A Long Way from Philly, by Lynne Cooke

When I met Mary in graduate school at San Diego State University about fifteen years ago, I never imagined that someday we would be on a motor powered canoe headed into the jungle. But there we were, on our way to Casa del Suizo, a lodge nestled in the Amazon. But, wait, maybe I should back up and tell you who I am and what I’m doing writing on Mary’s blog. I’m Mary’s friend, Lynne, who lives in suburban Philadelphia, PA, which is, well, quite different from Ecuador. During my visit to Ecuador, Mary generously asked me to be a guest blogger, and, as you can tell, I accepted the offer. I teach technical writing, and unfortunately, my prose reflects my profession. Stick with me through this blog entry, though. I promise not to use subheadings, bulleted lists, or forecasting statements, as we technical writers are apt to do. (On the plus side, I won’t use wordy phrases such as “due to the fact that” or “it is important to note that.”)

Mary and I met up in Quito on a rainy Saturday afternoon and stayed the night in La Mariscal, the happening part of the city – live music everywhere, great restaurants, and a bunch of hostels. The next day we began our trip to Tena by bus via a windy, hilly, hairpin turn, mostly unpaved road. I found the buses fascinating – people were in the seats, in the aisles, constantly getting on or off at unmarked stops. Scattered along the road were tiny shacks, some lit with a single, naked light bulb that hung from the ceiling. Although intellectually I knew that Ecuador was a developing country, I didn’t fully grasp what that meant until that moment. The contrast between what many Americans call home (5,000 sq ft. McMansions) and what many Ecuadorians call home is shocking. Don’t get me started…

We stayed at Mary’s place in Tena for a day before heading out to the jungle lodge. Tena is a mix of urban and rural. Small specialty stores, hostels, and restaurants line the streets, dogs roam the neighborhoods, and chickens cluck from day to night. Mary is quite the local – we kept running into people she knew – and she’s got a great place within walking distance of downtown Tena. Mary lives on the second story of a concrete single-family home. Her three-bedroom home has beautiful hardwood floors, lots of windows, and a great patio conducive to wine drinking, book reading, and snoozing. As a westerner who had never been to a developing country before, I was surprised by the rebar sticking out of the patio. I thought, “Is this place still under construction?” But no, this is just the way things are in Ecuador. Part of the infrastructure is in place if the owners want to build on to the house. Sounds reasonable to me.

From Tena we took a two-hour bus ride and then a 20 minute canoe ride to reach the jungle lodge, where we stayed in a room with a spectacular view of the river. Sitting on that balcony was one of the most peaceful experiences I have ever had.

The next day, we visited amaZOOnica, a preserve for monkeys, toucans, enormous colorful parrots, wild pigs, and the like. As recently as thirty or forty years ago, you could have seen these animals in the wild, but because of overhunting and habitat loss, most of the big mammals and birds are gone. AmaZOOnica is no urban zoo: volunteers live in on the grounds, give tours, and care for the animals, most of which were rescued from poachers or illegally kept as pets. Only about 20% can be reintroduced into the wild.
Before returning to Tena, I took a tour of a Kichwa village where I learned about some of the local customs, including the preparation of chichi, an intoxicating beverage which Mary has described as “tasting the way moldy laundry smells” (and she’s right). The tour also featured local artisans who create beautiful clay pots with intricate designs and parrots out of balsawood, all of which are for sale in the village. In this ecotourism model both the jungle lodge and the indigenous people benefit: The Kichwa have the opportunity to sell their crafts and educate tourists about their culture, and the jungle lodge can offer tourists a glimpse of Kichwa life that would otherwise be closed to outsiders.

A few days later, I took a bus back to Quito. This time the woman seated next to me balanced a box of 20 or so tiny, yellow chicks on her lap that peeped the whole way to Quito. I found the peeping soothing, in part because I didn’t have any idea what people were saying around me. You see, I don’t speak or understand Spanish (shameful, I know, because I lived in San Diego for many, many years). I felt like such a typical American tourist, gesturing and pointing to things and hoping people might understand a word or two of English. Fortunately, people were very kind to me. I made it from the bus station to the hostel, ordered a meal from a menu with pictures, and flew back to the US the next day.

