Down there...

Life was far simpler. I had less things, I needed less things. I definitely spent less money - not only because things were cheaper but because I didn't need to buy as much. I rode public transport everywhere. I enjoyed life in a more simple way. I was able to travel and explore the country, but did so in a modest way. I could have lived differently, more luxuriously, and still I was living in a farrr better situation than almost the whole Ecuadorian population.

Think about it - unlike the rest of the world, we have a CHOICE to live more simply. I personally thirst for shunning the "stuff" and "things" in my life and accepting a more simple existence... but in the blink of an eye I could choose to have all this stuff back. But the majority of our human brethren don't make this CHOICE, they live in a certain way because it's their only life path.

I'm working hard to not lose the realizations I made in Ecuador about what is necessary in life. It's too easy to get sucked back into the mainstream expectations of how life "should" be lived here.

Home again, Home again, jiggity jig

Well, I'm home. Or, in my home on this side of the world. My flight got into D.C. last night at around 8 o'clock, and after negotiating my way through English-speaking mobs, I was greeted with wonderful hugs and kisses and a few camera flashes from my parents. We put my bags in our van's trunk, where they shared the space with my parent's booty from an afternoon trip to Costco. I ate an over-sized Fuji apple from a prepackaged pack of 24. From the airport we took the overwhelmingly paved Beltway to my sister's apartment to visit her and her fiancé. We talked a lot, drank water straight from the tap, and played on their new Wii.

It's weird being home.

Even though I'm back now, I'll continue to post over the next several weeks. I still have some narratives from Ecuador that I'd like to share, and undoubtedly I'll have reflections regarding being back in this country. So, keep reporting back!

I'll leave you with a bit of the old poetry, an ode to Ecuador, something i just wrote-

Where are the beautiful stalls with ladies selling fresh cut flowers,
the children wearing wooden boxes holding gum and cigarettes for sale,
the mountains surrounding and framing my existence, reminding me of my smallness,
the melody of spanish floating across the air?
and my dog's wet besitos and wag-wag-wagging tail?

Humbly but boldly they are situated
where the sun shines strong even while it rains
where volcanos peek out on the horizon
where the ecuator gives a name to a small, love-rich country
where my heart remains.

¡Feliz Día, mom!

To my mom especially, but also to other readers with babies:

Happy Mother's Day! Thank you for all you do.

For a while now, my mom has really wanted to see a picture of my host family here. So, at long last, here you are, mom!

This is my Ecuamamá (Susana), me, my brother (Martín, 13), and my Ecuapapá (José). This was taken outside of their farmhouse, about 2 hours from Quito. Not pictured is Sebastian (19), my other brother, so below is a picture of him from when we went to a soccer game.

Dog poop has never tasted so good

...I mean, okay. There's this Ecuadorian snack here called caca de perro, which translates to "dog poop." But don't worry, it's not actually dog poop. It consists of toasted then caramelized corn kernels. But unlike American un-popped corn kernels, somehow these things are chewably crunchy and delicious. My Ecuamama just made some the other day, which was the first time I'd seen it, tried it, or even heard of it.

Anyway, its name was just too good to pass up for a blog post title. That's all.

The Tree Key: Deforestation and Global Warming

Here's a link to the follow-up NYT column about Yachana (see below post).

Columnist Nicholas Kristoff tells us why the work of Yachana -- specifically community empowerment within the Amazon, which provides locals with economic incentives to not cut down Amazonian trees -- is so important.

"Somewhere in the world, we humans cut down an area of jungle the size of a football field every second of every day, and deforestation now contributes as much to global warming as all the carbon emitted by the United States. By one calculation, four years of deforestation have the same carbon footprint as all flights in the history of aviation up until the year 2025."

We don't hear as much about deforestation contributing to climate change as CO2 emissions. Perhaps this is because on a personal level, resolving the tree-cutting problem feels more out of reach than cutting our personal greenhouse gas emissions.

We know we can and should: purchase electricity from a company offering a large share of renewable energy; walk or ride a bike instead of driving; purchase a car with high gas mileage; turn down/up our thermostats in the winter/summer; replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents; be smart shoppers when buying energy-gulping appliances like fridges and furnaces.

But we aren't told very often what we can do to prevent further global deforestation, which is an equally substantial contributor to the climate crisis.

Well, here are just three ideas of the type from the Union of Concerned Scientists' "Ten Personal Solutions" to global warming:

1.Buy good wood.
When buying wood products, check for labels that indicate the source of the timber. Supporting forests that are managed in a sustainable fashion makes sense for biodiversity, and it may make sense for the climate too. Forests that are well managed are more likely to store carbon effectively because more trees are left standing and carbon-storing soils are less disturbed."

2. Plant a tree.
You can also make a difference in your own backyard. Get a group in your neighborhood together and contact your local arborist or urban forester about planting trees on private property and public land. In addition to storing carbon, trees planted in and around urban areas and residences can provide much-needed shade in the summer, reducing energy bills and fossil fuel use.

3. Let policymakers know you are concerned about global warming. (and specifically deforestation)
Our elected officials and business leaders need to hear from concerned citizens. Sign up for the Union of Concerned Scientists Action Network to ensure that policymakers get the timely, accurate information they need to make informed decisions about global warming solutions.

Also, an organization called Rainforest Action Network is also currently campaigning against current practices in palm oil production, the majority of which takes place in rainforest regions, where "pristine rainforests are being clear-cut and burned to make way for palm oil plantations." This contributes to global warming ("Deforestation is the primary reason that Indonesia and Brazil are now the world’s third and fourth largest greenhouse gas polluters," according to RAN), and it also contributes to the destruction of vital ecosystems and displacement of indigenous people/small farmers. There is an increasing demand for palm oil, which is used in foods, soaps and cosmetics AND as an industrial-scale biofuel.

