You Shall Not Pass!

If one makes plans in the Rio Verde communities, past the dirt road turn-off in Lita, one must take the weather into account. Otherwise, one may die.

On the road to Rio Verde - Horse Crossing Muddy Water

The wednesday afternoon I drove to collect Oscar from Chota was heavy with a chaotic spectacle of clouds. Low, wispy clouds stretched across the valley, like the languid smoke from countless smouldering embers hidden between the sugar cane fields. Thick, puffy clouds emanated from beyond the distant eastern mountains, seething up stupendously to the inner reaches of space. I drove slowly, fighting with my curiosity and wonder to keep my eyes on the road. Around the mountain bend a flat crown of clouds remained visible behind. When I arrived at the site, I mentioned what I had seen to Oscar and joined him for two hours of work. When we departed for Ana Lucia’s house in Ibarra, neither of us thought to what the clouds might portend.

On the road to Rio Verde - Villagers Returning

Thursday morning came and we woke early at the sound of our alarm clocks. By a quarter past six we stood in front of the door to Pablo’s offices, waiting for our ride to Lita. The streets were empty. Along came a young man on a bicycle and sat down beside us. He nodded our way. “Are they often late?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said.

At half past six, one of Pablo’s employees arrived in the organisation’s shabby Mazda 4x4 double-cabin pickup. As we prepared to load our tools and my saxophone into the cabin, I asked him if there would be much cargo in the bed. “No, not much,” he replied. We placed our gear in the cabin, thinking to move some of it to the bed before leaving the city. Another pickup, a massive Toyota Hilux, pulled into the space behind the Mazda. Another of Pablo’s employees stepped down from the passenger side door and waved to us. We exchanged greetings and helped her load a few bags more into the Mazda cabin, then the two employees, the young man, Oscar and I boarded and we left behind the quiet sidewalk.

Chicks in Boxes

We stopped on Fray Vacas Galindo, beside the old railroad tracks leading to Highway 35 and out of the city. The driver made a call on his cellphone. He left the car, still talking on his phone, and approached the only open shutter on the block. From the cabin we watched him negotiate a deal with someone inside. The other employee turned around in her seat and asked us to help load some boxes onto the bed. As we climbed out of the cabin and picked up the boxes I had a good view of the dozens of little chickens inside each one. This was the cargo for the chicken-raising project in Rio Verde Medio. Next came four 25 kg sacks of chicken feed. Between the 100 kg of feed and the 70 chicks in boxes there was a full load on the bed.

Across the valley and beyond the first of the eastern mountains, Oscar woke me from a doze. “Look,” he said, pointing to outside the passenger window. I did not see what he intended me to. Realising my confusion, he added “The waterfall.” A wide stream of water was cascading down from the peak of a mountain on the northern side of the Mira River. On our last two visits this waterfall had been a thin white line barely visible from the highway. “It’s been raining here,” said the driver in response to our conversation about the volume of the waterfall. “Jamie saw huge clouds on this side of the mountain range, towards Lita, yesterday,” Oscar mentioned. “You have been to Lita in all sorts of conditions, haven’t you?” I asked the driver.

“Yes.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to pass the roads to the Rio Verde communities?”

“We won’t have any problems today. I have seen worse than this.”

Thinking that he must not have seen the clouds I had seen, I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

When I awoke, we were at the military checkpoint just before Lita. A soldier was directing the pickup into the small parking area and had asked for Oscar and I to bring our passports to a little desk underneath a tarp. We crossed the two lanes to the desk and I sat down on a bench against one of the three waist-high walls. Still bleary from sleep, I heard someone say, “Remove your jacket.” I looked at the soldier sitting behind the desk. “You cannot wear that jacket here,” he repeated. I looked at him. “What?” I asked. “Your jacket, you have to take it off here.” Finally my brain clicked on. I began to unzip my military camouflage jacket while asking, “You mean here at the checkpoint, right?”

“Yes, you cannot wear that jacket at the checkpoint.”

