Tech and Travel

So Laura Jean just published a very cool essay in a women's clergy e-zine that you can read here. The topic is (unsurprisingly) our upcoming trip abroad and how we're hoping to use skype and other technology to keep in touch with our family and friends, despite the distance. Take a look!

Nica Blog

So we are off to Managua on Monday morning -- very exciting!  Laura Jean and I will be doing a joint blog during our time in Nicaragua titled On A Journey.  The plan is for that blog to be our main space for posting stories and pictures about our time there.  I'll still be posting here on Goats Reading Books on non-Nicaragua themed stuff, but I expect the volume will be reduced. 

Anyway, if you're reading this, I hope you'll check out the new blog.  (RSS feed here, or you can do the google Follower thing by clicking on the link on the right-hand side.)

Nicaragua

So we have one of those big, life change-type announcements - which is that we'll be moving to Nicaragua in August to live and work there for a few years. (Not that its been that much of a secret, but I haven't mentioned it on the blog before.)

Living abroad has been a long-term goal of ours for many years and a great opportunity knocked so we decided to take it. We'll be working down there through the auspices of Global Ministries, which is the joint overseas division of the UCC and the DOC (Laura Jean's denomination).

Our local partner in Nicaragua will be the Christian Mission Church of Nicaragua. Laura Jean will be working with them to set up a kind of traveling seminary for the church's ministers and doing other forms of theological education. I'll be working on whatever environmental/development projects the community has in mind as well as teaching something math/science/environment-y at the Universidad Evangelica Nicaragüense (UENIC).

Or something! The situation may look different once we get down there. At any rate, we're pretty excited and are frantically learning Spanish and figuring out how to move ourselves and toddler down to Managua in just a few months. It is going to be a crazy adjustment so wish us luck, and please do let us know if you know anyone down there we should get in touch with (we've been continually amazed by the number of connections we've made already...)

And -- as this is an imminently blog-worthy topic -- I'm sure we'll have a lot more to say as the day draws near. Stay tuned.

Return Journey

Bittersweetly, our time in the East Bay is coming to an end, and we're heading back to DC this week. It has been a ton of fun being out in California again, and seeing family and friends on a regular basis. It's hard to believe 3 months is already over. Still, it will be good to be back in DC, and I'm sure we'll be back west sometime in the not-too-distant future.

At any rate, here's a geographically appropriate Rancid song...

Baby's First Backpacking Trip

We took Quinn on her first overnight camping trip the other weekend up in the Sierra Nevadas. It went really well (apart from the voracious, pigeon-sized mosquitoes) and Quinn seemed to have a great time. We went with my Dad, my sister Jessica and my cousin, Casey.


We got a nifty baby-carrier. Q was a little grumpy about it ...


... but the motion rocked her to sleep pretty quickly.



The big occasion for the hike was my Dad's 60th and my sister's 30th birthdays. Since we were bringing the baby, we chose a pretty easy trip, about 8 miles round trip. I confess I was a little apprehensive about taking the baby, envisioning all the bad things that could go wrong and mentally calculating how fast I could run the four miles back to the car in the middle of the night. But everything went awesomely.


We started near Huntington Lake and headed over Potter Pass.


Sadly even a short hike doesn't really reduce the amount of stuff you have to carry. You still need tents and sleeping bags, etc.


There is a beautiful view of the Sierra backcountry (looking north toward Yosemite) from the top of Potter Pass.


On the other side of the pass, our final destination was Twin Lakes. Here Quinn dips her toes in the lower twin.


We eventually found a nice campsite at the upper twin with a really great log for Quinn to play on. Quinn had a lot of fun splashing in the lake, picking up rocks and pine cones, tramping around the campsite and shouting the word 'chip munk!' Sleeping in the tent was just about the most exciting thing ever -- so much so that we had a hard time getting her to sleep.


Casey and Quinn.


Mmmm, camp food! (Actually, my Dad cooked a typically delicious meal of real pasta with feta, tomatoes and cookies for dessert -- he doesn't go in for any of that freeze-dried stuff.)


Upper Twin Lake, with island, as sunset nears. Interestingly, the stream flowing out of this lake travels underground for quite a distance.



