The Amazonian Adventure

3/25/11—3/29/11

Hello once again! I generally try to keep this blog in diary form by telling my experience in experience nearly every day. I try to keep it going chronologically so that I can recall things as they happen and I can organize my thoughts and memories in time and space. This particular story, however, deserves it’s own special space. It took me about half an hour to recount it over the phone, so we shall see how long this ends up being. I hope that I add enough color and imagery to help the story along. Well here goes; a non-storyteller tells quite the story.

On the morning of the 27^th I woke up at 4:40 am to get ready and eat breakfast before embarking on our journey into the rainforest. Our bus was supposed to leave at 5:30, but we were delayed because a group of kids had decided to go out and party the night before. Most of them got their act together and though they’d just slept for half an hour, they made it to breakfast and they made it to the bus on time. Two students, however, did not. One of them was my roommate and I woke her up two separate times. The first was when I left for breakfast and she bolted out of bed crying, “God Damn it!” and the second was when I returned after breakfast to get my bag. I opened the door to find her fully dressed and asleep, only this time in MY bed. She’s a difficult roommate but even so I woke her up and told her that breakfast was nearly over so she should probably get down there. I collected my bag and left for the bus because I’d done my part; I’m not her mother and it’s not my responsibility to run her life. Lauren, our other roommate, told me that after I left she woke up the so far unnamed girl once again, then left herself. We all then sat on the bus for about 40 minutes while the directors fretted over where the two missing kids were. One comes onto the bus in slippers with a pillow in hand! Maggie Hutchison asked him if he was bringing anything else, like say…..maybe water? I believe his response was, “Huh? No.” Oh dear. My roommate takes her time at breakfast, then boards the bus, only to have the directors pull her right off again. As they talked to her and Mr. Slippers and Pillow, they smell alcohol on their breath. This is the first time we’ve been to this community and we don’t want to offend their hospitality by dragging along drunk people, so the directors tell those two that they are not allowed to come. The day had barely begun, but there were already drama and rumors swirling around.

We finally left our hotel in Iquitos (the capital of Loreto, a region in northern inland Peru …aka the Amazon!) and drove for two hours until we arrived at a port on the Río Marañón, a river that feeds directly into the Amazon River. We then proceeded to wait there for an hour. I’m not exactly sure why, but all our directors left us at the port to go look for something (I suspect they went to go buy water for us. Honestly I was too tired to care at all). Finally, around 9 am we organized ourselves into three separate boats and took off upstream towards the indigenous community we had intended to visit, called 2 de Mayo. On our schedule they listed the bus ride as two hours and the boat ride as another two hours. Boy did they get that wrong! The community expected us to arrive at 10 am, but we didn’t dock on their shores until 1:30 pm. We were three and a half hours late! I’ve always imagined the rainforest as a chaotic place. I imagine it full of plant life and wildlife bursting from the seams, full of the noise of squawking tropical birds. I imagine the air thick and syrupy, smelling green (if you can imagine the smell and taste of a color). I imagine it twelve stories high and impassable to anyone who might walk through. I imagine the river’s current moving fast enough to drown anyone who tries to swim in it and I imagine the chaos and difficulty of traveling and living in such a place. While my experience of the rainforest doesn’t quite match up with this imagined image, my encounter with the difficulty of traveling might perhaps outweigh that image. For one, the supposed two hour boat ride ended up taking over 4 ½ hours. Our motor repeatedly broke down as we rode against the current. The boat swerved between large floating logs and I’m sure that the motor got stuck in various plant life multiple times. I remember at one point we pulled over to the bank and to anchor the boat the captain tied a rope to a hand full of tall grass. I remember remarking that that particular move didn’t appear too effective.

Remember now that our group was spread out between three smallish boats. Our boat had Ursula, Casey, Matt, Rachel, Maggie F, Rebecca, Julia, Lauren, Amy, and Me. Casey, having only slept for half an hour that night, spent nearly the entire ride asleep and I took some photo gems of him passed out. We had to prepare interview questions for when we reached the community, so I passed my time chatting, watching the landscape pass us by, and wracking my brain for interview questions. It seemed like everyone was just asking about the environment! I ended up asking them how they would define Strength. For example, is strength individual or is it derived from a group? Is one gender stronger than the other? How do you define strength; Is it emotional or purely physical? I talked to a guy named Luis and he gave me some unexpected answers, but I’m getting ahead of myself! Back to the story.

