Day 3

Hello!

Here are a few pictures of the third day of our trip where we had a nice tour in the morning, a miscommunication in the afternoon, an evening of trying to communicate, and a night of rejoicing due to the resolution of aforementioned miscommunication. Here are some pictures. That night, everyone conversed about the difficulties of community service ITSª.

Roxana, a guide that we hope to take on the job of giving tours, is showing the nursery to the alumni. She is explaining the process of insertions for the plants. Below is a picture of a grafted plant which is used to propogate good plant genes. Ok, I don´t know much about the topic, but you can see pictures of the process at the bottom of this web page




Here are some bags that are ready to receive the sorted cacao beans. There are the BIG beans, mediums, smalls, and things that aren´t really beans.

Here we are in our new hotel, along the river with a beautiful view..


And tarantulas in the rooms. Haha. We moved hotels to get away from the large insects and here we are with spiders the size of your palms (and bigger) next to our beds. PS Alison totally got a baby tarantula in her skirt. It was amazing. She lived.


Eberhard, Shahla, and Alison (with her spider skirt) looking over the view of the hotel.


Yutzos was a great place to hang out. Which was lucky since Adam, Brooke, and Anna ran through the streets of Tena trying to find a taxi to take them to a meeting with Carlos. We found one, had our meeting, cleared up our miscommunications (is there a tour.. not a tour? Why did all the Kichwa go in another truck and not with us, PS what´s the dealio?), and the returned to a bunch of patient alumni. They were all worrying about the delicate and new relationship between MIT and Kallari that had just been cultivated.

It turns out Kallari thought our tourism bus driver was racist, Brooke misunderstood that the canoe ride was three hours, and based off of the lack of clear conversations, Kallari did not have the chance to finish their tour.

Which reminds me a lot about the themes of the Peruvian half of our trip.

Here we are in Manco Cápac and Señor de Luren, trying to complete our documentary. We have a mere ten days left in our trip, and themes of post-disaster communication are swirling through our heads. We are trying to send a message to communities and reconstruction NGOs with our movie while involving the community in taking shots, making editing choices, and shaping the voice of the documentary.

It´s been a very long process. We just showed the community our second draft documentary outside of a community store located between the two little pueblos. We started late, it got cold, and a lot of people ended up leaving. We can´t be sure why. It seemed that they all enjoyed seeing their community on a big screen, their harvests being made more ¨hollywood,¨ and even calling out the names of their neighbors.

But communication isn´t easy.

We stressed six themes in our documentary, topics that I think applied strongly to a lot of the work that we did in Ecuador.

1. Trust between NGOs and communities so that NGOs understand the true needs of the people while also creating moments of exchange of imformation so that the relationship is two-ways

2. Sustainability through investment by the community that is beyond just participation.

3. Clear, honest, and transparent communication that informs communities of how and why decisions are being made.

4. Passionate leadership from the NGO that expresses determination and dedication. Someone who applies the talents and skills of their volunteers in a way that meets their community´s short and long-term needs.

5. Collaboration between NGOs, and government (as well as with communities) to ensure that work is being done in a consistent, high-quality manner with even distributions of aid.

6. Channels for communication that are accessible by communities to express their needs, concerns, and questions to the NGO.


Of course these things aren´t easy. And we´re finding out even more difficulties about this work as we continue editing our documentary.... but more later.

Day 2

With their noses to the grindstone, the alumni started working their tail-ends off on day two. We had the entire day to meet with stakeholders, eat lunch with the community, and finally get our feet wet.

The workshop was a smash success:

We arrived with little time to spare but few from the community beat us there. Robin, Deanna, Kathryn, and Alison helped set up the corn sheller while Brooke, Vikki, Shahla and Anna planned for the nutrition workshop.

Robin said kids are awesome and corn shellers are cool, but she doesn´t know a thing about them and spanish speakers should be doing the bulk talking. So we did. Robin squat down next to the community members and communicated the best she could. Hammers were swinging and the hands did the talking. Below you can see


Here, all the women are trying out the new cornshellers that they´ve made.

Here you can see the de-kerneling happening before your eyes.


The turn out seemed small at first but then as the day progressed, the corn sheller materials got snatched up. In particular, a corn sheller designed in another part of the world was much clamored after. ¨I have a cousin who is a metal worker. I´d like to show this to him so he can make more, better.¨ It was the highlight of Alison´s trip, I think. Then the nutrition workshop with professor Shahla in the picture below. She gave everyone a quick talk about balanced meals and opened up the floor for whatever questions the community had concerning nutrition. There were questions about salt, what kid´s should eat, etc. And Shahla fielded them all expertly. And in the end it turned out to be just right because all the food was gone and everyone ate contentedly.


Deanna(left) fled the scene to work with Judy (right) and Elias (middle) concerning the promotional brochures. A nice twist of a career spun her from mechanical engineer, systems thinker to designer. She´s talented. Like seriously. They talked about the details and the technicalities of the cooperative and chocolate-making process. The results have been good so far, but just you wait in September when things really get rolling. The post-trip relationship that has resulted has yet to fully bud, but I expect full bloom once emails begin to fly.



