From Quito: On the Intellectual Stagnation of Academia

I'm going to transition into my latest adventure by leaving my blog in a state of limbo, at least for the time being. I have several creative ideas, or at least I think they are creative, for how to present the travels and experiences that I hope are to come (a process that, as I envision it, will be collaborative and much less macabre than the previous years' writings). In the meantime, I like the idea of my unbaptized soul remaining in some nondescript limbo of the blogosphere. Don't worry, this doesn't mean that I am intent on remaining an absent and negligent writer (the last time I posted was on the 1st of July). To the contrary, I actually intend to justify my absence from writing with this introductory, limbo, blog.

At present, I find myself, once again, in the city that, by merely calling it a city, produces a paradox that will never be resolved, Quito, Ecuador. If you have been so valiant to have followed my writing since last year, you already know about my love-hate relationship with Quito. If you're a new reader, do the following, and not necessarily in this order: go back and read my rants and raves about Quito (if my opinion interests you, that is), do some research on the highest capital city in the world (I'm sure Wikipedia will suffice), if you're considering putting Quito on your bucket list, please don't let me discourage you (after all, it did make Nat-Geo's list of top 20 places to visit for 2013) and, lastly, consider if you really want to keep on reading me (just trying to save you, before you go over the cliff). The truth is, there must be something about Quito that keeps bringing me back; it certainly has nothing to do with the insanely unpredictable weather, horrendous overcrowding, mile-long traffic jams, choking pollution, and one of the scariest airport landings you can experience in your life. No, I think it has more to do with the food, the traditions, the people, the Historic Center, the relevance and historical significance, the beauty of the surrounding Andes mountains and a certain Dra. Báez and her amazing family. Whatever it is, here I am again, under about 5 blankets during the 45-50 degree nights, to keep warm, and swinging in a hammock on the balcony, with the 70 degree breeze blowing and the sun shining bright (most of the time) by day. 

All of a sudden, I find that I am free to think for me again, and that is something that hasn't happened much, well, since the last time I left Quito. In the past few days, I haven't done much by the standards that I was living in the U.S. over the last 7 months, but those standards, at least in my opinion, could really use some adjustment. This brings me to the main point of this entry, a bold statement that I am going to make based on my life during the last four months, "There exists, in academia, a restriction on instructors that incredibly limits their capacity for intellectual creativity, thinking and development." Of course I can't speak for all instructors, nor can I opine on the experiences of tenured professors (I can only assume that it is much worse for them). I can simply put forth my own personal experience as an adjunct instructor and logically assume that it is similar for others. 

 

I'm justifying my prolonged absence from writing by stating the obvious, there was just no way I could write. That's the Intellectual Stagnation of Academia that I am referring to. Yes, I mean me not being able to take a second to think creatively and be inspired enough to post a sad blog entry, but I am also talking about so much more. I would venture to say that a large majority of instructors and professors in institutions all over the United States (especially in state universities) are faced with this predicament that finds them sacrificing their intellectual potential. The following are some of my own personal for instances: I could work on that collection of short stories that I have been writing, or I could write up this week's lesson plans, I could read Freire's thoughts in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, or I could read the 75 essays that I assigned, I could consider working on getting published, or I could grade exams before other things pile up on top of them, etc., etc. I understand that this kind of work is simply part of the life of a teacher, but there must be something wrong when the people we look to as intellectuals can no longer be intellectual. My guess is that there are hundreds of instructors that are using survivalists/self-defense teaching methods and materials (that are most likely sub-par) as a means to not lose their minds.

What other choice would tenured profs and other instructors have (especially adjuncts that teach 5 courses or profs with classes that have 100+ students), other than to use the same tests they've had for the last five years, implement the use of sometimes arbitrary test formats like Scan-trons, recycle lesson plans, etc.? These are the effects of the commercialization and capitalization of university studies. Higher-ed in the United States has been made into a business; students aren't encouraged to follow careers that interest them, careers that will help them to expand their minds and grow as people, they're encouraged to study whatever degree will help them gain the most money in life. State universities all over the U.S. are pushing for larger and larger enrollment numbers so that they can benefit from the millions of dollars that roll in from private and federal funding; they aren't in the least bit concerned about the turnover rates (who cares is less than half graduate, the university still benefits from those millions of dollars that came in with the huge incoming freshman body). Who suffers in the end? That answer is obvious, the students and the instructors.

As for myself, I wanted to be the most effective instructor I could possibly be. This meant that I wrote a new and original lesson plan for every single class, created and prepared new materials daily, read and reread the text several times, created and uploaded new and original exams, assigned writings (definitely not the easiest of assignments to grade), etc. All of this meant that I had to sacrifice an incredible amount of "me-time." As a result, I haven't written anything new (aside from exams, assignments and grading comments) since July, the latest piece of literature I have read is Experience Spanish (the text for my Spanish 101 & 102 classes) and I truly forgot the beauty of sitting down with a cup of South American Joe and contemplating life.

Was it all worth it? Yes, I think so, yet it would have been nice had there been some sort of middle ground. I  was able to get through to some students, I had some really great experiences and I think some of these amazing students really learned and grew a lot (I can only hope that they will continue to pursue their studies and further their intellectual capacity). Really, as most teachers will say, it's the handful of unique experiences, the connections and inspiring students that make putting yourself through that kind of a wringer worth it. Effectively teaching three courses and having a second job on the side was an insane task, one that I should have known would have resulted in my extreme disillusionment and near loss of sanity. However, if you want to live the "American Way," what other choice do you have?

Thus, I have gone South once again, to live the "South American Way," at least for a while. O'er I am in search of a meaningful experience that will make me feel whole again. This time around, however, there is no solid plan, nothing established, and, at present, there are no leads. The only thing I do know is that something will turn up, and, at least, I won't be alone this time. For the time being, the Andean mountain range sure looks beautiful from the balcony and that hammock is calling my name.

What's Decent Anymore?

Read any poorly written literature lately? I certainly have, I'm checking out the supposed "latest craze" in novels, Fifty Shades of Grey, and I can safely say, up to this point, it's one of the most poorly written trash novels I have read. I guess you can't ask for much, they even advertise that it's garbage literature on the back cover of the book itself, Erotic Romance indeed. Well, this novel certainly is followed up closely, in the "poorly-written" category, by my last blog, "The Perspective Zone." Of course, my stylistic sins and Grey's are very dissimilar. As I began reading Fifty Shades, I found myself cringing at the falsity and lack of creativity in details like the protagonist's name, Anastasia Steele, and it made me feel a little better about myself. At least I had the tenacity to just unashamedly throw out the most generic name I could think of; Joe Blow, it's a universal character!

Really, if I'm going to be completely honest with myself and the reader, I have no other choice but to admit that my last blog was a story that started out interestingly, but fell flat on its face. The fact is that I simply got tired of writing the story and dropped it where it fell. It's like Gabriel Márquez said, a story either works or it doesn't. When a story doesn't work, the writer should recognize that it doesn't and either scrap it or revise it, not share it (oops). Well, my only excuse is that I really wanted to make a point with that story; let's see if I can achieve that here instead.


