To Be A Tiger

           A solitary incandescent light bulb cast its faint yellow light on the brown thatch ceiling of the A-frame building from which hung my hammock. Like the other four nearby hammocks, mine bordered one leg of the L-shaped space that served as a meeting place for the people of the community, and now for our group. The light contrasted sharply with the darkness surrounding us, and although it was not especially bright, it drew the attention of my eyes.

            It had been a long day thus far, and it felt good to finally put my feet up and take a deep breath.  The travel from Quito to Bua de los Colorados had gone smoothly: beginning at 9am with the short bus to the bus terminal, the transfer with all of our luggage to the public bus, the transfer to the cattle truck, and finally our arrival at the cultural center Shinopi around 2pm. 

            Once there we were greeted by Don Alfonso, head of the cultural center and the group of families involved in the cultural tourism/reforestation project here in Bua.  He was barefoot, and wore a black and white striped skirt that stretched from his waist to just above his knees, tied at the waist with a colorful band of silky fabric.  Around his neck was wrapped 6 or 7 more colorful bands that hung down his chest like a tie.  The rest of his torso was naked.  His body appeared strong and healthy, and looking at the scars on his arms, I imagined run-ins with snakes and accidents while working the fields. His hair, black and cut short around the sides, was longer on top, dyed in the traditional Tsachila fashion with an intense red dye produced from the achiote plant, mixed with some gel-like substance to give it a hardened, bowl or leaf shaped appearance on the top of his head.  Our group, together with seven local families, gathered in the meeting space and Don Alfonso stood in front of us, at first speaking in Tsafiki, the traditional Tsachila language.  The students seemed mesmerized by this man standing before them, addressing them in a foreign tongue and dressed in strange vestment.  Soon he began to address us in Spanish, giving many thanks to us for being here, to our families for allowing us to come, for the different organizations that had helped to bring us together.  He then talked a bit about our involvement in the community and how it positively affected the lives of those in the community.   He finally gave a brief introduction to the seven families that were gathered before us, introducing each family by the head of the household. 

            After a savory lunch of soup, rice, chicken and salad, we walked, together with the gathered families, down the dirt path behind the dining space (the other leg of the L-shaped space: a compacted dirt floor with simple wooden tables around the side and benches made of balsa wood as well as individual seats made of logs standing on their end) to a cleared area acting as the nursery.  Alfonso gave a demonstration on how to plant trees, showing us the depth to safely insert each baby tree into the hole: not too deep, not too shallow.  Afterwards, we gathered in a large circle, extranjeros (foreigners) on one side, Tsachila on another.  Alfonso walked around the circle, pronouncing the names of each family as we called to the previously chosen students to go over and meet the host family they’d be living with for the next five weeks or so.  It was an awkward meeting of cultures, as students and families alike pushed through their nervousness to greet each other.  They would be sharing houses together, sharing meals together, sharing work together for the next five weeks. 

            From what we’ve been told, the Tsachila people are a shy, non-confrontational people.  Traditional hunter-gatherers in small family units, they have been forced to adopt a more sedentary and social lifestyle as their territory has been reduced and they’ve been exposed to an encroaching agricultural society.  Most of the eight families have hosted students in the past, but only for about the past five years or so.  One can only guess the thoughts and feelings that both the U.S. students and the Tsachila people will have throughout this experience. 

            Afterward, we shuffled into three cattle transport trucks and headed down the road back toward where the families lived.  Jessie, Sam (the in-country project manager) and I tagged along in order to visit each of the houses and make sure that the students staying there were safe and comfortable.  One by one we dropped off the students and said goodbye.  After two weeks of being together every hour of every day, it was hard in a way to give them away.  A part of me wanted to coddle them, to be there in case something were to happen or to answer questions, to be there to help guide them in their curiosities.  As we left one house, I heard one student ask, “What do we do?”  Some of the houses had a flat screen TV, but for the most part, there was no technology for the students to enjoy: no tv’s, no internet, no iphones.  Most of them would have to learn a new language f they wished to verbally communicate.  As it was, most of them would settle in that night being able only to communicate in gesture.  The 6pm sunsets and the lack of external entertainment will no doubt force the students either to interact with each other and the families, go to bed early, or dive into the content we are working through.