Our boat broke down lots of times, but none of us ever really felt that worried. I’m really proud of everyone and how they handled this day. It would have failed spectacularly if we’d had bad attitudes. For example, we passed one of our boats an saw all five of the kids onboard just sitting on the prow and sunbathing. Their motor had died and there was nothing else to do but wait for another boat to come retrieve them. Our own boat couldn’t take on anymore weight, so we left them there and continued on our way. We’d come across them once before on the river and every encounter was nice because we’d get really close and chat with them. Sonia would even pass over a bag of plantain chips for us to snack on. So far in the day we were having a nice, chill time. Our only complaint was that the boat ride was so very long!

At 1:30 pm my boat finally arrived at our community, 2 de Mayo. We were unsure if this was the right place, but the entire village was waiting for us at the banks and we were swarmed by small children as we disembarked the boat. I didn’t want to get off the boat because I felt super overwhelmed by all the people waiting for us! We were embarrassed about being over three hours late, but we were also bewildered by the fact that we were the first to arrive. We left the boat and spent a fair amount of time awkwardly surrounded by people, feeling to overcome and shy to talk to them and that the same time feeling so much pressure to reach out. This is when we began to question Ursula, the director with us, where the others were. She had no idea, but suggested that we do our homework, aka conduct some interviews. I talked to Luis, and he told me that he thought strength was physical, but that women are the strongest gender. I have to go back and listen to that interview, but he spoke so quietly that I doubt I’ll be able to hear anything. Oh! We were greeted by the whole community (I remember one particularly smiley woman), but not really by many men. The children came upon us first, then the women, but the men stood a far way back. It was intimidating having them stare at us, but the weirder sensation was being greeted by an obviously drunk man in a blue vest. He talked to us, but he slurred his words so much that I couldn’t understand a single thing he said. He tried to hug me, then proceeded to hit me in the boob. I couldn’t tell if it was accidental at the time so I let it be, but it was very odd. The sunbathing boat arrived around 2:30 and we felt such relief! However, the third boat was still missing. When Sonia arrived on this boat we asked her what we should do if we had to go to the bathroom, where should we go? Her response was very unhelpful: a mixture of “I don’t know,” and “I think they go into the river and go to the bathroom there then let the water wash it away.” Neither of those responses left us with an answer. Rachel and I approached one woman, intending to ask, but then quickly found out that she was a midwife from a different community who came to the community in order to meet us gringos. We talked to her for a bit about childrearing, health, and the practices of childbirth there, all the while thinking of how to escape the conversation and find a bathroom! Rachel, smart one that she is, turned to one of the little girls, a beautiful ten-year-old by the name of Ruksara. Ruksara led us to the bathroom behind her house, a house on stilts to withstand floods, and showed us a very mosquito-ridden latrine. Oh boy. I’d essentially coated myself in Deet insect repellant, but not enough!

The boys had started a soccer game with the community’s boys, so the girls in turn wanted to have a soccer game just for girls. I played for a bit, but I do not handle humidity well and I literally had sweat pouring down my face. They’d advised us to wear long sleeves, pants, and tennis shoes to protect our skin from mosquitoes as much as possible. Iquitos did just have a problem with Dengue and there is no vaccine for it, so I opted to be careful and follow their precautions. That led to one very hot Claire! I sat next to a toddler who had been left alone on the sidelines by her older sister who wanted to play the game (and rocked at it!), but as soon as I sat down she started crying! I think so many new people scared her. Sorry baby! I didn’t mean to make you cry. At this point it was about 4, the scheduled time for us to leave the community and head back to Iquitos, but the last boat had still never arrived. We had not eaten because we’d brought food and school supplies to share with the community, but they were all on the lost boat. We felt terrible because we were supposed to offer half of the lunch, but we’d arrived completely empty-handed. We had absolutely nothing to give them, putting us in an awkward position. All this time we are having fun, but getting more and more worried about the lost boat. From our own experience we presume that their boat broke down, but why have they STILL not arrived?

