Back Again

I've done what I can in the office for now, so the next few days I'm going to spend in Los Naranjo collecting data on the roads and rivers that cross the community.
While I'm finishing up this map, Yanapuma is contacting other Tsachila villages in the area to see if they would also like to pursue a mapping project. So hopefully I'll be able to repeat the process for another community; this time with a little experience.

Map 1

It's not very glorious without a base map to give reference, but here is a draft of my first production.

ArcView is up!

After a mere 3 days of installation (reinstallation, registration, authorization, fail, repeat), ArcView is up and running! I lugged the desktop computer console down to the distributors office this morning and we found the error in one of the multiple registration codes. Yay!

Dongle

Barring a breach of contract on the part of the local ArcGIS distributor, I should be able to start work tomorrow! Yes, start. Well, I have uploaded the waypoints to the computer at the office, navigated the maze of user accounts and executed the necessary software updates, but as of today I haven’t been able to open the geography software that will facilitate our final product. Due to the cost of ESRI products (~$1500 for the most basic GIS kit), the manufacturer requires a rather intensive registration process to activate the program. Sometime in the last two years the software was uninstalled from the Yanapuma computers, so I reinstalled it yesterday afternoon. The first time I opened it, an error message declared I was missing a Sentinal SuperPro driver. Installed the necessary driver, I was informed that I was now missing the Single Use Hardware Key, also known as a 'dongle'. This dongle is a USB drive that ensures the software can’t be used on multiple computers at once. By what I would say is a design flaw, it looks just like a common flash memory stick so sometime in the period of time when no one was using the software at Yanapuma, the key walked off. By 9:30 this morning I had determined that the missing key was our problem, after starting installation about noon yesterday. The interim I was talking on the phone, chatting and emailing customer service reps in the US and Ecuador. Because the NGO is located in Ecuador, US reps claimed they couldn’t help and I would have to contact the Ecuadorian distributor. Since ArcGIS was donated to Yanapuma from the US, the Ecuadorian distributor said they couldn’t offer assistance. When I visited the distributors office they informed me that I would have to pay the annual maintenance fee before I could purchase the hardware key, for $600. The head of the Conservation Grant program at ESRI that originally donated the software said I could apply for funding to cover the maintenance cost and since I couldn’t buy the key, writing a grant presented itself as the only option. I sent a desperate email to our assigned customer service rep at ESRI hoping for some exemption from the maintenance fee. A few hours of grant forms later I get an email from the distributor saying they’d sell me the key. The rep had sent this email: “Would you be kind enough to assist the customer below with purchasing an hardware key? They seemed to have lost theirs.” With such a mandate from the headquarters, the distributor couldn’t turn me down.

One Week; One Comuna

We've done it! My GPS now holds coordinates corresponding to the complete community boundary.
So far, I've now circumnavigated Comuna Los Naranjo, been on board a 4-person motorcycle ride, and not gone a day this week without eating bananas in some form or another. I'd like to say I walked the whole perimeter, but the last day we drove a few of the boundary roads on Roberto's bike (see right), thus finishing our fourth day's work in the afternoon of the third day. Another qualification, the 4-person moto did include 2 children, so was actually less of a feat than sharing the seat with two fair-sized men. The banana boast is no stretch though, I've hardly gone a meal without plátano, interestingly, never once served raw. We eat it boiled, steamed, mashed and fried, sliced and fried, and of course, the Tsáchila favorite: boiled, mashed, then rolled. Here you can see the process, the finished product is sitting in the pot on top of the boiled bananas. Excuse the culinary digression, it has been somewhat of a preoccupation in the last week.
With the extra time I had after the exterior property lines, I made waypoints at the school, football field, cemetery, and a bridge. This will hopefully serve as highly visible reference points for overlaying an aerial photo.

On Friday, I attended a meeting in Puerto Limon concerning a reforestation project for the county containing Los Naranjo. Giovanny, Yanapuma's agriculture expert, gave a presentation advocating the participation of the Tsachila as seedling vendors to county officials, members of a local NGO and an environmental consultant. I was brought along because one of the issues complicating project initiation in border regions is that the county does not have very well defined boundaries. I was surprised to hear some debate about which towns actually fell within the county's authority. Towards the end of the meeting, the brought the position they envisioned me taking on: head county GIS technician! That was a bit of a shock. I felt like I was possibly getting myself roped into something I had no desire or ability to do. Fortunately, I knew all I had to do was talk a little longer and they would better comprehend my skill level as demonstrated by my language (in)competence. They were not easily dissuaded, but we eventually compromised to the goal of mapping the nearby Tsáchila communities instead of the entire county. The only problem with this plan is that it will take full participation from each of the Tsáchila comunas. So as of yet, this blog's title maintains its pertinence. This week I have my work set out for me though, remembering how to use ArcGIS at the Quito office.

