tena trabajo

living and working in ecuador can be summed up pretty easily in one word: ridiculous. this word doesn´t mean good or bad, it just means different. very very different. after 2 months here in tena, i´ve done very little work in the strict sense of the term. but hey, i´m just adapting to ecuador. i have seen much of the southern part of the province riding in the back of the consejo´s pick-up, and i have played a very very small role in helping some communities merely by handing over tilapia fingerlings raised by the consejo. but i am still struggling to find my niche and determine just what the consejo solicited my services for. my goal is to ultimately work with some of the communities within the vicinity of tena by helping them build and maintain fish ponds (by overseeing the quality of the water and health of the fish, etc). but the consejo has done very little in directing me as to which communities i can help do this. and it would be tough to just go out there and figure it out myself, cuz i don´t even know where the communities are much less the people that live in them. i even wrote out my goals for to the consejo 2 weeks ago. but ever since then i´ve come to the office at 7:30 in the morning, ready for a briefing on where we´ll be going and what we´ll be doing, and they have no plans for me or the communities, no goals.

yeah, its just been frustration as far as working goes. and sometimes bewildering. every day i wake up to go to work, i can honestly say i have no idea what we´ll be doing, where we´ll be going, what to expect. every day of work is different. needless to say, it´s a big change from working in the front end of a grocery store for the last 3 years. i would have to say one thing i can expect though is to be riding in the back of a pick-up.

so the consejo is located in the tourism office of the province of napo, and i´ve at least come to know the people that work there fairly well. but i´m still waiting for them to actually give me some work. i´m thinking maybe i can help in some area of tourism for the province, which is not going so bad as it is afterall the rainforest and people are already drawn to that. but it could be better, i feel the office could offer more help to the communities in coordinating eco-tourism projects. the director of the environmental projects said i could help measuring the water quality in the nearby area, but i havent heard from him in a few weeks. and another guy working with after school programs said i could help teach some environmental science to kids age 6-18, but of course he would mostly just want me to teach kids english vocabulary, and i havent heard from him in a few weeks either. so far i feel like my biggest assets to the consejo have been my english, my basic knowledge of computers that´s above-average for ecuadorians, and my camera.

i have done a lot of travelling with some interns studying tourism from the local universidad, and although they already have one camera, my extra one has come in handy. so i´ve taken several dozen pictures with that, and they might use some on the web page of the tourism dept for the province. maybe i can help translate what they´ve got into english, i´ve translated a few things for them already. i´ve become pretty good friends with one of them, an 18 year old named david. his dream is to start a tourism agency here, but since his family is poor he´s also planning next year to sign up to be a cop, which is pretty good pay and little work. he also wants to learn english as it would obviously help him with tourism. so while i know little about tourism, in an effort to promote eco-tourism i´ve offered to teach the interns english, but david is the only one that has shown up for a ´class´. i´ve told him that he should follow his dream of eco-tourism but that i also understand that he needs a job as a cop til then so he and his family can live.

most of the people i meet here who know that i´m a volunteer and that i know english want me to teach them. even as i type this there are probably 9 or 10 people that want me to teach them, and its hard sometimes to turn them down. they told us in training that people will want u to teach them english, and that unless its related to your program (ie habitat conservation / agriculture) you shouldnt do it because there are other programs and volunteers out there that are there specifically designed to teach english, whereas we are not. nonetheless, i have tutored david a few times and he´s slowly learning, and i´ve taught my neighbors´10 year old nephew a few times as well. it gives me a satisfaction to know that i´m directly helping someone here, something i´ll hopefully get the chance at with helping raise fish.