Wednesday, August 15, 2007
It is now about 8 pm on Wednesday and I am back in Iquitos at La Casona until Saturday when I return to the U.S. Since Monday it has been a nonstop learning experience and one that I am sure I will never forget. I knew that there is no way I’ll be able to truly chronicle all the events of the past couple days in the spirit and emotion that they were received but I will try. I have come down with a severe cold, and my nose is running, and my head is pounding. My hotel room is hot tonight and in spite of having just taken my second cold shower of the night I am still sweating…. I feel somewhat awful.
On Monday morning, I awoke at 6:45 am and checked all my gear for the last time. I walked out to the Plaza de Armas and found a restaurant that was open and ordered some breakfast. It was a place called “Ari’s Burger”, and I ordered the Executive Breakfast, which consisted of two runny fried eggs, toast and orange juice. I ordered a cup of coffee and to my utter bewilderment, it was delicious and served in a coffee cup that was clearly marked “Café de Colombia” …. I smiled and was satisfied just sitting alone in a street side café looking out onto the square as the Monday morning bustle unfolded before me. I wandered back to La Casona, greeting along the way an elderly man whom I had visited with breifly the morning before while sitting in the square. He smiled and greeted me back as we crossed paths again and he seemed notably surprised to see me.
I returned to my room and gathered my bags, one of which the hotel was going to hold for me in their bodega until I returned. When I reached the lobby, Carlos and his son, Esteve, were waiting for me. After settling up with the owner of the hotel and reserving my room for later in the week, we stored my “leave behind” bag and headed out to buy the provisions we would need for the next few days. The plan was to travel up to Ayacucho where I was to host a town lunch and visit with the community leaders, so we headed to pick up more than just our provisions.
We entered the Belen Market in Iquitos which was humming with activity from every direction. We darted in and out of supply shops buying 30 lbs of rice, 10 gallons of drinking water, 10 lbs of lentils, onions, cumin, garlic, two live chickens, oranges, apples, two mosquito nets and two 1.5 inch thick sleeping mats. So there we were, all three of us, our two bags of luggage, all our supplies and two squawking chickens – screaming down the street in our three wheeled moto-taxi toward the docks. I would have given anything to have been able to photograph the scene from the outside looking in.
Arriving at the main port in Iquitos with our gear and provisions we were informed that our boat captain Angel, who is widely regarded as being the best boat captain and river navigator in the area, was not going to be our captain due to a severe tooth ache. Instead a young man named Lucho was to accompany us up river. This did not please Carlos at all and after a short but lively verbal exchange with Angel we were off.
It was the same aluminum speed boat that Laura and I had traveled in to the Yanayacu River in January. The river’s water level was about 25’ lower than it was in January and it was surprising to see miles and miles of sandy beaches all along the way up the river. I sat on the bow of the boat listening to music on Laura’s iPod while we sped up the river.
We arrived in Ayacucho at noon after two hours on the river and found that the Yanayacu River was so low that our boat was unable to enter it. We unloaded our provisions and gear at the mouth of the river and walked up the river bank to the thatched hut of the mayor of Ayacucho. We were greeted warmly by a handful of children and a few men who were relaxing in the shade of the home.
We were told that the entire community had been waiting for us all morning and when we had not shown up by 11 am they all had either returned home or to Junín, a nearby village, where a soccer match between the two villages was underway. We were invited into the shade of the home and it was decided that the community lunch and town meeting that I was to host would take place the following day. Once we had situated ourselves and introductions were made by all present, we were once again reminded that the whole village had waited for our arrival in vain and that everyone had left, maybe to reinforce the shame we had caused.
After an hour and everyone’s comfort levels were firmly grounded, one by one each adult and a few children asked if we had brought medicine. A recent cold front in the area had caused, or was being blamed for, a great deal of sickness in the community. I dispersed in less than five minutes my entire supply of Ibuprofen and what little bit of Tylenol I had. We talked for a while with the mayor and then decided to walk through the village to tour the community and have a look around. I was in a great deal of pain and inquired as to the distance we would be walking. Carlos said, “About 700 meters”. I was relieved, knowing that when these folks say “a walk” what they usually mean is “an epic journey”.
We headed down the trail which was a single six foot wide pathway through fields and fruit trees along the river bank. Every hundred or so yards was the home of a family which consisted of a thatched open air room with out walls perched six feet off the ground on stilts. We stopped at each home along the way to greet the families as we went, and as we stopped at each home we were informed by at least one person that the whole village had waited for us all morning in vain and that the man of the house was at the soccer match in Junín. This was repeated at least twelve times during the course of the next several hours.
