We are a lot like finches!

A friend asked what made me happy. Let's see...

Swimming in the harbor, with sea lions, lifted by turquoise crystalline swells. Witnessing tropic birds soaring, trailed by two feet of white feathers, banking and braking just inches from a cliff. Riding my bike up volcanic cinders, to the rain forest where sweet oranges and the rich coffee grow. Enjoying the three families who have taken me into their lives. We slurp down fish soup, lentils, and rice and my loneliness evaporates.

I am happy when swapping ludicrous stories with cartoonist/Brit/French friend Alan Hesse. He and I have made more than a few cultural errors but we find a way to take the sting out. Here is my latest: I told a high-ranking guy that I was hoping that the educational reform would be finished in a 100 years. What I meant was that reform is never done. He interpreted my comment differently, and he responded with a tirade:

"The people from the northern hemisphere treat us as if they still own us. They are imperialists but they no longer control our country. The imperialists have said we cannot run our country. We have shown them that this is not true. When someone says reform will be slow, he does not understand it is happening now and the Darwin Foundation is helping. After 50 years, we have a contract to do educational work, and you cannot criticize what we do. I forbid any negative remarks."

My brief attempt trying to be smarmy, funny, a bit sarcastic, wise and profound was not welcomed by Mr. Important. I was chagrined, embarrassed, horrified to have made a mega faux pas. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

For two days, I was kicking myself. Until Alan and I chatted, that is. Then we looked at how many times we are not sure about the culture here. There are many layers of Ecuadorian culture, and so much originates from a history of colonialism and racism. Chatting with Alan makes the bad vibes disappear. After a couple of tall ones, we even revel in the oddities. He helps me shed my self-consciousness and self-condemnation. (That trait, that has never served me well, is not useful here.) I am learning, and that makes me happy. In fact, writing this email makes me happy!!!!!!!!!

One more happy thing, though it was born of tragedy: a wonderful father here, Patricio, lost his son in a car wreck. Ever since that sad day five months ago, Patricio has fought to make the streets safe. Today we had another Via Activa, and, as before, there are only bikers and pedestrians permitted on the streets. It is a sunny and happy day. I was so thrilled to be the documentalist and all-purpose gopher.

Aside from dozens of outdoor chess games, puppetry, aerobic dancing, and face painting, there was a spectacular bike jumping demonstration. These two nutty guys from Quito (Jairo and Daniel, a.k.a. Tiro and Chaso) sprinted down a 20' high ramp, went up a second ramp, and then they did flips in the air. They fell a few times and skinned elbows and hands. Ni modo, as they say. Whatever. Very cool. But, what was REALLY awesome was the utter do or die feeling. Here is why we in the audience had our hearts in our throats: the downward ramp was built on bamboo, the second ramp self-destructed (into splinters), their landing was on volcanic cinders, and the Locos were bloodied a few times. Everyone gasped, snapped away and loved the event.

Later, I spent a few days with Tiro and Chaso. Chaso, the taller Ivy League-looking guy, has competed in BMX contests throughout Latin America. Tiro is shorter ("I am a dwarf, that is just the way it is.") and funnier. He is missing a tooth in a prominent place, and he wears white-rimmed shades. He has won various world championships in one kind of suicidal bike race or another. His website features a skull and is named after a friend killed in an auto-car accident. Both young men are so full of life, curiosity and insight. As I realize how much I miss teaching, I am content to meet some youngsters with "animo," as they say here.

Whew! I feel happy, just thinking about today.

What makes me less than happy? Most of all the sense that there is blank check to exploit all of the resources here. There is lip service about the environment, but many powerful folks here see the conservationists, like the Darwin Foundation, as enemies of progress. The thinking is like this: the non-profits are outsiders who know nothing about people but who, out of arrogance, condemn residents and try to compel local folks to change. The developers have a good point in that conservationists often sound like tree huggers robed in Political Correctness.

