Much jungle

A lot seems to have been packed into the last week! Finally made it to the village (nobody turned up to meet me in the local town, so after 1hr sitting in the bus station with the taxi drivers I managed to get on an appropriate bus. The journey was interesting, with the whole bus emptying at one point to clamber over a precarious bridge to get on a new bus at the other side. And once arriving at the bus´s "destination" - middle of nowhere with lots of trees-, hanging around for a bit before following a boy "¿Santa Ana, si?" into the middle of even more nowhere. But it turned out the village was just around the corner, and once I arrived the people there were lovely.

I´m stating with a family just outside the centre of the village. The accomadation is basic - washing in river, earth floor, lots of fresh air and a dead chicken hanging in the front door (I think leftover from a festival) but actually really comfy, and I have my own room with a bed etc. The family have two children (well three but the eldest lives somewhere else), aged 4 and 9, and they like me a lot for no apparent reason.

I´m not sure that this was the best week to start working. It turned out that this week there was a three-day festival in the next town, so on Tues after a community meeting everyone headed down to that, and then again on Wed...Very traditional - a Catholic priest first blessed the festival, and then lots of ceremony for the new village priest to be ordained. Lots of tambours (drums) and trad clothes, and dancing, and especially the local drink -"chicha"- which is a fermentated corn drink that I can really only manage a little off. Unfortunately scary little old ladies passing round buckets of the stuff don´t believe you when you say this, and then it is traditional to tip the remainder over the persons head. We then spent the night in that village, and I didn´t smell great the next day.

The water system in the village is interesting- from what I can can its a good design. The main techinical issues are the distribution lines to the houses, and a very quickly clogging slow sand filter. One of the main problems is also to do with funding for running the pump. Most people have little newly-built bathrooms with a sink and toilet, but with no running water. Most people also seem to use river water for drinking, but they do always boil it first. Though when water is running through the system, I think they´re happy to drink that without boiling, which probably isn´t a great idea. Next week I will start running tests on it all, and the people in the village who´ve I spoken to seem really interested in that (or just polite, not sure). I´m basically working with the woman in the village who is in charge of the system, with also time to run my own work. I think on Wed we´ll be heading back here to Puyo to collect some films and equipment to organise a film night covering water health issues in the village, so that should be interesting (the village organisers seem pretty up on this kind of work, but I don´t know if it filters down to everyone else).

Yesterday I spent working with the community to move rocks from one place to another place (I would carry 2 pebbles, little old ladies would stroll past with six boulders) - they´re planning to build pools for fishing. It was hard work but I enjoyed spending time with more of the people, and after work everyone had lunch together - very social! My spanish is improving but it is infuriating for me, though eventually I can usually work out what I want to say! Also learning a (very) little Quichwa - the indigineous language which most people speak in addition to Spanish, as a lot of people are from the Quichwa tribe. There are two other volunteers in the village at the moment, but I haven´t seen them that much (one in working with an ecologist and is away a lot, and the other is leaving on Thursday). Its very very interesting here - although the village are used to having volunteers, Santa Ana is most definately its own community with volunteers welcome to stay rather than being in any way "for" them.