700 meters came and went several times over and by the time we reached the end of the village I was in such pain that I felt I would not be able to make it back from where we had come from. I would have insisted that we stop to rest had my size and weight not been the topic of conversation and amazement at every home along the way. I did not want to add “weak” to the already mounting list of adjectives being used to describe me, among which were white, pale, sweaty, fat and smelly. Carlos, realizing that the reason I drink so much water is because I sweat so much, asked one of the villages to find me some clean water. After a few moments some one produced a bottle of carbonated water, which I accepted graciously and drank in its entirety on the spot. It was extremely hot and I was exhausted and in a lot of pain when we headed back down the trail.
The way back seemed a lot faster since we were not stopping at each home along the way and as we approached our starting point, I gently explained to Carlos that we had just walked closer to two miles than 700 meters, just in case someone asks again in the future. He laughed and agreed it was longer than he thought. As the sun began to set, I took photos of the children and handed out Jolly Ranchers and had by that time attracted a large group of children. Each wanted me to take a picture of them and then look at the digital camera display to themselves. They had never seen a digital camera before and it was an indescribable novelty to them.
At around sunset we loaded our gear into the boat once again, pulled the motor half out of the water and inched our way up through the shallow water and mud to the maloca where we would be staying. After yet another reminder of our lateness earlier in the day we were served “lunch” at around 6:30 pm, of rice, platanos, and bocachico, a small (whole) fish that had been steamed in a banana leaf. It was as authentic as it comes and I ate without fear, having already decided that I was not going to allow them to serve or treat me any different than one of them.
We sat and talked with our host family until about 9 pm when we set up our mosquito nets in the middle of the home’s open air patio/dining area. We walked down to the river to bathe in the cool water after our sleeping areas were set up. Carlos and I walked down the trail about 200 meters to our area of the river that had the large fallen tree half submerged. We walked out onto the log which dipped and swayed as we went and used a small plastic basin to scoop water over our heads and soap up dressed only in our underwear. Always vigilant, Carlos (who looked after me relentlessly) kept watch for the caymans with the flashlight as we finished up and headed back to the house. We talked for a little while longer by candle light and then crawled into our mosquito nets to get some sleep. I dipped in and out of sleep all ngiht, waking almost every 45 minutes during the night by either the rooster that crowed every hour on the hour or one of the many other noises heard through the night, including the sound of hundreds of mosquitos that had gathered on my mosquito nets all around me.
The house began to stir at around 4:50 in the morning. A low, quiet murmur of voices was the only sound in the village, but as the sun began to rise up abov the trees a cacophony of birds erupted in song and all at once the world was alive and bustling. We broke down our bedding and mosquito nets and just after 6:30 am, Carlos and I headed to the river to do a little fishing before lunch. Accompanied by two men from the village, we travelled up stream in a peque-peque to an oxbow lake called Corriente. We were trying to catch the highly sought after Tucunare (peacock bass), but with no success. Within an hour of arriving the sun was blasting down on us and our window of opportunity for good fishing conditions was gone. We arrived back at Ayacucho at around 9 am for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and semi-stale bread.
By about 10 am, small family groups and a great number of children started to gather around our maloca and began cooking the food that was to be served at the town meeting at noon. Two ten gallon pots brimmed with rice and pasta while another stewed the two chickens we had brought and several more we purchased when we realized we were going to need to feed 300 people. At 11 am my abstinence from using the bathroom had caught up to me. After much deliberation amongst our host family and Carlos, it was decided that rather than find a suitable place in the forest, I should walk down to the school and use the newly constructed toilet that the Peruvian government installed in the school. A little shaken by the public discussion of my need to relieve myself, I headed down the trail with Carlos. Arriving at the school, the teacher ran to the river with a bucket and returned with it full and handed it to me. The toilet works, he said, but there is no water in the tank and you’ll have to flush with this. I took the bucket of water and to my absolute horror, when I poured it into the bowl it did not do its work. It actually did nothing at all. I ran down to the river and refilled the bucket again, hoping with every fiber in my being that this one would work. It did and I was relieved.
As we walked back to the house we started noticing that people were passing us on the trail with bowls and buckets full of noodles and rice. Carlos inquired and found that the town mayor had expedited lunch and had begun distributing food early. I told Carlos not to worry about it and that the people could go ahead and eat independently instead of the communal lunch he had planned for. He had a brief conversation with the elders which had little or no effect on the situation, as I had imagined it wouldn’t. More than anything, it was a lack of communication. We climbed the ladder back into our host’s home and waited as the people finished eating. At 12 pm we walked back down to the school where the village had assembled to hear me speak. All along the way as we passed thatched huts, villagers would say, “Gracias Don Miguel”, thanking me for the meal.
