We made it back to the U.S.

In case no one noticed, we should bring you up to date, by explaining that we did indeed make it back to the United States on December 31st, in time to celebrate the arrival of the new year with friends at Powell House. We were warmly greeted by our fellow community members at the Quaker Intentional Village - Canaan. It's great to be home!

Quito Days Are Here!

December 6th is Quito Day, when Quiteños and other Ecuadorians celebrate the founding of the city of Quito. Viva Quito!

The celebration, however, is not just one simple day of the year - it's 9 non-stop days of festivities, hence "Quito Days." The fiesta began yesterday afternoon with the first bull fights and guess who arrived at the same time? Here we are reunited (awww):

Jens arrived on our doorstep, back from Peru in one piece, happy but tired, dirty, and covered with chigger bites. I was happy to see him! After a shower and change of clothes he was revived a bit and he, Caleb, and I went off to "La Noche Quiteña" at Caleb's school, Colegio Nuevo Mundo, where we ate "pinchos" (like shish kabob) and corn on the cob with white cheese, and drank "canelazo," a warm sweet cinnamon drink. Some parents were complaining that the canelazo had no rum in it, but Colegio Nuevo Mundo is a smoke-free and alcohol-free place, as was announced periodically during the evening.

The school had brought in a traditional band whose music got the younger children dancing, and later a student band played songs that roused up the adolescents. The most popular act was the Vaca Loca (crazy cow), a person who ran among the crowd with a fireworks stick construction the shape of a cow on his head. The thing was lit and shot off fireworks in all directions at the students, faculty, and parents. It was great fun to watch (at a distance)!

Today was the opening parade for Quito Days and it happened to start right around the corner from our house. We watched both the beginning and end of the 6-hour event and especially enjoyed the performers on stilts. One of these is a condor - can you tell? (Click on any of these photos to see an enlarged version.)

Then came the float with the Reina de Quito (Queen of Quito). Can you spot her behind all those great giant masks?


In between watching the beginning and end of the parade, we went on an outing up Pichincha Mountain. In the photo below, Jens has entered by the "Viva Quito" sign to buy our cable car tickets.


In just a few minutes, the cable car took us from 9,680 ft. above sea level to 13,500 feet above sea level. The air was a little thin at that altitude. Can you read the sign below, which encourages people to move slowly and not to run?

We started walking up and around to get various views of the city, Pichincha Mountain, and other landmarks. If you looked closely, you could see the colors of the parade way down below and halfway across the valley. Here Caleb is taking a moment to catch his breath and enjoy the view:


In the picture below, you can see Quito in the valley running long from north (left) to south (right). The second or middle ridge behind the city is Cerro Ilalo, which was our first climb here in Ecuador this fall (see earlier blog).

We saw some fun plants and formations, including this one below. What you see is about a foot of biomass above 8-10 inches of ash that Pichincha Mountain had dumped during one of its many eruptions long ago. The ash has lots of pumice stone and it's all eroding away because it's exposed by a road cut.


All three of us have at one time or another climbed the lower of Pichincha's two peaks, which is called Ruco and was wonderfully visible today. (It's altitude is 15,400 feet.) We were a bit worried when a lost, American young man hiking alone asked the way up the mountain and, in answer to our questions, reported he did not have either water or warm clothing. I told him we'd been snowed or sleeted on twice up on that mountain, but he seemed to think it was just a bit higher than what he was used to in Colorado and he'd just come back down if he encountered any problem. I hope not to read about him in tomorrow's newspaper!

The church in this photo is new since we last were up on Pichincha Mountain in 2007. It was a bit out of place but tastefully done otherwise.

As we prepared to descend back into the city, we saw two young men coming up the cable car to do some mountain biking on the way back down. Check it out:


Viva Quito!
-Spee

Jens's Adventures in Peru - Part V

Just got on the computers as one place was down and the rest full up with no free computers. After the workshop went across the river with Robert, where he has a local awaruana ahijado [Indian godson] that is 14 years old. The boy has 8 brothers and sisters, his mom is 43. It is a really fun family living in very sparse conditions, but full of laughter, and they really love Robert who is just wonderful with all of them. Next to the waterfall local boys have fun swinging on vines.

