AmaZOOnica

This posting shows several pictures of a wildlife refuge located in the jungle some hour and forty five minutes out of Tena. The place is called AmaZOOnica. It is run by a Swiss foundation. Access to this refuge is by motorized canoe. We took a chance of just stopping on the road a hundred yards from the landing. A boat happened to come by and give us a ride to the refuge. (We were lucky several times that day.)

The refuge has about 300 birds and animals with some 60 being monkeys. Most of the animals have had a troubled past. Some were cute pets that the owners wanted to get rid of when they got older and hard to handle. Others were confiscated from bird and animal smugglers. Some were shot and injured or the babies were rescued after the mother was shot.

Managing a situations where animals and birds come in and some are set free is a complicated job. Birds and animals may or may not accept the new comer. Releasing animals has to be done at some distance away. Sometimes the cage is left in the new location and after some time the doors are open. Some animals raised as pets can never be released because they never acquired hunting skills.

The people who work at AmaZOOnica are mostly young volunteers from Europe with a few from Canada and the US. They live at the refuge from two to six months at a cost to the volunteer of $100 a month for food and lodging. The Quechua Indians who live in the area are being taught to manage the refuge in the future. The families live on site. There is an elementary school to educate the children. Because of anticipated long term relations with the Swiss foundation, the school also teaches Germans to the students. So, the Quechua student know their own language, Spanish, German and some English. We happened to meet one of the volunteer teachers at our hotel in Tena the day before. She invited us to visit the school. The picture below shows two Swiss kids with Quechua children in the background.

Get This Monkey Off My Back

This is one of those blog postings that will give all the wise-guy readers ammunition about "so which one is the monkey?" and a million other lines. So, fire away! The picture above shows Tiffany Miller with her new found friend. We were visiting an island zoo in Tena. Tena is about a two and a half hour bus trip north of Puyo. About one third of the ride was like riding a jackhammer. They are slowly improving the roads, however.

I wouldn't say I froze when this guy jumped on me, but I would say I scratched my head for about an hour after he got off. I think I now know why monkeys spend a lot of time scratching and looking through their fur.

Just outside of Puyo, we visited an botanical "farm". The owner has spent 28 years collecting plants which are going exstinct here in the rain forest. This is our fourth visit to this place over a several year period. We have over 250 pictures from this botanical "farm". Nathan & Tiffany are beside a "walking tree" which tends to gravitate toward additional sunlight over the years. The new "roots" grow out of the trunk all the way from a foot to three feet above the ground. New ones keep coming and old ones rot off.

The food of the rain forest people include a wide variety of natural things. The picture above was taken in a market in Tena. The large bowl is full of live grubs. This is a delicacy which we did NOT try. They are "roasted" in leaves much like the way they cook fish which we showed in a posting some time back. There are just some foods we can't get past the mind let alone the mouth. Be sure to click on this picture so you get a full screen view on your computer.

Future postings will include more pictures and details of three very full days of travel in this area.

Tena, Ecuador

The posting tonight is from Tena, Ecuador. We decided to take a short weekend trip about two and a half hours north of Puyo by bus. About half the trip was on excellent roads and the other half was on roads under construction or should have been under construction. I think an excellent business here would be the selling of heavy duty suspension systems for busses.

Tena is a river town. Two major rivers join just a few hundred yards from our hotel. The island that makes up the upper fork of this joining of two rivers is a sort of natural zoo. We spent some time attempting to photograph monkeys in the trees until we discovered that if you stand still under the smaller trees, they will jump on you and sit on your shoulder and head. After this happened several times, I now know why monkeys scratch a lot. I felt the need to work my hair over a number of times.

My nephew, Nathan Miller and his wife Tiffany are making the trip with us. Seeing the rainforest for the first time, they seem to enjoy it and conclude it is a ¨wow¨experience.

Tomorrow (we are skipping work) we will travel back down south a bit to see several river communities and will possibly visit an animal rescue zoo where the animals of the area are nursed back to health. The rainforest does not present an opportunity to see wild life because of excess hunting and cutting of the forest. If one were to travel inland far enough, this would change. However, none of us are in condition nor have the time to try this challenging trip. A few people ¨cheat¨by riding down the rivers for several days to say they have ventured into the primary jungle.