Around this time the rumor started stirring between us that the third boat had been stopped by some sort of Amazon Police and they were not allowed to pass and not allowed to come to the community. Up to this point we hadn’t worried about their physical safety, but hearing that news we began to speculate. We kept our cool, but we really wanted to know what was going on. Not knowing is almost worse that hearing bad news because your mind will run away with you. At that point the community leader reveals that a nearby community that doesn’t get along with him had taken the other boat. They would not let the students pass until they spoke to our director, Sonia, and to him. By now it was about 5:30 or 6 and huge dark clouds were creeping towards us and beginning to dominate the sky. Despite this, he and Sonia took off in a canoe downstream to go investigate the situation. We’ve never seen Sonia smoke before, but she must have been so stressed out by the situation that she had to drag a couple times before leaving us and heading out to negotiate. Oh, I forgot to add that two boatloads of students were on the shore at that time, but we only had one boat. The second boat had left several hours earlier to try and locate the missing boat. That’s how we learned about the tiff with the other community. So as Sonia left us we were essentially stranded in the community hours upstream from the nearest large port.

We were empty-handed, but eventually so much time had passed that Ursula begged some women to give us some of the food that they’d been saving for the party that they’d expected but that never occurred. We sheltered from the thunderstorm in an open air platform that had a leaky tin roof. I’m fairly afraid of thunderstorms, but this one was especially scary because you could see the enormous clouds coming for miles and miles and you could see the sky turn to gray and the river churn. I kept thinking about the time we went camping when I was little and we set up our tent and went to bed. During that night fierce winds started up, the rain poured down, and huge cracks of thunder terrified us in our flimsy tent. My memory of it (granted I was probably about five) was that our tent nearly blew away with my family inside. So, back to the Amazon. Despite the rain, we sheltered under the tin roof and ate some of the most delicious fish I’ve ever tasted, along with yummy yummy mango and yucca, a starchy tuber that’s fairly comparable to potato. We huddle in a circle divvying up the food equally among us, all the while being surrounded and stared at by the entire community. After a while the rain passed and we were left once again with tranquil waters. However, the sky in the distance would illuminate every once and a while with faraway lightning strikes.

We waited and waited, but no one returned and the sun quickly set, leaving us stranded in a tiny community 5 hours away from the nearest port (and apparently a full week by canoe!!!), without our director, food to provide for ourselves, a sufficient supply of clean water, and most of all without any information about the well-being of the third boat and no way to contact them. I became increasingly frightened about the prospect of going on the water at night. Looking back I might find this idea not so petrifying, but to depart on the water at full dark without knowing about our missing students, not trusting out boat captain, and spending hours on the river in the middle of the rainforest with no way to help ourselves if something went wrong struck me as the most alarming thing we could do. Ursula felt the same way and we grouped ourselves together and confirmed that none of us wanted to go on the water at night. Ursula asked the community if there might be a place where we, essentially as refugees, might sleep. They led us to the kindergarten, the jardín, gave Ursula the key, and we prepared to spend the night cramped together sleeping on wood floors being bitten by mosquitoes and worrying about our group. We thought we were about to retire for the night, but our adventure was not about to end. It would not end for hours to come.