             Last night after returning to Shinopi, we spoke with Don Alfonso under the dim yellow light to the background of a chorus of crickets and frogs.  Don Alfonso has a vision for his community, for the Tsachila nation.  It involves the preservation of his culture, and the preservation of the environment.  Much of this vision, in my eyes and from what I´ve gathered so far, has come from knowledge and foresight he has gained from outsiders – people that have come to his community and shown him the value of their culture, the inherent value in a healthy ecosystem. In a way, his vision is about maintaining autonomy; having something here that the younger generations can inherit as their own, instead of going to work for someone else in the cities.  In this way,  I question the authenticy of a culture that seems only to be gaining resilience as a consequence of outside influence, or only as a prospect of financial solvency.  
            I have been able to identify so far many assumptions and generalizations that I have held and made personally about indigenous cultures worldwide.  My experiences with indigenous cultures in Mexico and Guatemala seem so far to contrast somewhat drastically with my experience here in Bua thus far.  I have much yet to explore; some questions linger from before, and some new ones present themselves:
      Is there something truly environmentally sustainable in the life vision of indigenous peoples, or has it only been a lack of resources or technological advance that has limited their capacity to break the natural laws of competition that seem to keep all species in balance?
      What are the essential characteristics that define a culture?  Can a culture retain itself simply by maintaining traditional clothing, music and language, or are there more essential characteristics that define a culture?  For example, we go to the zoo to see tigers.  What we see at the zoo are tiger forms for sure - beautiful four legged creatures that have amazing stripes and penetrating eyes, whiskers, fierce roars, and ferocious appetites; yet isn´t the tiger more than that?  Tigers are hunters, forest dwellers, wild creatures that stalk their prey at night with an agility and precision unparalleld in the predator world.  I ask then, is what I see in the zoo truly a tiger, or has it lost its essential tiger qualities?
     

We Are The Journey

   The group was finally all together: 19 of us, who'd be traveling together for the next eight months around the world, sharing work, learning, fun, emotions.  For now, excitement, joy, departure.
   For me, relief, peace, arrival.
   We are all together.  It is finally here.
   Ecuador, to which we'd arrive in only hours: an afterthought.  The rest of the incredible places and people: still a dream. 
   We are the journey.  As individuals.  As a group.  19 faces, mine included, still against a backdrop of multi-colored lights whizzing by.  We are the journey.

