 Dusty:Starlight:Culture
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It's the Jungle, Man - It Talks to Me
2005-09-05 9:34 p.m. It's not cliché, nor is it too Mosquito Coast to say that things are a bit odd in the jungle. Or perhaps to say that one gets a bit odd in the jungle. Especially if one didn't grow up there and isn't used to the absolute isolation of having no road access, of being at least 15 k up or down river from the closest neighbor, and of having only faulty short-wave radio contact with the (by comparison, thoroughly modern) closest jungle port. So reading back what I wrote while I was in the jungle makes sense in that context - little of it is actually about the jungle, though I did keep records of the various monkeys, butterflies, toucans and macaws that we saw. More of it is about how I was feeling about Peru, how I was feeling about my self, and how I understood my place in the world after an especially turbulent year, personally, politically and globally. I'm still including it here, though, because now, when I'm most scared of Chief Justice appointments, economic explosions and drastic changes to civil rights, it seems very appropriate and timely. Here's an excerpt, and pictures that will seem totally random. I'm quite proud of the way that I was feeling, especially since I used to be sort of...non-descript, non-confrontational, and just...non. It's amazing what a good man, good family and kick-ass friends can do for you. Grrr. * Tuesday? August...2nd? 3:?? So there's this woman, Dr. Hannah, and she decided to move from Scotland to the middle of nowhere, Peru and surround herself with Tropical Rainforest. Met her last week here, at the research center, which is basically her family home. She has a baby out here - a baby. She married a local a few years back, built a research center from the ground-up using hand-tools and then opened the place up to scientists and volunteers who have a skill or two to contribute. It's a constant project, she told me yesterday, when I was dragging heavy wood from here to there to support a leaning orchid house. So here we are. In the jungle. Pumping all the water we'll need for the day, making our own food, planting Passion Fruit vines and playing with a baby called Piquito. I'm adjusting OK in my and Steve's little bungalow; the pink-toed tarantula in the ceiling keeps away the rats - they're afraid she'll eat their babies, I think - so at least we don't have the critters in our things. Wish I could say the same for Mark and Mike. But despite the teeny chew marks on their packs, I know Mark and Mike are likewise fine and dandy. Not sure about the Czechs who it seems were expecting a fancy Jungle Lodge, where the hardest part of your day is picking from the buffet. Ha ha, no one is calling you Bwana here. What is it about certain people and the way they click? I understand that there must be a certain chemistry to it all; I can imagine the thousands of academic studies done on personality types and interaction between strangers. I'm wondering this because Mark, Mike, Steve and I absolutely hit it off, and when I say hit it off I mean were joking like old friends and playing pranks on each other before we even left Puerto. Seeing their faces repeatedly around town - theirs being the only other white ones besides ours, for a few days, anyway - Steve decided to just ask them if they were going to PRC. They were, and so we talked - and a brief chat turned into an hours-long discussion: Mark is from San Francisco. Mike is from New York City. Steve and Theresa are from New Jersey. Mark likes peanut butter. Theresa misses Feta cheese. Mike takes amazing pictures. Steve spent years traveling around Asia just like Mike. Theresa usually carries more books than clothes with her when she travels. Mark got amebic dysentery in India two years ago. Mike almost got shot in Brazil during a robbery five months ago. I suppose there isn't much else to do besides talk in Puerto Maldonado unless you're working or living there. That's the shame of Puerto, actually: living there are some of the nicest people in Peru - people who are removed from the tourism industry and who aren't all salty and bitter over their fears for their jobs after next year's elections. We've been out at night here, in the Plaza, watched families come together to relax and talked to teachers and Pizza shop owners about their businesses. I wish it was a part of Peru people saw more of. But the tourist circuit blows past this place at lightning speed; the fancy jungle lodges that dot around this part of the Amazon Basin - mostly on the Tambopata or Madre De Dios - collect tourists from the teeny airport in Puerto, take them directly to a nice (enough) port, and load them into fancy speed boats replete with shiny new life-vests for the up-river journey. They never set foot in the town itself, which may very well be why these people have been so nice to us. No one's been through here enough to really piss them off, but at the same time the odd missionary or aid worker coming through or staying in town makes them used to foreigners enough so that no one will bother you if you just want to be left alone. So anyway, here - our mornings are filled with hard manual labor, early afternoons with trail clearing, and late afternoons with swimming and water pumping. Did I mention the trail clearing? There's just something about a machete that a girl can get used to. I've been thinking about why it feels so good to clear the overgrown brush from the trail paths. Why do I like to wield the machete? We have to take one every time we leave the compound and wander down the trails. We're alternately told that it's "in case of emergencies" or "just to help clear". I think both are true. Machetes are things to throw at snakes from a distance, or to throw at fat-man-with-gun from a distance. And who would he be? An illegal logger that Laurel (Dr. Hannah) has been chasing off her land for a few years now. He hasn't gotten violent yet, she told us when we first arrived and was explaining why our first instinct should be to hide if we hear human voices. "But he has torn up our stakes and trail markers before," she tells us in her lilting English accent, "and torn down my "privado" signs." Yikes. So maybe the