So now I am in Lima, after almost 6 weeks in the jungle. I am totally exhausted and have a bad cold, but am happy. I got my first rolls of film developed today - in Lima is the only lab of the country that can develop rollfilms.. The films look great, my old Mamiya did a good job and there seem to be some great images there. I can´t wait to go to the darkroom and print them.
After my time in the jungle, the city seems really strange to me.
My last days in the forest were great, but also sad. Especially the kids got very emotional (typically latino) and made it very hard to leave.
Angel gave me two more lanzas that he made. They are so beautiful, made from a dark wood from the rainforest. He shapes them only using a machete, which is amazing to watch. To complete one lanza takes him 2 full days of work. I shipped them to the states, because there is no way I am carrying those up Matchu Picchu.
Angel also made a remedy for me for my cold. I asked him for a remedy for altidude sickness, but he obviously didn´t know what that is and just prepared something for keeping the cold away, as he called it. He went to the forest for hours to collect different roots and plants. Then he pressed the juice out of them and cooked them together with fresh cane-juice and other things. Then the whole pot was left to ferment, which it did. It is a bit like ginger beer with herb flavour - very nice and quite strong for the ginger.
I am sure that will warm our bones on Machu Picchu.
Other than that I had to make a last minute rescue atempt for our fotoproject. A friend of Eduardo was supposed to take the kids´ cameras to Lima to get them developed there, because it is cheaper than in Iquitos. This friend never went to Lima and after two weeks of trying to contact him without success, I decided that it is time for action. I had only 2 days left in Iquitos and really didn´t want to leave without having the kids see their pictures. So we went to pick the cameras up from this guy- he wasn´t in his office, but we took the cameras anyway.
We managed to get them developed the same day in Iquitos and I could hand them out to the kids the next day.
I made a rough selection with each kid and it seems that there are some very nice and interesting shots there. The kids took a lot of pictures of their families (partly in pretty intimate situations), their friends, homes and animals. I can see a great exhibition coming out of all this.
I am already planning how to continue this project. It would be great if I could do the same thing with other native communities around the world -kids taking pictures of their sourrounding.
It would be so interesting to see the parallels and differences. Also maybe not only native communties but kids that live in big cities too. That would give an interesting contrast..
Yes, I am full of ideas and with my own work as well. I think there will be some amazing images and the whole dark story of myths and legends of the jungle visualised in pretty associative images together with texts that tell the stories of the demons, sirenas and ghosts..
I am excited!
You might be wondering two things: How did the whole Ahuyuasca drug session go? And: How the hell did she manage to get a cold in a constant climate of 33-35 Degrees Celcius?
As to number one, I never got to take it. My last week was too tight with the expedition to the super chacras and all those things. Angel said, when I come back we will do a Ahuyuasca session together. I am sad I missed that experience, but on the other hand am quite sure it wouldn´t have made my cold any better. That leads to question two. And for that I can suggest the humidity as reason. It is incredible how long things take to dry in the jungle. My hair for example. When I wash it, it takes the whole day to dry-no kidding. We usually bath at night, because any time before that is just a whaste of energy. Then I usually sleep with wet hair and I guess that helps a cold along. So there. And other than that I am just generally exhausted. I think the jungle is pretty tough on the body, when you come from a "northern" country.
Enough whining! I am pretty good and so chuffed that I was able to see, taste, hear and learn all the things I did! Tonight I will pick Tosh up from the airport and we have one night in Lima before heading on to Cusco tomorrow.
Great fun lies ahead, thats for sure!
Bare with me for some "real" images. Coming soon..
Ciao, luego, Johanna.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
22.) The search for the forest demon
The last two days have probably been the most adventurous of my life so far..
Angel, my Shaman dad, his wife Nilsa and daugther Daisy took me on an expedition deep into the old part of the jungle to look for the "super chacra" (see the report on demons and sirens).
We packed gear for two days and took off early Sunday morning at sunrise. The plan was to get to an old mans house, who lives all by himself far off in the forest, which would be our base camp from which we would go out to search the super chacras.
The walk to the old mans "house" took 4 hours through thickest jungle -and I can tell you with a lot of gear to carry that is not a sunday stroll. I found out that my super extreme hiking boots are made for rock climbing rather than walking through a muddy, slippery jungle. The soles are so hard and unflexible that it is almost impossible to cross slippery tree bridges over rivers with them. It is like trying to walk over a slippery wet wooden trunk with poles on your feet. I leave it to your imagination how many times I fell. Plenty, to everybodys amusement (mine included).
So after four hours of struggling through mud and vegetation with our machetes, we get to the old mans house, who Angel call "Mister". The mister is 47 and looks about 70, with thick square glasses that seem to have been made before the invention of lenses. Two glass blocks, held by a wire frame. The man resembles a mole slightly. He has a tiny cottage in the middle of the woods, with no direct neighbours for at least 1.5 hours.
We set up our camps- hammocks and mosquiteros and head back out deeper into the jungle. Here, so far from civilisation, the forest is truly ancient, with trees that are so high that you can´t make out where they end. It is amazing! So many smells and plants and animals per squaremeter! I can see why the rainforest is called the green lungs of earth. It really is like a breathing living organism.
It is hard work to cut through the heavy vegetation, and we are completely soaked in sweat. I am carrying all my camera equipment, which doesn´t make it easier. We walk for another hour before we reach the first "super chacra". Now I imagined from explanations they were giving me before, that these super chacras are like patches that look as if they were being cultivated by humans, where there are no humans around and it is totally impossible for anyone to get the harvest of the chacra to any port..
What they really look like is a bit different. Basically they are parts in the middle of the rainforest, that are clear from any small plants. All that grows there are high trees and the ground is totally clear. That is quite a sight, when you struggle for hours and hours through the thickest imaginable vegetation. It looks a bit like german forest. Just trees and pretty clear ground. So I can see why people here believe these places are haunted. It is really quiet there, as if all the animals stayed outside and so clean, it doesn´t seem like jungle at all.
Angel makes us all smoke cigars, before we enter the super chacra, to calm the demons.
I take amazing pictures and am happy that we made the long way here. I hope that I will be able to capture that weird atmosphere in pictures. It could just be a normal forest in Europe..
Altogether we walk to three different super chacras and the last one is actually home of a demon, Angel tells me. The demon lives in a huge dead tree and we leave some cigars for him. This last chacra is a magical place, where trees grow in circular loops. No lie. I wish I had some kind of audio recording device, because the silence is very dense and serene. No doubt this is the home of a demon.
After that we make our way back to "misters" house and prepare some food. By now we have been walking for about 8 hours in total and that means climbing, cutting, struggling through mud, trees and vegetation. You can not imagine how pretty we all look and how nice we smell.
My hat is covered in cobwebs as the rest of my body, which is probably good to capture some of the million zancudos.
I was so clever not to bring a change of spare clothes- so i will be wearing the same soaked stuff again the next day. Fun.
We get to eat some Zorillos ("Zorro" is the word for "Fox", "Zorillo" means "little fox"). The rat like animal has no resemblance whatsoever with a fox and tastes clearly of rodent, which is not my favorite food in the world.
Still great to eat something and with a soup of platanos and fish it is a good meal.
The next days we head back and I get to wash the black crust off my body..
I really hope the pictures turn out the way I have them in my head.
Today I am heading back to the jungle for my last two days there. We finally got the pictures of the kids developed and I will pick them up tomorrow. I can´t wait to see them after all this time!
On Friday I will fly into Lima to meet Tosh on saturday. Can´t wait to see the boy again and go on more adventures!
More stories on friday! Ciao luego!
Angel, my Shaman dad, his wife Nilsa and daugther Daisy took me on an expedition deep into the old part of the jungle to look for the "super chacra" (see the report on demons and sirens).
We packed gear for two days and took off early Sunday morning at sunrise. The plan was to get to an old mans house, who lives all by himself far off in the forest, which would be our base camp from which we would go out to search the super chacras.
The walk to the old mans "house" took 4 hours through thickest jungle -and I can tell you with a lot of gear to carry that is not a sunday stroll. I found out that my super extreme hiking boots are made for rock climbing rather than walking through a muddy, slippery jungle. The soles are so hard and unflexible that it is almost impossible to cross slippery tree bridges over rivers with them. It is like trying to walk over a slippery wet wooden trunk with poles on your feet. I leave it to your imagination how many times I fell. Plenty, to everybodys amusement (mine included).
So after four hours of struggling through mud and vegetation with our machetes, we get to the old mans house, who Angel call "Mister". The mister is 47 and looks about 70, with thick square glasses that seem to have been made before the invention of lenses. Two glass blocks, held by a wire frame. The man resembles a mole slightly. He has a tiny cottage in the middle of the woods, with no direct neighbours for at least 1.5 hours.
We set up our camps- hammocks and mosquiteros and head back out deeper into the jungle. Here, so far from civilisation, the forest is truly ancient, with trees that are so high that you can´t make out where they end. It is amazing! So many smells and plants and animals per squaremeter! I can see why the rainforest is called the green lungs of earth. It really is like a breathing living organism.
It is hard work to cut through the heavy vegetation, and we are completely soaked in sweat. I am carrying all my camera equipment, which doesn´t make it easier. We walk for another hour before we reach the first "super chacra". Now I imagined from explanations they were giving me before, that these super chacras are like patches that look as if they were being cultivated by humans, where there are no humans around and it is totally impossible for anyone to get the harvest of the chacra to any port..
What they really look like is a bit different. Basically they are parts in the middle of the rainforest, that are clear from any small plants. All that grows there are high trees and the ground is totally clear. That is quite a sight, when you struggle for hours and hours through the thickest imaginable vegetation. It looks a bit like german forest. Just trees and pretty clear ground. So I can see why people here believe these places are haunted. It is really quiet there, as if all the animals stayed outside and so clean, it doesn´t seem like jungle at all.
Angel makes us all smoke cigars, before we enter the super chacra, to calm the demons.
I take amazing pictures and am happy that we made the long way here. I hope that I will be able to capture that weird atmosphere in pictures. It could just be a normal forest in Europe..
Altogether we walk to three different super chacras and the last one is actually home of a demon, Angel tells me. The demon lives in a huge dead tree and we leave some cigars for him. This last chacra is a magical place, where trees grow in circular loops. No lie. I wish I had some kind of audio recording device, because the silence is very dense and serene. No doubt this is the home of a demon.
After that we make our way back to "misters" house and prepare some food. By now we have been walking for about 8 hours in total and that means climbing, cutting, struggling through mud, trees and vegetation. You can not imagine how pretty we all look and how nice we smell.
My hat is covered in cobwebs as the rest of my body, which is probably good to capture some of the million zancudos.
I was so clever not to bring a change of spare clothes- so i will be wearing the same soaked stuff again the next day. Fun.
We get to eat some Zorillos ("Zorro" is the word for "Fox", "Zorillo" means "little fox"). The rat like animal has no resemblance whatsoever with a fox and tastes clearly of rodent, which is not my favorite food in the world.
Still great to eat something and with a soup of platanos and fish it is a good meal.
The next days we head back and I get to wash the black crust off my body..
I really hope the pictures turn out the way I have them in my head.
Today I am heading back to the jungle for my last two days there. We finally got the pictures of the kids developed and I will pick them up tomorrow. I can´t wait to see them after all this time!
On Friday I will fly into Lima to meet Tosh on saturday. Can´t wait to see the boy again and go on more adventures!
More stories on friday! Ciao luego!
Monday, August 18, 2008
21.) Nuevo Madrina
Hey boys and girls. I haven´t been into town this weekend because I was witnessing a birth in my family. The 17 year old Erika had her baby, in the jungle, with no doctor or midwife around. It was amazing. She wanted me to be the godmother of the boy and I got to cut the naval cord (hope that is the right word).
It all started on Friday morning, when Angel and I were getting ready to go on our expedition in search of the forest demon. Erika was going into labor and I decided to stay because I really wanted to be there for that.
I have to tell you a bit about how pregnant women are here in general. Erika was working hard untill the day her labout started -and I mean hard physical work, with the machete in the Chacra, carrying 20 liter buckets of water for kilometers etc. I was telling Nilsa about the histery that European women have with being pregnant- they basically stop working two months before the baby is due (even if they feel well) and a lot of them are behaving like invalids, not moving too much, complaining and being sissies, mainly. Here the women, just ignore the fact that they carry a huge belly around, work and act as usual. In Erikas case it was also a bit complicated, because she got pregnant without being married.
Angel told me that the fathers child is a proper Gigolo and that they have warned her of him. She ignored the warning and obviously got laid.