Around 6:45 one of our boats returned, but it was empty and our fleeting happiness disappeared, only to be replaced with more worry. The boat people told us that we had to leave right away, but luckily Ursula was skeptical. She demanded to speak to Sonia before we went everywhere. The boat people told us that the third boat had already returned to Nauta, the original port, but how did we know that was true? Why would our group have left us there and gone all the way back? Also, how could they be there already? It’s a really long boatride! We grouped together next to the shore and tried to discuss among ourselves and tried to calm ourselves down, when in reality we only made ourselves more worried. What made this worse was that a number of men in the community started to drink. Mr. Blue Vest from earlier in the day and another guy approached us girls, essentially the only men who had talked to us women the whole day, and started to touch us. They tried to hug us and tried to convince us that we shouldn’t spend the night at the school, but rather at their houses. They tried to tell us to go inside away from the shore, and that the place to go was with them. As you can imagine, we did not like this at all. While this was happening Julia was giggling incessantly because she was swarmed by at least 25 little kids that were all poking her and tickling her. There was no escape! Ruksara kept tickling me too, but I escaped. I’ve got flying limbs when I’m tickled! I probably would have fought my way through that swarm of children! One of the leaders of the community advised us to get away from the shore and the drunkards and go inland where we’d be safer. Ruksara took me by the hand and led me, along with the whole group, to the telephone on the island where Ursula was awaiting a call from Sonia. Keep in mind that this was supposed to be a day trip so none of us had flashlights! We were stumbling around in the dark and in the mud. Ruksara even slipped on a toad and yelled, “Sapo!!” About twenty minutes later Sonia called and informed us that she was with the third boat at a nearby community called Bagaza, about ten minutes away, and that we had to leave. Leave now. I could hear the entire conversation on the phone and I knew, before anyone else realized, that we had to get on the water at night. We weren’t going to spend the night in 2 de Mayo after all. All my fears materialized and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t want to freak out because there was no choice in the matter, but I was so scared that I nearly had a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe and I had tears streaming down my face but everyone did all they could to comfort me, hugging me and telling me I’d be alright.

The boat people informed us that whoever had come on each boat had to return with the same boat according to their policy. Ursula, however, opted to go with the other boat that was missing Sonia at this point and had no one to oversee them. I felt even more scared because what would happen to us if our boats were separated? Ursula, however, carefully counted time and again that we had every single student and every single person that needed to return (more difficult to do in full dark!), and then told the two random people who’d come with us that they needed to accompany our boat. The random people were a man and woman from a local NGO (the one that organized our trip in the first place) and once Ursula assigned them with us I felt a tad better. So we said our goodbyes and left the community, apologizing for the failings of the day, and set off. Ursula requested that the boats move very slowly and stay within sight of each other. Good thing too because the engine on our boat died and the other boat tied itself to us and pulled us along. It was a little nice because then I could talk to the kids on the other boat.

What was supposed to be a ten-minute boat ride turned into over an hour and a half boat ride. The reason was that our boat people didn’t know the area and they were circling over and over again, missing the community every time. I fell asleep repeatedly (so uncomfortable!) so I had not idea how to measure time or how long we’d been on the boat. We finally arrived! It was such a relief to finally see the other group with my own eyes. The whole day I just kept thinking, “Poor Donaldo! He had to deal with us at Calca, and now he has to be in charge of this whole ordeal with the lost boat!” Chris, on the other boat, told us that when we arrived we had to whisper because they would hear that we spoke English and not let us leave, so we were all whispering when really all that we wanted to do was shout and talk to the third boat, to hear their story and make sure that they were okay. Casey asked why we were whispering and when we told him why he quickly dismissed that reason as bullshit. He hopped up and yelled at the other boat, asking if everything was ok. They were fine! We waited there for quite a while without knowing what was happening, but finally Donaldo joined us on our tiny boat and I felt such relief! I wanted to give him a big hug! He, in his usual sunny manner, greated us and calmed our fears. We asked him to tell us his story, and so he began. The story progressed with many sound effects in usual Donaldo fashion, but once he finished Rachel and I turned to each other and remarked, “Well, that day wasn’t nearly so bad. Maybe our day was worse!” The truth is that every boat had it’s own story to tell and while some people exaggerate and dramaticize (ahem, Chris), everyone learned from the experience and I think every single one of us benefitted.