Happy Birthday Dad and Jess!


Breaking camp the next morning.

Ecuador tidbits

Just to write them down before they fade (amazing how quickly that happens), some final thoughts on our trip to Ecuador.

• Southern Stars. It being my first trip to the southern hemisphere (albeit, barely) I was looking forward to seeing the southern stars. Unfortunately, the only nights spent outside of Quito were spent in the rain forest, where (it turns out) it rains a lot. We could see the stars one night while we were driving, and it was definitely neat to see Orion in the northern sky, but no primo star-gazing opportunities. Reason to go back, I guess.
  
  
• Volcán. The Andes mountains are really cool and we got to see several active-ish volcanoes. In addition to Guagua Pichincha--which looms over Quito and erupted spectacularly in 1999--we also spied El Reventador and Sumaco from the air on our flight to Coca and we drove right past the base of Tungurahua en route to Baños (which owes its thermal hot springs to the volcano's proximity).
  
  
  
• Chevron. In this week's Economist you can read the basic pro-corporate defense of Chevron. The authors do not seem to have bothered to interview anyone from the other side of the lawsuit and several of their assertions do not pass the smell test IMHO. In particular, the idea that Ecuador made tens of billions from oil exploration while poor, pitiful Texaco only made $500 million is laughable and inconsistent with other facts presented in the article. Chevron Pit has the full rebuttal here.
  
  
• Organize! We heard an interesting bit of history from Yury, our guide, about Monseñor Leonidas Proaño. Before the land reform laws of the 1960s, Ecuador's poor were essentially serfs, bound to the large haciendas. When Proaño became bishop of Riobamba in 1954, a region that was poor and mostly Quichua-speaking, he began to preach liberation and agitate for social justice. He even convinced parts of the Church to give up their large land-holdings. He also founded something called the Popular Radiophonic Schools, which trained leaders and community organizers. According to Yury many of young volunteers from the Radiophonic School are now leaders of the national indigenous rights organizations or are making policy in the national assembly and the Correa government.
  

New Years in Sarayaku (Part 2)

After collapsing into tent we were awoken quite early the next morning by the sound of drums. Apparently in Sarayaku, New Year's Eve is for dancing and New Year's Day is the time for more traditional observances. Some of the men began walking from house to house drumming even before the sun was up.

We spent the next two days talking to several of the local leaders and absorbing the beauty of the jungle. On New Year's Day we relaxed and observed some of the festivities, which were a mix of traditional dancing, speech-making and yet more chicha.

In our discussions we heard about the village's resistance to oil exploration on their land. Around 2003, the Argentine company CGC won the right from the Quito government to begin seismic testing in the area. All fine except that the Sarayacans were adamantly opposed to the project -- they were not interested in repeating what happened to the northern oil fields. Resistance to the oil companies took the form of actively escorting company employees off their land (among other things) as can be seen in the documentary, Soy Defensor de la Selva:
[The film was made by Heriberto Gualinga, a local Sarayacan filmmaker. He was nice enough to meet with us, screen his film and answer questions while we were there. The above clip is about 1/3 of the whole film -- the other two parts can be found here and here.]

The confrontation grew more serious when the Ecuadorean army was called in to back up the oil company (later in the film, you can see the Sarayacan women also confronting and disarming the soldiers). There were allegations that the army kidnapped and tortured 4 young men from the village. But in the end Sarayacu was successful. The NY Times had a decent rundown of the conflict and others like it in this article.

It was clear from talking with people that conflict with the oil companies had radicalized Sarayacu. Except "radical" isn't quite the right word. More like: focused their desire to control they way the interacted with the outside world.

There are some indigenous groups in Ecuador -- most famously some communities of the Huaorani -- who live deep in the rain forest and have voluntarily isolated themselves from outside culture. Sarayacu is most emphatically not one of those. Sarayacu has internet access, an agricultural college, solar and gasoline power, flush toilets, and a website. They have opened up their village to eco-tourists (like us), both to cultivate allies and to replace income that might have come from oil contracts.