Erika´s whole pregnancy was a taboo in the family and nobody talked about it. When I asked some questions, I realised very quickly, that nobody wanted to talk about it. The reason for that is of course that Erika has lost her honour. Angel told me later that the family has come to a compromise. They will allow her to stay in the house for two or three years - untill the baby is big enough to guarantee it´s safety. Angel said that most families would have chased Erika away, because it gives a bad reputation to the whole family and he (Angel) would have to care for the food of them both.
Erika will have a very hard time after these two or three years, because for her it is almost impossible to find a partner and without a man in the jungle life is pretty tough.
I hope she will find one..
So it all began on Friday and all through the day and the following day her labour continued, but nothing happened. She was in bad pain during the night, but hardly made any noise. I was sleeping next to her and could feel her cramping. The next morning Nilsa was getting worried and told me that she would do a cesarian, if the baby wouldn´t come soon. I don´t want to imagine how that would have turned out, with no sterile knives or anything at all.
Luckily by midday the baby was born naturally. I got to take pictures and cut the naval cord. I think it was a good thing I carry Alcohol and bandages with me..
As Nilsa tells me a lot of women and babies in the forest die at birth, because the cord is cut in a wrong way and things get infected. I don´t doubt that for a second.
So now I am oficially the new boy´s "Madrina" which is godmother and Nilsa explains to me, that that means, that I am like another child of the family now. I am honoured!
Erika wanted to name the baby after me, expecting it to be a girl. Now she called it "John, Aron" (they all have two names here). She asked me what my "husband´s" name is and called her baby after Tosh. She said she wanted the name of a good person, that is smart and has achieved great things in life like me. Not sure if Tosh is a cool as me, but I let her believe that ;)
It all started on Friday morning, when Angel and I were getting ready to go on our expedition in search of the forest demon. Erika was going into labor and I decided to stay because I really wanted to be there for that.
I have to tell you a bit about how pregnant women are here in general. Erika was working hard untill the day her labout started -and I mean hard physical work, with the machete in the Chacra, carrying 20 liter buckets of water for kilometers etc. I was telling Nilsa about the histery that European women have with being pregnant- they basically stop working two months before the baby is due (even if they feel well) and a lot of them are behaving like invalids, not moving too much, complaining and being sissies, mainly. Here the women, just ignore the fact that they carry a huge belly around, work and act as usual. In Erikas case it was also a bit complicated, because she got pregnant without being married.
Angel told me that the fathers child is a proper Gigolo and that they have warned her of him. She ignored the warning and obviously got laid.
Erika´s whole pregnancy was a taboo in the family and nobody talked about it. When I asked some questions, I realised very quickly, that nobody wanted to talk about it. The reason for that is of course that Erika has lost her honour. Angel told me later that the family has come to a compromise. They will allow her to stay in the house for two or three years - untill the baby is big enough to guarantee it´s safety. Angel said that most families would have chased Erika away, because it gives a bad reputation to the whole family and he (Angel) would have to care for the food of them both.
Erika will have a very hard time after these two or three years, because for her it is almost impossible to find a partner and without a man in the jungle life is pretty tough.
I hope she will find one..
So it all began on Friday and all through the day and the following day her labour continued, but nothing happened. She was in bad pain during the night, but hardly made any noise. I was sleeping next to her and could feel her cramping. The next morning Nilsa was getting worried and told me that she would do a cesarian, if the baby wouldn´t come soon. I don´t want to imagine how that would have turned out, with no sterile knives or anything at all.
Luckily by midday the baby was born naturally. I got to take pictures and cut the naval cord. I think it was a good thing I carry Alcohol and bandages with me..
As Nilsa tells me a lot of women and babies in the forest die at birth, because the cord is cut in a wrong way and things get infected. I don´t doubt that for a second.
So now I am oficially the new boy´s "Madrina" which is godmother and Nilsa explains to me, that that means, that I am like another child of the family now. I am honoured!
Erika wanted to name the baby after me, expecting it to be a girl. Now she called it "John, Aron" (they all have two names here). She asked me what my "husband´s" name is and called her baby after Tosh. She said she wanted the name of a good person, that is smart and has achieved great things in life like me. Not sure if Tosh is a cool as me, but I let her believe that ;)
Saturday, August 9, 2008
20.) 07.08.08 My present
Today, just before I left to Iquitos for the weekend Angel made me a special gift.
He had been working all morning on a traditional lanza, which the inkas use for hunting with a gigantic bow. It is like a spear and arrow in one. When he finished it, he handed it over to me and said it is a gift for me. I didn´t know what to say.
It is absolutely beautiful and means so much to me. He made an especial short one for me so that I could take it on the plane. He said "take it to your country and tell them about the people that live in the jungle in Peru". I certainly will.
I have to make him a gift now before I leave and I think I allready know what..
One more week with them. I am starting to feel sad having to leave them so soon. I got used to their way and living with them. And I really respect them very much. What an amazing experience this all has been.. I think I will realize that even more, when I will have left.
He had been working all morning on a traditional lanza, which the inkas use for hunting with a gigantic bow. It is like a spear and arrow in one. When he finished it, he handed it over to me and said it is a gift for me. I didn´t know what to say.
It is absolutely beautiful and means so much to me. He made an especial short one for me so that I could take it on the plane. He said "take it to your country and tell them about the people that live in the jungle in Peru". I certainly will.
I have to make him a gift now before I leave and I think I allready know what..
One more week with them. I am starting to feel sad having to leave them so soon. I got used to their way and living with them. And I really respect them very much. What an amazing experience this all has been.. I think I will realize that even more, when I will have left.
19.) 06.08.08 a normal day in the jungle
I guess it would be interesting for someone who hasn´t lived in a jungle community to know what a "normal" day here looks like. So here it goes:
I get up at about 6 am with the sunrise, but about an hour after all other family members (just because I can). Everybody is busy in the mornings organising stuff for breakfast, cleaning up, getting water, making a new fire etc. I brush my teeth, throw some water from the rain-tubs in my face and try to make myself useful. Usually I will go and fill up the drinking water bucket for the family at the spring in the jungle. Most mornings one of the girls, either Deysi or Rosa accompanies me and carries some water too. We joke and play one the way there and usually they show me some kind of new insect or fruit I don´t know yet.
When all the morning "chores" are done, we have breakfast together, the whole family. We have a very light breakfast, mostly a cup of coffee and some banana soup or a piece of bread you can by at a nearby house.
After breakfast and cleaning the dishes, I study some Spanish, help the kids with reading or some other school stuff and prepare for the class in the afternoon. Then on some days we would go to the chacra and work with the machetes clearing bits of forest or gathering Yucas and fruit.
On other days we would go fishing or washing clothes in the river which can take up to several hours.
Around 1pm we have lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day. We usually have two or three types of carbs - rice, yuca, platanos, or pasta with meat. That pretty much fills you up for the whole day. After lunch we chill out in the hammocks for a while before class starts.
At the moment the kids have school holidays, which means that my afternoon class is the only class they have. A lot of kids show up, I guess because they are pretty bored and don´t have too much else to entertain them.
We always have a lot of fun in class and I think I will really miss the kids here. They are great, so open and friendly.
After class I usually go play with the kids- either football or "discovering" which includes running through the jungle and looking at strange animals and plants. They would run ahead and bring some fruit or animal for me to check out. I teaches me a lot about the jungle.
Most days we go swimming after that in the nearby river or to the sirens waterfall, where you need a big group of people to go to be safe from the siren.
I heard that the siren is actually not only bad, but that she can help especially young men and in things related to music. So if a young man wants to be a musician he would bring his musical instrument to the place where the siren lives and leave it there over night for her to bless it.
Quite cool.
I take my soap to whereever we go swimming and it has become some kind of ritual for the kids too to soap up alltogether. Last week we couldn´t go swim in the usual spot because they had just caught a gigantic electric eel. We just arrived when they pulled it out. It was about two meters long and neck thick. They told us not to swim there, because they thought there was a second one living there.
Kind of scary to think that we had been swimming there the days before. Aparently these things can electrocute (notsure if i spelled that right) you easily, if you touch them.
By the size of them I totally believe that.
In the evenings we come back home and have a little dinner, which usually is some kind of banana or rice soup and coffee.
I thought the other day that here I probably eat half as much as I usually would, but I am hardly ever hungry. I don´t think I eat more than 1200 calories a day and I would totally be starving under normal circumstances. But here it is fine, maybe because of the heat. I never feel like eating too much.
So then after dinner around 6 or 7 it gets dark very quickly and we light some petroleum candles and chill out in the hammocks. I usually read or draw some more with the kids. Angel and I smoke a cigar and we have fun watching little Perci trying to dance, when we clap our hands.
I learned a lot from these people about how a family can work together.
They spend so much time together and have so much fun. It is really cool to see how they have so little but so much more emotinally than a "civilised" family. If I just compare it with the amount of time I got to spend with my dad when I was little- he went to work in the morning and came home late at night. So we only saw him for dinner and on the weekends. Which was probably more than many kids, because we always did cool things together as a family on the weekends.
Here family has a totally different meaning. They are a close little community, that works together and one is dependant on the other. But apart from a lot of work, they also have so much more spare time together, where they just sit around, sing and laugh and tell stories..
I like their way very much.
At around 8pm we all go to bed. Which sounds early, but by that time you are totally shattered, believe me..
I get up at about 6 am with the sunrise, but about an hour after all other family members (just because I can). Everybody is busy in the mornings organising stuff for breakfast, cleaning up, getting water, making a new fire etc. I brush my teeth, throw some water from the rain-tubs in my face and try to make myself useful. Usually I will go and fill up the drinking water bucket for the family at the spring in the jungle. Most mornings one of the girls, either Deysi or Rosa accompanies me and carries some water too. We joke and play one the way there and usually they show me some kind of new insect or fruit I don´t know yet.
When all the morning "chores" are done, we have breakfast together, the whole family. We have a very light breakfast, mostly a cup of coffee and some banana soup or a piece of bread you can by at a nearby house.
After breakfast and cleaning the dishes, I study some Spanish, help the kids with reading or some other school stuff and prepare for the class in the afternoon. Then on some days we would go to the chacra and work with the machetes clearing bits of forest or gathering Yucas and fruit.
On other days we would go fishing or washing clothes in the river which can take up to several hours.
Around 1pm we have lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day. We usually have two or three types of carbs - rice, yuca, platanos, or pasta with meat. That pretty much fills you up for the whole day. After lunch we chill out in the hammocks for a while before class starts.
At the moment the kids have school holidays, which means that my afternoon class is the only class they have. A lot of kids show up, I guess because they are pretty bored and don´t have too much else to entertain them.
We always have a lot of fun in class and I think I will really miss the kids here. They are great, so open and friendly.
After class I usually go play with the kids- either football or "discovering" which includes running through the jungle and looking at strange animals and plants. They would run ahead and bring some fruit or animal for me to check out. I teaches me a lot about the jungle.
Most days we go swimming after that in the nearby river or to the sirens waterfall, where you need a big group of people to go to be safe from the siren.
I heard that the siren is actually not only bad, but that she can help especially young men and in things related to music. So if a young man wants to be a musician he would bring his musical instrument to the place where the siren lives and leave it there over night for her to bless it.
Quite cool.
I take my soap to whereever we go swimming and it has become some kind of ritual for the kids too to soap up alltogether. Last week we couldn´t go swim in the usual spot because they had just caught a gigantic electric eel. We just arrived when they pulled it out. It was about two meters long and neck thick. They told us not to swim there, because they thought there was a second one living there.
Kind of scary to think that we had been swimming there the days before. Aparently these things can electrocute (notsure if i spelled that right) you easily, if you touch them.
By the size of them I totally believe that.
In the evenings we come back home and have a little dinner, which usually is some kind of banana or rice soup and coffee.
I thought the other day that here I probably eat half as much as I usually would, but I am hardly ever hungry. I don´t think I eat more than 1200 calories a day and I would totally be starving under normal circumstances. But here it is fine, maybe because of the heat. I never feel like eating too much.
So then after dinner around 6 or 7 it gets dark very quickly and we light some petroleum candles and chill out in the hammocks. I usually read or draw some more with the kids. Angel and I smoke a cigar and we have fun watching little Perci trying to dance, when we clap our hands.
I learned a lot from these people about how a family can work together.
They spend so much time together and have so much fun. It is really cool to see how they have so little but so much more emotinally than a "civilised" family. If I just compare it with the amount of time I got to spend with my dad when I was little- he went to work in the morning and came home late at night. So we only saw him for dinner and on the weekends. Which was probably more than many kids, because we always did cool things together as a family on the weekends.
