The Good Earth

I don’t remember what my Senior project was, or if I even had one. I remember reading The Canterbury Tales in my Senior English class and suffering through a rough composition echoing Chaucer’s sentiments in my own form of made-up journeys and characters. I hated the assignment. I most likely completed it the night before it was due, under the beaming blue light of the computer while simultaneously chatting up the social scene on Instant Messenger. A senior project at the Yachana Technical High School in the middle of the Amazon looks quite different. “Rising Seniors” made the trek from their various corners of the country back to the Napo Province to Yachana High School last weekend – just one week after school ended for the year. Thy were there to prep the half-hectare plot they were assigned last year for their Senior Sustainable Agronomy Unit.

Just like any other day, as if strapping on a backpack and kissing mom goodbye, the students casually picked up their machetes, stepped into their rubber boots, and traversed the steep, muddy stairsteps down to the Yachana’s finca. This farm isn’t quite the structured, orderly monocultures in the American Midwest.

The organic matter soup on the forest floor of the Amazon

With its ample rainshowers and endless supply of organic matter, this farm is an amalgamation of numerous wonders spontaneously bursting straight from Mother Nature herself. Plantain trees tower over bushes popping bright red Ahi peppers. Stalks of corn burst towards the sky as a variety of fruit trees beckon herbivores with their array of avocado, lemon and papaya.

The students spent the day clearing the plots and turning the soil. They will then plant the seeds, harvest the produce and sell it back to the High School, the Ecolodge, or at the weekend market across the river for profit. My job is to create a curriculum to lead them them through the learning process of all of this, which is to say, a little outside of my expertise. Explaining how to calculate the area of a plot in Spanish is one thing; conveying the nuanced nature of organic fertilizer and permaculture versus commercialized, chemical-dependent cultivation to teenage kids in the Amazon is another. The kids will have to collaborate with the chefs at the high school and at the Ecolodge to determine an appropriate amount and type of each crop they plan to grow on their plot. They will need to discuss with a hired agronomist to determine inputs and spacing. They will have to return four times during their summer vacation to tend to their plots and do the necessary manual labor.

A greenhouse started by some students the previous year. They intend to grow some of their veggies from seed here and transfer to raised beds later in maturation.

I am inspired by their work ethic incomparable to those of myself and my peers back at Stillwater High School. One day of our summer vacation wasted on manual labor for no self profit would have granted at least a few enraged PTA meetings alleging violation of international child labor rights. I am also refreshed to be directly involved in the production of the food I eat. As symbiosis surrounds me here in this mega-diverse kingdom this summer, I begin to realize what it means to provide for the land as the land provides for me.  I am enveloped by an ever-present ecosystem of which I am only one piece.

Life in the Jungle, Part II

First, complaints. For this I apologize but if you can’t vent to your blog, where else is a girl to let out her shameful, vain admittance of the yearnings for “necessities”?

If my ankles aren’t suffering enough from the blisters I’ve formed wearing rubber boots around, they’re now decorated in small red scabs where my lack of self control has scratched them raw.

Its not chickenpox, its just the Amazon.

The eco-friendly woman I am, I’m beginning to understand why they put deet in bugspray in the first place; my “Herbal Armor” provides no refuge from the bedbugs. Maybe its my pheromones of mildew emitted from my clothes that I have come to realize will simply never completely dry in the humidity. I patted myself on the back at how light my pack was upon departure with only one pair of pants I thought I could wash each day – I’m beginning to regret my lofty attempts to be travel savvy. My hair is a ball full of frizz and tangles, also never completely dry. I sweat, all of the time.

Ok, now for the good stuff. As the majority of the tourists left yesterday, I strapped a lifejacket around my waist like a diaper and jumped into the Upper Napo River of the Amazon basin with some of the local guides and workers to let the current carry me along a spectacular, exotic journey through the jungle, one which could never be topped by any diesel-running engine. I hiked through mud, leaves, trees, vines and streams for a couple hours through the Yachana Reserve of the jungle a couple days ago, passing along the way a forest grazer snake, a screaming piha bird, and tasting some piton fruit cut down with a Machete by the illustrious Juan, our guide. I’m serenaded every morning by the male oropendula birds showing off their best call of the wild which sounds eerily like an loud, computer-generated water droplet. I share my living quarters with several species of insects, some wandering ocelots, and a pet tarantula we’ve named Terry living under the stairs. Our hike back and forth to the dorm has become refreshing in the morning and blissful in the evening when the unimaginable darkness provides a blanket of black upon which some of the best stargazing is to be had. At this moment, I’m swinging in a hammock pondering the odd behavior of newborn chicks in step behind their mother foraging for food. Mornings and evenings are the best, when views of snow-capped volcanoes in the distance or twilight encloses over the river, when the tranquility of the jungle is remembered most.