I haven't always been able to keep as politically unbiased as I should in these blogs, and I recognize that I might touch on some topics that are politically important. I can't ignore the fact that it's an election year, and I probably won't be able to avoid addressing some subjects that make up a big part of the kinds of problems that we are currently facing in this country. Furthermore, I think that the kinds of things that I am going to talk about are issues that neither party, Republican or Democrat, are really addressing. On the other hand, even though it was most likely a move for votes, I was impressed to see President Obama pass major immigration policy reform. We still need to do much more. Really, I don't think that any of us can turn on the news and listen to these politicians and say honestly to ourselves, "These people are being real, speaking from the heart, only stating the facts and addressing only the serious talking points." As a matter of fact, I'm guessing that most of you, like me, listen to these folks and say, "These are seriously crazy people." Well, maybe I can talk through some of the craziness and get a little real, we shall see. 

The argument I was trying to make with my awful story was that most of us in this country are due for some much needed perspective in our lives. Have you ever heard of the Racial Threat Hypothesis? In case you didn't know such a thing existed or you need a refresher, essentially, this hypothesis, which I recall having learned back in freshman Poli. Sci., states that the degree of racism that people express goes up in areas where there are larger numbers of minority populations. So when you are part of a majority race, but there are large number of individuals from a minority race living in your area, you might have feel, irrationally, threatened by the minority. Based on my experiences, I would like to point out that this is a ridiculous reaction. The truth is, it's the minority that, justifiably, feels threatened.

Before I went to Ecuador, I had already had experience abroad, living in Argentina and traveling to surrounding countries, but that experience, nonetheless, did not prepare me for Ecuador. The time I spent in Ecuador was quite eye-opening in terms of my own racial threat hypothesis. You see, in Argentina, the majority of the population is made up of European immigrants and their descendants (just like in the U.S.), which means that most Argentine people are white. In other words, if I didn't open my mouth in Argentina, I was most often taken for one of them. The demographic picture in Ecuador, on the other hand, is much different. The Ecuadorian population is dominated by mestizo (a combination of Spanish/European blood with native roots) and indigenous peoples, which means that I STOOD OUT.


While it would be ideal for diversity and cultural differences to be truly celebrated, these values are often just required, but not truly felt. The truth is, it was very strange, challenging and often exhausting being so entirely different from everyone around me. It was eye opening for me to step on a bus and have everyone immediately shift their attention to me, sometimes it was a very insecure feeling to know that everyone can look at you and make a series of generalized assumptions based on your looks. My skin color in Ecuador meant many things, for one, it meant that I was most certainly gringo, it meant that I was a tourist with money (which wasn't true, especially the latter) and it often made me a target (for would be thieves, small children asking for money and vendors). Some would say that it's not so bad for everyone to think that you're a rich gringo, but the truth is it can make you feel pretty awful in a country as poor as Ecuador. Firstly, it's not fun, but rather quite sad, for people who have nothing to think that you can help them financially (I hate the idea of the white savior). On the other hand, it is also kind of scary to know that you are identified as a better choice for criminals because you're not from the country and, by default, that means that you have more money or valuables than anyone else (something that is definitely not true in my case). Don't get me wrong, I've always kind of stood out (I was definitely an outcast in school), but this was the first time that I experienced people making many assumptions about me based solely on my color, it really was an amazing perspective gained. 


So, I would like to close with a sentiment that I have always had, but that was certainly reinforced by Ecuador. That sentiment is as follows, people are people; it's that simple, there are good people and bad people and that is it. What's decent anymore? People, they are decent or they are not. The thing is, we have to get to the point where all of us realize that someone's race, sexual orientation, religious views, etc. don't matter at all, you're either a good person or a bad person. Everything else about a person that makes them different, unique or makes them stand out, is an opportunity for personal enrichment on the part of someone that meets them, it's an opportunity for gained perspective. My experiences in Ecuador were nowhere near as negative as the treatment many minorities or foreigners experience in this country. The worst thing for me was that everyone assumed I was a rich white target for robbery. In the States, on the other hand, minorities are often assumed to be poor, uneducated, prone to illegal activities, and altogether lesser peoples. Don't even get me started on the way immigrants are treated; just look at what they're doing in Arizona, saying it's okay to ask people for their citizenship papers because of the way they look. They call it "probable cause to doubt the individual's citizenship," which is a nice way of saying, "This person is tan-skinned so they must be Mexican." If I, at times, felt uncomfortable in Ecuador because of my skin color, just imagine how minorities and immigrants must feel in the states, and that's the perspective I wanted to share in my terrible story.

Next Stop: the Fifth Dimension Known as the Perspective Zone

            

           Rod Serling was constantly making reference to a Fifth Dimension, “Beyond that which is known to man.” He loved to say that it was a dimension, “…of sight and of sound,” but I would like to disagree with the title of this dimension. That’s right, Serling had it wrong, it’s not the “Twlight Zone,” it’s the “Perspective Zone.” I am speaking, of course, of a unique place that only a privileged few have the opportunity to visit during their lifetimes. The Perspective Zone is a place where everything you think and know is challenged, where your reality is flipped on to its head and you have no other option but to come to some realistic and undeniable conclusions.

Shall I open with a true Serlingesque statement? I think it is the only appropriate option here, really. Take, if you will, the following scenario of a man lost in an unknown land, he is a man who, for all intents and purposes, we will call Joe Blow. The last thing Joe remembers is having fallen asleep on American Airlines flight number 342, bound for HOU. When Joe wakes up, the plane has already come to a complete stop at the gate, the “fasten seat belt” sign has been turned off and people are standing up to open the overhead compartments and remove their carry-on luggage. Joe gathers up his own personal items and proceeds to head up the aisle, onto the connecting bridge and emerges into an airport terminal that he does not recognize at all. Thus enters Joe into the Perspective Zone.

He has been to the Houston airport several times on business trips, this is not it. The first thing he notices is that everyone looks different from him; they all have dark skin, dark hair and are petit. His first thought is to sort out what has happened with the information desk, but, as he has never been to this airport, he has no clue where the information desk is. He decides to ask someone. He walks up to the first person he sees, a middle-aged looking woman of short stature, glasses and dark curly hair, and he asks her if she has any idea where the information desk is, “Señor, no le entiendo nada, ¿habla español?” Joe becomes frustrated and tries, with no avail, to speak to the woman both louder and slower. As he walks away from the shocked woman who is now standing with her mouth open and a very confused look on her face, he thinks to himself, “Here we are in the U.S. and people can’t even speak English.” The woman was thinking, in contrast, “Aquí tenemos un tipo que viene hasta Ecuador y no habla ni una palabra de español, ¿y ahora?” It is not after Joe tries to communicate with three other people, a young lady on a cell phone, an old man with a dog and an angry gentleman with a cigar, that he realizes that no one in the airport speaks English. He resolves to find the information desk on his own.

As it turns out, the desk was not all that hard to find, the airport seemed relatively small and Joe only had to follow the natural flow that all modern airports seem to possess (if you’ve been in one, you’ve been in most). He walked to the end of a long corridor, through a security check point, out into the luggage claim area and up some stairs to the pick-up area. It was there that he found a pretty and very bored looking, twenty-something, woman, seated at a desk below a big hanging question mark, twirling her hair with one hand and leaning her face on the other. The first thing that he said when he came to the desk was, “English?” With an accent that Joe really didn’t recognize, she replied, “Yes sir, how caan I heelp you?” Joe was certainly relieved to finally find someone who understood him, but he couldn’t contain the rest of his anxiety, “Where the hell am I?”

After a lot of convincing and reassuring on the part of the pretty and board woman, Joe came to terms with the fact that he was now in Ecuador, South America. Once he was directed to the American Airlines counter, he sorted out that, somehow, he was boarded on the wrong plane. “I giive you my moost siinceerest apologies, Miister Blow,” Joe was informed by a not so pretty, balding, man that he would need to stay the night at a nearby hotel, as there were no remaining return flights to Houston that night. The happy man finished up with his sincere apologies and by saying, “We do haave some good neews, fors you seer, your luggage diid make iit to Houstone!” They provided Joe with the address to the hotel and sent him on his way.

