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Welcome to the jungle

So leaving Quito (previous blog), I took a 40 minute flight to El Coca, principle city of the province of Orellana and then a 2 hour car ride to a cultural centre in the buffer zone of the Yasuni National park. So here I will be for a few months, in the Amazon Rainforest!

So what is it like to live in the largest tropical forest in the world? Well my ‘casa’ (Spanish for ‘house’) is a small en-suite wooden cabin approximately 11.5 by 23 feet (of size seven sandals), with a metal roof (so it amplifies rain and in the midday sun it cooks me). Within the cultural centre complex there are 4 other similar cabins, a concrete-wooden house (bungalow) where a young family of 4 live, who ensure the maintenance of the place and a 2 story concrete-wooden building that serves a variety of functions from a house (for the family friend who invited me here, and who comes here now and again) to a community teaching centre.

Behind the buildings is an orchard containing a range of fruits, from different genus and species of banana, cawcaw (what they call coca pods – from which chocolate comes from), urka (similar but not closely related to the potato), papaw, guava, pineapple, coconut, coffee, cane, lemon and other exotic fruits that I’ve never come across before (but I can assure they taste nice). There are also plants here with particular health vitalising properties and some used by a local shaman (someone who is a specialist in using natural products for healing illnesses – not a witchdoctor, a common miss-association, one I had made prior to coming here).

Beyond the orchard is the forest (belonging to the centre) which takes a full day to walk around the perimeter. It is a primary-forest (I remember something from my high school geography) and is home to a diverse range of flora (some used for studies by associates of the centre) and fauna, such as wild pigs, armadillos (no Ben I cannot bring one home) different species of monkeys, snakes, birds of varying colour and other things of which I am unsure of their English name. A large river runs along one perimeter of the forest and if you follow that downstream for 2 hours you can get your piranhas, crocodiles and boa constrictors, follow it further and it will eventually take you into Peru.

Next-door (down the road) is a base for a petroleum company (there are a few sites in this neck of the woods) and are noisy enough to hear from around 6am to 6pm every day of the week.  1 mile down the road is the local town. It has a recently refurbished school and a university currently being built. That aside, most of the houses are wooden and stilted or grounded and concrete. You have your local carpentry, some small food and grocery shops, a few bars, volleyball pitch (a common sport here) and of course the standard dusty football pitch (the local women are keen players – win!) and a couple of churches. This place also extends to the river and the other side is the official start of the Yasuni Park with your tigers and what not. Heading back the way is the stone road to El Coca, the tarmac road it joins is midway between here and the city, with one other significant sized town in between.

My role at the centre is to provide education in English and Computing for members of the local community, ranging from primary school level to adults older than myself… all of whom are taught in the same class. It is an opportunity for them to hear English spoken by a mother-tongue speaker and give them more experience of using a computer (some have good prior experience, some limited). The adults and youngest seem to have least experience with computers, though both subjects are currently taught in the local school. I am teaching entry level English grammar and basic computing skills, like the use of Microsoft Office documents.

That is a brief overview of the setup here, more news and views to follow soon. Hasta Luego.

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