We also spoke briefly with Marlon Santi, who is the current president of CONAIE - the largest indigenous organization in Ecuador. He pointed out that this local political savvy mirrors the growing political clout of indigenous communities in the wider Ecuadorean politics. Periodic popular uprisings organized by CONAIE have won indigenous people greater control over their lands and have even helped topple a few governments. The indigenous movement has also been on the cutting edge of environmental activism in Ecuador.

There is a lot more to say about our time in Sarayacu, but primarily I was deeply impressed by their gracious hospitality and by the thoughtfulness with which they negotiated their interactions with the outside world. They had clearly thought hard about how they wanted to "develop" their corner of the world, weighed the pros and cons -- and I definitely got the sense that they are in the driver's seat.

New Years in Sarayaku (Part 1)

The morning we entered the rain forest we stopped first at a vista point to gaze and take pictures. Geographically speaking we were at the far western edge of the Amazon watershed, still in the shadow of the Andes Mountains, some two-thousand miles away from the mouth of the river. I remember being struck by the vast wilderness we could see, and the realization that an even greater vastness stretched on over the horizon. The forest seemed so mighty, and yet we had just seen evidence of its fragility too.
The previous day we had driven from Quito to Puyo (via Banos); today our destination was the village of Sarayaku - a five to seven hour canoe ride from the end of a gravel road. Apart from an airstrip (which was under construction) the Rio Bobonaza is the only road to Sarayaku. We were very privileged to travel on canoes with outboard motors; almost all the people we met traveled via pole-power, which lengthens the trip from five hours to two days.
The canoe ride was long and uncomfortable, but mostly totally amazing. As we went downstream the trees got taller and the forest got denser. There were occasional houses, but mostly just the river, the trees and us. The water-level was fairly low, so the canoe ran aground at most bends in the river and we made slow progress. After about four hours we reached the (largish) village of Pacayaku, and that's where things started to get unusual.

First, we were accosted by new year's eve revelers: two teenage boys dressed in drag and waving naked barbie dolls charged out to greet the boat. They shouted at us to give them some spare change (apparently this is a common Ecuadorian new years tradition) and anyone who didn't got splashed.

Second, we stopped for gasoline at the driver's brother's house and we were invited up to drink some chicha, a (pretty alcoholic) drink made of fermented yuca. A new year's eve party was in full swing - they had a CD player and people made a point to ask the gringas and gringos to dance. At a certain point they turned the CD player off and the whole party walked over to the next house for the next round. The whole thing was fun and pretty raucous (and a little disorienting) and of course, we still hadn't made it to our final destination. So after an hour of dancing and a significant buzz, we piled back into the canoes.

When we finally made it to Sarayacu we heard the news that the other boat (the one with all our bags and our guide) might not make it that night due to a mixup. Despite realizing that we were in the middle of the jungle with only the clothes on our back we weren't stressed, mainly because our hosts were extremely welcoming - they set us up in tents and invited us to join them for the evening's celebrations. (The second boat eventually did arrive shortly after nightfall.)

So we partied and danced and drank chicha and generally had a terrific new year's eve. Once the sun went down it got intensely dark out, and we tromped from house to house (over rusty bridges and down treacherous muddy slopes, etc. etc.) following the music and the crowd. The music was a mix of more mainstream latin dance music with a few CDs worth of Kichwa pop music (which I would love to find a CD of).

At midnight they burned effigies representing bad things from the year past. And then we (exhausted) tumbled into our tent. More to come in another post, but here's the picasa slideshow from this leg of the trip.

Chevron-Toxico

Our second full day in Ecuador we took a short flight to the town of Coca (known as Puerto Francisco de Orellana on maps) to see firsthand the contamination caused by oil exploration. Before oil was discovered in the 1960s, Ecuador's eastern rain forest was home to indigenous people, a handful of Christian missionaries and not much else. In the northern oriente, oil companies cut down the forest to build roads and towns, and settlers flooded into the area. From what we saw of Coca, oil wealth hasn't brought much prosperity to the people, but has resulted in shocking pollution.

