New Year's eve

Cricket is ready for the fiesta...
La Princesa (Sarah) and Mauricio
First group photo
Play time...
After four days we've seen and done about all the tourist oriented things we can manage. These four days have been interesting and insightful and the activities have given us at least a broad understanding of Yachana, the lodge activities and what constitutes "geo-tourism" ("Geotourism is defined as tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.") as defined and promoted by the National Geographic Society (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/about_geotourism.html). Equally, our participant-observation has raised a host of questions about tourism in general, about what constitutes sustainability in tourism, about the role of tourism in a community like this, and our role as researchers. Above are a few pictures from the last few days.

The lodge is full to bursting so we'll not doing the usual cookout on an island up the river as we've done in the past because it's logistically too complex to cook for and transport that many people. Instead, we'll have a buffet dinner, take a couple of canoes upriver for a bonfire and a toast to the outgoing and incoming year after which our group is going to the community to chase out the old new year and welcome in the new. In addition to the usual activity of drinking chicha ("corn beer") and regular beer and dancing, we'll participate in an excellent tradition: The burning of the old year (el viejo). A straw effigy of an old man is propped up in a place of honor in the community surrounded by palm leaves and flowers. Anyone who wishes writes about the negative things of the past year and puts them in the pockets, inside the shirt or anywhere else in his clothes. At midnight, he is burned, sending all the misfortune of the past year up in smoke, ready to start the new year afresh and hopeful.

Tomorrow is a day to get caught up with field notes, organizing photographs and all the little details of ethnographic research. Before leaving Denver, we defined some preliminary research questions that contribute to the long term research goals of the project while giving students opportunities to explore interests of their own within the broader framework. Now that we've been here a while, we'll refine those questions and clarify our methodological approach now that we've had a chance to learn a bit about the "lay of the land" from our peregrinations through the area, our many hours of discussion with Mauricio (a recent graduate of the Yachana high school who will be working with us over the next couple of weeks, helping us coordinate our various activities, arranging interviews, etc.), and our discussions with Douglas McMeekin (the founder of the Yachana foundation). We'll have one more round of refinement when we meet with the Yachana school director on Sunday. The two research teams are the "health team" interested in the broad question of health transition in this area, and the "agriculture team" focusing on the sustainable agriculture program being developed at the school and how that fits into the larger agricultural economy.

Saturday, we'll head across the river to the weekly market in the town of Agua Santa ('holy water'). Each research team will be looking at different aspects of the market: the health team will be looking at the medical/medicinal options available in this one place where many people who ordinarily live in relative isolation gather every week while the agricultural team will be inventorying the range of agriculture products for sale and some of the economic activities around buying and selling of products (coffee, cacao, corn, plantains, bananas, rice).

More soon, John

Day two--12-28-09

We spent the day on a mixture of activities, including a short walk through a typical rain forest farm, sampling various wild and domesticated foods, a short tour of the Colegio Tecnico de Yachana (Yachana Technical High school), the community of Mondana, and the overall infrastructure of the lodge. Looking at what's required to keep North American and European tourists comfortable and safe is a lesson in complexity. The students at the colegio are on winter break until Jan. 1 but will be arriving Saturday when we start our actual research. In the meantime, we're working to understand the broad context of the area.

We'll soon have more entries and photos. John

Arriving in Ecuador

A short post: We arrived with no more than the usual hassles of international travel (delayed flights, missed connections, lost luggage).  It's wonderful to see all the changes as the foundation and it's mission mature.  As we settle in we'll be posting more and add pictures and video.  For those new to the blog you can check out the website for the Yachana foundation below.  Time to hike up to the sunset site; more soon, John

 

http://www.yachana.org.ec/

 

 

John Brett

Department of Anthropology

University of Colorado Denver

john.brett@ucdenver.edu

303-556-8497

Getting Ready for Ecuador

It's been fun to reread posts from previous years at the field school. Tomorrow morning we leave for the fourth year of the Field School in Sustainable Development and Health in Ecuador. John Brett and I will be the faculty this year working as a team with twelve dedicated and enthusiastic students with majors or graduate study in anthropology, biology, international studies, public health, health and behavioral sciences, and business administration.

