Snow Angels

Looking up,

Wind whipped clouds

Dance,

On an all blue stage.

We become donkeys

Methodically marching in single file.

Each step, reduced to half

As loose scree loosing its grasp,

Crackles and slides.

Scowering the trail

Eyes shy,

From where El Cuchillo stands,

Roots,

Deeper than ancient redwoods.

Forced to stop

Rested lungs collect breaths

While lactid acid fires,

That torch flexed calves,

Cool.

Closing in on the heavens

Rising and falling chests

Quicken,

As God steals,

Precious Breaths.

Goals reached,

Ecstasy takes form,

In nearly naked snow angels

That glisten,

In memory.

We are coming to a close on our second day in Rure, a bustling tourist town nestled in the Amazon forest. Thinking back on the past week and a half since we made our descent into the Amazon, I can´t help but wonder at the stark differences inherent between the cultures in the Apolobamba and Amazon. Coming from Kaata, a rural Quechuan community located on the misty hill side of an Andean mountain where the people are more reserved and the children carry a greater sense of responsibility, it´s hard to believe this laid-back, tropical paradise is located in the same country.

We began our river float trip on the 24 of March, boarding home made rafts consisting of tires, sticks and rope with all our belongings and trusting our guides to navigate us through turbid waters with only a wooden ore for steering. Our make shift rafts were surprisingly sturdy and kept all our belongings safe...except the stove which we speculate was bumped off somewhere between breakfast and dinner on the second day. Sorry for your loss, Travis. After two days on the rafts, we boarded motor boats and arrived in Asuncion after a further two days.

I was immediately struck by the cultural difference in this community compared to the other places we had previously spent time. The presence of traditional, indigenous dress, so common throughout communities in the mountains, had been replaced by lighter clothing similar to what would be seen in Florida or California. The community had an air of ease and light-heartedness that I had not encountered in places like Kaata and Tutuacasa. Walking up from the river was like walking through a tropical paradise: we passed by grapefruit trees and gratefully accepted the coconut they offered us, freshly picked and cut open by Don Jose with a machete. We set up camp and then were introduced to the community. Asuncion is a small, Amazonian town made up of thirty families. It has no electricity and running water is available only from a couple of spiggets interspersed throughout the community (although it is extremely unreliable as we found out on our second day when the water pipe broke and the entire community had to go without fresh water for over a day).  At our meeting in the two room school house, we learned that their rice crop had been greatly affected by the late and heavy rain, so much so that many of them worried about losing crop before it could be picked. As such, we decided to spend our time there alternating between different families´ chacos and picking rice. We would spend a couple hours in the morning at one field, seek shade during the heat of the day, and spend another couple hours in a different field picking rice. Although the work was not strenuous, it was very rewarding knowing the fifteen of us were making a material difference in helping various families from the community harvest their crop. As a show of gratitude for our work, the community offered us showers up at the ecolodge a ten minute walk away. In order for us to have water for the showers, they shut their water off for an entire day, once again leaving the community without fresh water. This show of gratitude made me really think about what I value and the way I interact with other people. Here´s this extremely poor village in the middle of the Amazon, the people don´t have any possessions or even electricity and they willingly give up their water for a bunch of people they don´t know without even thinking about it. When I compare that to all the unimportant, material items I´m hesitant to share with the people in my life it makes me wonder where my priorities are. Why is it that the more material possessions one seems to have, the harder it is to share them?

On our fifth day in Asuncion, we went up river two hours to an even smaller, three-family community called Corte. The presence of poverty was overwhelming. Due to a shift in the river, the water tank that a previous Dragons group had donated could no longer be used. As a result, they had asked us to come up and help them build a well two metres wide and ten metres deep so they could finally have access to fresh water. When we arrived, I was amazed at how drastically different their lives were in comparison to the people living two hours away in Asuncion. Not only were they void of electricity and running water, but none of the members of the community owned shoes and many of the children looked disease-stricken. There was no school and they had never encountered white people before. Their main source of food was hunting (wild boar while we were there) and fishing; however they did not use a fish hook or rifle. They used a wooden bow and arrow. I would not have believed it if you had told me earlier that day that it was possible for someone to catch a fish in the muddy river water with a bow and arrow, however I was given proof later that night when they walked up with an 18 kilo cat fish!

We began working on the well later that afternoon, clearing the trees and plotting the space where the well would go. We worked in solid, thirty minute shifts in groups of four and by lunch time the next day, the site was unrecognisable. We had to implement a make-shift pulley system over the hole after we passed seven feet. Our system of working was primitive but effective - after less than half a day we dug over 10 feet, giving the community a great start to their well. We left on Thursday afternoon to return to Asuncion, feeling really positive about the meaningful work we had accomplished. We had an inter-cambiar with the community on Friday night, sharing our dance moves and drinking coconut juice while the community splurged in Ceibo Alcohol. The rest of us were ready early Saturday morning for our boat ride to Rure; unfortunately Freddy and Roger (our guides) had had a bit too much fun the night before and were not in great condition. Consequently we left a little bit later than we hoped but arrived before noon anyways. Tomorrow we are off to Sapecho, signalling an end to our time in the Amazon. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the different pace of life and I really feel as though our time here has given me a different insight to the Bolivian way of life.