Our guide in Coca was an organizer with the Amazon Defense Front - a community group that has brought a lawsuit against Texaco (now owned by Chevron) to force them to pay for a clean-up. We drove around the area and saw stuff like this:This is a pit where waste oil and produced water were dumped by Texaco in the early '70s. We found this pit about 50 feet behind this family's house. The family relied on a well for water and livestock and fruit trees for food -- it was hard to imagine that all were not horribly contaminated. Apparently they had complained for stomach aches for years (anecdotally we heard a lot about elevated rates of cancer and miscarriage). The Correa government is now paying to clean-up this site.

Starting in the '60s Texaco (in a consortium with Petroecuador) drilled more than 300 oil wells and created more than 1,000 pools like this one. Standard practice in the U.S. at the time was to re-inject the waste products into the well after pumping; in Ecuador (because no one was watching) they just dumped it in the jungle. In 1990 Texaco sold their stake in the oil field to Petroecuador and left the country. A few years later they paid to remediate some of the waste pools and the government of Ecuador agreed to absolve them of all future liability.

Except that the locals didn't think Texaco had done a very good clean-up job and filed a lawsuit in the U.S. courts alleging that Texaco dumped nearly 17 million gallons of oil into the rivers and forests (more than the Exxon Valdez), and left behind hundreds of unlined open waste pits. If you read their website (or their defenders in the WSJ) Chevron's defense seems to be something along these lines:

• the jungle really isn't contaminated at all, we cleaned it up in the 90s
• if it seems like the jungle is contaminated, it totally isn't our fault, we blame Petroecuador
• and if it is our fault, the waste oil and produced water aren't even bad for you (trust us!)

After years of delay and stupid lawyer tricks the case was moved to the Ecuadorean courts, and now it kind of looks like Chevron might actually lose and have to pay the community upwards of $16 *billion* in damages.

We visited 3 other waste pools. The first was in the process of being cleaned up by the government, the second had an outlet pipe that flowed into a nearby stream (!) and the final one was one of the pools that had been "remediated" Texaco in the '90s. A family home had been built on top of the site in the meantime, but our guide took a post-hole digger and a mere six inches below the surface dug up contaminated soil. He mentioned that Texaco had simply bulldozed earth on top of many of the waste pits - and that this shoddy work was one of the reasons they might lose the case. Anyway, here are the pictures. They don't really do justice to the visceral sense of outrage I think we all felt while we were there.

Quito and Yunguilla

Happy New Year! We're back from an amazing 10 day trip to Ecuador. It was the first significant amount of time away from Quinn for both of us (she stayed with my parents and picked up several new words!) And while it didn't kill us, the last few days were tough. At any rate we are all happily reunited and have pictures! This post is the first of three -- the next two will have much more about the Amazon rain forest.

We went on a trip organized by Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based group that does socially responsible tourism among other activisty things. The goal was to learn about social and environmental justice issues in Ecuador, particularly around the issues of fair trade, oil extraction and indigenous rights.

We flew into Quito, perched at 9,300 feet above sea level (you definitely feel the altitude). The city is hilly and sprawled across a long narrow valley (in the shadow of an active volcano) and reminds me at least a little of San Francisco. Quito used to be one of the Incan capitals, although they burned it to the ground to prevent the Spaniards from taking it. As a result it doesn't have the astounding architectural history that you see in Mexico City or Rome, but the people, the descendants of the Incas and others, are still there and still holding tightly to their culture.

Our first morning in Quito we had breakfast at a coffee shop run by the Kallari cooperative. In addition to handicrafts and coffee, the Quichua-run cooperative makes particularly delicious chocolate bars which they have begun directly marketing to Whole Foods in the U.S. The filtered coffee they served was also a rarity -- in Ecuador the good coffee typically leaves on boats and the locals mostly drink instant.

That afternoon we visited Yunguilla, a rural community north of Quito overlooking a dramatically beautiful valley, that decided in the 90s to move toward ecotourism and away from logging as a means of making a living. Gallindo, a young community leader, gave us the story of their project, as well as a tour of their community projects and the lush cloud forest that draws in visitors. Ecotourism seems to have brought the community some level of self-sufficiency, although from Gallindo's story it was apparent that the path was not always easy. On the ride back to Quito we stopped to take photos at the Mitad del Mundo - the monument marking the (approximate) location of the equator.

