Report from Ecuador, Part Two of Two (read Part One first!)

Let’s imagine again – this time, that you’re about to have a child. (Guys, bear with me.) Imagine that it is typical and expected that when you go into labor, you’ll go off by yourself into your garden and give birth alone. Imagine that if there are complications, no one is with you to help, but even if there were and it was determined that you needed urgent medical care, that the nearest health center is an hour’s flight away – on top of the hour minimum it would take the plane to fly in to get you in the first place. Imagine your justified fear as you approached your due date.

This has been the traditional way of giving birth among the Achuar people, an indigenous Amazonian tribe living in the rainforest that I visited in Ecuador a few weeks ago. You can easily understand why infant and maternal mortality are quite high in this region. Then along comes Narcisa Mashienta, a spitfire woman from the neighboring Shuar tribe, who married into the Achuar and immediately saw the unnecessary suffering and death the women endured in childbirth. As this was not her tribe’s culture, she set out to shift this practice and increase the health outcomes for both mother and child. Partnering with an American midwife, Margaret Love, and the nonprofit Pachamama Alliance, Ikiama Nukuri (formerly called Jungle Mamas) was born. Over the last 10 years, they have trained 63 Achuar Health Promoters to visit 87 of the far-flung Achuar villages, meeting with pregnant women, screening for high-risk pregnancies, and providing Safe Birthing Kits which include sterile supplies for delivery. They are also promoting the idea that birthing doesn’t need to happen alone, and has much better outcomes when assistance and support are given. Slowly the culture is changing to include mothers, sisters, and the health promoters themselves attending births. Since starting the program, there have been no deaths among the women who have been seen by the health promoters. Quite an amazing statistic!

My group got to meet one of their star Health Promoters, Veronica, as well as many of the women who had been assisted by Ikiama Nukuri in their births. We also took part in a training in one of the villages, where a pantomime birth took place (dramatically and hilariously acted out by our guide Belen) and the new baby’s father was portrayed supporting his wife through labor. This is an even farther reach to involve the husbands in the births, as typically they stay far away. Even helping out with cooking and chores after a birth are seen as “unmanly” and other men in the village make fun of those husbands who do help out. As you can imagine, this too is a point that is up for addressing, and the hope is for a Achuar man to step forward who is strong enough to be able to speak out against this bias, and start the shift towards a more equitable sharing of responsibilities here too.

My favorite memory is Narcisa explaining to us how they are promoting family planning using the not-perfect-but-way-better-than-nothing rhythm method. They have workshops for the women to create necklaces with 28 beads – the first nine, small beads (days safe to have sex), three slightly larger beads (caution days) and four big beads (abstain!!). Then back to the three caution beads, and then nine more small “safe” beads. The men who are on board with this system create bracelets for themselves so they can keep track too.

While there’s obviously a long way to go, great strides are being made. Imagine their brighter future!

Report from Ecuador, Part One of Two

Imagine that you don’t own a car. None of your neighbors do, either. Imagine that no one owns a car because there are no roads. There are no roads because you use the river in front of your village for transportation by canoe, or you walk through the jungle to get where you’re going. There are no stores, so you eat what you grow in your garden, or the chickens you keep, or what you hunt in the forest or fish from the river.

Although this may sound like a way of life from the distant past, it’s the present-day lifestyle of the Achuar tribe, deep in the Amazon rainforest, who I was privileged to visit while in Ecuador with the Pachamama Alliance at the end of September. One of the only nods to modernity in the small village of 21 families we visited is the airstrip that has been cleared, only large enough for very small planes to arrive and provide a link to the rest of the world. The nearest airport is an hour’s flight north – in  the town of Shell, named, yes, for the oil company that threatens the very existence of the ancestral homelands of these people.

Their land is pristine, original-growth rainforest. Not a single piece of garbage floats in the river, nor litters the paths. Their connection with the life force and spirit of the trees, the animals and the river is the bedrock of their worldview. I have never experienced a culture with such a light footprint on the earth. I am embarrassed by my own, in comparison.

While visiting, our group of 13 women from all across the US took part in some of their daily rituals – one of which included rising at 3:00 am to gather with the family to drink ceremonial guayusa tea, share dreams (great emphasis is placed on dreams and their interpretation), and learn how the elders pass their values and culture down to their children during this time of day.

