Gonna keep this one short. About to leave on a large boat and go up the river to a place called Yurimaguas. I am being accompanied by two amazing dudes: the boy genius Skyler, and the gentle giant, Cole (the manchild) Sigmon. The trip is supposed to take us around 3 days, which would put us in at Yurimaguas around Saturday morning, mas o menus. Then we will either go our separate ways there, or take a colectivo to Tarapoto, where I am staying to deliver some shit specimens to a lab, and hopefully staying with some folks I met at my hostal. Then I am going to try and work my way over the mountains to Huaraz on a path that is somewhat less traveled, but apparently well worth the inevitable trials and tribulations. This path will lead me to Tingo Maria, where things should get much easier. All in all I should end up in Huaraz on the 29th, just in time to meet Austa, Christina, Traci and Randy! I am excited for the adventures ahead, please pray for a high level of dicernment for my surly group and for smart decisions on my part as I forge ahead solo using the Peruvian bus system.
There will be a lot more pictures of the boat trip when I arrive in Huaraz next week. Until then, have a wonderful week!
j
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Monkey man is an actor
So I had an idea. "who am I to say that I know who monkey man really is. Maybe he and I just got off on the wrong foot". Then I figured, man it sure would be hilarious if I could get a buddy buddy picture with him. How funny would that be?
Well I got one. He actually looks normal here when he smiles, and seems to take good care of his teeth too. But I guarantee this man is not normal. From what I've heard from people here, he's an actor (artista) from Lima, who I suppose went crazy on drugs and is kept here by his family (out of their hair), by monthly or weekly stipend. Just crazy to see him like this, he just looks like a surley fisherman with a moviestar smile.
:)
Monday, June 14, 2010
"Yeah, I think we're going to ride in the other boat"....
It's funny sometimes how the crazy almost startlingly dangerous things that happen in our lives are the things we remeber the most vividly, and look back on with light hearted laughter. This was definitely one of those stories.
David, Sariah, the Dix (Dixner), the boat driver James, and myself were on our way for a quick visit to a community near the Napo lodge. My first opinion of our driver James, (who is acually a good friend now, but at the time...well) was that he was a bit on the overly cautious to the point of obviously not having an effing clue what he's doing side. I guess my feeling was not unwarranted.
One moment we're flying down the middle of the Napo river, the next moment we were stopped, motor sputtering and coughing, the shock from the abrupt and violent jarring ringing in our ears. "what happened!" Did we hit a log (dead head my grandper used to call'em)? Nope. But we appeared to have either gained an ungodly amount of bouyancy, or we were on land covered by 6 inches of water (i.e. a huge sand bar). Obviously it was the ladder.
Here is a picture of the shaken up gringo's, and Dixner. We were all laughs at that point. Look at the white legs on that gringo.
David's Leg...(it wasn't broken, just badly bruised)
When we tried to move the boat, we found that the 12 inches of water currently displaced by the flat bottom hull was not suficient enough to allow it to float (big surprise), and we were unable to move it one iota. Dixner and James tried using a stick to pry it along...but that was unsuccessful as well. Then we realized that the other gringo survey team was 20 minutes behind. To our delight, sure enough they came to our arm-waving rescue with one load welcoming "hola amigos", from the gentle giant Cole Sigmon, who was poking his head out from the side of their boat.
With 5.6 extra people (mariate (third from the left) helped push too :)). we were able to free the boat from the sand bar. However, when questioned if we wanted to get back on board the "amigo" (the boats name) with James behind the wheel, we very freely and justly said in a number of ways:
"Yeah, I think we're gonna ride in the other boat"....
:)
David, Sariah, the Dix (Dixner), the boat driver James, and myself were on our way for a quick visit to a community near the Napo lodge. My first opinion of our driver James, (who is acually a good friend now, but at the time...well) was that he was a bit on the overly cautious to the point of obviously not having an effing clue what he's doing side. I guess my feeling was not unwarranted.