Here family has a totally different meaning. They are a close little community, that works together and one is dependant on the other. But apart from a lot of work, they also have so much more spare time together, where they just sit around, sing and laugh and tell stories..
I like their way very much.
At around 8pm we all go to bed. Which sounds early, but by that time you are totally shattered, believe me..
18.) 05.08.08 My bites
Today we went to work in the chacra again- the families ´garden´. I am really liking working with the machete, cutting through the jungle. It gives you a great sense of accomplishing something, when you see the result. My family looked at me with great amusement, when I first wanted to try to help them. Now they accept it and seem to really appreciate my help. I feel much more useful lately, since I know now how the family works. I can do things by myself, without having to ask.
I am still waiting on the cameras of the kids to be developed in Lima. It has been one week and everybody is so excited to see the pictures (including me of course). I had one lady coming up to me when I got back to the village on Monday, who was trying to tell me that she had taken some nude pictures of herself and didn´t want me to show them in the class. It was very funny and we laughed a lot. I told her I would look out for them and make sure they are kept private.
This last week has been the worst so far concerning insect bites. Anybody who has not been to the jungle can never understand how bad the bugs can bug you here. There are bloodsucking beasts around all day and night. At daytime it´s little white flies that you hardly see, or feel when they bite you. About the next day, you will have the worst itch from these bites ever. And there are not just a couple, you get about 100 on a single arm. Then around 5pm the Zancudos are coming out of the grass and they stay for most of the night. I have to wear long socks and gumboots at night, because these suckers seem to love my feet more than anything.
No insect repellant, apart from some super strong sweat and water resistent jungle formula stuff that I bought in the states, which has a side effect list that is longer than that of an anti-baby pill, has any effect at all. I had to get Lea, a friend from North Carolina, to send some more of that stuff, because it´s the only thing that keeps the bugs off you for about an hour (it says on the label "up to 12 hour protection").
You can not imagine what my legs look like. Alex, the English girl said before she left "my mum will cry when she sees my legs". And that is pretty much the state I am in right now. Not pretty.
Not much can be done about it and you just have to suffer in silence. haha.
Funnily enough the locals in the jungle get bitten just as much as me, but their skin doesn´t react at all to it anymore. They seem to have developed some kind of resistance to the bugs poison over the years. I guess if you have been eaten by mosquitos for several years, at some point your body doesn´t bother with it too much any more.
Apart from those nasty zancudos and sandfllies during the day, you also get some nice white chiggers, that the women of the village pick out of the skin with a spike of a cactus. Little Perci is completely covered in chigger rash and I observed how Nilsa picked the little things out of his skin. They are so small, that I could hardly see them. She has obviously got some long term experience with picking out chiggers..
I will get some cream for mine. Or nailpolish as I learned from an army boy;)
I am still waiting on the cameras of the kids to be developed in Lima. It has been one week and everybody is so excited to see the pictures (including me of course). I had one lady coming up to me when I got back to the village on Monday, who was trying to tell me that she had taken some nude pictures of herself and didn´t want me to show them in the class. It was very funny and we laughed a lot. I told her I would look out for them and make sure they are kept private.
This last week has been the worst so far concerning insect bites. Anybody who has not been to the jungle can never understand how bad the bugs can bug you here. There are bloodsucking beasts around all day and night. At daytime it´s little white flies that you hardly see, or feel when they bite you. About the next day, you will have the worst itch from these bites ever. And there are not just a couple, you get about 100 on a single arm. Then around 5pm the Zancudos are coming out of the grass and they stay for most of the night. I have to wear long socks and gumboots at night, because these suckers seem to love my feet more than anything.
No insect repellant, apart from some super strong sweat and water resistent jungle formula stuff that I bought in the states, which has a side effect list that is longer than that of an anti-baby pill, has any effect at all. I had to get Lea, a friend from North Carolina, to send some more of that stuff, because it´s the only thing that keeps the bugs off you for about an hour (it says on the label "up to 12 hour protection").
You can not imagine what my legs look like. Alex, the English girl said before she left "my mum will cry when she sees my legs". And that is pretty much the state I am in right now. Not pretty.
Not much can be done about it and you just have to suffer in silence. haha.
Funnily enough the locals in the jungle get bitten just as much as me, but their skin doesn´t react at all to it anymore. They seem to have developed some kind of resistance to the bugs poison over the years. I guess if you have been eaten by mosquitos for several years, at some point your body doesn´t bother with it too much any more.
Apart from those nasty zancudos and sandfllies during the day, you also get some nice white chiggers, that the women of the village pick out of the skin with a spike of a cactus. Little Perci is completely covered in chigger rash and I observed how Nilsa picked the little things out of his skin. They are so small, that I could hardly see them. She has obviously got some long term experience with picking out chiggers..
I will get some cream for mine. Or nailpolish as I learned from an army boy;)
17.) 04.08.08 Pictures and Ayuhuasca
Last week I have taken some important pictures. After realising what the ´whole story´is about I organised some things I wanted to take pictures of. One of them was the waterfall of the siren (see last report) with Nilsa as the siren. We all went to the waterfall again and Nilsa posed as a siren, sitting in the waterfall in the afternoon sun. That was pretty cool, but even better was a picture I took next to the water of the pregnant Erika. She has an amazing face, very sublime looking and innocent.
Next week Angel will take me to a ´Super chacra´to take pictures, which I can´t wait for. He invited me to join him for an Ayuhuasca-session as well. I have heard a lot about this traditional halocinogetic drug, which the Shamans take to envision deseases, find cures, see into the future and go on spiritual journeys.
I feel that this invitation means a lot coming from him. I think we have come to a point that we both respect each other greatly and he offers more and more of his knowledge and opens up. It is an honor for me to accept his invitiation and I am excited for this expericene. I am generally no fan of drugs that make you loose control. In this case I trust his knowledge as a Shaman and believe that he will guide me and be there for me. some more information on Ayuhuasca: http://www.biopark.org/ayahuasca.html - a bit esoteric, unfortunately.
Angel explains, that the drug will let me share my spirit with all inkas, the forest, the mountains and all things on earth. He tells me that I will be able to let my spirit travel to my home country, visit my parents and friends, go anywhere I want.
It is necessary to go on a four-day diet before taking Ayuhuasca, taking only light foods, no salt, alcohol or sugar. I will start that diet tomorrow, hoping I won´t loose any more weight. I am starting to get quite bony ;)
Don´t worry parents, I will be fine!
So more about that whole Ayuhuasca-trip in next weeks report..
Next week Angel will take me to a ´Super chacra´to take pictures, which I can´t wait for. He invited me to join him for an Ayuhuasca-session as well. I have heard a lot about this traditional halocinogetic drug, which the Shamans take to envision deseases, find cures, see into the future and go on spiritual journeys.
I feel that this invitation means a lot coming from him. I think we have come to a point that we both respect each other greatly and he offers more and more of his knowledge and opens up. It is an honor for me to accept his invitiation and I am excited for this expericene. I am generally no fan of drugs that make you loose control. In this case I trust his knowledge as a Shaman and believe that he will guide me and be there for me. some more information on Ayuhuasca: http://www.biopark.org/ayahuasca.html - a bit esoteric, unfortunately.
Angel explains, that the drug will let me share my spirit with all inkas, the forest, the mountains and all things on earth. He tells me that I will be able to let my spirit travel to my home country, visit my parents and friends, go anywhere I want.
It is necessary to go on a four-day diet before taking Ayuhuasca, taking only light foods, no salt, alcohol or sugar. I will start that diet tomorrow, hoping I won´t loose any more weight. I am starting to get quite bony ;)
Don´t worry parents, I will be fine!
So more about that whole Ayuhuasca-trip in next weeks report..
Friday, August 8, 2008
More jungle pics
Thank you Alex again, for providing the pics! Great that I can put some after all!
These are from our trip to the "Monkey Island". Me and a monkey, some banana trees, me drinking from a root and the yummy star fruit..
These are from our trip to the "Monkey Island". Me and a monkey, some banana trees, me drinking from a root and the yummy star fruit..
My family
Here are a few of my family members:
Deysi (12) and Perci (1), Deysi, group shot:Rosa(10) Deysi Erika (17) and Perci, Perci and me.
We are missing Victor (13) and the parents Nilsa and Angel, coming soon..
Deysi (12) and Perci (1), Deysi, group shot:Rosa(10) Deysi Erika (17) and Perci, Perci and me.
We are missing Victor (13) and the parents Nilsa and Angel, coming soon..
Pictures of my house
Thanks to Alex, here are some more pictures (I still couldn´t develop my films and am afraid that won´t happen until I get back)
This is the house I live in, the kitchen (with Erika) and our "bathroom":
This is the house I live in, the kitchen (with Erika) and our "bathroom":
More pictures!
Thanks to Alex, here are some more pictures (I still couldn´t develop my films and am afraid that won´t happen until I get back)
This is the house I live in:
This is the house I live in:
Saturday, August 2, 2008
16.) 31.07.08 Of Demons and Sirens
Last night the turning point of my stay in the jungle occured. Now everything makes sense and I am full of ideas and images..
We sat around the kitchen eating dinner (usually banana soup and some thin coffee) when Angel came back from El Barrio (the port of the Amazon river). He had spent all day there drinking with his mates in a port bar and was quite wasted. He is in a chatty mood and offers me a cigarette (which I accept, because smoking in the jungle at night keeps the zancudos away and is really peaceful. I bought some hand rolled cigars at the market and smoke a bit every night watching the stars..)
Then Angel starts telling me by the light of a candle that he is the local Shaman called Icuro. I had no idea and can not quite believe it. He explains how he sucks out bad spirits (diabolos del Cuerpo - devils of the body) and sends them away. He gives me a demonstration which is quite impressive and scary. His hole body and face transforms and he becomes another person. He tells me that he speaks two different demon languages, which sound like a sing-sang, quite ancient deep and calming. He uses the local halocinogetic drug called Ahuyasca to diagnose patients. The drug gives him the vision to see where the illness is located and he can tell the future with it too.
He holds my hand and foot for a while and tells me that I am very well and have no demons. I am glad.
However absurd the whole thing sounds at first, the later the night, the more he talks in his demon languages I start to let go of my western scepticism and feel that there is something to it, as the Inkas have been healing this way for over 3500 years, much longer than any "western" medicine existed.
Then Angel tells me that with his camera (I gave him one too) he took a picture of a demon called Toronja in a super chacra. He explains what a super chacra is: it is a garden like the families chacra but in a total illogical location, many hours into the forest and far away from any human settlements. It would be impossible for anyone from the village to maintain this chacra because the way to any house or port is too far to travel within a day and you could have your garden much closer by. The locals believe that those so called super chacras are haunted by a demon of the forest. They walk far around it if they ever come accross one and leave some cigars as offerings for the demon.
They also believe in sirens, that live at the river and drown anyone that dares to swim in their waters. I find out that we have been to a place where a siren lives last week, which has a waterfall. I ask, why we could go there and he explains that it is ok, if you go with many people and somebody keeps watch. Now I understand why Nilsa never joined us to swim, but sat on a rock overlooking the waterfall the whole time..
There is a lot of mysticism and ancient stories of ghosts and spirits here. I can not believe that I am living in the house of a Shaman! How cool!
I ask him if I may join him for a healing and if I can take pictures. He allows it.
At night in bed I have a lot of images going through my head of pictures I have already taken and ones I still want to take. It sounds like the humming of hundreds of insects, it smells rich, sweet, green and moist and it feels dark and ancient. It all comes together now and I can see the whole clearly in front of me. It will be amazing!!
We sat around the kitchen eating dinner (usually banana soup and some thin coffee) when Angel came back from El Barrio (the port of the Amazon river). He had spent all day there drinking with his mates in a port bar and was quite wasted. He is in a chatty mood and offers me a cigarette (which I accept, because smoking in the jungle at night keeps the zancudos away and is really peaceful. I bought some hand rolled cigars at the market and smoke a bit every night watching the stars..)
Then Angel starts telling me by the light of a candle that he is the local Shaman called Icuro. I had no idea and can not quite believe it. He explains how he sucks out bad spirits (diabolos del Cuerpo - devils of the body) and sends them away. He gives me a demonstration which is quite impressive and scary. His hole body and face transforms and he becomes another person. He tells me that he speaks two different demon languages, which sound like a sing-sang, quite ancient deep and calming. He uses the local halocinogetic drug called Ahuyasca to diagnose patients. The drug gives him the vision to see where the illness is located and he can tell the future with it too.
He holds my hand and foot for a while and tells me that I am very well and have no demons. I am glad.
