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.