Half-mapped

Hurrah! We´ve begun mapping! The meeting Monday morning happened as predicted and was amazingly punctual (only 10 minutes late!). The six men who gathered at Alejandro´s house talked for a little more than a half and hour in Tsafike, presumably about the mapping process and obstacles. When the conversation ended, Alejandro turns to me and says something along the lines of, "Well, would you like to say something about the project and Yanapuma?" I asked him to fill me in a little on the discussion, then tried to explain the one potential misunderstanding, that our final product will not be an official survey or even necessarily permantent.

Alejandro taking notes on a waypoint

To my surprise, a little after my fumbling speech everyone stood up and I learned that we were to start mapping right then. We walked to Zacarias´s farm and started back along the boundary, which was marked by a thicker line of brush between two fields. We started by putting waypoints about every 30 meteres, but since the line was pretty straight we decided to just mark corners and a few in between. Communication was a little tough that first day for a few reasons. I was out of the loop of most conversation and didn´t have a good idea of the plan, so I often stuggled to answer questions about the mapping process. I tried to stress that I was just a technician and this was their project, but they still needed to know how to faciliate the GPS work. My complete lack of experience in the area was complicated by my difficulty with a technical vocabulary in Spanish. In spite of that, we managed to cover a few kilometers that morning and put down 25 points. The hardest part of the work is definitely coordinating land owners, which I have little hand in. After the second day, the track of waypoints on my GPS seems to suggest that we´ve covered half of the border. We´re now discussing what we can do next. There are a lot of options; marking all the roads and rivers for reference points on the map, overlaying the boundary line on an aerial photo, or uploading the roads to google maps so tourists can get directions to community shows.
Apart from mapping, I´ve been having a lot of fun taking part in a different lifestyle. Yesterday afternoon we fished the creek with nets and a toxic root that makes the fish ´drunk´ as Alejandro told me. After the opaque extract from the pounded root is released into the water, the small fish swim to the surface impaired enough to easily scoop up. After getting the hang of the motorcycle taxis that took me to Puerto Limon where I lasted posted, I got a chance to ride one motorcycle with two other grown men. I sat furthest back on the ride on the dirt road that connects the community to the highway, my feet on the pegs and Alejandro´s feet on mine, his son-in-law drove us.
Well, that´s all for now, will post more when I have time.

And so it begins... kind of

Anai, Diana, and me

Well, I haven´t technically started work yet, but I have worked. I spent this weekend getting to know my homestay family, the Aguavil´s, and helping out a little. On Saturday, I ferried banana bunches in their field/orchard/forest. On Friday I scraped the dangerously slipperly mossy slime from the hard-packed dirt ground around the compound, I suppose the equivilant of mowing the lawn. Also on Friday, the day after I arrived, I helped out with a Tsáchila tourist show. A group of 7th graders from the nearby city of Santo Domingo came to watch and participate in a display of Tsáchila traditional culture. (Here is a short video of the family performing). The night before, the Aguavil´s showed me how to make henna-like tatoos with the juice of a huito fruit. When applied with a stick, it goes on mostly clear, but in the morning you have a bluish-black mark that lasts for 8 days. The father put one ring on my arm, without pressure or knowledge of the expectations I stayed with that. The day of, all the men, myself included, painted their hair red with the dye from achiote, which washes out with soap. Everyone else was dressed in skirts and fully painted, so I wasn´t a very convincing Tsáchila (the blue eyes were a give-away too).
The community Los Naranjo has a center (the futbol field of course), but most of the families live a short distance away on their fincas (in this case, the banana dominated, partially-wild plantations). I´m sleeping in an approximately 15´x16´ timber framed house with bamboo-siding and a thatched roof. There are several other buildings like it on the compound, varing in shape and size, as well as a couple of palm-roofed covered areas holding hamacas or benches. Closest to the road the parents stay in a cement-block home with a kitchen and tv and further up the oldest son lives with his wife and three daughters. These grandaughters, aged 8 to 2, are a hoot and always keep me company, requested or not. Their favorite games include stealing my hat, repeatedly asking what my name is, and all sitting in my lap at once.
As for the mapping project, the plan is to have a meeting Monday morning. My host father seems to be very keen on having a map of the community, so I´m trying to stay optimistic, but I can imagine the difficulty in convincing all the community members to bushwack their property lines with a gringo.

