ve noticed that writing everything down actually doesn’t always help. Perhaps life should be considered a bit more like a walk through the jungle rather than a production line with productivity being the main aim..
Everyday as you walk through your home territory you instinctively notice things that need to be done. A bridge mended, seeds harvested.. and sometimes there is time and sometimes there is not as dinner needs to be caught. But a note is mentally made and seemingly a minga (working party) organised to complete such tasks.
I often wonder how the two cultures work together., one of list makers and the other of slowly getting things done. Is one better than the other?
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