This year the agriculture group will focus on assessing the status and functioning of the various systems created as part of sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry at the colegio and lodge. The health group will focus on documenting the health transition in the region by looking at changes in health care delivery and what services people access and changes in family composition such as family size and age of marriage and childbearing.

Once again, as most years, it is snowing here in Denver and quite cold. The contrast between winter in a dry, high plains ecosystem in Denver and perpetual summer in a tropical rainforest ecosystem in Ecuador makes the journey all the more exciting.

More to come as we enter the field . . . .

You can blame the late first entry on my lack of knowledge of blogging. I was entering the wrong address.

We have now completed a full week of research in Mondaña. It was dry and mostly sunny through the first part of the week, but today has brought true “aguacero” or tropical downpour. Although the level of the river here is more dependent on rain in the highlands, today’s rain will be good for the plants and for travel downstream.

During the week we have oriented ourselves to this complex community in which there is a Kichwa [local spelling] village with three distinct geographical “neighborhoods,” the Colegio Técnica Yachana (CTY), and the Yachana Lodge. There are many positive changes since last year including a brand new, beautiful dormitory to house the upper two grades and the microenterprise classroom, whose construction began when we were here last January, is now completed and functioning well, with students busy silk-screening T-shirts, making crafts to sell, and learning the principles of microenterprise. CTY has a new teacher in the microenterprise area and another person doing research on agricultural practices.

Mondaña now has a Peace Corps Volunteer in the area of public health who has been here four months and will stay twenty more months working on water and sanitation projects. Yachana Foundation has a new manager of the Yachana Rainforest Preserve.

Our project this year is work with the colegio students on follow-up of the portable water filter system project that began when we were here last year. We are almost finished developing a set of questions about water, sanitation, and illness and the condition and use of the filters, that we will ask of members of two nearby communities that we visited last year: Puerto Rico and 30 de Agosto. We will also be observing water sources, sanitation facilities, and community members’, students’ and teachers’ experience with the water filters over the course of the last year. This process, we hope, will yield important data about these topics specific to these two communities as well as provide methods, concepts, and key points from which colegio students can design and implement their own follow-up of the filter project in other local communities. CTY recently received a donation from a guest at the lodge so that each incoming student for the next five years will receive a filter that they can take home to their families. In addition, they just received another donation from the government in Loreto to install filters in 77 schools. Amanda Israel, who was a student in last year’s field school, is working with colegio students and teachers on this project. We hope to accompany the CTY students to Loreto on January 14th for the formal presentation and opening of the project.

A Snowy Beginning

I hesitate to think that we are establishing a tradition, but once again this year the beginning of our trip to Ecuador is marked by snow. Here in central Denver it is coming down fast and furious: absolutely lovely. It is hard to imagine that tomorrow night we will be at the Equator and on Friday in the jungle.

I am looking forward to a wonderful and productive period of research and learning in Mondana, Ecuador with five skilled and enthusiastic students.

Reverse Culture Shock

From some of the emails that have been shuffled around among members of the research team, it is apparent that some of you are experiencing a bit of reverse culture shock. Being in an entirely different environment for a few weeks is an eye-opener on one's own culture. Depending on previous travels and experiences, reverse culture shock can range from amusing to frightening. You may even feel like a foreigner in your own land.

Reflections on Ecuador, Part One

What's with the car photos? If you are a spectator of the Flickr photostream along the right side of this page, you may notice a string of car photos. For those of you who know me a bit, you are probably aware of my interest in American petroleum dependence and our culture built around individual transportation. Whenever I travel, I can't help but take notice of how other countries have apparent differences in perspective. The technology for automobiles worldwide isn't dramatically different, however marketing approaches from country to country differs even from within a single company.