So. The bottom line is, let's not forget about the disastrous impacts of deforestation that we all contribute to every day. Be a responsible shopper question where your wood and ingredients are coming from.

Yachana in NYT

Well, well, well. It looks like the news media knows what to cover and where!

On Sunday, a New York Times columnist used his column to write about the story of the two men behind Yachana Foundation. Hopefully that name sounds familiar to ya, because that means you read this post about my visit to Yachana Lodge when our study abroad group went to the Amazon in late February.

It's great to see Yachana getting coverage like this because what the foundation is doing is really special. I feel really lucky that we got to visit the Amazon under its watch. I also feel lucky that Juan Kunchikuy, the indigenous half of the Yachana business pair, is the one who served me that tasty grub!

I'm pasting the text of the column below, just because I know that then there's a better chance that you'll read it.

April 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Odd Couple of the Jungle
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

IN THE AMAZON JUNGLE, Ecuador

Douglas McMeekin was a failed businessman in Kentucky, and Juan Kunchikuy was a hunter in a remote nook of the Amazon rain forest who killed monkeys, deer and wild pigs with a blowgun and poison darts.

Now this unlikely pair has joined forces in a remarkable campaign to save the rain forest, “the lungs of the earth” that suck up the carbon we spew out. Of all the struggles to fight climate change, this is one of the more quixotic — and inspiring.

The Amazon rain forest that both men treasure is being hacked down, along with other tropical forests around the world. More than half of the world’s tropical rain forest is already gone, and every second of every day, another football-field-size chunk is destroyed.

Mr. McMeekin, now 65, started out not as an environmentalist but as an entrepreneur running a hodgepodge of small businesses in Lexington, Ky., employing about 50 people. In the 1982 recession, he went bankrupt.

Pained and disillusioned, he decided to go far away — to Ecuador, where he eventually found work in the Amazon as a liaison between international oil companies and indigenous tribes. He came to love the people, and his heart went out to them.

In school, Mr. McMeekin had suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia. “I was just a ‘dumb kid,’ and carrying that burden is difficult,” he recalled. The stigma left him empathizing with the Amazon natives, who were often scorned by outsiders as slow and backward because they were unschooled.

Mr. McMeekin began the Yachana Foundation in 1991 to promote education among natives of the Amazon, and in the course of his travels by canoe (there are few roads in the region), he met Mr. Kunchikuy, then a boy living in a cluster of huts a five-hour walk from any other village. Mr. Kunchikuy and his family were semi-nomadic, speaking an obscure tribal language (his real name is Tzerem, but an Ecuadorian official filling out his birth certificate turned that into “Juan”). They survived largely by hunting with darts tipped with home-made curare poison.

Mr. Kunchikuy was one of 12 siblings, of whom five died in childhood. One of his grandfathers was speared to death in a war with a rival tribe; another grandfather adorned his house with the shrunken heads of enemies he had killed.

At the time, in 1995, Mr. McMeekin was building an eco-lodge in the jungle for American tourists, to finance his dreams of promoting education for local people. So he invited the boy to move to the lodge and work and study. At the age of 17, Mr. Kunchikuy left his pocket of the rain forest for the first time — and encountered such wonders as shoes, electricity, running water, telephones and cars.

It was soon obvious that Mr. Kunchikuy had a first-rate mind, so Mr. McMeekin sponsored his education and a home-stay visit to Boston, where in the winter he encountered a puzzling white substance that was very cold. His tribal language, Shiwiar, has no word for snow, ice, freezing or even anything very cold. So after his return, it was tough to describe to his friends how his host family had taken him ice skating and snow-boarding.

Mr. Kunchikuy now speaks fluent English, on top of his other languages — Shiwiar, Spanish, Quichua, Achuar and Shuar, not to mention his mastery at calling monkeys and birds in the jungle. He became a naturalist and guide at the Yachana Foundation’s 18-room eco-lodge, which tourists reach by riding in a canoe for nearly three hours.

Now 30, Mr. Kunchikuy points wildlife out to American tourists and demonstrates that grubs can be tasty. He also displays his impressive collection of scars, from vampire bats, a piranha, a caiman, a stingray, and a shaman who operated on his chest to block another shaman’s black magic. In his spare time, he demonstrates how to shoot a blowgun.

“It has a range of up to 150 feet,” he explained. “It’s better than a shotgun, because it’s silent. You can shoot repeatedly if you miss the first time.” (Keep an eye on nytimes.com in the coming days for a video of Mr. Kunchikuy using his blowgun to spear a papaya balanced on my head — but don’t tell my wife.)

Yet the traditions he grew up with are eroding, much like the rain forest. Loggers are chipping inexorably away at the Amazon, robbing the planet of biodiversity and of a great carbon sink that absorbs our greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, the deforestation itself, including slash-and-burn clearing, accounts for 20 percent of global carbon emissions, the same amount as that produced by the United States or China. Several studies declare that the low-hanging fruit in the war against climate change is keeping these forests alive.

In my next column, on Thursday, I’ll tell you how Mr. McMeekin and Mr. Kunchikuy are doing just that.

Pocahontas got skillz

Did I mention the team's name is Pocahontas? Not sure who came up with that one...

Anyway, here's a pic of our soccer team before the final game. I'm the gringa without a uniform.