When we were back in the car I turned to Oscar. “I’ll have to find some military camouflage pants.”

Former Road to Rio Verde

Three minutes later we were in Lita, turning onto the dirt road. As we climbed the first steep incline, rounded a corner and began to climb again, a siren interrupted us. The driver pulled over and we watched as first an ambulance, then a pickup truck with seven people in the cabin and about a dozen crowded together on the bed, and then a police pickup with

Road to Rio Verde - Waiting at the bridge

another dozen people packed onto the bed passed on our left. Oscar looked at me. “I don’t think we have luck with the roads today,” he said in English. “No,” I replied, “I don’t think we’ll be doing any painting today.” Continuing along the road for several minutes we came to the first clay bank, an enormous red wall of earth which usually presented us with the first sign of how the roads further along would be. On our last visit we encountered a heavy truck unable to pass, but I managed to drive the pickup as it had fishtailed through several puddles of mud. Today was different; there was no road. The road was there where it passed over the river on a short bridge, and it turned right to head in the direction of the slope -- and that was where a lake of mud occupied the ground where the road normally continued, two small trees bent over in the middle of the lake. There would be no passing through to the Rio Verde communities.

Road to Rio Verde - Young men and their bikes.

As the employees waited around trying to postpone the inevitable decision of returning to Ibarra, mission incomplete, I climbed onto the mud bank to take some pictures. While I was taking photos of the slide, two men from the Rio Verde Medio community arrived on foot. They spoke briefly with the driver and then set out into the jungle. When I had climbed back down and cleaned the mud from my boots in the river, I asked him what they had said. “Someone on a motorbike was washed off the road last night by one of the landslides. They found his body under the slide this morning.”

Chicks in Baskets

We began to discuss our options. The employees tried contacting Pablo, but neither of them had reception. We waited. I took more photos. A trickle of Rio Verde Medio community members began to arrive, and then a stream, until half of the community had marched through the mud to reach us. All at once we began to engage in activity, moving the chicks from boxes to leaf-lined baskets, deconstructing the cardboard boxes to make basket lids, lashing the feed bags to their horses. As each basket was filled with chicks someone would heft it onto their back and start out across the lake of mud. When all of the cargo had been distributed and taken away we bid farewell and a safe voyage back to the remaining members of the community and watched as three young men who had arrived in the meantime hauled a motorbike through the mud. The employees tried once more to contact Pablo, could not, and at last made the decision to abandon the rest of our mission and return to Ibarra.

Road to Rio Verde - Help Arrives

On the drive back Oscar and I were discussing the efficiency of weekly drives to Lita that might or might-not end in a quick return. “We have no way of knowing if the roads are going to be cleared by the time we arrive or not,” chimed in the driver. “So you drive down regardless of the weather and if the roads are blocked you return to Ibarra?” I asked. He nodded. “That is a remarkably inefficient way of conducting business.” Oscar looked at me. “Jamie,” he said, “better to be inefficient and alive, than efficient and dead.” I looked out the window. Thick torrents of water gushed down the mountainside. Above, the open sky shone blue.

The way back - May 2013

Near Lita - Caña guadua house

Near Lita - View from 2nd floor of Caña guadua house

We followed the pickup Pablo was in about 5 minutes further east on the highway to a small dirt driveway into which the pickup turned abruptly. We followed, parked and climbed out of the car. Several baby pigs squealed as they sprinted past us to their pens. We continued down the path to where we were flanked by two large enclosures: a guinea-pig farm and a chicken farm. Pablo asked the staff in the guinea-pig farm to gather two of their older guinea-pigs who were no longer very useful in breeding. 