However absurd the whole thing sounds at first, the later the night, the more he talks in his demon languages I start to let go of my western scepticism and feel that there is something to it, as the Inkas have been healing this way for over 3500 years, much longer than any "western" medicine existed.
Then Angel tells me that with his camera (I gave him one too) he took a picture of a demon called Toronja in a super chacra. He explains what a super chacra is: it is a garden like the families chacra but in a total illogical location, many hours into the forest and far away from any human settlements. It would be impossible for anyone from the village to maintain this chacra because the way to any house or port is too far to travel within a day and you could have your garden much closer by. The locals believe that those so called super chacras are haunted by a demon of the forest. They walk far around it if they ever come accross one and leave some cigars as offerings for the demon.
They also believe in sirens, that live at the river and drown anyone that dares to swim in their waters. I find out that we have been to a place where a siren lives last week, which has a waterfall. I ask, why we could go there and he explains that it is ok, if you go with many people and somebody keeps watch. Now I understand why Nilsa never joined us to swim, but sat on a rock overlooking the waterfall the whole time..
There is a lot of mysticism and ancient stories of ghosts and spirits here. I can not believe that I am living in the house of a Shaman! How cool!
I ask him if I may join him for a healing and if I can take pictures. He allows it.
At night in bed I have a lot of images going through my head of pictures I have already taken and ones I still want to take. It sounds like the humming of hundreds of insects, it smells rich, sweet, green and moist and it feels dark and ancient. It all comes together now and I can see the whole clearly in front of me. It will be amazing!!
15.) 30.07.08 Jungle Exercise
I have solved a problem which was really starting to bother me. It is quite difficult to get some excercise here, as stupid as that may sound. Of course you sweat a lot all day even if not moving and you have to do hard physical work, but I was really starting to miss the feeling of aching muscles, if anybody can understand that.
I can´t just go jogging down the main path here, because people already think I am nuts. But not only that - there are a lot of rules for a "decent" women in this society (I clearly don´t belong into that category as things like playing football in the rain with the kids disqualifies me).
The thing is, that out of respect for my foster family, I try to keep to the rules and be good. That includes not wearing short shorts or going swimming anywhere near men. When I go swimmind with the kids and a man walks past in the far distance they start screaming and tell me to duck down. Then they gather around me and hide my body with theirs, although the poor fellow is so far off, that he could hardly spot me without a telelense.
The people in the village all look at me with a mixture of doubt and curiosity when I tell them I am married- which Eduardo told me is the only right answer for a woman my age. They wouldn´t speak to me if I told them I just had a boyfriend. That is sinful and totally unacceptable. Not that I am not going to hell anyways, but I really try to fit in so that my family doesn´t get into trouble for my behaviour.
So that means I can´t just go jogging like I would like to in the early morning hours when it is still cool. But I have found out that running with kids is ok, because you can blame it on them and slow down when you pass somebody. So thats what I have been doing, running around the jungle mainly barefoot with the kids, swimming and climbing trees. I feel much better now..
I can´t just go jogging down the main path here, because people already think I am nuts. But not only that - there are a lot of rules for a "decent" women in this society (I clearly don´t belong into that category as things like playing football in the rain with the kids disqualifies me).
The thing is, that out of respect for my foster family, I try to keep to the rules and be good. That includes not wearing short shorts or going swimming anywhere near men. When I go swimmind with the kids and a man walks past in the far distance they start screaming and tell me to duck down. Then they gather around me and hide my body with theirs, although the poor fellow is so far off, that he could hardly spot me without a telelense.
The people in the village all look at me with a mixture of doubt and curiosity when I tell them I am married- which Eduardo told me is the only right answer for a woman my age. They wouldn´t speak to me if I told them I just had a boyfriend. That is sinful and totally unacceptable. Not that I am not going to hell anyways, but I really try to fit in so that my family doesn´t get into trouble for my behaviour.
So that means I can´t just go jogging like I would like to in the early morning hours when it is still cool. But I have found out that running with kids is ok, because you can blame it on them and slow down when you pass somebody. So thats what I have been doing, running around the jungle mainly barefoot with the kids, swimming and climbing trees. I feel much better now..
some pictures.. finally
here are some pictures, not taken by me- because mine are all on film and will have to be developed first.. but maybe they will give you some idea of what it looks like here.
14.) 30.07.08 Black and White
There is some form of racism here which I never expected.. It is pretty obvious that people here are very fascinated with foreigners with light skin and fair hair (there are not that many here). I get a lot more atention than I would like- everybody, men or women, stare at me in the street. Men especially can get quite annoying, telling me they love me blahblah. It is really wired for me, because there are so many absolutely stunning peruvian women, in tight dresses with faces of inka-godesses and I walk around like a sloppy tramp, with a red and sweaty face and not sexy at all. Still all the men seem to be losing it. In the village the kids are fascinated with my hair and skin and touch it with amazement. When I asked them they said I am beautiful and they are ugly. They sid I have white skin and they called themselves "negros" -blacks. For me they are brown and absolutely gorgeous. They don´t understand and I didn´t understand either until I asked Eduardo about it.
He explained that this whole reaction is due to the fact that Peru was ruled by the Spanish concerors for a long time. They supressed the Inkas, took all their goods and enslaved them. For the Inkas the spanish represented all they could not have: wealth, power and beauty. And the Spanish had white skin..
Today in all the commercials you only see white men, women and kids with blond hair and blue eyes selling the local "Inka Kola" and all other products. All that peruvians find beautiful and desirable is represented in white skin and light hair..
Now I know why they all think I am beautiful, but it doesn´t make it easier. It actually is that bad, that I can´t go out, not even to a bar by myself, because the men get really agressive. I had to buy a cheap ring to underline my standard- "estoy casada" (I am married), they still don´t care too much and try anyway.
Thankfully the jungle is different and people there are much more relaxed.
He explained that this whole reaction is due to the fact that Peru was ruled by the Spanish concerors for a long time. They supressed the Inkas, took all their goods and enslaved them. For the Inkas the spanish represented all they could not have: wealth, power and beauty. And the Spanish had white skin..
Today in all the commercials you only see white men, women and kids with blond hair and blue eyes selling the local "Inka Kola" and all other products. All that peruvians find beautiful and desirable is represented in white skin and light hair..
Now I know why they all think I am beautiful, but it doesn´t make it easier. It actually is that bad, that I can´t go out, not even to a bar by myself, because the men get really agressive. I had to buy a cheap ring to underline my standard- "estoy casada" (I am married), they still don´t care too much and try anyway.
Thankfully the jungle is different and people there are much more relaxed.
14.) 30.07.08 Hygene
You might be wondering how people in the jungle keep themselves clean without electricity and running water. It is quite tricky I can tell you that. And mostly we are pretty dirty. During the day you can´t avoid sweating lots and then everything is covered in mud and dirt. Which means that your clothes are too. People here change their clothes at least twice a day and in the evenings, just before the zancudos come out is the best time to wash or bathe yourself.
We have a little space in the backyard, where we bathe- bathing (banar) here means to get a bucket of water from the spring and pour it over yourself bit by bit. Then you soap yourself up and wash the soap off. It is ok but I always have black water coming off me, when I take a proper shower on the weekends in Iquitos. The other way to bathe is to walk to the nearby river and just swim there and soap yourself. Quite fun too.
Other than that they have a real problem with dental care here. Nobody has a tooth brush and if they do they don´t use it. Everybody over thirty has hardly any teeth left and even the kids have rotten teeth. It is quite sad to see and I really don´t know how they handle the pain they must be in constantly. Alex bought a bunch of toothbrushes and paste before she left and handed them to me. That was quite cool, because I could give them to my family saying they were from Alex. That way I wouldn´t offend them.
I am happy to see that all family members apart from Angel are using their toothbrushes now. I think it helps that I am walking around openly brushing my teeth. They have been observing me curiosly for the last weeks.
A lot of kids have skin rashes and allergies from the polluted air and water around here. We need to walk so far into the jungle to get fresh water because the Amazon is totally polluted by the local Oil company "Petro Peru" which has they raffinery just a mile down the river from where my community lives.
Apart from that almost all of them have nice little lice colonies living on their heads, which is probably natural if you run around the jungle all day. I wonder if I will get them too..
We have a little space in the backyard, where we bathe- bathing (banar) here means to get a bucket of water from the spring and pour it over yourself bit by bit. Then you soap yourself up and wash the soap off. It is ok but I always have black water coming off me, when I take a proper shower on the weekends in Iquitos. The other way to bathe is to walk to the nearby river and just swim there and soap yourself. Quite fun too.
Other than that they have a real problem with dental care here. Nobody has a tooth brush and if they do they don´t use it. Everybody over thirty has hardly any teeth left and even the kids have rotten teeth. It is quite sad to see and I really don´t know how they handle the pain they must be in constantly. Alex bought a bunch of toothbrushes and paste before she left and handed them to me. That was quite cool, because I could give them to my family saying they were from Alex. That way I wouldn´t offend them.
I am happy to see that all family members apart from Angel are using their toothbrushes now. I think it helps that I am walking around openly brushing my teeth. They have been observing me curiosly for the last weeks.
A lot of kids have skin rashes and allergies from the polluted air and water around here. We need to walk so far into the jungle to get fresh water because the Amazon is totally polluted by the local Oil company "Petro Peru" which has they raffinery just a mile down the river from where my community lives.
Apart from that almost all of them have nice little lice colonies living on their heads, which is probably natural if you run around the jungle all day. I wonder if I will get them too..
13.) 30.07.08 new teaching methods
I have invented some new teaching methods for the kids, which seem to be working. Before we wrote some words on the board and made them repeat them. They quickly got bored and forgot them again. I tried to think of something that combines learning with playing. So now I teach them a few words like some food names and then I play a ball game with them. I throw the ball at them and ask them something like "Which fruit do you like?¨ The have to answer with "I like apples" for example. They really enjoy it and it helps to repeat the same sentence over and over. Then I ask them things like "How are you today?" or "what´s your name?" and they answer when they get the ball.
It´s more action, they pay more atention and don´t get bored too quickly. Plus I am having a ball too :)
I am getting more and more students- adults as well as kids coming to the afternoon class, which is great. They really seem to apreciate me doing this. Whenever I walk through the village to the harbour now, everybody greets me and has nice words for me. Everybody knows me, even people I don´t. It´s fun.
Tomorrow they all have to hand in their cameras. I am very excited to finally see the pictures they have been taking over the last two weeks. I hope there will be some great ones that we can have an exhibition of the project and maybe try to sell some of the prints. It would be such a good experience for the kids..
It´s more action, they pay more atention and don´t get bored too quickly. Plus I am having a ball too :)
I am getting more and more students- adults as well as kids coming to the afternoon class, which is great. They really seem to apreciate me doing this. Whenever I walk through the village to the harbour now, everybody greets me and has nice words for me. Everybody knows me, even people I don´t. It´s fun.
Tomorrow they all have to hand in their cameras. I am very excited to finally see the pictures they have been taking over the last two weeks. I hope there will be some great ones that we can have an exhibition of the project and maybe try to sell some of the prints. It would be such a good experience for the kids..
12.) 29.07.08 Sloth hunt
Today our neighbour hunted a sloth- for anyone not familiar with that animal, it´s those funny looking lazy fellows that hang around trees all day shuving leaves in their mouth. In German they are called "Faultier" which means "lazy animal". They are very peaceful and about the size of a gorilla. Our neighbour just cut the poor fellow down the tree with a machete and when he walks by the house with it to show it off it is still alive. It is bleeding badly and moaning with pain. The kids kick it and laugh and the men want me to take pictures of them with the sloth. I do it, just because of the horror and think it might be a good picture for something.
My vegetarian nature gets the better of me though and I wish they would kill the guy.
So far I have tried lots of different foods of the jungle and pretty much liked them all, apart from gunieapig, which is really dry and not too good. But I really don´t fancy eating that slothe and hope the neighbours don´t want to share.
The main food here is platanos, the green bananas. They are used like potatoes - cooked or fried as chips for breakfast. Then they eat a lot of banana soup- sweet mashed bananas boiled in water- really good. They don´t eat many vegetables, as they are hard to get. The meals mainly consist of two or three types of carbohydrates (rice, platanos and yuca or pasta) with meat. Followed by some fruit. When I come to the city the first thing i have to eat is a huge salad with lots of raw veg. I am such a pussy ;)
But my stomach is really getting used to meat and I feel good with the food here.
My vegetarian nature gets the better of me though and I wish they would kill the guy.
So far I have tried lots of different foods of the jungle and pretty much liked them all, apart from gunieapig, which is really dry and not too good. But I really don´t fancy eating that slothe and hope the neighbours don´t want to share.