One moment we're flying down the middle of the Napo river, the next moment we were stopped, motor sputtering and coughing, the shock from the abrupt and violent jarring ringing in our ears. "what happened!" Did we hit a log (dead head my grandper used to call'em)? Nope. But we appeared to have either gained an ungodly amount of bouyancy, or we were on land covered by 6 inches of water (i.e. a huge sand bar). Obviously it was the ladder.
Here is a picture of the shaken up gringo's, and Dixner. We were all laughs at that point. Look at the white legs on that gringo.
David's Leg...(it wasn't broken, just badly bruised)
When we tried to move the boat, we found that the 12 inches of water currently displaced by the flat bottom hull was not suficient enough to allow it to float (big surprise), and we were unable to move it one iota. Dixner and James tried using a stick to pry it along...but that was unsuccessful as well. Then we realized that the other gringo survey team was 20 minutes behind. To our delight, sure enough they came to our arm-waving rescue with one load welcoming "hola amigos", from the gentle giant Cole Sigmon, who was poking his head out from the side of their boat.
With 5.6 extra people (mariate (third from the left) helped push too :)). we were able to free the boat from the sand bar. However, when questioned if we wanted to get back on board the "amigo" (the boats name) with James behind the wheel, we very freely and justly said in a number of ways:
"Yeah, I think we're gonna ride in the other boat"....
:)
A Cabybara Love Story
Ah, I seem to have recovered relatively well from a bit of a "week of sickness". Sick! I mean, not sick, but sick as in bad ass. But not as in diarrhea. Hmmm, english slang is getting the better of me while oddly enough still keeping within the overarching them of my blog. I'm going to keep what I wrote, and if you don't like what I have to say you can just "return it to REI". He he.
The water and ecosanitation team made another amazing trip to the jungle, but this time as the total collective gringo circus! For the 4 days we were visiting communties, we were fortnuate enough to be staying at some pretty swanky lodges, built and maintained by Exporama Tours. We started with the most "rustic lodge first", and then ended our trip by staying at a lodge that had a pool, waterslide and AC. I keep thinking it's crazy and absurd to have AC in the jungle, but then am forced to remember a little place called Las Vegas (so many wasted nights...another pun).
The most rustic lodge was on the Napo river, and was duely named "the Napo Lodge". I'm pretty sure there is an Explorama somewhere in the name but lets just keep that implied. In this amazing lodge there was food prepared by awesome chefs, cozy open air rooms with mosquito nets and great bedding, bathrooms that made David and I wonder if we should hire the people who built them to work for us installing ecological toilets. --A cheeky little aside, David and I were enjoying a boat ride back to Iquitos aboard this huge ship named the "Queen of the Amazon". We met a few folks who had stayed at the fancy Ceiba Topps lodge, which was the end of our trip and the most glitsy of the different Exporama lodges. We explained the lodges that we had been staying at, and she was absolutely amazed at the fact that we stayed at the Napo Lodge. "You're crazy, I can't imagine walking down the path to the bathroom (lit by lanters spaced about 10ft on center), that place is just so rustic". David and I both shared the same thought bubble "man she should have seen where we sleeped the last week".
Anyway, at the Napo lodge there was great deal of animal life, ranging from talking parots to everyone's personal favorite, the Capybara. Capybara's are the largest animals in the rodent family. From the picture below, it really just looks like David was shrunk, ran into a mouse hole and stole the poor mouse's hammok. What a jackass.
The Capybara is a funny animal. It sounds like a video game as it walks around, making odd squeeks as it tries to suck the salt off your arm. I don't know if it's possible to put in words how adorable this animal is. It rolls over, it purs...it's just delightful. But aparently even adorable Capybaras have sad situations in their lives. Aparently this capybara had a mate at one time or another, but was abruptly left by her hubby for a sexier (larger?) capybara. They told me that these two would swim together and make lovey lovey noises to one another. Heartbreaking.
As we went to less rustic lodges each day, the semblence of "rusticity" became less and less noticable. Sigh.
