Olha as todo botos e peixe!

I know I know it has been awhile but Ive been living on a boat, sleeping in a hede, sailing down some rivers...you know typical days in brazil. This is bound to be a long one (like basically all of my blog entries but possibly longer) so get ready!

Depois(after) Manaus (super super super touristy city in the amazon, where it is extremely easy to find a good amount of people that speak english), the group motored down the rio negro until we came to the encontrado as aguas (meeting of the waters, which is an incredibly famous spot in the amazon where agua branco (white water) meets agua preto (black water). It was pretty cool and we got to swim, which was actually the awesome part. The white water was pretty cold because it flows down from the tops of the andes into the amazon river and then continues to flow to all the rivers that stem off the amazon, the current is also REALLY strong. The black water kind of feels like a luke warm hot tub (and by that I mean the pool at the Y in providence) and the current is less strong...I used to know why and I wrote it down somewhere but I have forgotten now. After swimming there for awhile we continued motoring in our barco (boat)down the rio branco agora (now) for the entire day. There was so much pretty scenary that I STILL havent had time to process it. Just imagine endless miles of white water (which is sediment filled so I cant exactly say clear but it is still cool) surrounded by pure primary forest...pretty right...and then you hit some farms and some intense deforestation and your vision is a little ruined but dont worry because 2 miles down is more pure primary forest...

This brings me to my first lesson learned about the rainforest. As a comparatively wealthy american conservationalist, it is extremely easy to think of the rainforest as just that...forest. Throw in some pretty animals that are on all those WWF banners and maybe some cool insects and spiders and it gets to you. Why would anyone ever even THINK of ruining this...it is perfect. And it is, but who are we as a developed country with a fairly stable economy and nearly depleted natural resources to march in and say we need to preserve and conserve the rainforest...to make us feel better (insert question mark) Everything I have learned about the rainforest in the US is just about the forest itself. I have never learned about the riberneros (people of the river) or the kilombolos (descendents of escaped slaves) that live there. I wasnt surprised nor ignorant, I was aware that people obviously had to live in and around the forest and sometimes a textbook would lend a sentence or 2 to the indiginous folks but only because they represent a fantasy.

The riberneros and the kilombolos have been living off the forest for hundreds of years. They are subsistance people and until recently, money was of no value to them. They fished and hunted and used slash and burn agriculture as they so pleased, mortality rates were fairly low compared to todays levels so there wasnt much need for modern medicine, the river was clean so drinking wasnt a problem. Then came the big mining companies, soy producers, and palm tree planters. They had money and thus they had power. They had to comply with governmental regulations nonetheless and so they created biological and sustainable development reserves to offset the damage they were doing to the land and the water (through intensive fertilizers), these reserves went right through the land of the riberneros and the kilombolos and thus because there is only permited extraction allowed on these reserves, these people were in violation of the law, when they were never given a say as to whether these companies were allowed to come here in the first place.

Everyone in the program had a chance to live with a ribernero community for 4 days and despite getting really sick, it was one of the best experiences of my life. There were 3 other SIT students in my village so I wasnt completely alone which was nice. My mom was on the community board and worked in the manioc fields (manioc is a very heavily cultivated plant that is used to make flour and many other food products...it is starting to grown on me) she also helped lead a multi-community church called frateridade para a vida da planetea (fraternity for the life of the planet)(which was really cool but more on that in a minute) she seriously had her stuff together. She had no children living with her but she did have a 7 year old daughter living with her sister in another community (having a child out of wedlock is extremely frowned upon and thus she only gets to visit her child sometimes)she had only been to one big city in her life (santarem)and knew absolutely nothing about the united states except that we have a black president. If I hadnt had culture shock before, I definitely experienced it here.

On the first night I went to the church mentioned earlier, traveling a few km up the river to another community where I sat for 2 hours listening to 15 or soo community memebers discussing and listening about the environmental problems surrounding a floresta tropical and how we need not only look to God but also look to the rest of the world to help conserve the forest, not only for the plants and animals but for the people too. It was probably one of the coolest church services I have ever been to. It would naive to think that these people arent educated, there is SO much we have to learn from them.

The second day I got sick. Im not sure what I ingested but at some point after lunch I had the WORST stomach pain I literally have ever had in my life, complete with throwing up everything I ate (gross I know) but it was awful. I suddenly felt completely helpless. The people in the community werent sure what to do because they didnt know what I ate (or drank)and the other SIT memebers were also at a loss. I had no medicine that would help me and while sleeping lessened the pain, I couldnt drink or eat anything. Finally, at some point in the evening a community memeber put me in a canoe and motored me over to the main boat that was anchored (thankfully) close to my community. I took some medicine and was finally able to eat some food and the next day I returned to the community.

The third day despite medicine I was still slightly sick and slept for about 10 hours. I ate nothing and felt significantly better sometime around 5pm but I missed out on working in the manioc fields, fishing, and (watching) people hunt, which kind of sucked but I seriously needed rest. By the last day I was completely better and had no desire to leave. I spent the morning with almost the entrire community and the other students painting nails and learning about the community history and how everyone felt about the bauxite mining company that was nearby. It was such an incredible experience and completely solidified that these are the types of communities I want to work with after I finish school.

After the rural homestay it was one NGO after another (with some GOs sprinkled in, I learned about sustainable community development, anti-mining activism, government sanctioned conservation projects,sustainable logging, governmental amazonian research projects and soy. We visited 2 kilombolo communities and learned some local remidies for the common cold among other things. Before I knew it it was the last night on the boat and time to go to Santarem where I spent my last day and a half and then flew back to Belem, which I found I missed a lot. I will never forget the completely clear nights where the only thing you could see for miles was the milky way, the heavy boat roaking storms (where I managed to lose 7 pairs of underwear at once...opa), or the incredible sunsets.

Thats all I have time for, for now. Hopefully I will update again soon

Tchau!