1. Departure for Peru, 7/13-16/06

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Big day for getting a “last batch” of supplies for our trip and getting my 11 year old son Luke ready for camp. My daughter Marissa who's coming to Peru with me to help with our work there printed out some Center brochures and helped me do an inventory of the hundred little things that went into our four different duffel bags. We also had two backpacks and my computer bag to round out the moving hardware, technology and stationary store going to Peru. Marissa's boyfriend Dylan came over later in the evening and set to work on a long overdue project – building a rearing cage for weevils and flies that will hopefully emerge from resin lumps. After a trip to the Lowes home improvement store to get brackets and screws and three hours of cutting, drilling, and stapling – it was done. I finally pooped out at 3 am.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Travel day. Last day of stretching and walking Juno at home for awhile. Wishing I had had more time to spend with Luke in recent days. I'm so glad he has been self-sufficient at home with his reading, coming up with new ideas to improve his CD top design for next year’s Art Fest Children’s sidewalk sale and brainstorming the plot of his dragon story with his Friends School friend for the Schlow Library story contest. We unfortunately didn’t have time to do one last measure of our sample corn plants. When we first measured 10 plants in May when they were a few inches tall. Last week they were over our heads.

My wife Yuri came home from her trip to the Soils Congress in Philadelphia in mid-afternoon, but I needed to keep pulling together my contact list and final packing. Marissa and I shared heartfelt goodbyes Yuri, Luke, Dylan, dog Juno and cats Xander and Merlin. Marissa and I finally hit the road around 4:20 pm – only 20 minutes after our hoped for departure.

I had a good feeling of adventure setting out with Marissa. It was definitely a different feeling, though, than earlier adventures with just the two of us. The first time was when she was two years old. Yuri and I had taken her to Cancun, Mexico. When Yuri needed to go back first, Marissa and I stayed on for some days longer. I toured the Cobá ruins with Marissa on my back and got her to sleep when she missed her mom. A few years later, Marissa and I did a canoe trip together in a Canadian lake for five days while Yuri attended a conference in Guelph. We did lots of paddling, caught a few fish and most enjoyed the setting up camp and huddling around the campfire.

I knew from various experiences living with my family in an Indian village in Brazil that Marissa had a deep compassionate side as well as strong patience and mental toughness. She endured riding on boat tops after a wasp stung her on her eyelid, waiting for hours for buses to come in the middle of the night, and dealth with bug bites of every description with great resolve. Our last big adventure was a cross-country trip with Luke in the summer of 2003. She again displayed her spirit of adventure and willingness to help wherever possible, even if that meant putting up a tent in the dark when we were all so tired from long driving we were ready to drop.

Marissa is now 16 and very much a young woman with her own mind, strong friendships and important relationship with her boyfriend. The days when I would tuck her into bed and lull her to sleep with a song are long over. This next month will be a golden opportunity to connect with Marissa again at a different point in our lives.

We arrived at our friend Brooke’s house in Kensington around 8:30 pm. Her son and daughter are both going to Peru (Machu Picchu and the jungle) with their father later this summer. Nice to hang out with our old friend. We got our doggie fix with Brooke’s dog Ginger, a gentle Bassett Hound (retriever mix?). We crashed for the night on two beds in her son's room.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Marissa and I arose very early – about 4:30am. Brooke was kind enough to get up with us and even offer a little breakfast, but basically we just loaded our bags into the waiting van. The driver complained a bit that we should have asked for a private trip because our bags took up the entire back section, but it was OK because we only picked up two more people en route to National Airport.

Our flight from Washington, D.C. to Cinncinati was delayed for an hour and a half because it was missing an axe. We still made our connection to Miami where we picked up our economy rental car and drove to the home of our overnight Quaker hosts Rustin and Randall Levenson. They were very nice informal and creative people who put us up in their guest house. Rustin is a professional paint restorer who has worked on some real masters. Randall is a retired professional photographer and photo printer. He used to follow carnivals and circuses to shoot people from the “inside" including ones with two digits per limb, a lady with tattoos covering all parts of her body except her face, and a man carrying his two foot tall mother in his arms. Marissa and I took a wonderful swim in their pool and did some timed underwater breath holding – Marissa topped me both times; her second time was about 80 seconds.

Guests started arriving for a potluck supper gathering just after 7. They included some folks from the Miami Friends Meeting and a few other friends of our hosts. After dinner we converged in the living room where I did my basic powerpoint presentation. This knowledgeable and inquisitive group had so many questions and comments that I finally cut it short just after 10 because a few people had left and others were clearly fading. I particularly enjoyed meeting an independent video journalist and a woman who had lots of outreach ideas for CECAMA.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

I got up in time to do my stretches and enjoy some great waffles and conversation with Randall and Rustin. We packed up and drove to the Miami Friends Meeting House just in time for the start of my talk. I had considered picking up the powerpoint talk where I had left off the previous evening, but decided instead to talk more about my personal experiences than explain the social context and scientific side of the Amazon work. It felt nice to give an overall account of what led me to the Amazon, involvement and then pulling back from the political side of rainforest work in Washington, D.C., deciding to go to graduate school, some highlights and challenges of living and working with the Tembé, and what had led me to start CECAMA and the goals of the upcoming trip to Peru. I stopped talking after about 50 minutes, and we cut short questions in time to start meeting for worship at 10:30. It was a nice quiet meeting with one message given near the end of the hour about the challenge of sensing “the truth." Marissa enjoyed her own quiet time reading in an adjoining room.

I chatted with folks after meeting for a while until my ethnobotanist friend Kristine Stewart arrived with her sister to go to lunch with us. While we set out for well recommended Peruvian restaurant, we chose an attractive and croweded Chinese dim sum place. We munched our way through plate after plate of squid, octopus, shrimp, chicken, and various other sorts of meat and veggie dishes for over an hour. I realized our time was already getting short.

After an anxious wait for processing the return of our rental car (it wasn't Herz), we got to the airport about an hour and a half before our flight. We started out at the end of a long line for Avianca airlines, but we were eventually brought forward to a shorter line to check-in for our flight to Bogota. When we finally made it to the counter, we were told we would have to get our seats for this oversold flight at the gate. After nervously waiting patiently at the gate for awhile, I heard the airline person say something about not being able to wait any longer before closing the flight. I spoke up and fortunately discovered that the people they were waiting for was us. Not surprisingly Marissa and I didn’t get seats together, but our flight was fine.

After a few hour layover in Bogota, we boarded our flight to Lima. In the wake of increasing sleep deprivation, I discovered I had left my advanced Spanish conversation book on the previous plane and it couldn't be recovered. Improving my Spanish from that point forward was going to me strictly up to me. We arrived in Lima just after 1 in the morning.