There are two distinct cultures here: those who want the islands to develop quickly, and those who believe that a slowdown is absolutely necessary. The much smaller second group points to the lack of potable water, lack of sewage treatment (non-existent), lack of oil (none), and lack of excellent schools (there might be one). True, there are three turbines on the wind farm, and there is a plan for sewage treatment, but there is also a population that doubles every 11 years.

Last night over supper, some of us had a loud debate. One person felt that the islanders have it too easy, since government employees (including teachers) get a sizeable bonus due to high prices. The local folks, therefore, are not "hungry" and so they have no incentive to innovate, study and plan. Theory 1: People are spoiled.

Theory 2: island cultures are all like this. They are inbred worlds, isolated from other provinces, with their narrow view based on their self-interest. There is not one bookstore here and no movie theatre (or any other kind of theater), so folks re-invent the same ideas. More expansive and eccentric notions die off, from lack of attention. Few are interested in the unconventional. People are ignorant. They are weak, in terms of ability to quickly adapt to new circumstances. They don't do well when they leave here; many return from the mainland with wallets empty. Because of this slack style, people are like Darwin´s finches. They exploit the environment so that they survive, but they don't push themselves to prepare for future conditions. The finches are everywhere, as always, but they are scarcely able to survive the predation that environmental degration has brought. Humans have to be smarter than finches, so that we anticipate our tendency to destroy our own habitat. Here, philosophy, ethics and such abstract ideas are as remote as Ulan Bator. People stagnate. I am partial to this theory, but... maybe I am wrong...

Theory 3: Life here is pretty much like life anywhere. There are tensions between the innovators and the traditionalists. As in the USA, there are liberals and conservatives who battle about the same kinds of issues. Republicans want to drill in Alaska and Democrats do not. People are absolutely normal here.

I am not sure what to think. I am fuzzy about this. I have been here too long to make be sure of anything!

Getting back to the present. I have only one complaint this week. Why is it that, in this pristine setting, surrounded by exquisite bays and sugary sand, almost no one swims? Of the 30,000 residents, I have only seen eight swimmers. This little group of fanatics are a team that practices next to the Darwin Foundation beach. I am so thrilled that I will join them. It does not matter that I am the only one over12.

Writing this has led to a little epiphany for Halloween Day: I am going to start a school for swimming next week.

Tito

Don´t worry, be happy

A friend asked what made me happy here. Good question Swimming in the harbor, with sea lions and turquoise swells. Witnessing tropicbirds soaring, banking and braking just inches from a cliff. Riding my bike up the mountain to the rain forest where oranges and corn grow. Every physical challenge here is exhilarating: the air is brilliantly clear and dry, the roads have few cars and I have no fear of sharks.

What makes me less than happy? It is the human world that makes me worried, even paranoid at times. There is a great desire for political and economic independence here, that, to me, is the same as a blank check to exploit all of the resources the islands contain. There is lip service to conservation, but many of the powerful folks here see the conservationists, like the Darwin Foundation, as the enemies of progress. We are the outsiders who like to order local folks around, even though we don´t know or care about them.

There are two distinct cultures here: the islanders who want the islands to develop, and those who believe that the resources are extremely limited. The second group points to the lack of potable water (almost none), lack of sewage treatment (non-existent), lack of oil (none), and lack of excellent schools (there might be one). True, there are three turbines on the wind farm, and there is a plan for sewage treatment, but there is also a population that doubles every 11 years.

Last night over supper, some of us had a loud debate. One person felt that the islanders have it too easy, since government employees (including teachers) get a sizeable bonus due to the distance from the mainland and the high prices. The local folks are not "hungry" and so they have no incentive to innovate, worry about the future, study and plan. People are spoiled.

Others think that the island cultures are all like this; isolated from other provinces, Galapaguenos have their own narrow view that is based on their self-interest. There is not one bookstore here and no movie theatre (or any other kind of theater), so folks inbreed their ideas. The more expansive and eccentric notions die off, since there are so few interested in the unconventional. People are ignorant.