He had already had quite enough perspective, but Joe really had no idea what kind of night he was in store for. As he had no bags, he made directly for the airport exit, but was stopped by a little girl before he reached the automatic doors. The girl was the epitome of sadness, her face, hair and hands were dirty, she looked as if she were about to cry and she carried with her a bucket that was just as big as her. Joe really couldn’t figure what was in the bucket until the girl extracted a red flower from it, which was wrapped in plastic and she held it out to him saying, “¿rosa? He assumed that this meant “rose”, but he really had no need for a rose. The girl followed him all the way to the taxis saying, “rosa señor, rosa,” and, by the time he was getting into the car, she was screaming, crying and making an altogether scandal.

Things didn’t improve much with the taxi driver. The man spoke no English beyond, “Hello my friind.” He resorted to trying to say the name of the hotel as best he could and he showed him the paper it was written down on. An hour later, after what seemed to be more of a circuit than a straight trip, the taxi driver promptly charged Joe double what they told him the trip should cost in the airport. He shut the door, accidentally a bit hard, and the driver drove off shouting at him what he assumed were profanities in Spanish.

The rest of his night was rather similar, full of confusions, mistranslations, and misunderstandings. The thing that most impacted Joe, however, was the way he was looked at and the way he felt. The reality was that he found himself in a foreign country; he was taller than everyone, white and didn’t speak the language. From the airport, to the hotel and while he was out for dinner, he noticed people looked at him quite a bit, they almost studied. Not being used to gaining this kind of attention, Joe felt rather uneasy. Every place and thing was new and different, the constructions were nothing like what he was used to, the cars strange and foreign and the order/rules appeared to him unclear or nonexistent.

When he had finished his meal (a plate he turned out not to enjoy at all because he had no idea what he had actually ordered), he tried to ask around to find out what the best way to get back to the hotel was, no luck. He felt that the taxi ride from his hotel to the restaurant was pretty short and he thought that he wouldn’t have much trouble finding his way back on foot. It turns out he was wrong about his assumption. He walked around for about an hour, found himself seriously lost and began to become a bit nervous. The hour he spent getting lost was full of hard stares from the people he walked by on the streets, asking people for help that couldn’t understand him and passing dozens of street corners that all looked the same. He made a turn down one street and found himself walking toward a group of five teenagers that he perceived as menacing. He began to walk fast and try to avoid eye contact, but he was stopped.

Joe began to freak out, but one of the boys asked him, in a perfectly understandable English, “Are you lost sir?” Joe explained to the boys that he had gotten lost trying to find his way back to his hotel and asked them if they had any idea how to get there. Not only did they tell Joe where his apartment was, they actually walked with him back. Joe thanked them all and webt up to his hotel room. The next morning, Joe made his way back to the airport and, relieved to be going home, boarded his plane to Houston. 

New Old Scene

Dear reader, 

I had expressed, in previous blogs, my intention to continue writing in this space, even after returning from Ecuador. South America is never far off, my return flight to Quito is in December, but I think that an opportunity to share some perspective has most definitely presented itself with my return to the states. The transition process of returning from a country like Ecuador creates a very unique opportunity to comment on several different subjects. I can´t guarantee that the publications of this new series of blogs will be as frequent as those I wrote in Ecuador (my free time is much more limited now), nor can I make any promises as to the intrigue produced by these new blogs (I don´t know that they´ll be anywhere near as exciting or enlightening as those I wrote in Ecuador), but I will make my very best effort to only write on topics of interest. So, should you choose to follow these new blogs of mine, I hope you will not be disappointed. You may have noticed that I made some changes to the layout of the blog space, I hope this new simple format makes the entries much easier to read (with new material comes a new design). Among other things, I hope to comment on the contrasts that I notice between Latin America and the US (for example, ever thought it was interesting that the US isn't referred to as Anglo America?). Fortunately, I have been given the opportunity to teach Spanish at ISU again, and I would also like to discuss my teaching experiences there in the coming semester. Apart from these engagements, I am hoping that other writing opportunities will present themselves during my time spent back here in the US of A. Anyhow, if you stick with me, I'll stick with you. Let's see where we can go with this, if anywhere.

Thanks,

Chris

Return to the Land of the North: Welcome back, from the TSA

Being in Miami Airport is like still being in Latin America, sort of. I say this because practically everyone speaks Spanish and you hear it everywhere. That's about where the similarities to Latin America end.  Up until this point, I've been thoroughly annoyed with me reentry/Miami Airport experience.

First off, I really dislike Miami, the people here tend to be rude as hell. As I said in my earlier entry, Miami is a ridiculously huge airport (I think I've walked about a mile and a half). Really, the size of the airport isn't the actual source of my irritation, it's, once again, the TSA that has managed to get under my skin.

First off, you have to walk about a mile to get to customs, this walk comes complete with a bunch of signs reminding you that you're walking in the direction of "Passport Control" (aka HELL). Once you get to HELL, get to have the most miserable government employees in the world yell at you, "Move to this line, step forward, follow the yellow dots, do a hand stand, whistle the Star-Spangled Banner, etc. etc. All of that is just to get them to let you back in the country. 

Once I got through he wonderful experience of passing through the passport verification process, I got to meet my new favorite TSA agent. From the moment I saw this guy and he started talking, I wanted to tell him, "There's something about your face that makes me want to punch it." Instead of doing that, I decided I try to accomplish reentry to the country and answer all of this guy's stupid, and I mean stupid, questions.  

Here is the rundown of the interrogation:
TSA Moron: Where you been?
Me: Quito, Ecuador
TSA Moron: Are you sure that's where you have been? 
Me: Yes 
TSA Moron: How long were you there? 
Me: 8 months
TSA Moron: There are a lot of good things in Quito, but there are also a lot of bad things. My job is to find the bad things. So, you bringing any bad things for me? 
Me: No
TSA Moron: What were you doing in Ecuador? 
Me: Volunteer work for a foundation called Yachana
TSA Moron: And how long were you in Ecuador? (second time he asks me this, as if I were going to slip up and tell him something different)
Me: 8 months 
TSA Moron: Okay, so were you in Ecuador as a missionary?
Me: No
TSA Moron: So who were you working for? 
Me: a volunteer foundation called Yachana (this is where I almost lost my temper) 
TSA Moron: So that's not and NGO? You know, a Non Government Organization. 
Me: I know, and no. 
TSA Moron: Okay, follow the yellow dots, welcome back.
Me: [Mumble not nice things under my breath]

Fun times, huh?  Aside from that lovely experience, here is a list of observations that I have made so far:
1. Hearing English on TV, over intercoms and in the form of chatter from people is a bit overwhelming. I don't know if it is the contrast with having heard Spanish for the past eight months, but Americans sound loud! 
2. Americans, it's diet time! I have noticed how much bigger people are.
3. Marketing is attacking me from all sides! 
4. There are a lot of people here! 
5. This place is big! 
6. In the news, they're discussing the latest attempted terrorist attack, which is scary and depressing. :-( I haven't heard a thing about terrorism for 8 months. 
7. I was strangely annoyed by some guy who was trying to make friendly conversation (he was complaining about the wait for HELL).
8. Things are expensive! I was going to buy a drink, but not for $3 bucks. 
9. Aside from the guy that tried to make annoying conversation, everyone seems very unfriendly and I feel just the same.
10. This air conditioning is freezing me out! 
11. MIA Wifi isn't free and I'm not paying $4 bucks for 30 mins of net. 
12. They're talking about things I have no clue about on the news. 