     2013. 29. Ecuador.  A new year, a new age, a new adventure.  A dewey decimal system formatting for my life?  With the new adventure comes new people, new places, new languages, new experiences, new tasks and new challenges.  One of these challenges, as always, is to stay connected to friends and family back home, or abroad, wherever they may be, and wherever that is for me.  I therefore proceed into another period of bloginess to help stay in touch with those people I love and cherish, and to those I don't quite as much, and even to strangers who in their attempts to learn interesting things about "rainforests," "conservation," "permaculture" and "Chris Morales," while typing keywords into internet search engines, find me, and my attempts to say hi to the world.  To keep up with the novelty of my life, I have updated the title of this blog.  As I will not be anywhere close to a bicycle for at least the extent of Ecuador's rainy season (through May) I hereby update the title of my blog from 'The Bicycle Diaries' to 'The Jungle Diaries' (at least until I come up with a better name).
     Despite a strong internal motivation to stay put in a place, to grow with the land and develop a strong knowledge of and respect for it, to live with a people and develop a long-lasting community, I have found myself again far from the grassy hills, oak/bay/madrone/redwood forests, seasonal streams, roaming deer, and all of my friends and family of California.  My decision to come to Ecuador, difficult as it was, was motivated by two factors: one, an incredible opportunity to learn ways in which I can live more harmoniously and with less impact on my surrounding environment; and two, a bit more selfish I must say, the opportunity to do this in an environment I have never spent much time but always enjoyed being in - the rainforest - tucked into the northwest coast of a continent I have never been, surrounded by a new culture which provides further opportunity for growth.
     So I now find myself an understudy for the next several months of the current reserve manager and intern coordinator at the Jama-Coaque Reserve, managed by the Third Millennium Alliance (www.3malliance.org), until I take over the position in April for the following 18 months.  The Reserve is not easy to get to:  it requires a six hour bus ride over the western Andes cordillera down to the small but bustling shrimp packing town of Pedernales, a well-coordinated truck or bus ride south along the coast about 45 minutes past shrimp ponds bordering the shore on the west and cleared hills and plains to the east, a truck ride or walk along the flat and meandering dirt/gravel road and across several streams that leads to the small community of Camarones, and finally the hour or so hike uphill, currently in mud and sludge six inches to one foot deep (because of the recent onset of the rainy season), into the headwaters of the watershed of Camarones, until one arrives at the Bamboo house, the center of 3MA operation.
     The bamboo house is entirely open air, with eight bedrooms of various sizes, several patios for lounging, eating and reading, and a well-equipped kitchen.  The house is located on a steep slope, and surrounded by a fenced in area developed into a palatable food forest and kitchen garden.  The food forest is filled with trees at various stages, many still just experimental, which produce all sorts of fruits and legumes.  These trees include guaba, guayabana, papaya and banana (which I recently learned are not actually trees but plants, being annuals with no woody material), mango, avocado, citrus, soursop, breadfut, uva de arbol, uva de playa, achotillo, macademia, cacao, coffee, and many others I cannot remember or pronounce correctly at this moment.  There are beautiful year-round streams, with waterfalls of differing qualities bordering this fenced in area somewhat, and scattered throughout the rest of the reserve, which totals just over 1000 acres now and is dissected by a system of somewhat navigable trails that continue to rise into the hills, going from moist forest to wet forest to cloud forest as you continue to rise up until you reach a ridgeline which signals the top of the watershed and the eastern boundary to the reserve.
     To any biologist or person fascinated in the diversity of life, the reserve is an exciting place.  The insects, ants, beetles and bugs provide a constant backdrop to life at the reserve.  They are everywhere, most of the time, providing a soundtrack to life, especially at dawn and dusk, and especially when combined with the calls of the endless amount of frogs and toads.  The birds, which begin their sweet cacophony at dawn and don't quit till dusk, vary in size and color and are magnificent to watch.  I marvel in the vividness of their feathers and the creativity of their design, especially the hummingbirds.  The monkeys, though not often seen, are often heard.  There are two kinds at the reserve: howler monkeys and capuchin monkeys, and on the two large hikes I have been on so far, I have been able to observe these agile primates in their element, swinging from tree limb to tree limb, picking at the fruits of tall canopy trees and interacting with each other and their young.  And lurking somewhere throughout the forest are the other mammals which share the land with us, the pig-sized rodents, the large raccoons, the wild pig, and of course the wild cats, the jaguars, the pumas, the jaguarundis, and the rare and endangered ocelots.
     Also lurking is the fear that often goes with being in an unknown environment, of the bugs and animals that are out there to get you; there are definitely tarantulas the size of my hand, and several different types of poisonous snakes, and ticks the size of a tiny freckle (no lymes disease though), and mosquitos (though they don't seem bad at all to me) and all the crazy looking beetles that you think will saw off your toe in the middle of the night if it happens to slip outside of the mosquito net, and all of the parasites and other microscopic organisms that we separate ourselves from as best we can in those 'developed' parts of the world.  This fear tends to fade as you familiarize yourself with your surroundings, learn how to obtain clean water and ensure food is grown and cleaned properly, learn where certain snakes hang out and how to protect yourself,  and learn that most bugs don't care at all for human flesh or blood.
     As there is no electricity at the house, electrical appliances are kept in check only by the batteries that operate them, which ends up limiting the types of appliances found to the occasional camera and flashlight at night.  At night we cook, eat, clean and read by candlelight mostly.  The meals are beyond anything I can have imagined.  Since there is no refrigerator, all ingredients are raw/bulk and fresh, brought in weekly from Pedernales and supplemented by what is growing around us (banana, papaya and yucca harvests occur frequently).  Cooking is something shared by many, with a schedule of head chefs for lunch and dinner made weekly, and many choose to take the time cook delicious meals, sometimes with dessert.  Those that don't cook, clean.  It is amazing what can be done with just a simple four burner stove fueled by a propane gas tank, and metal boxes that go on top to act as mini-ovens.
    Water is everywhere.  The humidity, though not worse by far from places on the east coast of US during the summer for example, gives everything a certain dampness, which mold tends to cling to and grow on.  Certain clothes I have given up on early at ever having a chance to be worn outside of the reserve again.  Others I keep tucked away in bags where the air can't get to it.  We usually get a good downpour at least once per day, sometimes it extends throughout the day and night.  The largest amount of rain I've measured so far was about four centimeters.  The temperature has been consistently in the mid-70's, and though it may only go down by a couple degrees at times, it brings a surprising chill to it.  The skies are just plain gray.  Supposedly it will get to a point in the rainy season (which is the summer technically, with warmer weather) when there is a downpour followed by clear skies and booming sunshine which provides the perfect climate for lush growth.  I look forward to seeing the sun there sometime soon.  I miss the sunshine, and I miss the stars and the moon.  It reminds me just how much I tend to orient myself to these celestial bodies.
     So for now this is my setting.  I will observe how Ben, the current intern/reserve manager, runs the place and manages the people, taking notes and thinking about how I might want to tweak things in my own style for the future programs.  I will learn about the plants, the trees, the birds and the bugs. I will learn about permaculture.  I will learn about Ecuadorian culture, and try to immerse myself in it as much as possible.  I will think seriously about humanity and our place in this world.  And once every week or two I will escape to the ocean, find a little town, with some good sand, some good waves, some decent internet, and hopefully a nice sunset, and connect and recharge for my next immersion into the jungle.  Pictures are posted in new slideshow to the right.  Many more to come...