The main food here is platanos, the green bananas. They are used like potatoes - cooked or fried as chips for breakfast. Then they eat a lot of banana soup- sweet mashed bananas boiled in water- really good. They don´t eat many vegetables, as they are hard to get. The meals mainly consist of two or three types of carbohydrates (rice, platanos and yuca or pasta) with meat. Followed by some fruit. When I come to the city the first thing i have to eat is a huge salad with lots of raw veg. I am such a pussy ;)
But my stomach is really getting used to meat and I feel good with the food here.
12.) 28.07.08 in the Chacra
Today we went to the families ´garden´ - a patch of cultivated land (about an hacre) in the middle of the jungle. It takes about half an hour walk through the forest to get to the chacra. The sight is quite impressive: it is a pretty much cleared piece of land, where they grow satchainchi (a local nut to produce oil), platanos, Yucas, tomatoes, papayas and all kinds of other fruit and veg. I have to take back everything I said about the men being lazy. Angel cleared this whole patch of land himself, with a machete and an axe and planted all these plants. He goes to work in the chacra every day in the early morning hours, when it is not too hot yet.
We took the machetes and the axe and start clearing a part of the chacra thats overgrown- that is hard work and withing minutes i am covered in sweat and dirt. We work for about an hour to clear a piece of about 15 square meters. You can´t imagine the amount of vegetation here. I have great respect for Angel for maintaining this garden, it´s unbelievable how he did all this by himself.
The chacra provides a little income for the family, as they sell all the fruit and satchainchis on the market in Iquitos, which they use for rice, sugar, salt and oil. The only things you can´t get in the jungle. They also get their wood for cooking from the chacra and we hack a tree into bits using the machetes. We carry the wood back on our heads and - which is really difficult, when you have to balance over log-bridges and muddy paths.
I somehow manage not to fall and am happy to make it all the way back.
Everything here is so much hard work. To carry the water from the spring, to wash the clothes, to get wood and food. The only thing that seems to come easily is fish and fruit. You can more or less just grab them. Everything else requires a great amount of sweat and effort.
I have totally changed my view about the males of the community this week. They still sit around a lot and don´t help at all in the house, but they work hard to provide the family with meat and all the essentials. I can see how men and women both have their place in this society and why it is that way. It is like the cavemen- the women look after the kids and gather fruit and vegetables, while the men go hunting..
We took the machetes and the axe and start clearing a part of the chacra thats overgrown- that is hard work and withing minutes i am covered in sweat and dirt. We work for about an hour to clear a piece of about 15 square meters. You can´t imagine the amount of vegetation here. I have great respect for Angel for maintaining this garden, it´s unbelievable how he did all this by himself.
The chacra provides a little income for the family, as they sell all the fruit and satchainchis on the market in Iquitos, which they use for rice, sugar, salt and oil. The only things you can´t get in the jungle. They also get their wood for cooking from the chacra and we hack a tree into bits using the machetes. We carry the wood back on our heads and - which is really difficult, when you have to balance over log-bridges and muddy paths.
I somehow manage not to fall and am happy to make it all the way back.
Everything here is so much hard work. To carry the water from the spring, to wash the clothes, to get wood and food. The only thing that seems to come easily is fish and fruit. You can more or less just grab them. Everything else requires a great amount of sweat and effort.
I have totally changed my view about the males of the community this week. They still sit around a lot and don´t help at all in the house, but they work hard to provide the family with meat and all the essentials. I can see how men and women both have their place in this society and why it is that way. It is like the cavemen- the women look after the kids and gather fruit and vegetables, while the men go hunting..
Sunday, July 27, 2008
11.) 28.07.08 Monkey Island
Today was a great fun day. It was Alex´s last day in Peru and we hired one of the little wooden Barcos (boats) to go to a Island in the middle of the Amazon which has loads of monkeys on it.
The boat ride took about 1.5 hours and we saw some pink dolfins jump out of the water next to the boat. I am still feeling like the ground is shaking like a boat, sitting here in the internet cafe. (I guess the amounts of beer I am drinking alongside, doesn´t help).
Arriving at the Island it is exactly like you´d imagine a monkey island in the jungle. The monkeys are everywhere, jumping around and being not scared of us at all. They think my red-bean-earrings are some fruits to eat and climb up on me using my camera strap and hair as ladders. I have never seen monkeys in the wild and certainly never touched any. It is really funny to watch them.
We play with all kinds of different monkeys for a while and then go for a walk into the jungle with our guide. He takes a machete and shows us what its for- when you run out of water in the jungle you can cut some roots and drink from them. He cuts through arm thick wooden roots with the machete as if it was caramel and hands me a log. He indicates to hold of over my mouth, and really the pure water flows out of it, like a little well. The water tastes better than any I have had in Peru so far- it probably is very clean because it is filtered naturally. Amazing! Then we walk through a banana forest and come past a star-fruit-tree. Our guide climbs up the tree like a monkey and throws down some fruit for us.
I knew starfruit from european supermarkets and as decorations for cocktails, which doesn´t taste of anything. This fruit I am trying now is absolutely delicous, bright orange, juicy and very sweet and sour at the same time. I like it!
We pass some more mini white-beard monkeys that jump on my back and eat fruit from our hands, before we head back on the amazon.
On the way back we get to whitness an amazing amazon-sunset and I feel very grateful to be able to see all this.
More fun stories next weekend. I hope you are all well. Kisses from Jungle-Joa.
The boat ride took about 1.5 hours and we saw some pink dolfins jump out of the water next to the boat. I am still feeling like the ground is shaking like a boat, sitting here in the internet cafe. (I guess the amounts of beer I am drinking alongside, doesn´t help).
Arriving at the Island it is exactly like you´d imagine a monkey island in the jungle. The monkeys are everywhere, jumping around and being not scared of us at all. They think my red-bean-earrings are some fruits to eat and climb up on me using my camera strap and hair as ladders. I have never seen monkeys in the wild and certainly never touched any. It is really funny to watch them.
We play with all kinds of different monkeys for a while and then go for a walk into the jungle with our guide. He takes a machete and shows us what its for- when you run out of water in the jungle you can cut some roots and drink from them. He cuts through arm thick wooden roots with the machete as if it was caramel and hands me a log. He indicates to hold of over my mouth, and really the pure water flows out of it, like a little well. The water tastes better than any I have had in Peru so far- it probably is very clean because it is filtered naturally. Amazing! Then we walk through a banana forest and come past a star-fruit-tree. Our guide climbs up the tree like a monkey and throws down some fruit for us.
I knew starfruit from european supermarkets and as decorations for cocktails, which doesn´t taste of anything. This fruit I am trying now is absolutely delicous, bright orange, juicy and very sweet and sour at the same time. I like it!
We pass some more mini white-beard monkeys that jump on my back and eat fruit from our hands, before we head back on the amazon.
On the way back we get to whitness an amazing amazon-sunset and I feel very grateful to be able to see all this.
More fun stories next weekend. I hope you are all well. Kisses from Jungle-Joa.
10.) 27.07.08 fishing and washing
This morning we went fishing with the whole family. We borrowed a big net from the neighbours and walked through the jungle to a nearby pond. Angel throws some cooked rice and beans (leftover from the days before) into the water and starts lowering the net into the water.
Angel and Nilsa hold the net between them and start wading through the water towards the shore. The two girls Deisi and Rosa get in the water and walk at each end of the net to make the fish go into the middle of it. When they reach the shore they slowly start pulling the net up at the ends.
In the middle of the net are about 100 jumping silvery fish, the size of a hand, which look pretty tasty to me. I help picking out the big ones and filling them into a plastic bag. We end up with about 3 kilos of nice fish and throw the rest back.
The whole action took about 20 minutes and I am amazed at how easy it is to get food in this place.
On the way back we pick some platanos (the green bananas which are used like potatoes) and dig out some yukas (manjok root, again almost like potatoes) for lunch.
Nilsa asks me how I would like to prepare the fish - I don´t have a clue how to cook fish in the jungle so I tell her to just do it the way they usually would. She cooks a pretty tasy fish-soup with platano base and red peppers served with yuka. The little fishs are eaten whole, with head and tail. I prefer not to eat the head as it is really hard and not very yummy.
I learned today (and already had some hints the days before) that men in this society are pretty useless beings. All they do is sit on their arse the whole damn day- the women and girls in the family do all the work. They are being treated like kings, always get the best and the most food, never help with anything in the house and never ever say thank you.
The other night we had a thunder strom with very heavy rains, that destroyed one side of the roof. Who got up to fix it, climbing on the roof in the middle of the night in the pooring rain? Nilsa. And guess who stayed in his warm and dry bed. Yep, Angel. I helped Nilsa and we fixed it pretty quickly. Still that helped build my opinion on the men here. But I can see where it is coming from by the way they raise their kids. The sons- 13 year old Victor and 1 year old Perci are spoiled rotten and never have to move a little finger, while the two tiny girls Deisi and Rosa have to work hard all day, carrying the heavy water buckets through the jungle, looking after little perci, cleaning, washing etc. Apart from that they get the smallest portion of food and are served after eveybody else.
I made the big mistake in one of my first days to share some of my meat with the girls, because I had way too much. The rest of the family was not amused.
In the afternoon I went to wash some clothes the way the women do here - in the river, with a bowl and some soap. The family looked very amused when I walked off with my bowl on my head.
Angel and Nilsa hold the net between them and start wading through the water towards the shore. The two girls Deisi and Rosa get in the water and walk at each end of the net to make the fish go into the middle of it. When they reach the shore they slowly start pulling the net up at the ends.
In the middle of the net are about 100 jumping silvery fish, the size of a hand, which look pretty tasty to me. I help picking out the big ones and filling them into a plastic bag. We end up with about 3 kilos of nice fish and throw the rest back.
The whole action took about 20 minutes and I am amazed at how easy it is to get food in this place.
On the way back we pick some platanos (the green bananas which are used like potatoes) and dig out some yukas (manjok root, again almost like potatoes) for lunch.
Nilsa asks me how I would like to prepare the fish - I don´t have a clue how to cook fish in the jungle so I tell her to just do it the way they usually would. She cooks a pretty tasy fish-soup with platano base and red peppers served with yuka. The little fishs are eaten whole, with head and tail. I prefer not to eat the head as it is really hard and not very yummy.
I learned today (and already had some hints the days before) that men in this society are pretty useless beings. All they do is sit on their arse the whole damn day- the women and girls in the family do all the work. They are being treated like kings, always get the best and the most food, never help with anything in the house and never ever say thank you.
The other night we had a thunder strom with very heavy rains, that destroyed one side of the roof. Who got up to fix it, climbing on the roof in the middle of the night in the pooring rain? Nilsa. And guess who stayed in his warm and dry bed. Yep, Angel. I helped Nilsa and we fixed it pretty quickly. Still that helped build my opinion on the men here. But I can see where it is coming from by the way they raise their kids. The sons- 13 year old Victor and 1 year old Perci are spoiled rotten and never have to move a little finger, while the two tiny girls Deisi and Rosa have to work hard all day, carrying the heavy water buckets through the jungle, looking after little perci, cleaning, washing etc. Apart from that they get the smallest portion of food and are served after eveybody else.
I made the big mistake in one of my first days to share some of my meat with the girls, because I had way too much. The rest of the family was not amused.
In the afternoon I went to wash some clothes the way the women do here - in the river, with a bowl and some soap. The family looked very amused when I walked off with my bowl on my head.
9.) 26.07.08 Photoproject
We finally started with the Photography project. I handed out cameras to all the kids, after explaining the project to them (Eduardo translated again for me) - They are supposed to take pictures to a chosen topic like "my home", "my best friend", "my favorite animal" etc. And since they only have 24 exposures, I told them that they are only allowed to take 2 pictures per day, so that they think about what they want to take pictures of first.
So much for the theory. In reality it looked like on the second day most kids had already half finished their cameras and hadn´t given it one thought. Which is understandable, when this is the first camera you own- they just went mad and took pictures of everything and everyone.
One other phenomenon is that a lot of the parents took the cameras off their kids to shoot some family pictures, which again is pretty understandable if you consider that none of them has ever had the chance to do so. On the other hand I have to fight my disappointment and think about the whole thing. We try again the next day to tell them why they should not just shoot around like mad and what it could be for them (we planned an exhibition with the pictures after finishing the project and were thinking about other ways to market the images). Eduardo has to do a lot of talking with the parents to make them understand too. It is like that in the jungle: when something is for free you take it. And nobody really thanks you for it or considers anything else.
