Day 4:
Thursday, August, 7, 2014
I wake up to the sounds of tropical birds.
You will never be able to hear the sounds of
tropical birds in the morning through a simple blog post. I am content to admit that I in contrast to this will never be
able to capture the sounds of tropical birds in the morning in mere black and
white pixels. The poetry and beauty of their song is far too complex for this screen, or for my
imagination. All I know is that I would
sleep a thousand years just to be able to wake up to the sounds of tropical
birds outside my window, and warm sunlight giving life to the flat green
curtains.
We all wake up and slowly emerge into the day. Ivana and I leave and go
to breakfast. We have breakfast on two
long tables that were taken from the set of Harry Potter under a gazebo that
over looks the Napo river which is the slate on which the sun rises and paints
its colours on. I love the amazon.
After breakfast we all fill our water bottles and head to the village
of Mondana.
It is about a 4-5 minutes walk to the village. We walk through a small part of jungle and
then cross a bridge that bends with every step but never ceases to be bent too
far as to break.
The first building Rodrigo introduces us to is the clinic. It is painted blue and it is raised high above
the ground in the anticipation of a flood .
People are sitting on the porch in plastic chairs and we are all smiling
at them and saying “Hola” and waving.
They all return the greeting.
We then go on a tour of the village which takes a little more than half
the morning. We walk past the church and
the soccer stadium. We peer through the
bard windows of classrooms all while walking through walkways cradled by
concrete walls and I soon realise how everything is covered in a thin grey dust
and how everything is a little touched by life but there are no people.
It is then that I learn everyone is out in the fields working and it is
only children who are too young to work in the fields and a few women who are looking after the young children that are still in the village but for the most part the buildings are all empty.
After the tour we head down a set of stairs to where we are going to be
working. There is a school and a small
covered area of concrete with a pit in the middle. We are standing on another
concrete square that has two polls placed on the sides near the middle. They are supposed to hold up a net for
Amazonian volley ball (which is volleyball with a really high net) but for the present there are mounds of wood that have
been piled on the concrete. A man named
Robert then talks us through the safety instructions that we have to abide by
on the work sight while Rodrigo translates for him.
We learn that we are going to be starting work on a community kitchen
so that the school that we are standing by has a clean place to make the
lunches for the kids and so that the community has a clean place to make food
in general.
Then we separate into two groups.
One goes to the covered concrete area where the kitchen is going to be
constructed and the other half start to move the piles of wood into piles by
another building which is out of the way.
We also separate the wood into different piles of size. I go with the wood moving group.
We work for about an hour. After
which we put our tools, safety goggles, gloves, and hard hats away and head
back on the trail to the lodge for lunch.
We take a couple hours to break for lunch and at 2 we head back to the
village to work for another 3 hours.
This time I grab a shovel and join the dirt moving group.
This group (I soon find out) is shovelling away a wall of dirt to give
the kitchen more ground footage. The
dirt that we take from the walls either goes to fill in ditches and ruts on the
lower level of concrete or goes to fill an empty gap that is being made by group
3. Who is adding a two foot edition to the entire kitchen by making a wall out
of wood two feet from the edge of the concrete.
This is all very difficult to explain.
Basically we are moving a ton of dirt and making the kitchen area two or
three feet larger on three sides of the kitchen (not the side that is shared
with the volley ball court).
Around 4 we head back to the lodge.
We then had 2 hours to shower and get ready for supper.
I shower in water that goes from ice cold arctic inspired water to
steam and trickles of transparent lava.
I am not even being sarcastic.
A little before 6 we head to the eating area that is near reception. The gazebo that we ate at earlier is being used by another group.
We eat and clean up afterwards.
Katie and Esta then have us move all the tables and chairs to the sides
of the room and we all gather on one end of the room.
That is when the rules were laid out.
There are two safe zones on either side of the room, in the middle is lava *insert witty joke that makes a remark about how my shower was also part lava*.
We are to all stand on one side of the lava pit, and will be given a
pair of boots. But, not just any pair of
boots no but a pair of life saving lava resistant boots. But there is a catch, once someone walks
across the lava then they can no long walk back, its kind of a use once rule
for everyone.
With that said we have to get everyone to the other side of the
lava. We can’t throw them, we can’t make
a bridge of dead bodies, we can’t climb over the tables on the side of the room,
we can’t jump, and we can’t have two
people use one boot and do a three legged race inspired move, trust me we
asked.
Then the fun begins.
An explosion erupts in the group.
Everyone starts to talk. It is
chaos. Thoughts and schemes are being
thrown into the air but nothing is being caught by anyone else. In one second the term “listen” was lost to
us.
A small group of people have created a circle and they are yelling
ideas at one another while a crowd circles them and shouts input here and
there. Then there are the people outside
of the circle that are sitting on the floor or making idle conversation. I find myself between the crowd and the
people who don’t seem too interested in figuring the game
out. I am trying to listen but being not
the tallest person or having super sensitive hearing I can’t see or hear
anything so I fall back and let the crowd and mission control play the game.
I still feel like I have to do something. Like I have to think of something. But I feel like I need an idea to grow on,
someone else’s idea to build up on.
I talk to some of the people on the side lines but no one seems to be
interested so I sink into another conversation with them while the group
mirrors waves as their voices raise and lower and rise again. With every idea the excitement tightens and
rises their voices and with every crack in their masterpiece the energy falls
only to be picked up by another thought.
Then the action begins. The plan is that the biggest people are to carry as many small people as they can and then the small
people are to be used as boot walkers to bring the boots back to the side with
the former group of people. And then
that routine is to be repeated for everyone.
I cross being carried with a fate to soon be a boot walker and then go
back as a lava crosser carrying two people (future lava crossers).
I am then on a side of people smaller then me who are supposed to have a
fate of carrying me…This plan is looking a little sketchy.
After many failed attempts to figure out a solution a plan is hatched
to save us. Except is requires starting
over. So we start over.
This time medium people carry small-medium people and small people walk
back and in the end we are left with all the medium people as
pre-used-lava-walkers and on the other side all the big people are to carry the
small people who have already walked across.
Genius.
(I pray that you understand this because it makes total sense in my
mind but probably reads as total balderdash)
The plan works! And we all applaud and scream and I loose my voice
because I love screaming as a substitute to applause.
We then circle around and talk about this experience. How everyone is a leader in their own way and
how this revealed how stressful situations change people and how we respond
when faced with a problem to solve as a group.
This is my honest opinion:
Afterwards we all headed back to our rooms for a good nights rest.
-Z
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