The Pachamama Alliance is helping the Achuar and other indigenous tribes protect their lands from the extractive industries – oil, gas, minerals -- that want to turn these lands into profit centers for their corporations, completely trashing the environment in the process and destroying the way of life that has been passed down for millenia. The Achuar are a strong, proud warrior culture, and refuse to allow any industry on their land. Their battles for sovereignty, and that of the other tribes, are happening in courts across the nation of Ecuador, and some positive precedents have been set. But it is an on-going battle as some corporations just do as they please in such a vast area with little oversight. I am in awe of these people’s courage, and have a much deeper understanding now of the uphill battles they face, as well as the importance for all of our planet that they persevere, and keep control of these remaining untouched tracts of land where the headwaters of the Amazon River originate. This journey has touched me more deeply than almost any I’ve done; I’m having a hard time putting the experience into words to share. Maybe the pictures will speak for me?

Guatemala, March 2018 Part Three: Semana Santa

Last Sunday, three of us in my group woke up shortly before 4 am to meet our guide and walk in the darkness towards a ritual hundreds of years old. Along the way we stopped to watch huge carpets being created on the cobblestone streets out of brightly-colored sawdust, patterned in traditional Guatemalan designs, at times adorned with long green pine needles, flowers, and vegetables. The community artists creating these carpets sometimes used flour sieves to shake new colors of sawdust onto mosaic cardboard templates laid carefully on top of the existing colors. To put details in the middle of the carpets, long wooden boards were suspended over the carpets, the artists laying on top of them to complete their work. Floodlit in the dark, they were breathtaking.

We joined other pilgrims walking along the way, as the streets were for the most part closed to cars. After more than a mile hike in the pre-dawn, we arrived at the Catholic church in the village of San Bartolome, on the outskirts of Antigua. A Mass was already being performed on a raised platform in the courtyard, and close to a thousand people were already gathered when we arrived. Standing at the back edge of the crowd, we waited more than an hour before the Fifth Sunday of Lent procession slowly made its way out of the church just as the sun began to light the sky.

The 40-foot wooden platform inched its way out the door, as if the church itself were giving birth. Carried by 90 men dressed in purple robes with hoods that covered them from head to foot, the statues on the platform depicted Christ’s suffering as he carried his cross toward his crucifixion. I was told that the platform weighed 7000 pounds, and over the course of the procession that wound its way through the streets of Antigua over the course of 19 hours, over 10,000 men would take their turn at shouldering that load. Followed by a band whose musicians would accompany the platform the entire day with no replacements, the somber music perfectly reflected the events being depicted. After a while, another smaller platform emerged, this time the Virgin Mary being carried by women dressed in black and white.

The procession made its way along the streets packed with the faithful – and the onlookers. The beautiful carpets that had just been created and laid out the path of the procession were walked on and destroyed – symbolizing the impermanence of life.  Trying to stay ahead of the procession so we could see the beautiful carpets before they were trampled was one of our goals, once we had stopped back at the hotel and picked up the rest of the group that had chosen a good night’s sleep. When the procession finally passed by the spot I had staked out to watch them go by, I was struck by the faces of those carrying the heavy load – a mirror of the determination and suffering that was depicted on the face of the statue they were carrying.

It was an experience I won’t easily forget, a tangible symbol of a community working together to create an all-encompassing, shared ritual that illustrates the deep devotion they have to Catholicism as well as their culture.

Guatemala, March 2018 Part Two: Visiting Chajul

We’ve spent the last few days in Chajul, a small town six hours north of the normal tourist route in Guatemala. I haven’t seen another gringo the whole time we’ve been here, save the staff of Limitless Horizons Ixil (LHI), the nonprofit that we’re visiting. Therefore we attract a lot of stares. Most are friendly – although some not -- and we’ve learned the words for “good morning” “good afternoon/evening” and “thank you” in the local Ixil language. This goes a long way towards breaking the ice and bringing smiles out from those staring at us. The children laugh and shout “hola!” at us, but most people here do not speak Spanish. This keeps them very isolated, as their language isn’t understood outside of the three towns that make up the Ixil Triangle in this mountainous region. Part of the mission of LHI is to help kids stay in school long enough to learn Spanish, and they provide tutoring for those they’re giving educational scholarships to. In this region, only about 2% of children finish high school, and LHI is working to change that, with both financial and educational support -- mostly for girls, who have the least chance of making it past about second grade.