I'm sorry if I seem very negative, I'm sure positive things will happen eventually. I think, up until now, I've had negative experiences because I'm in a lousy airport.

Return to the Land of the North: Plane ride UIO-MIA

Here I am in the plane. The boarding process amused me because of a chance meeting with an old "elitist" lady. These older wealthy Latin Americans (I call them the old elite, ancianos del elite) never cease to amaze me. She asked me if I was Argentine and I told her no, but I could be a "Kirchnerista" (someone who supports Argentine president Christina Kirchner). Her response to that was, "Es por eso que estamos en semejante situación en América Latina, por los jóvenes que creen en fantasmas" (That's why we're in this kind of situation in Latin America, because of the young people who believe in ghosts). She may have been referring to Ernesto Guevara, but something gave me the impression that she was more talking about her frustration with the fact that the rich Latinos, such as herself, are losing their ability to continue increasing their wealth through corruption and exploitation of the working class. Big surprise, when I got on the plane, I saw she was seated in business class.

Flights to and from Latin America are interesting because they're bilingual. Everything  is said first in English, then repeated in Spanish. Sometimes the translations aren't exactly word for word, but the general idea is the same.  One thing that's rather amusing about these English/Spanish flights is that you get to watch the flight attendants play the Latino or Gringo Guessing Game. I can just imagine the thoughts going through their minds, "Hmm, this guy must be gringo because he's white, but, then again, there are white Latinos." Then you can observe their next, better play it safe, move, "Buenos días, good morning." When they served the meals it was, "Buen provecho, enjoy!" From there, it depended on me, to speak Spanish or English, I opted for Spanish (may as well hang on to it as long as I can).

Back to the Land of the North

I'm on the first leg of my flight back to the land of the north. I'm sitting in the tiny Quito airport (you don't have to worry about which gate your flight leaves from because there's only one) waiting on a flight that heads to Miami at 09:45 and lands after four hours. There isn't much of interest to speak of at this point, except for the convenience of this little bity airport.  As I explained in my first ever Ecuador blog, Quito's airport is very dangerous due to the fact that it's smack dab in the middle of the city. On the other hand, I love it because of the facts that we got here in 15 minutes and it's so small that it's easy. If you've ever been in one of these huge international airports (my friend Mark calls Chicago's O' Hare, "O' Hell") then you know what I mean when I say that they're ridiculous. Those airports, like the Miami one that I'm flying to, are like small cities, they have their own zip codes and they're impossible to navigate. Let me tell you, I'm looking forward to getting lost in MIA today, not! Give me my tiny UIO any day.

No Contaron Con Mi Astucia (They Didn't Count on My Intellect)

One of Ecuador's main attractions is alpaca! I say that half jokingly, but, at the same time, it's true (I'll explain later). You can go to almost any part of Ecuador and find an artisan market full of gifts made by indigenous ecuadorians. In the selva, the artisan crafts consist mostly of decorative jewelry (bracelets, necklaces, etc.). Now, where the real goods are, at least for most tourists, seems to be in the mountain regions.  The majority of artisan goods that come from the sierra are mass produced by the Otavaleños,  Quichuas, named so because they're originally from Otavalo. The manufacturing and distributing of their products is a huge enterprise, not only in Ecuador, but all over the world.  Alpaca, that seems to be the unifying theme of all of the markets where the Otavlaeño artisan goods are found. If you go to the Mercado Artesanal (Artisan Market) of Quito, you will find nearly a hundred little stands, all selling pretty much the same things. You've got sweaters, hats, gloves, scarfs, pants, and so on, all available in a variety of colored alpaca fur. You can even get a sweater made of alpaca with alpacas on it! It's funny because, while it is cold in many parts of Ecuador, especially in the mountains, this gear would be suitable for the Arctic Circle!  Fortunately, not everything is made of alpaca, and you can find some decent stuff, if you have time to look. With everything being the same in every stand (not a good marketing strategy from what I remember in my studies), I arrive at my next point, bargaining. The time concern doesn't only depend on looking. Another very important part of going to an Otavaleño market, apart from sifting past the alpaca, is bargaining. It's called "regatear", or, as my friend Mónica likes to call it, "pelear" (fight), and it is not only accepted, but expected.  Why am I telling you about all of this? Well, this past week I spent a couple of days at the market, buying gifts to take back to the states, and I got some good stuff! As el Chapulín Colorodo, from a hugely famous Mexican comedy show, would say, "No contaron con mi astucia," (they didn't count on my intellect). I went to the market with my secret weapon, Mónica!  Mónica not only has a couple of friends at the Mercado Artesanal, she also loves to pelear. With her help, I made out like a bandit, and I only bought a couple of alpaca things! Now I've got all my gifts ready to go, they're currently passing from a conveyor belt to the airplane. Let's hope American doesn't lose my bag! 

Dylan Said, "Don't Think Twice, it's Alright"

The man wasn't talking about the kind of situation I'm going to describe, in fact Dylan was referring to a defunct relationship, but I think we can employ his words here for all intents and purposes. What I'm alluding to is a decision, a decision that I made personally around twelve months ago, a decision that has changed my life.

In January of 2011, I met with a woman who was pursuing her Master's degree at Indiana State University. At the time, I was in the last semester of of my Master's program. I had, of course, seen Stephanie Reinert before, had ran into her in the copy room and waved in passing in the department hallway, but we had never talked and had really never formally met. One day Stephanie asked if I would be interested in meeting with her to talk about a place in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon known as Yachana. That name, Yachana, means a lot more to me now, but I do remember being intrigued simply by the name. I would later come to learn that "yachana" is a word from the indigenous language Quichua and it can be translated to English as, "a place for learning." Regardless of anything that has happened in the last eight months, one thing that is completely undeniable is that Yachana most certainly has been, for me and many others, a place for learning.

If you have been following my journey, then you already know what my decision was in the end. When Stephanie met with me I was frantically trying to figure out how to find a job in and move back to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Interestingly enough, Stephanie's stories and a few conversations with the founder of Yachana were all it took for me to sign on. I think, at the time, I was easily convinced due to my romanticized predisposition to want help out and work alongside people who are doing positive things in the world. I don't use the phraseology, "work make a difference in the world," because the thought of that just sort of bothers me (I'll explain later). After hearing about Yachana, I did think it would be a great place to do something productive and important. So, did we do productive and important things? I think the answer to that might surprise you. 

When I see or hear phrases like "make a difference," "provoke a positive change," or,  "work towards a better/brighter future," I not only feel a strong repulsion for how generic and overused such phrases are, I also think that using such ideologies is pretty damn pretentious. Aside from all of that, it takes a pretty self-confident or delusional individual to think that they alone can "change the world." So, you will never catch me saying that what I have done at Yachana is going to somehow change the world. After becoming so close with the other volunteers, I can safely say that they would never say that either. The truth is, any halfway intelligent, not full of him or herself, volunteer doesn't expect to change the world. A decent volunteer is simply socially conscientious and wants to use their talents to help out in whatever way they might be useful.