The trips to the communities was enlightening. We gained a great deal of knowledge about why certain households have toilets and visa versa. It's truly a strange look at how people function as a community...where we might think that something like a toilet was important for a person, and for those around that person, a great deal of individuals would argue the contrary. It's facinating to me, but I suppose the fact that my white ass is walking around interviewing people and taking pictures of their shitters could also be considered "facinating" from their point of view.
That's about it... I have another story for a different blog, concerning an interesting event that took place during a trip to a community. I'll try to get to that tonight :).
Thanks guys!
The water and ecosanitation team made another amazing trip to the jungle, but this time as the total collective gringo circus! For the 4 days we were visiting communties, we were fortnuate enough to be staying at some pretty swanky lodges, built and maintained by Exporama Tours. We started with the most "rustic lodge first", and then ended our trip by staying at a lodge that had a pool, waterslide and AC. I keep thinking it's crazy and absurd to have AC in the jungle, but then am forced to remember a little place called Las Vegas (so many wasted nights...another pun).
The most rustic lodge was on the Napo river, and was duely named "the Napo Lodge". I'm pretty sure there is an Explorama somewhere in the name but lets just keep that implied. In this amazing lodge there was food prepared by awesome chefs, cozy open air rooms with mosquito nets and great bedding, bathrooms that made David and I wonder if we should hire the people who built them to work for us installing ecological toilets. --A cheeky little aside, David and I were enjoying a boat ride back to Iquitos aboard this huge ship named the "Queen of the Amazon". We met a few folks who had stayed at the fancy Ceiba Topps lodge, which was the end of our trip and the most glitsy of the different Exporama lodges. We explained the lodges that we had been staying at, and she was absolutely amazed at the fact that we stayed at the Napo Lodge. "You're crazy, I can't imagine walking down the path to the bathroom (lit by lanters spaced about 10ft on center), that place is just so rustic". David and I both shared the same thought bubble "man she should have seen where we sleeped the last week".
Anyway, at the Napo lodge there was great deal of animal life, ranging from talking parots to everyone's personal favorite, the Capybara. Capybara's are the largest animals in the rodent family. From the picture below, it really just looks like David was shrunk, ran into a mouse hole and stole the poor mouse's hammok. What a jackass.
The Capybara is a funny animal. It sounds like a video game as it walks around, making odd squeeks as it tries to suck the salt off your arm. I don't know if it's possible to put in words how adorable this animal is. It rolls over, it purs...it's just delightful. But aparently even adorable Capybaras have sad situations in their lives. Aparently this capybara had a mate at one time or another, but was abruptly left by her hubby for a sexier (larger?) capybara. They told me that these two would swim together and make lovey lovey noises to one another. Heartbreaking.
As we went to less rustic lodges each day, the semblence of "rusticity" became less and less noticable. Sigh.
The trips to the communities was enlightening. We gained a great deal of knowledge about why certain households have toilets and visa versa. It's truly a strange look at how people function as a community...where we might think that something like a toilet was important for a person, and for those around that person, a great deal of individuals would argue the contrary. It's facinating to me, but I suppose the fact that my white ass is walking around interviewing people and taking pictures of their shitters could also be considered "facinating" from their point of view.
That's about it... I have another story for a different blog, concerning an interesting event that took place during a trip to a community. I'll try to get to that tonight :).
Thanks guys!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Dilapidated Boats, Horny Cats, and Muscas Oh My!
We returned from the Jungle! We only managed to get 5 surveys done and I smell like a prison bus because there are no lavandaries open. But I managed to get all of my stuff washed today, and 10 Soles later, I have some of the cleanest clothes on the planet, what a deal (that´s like 3 bucks).