The population is about 98% indigenous, and was one of the areas hit the hardest in the 36-year-long civil war. Almost everyone in this town lost a family member to the war, and we were able to hear first-hand the experiences of one of the guerillas that was involved in the resistance. The war is still fresh in the minds of those who lived through it, and greatly influenced the ability of a whole generation to be educated.

The area itself is gorgeous, with sweeping green vistas and abundant vegetation. The hills are dotted with simple wooden or adobe homes, the smell of smoke from the wood cooking fires a constant companion.

We’ve spent time reading to kids at LHI’s bright and colorful library – the first and only in the community -- which is open to all children. It’s a very popular place for the kids to hang out, as school (if they attend) only takes place in the afternoon. It was great to see their thirst for learning and their keen interest in books.

We’ve also gone to various homes for lessons in backstrap weaving (even harder than it looks) and  tortilla making. One day we were served a lunch of a delicious regional specialty called boxbol, made from corn dough wrapped in the leaves of a squash plant, then steamed. It’s served with a tomato salsa and the sauce of ground pumpkin-type seeds, and is surprisingly tasty.

This is a very poor region of the country, and homes are mostly made of slats of wood with corrugated tin roofs. The insides are very dark, with packed dirt floors. It’s not unusual for there to be 3 generations of a family living together, and 8 or 10 children are common. In this very machismo culture, the woman’s place is in the home, and bothering to get girls educated is an uphill cultural battle, one that LHI is taking on with sensitivity and determination. Change is coming slowly, and in the faces of the girls that have received scholarships and a good education is the hope for a better future – for themselves, their culture and their town. We all felt grateful to be able to witness this evolution, and take part, even if only for a few days.

Guatemala, March 2018. Part One

I’m back in Guatemala again, this time bringing a group of seven awesome women with me on a Heartfire Journeys tour. We started off yesterday visiting the ruins of Iximche, where we took part in a traditional Mayan fire ceremony and blessing by a Mayan priestess – on International Women’s day, no less. It was a very moving ceremony, which included individual information for each of us based on our birthdate – a kind of Mayan zodiac system based on your birth date, month and year. According to this, your “nawal” is determined, which includes an animal (mine is the jaguar), a color (white) and an element (air). Her information to me was uncannily spot-on, and others in the group felt the same. The fire ceremony also had a healing aspect, a ritual of walking counter-clockwise around the fire with intention and prayer. The priestess radiated the unmistakable energy of a wise and beautiful soul, and we remarked how authentic the ceremony felt – not like something done just for tourists.

Today we visited Mayan Families, a nonprofit in Panajachel that offers a variety of services for indigenous families. We had collected a large number of donations that we brought from home – everything from kids underwear to Tupperware. I had posted on Nextdoor – a neighborhood listserve – that I was taking donations to Guatemala, and I received so many very generous responses that I had to stop accepting them as I had no more room in the two suitcases I brought. One woman donated two huge bags of boys’ clothing and shoes, as her two sons that she had adopted from Guatemala had outgrown them. Another man offered to buy some new things. I suggested socks and underwear as those are not great used. He did that, and also bought two brand-new laptops for the schools we’re visiting in a few days! I was so very touched by their generosity!

Serving lunch to the ancianos (elderly) in San Jorge, Guatemala, part of a program by the nonprofit Mayan Families

Anyway, at Mayan Families we got an overview of the many programs the offer, from sewing classes for women – who then get to keep the sewing machine when they complete the course – to their preschools and health clinics. We donated and built two stoves that reduce firewood consumption and eliminate smoke in the homes, and also sponsored a lunch and bingo game (with prizes, which was where the Tupperware came in) for the elderly in a nearby village. Although we had a three-language translation, from their native Kaqchikel to Spanish then to English, we still communicated quite well with smiles and pointing and pantomime. These lunches help avoid the isolation that can happen for the elderly, and we felt honored to be able to join in with them for a day.