In Berlin there is a 1.3 km section of the Berlin Wall, which has been conserved as a public display of art known as the "East Side Gallery." On one particular part of the wall, there exists a very interesting and profound inscription, it says, "Many small people, who in many small places, do many small things, can alter the face of the world." Now, I don't know about the whole "alter the face of the world" part, but I would like to think that, in the time we spent at Yachana, we were able to do some small things in a small place that I hope will be useful for the kids that we taught. I'm willing to accept that not everyone one of the students will now have a better life after this year (in fact many of them won't), but I do think that what we have done has improved their chances. Regardless of anything else, I can safely say that all of the students at Yachana High School improved their English abilities, increased their Math skills, learned about different literature they were previously unaware of (some even became big readers), and picked up on a lot of practical and useful knowledge from their internships. None of this is guaranteed to help them in the future, but I'm guessing that it certainly won't hurt. 

Certainly the kids got something out of all the work that we have done, but what about me? Early, when I was talking about what makes a good volunteer, I hope I didn't make it sound like volunteers are completely selfless. The fact is that being a volunteer does have a lot of self serving functions as well. If people did everything without thinking about themselves, the Peace Core wouldn't exist. It's funny because not all volunteers are the same, some are much much more self-serving than others. There are volunteers with a savior complex, volunteers with a messiah complex (also known as missionaries), superman volunteers (who think they can "fix" the world), gringo "spread the American way volunteers," environmental "save the planet" volunteers, and the list goes on. What kind of volunteer am I? The truth is I never really thought about it, and that's where Dylan come in. When I made the decision to come down and work with Yachana, I didn't think too much about it. Like I said, it didn't take much to convince me. Don't think twice, it's alright! 

I couldn't be happier that I didn't think twice when it came to making the decision to go out into the middle of the jungle. Would I do it all over again? Of course I would. When I said Yachana has been a place for learning, I meant it. I believe, and I'm sure you'll agree if you have been following my blogs, that I have learned just as much, if not more, than my students. 

What now? Well, for one thing, I have been spending the past couple of weeks in Quito just to get acclimated to living in civilization again. Once you've been trained to be in constant jungle mode, debriefing takes a bit of time. I have to remind myself that there is really no longer any need to shake out shoes or clothes before putting them on, hot showers feel pretty damn good, I like not sweating 24 hours of the day, I'm still getting used to the feeling of dryness and I don't have to check furniture, walls or beds for Bullet Ants before leaning, sitting or sleeping on them. Yes, being in Quito requires a whole different set of survival skills. Instead of worrying about being attacked by an animal, you worry about getting mugged, instead of sweating to death, you have to put on five blankets to go to bed at night, and instead of walking a mile to the lodge, I walk up hill to a bus stop and am out of breath by the time I get there (altitude). Canoes have been replaced with motion sickness provoking buses, pure air has been replaced with smog, and the croak of frogs and the sounds of millions of insects and animals at night has been replaced with police sirens and muffler backfires. Yes, it's a strange transition and I'm sure it will get stranger when I get back to the states. It's not all bad though, I appreciate the fact that I have 24hr, reliable and fast access to the net, a hot cup of coffee every morning, constant electricity, lights at night, and ice cream! 

My plans have changed a bit, a lot bit. You may not have been expecting this blog this early on, after all the school year was supposed to be for ten months. Due to some unfortunate happenings that I won't bore you with, the year ended two months earlier than planned. It was a bit surreal, bittersweet and sad, but we were informed of a situation and had to say goodbye to all of the students in a matter of less than 24 hours. It was interesting saying goodbye to all of those kids, they had become my family over the eight months that we spent together. The interesting thing is that most of them were very matter of fact about their goodbyes. You can definitely tell that they are used to people coming and going in their school lives. The good thing is that they always have each other and I know they will be alright. I'm sure I'm going to miss them more than they'll miss me. 

Two days ago I had to say goodbye to Amanda (the first Yachana volunteer that I met, we were on the same flight into Ecuador and we traveled to Baños together), she´s back in Pennsylvania, Ryan (the other Indiana guy, from Crawfordsville, who I am exactly the opposite of, but became very good friends with) and Stephanie will be heading down to Vilcabamba shortly to live there for a month. Just like that, our little family of volunteers was broken up. It's been too long since I've cried and the moments in which we said goodbye were tough, but I still didn't cry. Along with the kids, I've been missing these guys a whole lot in the past few days and maybe I should just bring on the tears :-) 

It's really tough to go back to your home country after you've been in another for an extended period of time. It was insanely difficult when I went back to Indiana after studying in Buenos Aires. The good thing is that I know that it's going to be hard and I'm going to just have to start preparing myself for that. I think I'll write short blogs about the re-entry process, it's really very interesting. Maybe writing about what's going on will help me mentally deal with it, I think you will be surprised about some of the things that happen to you. It's called reverse cultural shock, and I'm thrilled that I'll be going through it yet again, let me tell you. 

As I finish up here, the lighting is showing me yet another thing that will be different when I get back in the states. What do I mean by lighting? Well, it's 6:30 pm and there is no light, that's what I mean. Twelve hours of day, twelve hours of night, not in Indiana. Let me put that on my list, get used to crazy Indiana time again. Back to the U.S., it won't be long, on the 10th of May, as a matter of fact. See you soon, save a three-eyed fish for me!

  

Desolation Road

I originally wrote this at the beginning of March, when the internet was down, and saved it to publish it at a later time. Now that I am ready to upload it, things have happened here in Ecuador that make this entry even more important. During the time that I was writing this blog entry, two opposing factions were readying a face-off in Quito. News was released that Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, signed a deal with a Chinese mining company to begin the largest mining venture in Ecuadorian history in the Amazon. As a result of this news, a group of indigenous peoples, from the area where the mining is to take place, marched from that part of the Amazon to the capital of Ecuador, Quito. They walked over 500 miles. Correa rounded up people in his support and had them protest for the mining on the same day that the indigenous group arrived at the city to protest against it. Take a look:

Roads are good right? Roads mean access, ease of movement, development, Progress, with the big “P.” I remember, when I was in my early years of college, there was a road that was to be widened and improved, in front of the house that I rented from my boss. This project, I was told, meant a lot of great things. It meant that access from one side of town to the other would be improved, transit times would be cut down, the new wide road would link up to a new bypass (which was also another wonderful project) and life, in general, would be just, overall, better for the people of the town. This road project also meant that I got paid quite a nice sum for relocation, as a victim of “forced eviction,” since the new lane of the road would be passing right through what was the front yard of the house. Essentially, the government bought me, my landlord and the land.

At the time, I thought that the whole project was pretty great. I bought into the idea that I was sold. After the “ground was broken” I remember the project taking a considerably LONG amount of time. Part of the process involved cutting down and clearing out a lot of trees. Once the road was finished, in the years following its opening, I don’t really remember many changes. The traffic was about the same on the road, getting across town took about the same amount of time as always and the promised development is just that I guess, the road is now there, yay!

It wasn’t until now that I really started to think about some of the impacts of that road, of the many trees that were taken down and what that meant for whatever animals were living in that area. However, this blog isn’t intended for that road and its impact, but rather about different roads, roads down south, southern hemisphere, Ecuadorian Amazon, South America. If you think that the road in Terre Haute, Indiana meant a lot of different things, just imagine what a road in the middle of the rainforest means. Currently, all over South America, there is a lot of road construction going on in the lung of the Amazon. You might be questioning why I chose the word “lung” rather than “heart,” as is standard vocabulary for this type of imagery. Well, the Amazon is, quite literally, one of the major lungs of the world.

Did you know that the Ecuadorian government is building roads in the Amazon? If you didn’t know that, then you probably also didn’t know that the Brazilian, Bolivian, Colombian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan, among other governments, are also doing the same. I can’t comment much on the situation in those other countries, as I haven’t witnessed it first hand, however I can tell you about what it’s like here in Ecuador.