In the US as well as in Ecuador, there is no shortage of petroleum-fueled cars. Although I was in a place where I didn't even see a car for over two weeks, during the few hours I spent in Quito some of the differences were glaringly obvious. From a rough estimate, GM and in particular Chevrolet enjoys a large share of the automobile market in Ecuador. However, most of the models sold under the Chevrolet brand visible in Quito are not offered at all in the US. Notable in this category are the Chevrolet Luv, a useful and reasonably sized small truck and the Chevrolet Corsa and Sprint passenger cars. With GM flailing economically and losing market share to more fuel efficient Asian brands, why they do not sell these models in the US is beyond me. Until they realize that not everyone wants a gas-guzzling SUV or a high horsepower V-8, they will continue to be in ever greater economic trouble in the US as fuel prices continue to rise.

Assuming that you may agree with the observations above, or that at least you can see the basis for my underlying arguements, you may be expected to ask a question along the lines of:"So, what does all this have to do with sustainability in Ecuador?" Have no fear, there is indeed a relationship.

During our research into sustainable agriculture, my colleagues and I grappled with a definition of exactly what sustainability in fact is. Sustainability is a relatively simple idea in theory, but it is much more difficult to pin down in the real world. For nearly a month, we debated about a definition of sustainability. Sometimes we argued heatedly (as nearly everything is done in oppressively hot humidity) and sometimes more philosophically, smoothed by fermented beverages. While we reached no definitive consensus, it became apparent that sustainability is dependent on factors of economics, place and people. To apply that notion to a relatively simple agricultural setting already largely insulated from outside factors due to limited reliance on outside infrastructure is one thing; to apply it to the complex, expansive and material-hungry culture of the United States is another.

Personally, I found the work of the students and faculty of the Yachana Technical College admirable and impressive, but in all honesty, based solely on the quantity and content of the trash they discard versus that of the average westerner, they are not much of a problem to the world. We are. If anything is to have much of an effect in increasing sustainability worldwide, it is necessary for that change to occur in the west and specifically the United States. The choices we make on a daily basis could potentially have much more of an effect than similar choices made by dozens of people made in regions where material waste and consumption are not nearly as great.

So now, back to the car thing. In the Amazon, the supply chain from production to consumer could be as short as a single link. In America, such an occurance is rare. As consumers, we need to realize that as the final link in the consumption of goods and services, the choices we make have an affect retailers, distributors, marketing agencies, managers, workers and ultimately on the corporations at the top of the supply chain. Although we may not be capable of harvesting our own bananas for our own consumption, we share in the responsibility that what we do consume has been thoughtfully and appropriately harvested. Cars are representative of our greatest dependency and how we choose to buy, use and maintain them is of great consequence.

Sustainability in the United States is an idea so far from being attainable that to even mention it is to induce either laughter or despair. However, many of us who participated in this research project are not yet ready for surrender. Individually, we are not capable of much change, but if each of us were to reexamine patterns within our own consumption and even to persuade another person to do the same, change may ultimately occur. Forgive my optimism, but even incremental change is change.

Back in Denver

Most of the research team has made it back to Denver and are nearly universally unappreciative of the continued snow. This has been one of the longest stretches of cold and snowy weather in memory.

Over the next several days, this site will be updated with information from our time in the field, which for one reason or another, was not able to be uploaded to the blog from the field. Also, numerous photos will be added. Those of you in the class who have photos you'd like to share, please send them to me with a title and description and I'll put them online. Also, for anyone who would like to contribute to this blog, contact me and I'll set you up.

Our time in Ecuador was a unique opportunity and we owe it to ourselves and our colleagues to share the experience. Thanks to everyone.

Final day in the field

We are busy gathering our reports and preparing for their presentation. It's difficult to absorb the amount of work we have accomplished in such a short amount of time. If you haven't heard from your person here, we've been experiencing another internet dry spell, so be patient, all are well.

Preparing reports

Both the sustainable agriculture and health research teams are working feverishly to produce reports to be presented to the school tomorrow. It has been a quick research time and we have gathered a lot of data to process. We have produced maps and have created figures illustrating some of the sustainable practices and experimental ideas generated and tested at the colegio. The students and staff have been invaluable in their assistance and patience in helping us gain greater understanding of all that they have done in the past two years during the relatively short time we have been here. It is truly an astounding accomplishment considering they started with nothing and have by themselves built all the infrastructure, buildings and fields. Hopefully our report will be worthy of the type of effort they have already put forth.