After many adventures (stay tuned), we returned to Quito for one last day before our flight out. In the morning we visited the Capilla del Hombre, a museum featuring the work of Oswaldo Guayasamin, one of Ecuador's most famous and influential modern artists, and spent the afternoon wandering around the Old Town.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Ecuador Reading List

Laura Jean and I are heading off to Ecuador for 10 days right after Christmas (Quinn is staying with my parents). We're going as part of a Global Exchange trip to learn about environmental and social justice issues in that country - particularly involving disputes between Amazonian communities and foreign oil companies. Should be an interesting trip.

To prepare for the trip, I've been doing some reading on the issues and the country in general. (A good intro to the Chevron dispute is here; a defense of Chevron is here.) Here are some links:

Biodiversity and Conservation

• Finer et al. Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples. PLoS ONE. 3(8), 2008. (see also westernamazon.org)
  
• Kraft et al. Functional traits reveal niche-based community assembly in an Amazonian Forest. Science. 24 October, 2008.
• Ecuador's Choco under siege, but hope remains: An interview with UCLA conservationist Dr. Jordan Karubian (mongabay.com)
• The Harpy Eagle - King of the Canopy (Childrens Tropical Forests)
• Mangroves of Majagual, Ecuador are dying (Mangrove Action Project)
• Yasuni Scientific Research Station
• Research in Yasuni National Park
• Ecuador's plan to protect rainforest from oil drilling looks doomed (mongabay.com)
• Ecuador seeks to commercialize rainforest (Spiegel), 11/20/08
• Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development
• When chocolate is a way of life (NY Times, 11/4/08)
  

Oil Company Disputes

• Crude Reflections - Photo Exhibit (review here)
  
• Amazon Defense Coalition :: texacotoxico.org
• Clean Up Ecuador Campaign :: chevrontoxico.org
• Amazon Watch
  
• Texaco in Ecuador official site
  
• Jungle Law (Vanity Fair)
  
• A $16 billion problem (Newsweek)
• Ecuador keeps up oil cleanup fight against Chevron (Los Angeles Times)
• Ecuador ordered to pay $1.6B to Chevron (Economic Times)
  
• Amazonian Swindle (Wall Street Journal)
  
• Soy defensor de la selva [part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - short - via]
  
• Oil Exploration in Yasuni National Park
• Texaco goes on trial in Ecuador pollution case (NY Times)
• Seeking Balance: Growth vs. Culture in Amazon (NY Times, 12/10/03)
  
• Texaco in Ecuador (Oxfam America)
• Amazon activists win Goldman Environmental Prize (LA Times)
• Drilling for Oil Way, Way Offshore (Time, 8/18/08)
  
• 'Crude' forthcoming documentary by Joe Berlinger
• Chevron urges U.S. to revoke Ecuador trade (Washington Times, 2/5/09)
• Ecuador's Tribes Fight Big Oil (useful maps! Mariri Magazine, 6/4/07)
  

Recent Ecuador Politics

• Voters in Ecuador Approve Constitution (Washington Post, 11/29/08)
• Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature (includes text; CS Monitor, 9/3/08)
  
• Rights of nature news links via CELDF
• Ecuador Rising blog
  
• Ecuador maintains bond default threat (Financial Times, 12/11/08)
• How green is the Latin American left? A look at Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia (Upside Down World, 4/3/08)

[Updated 3/1/09]

Earth From Above

The shoreline of Lake Mead. (While on our trip to Vegas, we took a brief plane ride over the Grand Canyon -- amazing! -- and snapped this photo.) The region is currently in a drought and the lake is way way down and so this stretch of shoreline is usually underwater. Which is partly why it looks so bleached, although, honestly, the area around the lake is pretty stark to begin with.

(fyi Earth From Above is also the name of a fairly amazing series of photos by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.)

California

A few weeks ago we got back from an extremely relaxing vacation to California. I think I'm still feeling the residual good vibes from the trip. So here are some pictures of blue sky and other good things.


The primary reason for the trip was to attend my Grandma Mary's 90th birthday party and my Grandma Quinn's 85th. My parents also snuck a small baby shower into the schedule. It had been way too long since we had seen some family friends and some branches of the family tree. Here's my Dad with two of his siblings.


My Aunt Kathleen chatting with my Mom's tennis partner Charlene.