We have run in to a number of Americans here in Tena who took a five hour bus trip from Quito to do some white water rafting. We have had a couple of interesting conversations.

Wednesday Activities

We did not have school on Wednesday. The students performed a flag pledge marching program in the afternoon with all the pom and circumstance that this culture can muster which is substantial. The above picture shows a bit about this ceremony.

The teachers spent the morning hammering out a mission and vision statement for the school. This is new activity for them. We were very pleased with the process. Sharp disagreements were evident about the wording of both documents. To be able to separate issues from people in this culture is remarkable. We believe they now understand why it is so important that the staff go through the frustrations of creating these documents. Ownership was clearly evident at the conclusion of the session. Moreover, I think it was evident that they actually enjoyed the process.

The staff will conclude the discipline policy for the school at their next meeting next week. This has been an 8 hour process so far. We will next tackle some basics in setting academic standards. So, some progress here!

We look forward to the arrival of Nathan and Tiffany Miller from Moline, IL tomorrow afternoon. We will be doing some local touring and so there may be some missing blog posts. Hopefully, we will have some interesting pictures to post later.

A Routine Sunday Morning

We often forget the routine things of life as we go about our business. This series of pictures shows a part of our Sunday morning. Fortunately, MJ carries the camera most of the time and so pictures like this are possible when we think to take them. We have about a 20 minute walk to church. We often take the bus and walk the last few blocks. So the little guys are out shining shoes and a quick shine is available.

As we approach our home, the neighbors have some different looking chickens running around. (Many people keep chickens in their yards all over town). This "fuzz ball" was just different and didn't mind posing for a shot.

There is a little compound of houses built largely of scrap lumber emerging about a block from us. It has been interesting watching the construction in slow motion (over a 6 months period of time). The picture below shows the huge amount of clothes that need to be dried from the people who live in this compound. Of course, the houses are just filled with children. The almost daily rain provides a real challenge to ever get this amount of wash dry.

And finally arriving back at the apartment, the picture below shows our compound, the flowers and "the boss". The blue tank is the rain water supply. because of a number of interruptions lately in city water supply, this has been a real life saver

The bottom line is that life here is a kaleidoscope of sites, sounds and just plain different things.

Pantyhose And Mis-communication

Communication is a problem among people everywhere. Working between two languages with both parties much less than fluent causes even more problems. Consider the following rather funny incident:

The Pre-Kinder teacher came to school Monday with a giant run in her hose of which she was really not pleased. One of the cooks retails hose from her sister's shop and so has some on hand for sale.

The teacher understood that the cook only had hose on hand that might look like something from a XXX movie. MJ understood that XXX mean size and she imagined hose for a huge lady. MJ's co-teacher was telling me that the teacher was going to the kitchen to get three eggs. (XXX sounded like three eggs in her accent). I couldn't imagine the relationship between hose and three eggs but (for once) didn't ask.

Later in the day it came out that three of us had very different concepts of what happened:
1. hose that looked like something from a XXX movie
2. a huge pair of hose for someone wearing XXX
3. And Omer, who is out to lunch, wondering why a problem with a pair of hose involves three eggs in the kitchen.

Most of us had a good laugh over this one.

We now wonder how many of these kinds of situations go undetected and causes us to draw very bad conclusions.

A Different Way of Doing Business

Meetings with the teacher group has been very interesting the last week. We had two staff meeting where the purpose was to write a discipline policy. The interesting part is that this is their first experience of defining a problem and writing solutions. Prior experience has always been a top down approach where the solutions were given to them by the "powers that be."

Not having experience in approaching a problem could have been very difficult. Some thirty questions or ideas to ponder were written by us. We had a bit of difficulty in that the points, even though they were intended as "starter questions" became the only thing looked at. By the second meeting we started to get past that issue.

Discussion was slow at first. By the second meeting things started to take off. It was very interesting to see the experience of discovering that other teachers had common problems unfold. This really seemed to generate the conversation.

Next meeting we will be getting into the "consequences". Hopefully, the concept of collaboration will kick in as well as the power that collaboration can generate. A most interesting experience!