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":

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:

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!!

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..

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.

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..

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..

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.

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..