I’ve been back from Belen for a week and a half now, and it feels like I’m just beginning to touch down. The whirlwind of the trip to Peru segued immediately into the whirlwind of Xmas, travel, the New Year, sickness, moving, and a host of logistical dramas.Hopefully the regular readers of this blog have been nearly as busy, and so haven’t been waiting impatiently for an update…Belen was just amazing, in about five ways at once. Each of those ways in turn…
To cut straight to the full photoset, go here.
People
From the residents and community leaders of Belen and their children, to health-care workers from Iquitos, to Gesundheit Institute collaborators from Peru, Chile, Norway, and all over the US, I shared a little time and space, a little conversation or laughter, with dozens of folks. So many inspiring, dedicated folks, so many brilliant survivors… The cascade of personalities and faces and passions really enlivens the work of research and logistics, that can otherwise become a little grueling at times.
The task remains of figuring out how we can coordinate all these passions and capacities, so that our interest can turn into effective action - and it’s no small task. The resources represented by the concern and energy of all these folks is inspiring - and in truth, is the baseline of what we need to make something happen in Pueblo Libre. Particularly when we consider the folks in the community itself , this interest and commitment is the resource without which no effective project could happen - and if it came down to it, the only one we couldn’t do without.
The part which might require some finesse - for me, or for whoever - is to facilitate the coordination of the various people and projects involved such that the leadership of the people in Belen is consistently brought into the foreground. This, for me, is the essential element to distinguish what we do in Belen from charity - and to make it about liberation instead.
Surveying the terrain
The conditions in Belen are pretty extreme. I didn’t have a fraction of the time I would have liked to explore Pueblo Libre, preferably with a map for annotation, and a guide/translator in tow… I didn’t even see a decent map of Pueblo Libre until the last day, after Bjorn talked some municipal engineers from Iquitos into giving him a print-out of their CAD file.
That being said, I saw a lot with the time and resources that I had. The variety, in house construction, of adaptations to annual flooding was fairly extensive - from homes floating on log rafts, to houses raised on stilts - with anything from a common social space, to a chicken coop, to nothing, in the “basement” - to homes made entirely of bricks or concrete, in which the first floors are just abandoned during the wet season.
Latrines are generally located in the broad “alleys” in that seem to alternate with streets, between rows of houses. Most of the ones I saw were set across a ditch running down the center of the alley, that periodically flows with stormwater. They are built on logs, so that when high waters come, they just float up with the flood. Others are full-time floaters, on log rafts in the Itaya River. These broad alleys, despite some greenery, are pretty nasty, generally strewn with trash and presided over by carrion birds. They get broader, dirtier, and more desolate as they approach the river.
One of the most exciting discoveries of my explorations was the extensive gardens that that are grown out in the floodplain. I knew from prior research that indigenous folks in the region had done extensive cultivation in the fertile floodplain soils, but I wasn’t sure if any of that tradition was still alive. The main crops seem to be yucca and maize, with quite a bit of sugarcane, and papaya. I saw mangos and other fruit trees under domestic cultivation as well.
The connection with agriculture is extremely important - though not necessarily vital - for an eco-san program. If there is place for treated excrement and urine to go, and even serve a useful function, it will make it much easier to close the loop on those nutrient cycles.
As good as the map we got from the engineers is, I would give my eyeteeth for some topographic information. Figuring out just where the waterline cuts through Pueblo Libre at any given state of the river will probably, eventually, be crucial for design work.
Clowning
This is the difference of collaborating with Gesundheit. Those good folks discovered a long time ago that a red nose and some goofy clothes constitute an (apparently international) license for instant friendship with just about anybody - but especially children and old-folks. Clowning with children in Belen and Iquitos, with residents in an old folks’ home, with children at a community center for refugees from sex slavery, with patients at an AIDS hospice… this is a kind of activism of direct care, and immediate friendship, that I’ve never really experienced before. It’s changed the way that I think about activism, and I think it will change the way I work in the years to come.
Developing a vision…
…of a household-centered, ecological sanitation project.
In conversations with just about everyone I met, this is the vision that I tried to get people excited about. While this process of education, recruitment, and networking, is still in its infancy, I think this aspect of the trip was a big success. With very little warning or preparation, the folks that I spoke with about this set of strategies were very receptive - after it became reasonably clear just what the hell it was I was suggesting (working through a translator some of the time, and some of the time through my own somewhat meager Spanish).
The next steps all revolve around continuing this project of information and recruitment. Our strategy, in it’s current form, revolves around recruiting a team of representatives from each neighborhood, to (1) take part in a community design process, and in turn (2) coordinate hygiene education initiatives in each neighborhood.We may find that this strategy itself evolves as the project develops.
Resurrecting my rusty Spanish
This is one of those things that is almost inevitably banal to discuss, and anything but banal in practice. Suffice it to say that it was equal parts invigorating and frustrating to be getting by in my limited Spanish again, after several years of disuse. Just another reason why I’m thrilled to spending this coming winter in Austin, TX - many more opportunities to practice Spanish than I would find in the coming months in the Hudson Valley, I’ll bet.
Trying to work seriously, over time, on a community-led project in Belen with my current level of fluency would be kind of a joke. So I’ll get better.
And so…
I’m thrilled at what we were able to do in one minimally-planned, very short preliminary visit. Huge questions loom - the usual ones: funding, structure, coordination… and the other hundred topics that fall under those headings. The next few steps are clear, though, which I think is enough for now: work with Bjorn to make a budget for a joint water/ecosan project, and put together a little information about the whats and whys of ecosan, to distribute through our solid contacts in Belen. That should be enough to get us to a point where the next step after that, at least, is clear.