I am guided by a young man I now call my friend, Fabio Legarda. A promising graduate of Yachana who has just completed his first year of studies at Universidad de San Fransisco de Quito, there is pretty much nothing this guy can’t do. Between taking care of the gringos, reading the book 1492 IN ENGLISH (!), being at the beck and call of Douglas for any errands he might need, and writing a blog for the United Nations Environment Program, he assists me in learning Spanish. I hope he sees some good potential in this pupil because the frustration is compounding…

P.S. The food is incredible. 

Development of Development

On my quest for a better understanding of International Development through my Master’s Degree, I’ve joined this group of six student researchers to travel down here to the middle of nowhere, Amazon, Ecuador, in attempts to conduct my first ever real research project.

Last Spring, some of the MDP students prepared a project analysis of the proposed Yachana Technical Institute and cultivated the relationship with Douglas McMeekin, the director and creator of Yachana Foundation. Last quarter, our team of six student researchers completed our research proposal (passed through IRB successfully!) to conduct needs-assessment survey of potential students of the Yachana Technical Institute, a post-secondary training institution which aims to give people in the region the appropriate skills needed for regional employment opportunities – an idea apparently completely foreign to the local populations. What do they want to study? What could they pay? What kind of schedule is best for them? The second part of our research was a lofty attempt to imitate the longitudinal survey we observed at ICDDRB in Bangladesh where demographic information was collected on a random sample of the families in the region over a forty year period, producing an invaluable collection of data reflecting the changes in the community over the years, impacts from development projects, and data which can inform future development projects that may better serve the community.

Now doesn’t that sound like a Development Student in action? Participatory data-gathering and demographic information to inform future projects? We were prepared to set off into a Utopian world of development in which participants participate, students are eager, money is available, of course a crises of your time never occurs! Least to say, this is why an education with practical components applied on-site is so appropriate.

Douglas McMeekin is your typical entrepreneur. Visionary, exciting, motivating, bursting at the seams with ideas and innovation. A man who came to Ecuador with a less-than-perfect history in American business, a desire to change the world, and a sack full of dreams. Entrepreneurs (or at least the successful ones) also typically have a lot to show for those dreams they carried with them twenty years ago, and Douglas is no exception. The Ecolodge with its walkways adorned with indigenous flowers, its high-energy, bilingual, local guides, its internship employing local high school students in the kitchen.  The Yachana Collegio offering exceptional high school education to communities previously marginalized from knowledge, producing young people with confidence, work ethic and aspiration. The Yachana Technology, the greatest of which is the water purification buckets, procuring a much-needed amenity of clean water in the middle of the Amazon. I am nothing less than impressed.

But… there has to be a but… this is development. This is twenty years of trial and error, projects successful and projects left to rot in the backways. I’ve learned in the last few days that the high school almost had to close down last year for lack of funding in the foundation, despite the fact that the idea for the Institute funded by the foundation forges on. I learned that in fact no money is given from the Ecolodge to the high school, despite the fact that this is promoted all over the property of the lodge. I learned that in fact little food used in the kitchen is grown by the foundation or the high school kids as was suggested to us previously. I learned that there are about a million ideas in the head of that entrepreneur and his right hand man is continually reeling him in back to “reality”.

Confusions abound. They should offer you a course on the philosophy of development. Where do you begin? Which types of projects should you focus on? How much money should you have before you begin? Can you take chances with peoples’ lives? Should the cart ever be before the horse?

All of that said, here we are. This morning we conducted our first focus group survey which looked nothing like what we had hoped. Sporadic participation of 16 graduates of the high school who were… somewhat interested in the idea of technical training, while attempting to maintain their focus on the cute senorita across the room. We’ve been here five days and have altered our survey questions probably ten times.  This must be what Douglas meant when he said we’ll need to “learn to be adaptive”.

I’m learning more than conducting a survey. I’m learning how difficult it is to operate a conservation and education organization in the Amazon. I’m learning how to operate with difficult and different personalities. I’m learning about myself and piecing together pictures of my future.

Life in the Jungle

My stomach is grumbling as I find myself perched on a comfy chair, overlooking the Napo River, lush green forests pitched alongside the shores and floral hues of reds, oranges and yellows bursting from every corner. I think lunch comes soon, although I’m disappointed to realize the cause of my hunger pangs are from the one mile hike we trek back and forth to get to our sleeping quarters. I guess I’m not in as good of shape as I thought.