Arriving at the school, all of the working aged men, “morriadores”, were gathered in the school, with the women and children for the most part gathering outside. A table had been setup in the front of the room with the Peruvian flag laid out as a table dressing. There was the five village elders/leaders seated behind the table and an empty chair. The room quieted and one of the five men motioned for me to come forward and sit with them at the table facing the gathered villagers. In accordance with village custom, and I suppose to make things official, the national anthem was sung with gusto and a prayer was said blessing the meeting and its outcome. I was introduced and all eyes were fixed firmly on me…. I rose from my seat and wiped the sweat from my brow. I gathered my thoughts for a moment and started out by thanking everyone for having me in their homes and village and for receiving me so happily. I talked about my desire to build a lodge on their land, help build a solid economic infrastructure and ultimately try to help bring a better future to the community. I explained that I was not a rich man and that I make no guarantees. I told them if we work together than we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. There was some murmuring and I encouraged them to speak out and ask questions and make comments. I was only asked, “When will this happen?” That is the million dollar question I thought… the only question I really didn’t have an answer for. My response was, “It would happen, if at all, when I raised the money to start building it. It could be next month or next year, but to be realistic we would start construction around June or July of 2008.” One of the villagers who obviously liked what I had to say stood up and addressed the assembly.
“What Don Miguel is waiting for is for us as a community to tell him its ok to build here so he can make his decision about moving forward, so what say you?”
Not to be outdone by one of the villagers, the head of the counsel stood up and said,
“Esteemed men of Ayacucho, you have heard every word from Don Miguel’s mouth, are we in agreement?”
..to which a resounding, “SI!” erupted. And as fast as they had gathered the crowd was dismissed and began to disperse.
Carlos and I walked back to the house and spend most of the next two hours resting. My nap came to an abrupt end when the hammock I was laying in snapped and left me layed out on the maloca floor. After the shock of being woken up so suddenly had passed and after Carlos ensured I was not injured a good hard laugh was had by all and the evenings punch line and topic of conversation was securely identified.
When the heat of the day had begun to wane, we headed up to “Palo Verde”, the proposed site for the lodge, in a peque-peque. After 30 minutes on the river we arrived at the site, a 5 acre site on the east bank of the river on higher ground. About 20 square yards of the site had been cleared ahead of time to better see the layout of the land. It is beautiful location with three ceiba trees with massive sprawling roots reaching in every direction.
In addition to the main river access, there is a small tributary/stream on the far north side of the site that can act as both a secondary entrance and be used to take visitors on excursions by boat into the forest, during the high water season. After surveying the site we continued up river past Muyuna Lodge to the village of San Juan, where we met with the three village leaders there to let them know that we were possibly going to be building near them and to start the process of building a relationship with them. Although the lodge wouldn’t be in their jurisdiction, it is a big deal here, and rightly so, to have wide spread communication support.
We spoke with the village leaders for about 20 minutes and committed to bringing them a medical kit with medications the next time we came. The medicines would be resupplied once or twice a year as needed. It had been a long and busy day as we headed back down the river an hour to Ayacucho. Arriving just after sundown, I sat down to eat for the 1st time since breakfast. Rosario, the daughter of our host family, had prepared a meal of rice, boiled potatoes and chicken for me, knowing I had passed on lunch. I think she had saved me the best piece of chicken she could get her hands on from the community lunch and I was very appreciative. We spent the evening packing our gear for an early departure to the Tahuayu River for a bit of fishing before heading back to Iquitos. We sat that evening talking by candle light andn enjoying the remaining Jolly Ranchers all along swatting away the never ending attack from mosquitoes.
I was tired and hot and decided to head down to the river to bathe before bed. Everyone was alarmed that I was going by myself and Carlos began to stand up from the table where he was eating a late dinner. I told him I was going to be fine and to sit back down and enjoy his meal. He complied reluctantly and I started down the ladder to the ground. I overheard him tell one of the children to follow me from a distance to keep an eye on me. As I headed down the path I ran into Lucho, our boat captain, (29 yrs old) who asked where I was going and I told him. He said “…mmm, yes, I need a bath, too, I’ll go with you”, and we were headed down the trail in the direction he had been coming from. Seeing this, the children Carlos had dispatched to watch me retreated back to the house and up the ladder to the safety of their maloca.