Near Lita - Caña guadua walls
and ceiling beams

Caña Guadua - "Windows"

Meanwhile we continued over a small bridge and emerged into a clearing. In the center of the clearing was a two-story building. From the stone and cement foundation up, the house was built entirely of caña guadua, a large, wide-tubed plant in the bamboo family. Caña guadua can grow up to 25 meters long and is quite a stout building material, as we now saw before us. Caña guadua pillars hold up a caña guadua floor, serve as walls, and meet ceiling rounds of caña guadua where structural parts of the building are bolted together into a huge caña guadua clot above the second floor walls. Pablo explained that this was a center for rehabilitation -- I can only image that means for people who have served time in prison, as Pablo’s organisation also works to provide education to incarcerated folk -- and therefore everything had been built quickly, easily, and cheaply. Caña guadua satisfies all those criteria, the only lengthy part of building with it being the curing of the wood which takes about 25 days . 

Near Lita - Where the supports meet.

We explored the facility, took some pictures, then headed back to the pickup. As we passed the guinea-pig farm, a staff member came out and handed us a thick plastic mesh bag with two guinea-pig in its bottom. “These are for Ana Lucia,” Pablo said. “And what’s she going to do, keep them as pets,” I asked sarcastically, not sure that she would be happy with what came next for the guinea-pigs. “No, she’ll kill them,” Pablo answered flatly. “Are you sure? Because I’m not so sure she will be able to,” I contested. “You don’t know what Ana Lucia is capable of,” Pablo persisted, “she’ll kill them.” I

Near Lita - River-stone Foundation

pressed. “Why don’t you kill them, Pablo?” He looked away. “I could never kill a guinea-pig,” he answered sheepishly. “But you have no problem eating them?” “Jamie, I know it's not quite all logically correct… but let it be, it’s who I am.” I shrugged, and decided that I should at least know how to kill a guinea-pig so I could explain the method to whoever accepted the task. I asked the staff member who had brought the two guinea-pigs to us. “Well,” she began to explain, “there are two ways.” “What’s the easiest?” I asked. “You hold it by the back of the neck and cut right here,” she said, gesturing across the throat,

Near Lita - Caña Guadua steps

“and hold them up while they bleed out.” “And what’s the other way?” “You smash their nose into a rock and their eyes pop out.” “You have to be precise with that, don’t you?” “Yes, but if you do it correctly they die instantly.” I nodded, satisfied that I could ensure a quick death for the two unfortunate guinea-pigs. Really though I shouldn’t have been worried, as I’ve since learned that almost everyone in Ibarra knows how to kill a guinea-pig.

Our trip wouldn’t have been complete without giving a ride to a family at a small strip of restaurants all the way back to Ibarra, or running into a storm and then a landslide which covered the mountain highway with a layer of football sized rocks. By eight p.m. we had finally arrived back in Ibarra, safe and with no damage to the pickup.

Encounter with the Awa - part II

Rio Verde Community - Scenic view from village

The next village was only 5 minutes further along the dirt road, practically at its end. What a different village this one! The shoulder of the hill had been completely leveled here and five sturdy wooden buildings stood in a row on the side of a dirt playing field. At the far end of the field was a tiny playground with a swing-set. Beyond that was the schoolhouse. Pablo had taken us to this village, he said, to ask a favour of us. One of the young women here had wanted to continue her education after completing the village schooling. Her parents had separated when she was younger and neither of them would now sponsor her. The village head-person wouldn't sponsor her. Finally, her grandmother had stepped in to assist her.

Rio Verde Community - The Road Up

The young woman had gone to Quito to study at a beauty school and then returned to Ibarra after her graduation. Young adults who leave the village to study in big cities seldom return to the village, Pablo explained, but this young woman had wanted to come back. So now her grandmother had asked Pablo if he could put in a small beauty salon for her. Nothing overly complicated, "but most of the girls here reach a certain age and get pregnant and that's it for their education. I think if we build a little room for this young woman to give manicures in it will show the girls in the village that they can do something more, they can become professionals if they want to." "As long as I get a manicure I'll help," I joked. Pablo gave me a serious look. "No, Jamie, I don't think she's actually going to give many manicures, but if the people in the village want to, they can come see what it would be like, they can have some excitement, and they can fill their imaginations with different possibilities."