Law of the jungle. Whatever you leave lying around, you don´t need anymore..
I think next time I try something like this I would know better and talk to the parents first.
some of the kids seem to listen to me though and take it very seriously. They come to me all day long asking "can I take a picture of a butterfly?", "can I take a picture of a beetle?" "Can I take a picture of the tree?".. it is pretty cute.
I seem to be pretty popular since the photography started, because a lot of people show up at the house, pretending to visit by chance and then ask if they can have a camera after 5 minutes. I have given out all my 50 cameras and can only hope, that they take some other than family pictures with them..
So much for the theory. In reality it looked like on the second day most kids had already half finished their cameras and hadn´t given it one thought. Which is understandable, when this is the first camera you own- they just went mad and took pictures of everything and everyone.
One other phenomenon is that a lot of the parents took the cameras off their kids to shoot some family pictures, which again is pretty understandable if you consider that none of them has ever had the chance to do so. On the other hand I have to fight my disappointment and think about the whole thing. We try again the next day to tell them why they should not just shoot around like mad and what it could be for them (we planned an exhibition with the pictures after finishing the project and were thinking about other ways to market the images). Eduardo has to do a lot of talking with the parents to make them understand too. It is like that in the jungle: when something is for free you take it. And nobody really thanks you for it or considers anything else.
Law of the jungle. Whatever you leave lying around, you don´t need anymore..
I think next time I try something like this I would know better and talk to the parents first.
some of the kids seem to listen to me though and take it very seriously. They come to me all day long asking "can I take a picture of a butterfly?", "can I take a picture of a beetle?" "Can I take a picture of the tree?".. it is pretty cute.
I seem to be pretty popular since the photography started, because a lot of people show up at the house, pretending to visit by chance and then ask if they can have a camera after 5 minutes. I have given out all my 50 cameras and can only hope, that they take some other than family pictures with them..
8.) 25.07.08 Peruvian Independance Day
Today is a big fiesta in the community for the Peruvian independance day, which is on Monday. The kids will march down the main village path wearing red and white (peruvian national colors), there will be music, games and fun. It all starts at 10in the morning - the local wood-crafts man, who is already downing drinks with some budys offers me a cup of something home brewed which he calls "whiskacito" at about 9 am.
I give it a try out of politeness and decide that it´s best to have breakfast before drinking any more of that stuff. The wood-crafter called "Jorge" sits in a wheelchair but is always in the best of moods- not only when he´s drinking whiskey. He seems to have the job of the entertainer for todays event and they are setting up a ghettoblaster with a plastic microphone for him to talk. The kids start gathering around all wearing their school uniforms or red and white and waving little peruvian flags they made at school.
Slowly more people come around and when the whole communtiy is gathered around Jorges "porch" (which is decorated with red and white baloons) Jorge starts with a little introduction speech. Following him all the local celebrities (the head teacher, the community chief, and other important men) talk for a while into the plastic microphone about things that sound like
"Dear Mister Head teacher, dear comminity chief, dear family fathers, dear students and foreign visitors (meaning alex and me), I would like to welcome you all to our festivities for the Peruvian independance day. We are proud to be peruvians, blah blah blah."
Everybody seems to be saying more or less the same thing. I Feel that I have to say something too, as evertybody is addressing us especially and they even applaud us, when we are first introduced by Jorge.
Since Eduardo is there too, he can translate for me. I excuse myself for not being able to say everything in Spanish and tell them that we are very grateful to be here and thank them for their hospitality (blah blah). They all applaud and seem to take it well.
Then the kids do their little march, which is pretty rediculous: march music through a funky ghetto blaster (powered by a car battery) and about 15 kids with handmade flags marching down the muddy jungle path, past all the community members that sit on school chairs along the path. The literally walk for about 15 meters and thats it.
Great fun. I take some equally rediculous pictures. Anyway, everybody seems to be really enjoying themselves and after the "official" part is over they start giving out egg sandwiches and lemonade. The men all seem to be drinking something else, judging by their pretty funky way of walking by now.
Later in the afternoon we get to witness an almost fight of our 18 year old neighbour (who looks like 14) who is absolutely shitcanned and tries to box with Angel, my foster-dad. Angel is hardly able to walk at that point and the youngsters mum has to go between them to stop the fight.
Angel disapears in the evening with all the other men of the community, to the nearby village which has a bar.
Late at night we hear him coming home and Nilsa (his wife) goes down to tell him some very harsh sounding words. He is not allowed upstairs and has to spend the night in the hammock outside, lamenting and singing for about an hour before he finally falls asleep..
I give it a try out of politeness and decide that it´s best to have breakfast before drinking any more of that stuff. The wood-crafter called "Jorge" sits in a wheelchair but is always in the best of moods- not only when he´s drinking whiskey. He seems to have the job of the entertainer for todays event and they are setting up a ghettoblaster with a plastic microphone for him to talk. The kids start gathering around all wearing their school uniforms or red and white and waving little peruvian flags they made at school.
Slowly more people come around and when the whole communtiy is gathered around Jorges "porch" (which is decorated with red and white baloons) Jorge starts with a little introduction speech. Following him all the local celebrities (the head teacher, the community chief, and other important men) talk for a while into the plastic microphone about things that sound like
"Dear Mister Head teacher, dear comminity chief, dear family fathers, dear students and foreign visitors (meaning alex and me), I would like to welcome you all to our festivities for the Peruvian independance day. We are proud to be peruvians, blah blah blah."
Everybody seems to be saying more or less the same thing. I Feel that I have to say something too, as evertybody is addressing us especially and they even applaud us, when we are first introduced by Jorge.
Since Eduardo is there too, he can translate for me. I excuse myself for not being able to say everything in Spanish and tell them that we are very grateful to be here and thank them for their hospitality (blah blah). They all applaud and seem to take it well.
Then the kids do their little march, which is pretty rediculous: march music through a funky ghetto blaster (powered by a car battery) and about 15 kids with handmade flags marching down the muddy jungle path, past all the community members that sit on school chairs along the path. The literally walk for about 15 meters and thats it.
Great fun. I take some equally rediculous pictures. Anyway, everybody seems to be really enjoying themselves and after the "official" part is over they start giving out egg sandwiches and lemonade. The men all seem to be drinking something else, judging by their pretty funky way of walking by now.
Later in the afternoon we get to witness an almost fight of our 18 year old neighbour (who looks like 14) who is absolutely shitcanned and tries to box with Angel, my foster-dad. Angel is hardly able to walk at that point and the youngsters mum has to go between them to stop the fight.
Angel disapears in the evening with all the other men of the community, to the nearby village which has a bar.
Late at night we hear him coming home and Nilsa (his wife) goes down to tell him some very harsh sounding words. He is not allowed upstairs and has to spend the night in the hammock outside, lamenting and singing for about an hour before he finally falls asleep..
7.) 24.07.08 Rain in the Jungle
Today was a brilliant day. It rained in the jungle. When that happens it seems to be party time. It is not like any rain I have experienced before, it is as if the sky was a huge pool with a trapdoor that opens all at once and the whole content falls on the earth. And that for at least several hours.
Waterfalls as wide as a person form at the edges of buildings are pretty good massage showers.
I played some water-mud football with the kids in the field, which is great fun. You can also slide on your belly (like we europeans do in the snow) and do butt-bombs in puddles. So much fun. Half the village gathers at the school to watch the "loco" german run around in the rain like a mad chicken. I sometimes think I must seem like a wired zoo-animal to them.
The other great thing about the rain is that you can put out all the water buckets and gather fresh clean drinking water for at least 3 days within minutes, which you would have to carry two miles from the spring through the jungle otherwise.
When the rain stops the whole jungle seems to lie in a mist of steam. It is as if the plants are breathing out and it condesates in the air.. The green of the plants looks even greener and it smells amazing. All plants seem to give off some kind of odour and after the rain it is much stronger. The whole forest seems like it is reborn, rejuvenated. I go run down my favourite jungle path to smell and touch all the newborn green.
The bad thing after the rain is that strangely the mosquito populations seems to have quadrupled within minutes. They like the cool wet breeze and come out in hords to feast on you.
By now I pretty much look deseased (as Alex the english girl described herself) - and have just accepted that that is the price to pay.
Waterfalls as wide as a person form at the edges of buildings are pretty good massage showers.
I played some water-mud football with the kids in the field, which is great fun. You can also slide on your belly (like we europeans do in the snow) and do butt-bombs in puddles. So much fun. Half the village gathers at the school to watch the "loco" german run around in the rain like a mad chicken. I sometimes think I must seem like a wired zoo-animal to them.
The other great thing about the rain is that you can put out all the water buckets and gather fresh clean drinking water for at least 3 days within minutes, which you would have to carry two miles from the spring through the jungle otherwise.
When the rain stops the whole jungle seems to lie in a mist of steam. It is as if the plants are breathing out and it condesates in the air.. The green of the plants looks even greener and it smells amazing. All plants seem to give off some kind of odour and after the rain it is much stronger. The whole forest seems like it is reborn, rejuvenated. I go run down my favourite jungle path to smell and touch all the newborn green.
The bad thing after the rain is that strangely the mosquito populations seems to have quadrupled within minutes. They like the cool wet breeze and come out in hords to feast on you.
By now I pretty much look deseased (as Alex the english girl described herself) - and have just accepted that that is the price to pay.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
6.) 22.07. sick in Iquitos
My first week in the jungle is over and I am back in the city for the weekend.
We always come back on Friday evening to get a proper shower and stock up on food and water.
This weekend I caught some kind of wired food bug, which gave me the worst 3 days of Diarrhoea I have ever had. It started with a fever breaking out in cold sweat and shivers and then my whole body was on fire. I felt like a torch, seriously. I had to crawl into the cold shower, because I think I would have burned up otherwise.
Then I my poo had the same consistency as my pee fpr three entire days, which I am sure everybody wanted to know.
It wasn´t fun. Today is the first day I am feeling better and have eaten something that stayed in.
My skirt keeps slipping over my hips, which means that I have probably lost some weight. I am sure my jungle family will take care of me putting that back on.
I knew this would happen to me, especially after eating meat for the first time in 17 years. But I am surprised it was caused by food I had in the city and not in the jungle.
Everything here is about bacteria. You can´t have long finger- or toenails, because you will breed bacteria under them, you can´t walk barefeet, because you will catch a parasite that goes through the skin. When you get a tiny scratch in the skin it will get infected and will heal very difficultly. It seems the hot humid climate breeds all kind of bacteria, fungi and parasites. I guess it will be hard to stay away from all of them, but maybe my stomach is strong now for new beasts ;)
Hopefully tomorrow I will go back to the jungle and finally start with the photography project. The kids are so excited to start with it. I am too..
More next weekend! Adios amigos!
We always come back on Friday evening to get a proper shower and stock up on food and water.
This weekend I caught some kind of wired food bug, which gave me the worst 3 days of Diarrhoea I have ever had. It started with a fever breaking out in cold sweat and shivers and then my whole body was on fire. I felt like a torch, seriously. I had to crawl into the cold shower, because I think I would have burned up otherwise.
Then I my poo had the same consistency as my pee fpr three entire days, which I am sure everybody wanted to know.
It wasn´t fun. Today is the first day I am feeling better and have eaten something that stayed in.
My skirt keeps slipping over my hips, which means that I have probably lost some weight. I am sure my jungle family will take care of me putting that back on.
I knew this would happen to me, especially after eating meat for the first time in 17 years. But I am surprised it was caused by food I had in the city and not in the jungle.
Everything here is about bacteria. You can´t have long finger- or toenails, because you will breed bacteria under them, you can´t walk barefeet, because you will catch a parasite that goes through the skin. When you get a tiny scratch in the skin it will get infected and will heal very difficultly. It seems the hot humid climate breeds all kind of bacteria, fungi and parasites. I guess it will be hard to stay away from all of them, but maybe my stomach is strong now for new beasts ;)
Hopefully tomorrow I will go back to the jungle and finally start with the photography project. The kids are so excited to start with it. I am too..
More next weekend! Adios amigos!
5.) 18.07. Santa Clara
After my first night in the jungle I feel pretty good. Everybody got up with the sun - i slept about an hour longer. The cocerels started shouting exactly with the sunrise. What a cool alarm clock! I love it! In the early mornings the jungle is covered in a thick wet mist, which makes everything very quiet and peaceful. It´s beautiful and so different to the noise dirty city.
When I get up everybody has left- Angel and Nilsa to work and the kids to school. Only Erika is in the kitchen and cleans the dishes. I try to help her. I have no idea how this family works, what time they eat, how they cook, how they shower - everything is completely different to anything i am used to. I will learn a lot in the next few weeks.
