Into La Amazonia - Part 2

On the second day of my stay in the community, I got my first taste of what it was going to be like to teach English. I didn't really know much information at all, so it was difficult for me to prepare anything. All I knew was that I would be teaching the younger children, aged about five to seven, but I didn't know how many, or whether they had previously been taught any English or not. After finishing my seven o'clock breakfast, I grabbed my Spanish dictionary, some paper, and some crayons & felt pens, then headed for the school.

The community was about a five minute walk from my cabin. I enjoyed my first walk there, appreciating what it was like here when it’s not torrential rain. When I arrived at the class I meet Freddie, and was greeted by a classroom full of about fifteen loud, screaming children, who looked like they'd had coke for breakfast. After introducing myself, Freddie got them each to introduce themselves to me. They all of a sudden became very quite and very shy when it came to this, and many of their names were unusual for me so I found it very difficult to remember them for the following weeks.

Freddie was only nineteen and he held the huge responsibility of maintaining the curriculum, teaching all the children, and trying to at least keep them slightly interested in learning when they went on one of their many emotional rollercoaster rides. He had only the support of his brother, who was the teacher for the older children. After the introductions of the children, he pretty much just threw me straight into the deep end (I think he thought I was actually an English teacher.)

He gave me a whiteboard marker, yelled something to the kids, and then said to me, "ok, you can teach all the children today." I was a wee bit caught off guard because I thought that my first day was going to me an orientation sort of thing where I'd mainly be observing things. I had never taught any English before, so I didn't really know where to start. I thought back to what I was first taught when I starting learning Spanish and basically used that as a model for that day.

I wrote up a series of basic phrases in Spanish such as "hi", "how are you?", "my name is" etc. After getting them to repeat them with me in Spanish, I wrote the English translations and again got them to repeat with me. Often they would just be yelling things out. At times it would slightly resemble the English translation, but when they found it difficult, they just yelled out whatever was on their mind, often I had no idea what it meant. I also tried to use a bit of music, teaching them the parts of the body with the song "Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes", which actually ended up being reasonably successful.

When I returned to my cabin, I realized that the teaching English here was going to be much more challenging than I'd perhaps originally thought. I only taught for three and a half hours a day, from eight till ten, then from eleven till twelve thirty, but keeping the children engaged in one subject for that amount of time took a lot of energy for me, especially with a very limited vocabulary to teach from. The prospect of teaching that many children English for two and a half weeks seemed like a huge challenge, but the great thing about my time schedule, was that I had a lot of time off, so there were a lot of opportunities during the afternoons to relax and get my energy back.

Later on that afternoon, I decided that I'd go and check out the water hole by my cabin that Valerio had shown me. He assured me that there were no snakes or alligators, and that it was completely pure and safe to swim in. I trusted his advice, but as I hesitantly stood into the water, I couldn't help but think of all those Amazon documentaries that I saw on discovery channel last year about the great predators of the Amazon, and Anacondas that wait for days before stalking their prey. In the end I decided just to count to ten and jump in. After counting to about thirty, I finally made the plunge. As soon as I was fully immersed in the water, I tried to just let go of all the jungle stereotypes and enjoy it. I figured I would have to at some stage because this was going to be my bath for the next wee while.

The next few days became slightly easier for me as I became more and more used to my limited expression and Freddie must have seen that I struggled on my first day teaching, because when I returned the next day, I only had to teach three students while he took care of the rest of the class. I often got frequent visits from the children at my cabin, where they'd use my paper and pens to draw colorful pictures of houses, animals, and often their families, with a wee token appearance from me in there. They really enjoyed the creative opportunity because in the community and even at the school they didn't have any spare paper to draw on, let alone colored crayons & pens.

They also leaped at any opportunity I gave them to learn guitar. I'd show them one basic chord, and then they'd all queue up to have a go at playing it. It was really incredible to see how great full they were for these very simple creative opportunities. I often performed for them when they visited me and their curiosity would always get the better of them, I'd be strumming away singing a song and then I'd quickly find their hands all over the guitar, trying to help me strum each chord. My nice, clean, new guitar didn't stay that way for long, but I wasn't too concerned, I'd never seen children so fascinated and curious about the guitar. I enjoyed it when they came around. Sitting in a hammock watching time go by is very nice & relaxing, but I spent so many hours doing that, that it was nice to have some contrast. They always made time fly, and often before I knew it, it was half past six, time for dinner.