The trip was amazing. David and I left on a boat packed with people, chickens, chicks (small chickens), and a lot of foodstuffs. About 3hrs up the Amazon and onto a few other smaller rivers that entered the Amazon in almost a perpendicular fashion, we finished our trip in Manco Capac, where we stayed with an amazing woman named Maria. We ate food with her family, set up our mosquito nets, and got to sleep around 8 pm. At about 9pm my mosquito net collapsed. At about 11 pm, two cats in heat were chasing a rat....for about 3 hrs. At around 2am David had a hug Cockroach land on his head...what a butt hole, he woke me up when he got up. So needless to day, David and I didn't get much sleep. David also told me the next day that bugs were coming up between the cracks in the floor....I just opted to not turn my light on.
The next day was amazing, we visited a few house holds with Maria, and saw a couple ecological toilets that were in pretty good shape. Maria really has this town stoaked on sanitation. However, the other towns that we went to the following day (we went another 3 hrs up the river), did not have the same excitement. most of the communities up river, where CARITAS, an NGO promoting health and sanitation in rural Amazonian communities, did not feel that having a safe place to crap was as important as, say, a $100 gun. Either way the trip up the river was fantastic. The boat we took was Maria's and apparently it was only a year and half old. I swear the damn thing was about to sink, and there were quite a few boards missing. On the way home on day 4, we got in a huge rain storm...the likes I have never seen, and I am from Seattle. David and I hunkered down for about an hour, while the other student we were with, Jhon (and that's not spelled wrong) took up the middle, spitting, sputtering, and smiling. Meanwhile Maria, and her husband Robinson, were doing some epic boat navigating, and boat bailing. The picture of the dude with his shirt of is Robinson. One time I look back from my little shelter I built, and there's Robinson in his tighty bluies bucketing out water like it's his job. Oh, and this nimble badass of a man is 60 something. People in the jungle are just burly. And yes, that's a chicken in the front of the boat in the picture of the bow. Pretty funny huh. Didn't want it to go bad!
Ok I'm off to bed. This is not as well as I would have liked to make this entry, but I'm tired, I am excreting green diarrhea, and I am leaving for the jungle again for another 4 days, so I figure I shoud get going. I will try to make the next entry a bit better on the grammer and content front.
Thanks for reading, I hope this blog finds you happy, healthy, and hopeful!
The trip was amazing. David and I left on a boat packed with people, chickens, chicks (small chickens), and a lot of foodstuffs. About 3hrs up the Amazon and onto a few other smaller rivers that entered the Amazon in almost a perpendicular fashion, we finished our trip in Manco Capac, where we stayed with an amazing woman named Maria. We ate food with her family, set up our mosquito nets, and got to sleep around 8 pm. At about 9pm my mosquito net collapsed. At about 11 pm, two cats in heat were chasing a rat....for about 3 hrs. At around 2am David had a hug Cockroach land on his head...what a butt hole, he woke me up when he got up. So needless to day, David and I didn't get much sleep. David also told me the next day that bugs were coming up between the cracks in the floor....I just opted to not turn my light on.
The next day was amazing, we visited a few house holds with Maria, and saw a couple ecological toilets that were in pretty good shape. Maria really has this town stoaked on sanitation. However, the other towns that we went to the following day (we went another 3 hrs up the river), did not have the same excitement. most of the communities up river, where CARITAS, an NGO promoting health and sanitation in rural Amazonian communities, did not feel that having a safe place to crap was as important as, say, a $100 gun. Either way the trip up the river was fantastic. The boat we took was Maria's and apparently it was only a year and half old. I swear the damn thing was about to sink, and there were quite a few boards missing. On the way home on day 4, we got in a huge rain storm...the likes I have never seen, and I am from Seattle. David and I hunkered down for about an hour, while the other student we were with, Jhon (and that's not spelled wrong) took up the middle, spitting, sputtering, and smiling. Meanwhile Maria, and her husband Robinson, were doing some epic boat navigating, and boat bailing. The picture of the dude with his shirt of is Robinson. One time I look back from my little shelter I built, and there's Robinson in his tighty bluies bucketing out water like it's his job. Oh, and this nimble badass of a man is 60 something. People in the jungle are just burly. And yes, that's a chicken in the front of the boat in the picture of the bow. Pretty funny huh. Didn't want it to go bad!