Rio Verde Community - New Construction

Before introducing us to the grandparents, Pablo led us around the premises, again with me acting as his surrogate photographer. The buildings here are all in much better condition and there are two new facilities, a row of immaculate toilet stalls and an assembly hall. I wondered who had built these facilities and why they weren't going to help with the beauty salon. A sneaking suspicion arose in me that Pablo had a way of testing potential volunteers by subjecting them to travails. I recalled his story about the 6-hour hike with the activists from Quito. While I was considering this, Pablo brought us into the school building, where class was just letting out. "Friends, I'm going to ask you to stay for just a moment. I have something I want to talk to you about." With this he called the students back into the classroom, where all thirty-or-so of them sat back down. "Here with me today is a friend of mine, Jamie," he pointed to me, "from the United States. He is an English teacher. I was wondering," he continued, "if you would like to learn English?

Silence. Some of the students stared blankly ahead. A few girls close to Pablo fidgeted excitedly. Pablo tried again. "This is an opportunity to learn English. Are any of you interested in seeing what Jamie's English classes are like?" Some nods this time. "Well, what do you say?" "I think we're interested," said a student who looked like class representative. More nods. Murmurs of agreement from around the room. "OK, in that case, Jamie," Pablo said from across the room, "can you tell them something about your courses?"

All thirty heads turned to look at me.

Rio Verde Community - First year school rooms

“I’ve taught English in Japan and Brussels,” I began. “I teach because I like to communicate. I teach because helping people learn to communicate in a new way brings me joy. My class will not be one where I stand in front of a board,” I walked over to the chalkboard and pantomimed picking up a piece of chalk and drawing, “explaining everything to you, while you sit and listen. No.” I began to walk around the class, walking up to students’ desks. “In my class you’ll do a lot of talking, you’ll make a lot of mistakes, and you’ll learn how to communicate in English.”

“Say something in English,” interrupted Pablo.

“In English? OK. I look forward to working together with you all in the next trimester, and I hope you enjoy learning English!”

Pablo stepped forward from his nook between two desks.

“Well, that was really difficult! Thank you, Jamie, and thank you for your time, friends. Enjoy your afternoon.”

We walked back across the playground and football field amidst the students, who were      looking at me with a mix of curiosity and excitement. At the building next to where we had parked an older woman was waiting for us. “This is Jamie, this is Oscar,” Pablo introduced us immediately. “And this is the woman I was telling you about. Her granddaughter is the hair dresser.” The woman stood next to her partner. Both looked to be in their late fifties. Their faces were handsomely refined by wear, and they held themselves with a dignity I hadn’t noticed in the other villagers. The man’s button-up shirt and belted trousers might have looked pretentious amongst the casual style of everyone else, had this outfit not seemed to fit him as casually as a second skin. The woman invited us up a steep set of stairs.

Rio Verde Community - First coat of paint in the salon

Their lodgings are a simple set of beds in a room of wooden boards. A construction style with no insulation, just cut and fitted boards, screws and nails. I was strongly reminded of the buildings I had seen in southeast Asia, in Laos and Myanmar. The grandparents had some ideas about how to arrange the room to turn it into a beauty salon: put in a few boards to make a new wall here, place a mirror there, cut a hole in the wall here and cover it with a loose metal mesh to make a window, add a few shelves there. After explaining this they deferred to Pablo, who deferred to me. I took measurements, discussed some ideas with Oscar, and assumed responsibility as the “head decorator” for this project. We’ll be travelling back soon to decorate.

We said goodbye to the grandparents and set out on the long, unpaved mountain road back to the highway. Before returning to Ibarra, however, we had one more stop to make. What had been the entire purpose of this journey, what we had almost completely forgotten about. 

