Amazonia

Alipuncha! (that´s Quechua for ¨good day¨)
En la semana pasada vivimos en la Amazonia con Quechuas sin agua limpia, electricidad, y baños en uno dormitorio. this past week we lived in the amazon with Quechuas without clean water, electricity, and bathrooms in one room. it was a pretty cool experience. on sunday we piled into 2 pickup trucks and drove 45 minutes to the Puni River. i sat in the back of one of the trucks with yuri and chris and the backpacks in the pouring rain. In the Amazon. i´ve realized that everything sounds way more badass when i can add ¨in the Amazon¨ to it. so we got to the river and put on rubber boots and piled all our big backpacks in makeshift canoes (the kind where it´s a hollowed out piece of wood and someone stands in the back and pushes the canoe with a stick...like italy...except the Amazon). then they ferried us in the dark across the river in threes. the canoes were super tippy and it was terrifying. once half of us got to the other side we followed our guide Gloria from Quito down the wrong path the opposite way of the community. granted, it´s pitch black out and 2 of the 6 of us have headlamps on (i was one of them). it was also the Amazonian jungle and we were wearing 2 heavy backpacks and very tired. but eventually we made it and crossed a bridge made out of 2 logs next to each other to our cabin. we all shared one room where there were 6 sets of bunk beds. i slept above taylor in the mosquito nets they provided for us...thank goodness. then we slept. the next morning we got up to have a delicious breakfast of eggs, toast, pineapple, oatmeal, tea, hot cocoa, coffee, and other goodies. our food was basically like that for the whole week. it was kind of disappointing that we didn´t have Amazonian food, but it was good tasty food that gave us the energy we needed for our work. then we did morning movement outside. when we stepped outside of our cabin i saw my first tarantula. it was just scuttling around the ground until yuri and taylor killed it with machetes. then we went to work. we cleared an area of forest with machetes. i cut down banana trees and we saw really cool bugs. a woman threw a snake at taylor and we killed it. there were gigantic grasshoppers with fangs that kept landing on hannah. a lot of the insects were really colorful and really cool. the people of the community (called Punirumiyaku) were ridiculously strong and worked all day without stopping. it was hot in the sun on the Equator and i had to take a thousand water breaks. i got a pretty sweet blister too. after working we had lunch, rested, and worked some more. we all smelled great, had a lot of bug bites, and were disgustingly sweaty. after work we bathed in the river. it was really fun. we all got in our bathing suits and shoes and swam in the puni river, washed off, and then played in the mini rapids that were farther downstream. it was super fun. after bathing we went to a dance they were putting on for us. we watched them do some indigenous dances and then taylor volunteered me to dance. i went behind the gym, put on the skirt they gave me, and did an indigenous dance with 5 women. it was wicked fun. then everyone got up and danced so i wasn´t so singled out. it was a great time. then we had dinner, and went to bed. the next day i went to the school. it´s one building with three classes, and one teacher named Arturo. Miguel and i helped out with the younger kids. i worked with a little 8 year old named Sandy who was adorable. we wrote letters and numbers and glued stuff. it was great. the kids are all amazing. Ermel and Henry were the first two we met the first night. they´re 12 and 11 and cousins. then we met Edison, who´s 8 and also awesome. the kids immediately loved us and constantly climbed all over me and max. they loved to race with us too. then we had lunch and after lunch miguel and i helped do manual labor. this involved carrying ridiculously heavy logs to a canoe in order to have lumber to build a cabin. it was literally backbreaking. it took three of us to carry a log and then yuri´s shoulder popped out. then it popped back in and chris went to help other people carry a log and yuri and i carried a log by ourselves. i honestly thought my back was going to snap in half. it was so heavy. then, as we´re trying to catch our breath, some men from the community walked by, each carrying a log by themselves like it was nothing. these people were ridiculously strong. after that we learned how to make bracelets and jewelry. they showed us how to make the string from a certain plant, beads from a certain plant, and then we helped make a bracelet. most of us were too tired to move, however. so then we ate dinner and went to bed. wednesday we worked on the school. we sanded a wall on the outside and painted it bage. then we went inside and started to design a mural for the front and we scrubbed walls. these walls were covered with dirt and graffiti and as we scrubbed we sang ¨it´s a hard not life.¨ it was pretty fun. some boys our age from the community showed up and started hitting on me and maya, especially maya and it was really creepy. they all became obsessed with maya. after work a shaman came and did a demonstration. he drank some sort of alcohol, spit it onto a plant, and cleansed each one of us by brushing our heads with the plant and then spitting on our heads and sucking the bad energy out. it was really cool. when it was my turn he took a cigarette and did the cleansing the real way which involved blowing tobacco in my face. fun times. then we had dinner and went to bed. thursday we went fishing. we trekked upstream and crossed the river in canoes. chris and miguel just swam across, but they were the only 2 wearing bathing suits. then we each took part of the net and waded into the water. by the time the water got past the top of my rubber boots, i had accepted the fact that i was going to get wet. once the net was in place they told us how they drug the fish with a special herb they put in the water and that slows them down. then i jumped, fully clothed, into the river and looked underneath with goggles and just chilled with people. we played a game where i jumped on kyle and we´d both go under. it was sweet. then we went over to where they were fishing and fished. now, this fishing is very primitive. we went underwater with goggles, looked under rocks, poked fish with spears, and then caught them with our hands. i personally didn´t catch any, but kyle got 2 and one swam up my shirt when i was sitting on the rocks. it was wicked fun. i fished with spears. IN THE AMAZON. after lunch we started to paint a mural. we made a giant butterfly, a snake, monkey, toucan, flowers, whatever we wanted. maya didn´t come because she wasn´t feeling well, so the creepy kid who was hitting on us on wednesday, named Renee, focused his attention on me. he literally stood there telling me he wants to have sex with me. it was super awkward. but then maya came and he creeped on her instead. after work we made chocolate and had homemade hot chocolate and the fish we caught for dinner. it was way cool. after dinner we went to bed. friday we went into the jungle. this wasn´t a normal hike. Francisco led the way with a machete and cut a path for us to walk through. we were really roughing it. he told us about different plants and their medicinal purposes and we waded in waist deep water and then went swimming in a stream. it was a really cool hike through a tropical rain forest. then we had lunch and finished the mural. after that i hung out with the kids at the river while taylor bathed and then we went back, put on dry clothes and went to the village meeting place. the kids did an indigenous dance for us, sang a song, and then the community made us dinner. there was cinnamon tea from a tree that we had seen earlier, heart of palm, palm leaves, more palm stuff, and corn. it was really cool. after that everyone went back to the cabin except me, max, miguel, yuri, chris, and janiva. we danced. i danced with a ton of people. they wouldn´t let me sit out. whenever someone didn´t ask me to dance edison would. he´s 8. it was fun. then one of the girls made me dance with max for a neverending song which was a lot of fun and then max made me dance with renee. that was awkward because the whole time he was telling me how beautiful i was and how he wanted me to stay and all that stuff. then i went to bed. this morning we got up, and ermel paddled us across the river and we went to tena, got on a bus, and went to baños. in tena we met up with the other group. it was so much fun to see them. they haven´t been roughing it as much as we have. so that´s cool for us. we´re in baños this weekend getting massages and chilling in civilization. that´s all for now!
love,
Kate

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