After two days of non-stop partying, we retreated up to the mountains and proceeded to sit on our butts for two whole days, drink beer, eat chips and salsa and stare at the beauty of nature. Which was absolutely perfect.


Before heading back, we dropped in on a few friends up in the Bay Area and gathered them together for dinner.




Here are Le and I, modeling our sweet EJ t-shirts.


Cathy stretches!


On our way back across the continent, we parachuted down into Mount Vernon, Iowa for Laura Jean to officiate her cousin Peter's wedding. I'm pretty sure we were in Iowa for less than 24 hours.


Here are Jesse and Amy, looking pleased...


... and Peter and Mardi looking happily married.

Mexico City

Here are a handful of my pictures from my late-November trip to Mexico City -- posted for your pleasure a mere 4 months late. The rest of the pics can be found here (snapfish login required).


The trip was a ton of fun and Mexico City is an amazing, endless city -- both beautiful and real at the same time. (Above are skeletons from the Frida Kahlo "Blue House" museum.)



Flying into Mexico City we could see Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl, the legendary twin volcanoes overlooking the Valley of Mexico...


... however, most of the city was covered in a thick layer of brown haze. The metropolitan area has nearly 20 million people (3rd largest in the world behind Seoul and Tokyo) and a terrible air pollution problem.


My old college roommate, Julie who has been living in Mexico for six years now, met me at the airport and we had lunch overlooking the Zocalo, the central square of the city. Here, within yards of each other, you can find the city's Aztec past at the Templo Mayor, the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the National Palace, the hub of modern Mexico's government. In other words, tourist central.


Julie, overseeing the hubbub below.


A peaceful courtyard at the National Palace.


Julie riding the subway with a really awesome clown.


Here's the Metropolitan Cathedral, looming over some Communist flags (yep that's Marx in Stalin in the photos) and peacock feathers used by a group of traditional dancers.


The Zocalo is also home to all manner of political protests, and Mexican politics have been pretty interesting lately. Protest encampments lined the streets to draw attention to a variety of issues: from the bitterly disputed 2006 presidential election to the current uprising in Oaxaca to the continuing relevance of the Zapatista movement in Mexican politics.


Thousands of street vendors selling anything you could want.


Bustling street life, outdoor markets selling to tourists and locals alike.


The reason for the trip is that Starflight, the 3-d astronomy museum exhibit I helped pull together, was being shown at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, and we were all invited down to help with the installation and attend the opening.


Here we have Starflight in action. The highlight of the trip for me was speaking (in my halting Spanish and their halting English) with the folks who came to opening. People generally thought it was pretty cool and we had some fun conversations -- there's nothing quite like describing abstract astronomical concepts in a second language to a group of artists.


One great thing about Mexico are the literally hundreds of gorgeous Diego Rivera murals dotting the city. Above is El Arsenal, prominently featuring Frida Kahlo as a worker...


... while this is Man, Controller of the Universe, mostly famous because the original was supposed to have been painted at the Rockefeller Center in New York, but was destroyed by John Rockefeller because of its explicit pro-Communist message (which was the subject of the movie, Cradle Will Rock).


By far the coolest things I saw in Mexico were the pyramids at the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan. Keith and I grabbed an early morning bus out to the site (about an hour outside of D.F.) and we mostly had the pyramids to ourselves for several hours. This is Keith descending the Pyramid of the Sun.


The smaller, but more ornate, Pyramid of the Moon.


Me on top of the Pyramid of the Moon.


A beautiful (if smoggy) sunset from my hotel room.


Behold! A winged cow!


Sadly, I only had a few hours to zoom through the fabulous National Museum of Anthropology, when I bet you really need a few months to do it justice.


These guys are Totonac indians performing the voladores rite, which is a really cool, if trippy, native tradition where they hang upside down and rotate around while playing music. The rumor I heard was that the Spaniards brutally stamped out many aspects of Aztec culture, but they let this one survive because they incorrectly thought it wasn't religious.

And lastly, I have to say D.F. has a subway system that is both one of the most extensive I've ever seen (outside NYC) and completely overwhelmed by the number of people who use it daily.

Can't wait to go back...