The story doesn’t end here! So, even though we’d been on the boat for hours, we essentially still had the entire journey back to Nauta ahead of us still. We departed, trying to keep the boats together, but inevitably some (most) had motor troubles. I slept intermittently throughout the journey back, but I remember being startled awake at one point by a flashlight in my face. The boat had broken down and one of the boat hands needed me to move my legs up so that he could pass to go talk to the captain. We stopped to get gas, but spent quite a while docked there because they had to wake up the owner of the gas station. I imagine that this night was the worst night ever for everyone who worked on the boat. We complained, but really we just sat on the boat for hours and hours. The boat hands had to deal with navigation, avoiding logs in the water, and attempting to fix the motor over and over again. Donaldo is so silly, I was glad to have him there. He kept calling my name (Clarita) in a silly voice and I’d had to respond by saying his name in the same silly voice. At one point he stuck his foot in my face… he’s so silly! But he kept our spirits up. I went back to sleep and slept most of the way, but towards the end I woke up and asked Rachel what time it was. Rachel was fairly delirious at this point and talking to Donaldo, but she stopped to tell me that it was 2 am. I drowsily counted on my fingers one by one until I came to the realization that we’d been on that boat for seven hours. We left 2 de Mayo just around 7, and there we were, on the river at 2 am still without an end in sight. At that point I became quite delirious myself! She told me that when I was asleep the boat had broken down several times and that they’d crashed into some pretty big waves. This boat was loaded with weight and really close to the water’s edge. She, in her state, imagined us capsizing and imagined how ineffective our life vests would be in the middle of the dark river. I’m glad that I slept through that portion of the journey! She deliriously questioned Donaldo why it was taking SO LONG to get back and he tried to calm her and the other kids who were awake. He told them that it was dark, that we had to go super slow to avoid obstacles, and that it was all right, that we’d get home. Still, seven hours! That was after spending over four hours on the boat earlier in the day!

Around 2:30 am we finally arrived in Nauta and I was sooo very pleased to step onto dry land. My boat was the last to arrive and I finally had an opportunity to talk to people from the third boat. I hugged Kia and asked her if she was really taken captive. She, in her well-reasoned way, said that people will exaggerate the situation, but yes, in a way they were held against their will. They weren’t allowed to leave and at times it really was scary. We loaded ourselves onto the bus back to Iquitos, only to have THAT engine malfunction. Really just about everything that could go wrong DID go wrong. Finally the bus started and we began our two hour trip back to Iquitos. I wasn’t too tired since I’d slept so much on the boat, so I had a delirious conversation with Julia and overheard Leah recounting her story. The funniest parts were about the “Golden Shoes!” and Sonia saying on the boat ride back that she didn’t care if she had to wake up the someone, but that when she got back she was gonna order like 15 chickens (Pollo a la Brasa) and down that food! I don’t think Sonia had the opportunity to eat all day. We arrived at our hotel in Iquitos and I headed straight up to my room on the fifth floor. I had to bang on my door to get Bryn to wake up and open it, then I walked inside to find Jake passed out in my bed. At that point I sort of just pleaded with him to get out so that I could go to sleep. He quickly obliged and went to his own room. Bryn asked us what the day had been like and where we’d been. I asked her if we could tell her in the morning, then proceeded to finally go to bed. Before I totally fell asleep I hopped out of bed to check my watch. The time displayed was 4:35 am. That means that I’d started this adventure nearly exactly 24 hours ago. What a long day.

That is the end of my own experience, but what happened to the third boat?

Eventually Donaldo’s boat had it’s own engine troubles. I thought they were ahead of us the whole time, but in actuality they rode far far behind us. Their engine stopped and the boat hands couldn’t seem to fix it, but then after waiting and waiting it miraculously started. They chugged along the river for a ways, but then the boat broke down again. This time they’d run out of gas. Evidently they anchored because some of the girls had to go to the bathroom, and without saying a word all of the boat hands took off running into the forest. They, light-hearted as they are, shrugged it off and assumed that they’d left to go look for gas. They took the opportunity to go swimming in the river (the people on my island went swimming with the children too). Tyler thought she felt a leech on her, so they all quickly leapt out of the water, but not before they sighted a pink dolphin. How cool! Their boat had all of the food meant for the community, so they sort of just relaxed and ate some avocados and carrots. Then, as Leah told it, a canoe approached with filled with a couple “HOT” young Peruvian men. Those girls assumed that the boat hands had sent this canoe to help them and they cheered! They greeted them with smiles, giving them the candy we’d brought for 2 de Mayo. Donaldo had them all sing “Que Bonita Sale la Luna Llaullina” and Allina (so funny!) started to chant “Best Day Ever!” over and over again. Another canoe filled with about fifteen more young Peruvian men came along and the two canoes latched onto their boat and towed them to their community. I think at this point the girls realized that something wasn’t all right. Allina said that she asked one of the men in the canoe which community they were taking them to, but he refused to tell her which. Then she got suspicious. It became clear that they weren’t welcome when they arrived at the community (Bagaza) and they were met by angry people yelling at them.