Ok I'm off to bed. This is not as well as I would have liked to make this entry, but I'm tired, I am excreting green diarrhea, and I am leaving for the jungle again for another 4 days, so I figure I shoud get going. I will try to make the next entry a bit better on the grammer and content front.
Thanks for reading, I hope this blog finds you happy, healthy, and hopeful!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Vamos a la selva!
So we're going to the jungle! Sweet. After getting ahold of CARITAS, they have managed to give us the go-ahead to head into the jungle via the Amazon Rio. The trip will take us to a few communities (which I cannot pronounce or spell :)), where we will have the chance to see how the CARITAS dry toilets (ecosanitation), have been working over the past few years. The cool part is we'll be living in the communities. Should be awesome, but the bugs are likely to be relentless. I hope the antimalaria meds are up to snuff :). I will try to post a few pictures of my travels along the river when I get back on Saturday of this week. I'm super excited. Say a few prayers for our boat, for our health, and for our good time speaking with folks along the way. May we get the information we need to supplement our understanding of why people shit where they do. Because, believe it or not, it's making millions of people sick.
have a great day!
have a great day!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
"No me molesto"
Wow, let's start from the beginning.
So right when I was thinking that life was actually becoming a bit routine: meetings with students, municipality members, NGO Frenchies, NGO Americans, distant and hard to get ahold of Peruvian NGO's (*cough*CARITAS*cough), life went and threw me a curve ball. A couple mornings past, I get out of my hostel (the pun is coming later...100pts if you can find it), with my hands full with a bit of food from the lunch and dinner from the day before. I'm still wiping the sleep from my eyes. The day was surprisingly cool, and the sun was just beginning to peak it's way through the narrow streets of Iquitos (en la ciudad). It seemed like any normal day in a large city in the Amazon. People were going about their business, bustling about with newspapers, random candy stands, and getting ready to turn on their boom boxes. Ah, yeah simple, boring, and comfortable. Breath in, hold it, think about trees falling in woods, one hand clapping, and exhale. That's how I felt this morning. Then it happened...Monkey Man erupted from my periph.
He came into my line of site almost like a boulder from an Indiana Jones movie. My shear surprise was probably not unlike Harrison Ford’s. Only problem...I'm not an actor who can escape to my dressing room. Monkey Man was clad in the same kind of pants you might see a white hippie yoga instructor wearing in southern India. Only thing is, the sides of the legs were cut in an unnatural way (longitudinally, and haphazardly), he obviously wanted to be "different". Monkey man wore nothing else. The draw string on his pants was untied, the only thing holding up his pants being the combined shear will of everyone walking down the street. His body was hairier than the usual homosapian. He didn't look like the typical Peruvian by any grandiose stretch of the imagination.
He was obviously well fed, but apparently he hadn't eaten this morning, and I must have looked like an awesome piece of gringo meat. That or he wanted the food I was carrying. Either way I was frightened.
He came at me with a few indistinguishable grunts at first, with his eyes bulging out, and hands held out in a fashion similar to the resting stance of Zangief, the Russian bear wrestler in Street Fighter 2. I quickened my pace. He quickened his. I turned my body and B-lined it up the street, while he kept his body square to mine, similar to how a person plays correct and proper defense in basketball. He obviously used to play forward on some Monkey Man basketball team. Team Tarzan.
"ooga, booga....coooooommmmmiiiiddddaa....." which I think stands for "ooga, booga, foooooooooooood,..." in monkey man. Either way I started to raise my voice, telling him “No, No, NOOOO”. He kept after me for about a quarter of a long block. Finally I remembered what a friend said to say if someone continued to bug me incessantly me on the street. Well at least I thought I knew the right thing to say--all that came out was "No me molesto!" Monkey Man stood there in his tracks, puzzled, brain moving a kilometer an hour (fast for our ancestral cousins). And this is where I left him. In a pile of confusion. “HA, showed him!” I thought.
