What happened was a story fit for Oprah… or Ellen, Ellen would be fun. When the word was passed on to all of our MDP partners about the location of our research, one of our professors, Julie Andrews, was elated to hear that we would be trapsing around the same plot of jungle she visited more than 15 years ago in her young career. Julie is a videographer and news contributor to News 9; She has an incredible family and a beautiful home in Denver which she graciously invited us into for some dinner and wine before we left… to give us a mission.
Julie had visited the Napo Province of Ecuadorean Amazon for a month long ago. She taught English, made videos, and did much of the same activities we participate in today: bug bites, rainforest symphonies, shotty canoes. The memories of her family there brought tears to her eyes, yet, she had not communicated with them since she left. The community in which Julie stayed was quite small, remote, no electricity and certainly no roads through which to tote gracious gifts and letters from well-meaning, monthly gringo visitors.
Our mission looked something like this: Find a canoe. Find Huino. Find the football field in the middle of the community. Look for a house on one of the corners of the field. Find a woman named Narcissa, her husband and her three kids (no last names) and give them these soccer balls, books, pictures and a heart-felt letter. Oh, and don’t forget its 15 years later so no one will look like they do in these photos, certainly not the kids who were 5 at the time nor the father who was 65 at the time and may not be alive. Hmmmm…
To my utter amazement, Mission Impossible became Mission Accomplished today. We hitched a ride with the Yachana canoe that was headed down river to Coca; the dropped us off on an abandoned bank with a half-constructed gravel/dirt road leading to Nowhere, Amazon. Filled with the energy of the sun straight from the middle of the Earth blaring down on us, we hiked up the road for a while until a dump truck operated by none other than a friendly young Ecuadorean who had lived in New York with perfect English. He informed us we were walking in the wrong way, gave us a bumpy, sandy ride in the back of his truck down the road, and informed us of the next obstacle: we would have to ford the river, and we would have to dig out a canoe to do it.
All adventures become less intimidating when you have a jungle guru like Fabio at your side. Two at a time we scooted into the canoe no wider than my waist and no deeper than my Nalgene bottle.
Digging out the canoe
Crouched with eyes agape and abs engaged, Fabio used a long branch to push the canoe across the rier, careful not to sway more than a bit and tip ourselves over into the murky water, video camera and all.
Riding in the canoe across the river to Huino
A young boy toting a dog he apparently wanted to sell us found us on the other side, escorting us up the steep, slippery slope of primary forest and across several Ant Superhighways until we reached Huino. Huino has changed. Electricity lines draped the sky and the center reeked of construction and development. Finding the family wasn’t quite as hard as I had imagined with my ethnocentric mind – small communities like this have quite the ability to spread the word, and they know every single person who has ever walked these streets for more than a day. We soon found Nancy, a friend of Julie’s who was flushed with emotion upon the mention of her blonde friend’s name. Nancy led us out to Narcissa’s chakra(family horticulture plot) where we uncovered a family much like the description Julie had given us.
Narcissa and her family receiving their letter from Julie, in the middle of their work day on the finca.
Narcissa was much older now, although that didn’t stop her from spending her hot, sunny days working in the field. Nancy, the daughter, was a woman now with a young son and a baby daughter who swung in a glistening white-sheet hammock under the shade of a plantain tree as her mother diligently swung her machete clearing space for crops. We gathered under a lean to, all six of us gringos on our mission and the family of Narcissa. The only exception, the father who had died just three weeks before our arrival.
Joyful tears were shed and genuine smiles were shared as we read the letter aloud to the family and passed around the pictures.
Narcissa cries tears of joy
After departing the chakra and sharing some fruit Narcissa cut down from her tree, we made the trek together back to their house, exactly where Julie described it at the corner of the field. Except this house was a new one. The plot where Julie had lived lay bare in the shadow of a concrete-walled, two-story, barred-window home that the family now shared, equipped with a stove-top fit for Denver surburbanites and a living area in which we shared some much-needed cold coca cola and crackers while opening the soccer balls and books fro the children. It was an afternoon of joy for all, and exceptionally pleasing to see the community’s development and the family’s well-being improved over the time away.
Julie's Amazonian family, 15 years after the last contact.
Save a little spill out of the dugout canoes on the way back across the river that made for good laughs, we safely made it back to Yachana with stories to tell and an incredible video to share with Julie.
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