I’m not exactly sure about the details of their experience, but evidently they were put on the second floor of a house and forbidden to leave. Maggie said that she had to pee but they wouldn’t let her leave! They demanded to speak with the leader o 2 de Mayo, so they sent people out to retrieve him and negotiate. This is the point when Sonia and the leader (Alfonso Flores) left 2 de Mayo without telling us anything that was happening. They had to leave right away and they didn’t have time to explain to us what was happening. Keep in mind that Sonia had trouble the whole day because various leaders visiting from nearby communities refused to acknowledge her position of power seeing as she was female. The Amazon, and the Andes, is still quite machista. She came to Bagaza and explained that we were students, not tourists, and that we had no interest in oil prospecting or taking advantage of them. We were only here to learn. The community of Bagaza felt terrible and treated their “hostages” better, apologizing profusely for the misunderstanding. Sonia sent the other boat back to 2 de Mayo to retrieve us, and when we didn’t come she called Ursula on the island’s phone. I had no idea until that moment that we even had a phone with which to communicate. So we set off and the rest of the story you know.

So, what was the miscommunication? Why did this all happen to us? Did we cause trouble for these communities, or did they cause trouble for us? What really happened? We got together in Cusco this morning to clarify the real story and I can explain it a bit better now.

This particular lake connected to the river, they called it a bahía, has had to deal with repeated oil spills from oil companies over the last forty years. Apparently just in 2011 there were 26 oil spills in the river. The river, for these communities, is their lifeline, their livelihood. If the river is poisoned, then so is the fish and so are the people who consume that fish. So within the last few years the communities joined together to try and fight these oil companies. They live in remote places without much communication, so the preventative measures they can take is to stop and gringos to try to go up the river. They thought we were tourists. Evidently Alfonso had notified all of the communities in the area about our trip, but he’d forgotten to tell Bagaza. The communities have reason to mistrust their leaders because the leaders are often bribed by oil companies and the pollution continues. Even if we weren’t oil prospectors, we might still be tourists. If that was the case, then Bagaza was upset with Alfonso for profiting from tourism and leaving them out of the loop and violating their agreement to not allow oil people nor tourists pass. Alfonso tried to convince them that they had to make alliances with people in the West who might help them, and that is why he let a group of American students pass by. Once all this was explained the situation cleared up. Some people will say that this was a hostage situation and that they were kidnapped, but I think that at the core it was merely a miscommunication between communities doing their best to protect their land, to protect their lives. Sonia told us today that lead has been found in the water and in the fish that they consume, so these communities basically have no choice but to continue eating fish containing lead and drinking contaminated water. As she stated it, they are slowly dying. No wonder they fiercely guard the area! I wasn’t harmed, actually the only person who was injured was McClain who had her wrist hanging outside of the boat in the dark when the boat slammed into another boat. She went to the doctor yesterday and luckily her wrist isn’t broken, the bone is just bruised. My community treated us incredibly well and Bagaza was extremely apologetic for the whole thing. In a way this experience is the whole reason why we came to Peru. Globalization isn’t just the expansion of culture around the world, but it is also the consequences of a global economy that demands natural resources. The oil company that spills oil in the Río Marañón is an Argentinian company called Pluspetrol. The BP oil spill isn’t the only fuck up that oil companies make.

All in all we are safe and sound in Cusco once more, only we’ve all grown as people. I’m proud of everyone for keeping their calm throughout the day and for treating each other with such respect and care. Yesterday we had to call our parents to tell them that we were all safe because some parents were calling Sonia in a frenzy. I recounted the story to my parents and my dad told me to write it down (actually he first told me that I should write it into a movie script ha) and my mom responded, “Holy Shit! I didn’t hear about any of that!” This morning when we went over the whole story I happened to have my voice recorder and I recorded the whole conversation. Hopefully it will load onto blogger. To finish off this long story, I want to apologize for any weird grammatical things that you spot. It would appear that I’ve forgotten how to write proper English.

So there it is: The Amazonian Adventure.

xoxo,

Claire