After cleaning i try to find out how to wash, as I am still totally sweaty from the day before. Erika hands me a bucket of water and points to a door in the ´dining- room´.
The door leads to the backyard and the toilet. The floor in front of the toilet is wet so I figure that this is the place they ´shower´. I try my first jungle shower which works pretty well.
Then I decide to make myself useful and try to find out where they get their drinking water. Erika explains that the spring next to the house where Alex lives is the only clean water they have. I take the container they use for water and make my way through the forest. The walk takes about 15 minutes. I fill up the bucket, which holds about 40 Litres and drink a coffee with Sebiño and Alex. I manage to carry the bucket back and get a lot of puzzled looks from people in their houses watching me march by. They are obviously not used to a white person carrying heavy things. Usually they send their kids to get water.
I have no idea how they do it...
After another afternoon of teaching i sit on the porch with the family trying to talk with them, which is still very hard, because of my limited Spanish. I can pick up a lot of what they are saying, but to say the things I want to say is much harder. Angel is very good with that, talking slowly and trying to use different expressions, when I don´t understand something.
They ask me whether I am married and how many kids I have. Eduardo warned me not to say that I was single or just had a boyfriend, because they would think of me as a slut. So I tell them I am married (estoy casada) and they all burst into laughter when I say that I don´t have any kids yet. Maybe one day (algun dia) I tell them and they look at me doubtingly.
The two girls Deisi and Rosa look at my hands and ask me why I don´t have a ring. The clever little things. Now I have to come up with an answer quickly as everybody is looking at me expectantly. I tell them that i took it off so that i wouldn´t loose it in the jungle. That seems to satisfy them.
The moon comes out - it is almost full and lights up the whole jungle. There are some beetles that have a greenish light in their back (I don´t know the english word. In German they are Gluehwuermchen) that look like stars in the trees and grass. The kids show me how to catch some ´luminacas´the glowing beetles and we play with them for a while. I take some pictures of the house in the moonlight and the two girls dancing in their dresses, which looks like two ghosts.
Angel sits on the porch smoking a cigarette listening to the cicadas and I decide that I like the jungle..
When I get up everybody has left- Angel and Nilsa to work and the kids to school. Only Erika is in the kitchen and cleans the dishes. I try to help her. I have no idea how this family works, what time they eat, how they cook, how they shower - everything is completely different to anything i am used to. I will learn a lot in the next few weeks.
After cleaning i try to find out how to wash, as I am still totally sweaty from the day before. Erika hands me a bucket of water and points to a door in the ´dining- room´.
The door leads to the backyard and the toilet. The floor in front of the toilet is wet so I figure that this is the place they ´shower´. I try my first jungle shower which works pretty well.
Then I decide to make myself useful and try to find out where they get their drinking water. Erika explains that the spring next to the house where Alex lives is the only clean water they have. I take the container they use for water and make my way through the forest. The walk takes about 15 minutes. I fill up the bucket, which holds about 40 Litres and drink a coffee with Sebiño and Alex. I manage to carry the bucket back and get a lot of puzzled looks from people in their houses watching me march by. They are obviously not used to a white person carrying heavy things. Usually they send their kids to get water.
I have no idea how they do it...
After another afternoon of teaching i sit on the porch with the family trying to talk with them, which is still very hard, because of my limited Spanish. I can pick up a lot of what they are saying, but to say the things I want to say is much harder. Angel is very good with that, talking slowly and trying to use different expressions, when I don´t understand something.
They ask me whether I am married and how many kids I have. Eduardo warned me not to say that I was single or just had a boyfriend, because they would think of me as a slut. So I tell them I am married (estoy casada) and they all burst into laughter when I say that I don´t have any kids yet. Maybe one day (algun dia) I tell them and they look at me doubtingly.
The two girls Deisi and Rosa look at my hands and ask me why I don´t have a ring. The clever little things. Now I have to come up with an answer quickly as everybody is looking at me expectantly. I tell them that i took it off so that i wouldn´t loose it in the jungle. That seems to satisfy them.
The moon comes out - it is almost full and lights up the whole jungle. There are some beetles that have a greenish light in their back (I don´t know the english word. In German they are Gluehwuermchen) that look like stars in the trees and grass. The kids show me how to catch some ´luminacas´the glowing beetles and we play with them for a while. I take some pictures of the house in the moonlight and the two girls dancing in their dresses, which looks like two ghosts.
Angel sits on the porch smoking a cigarette listening to the cicadas and I decide that I like the jungle..
4.) 17.07. Santa Clara
At last in the Jungle. It is exactly like I imagined from endless documentaries I have seen about jungle expeditions.. amazing! So many plants! And animals.. I am so excited to be here.
We got to the Santa Clara community, which will be my home for the next weeks taking a little barco (a wooden boat which looks a bit like a nutshell, with a tiny motor). The boat holds about 15 people and has a roof of palm leaves.
The ride on the Amazon river took about 40 minutes. The Amazon is a truly amazing river of huge dimensions. It looks more like the ocean than a river.
The boat stops several times to let people on or off. There are no piers or such like- the boat just pulls onto the muddy riverbank and the people hopp off. When we get to our stop it is the same. We have enought luggage for a whole expedition team: all my camera equipment, cameras for the kids, food and fresh water supplies for the whole week for me and the family I will be staying with and my clothes, which is the least of all.
The walk to the community takes about 20 minutes through thick greens and I am glad we find a local kid willing to help us carry our heavy gear. It is a constant 30 Degrees Celcius here with a felt humidity of 80 percent. Not sure what it really is, but it feels like you can drink the air and you sweat, even if you are not moving and in the shade. Imagine walking in that carrying the maximum you possibly can (in my case about 50 Kilos). We are soaked - and I mean completely dripping wet to the underwear within minutes. And I don´t sweat usually..
When we arrive at the ´village´which consists of about 15 houses that are spread out along a narrow path in the jungle, kids start coming out of the houses and following us. The adults step outside and wave and greet us. My family isn´t home when we get to their house so we decide to leave our luggage and visit Alex, who is an English girl living here aswell for two weeks.
Alex lives in a house which is further into the jungle and a bit away from the other houses. The workers who are currently building a fish pond for the community are using the house for their meals and siestas. Alex lives there with an old man called ´Sebiño´ and a bunch of chicken, dogs and cats. Sebino cooks us some lunch on the fireplace-a type of polenta roll with chicken, rice and vegetables. I am again amazed of the quality of the food even here in the jungle. It´s really yummy.
Alex tells us about her first week and how she has managed so far. She shows me her mosquito bites and the poor girl literally looks like she has a severe case of the measels! It is scary! She sits there in a longsleeve jumper, long trowsers and boots, which must be way too hot, but aparently keep the mosquitos off her a little.
After lunch we walk back to the village to meet my family. Angel is the dad and has just returned from work- for the local petrol company ´Petrol Peru´who has a ship on the other side of the Amazon where most men of the community work. Angel is 42 years old about a head shorter than me (like most people here), wears some old rubber boots, a t-shirt and shorts that seem to almost fall off him and has a huge grin on his face. He welcomes me and introduces the rest of the family to me: his wife Nilsa and their five kids Erika (17),Rolando (14), Deisi (12), Rosa (10) and Perci (1).
Erika is highly pregnant and at the beginning I don´t get it, that she is their daughter too. It takes me 2 days to figure that one out. At first I think it might be a second wife..
They show me the ´bedroom´where the whole family sleeps. It´s upstairs -most houses here are built on poles to have one partly closed room at the first floor and an open ground floor. the room is about 15 squaremeters big, had three beds one of which i will be sleeping in. Rolando, whose bed I am occupying is sleeping on the porch. Wife, husband and baby share one bed, the three girls share the other. The pregnant Erika is the only one apart from me who has a matrass, everyone else is sleeping on the wooden planks of the bed..
The family is lovely- especially the kids warm up very quickly and laugh their heads off, when I try to explain something in broken Spanish. They are very patient and say things over and over until i understand.
In the afternoon I visit the little village school where Alex is teaching English in the afternoon.
I join her for the two hours and we try a little combined class. The kids are from 6 to 13 years old. And Erika joins us too. She has never learnt any English and seems eager to learn.
The younger kids take it easy, laugh a lot and bring in all kinds of insects during class, we can study. Great fun.
In the evening, when Eduardo has returned to Iquitos I try to help Nilsa with the dinner, but she won´t let me. They serve me dinner in the ´dining room´which is the room next to the kitchen with a table and two benches as only furniture. The others are eating in the kitchen, which doesn´t have any furniture. I feel totally stupid and try to tell her that I don´t want any special treatment, and that we should all eat together. I realise that they do it out of respect, but i hope i can show them, that that is not necessary.
That might take some time..
Later we put up my mosquitero (mosquito net) for the bed and we all go to bed soon after the sun sets. I have a hard time going to sleep because of all the wired new sounds and sourroundings.
We got to the Santa Clara community, which will be my home for the next weeks taking a little barco (a wooden boat which looks a bit like a nutshell, with a tiny motor). The boat holds about 15 people and has a roof of palm leaves.
The ride on the Amazon river took about 40 minutes. The Amazon is a truly amazing river of huge dimensions. It looks more like the ocean than a river.
The boat stops several times to let people on or off. There are no piers or such like- the boat just pulls onto the muddy riverbank and the people hopp off. When we get to our stop it is the same. We have enought luggage for a whole expedition team: all my camera equipment, cameras for the kids, food and fresh water supplies for the whole week for me and the family I will be staying with and my clothes, which is the least of all.
The walk to the community takes about 20 minutes through thick greens and I am glad we find a local kid willing to help us carry our heavy gear. It is a constant 30 Degrees Celcius here with a felt humidity of 80 percent. Not sure what it really is, but it feels like you can drink the air and you sweat, even if you are not moving and in the shade. Imagine walking in that carrying the maximum you possibly can (in my case about 50 Kilos). We are soaked - and I mean completely dripping wet to the underwear within minutes. And I don´t sweat usually..
When we arrive at the ´village´which consists of about 15 houses that are spread out along a narrow path in the jungle, kids start coming out of the houses and following us. The adults step outside and wave and greet us. My family isn´t home when we get to their house so we decide to leave our luggage and visit Alex, who is an English girl living here aswell for two weeks.
Alex lives in a house which is further into the jungle and a bit away from the other houses. The workers who are currently building a fish pond for the community are using the house for their meals and siestas. Alex lives there with an old man called ´Sebiño´ and a bunch of chicken, dogs and cats. Sebino cooks us some lunch on the fireplace-a type of polenta roll with chicken, rice and vegetables. I am again amazed of the quality of the food even here in the jungle. It´s really yummy.
Alex tells us about her first week and how she has managed so far. She shows me her mosquito bites and the poor girl literally looks like she has a severe case of the measels! It is scary! She sits there in a longsleeve jumper, long trowsers and boots, which must be way too hot, but aparently keep the mosquitos off her a little.
After lunch we walk back to the village to meet my family. Angel is the dad and has just returned from work- for the local petrol company ´Petrol Peru´who has a ship on the other side of the Amazon where most men of the community work. Angel is 42 years old about a head shorter than me (like most people here), wears some old rubber boots, a t-shirt and shorts that seem to almost fall off him and has a huge grin on his face. He welcomes me and introduces the rest of the family to me: his wife Nilsa and their five kids Erika (17),Rolando (14), Deisi (12), Rosa (10) and Perci (1).
Erika is highly pregnant and at the beginning I don´t get it, that she is their daughter too. It takes me 2 days to figure that one out. At first I think it might be a second wife..
They show me the ´bedroom´where the whole family sleeps. It´s upstairs -most houses here are built on poles to have one partly closed room at the first floor and an open ground floor. the room is about 15 squaremeters big, had three beds one of which i will be sleeping in. Rolando, whose bed I am occupying is sleeping on the porch. Wife, husband and baby share one bed, the three girls share the other. The pregnant Erika is the only one apart from me who has a matrass, everyone else is sleeping on the wooden planks of the bed..
The family is lovely- especially the kids warm up very quickly and laugh their heads off, when I try to explain something in broken Spanish. They are very patient and say things over and over until i understand.
In the afternoon I visit the little village school where Alex is teaching English in the afternoon.
I join her for the two hours and we try a little combined class. The kids are from 6 to 13 years old. And Erika joins us too. She has never learnt any English and seems eager to learn.
The younger kids take it easy, laugh a lot and bring in all kinds of insects during class, we can study. Great fun.