The covered area in the family compound used for meetings and shows

I'm off!

Two days after I began the search for a community map of Los Naranjo, I’ve finally figured it out; no such map exists. Within a few hours of turning in my painstakingly edited letter to CELIR, I was sent an email from the director recommending that I take my request to the Sub-secretary of Lands. To make a long story short, I went to a new building, started on the 8^th floor, got sent to the 5^th then the 11^th, then back to the 5^th. The phrase, “I was just there, they told me to come here,” became far too familiar. I returned one last time to the 11^th floor this morning, only to be informed that the government has never mapped Los Naranjo.

Tomorrow I'll bus the four hours to Santo Domingo, then another hour with Guadalupe to the village. She'll introduce me to the community and I'll get my host family. Then I can start!

First Day

As directed, I arrived punctually between 9 and 10 am. I think I got a pretty good feeling of how this internship will be structured. After a welcoming, but pretty short orientation, I was showed a computer that housed all the GIS data of previous projects. Since what work has been done previously was in other communities, I gleaned what I could from the processes the previous workers used. Thankfully, several of them left in-depth reports of past projects, detailing how they had gone about engaging community members, what problems they encountered and a great deal more useful information. I also chatted with Guadalupe, the outreach staff person who has been visiting the communities to see if they would like a map done. Since the community Los Naranjo has decided they would like to delineate their property lines, we can start with my part as soon as I arrive. Guadelupe and I planned to meet Thursday in Santo Domingo because she will be in a different town on Wednesday and I still need to find some maps of the area. And that was my next task.

After an early lunch of fried plantains and eggs with a syrupy mango juice, I walked to the Instituto Geografico Militar (IGM), which happens to sit at the very top of a fair-sized hill. At the front gate where visitors receive passes, I learned it’s always good to carry identification. I saved myself from another trek by convincing the guard that my written passport number and name would be enough. Ok, maybe I just acted pitiful and fumbled in my bag for a while before pleading he allow it, but I got in either way.

The cartography office was very impressive; far more professional and modern than its counterpart in Buenos Aires. A woman who manipulated the map database on a touch screen computer helped me locate the topographic maps I needed. Los Naranjo was printed near the bottom edge so I bought the grid to the south as well, since it happens to contain another Tsáchila community, Cóngoma. I purchased two of each to keep on in the office in Quito. Besides the hill, that was easy, but the next map I needed, of community boundaries as created in a government concession years ago, turned out to be a lot harder to get. On goal of this project will be to compare the historic legal boundaries of the community with what is left of their lands after continued encroachment from surrounding ranchers over the years.

Instituto Geografico Militar

The folks at IGM told me to go to CELIR (The Special Commission of Interior Boundaries of the Republic) at the junction of Chile y Guayaquil. I stopped by the Yanapuma office to drop off the topo maps and find CELIR online, but the phone number given on the government website raised no one. I took a taxi this time, as recommended by Guadelupe, to the historical center. With help, I located the Guerrero Mora building (thankful for the practice I had in pronouncing guerrero after living in a province of that name in Mexico), but the first guard told me CELI (they drop the republic part) had moved, which appeared likely since it was full of construction rubble inside. I returned to protest after two people on the street redirected me to the Mora building, but to no avail. After an argument with the man at the front counter through a chest-high opening in the glass, I was told to go to the general tourist office. The lady at the tourist office kindly marked two places she knew were government offices. I went to the closest one first, Department of National Security and they told me to go the Ministry of the Interior at the Presidential Palace. So I put on a business face, walked up to the building where Rafael Correa works and requested to visit the Interior Ministry. I was told to go around back. The security trio at that door told me to go to the Guerrero Mora building, of which I had to convince them was not correct before I could continue. Then the officer at the desk inside told me to go to the Mora building. And so it continued until I was inside the building and finally found someone who was aware of CELI. The chubby bureaucrat at the end of the line listened to my plea and told me all solicitations had to be in writing, addressed to Señor Ministerio del Interior. An hour later I returned with a letter in hand, corrected and embellished by the owner of the internet café I used, but the office had closed at 4:30.