Another theory is that the people are like Darwin´s finches. They exploit their environment so that they survive. They adapt. But they do not feel any intrinsic need to develop their culture, since such development has no purpose. They are existentialists in that their experience is their teacher. Philosophy, ethics and such abstract ideas are as remote as Ulan Bator. Not a single bookstore on the Galapagos! People find a niche and stagnate.

I am not sure what to think. I have to refer to what makes me fired up and that wold be swimming, biking and viewing birds. Why is it that, in this pristine setting, surrounded by exquisite bays and sugary sand, no one swims? Of the 7,000 residents, not a single person swims more than a few strokes. (One notable exception: a large group of teenagers learned how to surf from some tourists and enjoy the big waves.) No one is kayaking or sailing. There are few cyclists and very few runners. I cannot think of a better thing to do than to encourage local people to get involved in their rugged and beautiful landscapes.

So as to change some of this, I am co-heading this island´s Ciclovida Cristobal - as in biking/life/san cristobal. We will have a book store on the boardwalk, biking games (jumps, obstacle courses), BMX acrobats, massages, and face painting. I lobbied for swimming lessons but that was a bit too radical. All of this ocean stuff will have to wait.

Sea lions are so ridiculously lovable!!!!

Odd picture -- pelican going in my head

The Orange People

On Saturday, Juan Carlos Guzman and I were biking in the fog-covered highlands, about 8 km north of the provincial capital, Puerto Baquerizo. His Haro aluminum and my Airborne titanium frames took us from the lustrous bay, filled with fishing boats, through the grimy barrios, and up a steep hill, past goats and cattle, past the overgrown cemetery and into the “garua” or misty rain. We left the asphalt and veered down the trail leading to a novel and critical experiment in environmental control. Our bike tires skidded on the crushed volcanic cinders, a crumbly kind of bubbly rock that is the color or iron oxide.

We fish-tailed to a stop at a varnished sign announcing a Darwin Foundation experiment to control invasive plant species, especially the accursed blackberry. Due to its massive number of seeds (often dropped by birds), blackberries blanket every one of the islands. This is a disaster for endemic plants, most of which are snuffed out by the aggressive "mora." And, if the endemic plants die, then the famous and exotic animals (finches, too) that depend on their seeds will die. Even though I love blackberry pie and cobbler more than anything else, I can see that here, at least, mora is something akin to evil incarnate.

Herbicide is the only large-scale way to control mora, although the only effective, long term way to permanently eradicate the berry is for humans to pull up every plant and burn all of them. That is difficult, since we are talking about billions of plants that live among scraggly bushes with large thorns. Other than herbicide and digging out the roots, the only other antidote may well be coffee plantations. Coffee trees shade the shorter bushes, thereby making sun-craving blackberries unable to thrive. So, oddly enough, Conservation International, an NGO here that is usually identified with goals like the preservation of endemic species, is helping to increase the number of non-native coffee plants in hopes of stopping mora. The head of CI, Fernando Ortiz, is quoted in yesterday's NYT article about “two-legged” threats to the islands and possible answers, including the coffee tree planting programs.

Coffee plantations will succeed, perhaps, since Galapagos coffee is, indeed, excellent. Still, the magnitude of plantation makes this solution impractical for most farmers, and such projects will hardly dampen the spread of mora. That is why the CDF is experimenting with types of herbicide, in the hope that a minimal application can be made more effective. The CDF land, donated by a local tour organizer, has dozens of squares, each with mora that has been treated by some kind of weed killer. The land seems spent, quite unfertile, but that is the point, it seems.

While admiring the agricultural plots, we saw a roundish woman and teenage boy emerge from the forest. Both were dressed in smudged T-shirts and muddy boots. The woman, who turned out to be the boy's aunt, carried a long machete and the boy toted a sack of giant oranges. They told us that they made their living by harvesting oranges throughout the highlands. This seemed illegal, by my hometown standards, so I tried to think of a non-judgmental question. I finally asked if the private land owners liked their oranges and she responded by saying that most are absentee landowners and never harvest anything. Private lands without fences are everyone’s domain, as long as the visitors only take fruit.