You may recall me talking about traveling from Tena to a community upriver from Yachana called Los Ríos in order to return from Quito. Remember the blog in which I bitched about the terrible ride by bus, over a road that is constructed by river rock? That road is one of the many that was built in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon, providing access to once uninhabitable territory. This is territory where only indigenous tribes lived before. Now, all along this road, there are hundreds of houses and small communities all scattered about, populated by people known as colonos¸ colonizers. I never have liked the word “colonizer,” it brings a negative connotation to my mind. When I hear “colonizer,” I think “conquest” and I automatically revert back to my knowledge of what conquest is. In my mind, images of the early European colonizers (the English, the French and the Spanish) come up and I think about destruction. Remember what you were taught about the colonizers? I recall the genocide of millions of indigenous, the clearing of an unfathomable amount of forests and the hunting and killing off of animals, many of which no longer exist or are near extinction. Yes, for me, “colonizer” is quite an ugly word.

Unfortunately, here in the Ecuadorian Amazon the story of colonizing is very similar. You might remember me talking about the Yachana Wildlife Reserve and the partnership Yachana maintains with an organization out of the UK known as Globalvision International. One of the many projects that GVI is working on right now is all about road building. The outlook of the whole thing is bleak, but GVI’s idea is to at least give the people an idea of the impact so that they are at least conscious of what they are doing. So you may be asking, what is the impact then? Well, let me relay what the GVI  people told me. Keep in mind, the members of GVI are scientists, I am not.

The way I was made to understand the situation is that road building and colonizing has four phases. The phases are as follows: Phase 1 – the initial road is established, Phase 2 – that initial road is widened, Phase 3 – telephone poles and power lines are put in and Phase 4 – the road is paved. These might all seem like simple processes when they are presented like that. I don’t want you to forget, however, that we are talking about this all going on in the middle of the rainforest. Keep in mind also that the people begin to colonize from the start of Phase 1 and that the colonizing also has many impacts. Let’s take a look at what the impacts are in each one of these phases.

Before we begin, here's one of my pics of more or less un-messed with rain-forest.

In Phase 1, when the road gets put it, a lot of machinery, heavy machinery, has to be brought in. I don’t know about you, but the mere words “heavy machinery” bring another word to my mind, “destruction”. When these machines are brought in, their main purpose is to knock down a lot of trees, flatten the land and make a path. Usually, as a means to save time and money, the straightest line is selected for this path-making, which means the features of the terrain aren’t usually taken into account and there isn’t much regard for what is taken down. As you might imagine, the initial road making, with all of this loud machinery, scares the shit out of animals, and those who aren’t destroyed by the machines retreat deeper into the jungle. We also mustn’t forget that many animals live in these trees that are torn down and the trees themselves are not just life, but life-sources. As the road is being constructed, people begin to colonize, which means more tree chopping and land flattening to make way for their homes and farms. One thing that’s good about phase one is that the road is relatively narrow and there is still a bit of canopy over the road and tree cover still exists.

This is a road (Phase 1) built right in the middle of the Yachana Ecological Reserve by the government.

Phase 2 means that more trees have to come down as the road gets wider. In Phase 2 the canopy is opened up much more to make way for another lane on the road. GVI informed me that, once the road is made, the government has a right to develop twenty meters on either side of the road (forty in total). If they so choose, they can develop forty meters on one side and leave the other. What does a wider road mean and a more open canopy mean? First, it means that monkeys that use the trees as their home are very vulnerable because they can no longer cross the road by tree, but rather must cross on the ground. Once a monkey is on the ground, it is vulnerable to bird attack. The opened canopy also means heat, which kills amphibians like frogs and lizards. No trees means no shade, which means hotness. The road being wider also means an increased since of security for motorists, which means that many more vehicles will pass and at greater speeds. The increased speeds and quantities of vehicles mean that more animals will either be ran over or retreat into the forest due to the noises and vibrations. These wider roads also mean more access, which means the individual houses begin to become more frequent and small villages or communities are formed (more land “development”).      

+  =

The electricity installation of Phase 3 means more canopy opening and more tree destruction. Remember, when you take down a tree, you don’t only kill the tree, but you also destroy a habitat and whatever the tree lands on. The holes for the posts attract frogs and other amphibians and become death traps, the animals go in, but can’t get out. Afterwards, the posts are simply dropped in on top of the animals. More trees have to be cleared out so that they don’t interfere with the power lines. Once electricity is installed, more people are attracted to the little villages and communities and these soon become towns. Communities, villages and towns mean buildings like churches, medical centers, schools, stores and more homes. All of those things require more taking down of trees and lead to the fleeing of more animals. Unfortunately, the animals that stick around these communities or towns are often hunted and killed as well (mostly due to a lack of understanding or education on the part of the people).

            I witness Phase 4 every time I take the trip from Quito to Tena, but I haven't seen it here, this far inside the jungle yet. I’m told that is to come just in the near future. Phase 4, when realized, will mean more destruction, more machinery and more “development.” Asphault will have to be brought in and laid down, the speeds will go up even faster on the road, more animals will retreat or be killed and more trees will be downed. Once access is facilitated enough by paved roads, communities and towns will become small cities. I know this is how it will happen because it has already happened. Tena, a rather considerable city, is right in the middle of what used to be full Amazonian jungle.

            This is all progress, right? Historically, what we have been taught is that once an influential group, say an entire government, gets it in its’ mind that they are progressing, this “progress” cannot be stopped. Please don’t let me tell you that everything is wrong with this road building. There are benefits, the Ecuadorian people do have the right to access to a better life, they should be able to more easily transport their products, they should be able to get into the cities and they should be able to develop “their” land. Here’s where my skepticism comes in, it’s why I put the word “their” between quotation marks. Is really any of this land ours? I think the simple answer is “No,” but the complex answer is, “Legally, based on laws that men have created and accepted universally, it is now.” Apart from that, while the government tells the people that they’re constructing these roads to better their lives, the major driving factor behind the creation of these roads is the facilitation of access for oil exploration.

So, my short and simple assertion is going to be a very skeptical one, but it will be the truth if we do nothing. Let me paint this picture for you. We do nothing, meaning we cannot stop the destruction of the planet. We have gotten to the point where there is no turning back. There are a bunch of “bleeding heart liberals” (to make use of the overused label) all over the world that are sitting back in their comfortable furniture, air conditioned homes, in their developed cities, with their hybrids, their computers and their comfortable lives in their animal and tree free cities shouting, “Save the planet.” I don’t mean this to insult them, but the planet won’t be saved while all of us are still on it. All they need to do is look around at the places they live in, think that all of that was forest before it was “developed,” before it was “colonized.” Why? It’s simple, we are terrified of nature in its’ natural state. No one wants to live in nature; they only want to camp there on the weekend. We are much more comfortable with our automobiles, our temperature modified living, our grocery stores, etc. Notice that I said we, including me.

            You’re now asking, “If things are so bleak, if the planet is doomed, what are you doing?” I’m doing what I can, along with many of those other bleeding hearts, to slow things down a bit. For now, we can educate, we can get more people to do less killing and destroying of plants and animals and we can slow the process down a bit. Ultimately, I realize that we might not be able to stop it; we may very well be a nasal infection that the earth is going to sneeze out one of these days. Meanwhile, I’m doing my best to help out down here, to educate a little and slow down the destruction. You may not know it, but a lot of other bleeding hearts and I, along with a lot of young people of the new Ecuadorian Amazon generation, are down here doing what we can to protect your most valuable assets, life forms and oxygen. Please do what you can to try to postpone, maybe even stop, its’ disappearance with us.             