I’ll end by thanking Mary for being an incredibly gracious host and by letting you know that the work she’s doing in Ecuador makes a difference. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mary decided to stay in Tena permanently because the Kichwa people I met think of her as a member of their community, which she is.

We Are Pioneers: Supermaxi, Biodegradable Bags, and the Women of Cuya Loma

Happy Earth Day from the Amazon! I’m celebrating by writing this blog and participating in the CALL FOR CLIMATE campaign to demand that Congress act now to reverse global warming. Any other earthlings who feel so inspired, please pick up your phones on APRIL 22 and dial your Senator and Representative: 202-224-3121.

For five hours over a partially paved, mostly potholed “highway,” I sat on the bus from Quito to Tena with my plastic shopping bags trapped between my feet. I enjoyed the cloud forest whizzing by as we descended from the Andes to the lowland jungle, feeling a little less guilty than usual after my trip to Supermaxi in Quito. As the name implies, Supermaxi is the largest nationwide grocery and household goods store in Ecuador and sells two things I find I can’t buy in Tena and can't live without, despite my efforts to “live local” and “get off the grid”: dijon mustard and balsamic vinegar.

Fortunately, Supermaxi has gotten the memo about the climate crisis and has replaced its conventional plastic bags with biodegradable ones, which announce “We Are Pioneers.” In the grand scheme, it’s a small step of course, but it shows decent corporate leadership and helps me feel better about my carbon footprint:

+ 6 jars of imported dijon mustard
- 1 biodegradable bag
+ 1 5-hour diesel bus ride
- 1 4-hour trip in private car
= how much carbon I’m putting into the atmosphere?

Well, the math is beyond me, but that’s what these nifty carbon calculators are for.


Though excellent laundry services abound in Tena (80 cents a kilo gets even your underwear washed, dried, and ironed), most women (women) wash their family’s clothes in big cement sinks at home. Most people can’t afford to buy washers and dryers, and even the wealthy tend to relegate the task to their maid (again, a woman). Since I have a cement sink and clothes line, I do the same with most of my clothes. It took only two or three weeks of sudsing, scrubbing, wringing, and hanging for me to appreciate both modern technology and the feminist movement. All the books and articles I’ve read on gender roles seemed like abstract musings compared to what I learned washing my own clothes by hand in Ecuador.

Multiply that work by seven people (six kids and one husband, an average family size) and it’s easy to understand why, when I visit rural communities, the women are eager to have electricity, running water, and roads, even though they often come at enormous cost to a fragile rainforest environment. The men want those things too, but technology is more a matter of convenience for them. Though Kichwa men generally help around the house more than other latino men, domestic chores are still optional. Not so for the women. Technology could improve their daily existence dramatically, leaving more time for education, a professional career, or simply the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives.

Does this freedom, as a result of modernization, inevitably lead to the production of trillions of plastic bags? That’s what I wonder when I talk with communities about building water or sanitation “systems” that solve one urgent and important problem but create ten others that burn on a slower, but no less powerful, flame. I’d like to think that freedom—and creativity—can lead directly to solutions that improve the standard of living for the poor and marginalized and skip the step we industrialized nations have taken in the development process, the one in which industries pollute the planet and exhaust natural resources then later scramble to fix things.

It has taken Supermaxi less time to adopt the biodegradable bag than it’s taken Wal-mart to demand its vendors reduce product packaging. And 13 women, including the president of the community of Cuya Loma, will be pitching in to build dry composting toilets for their houses next weekend (more to come on the marvel of the dry composting toilet). So perhaps these are signs of a new kind of pioneering spirit to work with the earth, not against it.

The Pick-up Truck to Puyo

From Tena, capital of the jungle province of Napo, you can get to Puyo, capital of the more southerly jungle province of Pastaza, in two and a half hours by bus. If there are no buses running, as was the case when I traveled there recently, you can hop in the cab of a pick truck which will take you over a rutted, dusty, rock-strewn, unpaved road and get there in about one and a half or two hours, depending on how much confidence the driver has in his truck’s shocks. Or if you are particularly desperate, you can hop in the back of the truck, squeezed in with other people, electronic equipment, miscellaneous bags, and a spare tire, and hold on for dear life. Unwittingly, that’s what I chose to do.