    Today is our last day living amongst our various families in Kathmandu. I've been thinking in these days leading up to our departure about the impressions I first had of my family and which they must have had of me. I liked them immediately, sensing their warmth, generosity and openness, but I was concerned about my place in a house where each person was so defined by their role in the family. I did not know whether trying to help my mother and sister cook would irreparibly mar the meal, if speaking to my bhaa would be overly bold, or questioning my brother in conversation, intrusive. I lamented the lack of young children to lighten the mood, and worried I was out of place in this quiet, composed household.

    A month having passed, my impressions have changed as much as I must have. In truth, I think I have not changed so much as stripped away a lot of what masked my actual self. The accepted social rules and personal expectations I live by at home are of no use to me here, and I've set at least some of them aside to learn how to live anew. Having done so, I settled happily into the rhythm of my home. As the language barrier slowly crumbled (still partially and resolutely standing) I've come to appreciate my aamaa's unobtrusive but hilarious humor and my bhaa's rambling and incomprehensible conversation. My dhaai, so shy and distant at first, has become a teasing, curious and kind brother, eager to discuss anything from politics, to food to the Red Sox. My dauntingly competent didi, who though only 21 carries most of the burden of the household, has become a true sister. She is kind, bitingly hilarious, engaging, and extremely caring. She has been my closest and most insistent guru.

    I am going to keep this short because I'd rather be home expressing my gratitude to them in action, than to others in words. I am begining to understand why Nepalis don't have a commonly used word for "thank you." It is easier to say something than to show it, but I want to make the effort for them. My household here has been a true family to me, helping me redisover the part of myself that is open to new experiences, to being teased, loved and to feeling things truly and deeply.

I think that most of the world is connected these days. I can buy Maggi on every corner of this earth.I can buy Wall's ice cream--the one with the two consecutive hearts for a logo known as Kwality Wall's in India, Good Humor in the States, Magnum in other parts of the world--anywhere on this globe with enough electricity to power a small freezer. All goods come from China. Take you pick--church or mosque? Would you like sugar with that Nescafe? Does for Yahoo address end in ".com," ".fr," or ".in?" I once bought a can of milk in Guinea that was made in Lima, Peru by a company out of Hong Kong--the writing on the can was in English.

But there are other connections too, deeper connections that I feel at work when living in India. Bring to mind the first Indian and Western Eurasian exchange that comes to mind. Maybe you pulled up the spice and silk trade crossing Arabia to Europe, decorating the tables of wealthy merchants. Or maybe you thought further back, to a deep and almost organic connection that arose from the slow dispersal of plant and animal domestication between the fertile crescent and Indus Valley that diffused wheat and chickpeas and sheep and goats and cows and other pulses and fibers across the latitude that spans Eurasia. If you've read Guns, Germs, and Steel, you almost certainly thought about the historical significance of the long Eurasia latitude and that very first exchange before the rise of civilizations.

There are several times on this trip when I have not only been reminded of this latitudinal connection, but also felt it as a living, breathing legacy that continues to run below the surface connections of modern globalization--which largely is not diminished or augmented by latitude and longitude.

The first such moment of connection occurred as my Cathay Pacific flight flew from Hong Kong to Delhi. On the animated map that showed the flight's progress, I could see, for the first time, and India-centric map with Tehran and Islamabad and Kabul to the west and the Tibetan plateau and Kathmandu top the north and Dhaka and Bangkok and the Gulf of Tonkin and Hong Kong in the east. And, as elementary as it may sound, at that moment, with the white airplane icon making it's way toward Delhi and the world frames around the Indian capital, a thrill of excitement ran through my mind, tugging at my consciousness. That visual reminder of India's historical legacy, flowing across that latitude, past Tehran and into the Mediterranean made me feel the centuries of human interaction and innovation that has moved across that continent, carrying food and language and alphabets and poetry and mathematics and philosophy and art and yes, spices and silks too, from one independently arising civilization to the other, meshing all of these elements into a fluid, though markedly unique, existence.

The second time that I was truly moved by an inner knowledge and recognition of my position in space and time, I was sitting rather uneventfully and reading a boxed text block in my Hindi book, when I read: "Admi (man in Hindi) derives form Arabic meaning "descendant of Adam" and manav (human in Hindi) derives from Sanskrit meaning "descendant of Manu (the progenitor of the world in Hinduism)." I was floored. I laughed and read it again and laughed with delight at this newly discovered fiber of connection. "O, in what an amazingly intricate and profoundly varied and connected culture I have found myself living," I happily thought. I was so thrilled to be in India, living and speaking and existing in the midst of this timeless flowing and coalescing stream of humanity.