Although I hadn’t achieved everything I hoped, I felt it was a pretty successful day. I had one map and a plan to start work.

The weekend

Saturday afternoon I straddled a creatively marked, but incorrectly located equator, sat in the confessional seat of a gilded Jesuit church, crept through traffic in the historical center for two hours and drank canelazo at the foot of the virgin-of-the-small-loaf-of-bread (La Virgen del Panecillo, who happens to be a dragon tamer). Back at Cisco’s house, the extended family had gathered for dinner, Cisco’s family of four, two cousins, two aunts, two uncles and me. Before the turkey and potatoes came out, the cousins traded Chuck Norris jokes (who knew his omnipotent influence spread so far?). I failed miserably at explaining why I couldn’t translate Knock, Knock jokes of the orange variety; “Naranja you glad I didn’t say banana?” just doesn’t make much sense. I was also privy to an interesting debate about the role of General San Martin in Latin American history; being an Argentinean (like one of Cisco’s uncles) his role is downplayed in the liberation of Ecuador, either that or its exaggerated by Argentinean textbooks, I haven’t checked.

El Centro Historico

To rest from such a busy day of driving around, Cisco and I retired to his family’s finca. An hour north of the city they have a small house on a quarter of an acre with avocado, lemon and other fruit trees, some of which they sell to local supermarkets. We spent the afternoon drinking Pilsner (the Ecuadorian’s beer of choice), talking about life and picking green avocados to ripen later. I also tried for the first time a tree-growing variety of tomato (the tamarillo), as well as a cross between a lime and a mandarin orange.

I’m steadily increasing my Ecuadorian slang. Chévere means cools, cheveraso means really cool and man (pronounced mahn) means man, or woman actually (e.g. “Mira ésta man). For more, see the Factbook group, “You know you're Ecuadorian when...”, strangely and fortunately in English.

I’m now at the Hostel Galapagos Natural Life, which was recommended to me by the Yanapuma folks for its proximity to their office, though there are a million other hostels here in the tourist district La Mariscal. I scored a private room for the price of a dorm ($8 a night) because 15 Chilean girls traveling together filled the rest of the hostel. Around dinnertime a woman from the hostel came and knocked on my door to tell me there were empanadas and coffee in the dining room. The 15 Chileans, 2 Germans, 4 Ecuadorians and I shared a large dish of fried empanadas with cheese and fried dough with syrup. I’ve got high hopes for the complementary breakfast since dinner wasn’t even advertised.

To work tomorrow!

Quito!

Seeing my friend Cisco as I walked out of customs in the Quito airport was a wonderful welcome. It's such a luxury not to have to search for a hostel on the first night in town. I met Cisco, who's real name is Francisco and actually goes by Pancho here, when he spent a year in my hometown as an exchange student. In the evening we had a good time talking about old friends as we browsed pictures of high school track; Cisco and I competed in the 4x 200 meter relay together. Last night, after a hot meal and shower, I slept soundly surrounded by the familiar photographs of Dan Evans.
I woke up this morning and pulled back the shades to be greeted by the Andes mountains sitting what seems like just a few blocks away. Pretty comparable to Sitka ;), except the elevation here is 2,800 meters (9,200 ft).

Ciao,
Ben

SeaTac

Now that I'm en route, it's time to set up a blog. My goal for this blog is both to keep friends and family up to date (with hopefully weekly posts) and to encourage myself to write about the experience.
I have to admit, I've been a little anxious about my ability to help with my minimal GIS experience and without much prior knowledge of project details. I have agreed to help the Yanapuma Foundation with community mapping, but the large part of my adventures are yet unknown (thank Molly for the great title of this blog). Yanapuma approached the Tsáchila community after they expressed interested in a mapping project, but the process of determining exactly what needs to be done is a long one, so my preparation has been a little short on specifics.
I've made contact with a high school friend who lives in Quito, who generously offered to pick me up at the airport and take me in for the weekend. On Monday, I'll report the Yanapuma office to hopefully learn what I'll be doing. Next update will be from Ecuador!

Thanks for reading Mom,
Ben