machete is necessary. But I don't plan on any encounters with fat-man-with-gun, with or without my husband by my side. And if I had one, I'd do the smart thing and run away, not approach him (or a snake, for that matter) wielding a weapon. So what's with the machete-love? I think I figured it out. Here's something truthful about me that I wish wasn't: I bore easily and can't be placated simply by material things. I suffocate if left in a routine, particularly if it's an easy one. Part of this comes from a need, I think, to test myself - to prove to myself that I'm capable and haven't gone soft despite the many, many, many luxuries readily available to me in my own country. So when I can't test myself, because of my job, my family, and countless other things that keep my feet firmly planted for seven or eight months out of the year, I think of my travels and picture myself doing something: learning how to carry water or bricks on my head in Ghana, chasing little critters out of my tent in Botswana, or...chopping my way through the Amazon jungle in Peru. The machete becomes an amplification of my power; a symbol that I will later cherish as a memory representing all I am capable of. With so much media in the Western world aimed squarely at me, telling me not to be powerful, not to be fearless, and to take up as little space as possible, literally and figuratively, I can use these images as rapid-fire ammunition back, to spit in the face of a misogynist world and say no, I'll take up as much space as I damn-well please, as much space as humanly possible. I'll show them I won't fold because of a few rats, high spaces, civil wars, sweat, blood, tight spaces, crime waves, bug bites, or tropical diseases. With these and other images - the images of the kindness of strangers, let's say - I can refuse to be as afraid of people as the media would like a young, white American woman to be. I can refuse to remain, safe and sound, holed up with my husband in my little suburban apartment, traveling in summers only to the mall (preferably in a large automobile that defies all consumption standards) or occasionally to the beach or, should the craaaazy feeling strike us, all the way to Club Med on a 14 mile country clu- er, Caribbean Island, where it's safe (inside the fence, of course) and whiteness proliferates. With these images, I can refuse to be kept from seeing what the world holds, or kept from learning new ways to feel good about myself (you mean you can do that without shopping?). Traveling has taught me what people are capable of when they're desperate, in good ways and bad. It has landed me in the midst of political strife and made me at times truly afraid for my life, but has presented me with the most unforgettable experiences of my life, and has allowed me to accomplish things I wouldn't even understand that I was capable of if I allowed myself to be told I should fear. It felt damn good to look down a dizzying sheer cliff, and with what little oxygen there was, shout out that I had climbed 15 miles of loose and rough terrain, over rope ladders and sharp angles. Sitting - quite literally - on the apex of Huayna Blanca or some other mountain, in shock that despite my sometimes fear of heights I made it, helped me store yet one more image to pull up whenever I feel stupid, small, or incapable - and particularly when I'm feeling like being a big girl - using up all the space I'd like - is just bad, and is not at all what boys like. But the best boys I know - the ones that have any sense of themselves and that sexy sense of self-confidence - do like, and even look for, girls who dare not to shrink in the corner and stand up only when called to. One night last week, I plodded outside in borrowed rubber boots to help Mark pump the day's water. I had skipped a shower since I'd been to the little off shoot of the river and had spent a good two hours swimming in it. Leaning over, something fell out of my shirt. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was some kind of large, fresh-water bug with spindly, lanky legs - the kind that cling to your bathing suit when they get washed up against it. It was dead, but clearly visible. "Gross," Mike said. "Yeah," I said, and went back to pumping. Only because he went on about it did I realize how significant it was that I didn't blow a gasket when I found large dead bug inside my shirt. "How should I react?" I asked Mike. He smiled and went back to pumping. "You're one tough chick," Mike said to me after on the way in to the center. I stifled a smile and said "Yeah, you're one tough chick too." More tomorrow - the generator's losing power; I can hear it winding down. whrrrrrrrrrr xoxo * The Amazon River from the scariest plane ride I've ever been on (flight delayed 3 hours, flight canceled because of horrible weather and windsheer, then flight on again: "Rapido! Everyone on the plane!" said the attendant, "The pilot’s going to give it a try!"):
...and the sad sight of rapid deforestation:
There are only two ways into the jungle - 1) a gringo boat, with actual life vests and a real out-board motor that you get to ride in FREE with your $450 two day stay at a fancy and clean jungle lodge:
And as a bonus, you can play "rock the local boat" when you go roaring past in all your touristic glory. 2) Or, hitch a ride on one of these jobbies with a gold miner or fisherman:
We - Steve, myself, Mark and Mike - got lucky enough to choose the little known and very rare third option: the community taxi boat was making its once a month (random) ten hour ride up-river to where we needed to be. And in case you're wondering, we had life-preservers too:
...but only four. And there were about 16 of us on the boat. And I bet the Peruvians didn't know how to swim.
As for the way back into town after our two week stay...well I'm not ready to talk about it yet. But it was this little guy's job to keep the hole in the boat plugged with his toe:
Oh, and it's apparently the woman's job to bail water out of boats. But I made myself useful by plying the kid with goodies to keep him lively. That's our crap he's eating - we didn't want him falling asleep on the job. Picaflor:
Work work work:
Play play play: Swim swim swim: More soon! xox
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