Fly like an Eagle to the Sea, and the jungle, and the Mountains

It is common wisdom here and a source of bragging rights for all Ecuadorians that their country, a country most close in size to the U.S. state of Colorado, is one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet. Just to provide you with some trivial information, Wikianswers tells me, “Colorado is the 8th largest state with 103,729 square miles [and] Ecuador measures 98,985 square miles.” As you might imagine, at its size, Ecuador is not a very big industrial nation, which means that it relies on limited resources for national income. One of these resources is the export of fruits and roses, although the income generation and dependability (shelf life) of those products is sometimes iffy, another product, unfortunately, is oil, which is leading to the deforestation of the Amazon (a topic I address in another blog to come) and, finally, one of the most important national products of Ecuador is a service, tourism.

            If you ask any Ecuadorian what the most amazing thing about their country is, they’ll be very quick to tell you (or boast) that the tiny country of Ecuador has three incredible landscapes that very few countries possess: coastal, mountainous and jungle. The bragging rights provided by these three natural landscapes are the base for the entire tourism industry of Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government, past and present, has not been unwise in its exploiting of this natural resource. The former tourism campaign was decent, with its catchy slogan, “La vida en estado puro” (Life in its pure state), but Rafael Correa (current president of Ecuador) hit a grand slam with his investment in the new Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism, “Ama la vida” (Love Life), simple, but great!

            So, why does any of this matter, am I working for the ministry of Ecuadorian tourism? I can assure you, as my bank account reflects, that I am not on the Correa Ama la vida payroll, but I would like to promote some tourism in this blog. It’s not my intention to solely promote Ecuador, but its triple threat landscape provides me with an argument that I think my readers will be unable to deny.

            It might not be convenient (or maybe it won’t meet your expectations) for you as the reader, but for me, the writer, it’s much more simple if I cut out a lot of the “anti-travel abroad” protests that I’ve heard over the years and narrow them down to the three most common: fear, egocentrism and money. One of the most typical things I hear from people in the U.S., when I talk to them about traveling abroad, is their proclamation of fear of the unknown. After that, I also get the very egocentric question, “Why leave the states when we have it all here?” Lastly, I usually get some sort of decree about the extreme state of poverty that the would-be-traveler is, supposedly, currently in. I know this seems formulaic; after all three arguments fit conveniently into three main points of the body of an essay, but let’s take a look at each one of these arguments individually.

            FEAR, this is most definitely one of the most powerful drivers behind a lot of our actions, isn’t it? When people in the states think of traveling abroad, they tend to get a very nervous and worry a lot about a little. “I can’t speak the language!”, “Rules, transportation, stores, bathrooms, etc. will be very different there!”, “What about converting money?”, “What if I get lost?”, “What about the out-of-control drug war?”, and “Aren’t things dangerous ‘over there’?”, are just a few of the worries I have heard. If you let fear rule your life, you may never do anything nor experience anything new. Most of these doubts or worries are completely irrational anyway. “Is it dangerous over there?”, it’s dangerous everywhere! The U.S. may be one of the most dangerous countries in the world, especially if you look at the murder and other crime rates, but that doesn’t seem to keep anyone from going to work or conducting their normal business. Those other things are just problems that you must learn to get over, they’re part of the experience. If you don’t speak the language, you do the best you can, if you get lost, you work to get found, and you figure all of these things out.

The next claim I want to address is the idea that the U.S. somehow has everything and, therefore, there is no need to travel to any other country. This claim is certainly untrue. I cite my early statement about Ecuador, the country just slightly smaller than Colorado, with its’ coastal, mountainous and tropical jungle regions. Is this also true for the U.S.? Coasts, check, mountains, check, and tropical jungle, no check. Where is the tropical rainforest in the states? The simple answer is, there isn’t one (unless you count Puerto Rico as part of the states). The 50 states have pretty incredible and diverse landscapes, but they don’t have everything. There is a rainforest, in Washington State, but the US is not in a tropical region, so there are simply things that we don’t have. Keep in mind, as well, that the US is HUGE, so it’s pretty incredible to think that Ecuador, a little tiny country has many things that the United States do not.

Anyone who has read Darwin knows about all of the incredible species he discovered on the Galapagos Islands. Ever get a look at the Galapagos tortoise in its’ natural habitat? Another interesting trivia fact, there are around 888 bird species in the United States, Ecuador has 1,515. You may be saying to yourself, “The number of bird species is VERY trivial,” and, “What do I care about birds?”, but I’m simply using that as an example of the differences. The diversity of natural wildlife in Ecuador is simply astounding and unlike anything else I’ve seen in the states.

The differences don’t only exist in the flora and fauna. If you’ve been following my blog regularly, you will have also noticed much dissimilarity between Spanish colonial constructions in South America and those British (the ones that are left) of North America. I’ve visited many countries in Latin America and one very incredible thing about their architecture is that a lot of colonial constructions are still very much intact. I should not only argue for travel to South America. Keep in mind that the modern Americas are very young, I have yet to travel to Europe or Asia, but, there, we’re talking about nations that are thousands of years old.

The worst excuse I’ve ever heard for not traveling is, “I don’t have the money.” If you wait until you do have the money, you might never have the chance to do anything until you’re at the point where your body is no longer able to enjoy it. Given, there are, most definitely, situations that take economic priority to travel, but I would suggest that some creature comforts can be sacrificed to increase your quality of life through a travel experience. Find a way, plane tickets are expensive, but other things are cheap. I can eat a complete meal here in Ecuador for $2.50 usd! I think that we sometimes have the mentality that our material purchases will improve our quality of life. People have this idea that they need to spend all of their money on a home, a car, a stereo system, a television, etc., which leaves them without a dime to spend on travel. People work so hard to pay for all of their material possessions that they’re trapped into a job where they are given two weeks off a year. Two weeks off a year is hardly enough time to go anywhere and, when you’ve already bought into the idea of a capitalist’s paradise, the only kind of trip you’ll allow yourself to have at that point is one straight from a brochure, all expenses paid. The expenses are definitely paid, at the highest price possible.

So, you might be wondering how the theme for this blog came about. At the end of February and the beginning of March, I found myself sitting on a beach*, under a tent, sipping on a 40oz beer that I had just purchased for a dollar and staring out at the Pacific Ocean waves roll in. I had a revealing thought at that moment, “Here I am, on the beach with little money in my bank account (but plenty of beer), happy as hell, and there are many people that will never do anything like this.” It made me sad, so I wanted to write an entry to try to convince my readers to travel abroad. Come down and visit me if you want! I hope I haven’t sounded condescending (that was not my intention); I simply want to encourage you to improve your quality of life a little without material goods. Leaving home means a challenge, a cultural exchange; quite literally, it’s an “experience of a lifetime”, and you shouldn’t wait any longer.

*I actually traveled from the Amazon (Yachana), to the sierra, Quito, to the Coastal city of Manta, back to Quito and, finally, back to Yachana in a period of less than ten days. I was able to visit three very diverse landscapes in less than ten days, that’s one of the reasons this country is so amazing. 

Man on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, or Maybe Not

The internet, connectivity, signal, Wi-Fi, web, online, etc., all of these words are things that have become very familiar to us in our “modern world”; and all of them are things that I have been without for several days now. It’s funny, but you really forget how much these “social networks”, more like “anti-social networks,” trap you in. My level of anxiety, from my state of “disconnectedness,” is nearing the summit of Mt. Despair, but, just before I get there, I’ve decided to take a step back and look at the plain irrationality of the whole thing.