Encounter with the Awa - May 2013

Rio Verde Community - Village Square

Shortly after our arrival and shaking hands and exchanging greetings with all of the male adults and many of the children, a meeting was called to order and Pablo was asked to attend. As his friends and guests of the village, we sat in too. We occupied part of the short wood benches fit against the walls of the assembly hall along with about half of the attendees, while the other half sat in plastic chairs arranged in loose rows facing toward the “front” of the hall. The assembly chairman, the village headman and Pablo did most of the speaking, although participation was open to any villager who spoke up. The subjects brought up were villager participation in foundation sponsored projects not being enough to justify funding to the Swiss sponsors; the construction of a new permanent kitchen and

Rio Verde Community - Assembly

dining hall; a project to raise chickens (which apparently had gone fine in another village until the first big festival and then all the chickens and eggs were eaten); and finally a plea to the village adults to learn how to sign their names, important now that banks and government agencies will be changing their regulations as not to allow fingerprints. The meeting was long and I found my attention wandering. Eventually we were asked if we wanted to share any words with the assembly, which I found strange as Pablo had invited us in order that we might learn more about the organisation that will be sponsoring our volunteer visas. I thanked the village for including us in their community, and Oscar simply introduced himself. Lunch was next and one of the female teachers brought us a plate with cooked yuca piled high upon it, and a small dish full of salt. As I finished the spaghetti I had prepared in case vegan food was not available and tasted a yuca, I began to regret having brought food -- the yuca was the most delicious I’ve ever tasted, soft and moist, delicate yet not floury and full of flavour.

Rio Verde Community - Outside the kitchen

Not much happened after lunch except that, as I followed Pablo and two male villagers to photograph the newly constructed chicken coop (as Pablo had forgotten his camera he appointed me his surrogate photographer for the day), one of the men pointed to a white speck on a distant mountain. “Do you see?” he asked. Neither Pablo nor I saw. “That’s where I live,” he explained. Pablo and him discussed for a moment and then Pablo elaborated. “Every day he and his kids walk two hours from there to come to the schools here. They have to cross the Rio Verde but there is no bridge, so they take their clothes off and cross. Almost everyone in the community has to make a daily trip like his.”

Rio Verde Community - Inside the kitchen

Our inspection of the village facilities finished, we said our goodbyes and set out. I asked Pablo how he had come to work with these people. "Do you want the truth or a lie?" he asked back. "The truth, always," I said. "A long time ago I was part of a revolutionary group in Quito," he began. "After a time, the government decided to start brokering deals with some of the groups. People who agreed to the deals became wealthy. I didn't want to make a deal with the government, so they began to harass me and my family. That's when I moved to Otavalo and began working with indigenous peoples to have their rights legally protected. I worked with a group of shamans to have their practice recognised as culturally important. Our efforts were successful and meanwhile Otavalo as a region was prospering. Eventually the groups that had been marginal when I first came were doing well without my help and I decided to leave. I took out a map and looked for the most isolated communities. That's how I found the Awa."

"I wanted to ask you about the contract. There's a lot of reference to drug prevention, both use of and trade in. Is that language included in order to receive funding from government anti-drug programs?"

"No. I don't take any money from the government, I don't want any of the government's money. All of the money we use here comes from our Swiss funders."

"And do you have much help from local activists?"

"Jamie, I've got to tell you that I really don't like activists."

"Why not?"

"The activists have a lot of ideas but when it comes down to action they fall short. Environmental groups come here with two-year projects and when the two-years are up they leave the community with all sorts of problems. Conflicts over power, conflicts over money. Sometimes they leave systems without teaching the community how to use the system and in the end the land is destroyed. Lumber companies, development companies, large agricultural companies -- someone comes in and is able to buy the destroyed land for very little money because the community is fragmented and desperate. That's why I don't like activists, Jamie."

Rio Verde Community - Chicken Coop

We walked for a few minutes in silence, and then he continued. "Three years ago I found out about a group of urban activists in Quito. They dressed like punks, did a lot of a pro-environmental graffiti... I had a lot of hope in them. So, I invited them out here. At first they arrived and stepped into the forest and said, 'Oh, look at all the nature -- it's so wonderful, so beautiful!' We hiked for six hours to one of the villages. When we arrived they couldn't get off their feet fast enough. 'I can't stand all these bugs!', 'What an uncomfortable place!', 'The toilets here are disgusting!' I invited them back to help with some projects here. Not a single one of them came."

