December 2000

Hello and sorry for the longish break since writing the last instalment of the field workers diary.
Since then a lot has happened, my learning curve keeps on skywards and I have made both progress and blunders.

My official title (which excited me in a sad gorky kind of way as the only other official title I had was Waitress) is the co-ordinator of the TReeS projects. TReeS (Tambopata Reserve Society) has three branches of projects, community development, researcher support and environmental education. Obviously having not yet graduated it would be a bit daft to try and academically support researchers doing graduate studies. I am in fact learning lots from them.
Within the community development category is the Ethnocultural Centre of the Ese´eja (from now on CEE) which a lot of my work is focussed on. The centre, as mentioned in the last instalment, hosts a botanical garden for plants used in traditional medicine. It lies at the heart of the Ese´eja community of Baawaja, an indigenous population consisting of 40 families, about 200 inhabitants. Patients come from far and wide to receive treatments prepared by the resident healer using plants taken from the surrounding forest. In recent years it has hosted several exchanges between healers from other communities to share information and increase the extensive indigenous knowledge of the healing properties of plants found in the rainforest.
The first time I visited I was struck by the tranquillity and beauty of the centre, three wooden buildings with a back drop of rainforest, reached by boat along the Tambopata river and hosting its own private beach, on which I have turned very red.
The aim is to make the centre self financing and increase the participation of local people in its activities that are predominantly concerning the cultural resurgence since taking the political stance to separate the community from immigrants from the Andes who are sharing the same land.
The Ese´eja use the centre to record their history, stories and songs. I have been involved in writing funding proposals to enable the changes needed to happen, which includes the potential of inviting tourists to visit.

The second time I visited CEE I made a tremendous blunder. I was there to be a godmother at a mass baptism of many Ese´eja children. The priest who was on a salvage mission from Cuzco irritated me in what he said re ìthe lives of the nativesî in his sermon which then went on to political propaganda, but that is a whole other essay. I had been asked the week before and explained that I was not Christian and therefore was perhaps not the right person to be responsible for Tanya´s religious upbringing. This minor detail was not considered important however so long as shoes and a frilly white dress were provided. So off I went to buy the dress and the shoes and arrived with everyone else at CEE on a ten metre canoe packed with 38 people and a chicken. And this is where we witness the blunder. Amongst the Ese´eja community I have met most people from two very large families, the Mishajas and the Peshas. The Mishaja women are numerous and look very similar. Having only met my goddaughters mother once, and her sister once, and given the fact they have identical missing teeth and daughters of the same size, and that it was early in the morning, I donít think I can be held totally to blame for mixing them up and then putting the white dress on the wrong child. There then proceeded an embarrassing extraction of wrong child from dress and I felt quite bad, but they just laughed about it thankfully.
I also tried ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic vine drink that is used for healing. However nothing happened, I saw nothing. The shaman said this was because of problems in the spirit world and the fact that there was an ill woman (one of the patients) in the room. Interestingly it did have an effect on him and the other local man who was drinking it. I am reserving judgement until I know more.

The third time I visited the centre was last weekend and I was very impressed with the amount of work. Three young guys have been enlisted to help undertake all changes that require human power and the changes were very noticeable. Half a canoe has been constructed, the structure for a new house specifically for the preparation of medicines has been build and lots of the ground surrounding the centre has been cleared and started to be planted. If we can get funding for the rest we will be cooking with gas.

What has been very interesting as I have got to know people and organisations etc in and about Puerto Maldonado is the extent of internal politics. As one person said today if you start with the premise that each organisation hates the other organisations and each lodge hates the others, then add a few personalities, you are in a good starting position to understand what is going on here. Perhaps it is not quite that dire but I have been made very aware of the Ese´eja reaction to external agents recently which justifies comment, particularly in the context of the role of anthropologists in the field and the development process. I donít really have space in this piece to go into depth so excuse the brevity of explanation.
When I introduced myself and what I was doing at a community meeting an old man talked about the problem of anthropologists and investigators coming, taking what they wanted but not providing enough assistance for the community in terms of aiding development. I am there for community development but am also taking something away for myself with the whole experience, but said I was very conscious of this. I also explained my limitations being a foreigner and non-professional but due to the respected position of TReeS, my supervisor and perhaps my openness I seem to be welcomed.
According to one anthropologist working there the Ese´eja separate the anthropologists into ´true´ anthropologists who study just the Ese´eja and non-anthropologists who also work with the colonos, economic migrants who may go back generations sharing the same land but who are not Esa´eja. In many conversations I have heard the good and bad of anthropologists evaluated, with one compared to the other in terms of ìwhat have they provided for us in return for their work?î. Infierno is quite a magnet for external agents, as well as the anthropologists (a ratio of about 1 anthropologist per 40 people in a population of 200) there are conservation organisations and NGOs, for example TReeS, Pro Naturaleza and more. The most controversial is Rainforest Allegiance who own two lodges along the Tambopata river. As far as I understand they presented a contract to the community of Infierno (Ese´eja and colonos together) which was signed without a lawyer being consulted. It prevents the community from developing their own tourism initiatives for 20 years. The benefits were supposed to be that the company got 40% profits and the community got 60% and people would be employed in the lodges. They would also provide assistance for community development. I do not know the exact ins and outs of what really happens but Rainforest has become both the good and bad devil sitting on the shoulders of the community. They provide some things (although whether these things are driven by the community or decided upon by Rainforest and not necessarily answering the needs of the community is disputed), faltering in others and are accused of favouring the colonos and not the Ese´eja. Money is a contentious issue and none seems to actually flow into the community. Far from the misconceived idea of money and economics strangely infiltrating in indigenous lives, the Esa´eja are more than aware of the worth of the dollar. Rainforest seems to have exacerbated the community separation and provides an interesting example of development driven by external agents and perhaps more particularly those with business interests.
This has really got me thinking about the issues concerning development and anthropology, the creation of dependency and the development of development.

But onto lighter fluffier things to finish with. My chocolate ration is still high, the gym is still balancing out the effects, and I have new past-time. I bought a bike that saves me enormous amounts of time and money getting around town and I can indulge in this past-time of racing the motorbikes and motor taxis. As a measure on the pace of life I often win and I can assure you this has nothing to do with extraordinary leg power.
My friend is coming in less than two weeks, and I am thoroughly enjoying not having to listen to the awful Christmas music played in every shop accompanied by cheap tacky decorations and all the other misdemeanours of a commercial navidad. Plus the mangoes are dropping all over the place making yummy drinks in my blender. The government should issue safety warnings and hard hats to all residents. The first rains of the rainy season have swollen up the rivers (something British residents will be quite familiar with) and I have got rid of my headlice and parasites.
All in all still going well!!

Rebecca