By the time it got to dinner, the sun would be well and truly gone, and the temperature would drop to a nice, comfortable level. There was no electricity up my neck of the woods, so I always ate my dinner with candle light. The most common things I was served up were vegetable soups, often with lots of potato or yuca to make it filling. (Yuca is very similar to potato but it is a lot denser, tasted really good!) They also seem to love rice here, and when I was lucky, I'd be served up some fresh caught fish.

The first time I was served this, there were about four small fish which had been prepared and pretty much cooked whole. It wasn't that unusual to me, but after scooping my first sample onto my fork and getting a taste, I realized that they didn't take the scales off during the preparation. It was a wee bit awkward because Valerio and his family where sitting there watching me, meanwhile I was spending most of my time spitting scales out, and trying to free my mouth from all the tiny bones. After trying a few different techniques with my fork, by the last fish I was able to extract the meat without to much hassle, and finally I actually got to enjoy the taste of it.

After finishing my meals Valerio would sit with me, and we'd have very basic conversations. I don't know why, but often I found Valerio more difficult to understand than some of the others. Most of the times I just tried to find key words in his phrases, and then say something back with that key word. Sometimes it worked a treat, and I'd have a conversation with him, not really knowing at all what he was really talking about, and him not knowing at all what I was talking about. But other times it didn't work at all and it ended up just tying the both of us into a big knot of confusion.

This didn't matter to much if it was just a normal conversation, but there were times where he was explaining instructions to me, like one day he explained to me that tomorrow I was going for a walk with his family. I understood that I was meeting him at three in the afternoon, and that we were going for a walk and going swimming. He gave significantly more information than that, but I didn't pick any of it up. I thought I had enough information though so I just went to bed thinking "Ok, tomorrow I'm going for a walk with the family to a water hole."

As three o'clock approached the next day, one of the girls came into my cabin and said its time to go. She then pointed to my pack and said something to me, showing me a key. I realized that she meant that she can lock up my pack in the room below while I was gone. So I threw a few things into the pack, zipped it up, then looked at her, waiting for my next instructions, and wondering why the hell I need to lock my pack away for a day walk. She gave me a weird look, then picked up my pack and slowly struggled downstairs. I followed her and felt a bit guilty because I realized I'd accidentally given her the impression that I wanted her to carry my pack for me. After locking the room, I asked her what I need to bring and she said "just you camera, and your clothes." I had my camera, and I figured I'll just use the clothes I'm wearing to swim in, so I made my way to where I was going to meet Valerio wearing a tee shirt, shorts, and gumboots.

I ended up walking with a few of the children and it was the first time that they had seen my camera. I didn't know how they would react to the camera here but to my surprise, they absolutely loved it. The children would pose at every opportunity possible. It actually got to a point in the end where I had to say "ok... but this is the last!" After about an hour walking, we arrived at the river where I had been dropped off from the canoe earlier in the week. It was sunny today though so I had a much better view and a much broader perspective of the forest.

As soon as we arrived, the children just ran and leaped straight into the river, not even bothering about their clothes. They yelled at me, telling me to come and join them. I started taking off my top, getting ready to jump in, but I had a bad feeling about it, so I decided not to because it was starting to get cooler and I didn't want to have my only clothes all wet. After about half an hour we all jumped into the canoe. It was basically me and nearly all of Valerio's family. We cruzed off and I wondered to myself "hmm so we're going for a canoe ride as well, I must have missed that part of the conversation."

We didn't really go to far in the canoe. First we pulled up and the children all ran into the bush and came back with bags and bags of oranges, while I stayed in the boat watching Valerio catching Piranhas thinking "shit I'm glad I didn't jump into that river!" When they came back we all sat in the canoe and had a big feast of oranges. The oranges had green skin which was also very tough. It wasn't uncommon to see the children just pick up a huge machete to peel their orange. I always found it very hard to look at, the first time I saw it, a girl, aged about 6, held the orange in her hand and ran the machete around the outside, barley missing her fingers. Valerio was just going about his business as if she'd done it quite a few times before.

