Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Going Deeper
I'm not sure if I said before or not that we went to the Zoo with Shaun, but we had a lot of fun and held a boa and just had a great time seeing the animals that we eat :) and see some of the animals that we see dead alive. :) That was last time in Iquitos.
When we left Iquitos I felt (as i always feel leaving) a nervous feeling of wondering what will happen and how things will go in the village. When we got there us girls decided to go out everyday with our Peruvian friend to share stories at a different house everyday. We met a lot of really cool people this way and this trip had a LOT of joy in playing with the kids and talking to the people. We built a lot of relationships and everything went really really well!
Then the last of the three weeks we went deeper in the jungle to the village we had previously visited we were well received when we arrived, we met with all of the women of the village and asked questions about their culture (marriage traditions, about having babies, burial traditions etc.) we learned quite a bit. When they decide to marry a man will come and ask the father if he can marry his daughter, if the dad agrees they drink a lot and then are married by a little ceremony complete with a TON of drinking and getting drunk. They are usually not legally married and no one in the village is legally married. Because the village that we are in is becoming more and more "westernized" they are now all wanting to be legally married and are working to have that happen. They also are all learning Spanish and only one woman feels very comfortable with speaking Spanish, most of the other women understand Spanish but like us have a difficult time or are shy to speak spanish for fear of mistakes. The second day we were invited to a farm (by we i talk about the girls as it is not cultural to spend very much time with our guys). We made a fifteen minute trek through the jungle, across logs to cross creeks and everything. The mosquitoes were bad before but in the deep jungle they're very very very bad and HUGE!!! :) surprisingly i made it out fairly unscathed by their attacks on my already low blood supply :). we got there and there were a bunch of plantain plants and baby (apple) banana, and some type of banana/plantain that is very thick in the body it's very good and the closest to an american type of banana that i've had so far. YUM!! The ladies chopped a bunch of bunches down and started tying leaves around the bunches to form a type of jungle rope to use to carry the bunches on their backs. they had brought a basket back and they loaded it up with papaya and bananas and told me to carry it. I have some pictures i can hopefully add to facebook and maybe here of me and another woman demonstrating how they carry the baskets and bunches resting on their backs with the majority of the weight on their foreheads though. This was surprisingly not incredibly difficult for me (though i had a very light load) we made the fifteen minute trek back which was quite a bit more difficult when we tried to cross the creeks with the extra weight especially if you know of how handicapped my balance is.... This was deffinently probably the most fun we had in the three week stint we had this time.
The next day we were told that some people were mad that we weren't just giving the people handouts and the village was going to vote to see if we would be asked to leave the village. This was a HUGE discouragement. We were so incredibly disappointed at that point. and i didn't know who we could talk to with out them becoming more angry with us. I spent a lot of time in my hammock reading after this just to get a fresh perspective and some encouragement by thinking a lot. Then they told us that we were able to stay but that there was a big festival called carnival coming up and that they would need the place we were staying to celebrate so we would have to move. However because we had another family with us with two girls ages 3 and 7 we decided to leave when it started because it was all about drinking and being drunk the whole time. We spent the rest of the time tip toeing on egg shells but at the end of the trip the women began bringing us gifts of friendship and we began to feel more comfortable with them. they established a list of five women that we could trade with each day. we were asked to trade with only the five women designated for each day to trade for food or what ever we needed. However our goal was not to trade for things since the only reason we wanted to trade was to not establish a mindset of "here are white people what can we get from them". Unfortunately this mindset seems to be already throughly established... This is something i think about often hoping that it will change. The people are wonderful though and despite how little they have they share everything, we try to share with them as well and build relationships in that way.
The boys have great relationships with the men and are trading English lessons with them for lessons in their language. The end of the trip was great, the last day we were there they were beginning to kick of carnival chasing people down and throwing them in the river. They shot a pig and because they used one of our shot gun shells to do it they gave us some meat YUM!! I've never seen a pig being butchered until now, it's quite entertaining. :) Then some people came to work on the well they have in the village and that night they showed Jesus of Nazareth in the tribal language (they really have done a great job in translating these movies into EVERY language) But by the time they came to the baptism of Jesus it started raining so they hurried and tore the equipment down so it wouldn't get ruined. This was a big encouragement. Apparently an american missionary pays a crew to go around and work with wells in the villages and then they show the Jesus film in the villages that night!
Think about us as we are eaten alive by all sorts of blood sucking insects, it is really a miracle that non of us have gotten malaria or dengue yet! We're loving the rest here in Iquitos and are excited to go to a movie some time this week. It's super encouraging to talk to friends online and to get some good familiar food in our system.
Food by the way is not bad or crazy different. We eat some sort of plantain for every meal though and usually will eat at least one form of starch for every meal if not up two three different things of starch for example a normal meal would be boiled yucca, fried plantains, rice, and beans or if you're lucky some sort of fish and if your really lucky chicken or other meat. My favorite type of fish so far is the Pirana because though all fish is super bony it is familiar enough that i'm beginning to get the meat off of the fish with out always having a mouth full of bones. The only real meal that they eat is lunch. breakfast and supper are usually something like oatmeal in the morning (very soupy served as a hot drink) or coffee.
