Thoughts on Rain
The Amazon makes even your expensive, Gore-Tex jacket feel
like you are wearing a plastic bag...
What I find slightly interesting
and intriguing is rain and people’s reactions to it here. It rains here a lot.
So far, there has been at least one torrential downpour per day (although I am
told it is not usually this rainy). Regardless, rain is a natural process here
that happens quite frequently. It is the rainforest after all. However, when it
rains, all activity stops. You would think that people would learn how to work
through the rain like Northerners do snow and ice, but they don’t. Granted, the
rain doesn’t usually last for days, just a few hours.
One morning at breakfast, my
host-mom asked what I was doing today. I said I was doing what I usually do and
going to the coffee processing center. She told me that because it was raining
so hard, she doubted anyone would be there. I went anyways. She had told me this
before but every time I had gone when it was raining, there was someone there,
so why would today be any different? Well, she was right. No one showed up for
two hours and I went back to my community dejected, called my coordinator, and
he said we aren’t doing anything today because it is raining. Trying to keep up
with people’s thoughts on the weather here is like trying to pin the tail on a
running donkey while blindfolded...
Experiences with Rats
For the last few weeks, I have
been having problems with rats in my room. Yes. Rats. The first night I
encountered them, I woke up to hear something rustling beside my head on my
plastic covered mattress. When I turned over, it bolted off my bed, under my
mosquito net, and up the wall. I initially thought it was a giant spider (I had
just finished reading the second Harry Potter book), then a rat, and then my
mind landed on a monkey, and so I went back to sleep. In the morning I asked my
host-mom what it was and she said it was a rat, point blank. Well, apparently
rat’s climb walls...
For the next few weeks, I encountered or heard them every
night. I saw them a few times running along the gaps in my walls and the
ceiling. I was terrified and barely got any sleep. However, after a week of
this, I decided I needed to get over my fear. My family has been living with
rats all their lives and to be honest, they don’t really bother me.
I’m not even sure they are looking for food because they are definitely well
fed and big, and there is never any evidence of them eating the food that is
left out overnight. My decision though was much harder than anticipated. I got a
break from them when I went to Manta for a few days, but still I find the only
days that I am not bothered with them are when I cannot hear their movements because
there is a huge storm outside. To try and replicate that, I have been wearing
my noise-cancelling headphones to bed because I don’t have earplugs and it has
been working pretty well. I am starting to sleep through the night. Maybe, when
I have lived there long enough, I will try to get used to sleeping with them
without ear plugs. Until then, I’ll keep my earplugs.
On a side note, my mom looked up
rat in her Aboriginal totem book and discovered that rats are a “sign of success, restlessness, and shrewdness.” They
are also revered in Chinese because of their adaptability, intelligence and
ability to reason. I don’t know what this is supposed to mean to me, but I
hopefully I can understand the message it is trying to bring me.
Placement Assumptions (written January 31)
As I write my
real proposal for my placement, after one month spent in my community to be
presented next week, I have had to go over the practice proposal I did at the
end of October and my presentation that I did at the beginning of December.
Looking back, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had really
high hopes for what I wanted out of this placement. However, what my community
wanted me to do is not all what I had imagined I would be doing.
I had
thought in August that if I ended up with a placement that involved
agriculture, I would change immediately. I hate gardening and getting my
hands dirty in the sweltering heat was not my idea of a placement I
wanted to
do...
However, it turns out that I am having fun learning about coffee and more importantly, learning lots. I hopefully will
be able to answer my research question, which has not changed, “How does
oil development affect indigenous communities in the Amazon?” However, I had
also thought that I would be researching social movements and their role in
opposing fossil fuel development. I made the
assumption that social movements were needed to guide the actions of indigenous
communities, which looking back was rather racist and naive. In reality, my community is
incredibly organized and are now helping guide other communities in the same
struggles they are facing.
Language and Discrimination
Language is
such an important part of a culture and essentially leads to acceptance. If
you are not fluent with the language, it is much harder to integrate. This I
have realized. People also automatically think that you aren’t very bright when
you have trouble with the language. You cannot participate in discussion that
you normally would in your native language, and people think the lesser of you.
I have experienced this with my coordinator. Often, he talks to me like I
am stupid or just ignores me.
I also realized that I now have had a
taste of how immigrants to Canada feel when they are discriminated against on
their level of intelligence by adeptness in English. Problems learning the
language does not mean you are stupid, it just means you have problems learning
the language.
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