After catching one last fish, we pushed off, and were once again cruzing down the river, and I was once again thinking "where the hell are we going." About one hundred meters down the river we pulled up again. All the children jumped off, but I wasn't sure whether to stay or to go. I noticed everyone was taking all the gear off the boat, so I decided to get off and help the children carry the remaining oranges. Once I climbed the bank I realized we were going to a house. It was very old looking, and similar to the houses back in the community.

As I went up the stairs and sat down, everyone was running around getting things ready and set up. I got the vibe pretty quickly that we were going to be staying the night here. I couldn't really figure it out though because there was nothing there, it was literally just an old wooden floor with a few massive bags of rice, and some old wooden seats. All the windows were smashed out, and there were no mosquito nets anywhere to be seen.

I sat there and laughed to myself, I was very much observing things rather than being involved in them. As a sat there I realized that I had no where to go, and nothing to do. I was just drifting along, feeling, gently observing each experience. The fact that I had no idea what was going on didn't seem to matter, and the realization came to me that I was living the adventure I came here to live, with no agenda, and no sense of control of what’s happening next. I felt this incredible sense of freedom, and just sat there enjoying this beautiful sense of "not needing to know anything."

I'd been going to bed very early since I'd arrived here, often no later than seven thirty, and tonight was no different. As I finished my meal, Valerio pointed me in the direction of my bed. It was just a white sheet laid out on the wooden floor with a thin blanket on top. A few pieces of clothes had been folded together to make up a temporary pillow. He also gave me some matches and a candle incase I needed to get up in the night. This was the first time that I'd spend a night outside of my cabin. It was a nice change being in the company of a family, even though I never really talked much.

After a painful sleep and an early start, we were packing everything back away, although I didn't have much to pack, still wearing my original tee shirt and shorts. I followed the children down to the canoe, wondering what this day was going to bring me. Once the boat was loaded we headed off again, still going in the opposite direction to the community. I noticed the children all had this sense of excitement to them about where we were going. We eventually got to the Napo River, a spectacular, massive water highway which seemed to link up all the communities around here.

As we cruzed down the river, there were guys standing at the river banks, waiting to be picked up. They'd often throw on empty gas bottles and I quickly realized that this must be a regular event for these guys. I thought back to the conversation I had with Jacobo, and remembered that he said I'd be going to one of the big markets on Saturday. I had no idea that this would be the way in which I'd be going there, and then realized that most of my conversation with Valerio was probably referring to this. After about thirty minutes in the water, we had arrived at the market and I noticed everyone was suddenly in a frantic rush to get ready for the market.

As soon as everyone got off, they all changed their clothes. All the men put long pants on, replaced their gumboots with polished shoes, wore very similar looking tee shirts which seemed to represent their community, brushed their teeth, and got out a mirror to inspect their hair as they filled it with handfuls of gel. They then toped it off with a wee spray of their unique blend of cologne. The women didn't go to the same extreme, but they still made an effort to look a bit tidier, and the kids got out their best "Saturday market clothes." Meanwhile I was standing there with these stinky, dirty clothes, which I’d been wearing for two days, and these gumboots which appeared to have more brown than black. I stood in the river and washed them, figuring that’s all I could really do to tidy myself up. No one really appeared to mind though, they actually looked eager to show me the market.

After walking around, and talking to Valereo a wee bit, I found that this was the trading market for all the surrounding communities in the area. People would come here to fill their gas bottles, to buy clothes, food, cooking equipment, and excited children would come to get their little candy treats that are no where to be seen in their community area. It would have been a great opportunity for me to buy some gifts for the community, but I didn't have any money with me, so I made a mental note to bring some next time. After a few hours of wondering, and hanging out with the kids, it was once again time to get back into the canoe. This time I knew where we were going, because Valerio had told me that I will be back at the community buy lunch time.

We headed back, dropping everyone off with their supplies for the next week. As we veered off the Napo river, back in the direction of the community, the children were still sucking on their treats, and I was getting fried in the sun, hanging out for the arrival of the community. We pulled up the boat, and at last we were heading back in the direction that we came from. Everyone seemed to be exhausted by the whole outing, including me. Once we arrived back I wondered back to my cabin, thinking "how I could have confused such an adventure, for a three hour walk to a swimming hole!"