Any way send some questions if you want me to give you some other info... i don't always know what to write about so just go ahead and ask what ever... :) love you and pray for you all often!
When we left Iquitos I felt (as i always feel leaving) a nervous feeling of wondering what will happen and how things will go in the village. When we got there us girls decided to go out everyday with our Peruvian friend to share stories at a different house everyday. We met a lot of really cool people this way and this trip had a LOT of joy in playing with the kids and talking to the people. We built a lot of relationships and everything went really really well!
Then the last of the three weeks we went deeper in the jungle to the village we had previously visited we were well received when we arrived, we met with all of the women of the village and asked questions about their culture (marriage traditions, about having babies, burial traditions etc.) we learned quite a bit. When they decide to marry a man will come and ask the father if he can marry his daughter, if the dad agrees they drink a lot and then are married by a little ceremony complete with a TON of drinking and getting drunk. They are usually not legally married and no one in the village is legally married. Because the village that we are in is becoming more and more "westernized" they are now all wanting to be legally married and are working to have that happen. They also are all learning Spanish and only one woman feels very comfortable with speaking Spanish, most of the other women understand Spanish but like us have a difficult time or are shy to speak spanish for fear of mistakes. The second day we were invited to a farm (by we i talk about the girls as it is not cultural to spend very much time with our guys). We made a fifteen minute trek through the jungle, across logs to cross creeks and everything. The mosquitoes were bad before but in the deep jungle they're very very very bad and HUGE!!! :) surprisingly i made it out fairly unscathed by their attacks on my already low blood supply :). we got there and there were a bunch of plantain plants and baby (apple) banana, and some type of banana/plantain that is very thick in the body it's very good and the closest to an american type of banana that i've had so far. YUM!! The ladies chopped a bunch of bunches down and started tying leaves around the bunches to form a type of jungle rope to use to carry the bunches on their backs. they had brought a basket back and they loaded it up with papaya and bananas and told me to carry it. I have some pictures i can hopefully add to facebook and maybe here of me and another woman demonstrating how they carry the baskets and bunches resting on their backs with the majority of the weight on their foreheads though. This was surprisingly not incredibly difficult for me (though i had a very light load) we made the fifteen minute trek back which was quite a bit more difficult when we tried to cross the creeks with the extra weight especially if you know of how handicapped my balance is.... This was deffinently probably the most fun we had in the three week stint we had this time.
The next day we were told that some people were mad that we weren't just giving the people handouts and the village was going to vote to see if we would be asked to leave the village. This was a HUGE discouragement. We were so incredibly disappointed at that point. and i didn't know who we could talk to with out them becoming more angry with us. I spent a lot of time in my hammock reading after this just to get a fresh perspective and some encouragement by thinking a lot. Then they told us that we were able to stay but that there was a big festival called carnival coming up and that they would need the place we were staying to celebrate so we would have to move. However because we had another family with us with two girls ages 3 and 7 we decided to leave when it started because it was all about drinking and being drunk the whole time. We spent the rest of the time tip toeing on egg shells but at the end of the trip the women began bringing us gifts of friendship and we began to feel more comfortable with them. they established a list of five women that we could trade with each day. we were asked to trade with only the five women designated for each day to trade for food or what ever we needed. However our goal was not to trade for things since the only reason we wanted to trade was to not establish a mindset of "here are white people what can we get from them". Unfortunately this mindset seems to be already throughly established... This is something i think about often hoping that it will change. The people are wonderful though and despite how little they have they share everything, we try to share with them as well and build relationships in that way.
The boys have great relationships with the men and are trading English lessons with them for lessons in their language. The end of the trip was great, the last day we were there they were beginning to kick of carnival chasing people down and throwing them in the river. They shot a pig and because they used one of our shot gun shells to do it they gave us some meat YUM!! I've never seen a pig being butchered until now, it's quite entertaining. :) Then some people came to work on the well they have in the village and that night they showed Jesus of Nazareth in the tribal language (they really have done a great job in translating these movies into EVERY language) But by the time they came to the baptism of Jesus it started raining so they hurried and tore the equipment down so it wouldn't get ruined. This was a big encouragement. Apparently an american missionary pays a crew to go around and work with wells in the villages and then they show the Jesus film in the villages that night!
Think about us as we are eaten alive by all sorts of blood sucking insects, it is really a miracle that non of us have gotten malaria or dengue yet! We're loving the rest here in Iquitos and are excited to go to a movie some time this week. It's super encouraging to talk to friends online and to get some good familiar food in our system.
Food by the way is not bad or crazy different. We eat some sort of plantain for every meal though and usually will eat at least one form of starch for every meal if not up two three different things of starch for example a normal meal would be boiled yucca, fried plantains, rice, and beans or if you're lucky some sort of fish and if your really lucky chicken or other meat. My favorite type of fish so far is the Pirana because though all fish is super bony it is familiar enough that i'm beginning to get the meat off of the fish with out always having a mouth full of bones. The only real meal that they eat is lunch. breakfast and supper are usually something like oatmeal in the morning (very soupy served as a hot drink) or coffee.
Any way send some questions if you want me to give you some other info... i don't always know what to write about so just go ahead and ask what ever... :) love you and pray for you all often!
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