I am currently in Tena, jungle city between Quito and our reserve at Yachana. We are here because the five-weekers are going back to Quito tomorrow *sniff* so we´ll be saying goodbye to Laura, Sasha, Sherry, Rikard and Jamie, and Hells. The rest of us are here for at least another five weeks, and some people are here for six months in total.
The past few days have been really uneventful so I'm struggling to know what to write about. The projects (mammals, butterflies etc.) are really only running for 3 weeks at a time, because in the first week of phase, we are all training, and in the last week of phase, we are cleaning up after the trip to Hector's Island, and getting ready for the new five-weekers.
Anyway, my sister asked me why so many of the projects are centred around the effects of the road and why it matters, so I'll explain. Until 2006, the reserve was just normal, fairly untouched rainforest, then they built a dirty great road through the middle of it. there's not much traffic (one vehicle per half hour?) but it's important to know whether it is affecting the animals, because if it is, then our research here might help to stop other roads being built through the middle of untouched rainforest. if our research shows that animal populations are suffering, then it's important to try to stop other roads being built elsewhere and decimating more animal populations. On the other hand, if the road is having no effect on animal populations, then if another remote community want a road and animal rights people are saying no, it'll damage the environment, then our research will be able to show that in fact, having a road doesn't really affect the animals, so if the community wants the road they should be able to have it. It's early days yet, but the evidence so far seems to suggest that the road IS having a negative effect on the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and butterflies. This is a bad thing in itself for our animal populations, but also a bad thing becasue the chances are that more communities will want more roads built to connect them with the outside world.
The people of the communities around Yachana (our camp) seem phenomenally poor, living in one-room wooden huts on stilts, with a few chickens, the odd malnourished dog or two, and grubby children with bad teeth left to scratch around in the dirt while their parents are out working the land. the women have around 5 to 10 children, and carry their babies around strapped to their bodies with a sheet or piece of material, the babies being attached to a nipple or sleeping most of the time. But the kids really are delightful.... when i was doing TEFL and teaching them, they were crazy and wanted to run around all the time, and the boys loved shouting out answers, but didn't want to do any writing, and would do things like hide their pen and paper, and then when you give them another pen, they miraculously produce their original pen from under the table, then a minute later, revert back to saying "No hay pen!" and shrugging... the little menaces. the girls, on the other hand, didn't do much shouting out, but would say the answers quietly, and wrote what we wrote on the board perfectly and neatly and were miles ahead of the boys. That's the kids at Puerto Rico, which is our nearest village (like, 10 huts), about half an hour's walk away from our camp. We're also now teaching at Salazaar, which is an hour away, and when you get there, you see what poverty the kids are actually born into. Their clothes are absolutely filthy and full of holes, and lots of them had black teeth or suchlike, and they didn't seem to have any toys at all... but they are lovely and playful and would happily play frisbee, skipping etc. with us. we did some educational games like throwing a ball and saying "my name is Karen" and then throwing it to another GVI volunteer who would reply "My name is Ella", then throw it to another vcolunteer, and by the time we'd all thrown it to each other, the kids had picked up on it, so we throw it to a kid, and they´d say "my name is Anna" and throw it to their friend, who does the same... and you can teach them in this way without having to explain things to them. our instinct to copy one another is an amazing tool! we also taught them the names of some animals, by showing pictures and repeating the word, and then the kids did the same, and we did animal charades, and they were really good at shouting out the words.... i didn't want to have anything to do with the children, i didn't really want to teach them, and i didn't want to have to play with them, but now i'm really glad i did. it makes you realise that kids are kids the world over and it makes you hope that they can grow up wealthier than their parents... having said that, they seem pretty happy and unburdened with the materialism of the Western world. They are happy to just play football and skipping with some strangers like us.
Our other contact with the local communities is with the students who come over from Yachana, the partner college. Three lads (Galo, Cristian and David) came over to stay for a month, and they did what we did, and we had Spanglish in the evenings when there was a langauge exchange to help both parties improve their grasp of each other's language. For some people, that was their only contact with them, but I sat with the guys and Spanglished (if that can be a verb?!) every night, which was really good fun and I miss the guys now they're gone. It certainly gave me an incentive to learn more Spanish, but i'm already anticipating it being a shame that I'll forget most of my Spanish (not to mention all the bird calls and latin names of frogs!) when i get back to England. but hopefully stuff like that will always have been worthwhile, and no knowledge is wasted. The guys were hardworking and a good laugh and i'm not sure how similar their backgrounds are to the poor kids we've taught in the TEFL thing.
There has been a bit of a feeling of cabin fever around camp, with people wanting to escape and feeling hemmed in, but i don't really mind that too much. I'm happy to have a 'home' and do the same things several times. We don't really see the same volume of animals I saw in Costa Rica, but it's a totally different environment so maybe it's unfair to compare the two. however, we hear birds all the time - the yellow rumped caciques and russet-backed oropendolas are ever-present, and have amazing calls, which sound like R2D2 (star wars robot) or other weird out-of-this-world sounds which you would never think a bird could produce. it's really cool. i love the feeling of being in the wilderness, and things like bats flying around near the toilets - one flew into my chest the other day - i thought bats were supposed to have excellent echoloaction skills, but if my experience was anything to go by, the phrase "as blind as a bat" seems more appropriate. stupid things.
something fun we've done recently was sat camp - this is where you stay out in the jungle in hammocks (that zip up around you). it does feel a bit like being in a coffin, and i thought i'd struggle to sleep like that, but it was actually really comfy and i slept well. in the morning we got up at about 4.30 i think, and went off to do mist netting, and we caught 7 birds i think. the birds are then measured and everything. it's a nice way to get up close to birds, and i don't think they are too stressed out. at any rate, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Tonight we are going to have our first pizza in 5 weeks, and it's like the last supper, as it's the last time we'll all be together with the 5-weekers, so we say goodbye to them today. then loads of us are off to Baños, which should be fun for a couple of days, then back to camp for the next 5 weeks of rice and beans. Honestly, i have eaten enough beans to last me a lifetime! Please, family and friends, when I'm home, DO NOT COOK ME ANY BEANS!!!!! however, fried banana in sugar is definitely something i want to export back to the UK.