Came back to find that Jorge, who took a tumble at the waterfall was having a local healing herb applied to his rib by the wife of one of the workshop participants. Rufinio is quite a character with a lot of stories and a lot of the "old ways" about him.

The mix of mestizos and Awaruna, though all speak Spanish well, adds a different dimension, there is a very definite cultural divide. The mestizo/whites are church or NGO types mostly, but still function, talk, tell stories, in different ways. Had a couple of flop exercises and some surprise power ones. Was great that the electricity stayed off until we finished today, as the disco place next door couldn’t play their music ´til just after we finished.

One more day and though Jorge and I are ready to head home, we aren’t looking forward to that eight, or more, hour drive do Bagua. Nor am I looking forward to the trip back up to the border. Don’t know how those drivers take it trip after jarring, noisy trip. And yet, there is both enormous and detailed beauty the whole way!

Thanks for keeping the news coming.

J.

Jens's Adventures in Peru - Part IV

Hola, we are a little fried, but doing well. The second workshop is off to a good start, no need for translation, so it is easier in that sense. The new place is next to a pseudo discotheque, so my head is pounding from trying to hear while trying to block out the pounding rhythms next door.

May try to get online later, after I get back from supper. This place is nuts with all the different currents, conflicts, world views, agendas spinning past. Am learning a bit about the catholic push since we are in the casa comunal of the catholic church in town.

Hot, sweaty, it was raining when we woke up and the river is up again. Nice that the internet speed has increased substantially.

J.

Jens's Adventures in Peru - Part III

More news from Jens after Day 2 of the first Workshop he's co-facilitating...

Hola,

Back on the computer for my allotted hour.

We are well into the jungle, in the sense it is flat and the mountains are up-river from us, though the local folks talk about the two ranges that flank this area. There is a small canyon where the two ranges meet that is famous for the wildness of the waters flowing through (in essence the whole watershed of three river systems). It is said to be hugely deep and prone to whirlpools. Only the best motoristas take canoes through, and then only during certain conditions, otherwise folks hike up, over, and around. I think google earth will show you pictures of this place called a "pando" locally. Part of the lore of the area. Today the river is down and we had very hot, sunny weather.

Day two is over with more cultural and language challenges, though folks seem engaged and involved. A couple of the participants seem to have been through major trauma and seem to come and go, mentally. There are three "mestizos" in the group who have all the gregariousness of most latinos, and they will be chuckling while half of the indigenous folk are stone-faced. Everyone seems to enjoy the light and livelies [exercises], however.

Have been learning a fair amount about the native groups. All are subgroups of the Jibaro (a name many of them use though it is not their original name for themselves) people and they are related fairly closely to the Shwar and Ashwar [Indians]. The place of women is pretty low, and the folks from the Environment Ministry and other NGOs talk about the extreme difficulty of outsiders having any substantial contact with the women. Even if they do some work, they will not accept money but wait for the husband to show up and get paid. Social problems in the area are huge. Lots of AIDS, sexual abuse, revenge killings, suicide (particularly among women), alcoholism, etc. And yet I´ve never seen a group grasp I-messages faster or work better at resolving conflicts in some of the standard AVP confrontation exercises. Below, most of the group is heading back across the river at the end of the day.

Community is very strong, but very contentious. A couple of the Apus who are taking the workshop talk of how the people don´t like them to come to Nieva out of fear they will sell communal lands to the oil companies. These guys wouldn´t dream of doing that, from how they talk.

Fascinating. Brujeria [witchcraft] is rampant and blamed for a lot.

Re my visa, I´m hoping to play it by ear, depending on how the trip back works. It may not be as full of timely connections as I had coming here. Hope I don´t have to stay until Monday but it may be that is when I catch a flight back from Cuenca. Or I could spend more time and pay the 200 bucks in Quito. Will see and have a better sense when I get back up to Bagua or Jaen.

Love,

J.