I met David at the local Asai shop (where I am getting some of the best Asai in the world at a price that would make the hippie, yoga, health conscience type drop their workout mat, stop talking about how awesome their workout plan was, and move to Iquitos). Anyway, I tell him about my story with my knuckle dragging friend. His laughs escalated to their highest when I told him what I said to this man to get away. I was actually quite proud that I told him to “stop bugging me!” and he stopped. “no, no, dude”, David responded, “you didn’t tell him to stop bugging you, you told him to stop bugging yourself (as in, Jeff telling Jeff to stop bugging Jeff).”
No wonder Monkey Man was puzzled into a state of suspended animation.
So, yeah, my Spanish could use some work.
So right when I was thinking that life was actually becoming a bit routine: meetings with students, municipality members, NGO Frenchies, NGO Americans, distant and hard to get ahold of Peruvian NGO's (*cough*CARITAS*cough), life went and threw me a curve ball. A couple mornings past, I get out of my hostel (the pun is coming later...100pts if you can find it), with my hands full with a bit of food from the lunch and dinner from the day before. I'm still wiping the sleep from my eyes. The day was surprisingly cool, and the sun was just beginning to peak it's way through the narrow streets of Iquitos (en la ciudad). It seemed like any normal day in a large city in the Amazon. People were going about their business, bustling about with newspapers, random candy stands, and getting ready to turn on their boom boxes. Ah, yeah simple, boring, and comfortable. Breath in, hold it, think about trees falling in woods, one hand clapping, and exhale. That's how I felt this morning. Then it happened...Monkey Man erupted from my periph.
He came into my line of site almost like a boulder from an Indiana Jones movie. My shear surprise was probably not unlike Harrison Ford’s. Only problem...I'm not an actor who can escape to my dressing room. Monkey Man was clad in the same kind of pants you might see a white hippie yoga instructor wearing in southern India. Only thing is, the sides of the legs were cut in an unnatural way (longitudinally, and haphazardly), he obviously wanted to be "different". Monkey man wore nothing else. The draw string on his pants was untied, the only thing holding up his pants being the combined shear will of everyone walking down the street. His body was hairier than the usual homosapian. He didn't look like the typical Peruvian by any grandiose stretch of the imagination.
He was obviously well fed, but apparently he hadn't eaten this morning, and I must have looked like an awesome piece of gringo meat. That or he wanted the food I was carrying. Either way I was frightened.
He came at me with a few indistinguishable grunts at first, with his eyes bulging out, and hands held out in a fashion similar to the resting stance of Zangief, the Russian bear wrestler in Street Fighter 2. I quickened my pace. He quickened his. I turned my body and B-lined it up the street, while he kept his body square to mine, similar to how a person plays correct and proper defense in basketball. He obviously used to play forward on some Monkey Man basketball team. Team Tarzan.
"ooga, booga....coooooommmmmiiiiddddaa....." which I think stands for "ooga, booga, foooooooooooood,..." in monkey man. Either way I started to raise my voice, telling him “No, No, NOOOO”. He kept after me for about a quarter of a long block. Finally I remembered what a friend said to say if someone continued to bug me incessantly me on the street. Well at least I thought I knew the right thing to say--all that came out was "No me molesto!" Monkey Man stood there in his tracks, puzzled, brain moving a kilometer an hour (fast for our ancestral cousins). And this is where I left him. In a pile of confusion. “HA, showed him!” I thought.
I met David at the local Asai shop (where I am getting some of the best Asai in the world at a price that would make the hippie, yoga, health conscience type drop their workout mat, stop talking about how awesome their workout plan was, and move to Iquitos). Anyway, I tell him about my story with my knuckle dragging friend. His laughs escalated to their highest when I told him what I said to this man to get away. I was actually quite proud that I told him to “stop bugging me!” and he stopped. “no, no, dude”, David responded, “you didn’t tell him to stop bugging you, you told him to stop bugging yourself (as in, Jeff telling Jeff to stop bugging Jeff).”
No wonder Monkey Man was puzzled into a state of suspended animation.
So, yeah, my Spanish could use some work.
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