            I think the most apparent thing that I should be recognizing is the fact that I LIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON! I realize that it is quite a miracle of science that Internet, with a capital “I,” and the F-word (Facebook that is) have even found their way into the selva. Is Mark Zuckerberg aware that even underprivileged kids from the Ecuadorian orient, many of whom live in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t mean rural Indiana nowhere, have Facebook accounts? Would Mr. Zuckerberg be willing to donate some of his gazillions of dollars to my students if he did know this? Who can help me with this matter? Anyhow, my point, after that brief rambling session, is that kids here in the orient who have no computers in their homes, generally have regular access to internet while they’re here at school, thanks to Yachana. Unfortunately, the rule of the selva is that things tend to break with time out here.

            Our internet system is a bit of an intricate beast of technology, which I will not even presume to be able to explain with my little knowledge. Let’s face it, with things moving as fast as they are, a 2^nd grader can do things with a cell phone that are completely lost on me. At any rate, some way or another, an internet signal is aimed at a big satellite here at Yachana, which, in turn, is distributed by a series of other satellites and antennas. Believe it or not, the antenna at the high school spreads the signal it receives, from the lodge, which is about a mile away, all around the school grounds and gives us Wi-Fi (very slow Wi-Fi¸ but Wi-Fi nonetheless). A signal is also somehow sent down river (about 2-3 miles) to the Global Vision International Yachana reserve and distributed in a similar manner. As you might imagine, if something goes wrong with this system, it is a bit complicated to get it fixed. First and foremost, I have never passed a Best Buy while floating down the Napo River, and I don’t think that the Geek Squad makes house calls here. Can someone also look into that for me? As a result of a “down” in the system, we have now been without internet, within the entire Yachana community, almost since the beginning of the month.

            The first thing that this experience has taught (or rather revealed to me) is that, over the years, I have slowly and without knowing become very sick with a new disease known as, “Facebookus Addictulitis.” What is the cure for this disease? Well, scientist (mostly those born in the fifties and sixties) all over the world are hastily and desperately searching for a cure, but they have been, thus far, unsuccessful. I however, Christopher Mackenzie Baumunk, MA grad of Spanish Literature, believe I have come up with a remedy (or at least a temporary treatment). All you have to do is volunteer to teach at Yachana Foundation, in the interior of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and wait for something to go wrong with the internet. Alternatively, for a speedier cure, you could also bypass the wait and volunteer at a place in the selva that simply has no internet. Might I suggest a very unique experience with an indigenous Amazon tribe, perhaps the amazing Shuar people, or the Huarani?

            Well, I have decided to respond to the plea of the band Third Eye Blind, “Wish you would step back from that ledge my friend…,” and not end it all quite just yet*. Ultimately, I think my internet-less experience is going to be a quite good one for me, even if I can’t see that at this point. I do think that my friends and family, you, the reader that follows this blog, will begin to feel just as disconnected from me as I do from them. That is certainly one of the unfortunate effects of this circumstance, but all I can do is apologize for my long absence from blogging and emailing. Even as I write this (in Word), I am uncertain when I will be “reconnected”. There is a very good possibility that I might not actually be posting this until the end of the month, when I’m in Q    uito on break. I have also previously written two other blog entries, which I have been unable to publish, but plan on doing so whenever the “access” returns.

            While I am writing this, I am laughing to myself slightly because of the vocabulary I have been employing. My mind reverts to It’s a Wonderful Life, also to the 60s, 70s, 80s and, even, some of the 90s, when words like blogs, blogging, emailing, Wi-Fi, etc. would have been completely unknown gibberish. I don’t have to go into this subject to much, because I know it’s one that is over-exposed as it is, but it’s interesting, isn’t it? Just think, we have even had to reinvent words, take words that used to have another meaning and give them a new one. A net is still used for fishing or playing sports, but it is also the Net and a mouse was a problem that required the use of traps with cheese, poison pellets or the purchase of a cat, but is now also what I’m holding in my hand, manipulating the cursor. From my point of view, that of a child born in the 80s who grew up in the nineties, this transformation and movement of technology is incredible. I remember the first modems that made that horrible sound, which I affectionately called “The Dying Cat,” the term “56k”, which meant it took one hour to download a song on Napster, the little AOL Running Man, “You’ve got mail!”, and the old Floppy Disks that were literally floppy! Now we have about a million words to identify our storage devices that are smaller than my pink finger, pen drive, thumb drive, memory, flash, and the list goes on.     

            Now that I find myself out here in the selva, without my precious connection, I realize how much a big part of our lives technology has come to be. I’ve almost always known technology like this because I grew up as it was growing up. It might be the craziness talking, but I think I am starting to like being without it! As many of you know, I have never liked texting and I am more than ecstatic to be free of that completely dehumanizing and, often times rude, practice. When I say it’s dehumanizing, I refer to the fact that it ties you to the machine and makes your response almost as instantaneous as the obnoxious beeping, buzzing or musical prompt it emits. I call texting rude, because it is often done right in front of you, while you are conversing with someone, having dinner with them or sharing a beer; the live, face-to-face, communication is abruptly cut off and priority is given to the machine and its’ prompt. I am curious as to how my family and friends are doing and I wouldn’t mind having news of the “outside world,” but I am glad to be free of the impulse to see if I have notifications or new emails.

            The lack of internet combined with terrible weather is also leading to some curious behavior issues. Thus far, this has been an interesting month; we are in the rainy season, which means, if it doesn’t rain a lot, it rains every day. I have been told that the rainy season lasts until June, so we can expect this weather almost every day for the next three months. I’m from Indiana, I’m no stranger to adverse weather conditions, but I must admit that I have felt a bit like a walled in cat during the past week. No internet, no electricity during the day (our inverter is down) and a lot of rain, make you look for new things to occupy your time in the jungle. I guess the Northern Russians must feel this way in the middle of winter, unfortunately we can’t resort to Vodka here. My students expressed their feelings of entrapment by trying to sneak off, without permission, to the community fair downriver, two days ago.

I feel strange because I am now the “responsible adult,” the “authority,” who is required to “lay down the law” and provide a punishment. I don’t much like being the authority figure, it makes me feel old and see myself as the mean parent (I don’t want kids, EVER), but, with the help of the other volunteers, all three of us looked like the bad guys and we decided on the punishment together. It’s funny, as I spoke with the kids I felt like I was repeating my mother’s words, “Son, you will never lose my respect or my love, but you have definitely lost my trust.” The kids, a group of five, as a consequence of their actions, no longer have permission to go to the community or anywhere else without our accompaniment and have also lost their next external internship, which means they will be interning at the lodge next month.  

            Well, I will wrap up this document (I call it a document because I have no clue when it will become a blog) here. Just as I finished that last sentence, the rain starting coming down even harder. The tin roof of the high school amplifies the impact of the drops and that depressing feeling starts to creep on in. I think I remember seeing a chess set around here somewhere. Does anyone remember Rocky IV, when Rocky’s trainer is playing chess with the Russian owner of the cabin that they’re training in in the middle of the Siberian dessert? That’s how I’m beginning to feel, minus the cold. I hope the kids know how to play chess. 

*My readers who are nineties kids will get my reference to the song “Jumper,” but, if you didn’t get it, take a look at Third Eye Blind’s, “Jumper,” on YouTube.