Back at the pickup I changed into the fresh pair of clothes I had packed and felt some eyes

Rio Verde Community - Inside the Dining Hall

watching me. I turned around and saw a young girl standing inside of the little wooden hut next to the pickup truck. We had some extra food, so I offered her a banana. Pablo's colleague looked at me. "She doesn't need any of those," he said, and gestured to behind the low wooden wall. I gazed over. There were several bunches of bananas cut straight off the tree; there must have been at least 50 bananas. I grinned sheepishly and waved goodbye. 

On the road to Lita - May 2013

Back in Ibarra. For our Visas we spoke with Señor Pablo who operates the NGO “Tierra Para Todos”. He has agreed to sponsor me as a volunteer for his NGO and in exchange I’ll give lessons in English at a small mountain village school, and possibly to the blind of Imbabura and incarcerated adults in Ibarra. Last Thursday Oscar and I drove east with him to visit the mountain communities. He said we would be traveling around the Rio Verde area, but having no idea where that was I could only follow their red Mazda pickup as it left Ibarra by the Panamericana towards Chota, reached the first major fork in the road, and turned left -- to the other side of the Mira river, to where we had never before gone.

Rio Verde Communities - View from near the first village, plus the rare horsed Belgian.

The Mira splits the Andean valley region into a dry side -- where we are building -- and a wet side, which we were now driving through. As we passed the Salinas museum, whose existence had heretofore been of a dubious nature, we stopped to let on some hitchhikers. Very few buses this side of the Mira. As the drive continued, the vegetation around the highway thickened and turned from desert scrubs into lush copses of tropical forest -- palm trees, pineapple trees, enormous bushy leaves pushing out in clumps, tall green grass. And the houses changed, too, from the cinderblock concrete style to an all wood, stilt-frame style. Villages grew smaller and habitations less frequent. Along the highway signs to reduce speed would suddenly appear and in 500m would be a school, completely isolated from any visible community. After driving for an hour and half we arrived at a military checkpoint. A soldier returned from checking the car in front of us, removed the roadblock and waved us over to the side of the road. This is the one of the major roads from San Lorenzo and the Esmereldas provinces -- and Columbia -- to Ibarra. The drug traffic from the north makes for lots of check points.

The highway on the other side of the Mira is so new that on Google Maps it’s marked “Highland Road” and disappears en route to the valley between Cotacachi and El Angel. The new road is well paved and marked, complete with cat’s eye reflectors and mini-shoulders. The side of the road however is prone to collapses and at a few locations we had to switch lanes to avoid landslide debris and fallen trees.

Rio Verde Cricket

We arrived at Lita, a tiny hillside strip of restaurants and hotels, general shops, housing and schools, two hours after our departure. We parked in front of a restaurant offering breakfast. Inside, our waitress had to return several times to inform us that certain food she wasn’t available and did we want something else? Pablo had chicken soup, Oscar took two cheese empanadas and I had the only vegan option -- dry, crumbly sweetbread. The instant coffee sat on the table long enough for us to fill our cups before the waitress took it away to another table. The best part of the restaurant was the view, of the shallow valley just below Lita and the distant mountains covered by rainforest. There were many little birds with bright coloured bellies and wings flitting about, flying through the open walls between supporting wooden pillars and chirping from the rafters before fleeing back to the tops of lemon trees.