In the evening, when Eduardo has returned to Iquitos I try to help Nilsa with the dinner, but she won´t let me. They serve me dinner in the ´dining room´which is the room next to the kitchen with a table and two benches as only furniture. The others are eating in the kitchen, which doesn´t have any furniture. I feel totally stupid and try to tell her that I don´t want any special treatment, and that we should all eat together. I realise that they do it out of respect, but i hope i can show them, that that is not necessary.
That might take some time..
Later we put up my mosquitero (mosquito net) for the bed and we all go to bed soon after the sun sets. I have a hard time going to sleep because of all the wired new sounds and sourroundings.
3.) 16.07.08 more Iquitos
Today we finally got my luggage from the airport. If you are a smarty like me you will have combined the facts correctly- I have been wearing the same clothes for almost 4 days. And yes, that means the same underwear too. And with the amounts you sweat in this hot and humid country you can not imagine how much fun it is to walk around like that. Anyway enought whining. It is not that bad, but I am really, really happy to see my luggage.
Eduardo suggests to go and see the local zoo to get an impression of the animals that i will encounter in the jungle. That is great fun: I get to see the giant Paice fish I ate last night and I can tell you the sight, when that ancient animals turns up at the surface of the water is breathtaking. I have never been impressed by a fish before. That one truly is magical.
Then we get to see a bunch of different monkeys, aligators, pumas, spiders, turtles and birds. Eduardo tells me that I will encounter most of these in the jungle. I hope I won´t run into too many pumas. I start believing him, when we see the same little white beard monkeys they had in the zoo on the way out, jumping from tree to tree.
One other amazing animal in the Amazon river is the sweet water dolphins. They have grey ones and pink ones here. Eduardo tells me that the locals make fun of the tourists, when they don´t believe in the pink dolphins and get to see one they tell them the story of the pink mosquitos: watch out for the pink mosquitos in the jungle, when they bite you, you will turn gay.´
Tomorrow we are going to the jungle by boat to meet the native communtiy I will be staying with. I can´t wait!
Eduardo suggests to go and see the local zoo to get an impression of the animals that i will encounter in the jungle. That is great fun: I get to see the giant Paice fish I ate last night and I can tell you the sight, when that ancient animals turns up at the surface of the water is breathtaking. I have never been impressed by a fish before. That one truly is magical.
Then we get to see a bunch of different monkeys, aligators, pumas, spiders, turtles and birds. Eduardo tells me that I will encounter most of these in the jungle. I hope I won´t run into too many pumas. I start believing him, when we see the same little white beard monkeys they had in the zoo on the way out, jumping from tree to tree.
One other amazing animal in the Amazon river is the sweet water dolphins. They have grey ones and pink ones here. Eduardo tells me that the locals make fun of the tourists, when they don´t believe in the pink dolphins and get to see one they tell them the story of the pink mosquitos: watch out for the pink mosquitos in the jungle, when they bite you, you will turn gay.´
Tomorrow we are going to the jungle by boat to meet the native communtiy I will be staying with. I can´t wait!
2.) Arriving in Iquitos
Finally in Iquitos after more than 40 hours of travelling.
I realised that I am really going to the jungle when we landed on a runway that is literally cut into the jungle. Lining the runway there are little bamboo huts which fit exactly one man, who stands there, guarding the runway, keeping the lions out or whatever. I don´t have the slightest idea.
The airport is a tiny building that looks like it´s been made from bits of a container ship. The luggage is dropped in the middle of the hall - unfortunately mine didn´t make it, with all the delays and flight changes.
When I walk out of the airport i get an idea of what superstars on the red carpet must feel like: there is a crowd of people there all waving and shouting at me. Taxi drivers, or Motokar drivers, as the three wheeled motor-bike-people-carriers are called here. I am glad as I spot Eduardos face in the crowd - he is as skinny as he looks in the pictures. He welcomes me very warmly and we take one of the noisy motokars to town.
Iquitos is like I imagined a booming Indian metropolis- unbelievably packed, loud and noisy. Hundreds of Motokars driving around and even more people in the streets. The only other place where I have seen similar amounts of people is in the center of Tokyo and in New Yorks time square. Its madness!
We are driving to a hostel where Eduardo has accommodated me for the night. The eldery reception lady sitting in an even more ancient reception hall, starts hectically shuffling around when we enter. She is trying to put my details into the hostel-book and reads my last name in my passport as ´Deutsch´´Johanna Deutsch´. I can make her understand, that that is my nationality and not my last name but when it comes to homeland and country of residence (Germany and Scotland) she looks at me with an air of panic.
The room is tiny, dark and dirty, but I am happy and would sleep standing upright tonight.
Eduardo takes me for a short walk downtown to get some dinner. I try one of the local specialities - Paice, which is a huge fish, which looks like it exists only in fairy tales: about 2-4 meters long, pure muscle with shining green to purple scales. It is absolutely delicious, served with green fried Bananas, rice and a hot sauce. All that goes down very well with my first local beer Íquitenia´. Good stuff.
I decide that it is finally time to seperate the clothes from my stinking body- which seem to be stuck together. Unfortunately my clothes are still in Lima so I will have to wear this sticky layer again tomorrow. Not too much fun. Anyway, I am glad to finally be in a bed - not even bothered about the bedbugs.
I realised that I am really going to the jungle when we landed on a runway that is literally cut into the jungle. Lining the runway there are little bamboo huts which fit exactly one man, who stands there, guarding the runway, keeping the lions out or whatever. I don´t have the slightest idea.
The airport is a tiny building that looks like it´s been made from bits of a container ship. The luggage is dropped in the middle of the hall - unfortunately mine didn´t make it, with all the delays and flight changes.
When I walk out of the airport i get an idea of what superstars on the red carpet must feel like: there is a crowd of people there all waving and shouting at me. Taxi drivers, or Motokar drivers, as the three wheeled motor-bike-people-carriers are called here. I am glad as I spot Eduardos face in the crowd - he is as skinny as he looks in the pictures. He welcomes me very warmly and we take one of the noisy motokars to town.
Iquitos is like I imagined a booming Indian metropolis- unbelievably packed, loud and noisy. Hundreds of Motokars driving around and even more people in the streets. The only other place where I have seen similar amounts of people is in the center of Tokyo and in New Yorks time square. Its madness!
We are driving to a hostel where Eduardo has accommodated me for the night. The eldery reception lady sitting in an even more ancient reception hall, starts hectically shuffling around when we enter. She is trying to put my details into the hostel-book and reads my last name in my passport as ´Deutsch´´Johanna Deutsch´. I can make her understand, that that is my nationality and not my last name but when it comes to homeland and country of residence (Germany and Scotland) she looks at me with an air of panic.
The room is tiny, dark and dirty, but I am happy and would sleep standing upright tonight.
Eduardo takes me for a short walk downtown to get some dinner. I try one of the local specialities - Paice, which is a huge fish, which looks like it exists only in fairy tales: about 2-4 meters long, pure muscle with shining green to purple scales. It is absolutely delicious, served with green fried Bananas, rice and a hot sauce. All that goes down very well with my first local beer Íquitenia´. Good stuff.
I decide that it is finally time to seperate the clothes from my stinking body- which seem to be stuck together. Unfortunately my clothes are still in Lima so I will have to wear this sticky layer again tomorrow. Not too much fun. Anyway, I am glad to finally be in a bed - not even bothered about the bedbugs.
1.) 14.07.08 Trip to Peru
..Lima, I am travelling since 31 hours. One more hour to wait till my last flight from Lima to Iquitos is leaving. Didn´t spend the night in a hostel as planned, because my first flight from Raleigh to Atlanta was delayed for 8 hours- ground stop because of bad weather in Atlanta. So I missed my connection flight and got on a late night flight to Lima. Slept for about 3 hours and had some time (another 8 hours) to ckeck out Lima.
That was way different to what I thought it would be- when you image search google for Lima it comes up with some amazing looking pictures of white beaches with palm trees and fancy looking colonial style houses. The reality is quite different. Lima is poor. Much poorer than I ever imagined. The cars and houses are falling apart, everything is covered in a thick black layer of dust (partly from the smog) which looks like ashes from a vulcano. The sky is so clouded with smoke, dust and fog that it always seems like dusk or dawn.
In a cab you really wonder whether all the parts, which are sometimes held in place by sticky tape or nails, will actually reach the destination. I am picturing those glued together wrecks to fall apart in the middle of the road an me and the cab driver sitting there like kids playing riding a car. - Fun.
Luckily that doesn´t happen and I reach the city center with lots of ´drive-by-images´: women sell homemade bakeries from baskets they carry around with baby bound to their bellies, dogs look more dead then alive, little boys cleaning shoes in the streets and shooting at people with paper bullets through blow guns, 3 or more cars driving in one lane (i didn´t think it was possible..).
Thwhole city stinks of the car fumes -pretty sure they are not using any filters here.women are absolutely stunning and sublime, men are not, houses are made from multiple materials, starting with concrete that´spatched up with corrugated sheets of metal and bits of wood and cardboard.
Looks like all the houses lost their 2nd or third floor in a hurricane, because they are missing the roofs and steel poles are sticking out of the concrete.
The black dust covers not only buildings and cars but also the people, who are all in a very good mood, smiling at me, laughin and waving. ´gringa, Rica, te quiro´are comments i get walking in the street - pretty wired when people stare at you and tell you they love you although you haven´t had a shower in 40 hours and hardly any sleep. I don´t feel too cute, but aparently I am different and some people stare at me as if they´ve never seen a white person. I feel the difference not only from my skin color, but also my clothes. I am wearing my scabbiest hiking clothes and still feel way posh. It doesn´t help that i am carrying a 10.000 Dollar camera around with me.
I still take pictures untill a police man stops me and says I can´t walk any further. ´Roba´-I will get robbed f I walk on. I consider ignoring him, because it looks pretty interesting and I like forbidden things, but he is very consistent and won´t let me walk ahead. I give in, not having the strenght to fight him or any burglars for that matter.
I return to the airport and am looking forward to finally meeting Eduardo (my contact from the organistation I will be working for) and seeing the jungle..
Please excuse any spelling or other mistakes, it is freakin hot in this internet joint and my brain is not working too well after 3 days of diarrhea. - read about that fun part of my trip soon..
That was way different to what I thought it would be- when you image search google for Lima it comes up with some amazing looking pictures of white beaches with palm trees and fancy looking colonial style houses. The reality is quite different. Lima is poor. Much poorer than I ever imagined. The cars and houses are falling apart, everything is covered in a thick black layer of dust (partly from the smog) which looks like ashes from a vulcano. The sky is so clouded with smoke, dust and fog that it always seems like dusk or dawn.
In a cab you really wonder whether all the parts, which are sometimes held in place by sticky tape or nails, will actually reach the destination. I am picturing those glued together wrecks to fall apart in the middle of the road an me and the cab driver sitting there like kids playing riding a car. - Fun.
Luckily that doesn´t happen and I reach the city center with lots of ´drive-by-images´: women sell homemade bakeries from baskets they carry around with baby bound to their bellies, dogs look more dead then alive, little boys cleaning shoes in the streets and shooting at people with paper bullets through blow guns, 3 or more cars driving in one lane (i didn´t think it was possible..).
Thwhole city stinks of the car fumes -pretty sure they are not using any filters here.women are absolutely stunning and sublime, men are not, houses are made from multiple materials, starting with concrete that´spatched up with corrugated sheets of metal and bits of wood and cardboard.
Looks like all the houses lost their 2nd or third floor in a hurricane, because they are missing the roofs and steel poles are sticking out of the concrete.
The black dust covers not only buildings and cars but also the people, who are all in a very good mood, smiling at me, laughin and waving. ´gringa, Rica, te quiro´are comments i get walking in the street - pretty wired when people stare at you and tell you they love you although you haven´t had a shower in 40 hours and hardly any sleep. I don´t feel too cute, but aparently I am different and some people stare at me as if they´ve never seen a white person. I feel the difference not only from my skin color, but also my clothes. I am wearing my scabbiest hiking clothes and still feel way posh. It doesn´t help that i am carrying a 10.000 Dollar camera around with me.
I still take pictures untill a police man stops me and says I can´t walk any further. ´Roba´-I will get robbed f I walk on. I consider ignoring him, because it looks pretty interesting and I like forbidden things, but he is very consistent and won´t let me walk ahead. I give in, not having the strenght to fight him or any burglars for that matter.
I return to the airport and am looking forward to finally meeting Eduardo (my contact from the organistation I will be working for) and seeing the jungle..
Please excuse any spelling or other mistakes, it is freakin hot in this internet joint and my brain is not working too well after 3 days of diarrhea. - read about that fun part of my trip soon..
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