Hi from the rainforest!

As you may have found we have two teams working on different projects: Community Health and Agricultural Practices. I'm working on the agriculture team and learning many things I hope to incorporate some way when I get back to the states. Today, we worked alongside students to classify the many plants and animals as well as to categorize the uses and associations found along the way. Previously, we (UCD students) did the classifying according to our own understanding to see how the project would go: the results are as follows (not too exciting)

Vegetables: onion, radishes, spinach, beans, tomatoes, papachina, malanga, etc.
Fruits: papaya, banana, plantano, oranges, coconut, etc.
Animals: pigs, chickens, laying hens
Pretty general, not too much thinking had to go into categorizing what is a fruit, vegetable, or animal.
However, with the students they tended to categorize into associations, or things that go together: planted at same time, grow at same time, etc. It was interesting to see that they definitely put more time and effort into fully understanding their environment and in the meantime we were able to better understand how they see their world. Great fun!

5 January 2007

Kate, Cristella and Andy continued surveying with primitive surveying equipment. Most of the crop areas are fairly well cataloged at this point.

Julie, Megan, Liz, and Perry all worked on classifiying the many crops and animals with some of the students.

2-4 January 2007

An update of our project:

The sustainable agriculture team has collected copious data on plants, crop activities and has done some extensive geographic marking of the Yachana Colegia site. It is 250m wide, 2000 m long south of the river and roughly rectangular in shape. The low land, approximately the first 400m south of the river is where almost all crops are grown. It floods in the summer to a depth of 2-3 meters. The highland is about 100m higher, and mostly primary and secondary growth rain forest. Lumber is harvested in the highland for construction in the colegia.

1 January 2007

Today I conducted some field training in the operation of GPS receivers. After obtaining coordinates from specific sites during an exploratory hike of the area, I created a course for GPS teams to navigate from point to point. There were no participants with any prior practical experience in GPS navigation, but within a couple of hours, all members of the team were comfortable with basic operation of the units.

Following the GPS exercise, our team met to discuss the plan for tomorrow. We are to meet with select students from the Yachana technical school currently working in the agronomy and sustainable agriculture section. We plan to provide an orientation to them as a group for our project, including the presentation of our purpose, research question and we plan to discuss some of the methods by which we are to obtain data. Many ideas have been provisionally adopted and will evolve as our initial assessment comes into focus.

Notes: This was easily the hottest day of our project to date. The sun was powerful and penetrating most of the day.

31 December 2006

We spent the morning assembling water filtration units for distribution in local schools as part of a program of FUNEDESIN. Several students and the research team worked cleaning and assembling the components into finished products.

In the afternoon, individual research groups met to plan the course of our data gathering and observation which will begin in earnest on 2 January. The sustainable agriculture team met with Miguel, the director of Yachana school. He was very informative concerning the progress as well as setbacks in the school's operation. Miguel is a very straightforward and perceptive individual who is likely to prove a valuable and continued source of information.

In the evening, the research team gathered with local students and teachers at a sandbar in the Rio Napo, where we enjoyed an evening meal and the traditional burning of an effigy representative of the things to be forgotten from the previous year.

Notes: During the night, a pig escaped its pen and damaged the waste biodigester bladder.

Initial tour and assessment

We've taken a tour of the lodge, school and village and began to assess the many projects going on. The sustainable development group has met with the director of the school and have narrowed their focus to agriculture and Yachana High School and how they are relating to sustainable living. The medical group has narrowed in on two large subjects; the medical clinic in Mondaña and a community health survey.

We made it...

... but to this point the internet connection is fairly intermittent.
If you don't hear from us, don't worry we're all well. You'll hear
from the person you're wondering about soon.

In Quito

We made it to Ecuador (most of us that is, good luck tomorrow Kate) and found it to be rainy and cool. It seems like a nice city. It's a pity I won't have much time to check it out, but others probably will. More tomorrow.

Happy Travels

For those of you wondering just where Mondaña is located, Google Earth is a good way to view the location. This link to a Google Earth locator should work, but if not, just type in Mondaña, Ecuador and Google Earth should take you there. For the project team, safe journeys and see you in Quito!