Her day’s wandering had another purpose: she was upset because her prized pig had escaped into the wild. We offered our condolences and then she offered us four large oranges. I fumbled at the skin, unable to open it at all. She reached for her machete. She grabbed another orange and nimbly cut away the skin. (I tried to suppress any worries about what else the machete might have been doing prior to cutting my orange.) Patient and meticulous, as if she were shaving a tender cheek in a barber shop, she peeled away. The shavings dropped on the cinders, and she handed me an Ecuadorian-style orange. The local custom is to squeeze the white husk and then suck out the juice out of the top, as if it were a water bottle. The juice was amazingly sweet.

As has become our custom, Juan Carlos asked about songs, poems and dances from her provincial home, meaning the province which she left to come to the Galapagos. She said that her husband was from Loja and used to sing many songs. A few years ago, however, he stopped singing. She explained, saying that her husband had joined a pentecostal church and that, aside from a ban on drinking and smoking, traditional songs and dances are forbidden. Earnestly, she explained that her husband had learned that songs of the world were often evil.

In every other L. American country I have visited, most of the evangelical songs are actually Baptist hymns from the southern USA. I was miffed that her family had dropped the ancestral customs, especially the culture that is carried via song. Still, I guess her husband has reaped much good from the church, especially in his refusal to drink. Alcohol is truly a curse for many men in my village, so perhaps this teetotaler now has what many lack: sobriety.

Ghosts in the High Part

With black shirt neatly ironed, Patrick looks like a young priest and I told him so. He laughed and confirmed that, indeed, he is a church leader, not in the Catholic church but in his Pentecostal temple. He sings, plays the electric guitar and gives sermons. I asked him what it was like to live in the Galapagos.

"I was born here, one of the few who have lived all of their lives on this island. I was born in Progreso, the village made famous by the sugar planter named Cobos. He was successful for two reasons: he was ahead of his time in machinery and his workers were prisoners. The way Cobos is honored today is not with photos or a statue. Instead, some of the gears from his sugar mill are in the Progreso roundabout."

I told Patrick that the gears are surprising. What about statues? Even statues of animals. After all, Puero Ayora, the largest town on the Galapagos, has statues of a tortoise, albatross, iguana and sea lion. Yellow gears????

"We want to remember Manuel J. Cobos since he was the first successful capitalist on the islands. However, we don't want a statue because Cobos beat his workers. Even though his sugar plantation employees were prisoners, they deserve rights, too. The prisoners might have been bad people, but they could not take it any more so they killed him. One inmate stole his revolver, shot him and then another finished Cobos off with his machete.

Ever since then, the spirits of the dead dictator and the prisoners rise up from time to time. They are around Progreso and I hear them all the time."

Patrick's tale brought back memories of the "Enchanted Isles" and an obscure poem by Herman Melville. Melville visited the Galapagos and was horrified by what he saw. His observations were incorporated in Moby Dick and a poem, excerpted below:

THE ENCANTATAS

(Enchanted Isles)

The Isles at Large

-- "That may not be, said then the ferryman,
Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;
For those same islands seeming now and than,
Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,
But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne
In the wide waters; therefore are they hight
The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;
For whosoever once hath fastened
His foot thereon may never it secure
But wandreth evermore uncertain and unsure."

"Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,
Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,
And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl."

Because life is hard here, you have to be very innovative and persistent to survive. Cobos somehow managed to build roads and canals, a pipeline and a waterworks all before the 20th century.

"Cobos paid the price, though. According to legends, he had told the workers that they were not allowed to pick any fruit from his prized guava trees. One day, he discovered that a boy had taken a piece of fruit. He called the boy out of his hut and whipped him to death. The mother, outraged by his cruelty, yelled to Cobos that the guava trees would never again bear fruit. Furthermore, she cursed him in vowing that he would never leave the islands alive. Today, you will notice that the tens of thousands of guava trees yield no fruit at all. And, by the way, Cobos was killed by the workers who hacked him to death."

"