I had scheduled a meeting in Puyo with a French pharmacist who had spent the last 20 years working with indigenous communities and creating a formidable practice in medicinal plants. I’d already postponed the trip once because of protests against the Andean Free Trade Agreement that the Ecuadorian government was negotiating with the U.S. Puyo had been virtually shut down, so the first day things were almost back to normal I jumped on the chance to make the journey.

After waiting for a half an hour for a bus I was told would come, a pick up with 5 grown men in the cab, 4 in the truck bed, a woman, two children, and the aforementioned electronics rolled up and offered me a ride. I jumped in and literally perched on the narrow rim of the bed like the others. A couple of people in the back got out within the first fifteen minutes, giving us a little more room, but the TVs and stereo speakers took up most of the floor space. At about that point the road, which had been partly paved, turned to dirt, and the driver hit the accelerator. Every 20 seconds or so my tailbone jammed into the metal rim, and I had to keep adjusting my grip to keep from falling backwards out of the truck. And every 20 seconds I glared at the driver and the guys sitting inside, though of course if I’d had an upholstered bench to sit on, I wouldn’t have given it up either. First come, first served.

Fearing I’d have lifelong spinal injuries if I stayed in that position, I stood on the spare tire and held on to the rail above the cab. Standing was much better on my back because my boots absorbed the shock of the road, and I just had to hold on tight to the rail. Meanwhile, a couple also sitting in the back grasped each other, both out of affection and for safety. The I realized that the woman held a beautiful green parakeet in the cuff of her shirt. She and the man handed it back and forth while they hugged and tried to reposition themselves.

Meanwhile, the two kids, whom someone had thoughtfully allowed to sit in the cab, got car sick. The driver stopped and promptly handed them to the couple, their parents, who began the repositioning all over, passing the bird, folding the kids into their laps. Practically before the driver started the engine, the two boys were limp and asleep. We tore out on to the dirt road again and soon pulled over for no apparent reason. One of the men got out, so I assumed we’d arrived at his stop. But then all of the men and one of the boys got out too, leaving me, the other woman, the youngest boy, and the bird. They surrounded the truck with their backs to us and their legs spread, and then came the sound of rushing water. It always disgusts me when I see men urinating in plain view, but this was the first time I’d seen a virtual chorus line of men peeing in the dirt. I actually laughed out loud, but I doubt anyone could hear me over the noise.

By the time we hit the road again, I was already sick of the truck ride, and it had only been about an hour. I was covered in dirt and my hands were red and sore. We hit top speeds, the road worsened, and small stones began hitting my face. I had the macabre, but probably accurate, thought that I could lose an eye. And then what would I do? But by that point I realized there were no buses running to Puyo that day, and since I was already half way there, I should just suck it up.

An hour later we rolled onto paved road and I was thrilled to see stoplights and gas stations. I jumped out at my stop, which was the first in town, and waited patiently for the French pharmacist to pick me up. He soon drove up in a white pick up with a gloriously spacious cab, and we rode off in comort to visit his medicinal garden.

Guayaquil: The Extreme City

If you spend much time in Quito, the political capital of Ecuador, you get accustomed to hearing stories about Guayaquil, the economic capital of Ecuador. The huge port city is twice as populous and sprawling as mountainous Quito, is sweltering with humidity much of the year, has an even more extreme gap between rich and poor, and is supposedly riddled with thieves and murderers. Being from Oakland, I wasn’t overly daunted by this last fact, plus I was going to get a brief tour of the city from a local whom I figured could help me stay safe and alert.

My guide was Lupe, born and raised in Guayaquil. She is a doctor who works in the city four days a week, then travels 3 hours each way by bus to work in rural communities every weekend. She’s a small woman (at 5’2”, I tower over her) but formidable. She speaks at close to the speed of light, tells you exactly what she thinks, and uses her hands to dramatic and sometimes dangerous effect, especially if you are a non-native speaker leaning in close to try to understand what she’s saying.