My first 24 hours at Yachana have been filled the expected travel woes (mucho dolor en mi estomago) and some rather unexpected realities of life in the Amazon rainforest. Its green here. And when I say green, I mean 650 species of tree per hectare (100 yards x 100 yards).  Green means bushes with leaves the size of the hood of your car. Its paradise for those of us who always wished we could live out the land before time. Its also muddy here. And when I say muddy I mean sludge that goes calf deep sometimes. We’re well equipped with knee-high rubber boots and seem to be quickly mastering the art of mud hiking. The sounds of the jungle are ferociously powerful. A chorus of frogs, crickets, monkeys, and a host of birds make their presence known in the darkness of night. And frequent torrential rainstorms eternally replenishing life in the wild kept me tossing and turning under my mosquito net all night. Insects, even greater in diversity than trees (100,000 species per hectare), make no polite request for the sharing of our sleeping quarters. Cockroaches have infiltrated our beds despite Matt and Dan’s best efforts to utilize our illustrious Chacos in squashing them – they return everlastingly, which is I assume why they are said to be the only survivors after any potential doomsday world destruction scenario.

The forest demands respect from those who wish to enter it. The jungle is a propitious reminder that we are humans, animals at best, an iota of something much larger, greater, more powerful than we could ever collectively create. Our societies have been functioning for centuries now (some could argue, millenia) under the assumption we are grand enough to extract ourselves from this thing we call the ecosystem; that we are distinct and disparate from nature. The jungle may remind us that, in fact, we are nature. We are mere portions, pieces, pawns in an eternal, chaotic beauty of life and death and rebirth that happens every day here. Ants are building colonies and carrying leaves across the pathways I walk on here. Flowers are blooming and offering delicious feasts to their pollinators. Rains are filling the river and washing rocks from the highlands into the basins of the jungle. Humans have infested this area in the last 50 years causing alarming rates of deforestation. If we cannot find a way to reinsert ourselves as parts and participants in nature, nature will surely find a way to destroy its festering cancer.

Alas, I’m humbly soaking up all I can learn from the leadership of Yachana in education for conservation and sustainability. From programs employing Payment for Ecosystem Services to award farmers with money in exchange for not cutting down the forest, to technical training of young adults in PV solar technology maintenance, to one of the best ecotoursim lodges in the world according to National Geographic, this Foundation is making strides.

I washed my clothes in the sink today with the notorious Dr. Bronner’s, hanging them in a shelter which protects from the rain but provides no precipitation for the drying process in this humid air. I am hoping against odds I may have clean pants to wear tomorrow. I took a cold shower in a simple, small room. And now I lay my head down under a mosquitero, hoping to rest amid the symphony of the jungle tonight.

El Oriente

As they call it in Ecuador, El Oriente, the Amazon beckons me on this early morning. Caffeine assisting me, from the comfort of Denver Airport’s picture windows in concourse B, I’m gazing out at an all too familiar skyline of snow-capped peaks, the snowmelt of which I will not meet again until August as it fills the rivers and streams and blooms the wildflowers of the foothills. Colorado summers are distinguishably my favorite thing about living in this State – hiking, climbing, rivers, bikes, backpacking – and I will be sad to miss the heart of it all this year.

Alas, off I go to a world of wonder, education and adventure awaiting me atYachana Foundation on the upper Napo River in the Amazon River Basin. Piranhas, crocodiles, some giant iridescent insects yet to be named, some populous pesky insects yet to be killed in the throws of my annoyed, slapping hands, flowers with scents and dyes yet to be experienced by my senses, indigenous people of Kichwa descent, and many adventures awaiting my curious mind. Truly, this trip is void of any expectations from me. An open mind and a bag full of books is all I brought. Okay, I brought my rain jacket too.

I will be lacking in French Press coffee, NPR mornings, and hot showers. There will be no saucy advertisements and debilitating (at times) technology of Western culture. The texting and emailing I’ve become so accustomed to – they give you that little “high” everytime a familiar tonal melody or the long-awaited vibration informs you that, yes, you are in fact important and someone needs to talk to you. In reality, most of the time its an update from Groupon or Facebook hardly caring for my attention.

A break from civilization and society and the impossible expectations of life I place on myself. A time of slight solitude, profitable peace. I will put to work these hands and this mind that has endured their first year of development in training, observing first hand the incredible possibilities of a future embedded with social equity and sustainable ecosystems as practiced by Yachana Foundation.

Stay tuned, it should be a good summer.