Jens's Adventures in Peru - Part II

Nieva is a fascinating combination frontier town, river town, small town, jungle town. It has a plaza with the Catholic church just up the hill. Much of the town goes along the Nieva and Marañon rivers with the main street just behind the houses that line the flows. Yesterday´s rains have made the river rise all day today, with some participants in the
workshop expressing concern about getting home after dark: too many trees and branches float down and can´t be seen in the dark. The afternoon activity in the plaza was a women´s power volleyball game.

This is native Amazonian territory - a large percentage of the population is native, though there is a good mestizo population and a few foreign NGO workers. Also the police who go jogging and yelling in rhythm at 6:00 a.m. up the main street. And a few govt. folk. A sponsor of these workshops is the Ministry of Environment, thanks to the wife of Robert
Vincent who is moving up those ranks.

This morning after our potato, yucca, and egg breakfast, Jorge and I took a motorized dug-out across the river to an NGO office where the workshop is being held. The room is a thatched-roof building open on all sides in the local style. Butterflies and dragonflies buzzing through, with chickens under the beautiful chainsawed hardwood floor.

The workshop has been unlike any I´ve done before. Most of the participants are native, and four speak very little Spanish so we do a lot of translation. I used to think AVP is about as cultureless as you can get in this sort of work, and I still feel this way, but that doesn´t mean it isn´t cultureless. It took the first three rounds before everyone caught on to what Concentric Circles was about, not ´cause anybody is slow, but rather, it seems, because who would ever think of arranging a way for people to talk together in this way? Nevertheless, the topics of violence/non-violence, communication, community, conflict resolution, are of intense interest to the group. There have been a number of comments as to having to bring this up in the community.

Peru has handled their native population very differently from Ecuador, mostly neglected until recently, with much less development, until recently, and now with a very forward thinking, I think, approach of helping many groups register their land as communal land that is not accessible to development. Hence the uproar earlier this year when Alan Garcia suddenly had some laws passed allowing oil companies to move around looking for their black death.

Among the group are some Apus, community leaders, who are listening carefully and making great comments. It is clear they deal with conflicts all the time and really want to talk about this stuff.

Have to go to dinner, more yucca, I´m sure, and there are many folks waiting for this computer. I do want to thank you all for the birthday greetings, much appreciated, and I wish you were either here or there were other ways to share time with you in this setting. Jungle rivers are something else, muddy yet clean, flowing, yet calm, fringed in huge
trees, sandbars that disappear quickly, traveled by noisy and stealthy canoes.

Much love, and thanks for writing,

Jens, pop, that guy.

Jens's Adventures in not Ecuador, but Peru!

Thinking of you in Nieva, at the confluence of the Nieva and Marañon rivers. The Marañon is considered the main headwaters of the Amazon and was a big part of the reason Ecuador and Peru were at odds for so long.

The eight hour trip started at 3:30 am this morning with a wait for the car. What happens here is much like a service in Jerusalem where cars leave when they are full. But the three of us (Robert, Jorge, and I) paid for the extra seat so we would have the little Toyota Corolla station wagon to ourselves. So it came by closer to four and by the time the driver stopped by his house for his overnight bag, and we got gas, and filled the tire with air it was closer to 4:30. We did great, even with the rain, until we hit the spot where the river flows over the road.

We had to wait three hours for the river to go down. Then there was another hour while we got the car on a balsa raft that the locals push across another river and then help pull the car up the mudslide on the other side. It was all a lot of fun, if you are not a Toyota Corolla. I now know that last winter I could have easily backed on down into that ditch and driven out up the other side. No problem, we even have tread on our tires! That car swam, went over boulders, waded through foot deep mud, bottomed out a hundred times or more, and came through with its muffler intact.

We arrived in Nieva at about 5:pm. It is a neat little town, pretty typical Amazon river place, lots of indigenous folk, some mestizos and a very few foreigners with ICUN and other groups.

This connection is slower than last night´s. Jorge gave up as aol would not load due, I think, to all the trash and images they put up with their e-mail. Thanks for the birthday wishes. The only thing wrong with the day was that my family wasn´t along with me. Natalie would be interested in talking to the many obviously-young-teen mothers you see around here.
The native compounds would also be of interest. Great to be back in the jungle.

Much love,

J.