Rio Verde Community - Fish Pond

Breakfast eaten, we drove a short ways down into the village looking for rubber boots. The general store we chose didn’t have my size (44) but luckily had just close enough (42) that I could fit without sore feet. We also picked up some water for the trek to the first village. From the store we drove back up to where a dirt road branched off from the paved highway, on the other side of a deep ditch. My poor truck -- the shocks took such a beating from the deep gap between roads! They bounced back though and for the next half hour I thoroughly tested the low-gear 4x2capabilities, driving on a hole-riddled dirt road dipping up and down, through rain-flooded mud fields and past fallen boulders with passing space barely wider than the truck. Jurassic Park came out when I was nine (1993) and I was so enthralled by the setting -- dinosaurs! and exploration of a tropical island -- I went to see it seven times in theatres. Driving through the jungle split by dirt-road was like living out my own exploration fantasy.

Eventually we crossed a bridge and Pablo let us know this would be the end of our drive for the moment. We got out and I was going to change into hiking appropriate shorts, but Pablo suggested that I go pants-tucked-into-sucks as we’d be doing some pretty serious jungle hiking. On the other side of the bridge a guide from the community was waiting for us with three small horses -- Ainoa and Sandra

Rio Verde Community - Young Buck

had been invited but had to cancel last minute when Ainoa floated her first fever. Horses!! -- I was all excited to ride one for the first time since I was a little kid. One foot into the stirrups and then onto the back of a heaving, ponderous beast struggling with the pounds of flesh on its back. Took me but five minutes to get over the excitement. I tried whistling to the horse to signal a stop, as the guide had done earlier. Nothing doing. I tried clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth and patting its neck. No stop. I tried pulling the reigns back, but I was sloppy and I got a turn instead of a stop. Then I grabbed the front and back of the saddle, slipped my feet out of the stirrups and leaped off, to laughs from the men on the trail behind us. Much more comfortable in mind and fleet of foot on my own pair I quickly caught up with Oscar and Pablo and took the lead for a little while.

The tropical rainforest is an amazing place and one of the few regrets from my visit to mainland southeast Asia was not trekking through it. Here I made up for that -- really, this type of environment

Jungle Road - Dying Butterfly

seems to appeal to all sorts of past fantasies and desires of mine. There is so much to see: ants marching in line across the path, each one carrying mandible-cut pieces of green leaf; waterfalls, rushing rivers with precarious wooden bridges over them; dozens of different species of butterfly and moth, colourful birds swooping across the path, an eagle soaring above the valley; trees and vegetation of all sorts, leaves the size of my chest laying fallen on the ground; zounds, the sounds!!! cicadas buzzing like chainsaws, chirps, water rushing, mud squishing underfoot. At some points the path was ankle-deep in muddy water, at other points I thought we were walking on the most interesting coloured solid rock. I pointed this out to Pablo and he laughed. “It’s clay,” he said. I reached down and scraped off a chunk -- pure clay, bright orange, in enormous quantity. Later we found the same amount of lighter yellowish clay. I told Pablo how excited this find had made me, and how I looked forward to returning for the different colours when we finally reach the plastering stage of our house. He took the opportunity to mention a cache of turquoise coloured clay he had seen about 6~7 hours hike into the jungle, and ever since that hike has haunted my imagination.

Rio Verde Community - Can you see the villagers house in the distant mountains?

When we arrived at the crest of the ridge we had climbed I looked over and saw the mountains extending their fingers all around us. In the valley immediately to our left a solitary eagle soared. We arrived at the village several minutes later. Several buildings consisting of wooden boards nailed to a frame on a concrete foundation make up a commons. Two wooden posts on each side of the commons give a playing field. The buildings are, starting from the right, an assembly room, a bathroom, atemporary kitchen, the 2nd-5th year classroom, the old kitchen, the dining hall, and then two unidentified buildings after a gap where the mountain path continues. Of the buildings that have

Rio Verde Community - Leaf-like moth

windows none have glass, instead using wire netting of 2 by 1 inch open rectangles. The wooden wallboards have bent and warped in the humid weather leaving small openings here and there between them. A variety of moths, some with dark red patterns on their wings, others which at first appear to be brown, wilted leaves lay motionless in unoccupied spaces. Dogs enter and leave freely, unless they become particularly bothersome and are kicked out.