She met me at the airport and launched into a detailed, rapid-fire story about her work, all the while leading me across a busy six-lane thoroughfare to catch a bus to her house. I realized then that thieves and murderers would probably be the least of my problems. Following the story, keeping track of my belongings, and trying not to get run over by maniacal drivers gave me a new appreciation for the term “multi-tasking”. By the time we squeezed onto the bus and Lupe, my bags, and I wedged into the last two hard plastic seats, I was exhausted. I’d been in Guayaquil 15 minutes.

I still don’t know what exactly Lupe said or what exactly I saw on the bus ride to her house. My receptors were on overdrive. But once I let go of the hope that I could make sense of things, I started to enjoy the chaos. I know we passed a lot of small, crammed together cinderblock buildings with rusty signs. The storefronts were blocked by bars, like at a bank teller window, through which people exchanged cash for soap, fruit, beer, diapers, or whatever else was on the shelves. People were out and about in shorts and flip flops, and we passed a lot of small restaurants that grilled all kinds of animal innards in big street side barbecues.

Lupe lives with her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and eight-month-old nephew in a working-class neighborhood in Guayaquil, which means she lives in a poor, but not desperate, part of the city. Although Lupe comes from a family of professionals—one sister is a pediatrician, another is a teacher, and one of her brothers is an accountant—they earn less than an Ecuadorian middle-class wage. Their house is their only investment. It’s an attractive if quirky building: stairs take you up a flight so you can go down a level and doors seem to appear out of nowhere. After spending a few hours there, I got the hang of the layout, in which everyone has individual space, though most of the time the family is together in the living or dining room.

Lupe and I ate lunch with her sister and mother, who welcomed me like their favorite neighbor who’d just come back from a long trip. We talked about the kind of food I like, how Arnold Schwarzenegger ended up as governor of California, the pending Andean Free Trade Agreement, Ecuadorian celebrities, and the weather. They also made sure I knew what a fabulous city Guayaquil is, from the climate to the variety of things to do to the major economic interests controlling the country from their hometown. Later, Lupe took me on a tour that began as an errand to buy an AIDS prevention video for the health promoters she works with, and that’s when I got a taste of the city her family described.

A couple blocks from her house, we caught the bus near the tributary of the river that runs through Guayaquil, one of the filthiest I’ve ever seen. Trash floated on the caramel-colored water, which rose to the level of the houses that seemed to grow out of the weeds. The bus dropped us off somewhere near the commercial center. I followed Lupe through an immense warren of stalls selling everything, including more bootlegged videos than I’ve ever seen in my life. Lupe, of course, charged through the maze with utter confidence, while I clutched my purse to my side and hustled to keep up with her, lest I be lost in Ecuador’s answer to Marrakech. Then we emerged from the central market onto a vast tree- and skyscraper-lined boulevard and walked several blocks to the Malecon, which fronts the river. But here, the water gleamed a natural green and reflected the thick cumulus clouds and lush vegetation on the opposite bank. And the Malecon itself is a marvel—several miles of boardwalk comprised of botanical gardens, modern sandstone and metal architecture, impressive monuments to Ecuador’s founding fathers, museums, shopping, and gourmet restaurants. The Malecon is proof that Guayaquileños have a vision for a world-class city.

The Malecon leads to an artsy hillside neighborhood called Cerro Santa Ana, a collection of colorful houses, restaurants, shops, bars and galleries. We climbed more than 400 steps to the top of the hill where a new lighthouse, modeled on the original from the 1800s, sits. From there, you have a remarkable view of the city and where the money goes. Directly below the summit is a slum slated for redevelopment as a tourist complex, to the east is the Malecon and the business district, farther afield is the area where Lupe and her family live, which was paved with streets and sidewalks just a few years ago. Next on the city’s list, Lupe told me, is to clean up the river that runs through her neighborhood. Short as my trip was to Guayaquil, I got the impression that just as the people, the weather, and the pace of life are more intense, the process of correcting imbalances between rich and poor is probably that much more painstaking, and changes that much more hard won. But perhaps those incremental victories are part of what makes Lupe so proud of her hometown.