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.