Lucho and I walked tediously down the fallen tree into the water as waves of sheet lighting lit up the night sky exposing the silhouettes of palm trees on the horizon. The evening was starting to cool down and the water was warm on my feet as I neared the end of the fallen tree into the water. Shining my light down into the water I found myself staring headlong into the eyes of a 6 ft electric eel. With a gentle swing of its paddle shaped tail, it dove into the darkness and was gone. Lucho was absolutely beside himself with trepidation and would not enter the water. I laughed and began dousing myself with the warm water and started washing my hair. Seeing that I was not being attacked by the crazed electric eel, Lucho joined me in the shallows and he headed back to the house. There was now a gentle breeze and except for the mosquitoes, we were comfortable back in the candle light of the house. I announced my desire to sleep and started into my mosquito net when we heard voices approaching in the darkness.
A voice from below called up asking for permission to come up as we shined our lights down to see who it was. Standing at the base of the ladder was a short Peruvian man bearing two live chickens and a bag of belongings. Behind him were two tired, dirty, scared looking backpackers. “American?” I called down. “French and Israeli” was the response in broken English. They were welcomed by our host, whose home was quite full of foreigners. The travelers seemed reluctant to make conversation but said that they had been traveling for four months and that they had just come from Bolivia. They were en route to San Juan which was an hour up river from us, but they were too tired to continue that night. I offered them the last of our drinking water since we were leaving in the morning and they reluctantly agreed to refill their bottles before we left. It was clear that they were not accustomed to trusting people so I did not press them any further. I crawled into my mosquito net and fell fast asleep.
I awoke at 4:45 am and was the 1st to crawl out of my mosquito net where I discovered that a half dozen mosquitoes had found their way into the net the night before and had laid siege to my legs. They were covered in red welts and itched terribly. I awoke Carlos and Lucho and within 15 minutes we were packed and saying our good byes to our host family by the river’s edge. We edged our way down through the shallows of the Yanayacu to where the dried up river met the Amazon and we were off.
The river was smooth as glass and we sped down river toward the Tahuayu tributary. The air was cool and mist was rising off the water and the forest on all sides as the burning orange sun rose over the tree tops and illuminated the morning. I sat on the bow of the boat as we glided across the water, taking in the morning sun. The only noise was the wind.
As we approached the Tahuayu we saw that the water level of the smaller river was, like the Yanayacu, too low to enter in our boat. Tired from the past days in the jungle, we resigned the mission to catch our trophy fish and continued down the Amazon toward Iquitos. We arrived back in what can only be described as the “bay” or docks of Iquitos and stopped briefly to fish a little around the seal plan hangers on the opposite side of the bay.
At around 10 am, we packed it in and headed across the harbor to the docks as a Peruvian Air Force sea plane, a twin-otter, flew low over the bay as a warning to boats that it would be coming back around to land on the second pass. Its twin turbo prop engines whistled in its signature high pitch vibration as it dipped low and then climbed back into the sky and crossed the mid-morning sun.
Upon returning to my hotel, I upgraded to an air conditioned room, a $7.00 difference in price, took a shower and napped for most of the afternoon. I have been here now since Wednesday afternoon, resting and meeting with Carlos and others for two days. It is now Friday night, August 17th, 10:20 pm. I came down with a cold which hit me full force on Wednesday after our return from the river and I have been taking medicines since then. I am almost back to 100% now and tomorrow I’ll head back to the states.
I have met a lot of new people on this trip, one of which was Fabiola, the owner of “La Casona”, the hostel where I am staying. It turns out she is a Christian and her husband is a local attorney. She and her husband have been very kind to me and over the past two days have been helping me with the legal paperwork and process of getting incorporated here in Peru. She has invited me to eat lunch with her family tomorrow and although it will be a busy last day here, I have accepted her offer and am looking forward to developing a better relationship with her and her family.
Tonight I took Carlos and his family out for dinner and had a great time. They were very appreciative and thanked me for everything I have done for them, but the more I thought about it, the harder it was for me to identify exactly what it was that I have done for them. I guess in some way it has been hope more than anything else, which only adds to the pressure I feel to follow through with this plan
There has been a lot of “talk” and this trip added significantly to the emotional investment I have already contributed to the idea. I guess in my mind there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this is the beginning of something that will consume much of my adult life, but I am unsure of how, if at all, it fits into my life and career back in the U.S. Part of me believes that I can do both but part of me knows that 50% of my time is still just 50% of my time. I would be, or as far as I believe now, robbing one to pay the other in that scenario. That is to say that if I am not focusing all of my efforts on one of the other, one of them will get short changed in the deal. We’ll see how it goes, time will certainly tell.