Trip to Pevas

On Monday we took a day trip over to Pevas, a small city located roughly an hour and a half away from the field station. Traveling with our trusted Segundo, we happily entered the city, which was colored with festive flora and murals. Coming from the rural jungle, we were pleasantly surprised with a town square filled with smiling faces and free wifi. As usual, the local schoolchildren took a liking to Krislia and her long, flowing braids. Our trip was particularly artistic. Undertaking the ascent to the dominating palace of Francisco Grippa, famed artist and eccentric, we didn’t know what to expect. With a cerveza in hand, the colorful character smiled and led us into his world, rooms plastered with fanciful artwork: jungle-inspired landscapes took their place next to a reinterpretation of the last supper with ex-President Nixon at the forefront. Suffice to say we were quite impressed, and we all walked away with a few Grippa prints as well as this memorable insight: “artists are born, not made.” Inspired, we made our way to Santiago de Yahuarcani’s studio. In contrast to Grippa’s flamboyance, Yahuarcai’s humble but beautiful home was decorated with artwork inspired by indigenous legends (he was born in a small indigenous community nearby, and inherited these stories from his grandmother). On our way out, the family showed their graciousness by handing us a fresh bundle of delicious bananas, which we promptly inhaled. Before departing, we had the pleasure of lunching with our lovely Zoe, who, despite our pleas not to leave us, has begun to work at the hospital in Pevas with her medical school colleague, Adam. The cherry on top of our wonderful trip was a glimpse at some famed Amazonian river dolphins. Pinkless yet still beautiful, they were certainly worth stopping our boat.

Project Update

While we initially planned to work with the kids in the school, painting a mural on everything we taught the week before, the teacher was unfortunately stuck in Iquitos for the week. Of course, we were able to improvise many more tasks in the meantime. One of our major tasks involved the watering, caring, and reidentification of the medicinal plants in the garden after a slight mishap where uprooting plant-identifying-flagpoles is a fun pasttime for local children (understandable — we all would have done the same thing, and those pink flags were quite tempting). Another task we undertook was some major planning and reformatting of our booklet on medicinal plants and their uses. After some discussion with Devon, we decided that the final product will not only be dispersed through the communities, but will be advertised on the Project Amazonas website for purchase by those interested (all funds would go back to the community). Earlier in the week, we had many visitors. Apart from Devon, we had a computer programmer from Barcelona named Luis, a Peruvian doctor named Felix, a Project Amazonas fellow and anthropologist-professor-extraordinaire named Jim, and a group of eight father-daughter duos from Georgia. The latter group was from an organization called Rivers of the World, and four days after sailing in on a fine vessel, they were kind enough to leave us with a fine bottle of sriracha. Upon discovery of their gift, Sally let out a primordial shriek of happiness that left us all astonished.

Meeting with the Parents Association

The week has ended with an exciting and important development in our project: the addition of a caretaker position that will be undertaken by families in the community of Santo Tomas. On a rotating, monthly basis, the families will be taking over the care and expansion of our medicinal garden and tree nurseries both at the clinic and school. We drafted up an official contract for the job in English and Spanish (with the translation help of Luis), and presented it to the sixteen families of APAFA. An equivalent to any parent-teacher association in North America, APAFA is one of the most important and authoritative groups in Santo Tomas. After initial nervousness at the completely-in-spanish presentation by Alec and the support of both Dona Alicia and Ana Cecilia, the community enthusiastically accepted the position! Pending some final tweaks, the participating families plan to sign the document in our last week. Though a recent addition, we are very excited about this aspect of our project which has become essential to its sustainability and lasting impact. Not only will the families be recieving payment to help with the costs of school, but through direct community participation in our project, we hope that Santo Tomas will be proactive in the continual acquisition of seeds, planting of trees, and use of medicinal plants and recipes. To celebrate, we spent Saturday night dancing around our dorm and laying on top of the four-story observation tower, in awe of the milky way and her shooting stars.

– Anna & Alec