Hello All!

I write from beautiful Puyo, in the Amazon region of eastern Ecuador. It has been a very busy two weeks since my last note.

I arrived in Puyo two weeks ago. Upon meeting with the leaders of FINAE (Spanish acronym for Federation of Achuar Indigenous Nations of Ecuador), it was decided that it would be of great value for me to conduct a workshop in the operation and maintenance of their radio system. The system has suffered from lack of knowledge on how to use the rather complex "ham type" radios and problems associated with maintenance in this incredibly moist climate.

This was a daunting project: 10 radio operators (who oversaw 5-10 community radio locations each) would have to be flown via the Achuar's "air force" (one Cessna) to central location in the north for the training. While Amazon Watch and the Achuar's funding organization, Pachamama, worked out the money involved, I threw myself into digging into all three radio manuals and translating them into simplified, task-specific user's guides. I also produced troubleshooting charts, a maintenance calendar and a reference guide on how to run a multi-station radio network.

I was originally worried that my Spanish was too weak and that I would need help with the translation. It turned out that my previous experience with this radio-techno genre in Mexico enabled me to produce text that was good enough for the FINAE secretary to quickly go through and make corrections, mostly misuse of verbs and indirect/direct objects. Spanish is an "easy" language to learn a LITTLE of, but not so easy to speak and write well (as if any new language is easy, especially for this particular middle-aged linguistic space-case). The other thing is that working these past few weeks with the Achuar, I hardly ever heard them speak Spanish; they used Achuar amongst themselves and over the radio- they would only switch to Spanish to talk to me. There was a certain air of unreality working in this setting…

The only break I had from translating radio training materials came in the form of music. A few weeks ago in Quito, I had purchased a Churango, a ten-stringed Andean instrument that has a beautiful ethereal tone that sounds like a cross between a harp and a tambourine (!). I had met Tzmarenda from the indigenous musical group Arutma Uchiri at the Amazon Alliance conference. specializes in the music of the Shuar indigenous group. As luck would have it, I ran into Tzamenda on the street here in Puyo my first day back. We got together and jammed, swapping the his guitar and my Churango back and forth trading licks. This had the effect of firing me up to play more and memorize more chords. I pretty much have the basic chords down, but I am struggling with the rapid, stacatto strum that is a must-learn for the Churango. I am also having a bit of fun trying non-Andean tunes (especially minor chorded ones) on the instrument; "Ghost Riders in the Sky" sounds great on a Churango!

Finally, I completed the course materials and about the same time, the money came in. Due to the fact that the country completely shuts down for the pre-lenten carnivals and that it was prohibitively expensive to fly on weekends, my workshop was cut to just short of two days. Domingo, (the Achuar communications coordinator) and I loaded our gear onto the Cessna and were flown due north for an hour to the community Achuar community of Wasak'etsa.

All that I had heard about the Amazon rainforest did not prepare me for the experience of actually being there. As soon as I stepped off the plane it was as if the intensity control on my "reality TV" was tuned to the maximum. The bright green, the chorus of insects and birds, the musky smell of the jungle and the incredible humidity all combined to assault my senses. Life just doesn't exist there, it abounds. Everywhere I looked there was a Darwinian drama playing out before my eyes, the leaf-cutter ants at my feet, the vines locked in struggle with the trees and the jungle marching on the airstrip almost before my eyes.

We were greeted by Father Domingo Botterro, a Paulist Priest from Italy who is the director of the large boarding school that makes up most of the community. We were to use some of the school buildings for the workshop and the Mission was providing us with sleeping quarters and food. Padre Domingo was an affable, zany sort that had the slightly crazed look in his eyes that indicated each one of the 13 years he lived in Wasak'etsa. I couldn't help but like the good Padre; he reminded me of the worker-priests and nuns I had met in Nicaragua, folks who lived a large chunk of their lives in extremely remote areas to work with the poor. The Catholic Church, (unlike many Amercian Evangelicals working in the region) are extremely tolerant of local cultures and act as advocates in their behalf.

The plane made a few short hops and brought in some more students. I set up the solar panels and the radio stuff in a big, open-sided shed that was to serve as the classroom. The next day, the rest of the students arrived and we began the course. I spent the first half of the session showing the Achuar how to use and program each of three radios they have in their system. The next part included going over maintenance charts and troubleshooting procedures. Domingo would jump in often and explain confusing points in Achuar. The 10 students were very intelligent and eager learners. Each one of them elected to come back to the class after dinner and work into the night on reviews of how to program their radios. They knew they had to go back and show 5-15 other radio users what I had shown them and were therefore eager to get in as much time as possible. We were all frustrated that we had only a day and a half of class time, vs the three we had originally planned. I do think they were able to grasp what they needed and that the reference material will enable them fill in the blanks left by information overload.

The third and last day the plane arrived at 10 AM to start the process of ferrying the students back to their communities. Since we had a few hours to kill until our hop back to Puyo, Domingo invited me to take a walk with him into the forest. We crossed the river and hiked an hour to and fro down a muddy trail that goes to the next community, about a day's walk away. I was again struck by the abundance of life: incredible rainbow colored butterflies, bright orange mushrooms the size of grapefruits, huge trees that towered above the canopy. Domingo was raised near here and proudly talked to me about the jungle and the Achuar as he took video footage on a camera donated to FINAE by Amazon Watch. I felt honored and humbled to be Domingo's guest in his ancestral home, a speck in the immenseness of the Land of the Achuar.

The plane arrived and took us back to Puyo. We checked in with the office, fixed a broken radio that appeared at the there in my absence. I returned to my hotel and took a long shower and settled down to my churango. It feels to me like my time in the jungle was almost some sort of waking dream…or maybe this part is the dream and I had inadvertently stumbled on Reality…only to let it slip away via the Cessna.

Anyway, I am certain I will be back here again. Three other tribal groups have come out of the woodwork wanting help with their radios. The Achuar need more workshops on how to rebuild and maintain their antennas. Padre Domingo wants me to come back to Wasak'etsa and show him how to set up a digital communications patch between computers and radios in his Mission radio network. I am thinking maybe next fall I would make another trip.

Update on the Mindo Cloudforest pipeline blockade. The activists are still holding their

own, the National Police has yet to move in. The IMF, under pressure is re-investigating

their funding for the project. The Green Parties in Italy and Germany are causing

problems for their national petroleum consortiums that are buying into the project. Stay

tuned to www.amazonwatch.org for the latest….

I thank all of you who have been so kind to me with your help, prayers, good vibes, and

friendly emails; it meant a lot to be able to hear from my friends.

Abrazos de Ecuador,

John Parnell