Erika, Joe, Dick, and Roberta headed straight for the office and hung up a big piece of paper and began mapping out the business of Kallari. After a meeting with Carlos and Leonor, they were able to really start revving their planning engines. Then they spoke with Judy to get finer details about the cooperative (time that Carlos just didn´t have) and the markets in the United States.



Then the alumni split up. Some began to clean up the workshop space while the Tourism Planning group went on a short tour with Kallari to meet some farmers and havea jolly time in the Rainforest amongst all the cacao plants.


Here, you can see that Nick from Global Adrenaline has fancied himself a tree-climbing device and harvested a yucca root. The smile says everything.

Here, Anna tries it out. Looks more like she´s brute forcing up that tree, but you can see the fibers around her feet!


And finally, our community tour guide.

The day was full, and we retired to our Cabañas in the deep woods with the large insects and abundance of tarantulas in the bathrooms. And when we arrived, we laughed and drank some wine. And the night passed pleasantly.

Except for Roberta who had ¨friendly baby monkeys playing on her roof.¨ Well, they were bats actually.

Day 1 (in Tena, that is!)

A brief summary:
1. Factory tour
2. Four hour drive from the mountainous Quito to deep jungle depths of Tena
3. Our first official orientation with Kallari
4. Dinner follwed sleeping the night away in the eco-lodge Cabañas Aliñahui

But how it really happened is a whole other story. Where we last left off, the alumni had just arrived and taken a brief 2-day orientation throughout Quito, learning how to work with communities with the Pachamama Foundation and understanding the tail end of Kallari´s chain of production (cafe and factory). Although we don´t have any pictures, we promise we saw how chocolate was made. Through the entire process from toasting to conching, until the temperature is made just right and each package is sealed by hand.

On a tight schedule to get to Tena by 3pm, we hopped back on the bus. Brooke was breaking out in stress hives, contemplating the intricate consequences of missing the integral meeting with the Board of Directors. Just that morning, the route had been blocked due to massive landslides. How would we pass? Would the road be under construction? Once we started, there was no looking back. Anna reassured her that everything would be okay. Anna is almost always right, too, so Brooke believed her.

Meanwhile, Adam was in Tena sipping on a pina colada. Work had slipped through his fingers and time was abundant. Or so he says.

In the last blog post, you see our journey. We rushed and ran and turned and swerved all the way there. By the time we arrived, our stomachs were in our feet. Judy Logback and Raquel both narrated our path. I don´t think any one will remember every single river, but that´s ok!

(insert story about finding the infamous corn sheller, a tale only to be heard in person)

We arrived though.. thirty minutes early for our orientation. Brooke fainted and Adam took it from there:


Here, you can see how organized our orientation was. Adam had set up name tags, printed relevant documents, and provided the groups with handy notebooks to take down useful information. The Kallari office accompanied each project group accordingly. We had Judy working on promotion materials. Fabricio was working with the Community Workshop Group, naming all the food he could possibly think of. Leonor and Carlos were swept off their feet to work with Growth Planning... and by the end of it, everyone´s heads were spinning.

The most important part, though, is that the alumni worked with the community parter, one-on-one. And Brooke was happy. Adam was happy. And Anna was ecstatic because the rainforest is like her favorite place ever. Period.

Carlos gave a kind welcoming speech to the alumni. He said that everyone thinks that the Cooperative is crazy, but they dreamed their dream and here they are earning more money for their farmers. There was a small part inside of me that stood and applauded when he said, ¨Welcome to Kallari´s house. We are glad you are here.¨ As students preparing for the trip, the moment could not have been any more rewarding.
During our orientation, Robin Millman learned how to make a cornsheller for the first time. As an educator, she was charged with working with the community face-to-face to help them learn more about design and creativity. As a non-native speaker, however, Robin insisted that Adam run the workshop. Here, you can see her doing a fab job at putting together a cornsheller. An impromptu workshop was called as the Kallari technicians showed up on the scene, and Fabricio started pounding away. It was a preview of what was to come tomorrow at 8:30 am when we started the real thing! I´ll give you a sneak preview though.. Robin and Shahla rocked their community interactions and made everyone feel at home. Big kudos to their open ears and hearts. You think that´s cheesy? Just you wait!
After a long three hours of saying hello to Kallari, we trekked our way south for 40 more minutes to the Cabañas. The place is a solar-panel run with rainwater harvesting sort of hostal. It serves dinner, breakfast, and packs lunch in beautiful banana leaves to cut down on its environmental impact. The lodge is 1.2 km from the main road, inside the jungle, alongside the Rio Napo. Here is the view.

When we arrived, however, the hostel was not like the hostel we saw on the internet...

-Intermission-

Hello all,
Apologies for the hiatus, but a thundering herd of alumni, coordinators, and travel guides charged through the last ten days of our lives.

Anna remains in Ecaudor to tie off the rest of the loose ends while Brooke and Adam travel another 48 hours from the jungle back to the dessert. The community is far from internet connection, but they will make valiant stabs to blog as best they can.

To tide you over until we are able to blog in detail again, here are some photos of the beautiful scenery between Quito and Tena: