…aquí va el que escribió hoy, acerca del fin de semana con los estudiantes del certificado de Holistic Science de Schumacher College. ¡Gracias Silvia, Aleja, Adriana y todos los participantes!
My First “Holistic Science” Weekend
This trip began at a restaurant in Bogotá, where my dad, his friend Andrés and I, stuffed ourselves with all kinds of meat, like “Chinchulines” (fried small intestine), “Molleja” (sweetbread), “Morcilla” (blood sausage), “Colita de Cuadril” (rump cap) and “Vacío” (thin flank). I know you are probably asking yourself why, so here you go. We were about to spend the weekend at “La Guaca”, a “finca” an hour outside of Bogotá, with twenty people who are getting their degree in Holistic Science and Transitional Economics. The catch was, that the whole time there would be no meat at all, because all the people there were vegetarians!
After our meat-fest and an hour long drive with dad, Silvia Gómez, and her two-year old daughter Ana, I finally got there, said Hi to everyone and jumped in bed, because I was really tired from a week of bird watching. Silvia is the director of Greenpeace in Colombia, and together with Aleja and Adriana from “Efecto Mariposa”, are in charge of the certification in Holistic Science and Transitional Economics of Schumacher College. But I wasn’t there to get a certificate; I was there because Dad wanted to bring me to be with people that have a different way of thinking about the world.
The next morning, I had to get up early again, because Dad was teaching an introduction to Chi Kung lesson out in the field for everyone. I even got to help do a demonstration of a Chi-flow in front of everyone.
After breakfast, we all went to their organic vegetable garden to split into groups to learn about how it works. I started off at the harvesting station, where we picked summer squash, zucchini, lettuce, artichoke, tree tomatoes and blackberries and brought them to a tent with a bucket of water, where I started to wash them.
Little did I know the rest of my group had already gone on to the next station, and I was washing with a different group. At the next rotation, I asked my dad how many rotations he had done, and it was when he said two that I figured out that I had stayed behind. Meanwhile, another group came back with a giant basket of tomatoes and when everyone came over to pick out some to eat, they said, “If you want to eat some you have to pick them!” So, a few other people from different groups and I went to the tomato patch to find out that the other group had picked them all. Then Vero, one of the owners of the farm who was in charge of that station, told us to cut down all the plants. So for the other two rotations we cut down, dragged out and sorted through all the plants to find any salvageable tomatoes.
The whole time, Aleja was explaining to us how the garden is very special, because when they first made it, they had a dowser come to find a good spot in the earth to plant it. Second, they had to find the perfect orientation, so that it gets sunlight all day. Third, they planted a ton of small trees around the perimeter to act as a wind barrier ( I know that there is a fancy name for that, but I don’t remember). The garden is shaped as the “Flower of Life” with each “almond” as a planting bed which all have a cycle… 1 rest and fertilize (grasses and natural fertilizers), 2 root vegetables (carrots and beets), 3 stalks (leeks), 4 leaves (lettuce and kale), 5 flowers (broccoli, cauliflower, and artichokes), 6 fruit (berries and tree tomatoes), 7 compost (organic trash), then back to 1.
After we went back to the house, Dennise taught me how to knit like I used to when I was little. But now it was even more fun. That afternoon, everyone filled out a little form shaped like a spider web, that assesses you and your community´s level of satisfaction of needs. That whole afternoon we spent sharing ideas and opinions about ourselves and our communities and what they represent.
Later, we learned how to make sourdough and sourdough pizza with Olga, an artisan baker who was one of the students. We had the pizzas for dinner and the sourdough for breakfast, which were delicious. I even got to make a tiny loaf of bread out of the left over dough.
The next day, we woke up early again for Dad’s second Chi Kung class. After another good meatless breakfast, Esteban, Richard and I balanced rocks of all sizes on top of one another to form towers and bridges. As we were sitting there talking, I said to Dad “Dad, why am I here with you, all this sourdough-bread-making, garden-work, knitting, vegetarian-hippie stuff is totally something that I would do with Mom, definitely not you!”
But of course Dad didn’t answer, but turn it into some complex question that takes days or weeks of thinking about to come up with an ok answer.
Finally, we went to the field to create experience maps, for everyone else of their degree, and for me my homeschooling project. Mine ended up looking like a flower, because it was made up of six interlocking circles, each one labeled Spanish, Diversity, Conservation, Development, Martial Arts and Processing in the middle, connecting to them all. These six are the main topics of all my unit studies and field trips. After that, when everyone had shared their projects, Silvia offered for me to share mine, which I did. Some of the students joked that they wanted to be adopted, because they were jealous. After a really good lunch and dessert we all packed up and said goodbye.
Finally, I would like to say that I found it a great first sight of one of the sides to this ongoing project of looking at and experiencing the perspectives of the conservationists to then compare with the palm, cattle, foresting, coffee, and oil industries I am going to visit.
Cultural Diversity through Music
This week, I learned about cultural diversity through music with my grandfather Dongui in Bogotá. We were very fortunate to have our studies begin with a man named Mauricio Posada, an instrument maker or lutier, who happens to be friends and neighbors with Dongui.
He told us the story of Colombian instruments, beginning with the story of guitars. First, the Arabians had a string instrument similar to a guitar, which then the Spanish adopted, because the Arabs occupied Spain for eight hundred years. These early guitars were for waltzes and only had four strings. It was this four stringed instrument that was brought to the New World and mixed with local rhythms from the quiet Andes to form the first Spanish-South American music. Spanish guitars were perfect for local rhythms like Bunde, Bambuco, Pasillo, Torbellino, Guabina, and others (mixes of Spanish and Chibcha rhythms).
Over time, this developing guitar evolved into the Tiple, which has twelve strings, grouped into sets of three, each with a thicker string, an octave lower in the middle, the Cuatro from the Llanos, which has only four strings, giving it the name, the Tres from Cuba, which only has three strings, also giving it the name, the Requinto with twelve strings that is almost identical to the Tiple, but doesn’t have the thicker strings, the Cavaquinho, which is like a Brazilian Cuatro, the Vihuela that has six pairs of strings, and the Bandola which has sixteen strings and sometimes looks similar to a mandolin in shape.
It is said that the first instrument makers in what is today Colombia were the Norato family in Chiquinquirá, Boyacá, a family of artisan lutiers. Soon after, came the Padilla family, from Bogotá, another family of artisan lutiers.
After explaining to us all about all the instruments, he brought us to his living room and pulled out all of them that he had told us about. But not only does he make great instruments and know a lot about them because he’s a teacher of Colombian music, but he can play all of them really well, and play all of their different rhythms.
Later, after his awesome concert, he brought us into and through his bathroom to the entrance of the first room of his workshop, where he makes the instruments. There were tools and boxes (of tools) covering every table and countertop, forming his huge collection of incredibly specialized tools from all over the world, including some woodworking planes the size of a large marble.
Next, he brought us into another room where he showed us the whole process of bending the wood for the sides of the guitar. First, he wets each piece with water and places it between two thin pieces of metal and clamps it shut. Next, he takes the “sandwich” and places it on the top of a mold shaped like a body of a guitar cut in half. Third, he turns on the powerful light bulbs inside the mold to heat up the wood and turn the water into humidity and at the same time puts weights on the ends of the “sandwich” to start bending it. Once the “sandwich” has started to bend, he attaches springs to the ends and takes off the weights to finish bending it. Last, he attaches a spring around the middle to create the curve and leaves it there for only thirteen minutes, and by the time the “sandwich” has cooled, the wood is already perfectly bent into shape. But he doesn’t just use any wood; he orders wood from the Amazon, US, Central America, Africa, Madagascar, India, and Brazil for different parts of the instruments.
Finally, just before we left, he showed us how frets are measured using a very complicated equation that of course I don’t remember.
The next day, Dongui and I sat down at the dining room table, where we went over the historical and geographical approach to music in Colombia, which would have made a lot more sense to have gone over the first day.
Although we were talking about the story of music in Colombia, the story begins long before. With the expanding Spanish Empire, Christopher Columbus set sail to the unknown. Ending up in what is now Guanahani (Bahamas) where not him but others, Bastidas and Ojeda, continued on to Venezuela and the coast of Colombia, founding villages all the way. At one of these villages named Barranquilla at the mouth of the Magdalena river, them and six hundred seventy men decided to travel inland up the river and through the Andes until on August sixth 1538 there were only two hundred left due to illnesses, animals, fights with natives, and all the dangers of the unknown, they got to a place where they founded Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, where my grandfather’s ancestors, my grandfather, my dad, and I were all born. These years, from Columbus in the Bahamas to Bogotá, we like to call “the Forty Years of Silence” because of the fact that there was no music being made at all.
So then, Dongui told me about how the Spanish conquistadores mixed with the local native population to create the so-called mestizos, which nowadays makes up 47% of the Colombian population. Along with 24% Mulatos (black natives), 20% Blancos (whites), 6% Negros (blacks), and 2% Natives. And so, with all this different ethnicities, there were a lot of different types of music from all over.
A good example of this is the incorporation of African percussion into the developing music of the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts of Colombia, although they grew to sound very different because they are far apart. In the Caribe you can hear Porro (brass), Merecumbe (Merengue-Cumbia), Vallenatos (stories of the people accompanied by the guitar, Caja, Guacharaca, then Accordion), Merengue, Paseo, Puya, and Son. On the banks of the Magdalena River you can hear Chalupa, Cumbia, Fandango, and Bullerenge. On the Pacific Coast you can hear Alabaitos (the songs and dances made for the funerals of children, which there were a lot of due to the poor living conditions and climate) and Currulao played with the Marimba de Chonta, flutes, drums, and some clarinets afterwards.
Last, Dongui told me about how in the villages and towns, one of the first buildings they built was a Catholic church to spread the Catholic faith. But, because a lot of the people didn’t know how to read or write, missions, churches, cathedrals, chapels, schools, seminars, and monasteries, all used music and fancy decorations to attract people to the churches. So, in turn musical instruments became available to people, which led to music and concerts on holidays, fairs and popular celebrations.
Later, with the developments of radio, radio theatre, T.V., and movies, music was effectively spread through Colombia and brought into almost every home.
Next to president’s palace there is a small museum owned by the National University where Dongui had somehow reserved us a private appointment at ten, but the museum is about an hour across the city so we barely got there on time, at 9:58.
During the tour, they led us into a private room where there were about ten giant safes with tons of Colombian and a few non-Colombian instruments like Maracas, Guacharacas, Pan Pipes, Flutes, Gaita macho (with 2 holes) and Gaita hembra (with 5 holes), marimba de chonta, African drums made in Colombia out of tree trunks and skins, cuatro, harp, guitars, tiples, bandolas, mandolin, Chinese violin, güiro, jaw, armadillo shell charango, and Guadua tubes.
After the first museum, it wouldn’t be a trip with Dongui unless we stopped for almojábanas, juice, buñuelos, tamarind ball candy, and a picture at the colonial observatory. Also, we got to see another importance of music in early Colombia at the Santa Clara colonial church. With a beautiful gold inside and tons of paintings, it attracted people long ago, and still does today, with beautiful music and décor.
At last, we finally got to the Gold Museum. I know you’re probably asking why we went to the Gold Museum; our goal was to see the differences between the native cultures from the different parts of the country. While walking around, we also got the maps of the locations of mining and smelting, gold birds, jewelry and a few musical instruments made out of gold, like a horn, a bunch of bells, and ocarinas (whistles in the shape of animals).
After the Gold Museum, we walked through the Bogotá center, and then took the Transmilenio bus system back to the mall next to Dongui’s house, where we got to eat some ice cream, before going home.
The next day Dongui was out getting chicken for lunch and going to the eye doctor, and doing other errands all morning, so I got to sleep in and then work on finishing my report. Suddenly, Dongui called and told me to run to the mall and bring my camera. When I got there, I saw an awesome Marimba player talking with Dongui who had just come from the Pacific Coast to Bogotá and he had just so happened to be giving a free concert in the middle of the mall! He even let me take pictures and play the drums with him. Last, before leaving we bought some of his CDs and said goodbye.
Last, I would like to talk about how Dongui gave me his accordion that he had owned for over SIXTY years, that his father had bought for him when he was young. This past month I have been playing it every moment of every day that I can, and of course having Dongui give me lessons.
This week with Dongui has been a super great addition to our topics, especially because I got to “see” not only cultural diversity through music, but all of this through the eyes of Dongui - I have had an awesome time doing everything from spending a day going to museums all over Bogotá to just sitting at home listening to recordings of rhythms and songs from the different parts of Colombia and hearing stories of where they are from and what they are. I am very excited to keep on practicing the accordion and learning lots of new songs with Dongui!
Hola a todos! y un especial agradecimiento a Nicolás, por compartir con nosotros...
Después de elaborar la envidia de la buena, de deseo irracional de ser adoptados y las comparaciones con lo que nos ha pasado...que nos queda? que vamos a comenzar a hacer con todo esto a partir de ya? que posibilidades tenemos?...nunca es tarde!
...Acabo de llegar de un viaje por centro américa en el que, el tema central fue la educación, conversando menos sobre enseñanza y más sobre aprendizaje...compartiendo con Daniel Prieto, Denise Najmanovich y Francisco Gutierrez...no hablamos de nada nuevo bajo el sol, todos sabemos que crecemos atravesando un sistema educativo que termina por atravesarnos a nosotros y quedamos de rehabilitación...solo que hay muchas opciones innovadoras y no hacemos nada…
Para mí es completamente inspirador encontrar las entradas de Nicolás y sentirme invitada a levantar la cabeza y observar a mí al rededor...encontrar los distintos lenguajes en que me habla la naturaleza, los distintos maestros de quienes puedo aprender y descubrir la posibilidad de diseñar alguna "asignatura" acompañada...aunque nadie me la certifique institucionalmente...
Sera que estamos formando los seres humanos del siglo XXI, con profesores del siglo XX en instituciones del siglo XIX???...Si, aja! necesitamos seguir existiendo aquí y movernos fluidamente por los sistemas...pero es eso lo MÁS importante??...parece que tenemos infinidad de caminos para fluir y a la vez construir nuestra conexión...todo depende de lo que hacemos con lo que aprendemos...
De pronto en vez de cambiar de hijos, mágicamente los hijos cambien de padres…quiero decir que cuenten con unos padres que hagan algo con todo esto!!!... Cuál es el valor que tienen la interacciones que tenemos con otros? O cuales los posibles valores agregados?... Como podemos seguir aprendiendo juntos sin separaciones por edad, genero, color, signo zodiacal?...
Me enternece, al tiempo que me motiva a seguir con fuerza, leer a Nicolás siendo generoso con lo que le pasa, siendo valiente y registrando al tiempo lo que va aprendiendo y como él se va transformando/moviendo con la experiencia…
como vamos con nuestros diarios?...
Sonrisas del Corazón
Helen
My Coffee Adventure
A few days ago, we went to the Granja Esteban Jaramillo of the Comité de Cafeteros de Antioquia with Hernán Mendez and his family. Hernán is the CEO of Juan Valdez, which is part of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia.
We also went to one of “Cenicafé” farms – Centro de Investigaciones del Café. The main Cenicafé headquarters is in Chinchiná in the region of Caldas where the main laboratories are, and the research and experimentation of the coffee is done, as Hernán told me. But Dad lives in Antioquia, so we went to the one there, where we met Don Iván. He told us about how farmers focus on producing lots of coffee, which means they don’t have the time to research. So, people like Don Iván, who are very passionate about coffee, work at places like Cenicafé to produce seeds and saplings for the farmers to grow the best coffee in the world. He also showed us the way they germinate the seeds in long boxes of soil covered with fabric to keep the levels of sunlight and humidity ideal.
Next, I helped him plant a sapling burying it with two layers of soil, compressing each one with the butt-end of the shovel. He also showed us their collection of hundreds of coffee varieties from all over the world, so in case a disease wipes out all the coffee in a country that variety and all of its genetic information won’t be lost.
One of the crosses of these varieties is the Castillo Rosario, a sub variety of Variedad Colombia, which is a cross between the Caturra and Timor varieties. This makes it resistant to Roya and Broca, two plagues for coffee and perfect for the soil of the Colombian mountains. They also plant the Robusta next to the Castillo. Robusta is a variety of coffee planted in Brazil and Africa, prone to being infected by Roya and Broca, so when the Robusta gets infected and the Castillo doesn’t, it confirms the strength of Castillo Rosario.
After that, he helped us strap on the coffee collection buckets so that we could try picking some coffee, because in Colombia people pick coffee by hand from small trees unlike some other countries where they use machines to shake the big trees and have all the coffee fall to the ground. After a while the other kids and I had picked three kilos of ripe coffee in total and went to the processing station, where they have big machines. These machines have many different jobs. The first one sorts the big ripe coffee out from the little green ones or the over ripe ones, leaving only the best berries. The second one peels each berry and sends the peels to a compost pile to make fertile soil for the saplings. Third, the coffee gets fermented in big containers for about half a day. Last, the coffee gets dried so that the slime that surrounds the seed turns into a shell, called “pergamino” or parchment.
The next day we went to the coop of coffee buyers. There, farmers bring all of their coffee in giant sacs. These sacs are so heavy that I could barely lift one an inch of the ground. Next, the buyer takes two hundred and fifty grams out of the middle of a sac by puncturing the side with a sharp tube, like a giant pointed spoon. Once they have exactly two hundred fifty grams they take the shell off of them with a machine, and sort out the bad ones like broken or cut ones or ones that are discolored. After finding the percentage of good ones the buyer can determine the price that he will pay for all the coffee brought by that farmer. Thanks to the great plants and the triple sorting by the picker, the machine, and the buyer, Colombian coffee is the best coffee in the world.
That night, a woman named Daisy, who is a trained coffee roaster came. She helped us roast some of the coffee we had gotten at the coop that morning. There are three ways to tell when the coffee is done roasting – every minute you smell a sample of the roasting beans, after about eight minutes, if you listen carefully, you can hear the popping of the coffee begin, when the popping is over, and the beans look dark brown and have almost doubled their size, the coffee is done. You can´t quite drink a coffee bean, so first you need to grind it and mix it with ninety-eight percent water at ninety-four degrees to make a perfect “Tinto”, which is a small cup of hot coffee that Colombians love to drink, but you will never see a Colombian drinking coffee alone, because there is an unspoken rule that Tintos must always be drank while talking with other people.
20 Days in the Amazon
Since this was my fifth trip to the Amazon, I am not going to go into too much detail about our day-by-day adventures, but instead I am only going to write about my two favorite topics, which were Esteban´s resourcefulness and knowledge in the jungle and the magic of the Maloka.
Each one of these topics was a completely different trip, although they were both in the same big journey to the Amazon:
Our first trip was a long boat trip, starting in Leticia, going down the Amazon River in Brazil to the Putumayo River (Iça) to the Purité and back. On this part of the trip we were with Mauro García, another one of Dad´s crazy friends, Tati Escovar, who is biologist who specializes in frogs, and the Cruz-Pachón family, who are Andrés, Tats and their seven-year old son, Mateo.
On our second trip we flew to la Pedrera on the Caquetá River, where we went up to El Cocotal. From there we went up to Puerto Lagos (the traditional Maloka on the Mirití river), there we spent a night and went to Quebrada Negra with the shamans and then back to la Pedrera, Leticia and finally back home. On this part of the trip it was only Mauro, Dad and I.
Esteban
I knew Esteban well because he had been our boat driver many times before, but I had never been on a whole trip with him as a guide. This trip was even better, because not only was it with him, but because he had a friend of his – Neginho – driving the boat, so he could sit and talk with us and share all of his stories and knowledge. This whole trip came to be because a few years ago him and Dad had been talking about good places where there are lots of fish and deep, well preserved jungle, and Esteban immediately brought up the Purité, where he had been researching monkeys with a famous primatologist some years before. Esteban is a born Ticuna from the Mocagua community in Amacayacu, so he has that special connection and awareness that the Indigenous people have, and also has worked with many primatologists, entomologist, ichthyologists, ornithologists and botanists, assisting their research, which gives an additional scientific perspective to his already exceptional skills in the jungle.
To start up with, from being a boat guide for many years, Esteban has the most incredible internal river-GPS. For example, whenever we asked him how many curves of the river were left until wherever we were going, he could always tell us exactly how many, even though he had not been to the Purité for three years. You would think that driving on a river would be easy, because it just flows one way and you can either go upstream or downstream, but jungle rivers snake all over, forming curves, lakes, islands, channels, beaches and shallows, and a crazy maze, especially when the river floods up into the forest. One time on the Amazon river, I was super impressed when he knew to go around an island, up a channel inside the forest, and around some shallows to find another pass, which would shave a few hours off the trip, in the darkness of the night.
One of my favorite parts of this trip was definitely the amazing food he prepared for us. First of all, everything was awesome because it was all hand made from scratch with ingredients that were local, natural, and fresh. Some of the amazing things we ate were pirarucú patarasca (arapaima filets wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over the fire), bagre muquiado (different types of smoked catfish), smoked piranhas for breakfast, and mojojoy (a type of grub that lives in palms), casabe (a flatbread made from yuca brava a poisonous tuber), fariña (the same tuber shredded up into tiny little pieces and toasted used to put in soup), palm hearts, and fresh water out of the bejuco de agua (a vine).
For a few of these foods, the story behind them was just as awesome. For example, we were riding in the boat one when we saw a man and a young boy in a little wooden boat, almost tipping over. As we got closer, we realized what had happened - the man had just harpooned a pirarucú and was waiting for it to get tired, so that he could pull it in to the boat, because otherwise it is just way too big and strong. After watching him for a little bit and asking him a few questions, we decided to buy it from him then and there because it would be a win-win. With this, we would be set for meat for a few days, and they wouldn’t need to keep fighting it for another hour and then have to take it all the way to some fish market somewhere far away. With everybody helping, we finally got the monster fish in the boat. Immediately, Esteban started whacking at its giant armored head with a big machete. Next, I thought he was going to cut open the belly and take out all the guts, like I have always seen fish being cleaned. But instead, he started to knock off the scales in two rows going all the way down the spine and around to the bottom or the tail. Then, with two sharp knives we began to peel all of its scales off in one piece, like a giant sheet of armor. Next, without even taking out the guts, he cut off the two insanely large filets and was finally finished. That night we gave the head and most of the spine to some locals, saving a little bit for our broth for breakfast. They, in turn, let us camp out the night on their community’s “fariña factory” where we made the pirarucú patarasca, which was my favorite meal of all!
Also his resourcefulness at camp was amazing. Whenever he needed a table or a rack or something, he would just go out into the jungle and come back with everything he needed to build it, and make it. At the mojojoy camp he made himself an entire kitchen, an adjustable height grill, a stove for boiling water and making soups, a table, a rack for hanging cups, a bench for us to sit on and a thatch roof over the fire to keep it safe from the rain and to smoke the fish, and all this different types of woods, vines and leaves. This may sound somewhat easy, but it requires a lot of knowledge, because for example to tie the sticks together to make a table requires a certain type of vine – the yaré – which is flexible enough to not break when you wrap it and tie it, but hardens like a wire afterwards. He knew how to turn the young leaves of the chambira palm into a tough, thin string, how to take sap from the copal tree to light a fire with wet wood, which vine you could cut and fresh water would come pouring out and which saplings to make fishing rods out of, so that they would be super flexible and strong enough to fight a big catfish. Even what might sound like a simple thing, like a fire, requires tons of his knowledge, because you need the bizcocho wood to split into firewood, which burns for a long time, the oily shavings of the copal and others that catch easily and burn even if the are wet, which woods smoke best to make the piraña muquiada, and which saplings were fireproof to make the grill out of.
One of the plants, which impressed me the most was the chonta rayadora. This is a type of super tall and hard palm, which is up on its roots like stilts, which are covered by short, stubby spines. The spiny roots are used as graters for yuca and huito, the super hard wood is used to make bows, darts, arrows, masks and all sorts of things, it is split open to make floors and walls, and the pithy inside is home to the mojojoys – the protein power-punch of the jungle in the form of a giant, greasy grub.
To top it all off, when we were three days away from the nearest motor mechanic, the pistons and rings of our second motor broke. We floated downriver with Mauro and Tati trying to paddle and calculating that, at that speed, we would arrive back in Leticia in about three years. We continued paddling super slowly, until we arrived and were forced to spend the night at a “Christans camp”, where we had also been forced to stay a few days earlier. So there we were, in the middle of the jungle, stranded with no food left and two useless motors, because the tool that we needed to try to fix the pistons and the rings was three or four days away IN A MOTORBOAT WE DID NOT HAVE!
At the end of that afternoon we heard the rumble of a motor - Esteban had carved the very tool that he needed out of a piece of chonta – my favorite super palm - to replace the pistons with the first broken motor!
The Maloka
The first day of our arrival to El Cocotal – Martín´s center on the Caquetá River - as soon as we arrived and got a look around the place, Dad asked Mauro and I what we imagined a Maloka was like. I had heard Dad tell many different people stories on the topic, but still didn’t have a perfectly clear picture in my mind of what I thought it was. Over all we agreed that we thought that it was a big cone-shaped building where everybody sleeps on the outside and men talk around a fire in the center. That evening dad took us to see it quickly from the outside and gave us just a minute to have a quick first glimpse inside. Two of the main questions that went through my head as we looked around were:
Wow, this is big! How can they lift, set in place and fasten the beams up that high without a crane or any other construction tools?
Why are the doors aligned funny?
Of course, Dad did not answer any of these questions, but just smiled and said we would return next morning to continue our “research”.
The next morning, Mauro and I went with Dad to measure the Maloka. But we did not know where to start, because there were sixteen different posts, four in the inside and twelve around them, the poles in the middle were super high (I even tried to climb one of them to measure it, but couldn´t reach the top), there were circles, squares, triangles, rings and to make it even harder, we didn´t have a unit like a meter or a yard to start up with, but just a long long string, so we were completely confused and didn’t know where to start.
After a while of scrambling around, trying to make sense of all of this, yet failing all the time, we convinced Dad to give us a hint. He told us that everything is based around the unit. If you know what the basic unit is, then you can determine the proportions; if you know the proportions, you can create a structure; when you create the structure using those proportions, that determines the flow of the energy; and the flow of the energy determines what goes on where, within the Maloka. Now that I just wrote that, I know that you are probably just sitting there, going – Huh? - Because that is how I felt too, when Dad first explained that.
To make some sense out of this, Dad told us the story of origin of the Maloka, which is, just like all Tanimuka stories, very, very long and hard to keep track of. But so that this report doesn´t turn into a novel, I am only going to write about the part were the “unit” comes in:
When Yaifotsirimaki – Grandfather Jaguar – gave the secret of the Maloka to the Imarimakana – the Four Immortal Brothers – he showed them his chest and said: “Taking the distance between my nipples and making a square from that, you have the four “estantillos” – the four main pillars. Each estantillo has to be double the height of that distance. With that, you can build your Maloka!”
Finally a starting point! By measuring the distance between two of the estantillos, we had our unit and with that unit we started “seeing” everything. First, we saw four additional squares on the ground, shooting out from each side of the central one, forming a cross. Then we realized that the squares were actually five cubes with a sixth one on top.
That is when Mauro asked my Dad – “Doesn´t this have to do with something like the Squaring of the Circle and the Golden Proportion?” But of course, Dad didn´t answer his question directly, but had to answer it with another question, which was something like “Of course, but do you remember the basis of the Golden Proportion or where Phi comes from?” and so Mauro frantically told me to start to help him measure everything he thought of to try to remember those things, but never actually figured it out. So, when I asked Dad to give us a clue, Mauro freaked out and stubbornly had to continue trying. If you know Mauro (and if you don´t, you can probably imagine from my report on him sailing in Barú), then you probably know that he has an incredible mind for figuring out all kinds of architectural calculations and proportions, so he went crazy not being able to figure out the secret little proportions of my dad´s question.
When he finally accepted a clue, my Dad told us to measure the diagonals of one square, one cube and two squares together and we found that they were the square roots of 2, 3 and 5 of our original unit, and with those roots and a crazy equation that Dad gave Mauro, we also had Phi. Now, with all the crazy secret measurements of the Maloka, we drew out a basic blueprint of it. In order to help him draw out the proportions in the blueprint, Mauro designed the awesomest tool, which we named the “Maloka Stick”. It was a stick made out of a piece of Guaruma palm with a little hole, so that it could be rotated and used as a compass, and with notches on the unit and every other proportion line. With this one stick he drew out the side-view and top-view of the Maloka and my Dad helped him draw the extension of the Maloka into the 6 upper dimensions of the Tanimuka view of the Universe. Finally we had the complete structure in our heads and we understood each of the crazy proportions that came out of the measurement of Yaifotsirimaki´s Heart of the Jaguar.
Of course, Dad had to give me the ultimate test of understanding of this structure, by making me build a little model Maloka. After two failed attempts at supporting the structure and holding it together and two whole days working at it, we finally got it to withstand its own weight. By this time, Dad himself was sitting on the ground helping me finish, before it was time for us to leave El Cocotal. In the end, we finally had a structure that looked somewhat like a Maloka and had the four estantillos, the six cubes and the twelve outer posts, the “correa” with a few diagonal roof beams and the two triangular windows at the top.
The next day, we figured out how the path of the sun across the sky throughout the day and the year shines through the two triangular windows into the different parts of the Maloka, so it can be used as a calendar and a clock. But then, my Dad had us test the movement of the energy in the different parts of the Maloka. Just like a perfect crystal, the sacred geometry of the Maloka also refracts and reflects the energy that comes through the windows and the doors to create different flows. The flow of the outer ring is like a fly – always gently moving in seemingly random spirals all around that area. The “baile” ring has a counterclockwise flow that “snakes” around, moving closer and farther from the center in different places, which made us go back and forth and do extra loops, as if us we were dancing in circles. The central square between the four estantillos was like an hourglass with an extra bulb in the middle and a giant flashlight beam shooting up into the sky.
That whole day, we also talked about the uses of the different areas of the Maloka and the ways to show respect when we visit Manuel Tanimuka´s and Rodrigo Yukuna´s traditional Maloka. By then, I had finally completely understood my Dad´s explanation of “If you know what the basic unit is, then you can determine the proportions; if you know the proportions, you can create a structure; when you create the structure using those proportions, that determines the flow of the energy; and the flow of the energy determines what goes on where, within the Maloka…” and I was super excited to go see the “real deal” Maloka the next morning.
The next morning we left up the Caquetá, heading to the mouth of the Mirití River, where we finally arrived at Puerto Lagos – Manuel and Rodrigo´s traditional Maloka. After a few hours, my Dad finally said that we were almost there and that we should remember our arrival to the “Christian” camp on the Purité and compare the feeling to this arrival (the “Christian” Camp was a place where 25 people dressed in robes, who called themselves the Christians, destroyed one of the most beautiful parts of the Purité river, turning everything there into a treeless swamp, where everything looked dead). This was the most beautiful entrance ever! First of all, it looked as if there was no entrance, because you couldn´t see the Maloka or any signs of humans at all. After snaking through the flooded forest and scaring a few dozen bats out from there blissful sleep, by bumping up against their tree, we saw a perfect channel in a tunnel of trees and vines, with a few canoes at the end and the big Maloka standing in the back, as if it had grown right out of the jungle itself.
When we first got out of the boat, Juan Tanimuka – Manuel´s son – guided us up to the Maloka, where the two shamans came out to greet us. It was awesome not only being able to go there, but having Manuel and Rodrigo actually come out to greet us, because Dad has been there several times before and is good friends with them. And if it wasn´t for that, then there is no way we would have been able to visit a traditional Maloka, and even less be able to talk to traditional shamans.
The traditional Tanimuka Maloka has three shamans with different specialties:
A Maloquero is responsible for the Maloka, because he built it, and therefore he is the one the one who runs the place and makes all the final decisions. Him and his wife, the Maloquera, lead the everyday life of the community. The Maloquero is also the shaman in charge of all the everyday magic, like the mambe, tobacco, and all the everyday rituals. This means that everything he says is final and must be obeyed.
A Cantor is the shaman who manages their preventive medicine through the “bailes” and the one who shares and keeps the oral tradition. The “bailes” aren´t just dancing, though; they bring everybody together in the Maloka (together with people from other Malokas and other ethnic groups) and through music, the dances, the costumes, the stories and especially the certain way he uses the crazy energy of the second ring, he helps everybody get accustomed to the changing flow of energy of the environment around them. He uses the magic of the music to get everybody in tune with the natural surroundings.
The “Payé” is the shaman who connects with the spirits of their ancestors, to ask for their guidance and to aid the mambeadero conversations and negotiations, and the “dueños” – the spiritual owners of everything in the rivers and the jungle – to ask for permission for where and what they can hunt and fish and what sacred sites they should not touch.
Manuel Tanimuka was a Maloquero, who is also trained as a Payé, and Rodrigo Yukuna specializes as a Cantor (he is even a Cantor trainer for young shamans in training), who got his own Maloka, so has the duties of a Maloquero and also does the work of a Payé.
When we finally went in, everything my Dad said came to mind – don´t cross the center square, don´t touch anything in the maloquero´s area, especially his janea and his “thinking seat”, stay at the side of the visitors, don´t cross around the maloquero´s pole, don´t touch the feather box, don´t play the giant manguaré drums, don´t go through the locals´ door, don´t get up out of the circle unexcused, don´t interrupt, don´t decline any offers… So, basically, I sat silently at the outer part of the visitor´s section, waiting for my Dad´s instructions.
Finally, after about half-an-hour, when my Dad and Mauro were sitting in the middle with the Maloquero and the Cantor in front of them, I was given the great privilege of being invited into their circle, where I could sit on a “banquito de pensar” (a little wooden seat that is specifically used by the male adults to sit in the center and talk at night). But being given this privilege came with some responsibilities, which Dad had already explained to us beforehand: No talking unless you are spoken to, sitting quietly and listening attentively, saying yes to anything offered and sitting there until the Maloquero said “It is time to go to sleep”. This very anticipated sentence finally came eight hours later, at one o´clock in the morning!
One of my favorite moments happened the morning after the whole night of listening to stories of origin and all of the secrets of the Maloka, because Manuel and Rodrigo recognized that we had been actively and intentionally showing respect and gratitude. Because of this, they completely opened up to us and they even took out and let us try on their ceremonial masks and clothing, which they use for the Baile de Muñeco. As I write this, I sit here with the two of the awesome masks that Rodrigo gave us and remember the smile on everyone´s faces when I put on the grass skirt, palm fiber shirt and giant masks.
Going back to my Dad´s question at the beginning of this week, I now understand that the Maloka is so much more than I thought it was – it is the place where they sleep, eat, cook, negotiate and reach agreements, keep the oral tradition through stories, make all the ritual mambe and tobacco, meet their potential husbands and wives during the bailes and manage the preventive health of the community, connect with the ancestors and with the dueños to ask where and what they can hunt and fish. When a place is completely run by the shamans, their Malokas and their tradition, the whole ecosystem is kept in perfect sustainability, because that is the way it is supposed to be. Even though I have never met Martín in person (I have talked to him a few times on the phone and heard all kinds of my Dad´s stories about him), I now think I understand why his project of letting the traditional shamans run the land is so important and magical.
Thank you so much to Martín for letting us come to El Cocotal and arranging our trip to visit Puerto Lago. Thank you so much to Manuel Tanimuka and Rodrigo Yukuna and all the Puerto Lago community for letting us stay in their Maloka and sharing all their wisdom, traditions and stories with us. Another special thank you to Esteban for being our guide, cook, captain and solver of impossible problems at the Purité. Thank you to my “Big Brother” Mauro for helping me understand all the crazy measurements of the Maloka and solving all of my Dad´s “Maloka Mysteries” and thank you to the “Frog Lady”, Tats, Mateo and Chullachaqui for sharing this adventure with me.
And especially thank you to Dad for taking us on this awesome trip!
Anexo final a "My Coffee Adventure":
About a month later, Dad and I went to learn about the different types of preparations of coffee. It turns out, scientists have found twelve different coffee growing regions in Colombia, each with a different flavor, aroma, body and color. These are Nariño, Huila, Cauca, Tolima, Cundinamarca, Santander, Risaralda, Quindío, Caldas, Antioquia, Magdalena and Sierra Nevada. But today, we were going to find out how the regions aren’t the only reasons coffee can be different.
With the help of Hernán, Adriana and Johanni, one of the best “baristas” of Juan Valdez we got to sample four preparations of the same type of coffee from the same region to taste a few of its possible differentiations.
The first preparation he showed us how to make was the “aero-press”, which makes the coffee by pressing it through a filter using air, so that it penetrates the grounds to increase the flavor.
The second one is called the syphon. This uses the pressurized air trapped and heated by a light to suck the water up into the coffee grounds and then back down through the filter to create a hot aromatic cup of coffee, which because of that was my Dad´s favorite.
The third preparation is called the “Dripper V-60”. “Dripper” because hot water is poured through the grounds so that it drips through the filter, “V” because the filter is shaped like a cone or a “v” and “60”, because in the cone there are a bunch of ridges going all the way around the inside at a 60º angle to create a vortex to make sure the water goes through all the coffee.
Last, we tasted the coffee made by the “Kyoto Cold Dripper”, which takes four to ten hours to make a batch, because the cold water drips very slowly (38 drops per minute) through the grounds until, at the end, you are left with a refreshing, flavorful glass of ice-coffee. This and the first one were my favorites, because unlike my Dad, I prefer my coffee not piping hot and milder.
This was awesome to see, because during our visit to Venecia, we only got to try it as a “tinto”, but today I realized how much the preparations can change and improve a good cup of Colombian coffee.
My Day as a Cowboy
This Semana Santa, we went to “los Llanos” – the prairie lands of Eastern Colombia - with my uncle Pex, my aunt Luisa and my cousins. Pex, Luisa, and their family had planned an entire day of a cowboy´s lifestyle for me to experience, which included herding and corralling, lassoing, handling and vaccinating the young calves, slaughtering and butchering a young cow, preparing the “ternera a la llanera”, and living in a genuine Colombian cowboy ranch.
My adventure began the night before, when we set up camp in a round gazebo-style structure called a kiosko, where we hung our hammocks at dusk, while listening to the end-of-the-day birds calling and the beginning of the nocturnal ones, singing together with all the insects and frogs. I could recognize the oropéndolas and arrendajos and then the nightjars, cicadas and froggies. I fell asleep thinking about our awesome but challenging day ahead of us, after I finally heard the plan from Pex, which made me both excited and nervous.
In the morning, we all got up at five thirty to go to the place where my cow was tied up to a tree to be slaughtered and prepared for us. Being a part of this process was really special for me, because in the Llanos there is a common tradition of slaughtering a cow for a very special guest, so that everybody can share a feast together and so I felt very honored to be worthy of having a cow killed on my behalf.
Some years ago, I had been in the Amazon helping out with the process of butchering a borugo and then preparing it to be eaten, but this time I was there and helping out at the moment of its death. It was amazing to experience this whole process of going from a live animal to my food, because nowadays we just go to a supermarket and see ground-beef patties on a Styrofoam platter, which is almost like a barrier between ourselves and anything that has to do with the sacrifice of the animal, in other words, separation of us and anything that is labeled as “gross”.
But this time, as soon as we got there, Dad and I walked over to where it was tied and got down beside it and thanked it for letting us take its life in order for us to share it as a family and learn to be more grateful for the food that we eat.
Then, everyone helped tie its legs together and hold it on the ground. Next, when everyone was ready, Don Efra, the old head cowboy, pulled out his knife and stabbed it on the side of the neck where it would die as quick and painlessly as possible. Meanwhile, Herney, his assistant, took a cup and a bucket, and collected all the blood that came pouring out. Third, once my cow was dead, they made a few thin cuts, one across the neck, one down the chest and stomach and one down each leg, to be able to peel the hide off. Fourth, Don Efra told me to grab one of the legs and pull it in different directions, so he could peel the bottom. When we finished that leg, we went on to do all the others.
With the skin off, we could separate the different cuts of meat, like the ribs, legs, sirloin, rump, belly, skirt, flank and neck. Next, we went through the entrails to take out all the edible ones, like the liver, heart, kidneys, small intestine, and lungs, but before we cut the lungs out, Don Efra cut the trachea and pulled it out and inflated the lungs by putting his mouth on it and blowing. As soon as he let the air out, Dad asked me if I wanted to try it and I remembered seeing a hunter do that on a TV show, so I immediately said yes and blew them up like a balloon. When I took my mouth off, I looked like a zombie or a vampire, because I had so much blood dripping from my mouth and lips, which of course Dad had to take a picture of.
As we were finishing up separating the last cuts of meat, Gabriel – another cowboy who was in charge of cooking the “ternera” – came out with a dozen or so giant skewers about the size of me. On each of the skewers he hung a different cut of meat, which were then stabbed into the ground in a crescent around a big fire for several hours. Meanwhile, Don Efra took one of the skewers and in an alternating order put big chunks of lung, heart and liver on. Then, he wrapped the giant kebab with the “chinchulines”, which are the clean, small intestines, to hold everything together. Finally, with a cloth-like piece of fat from one of the stomachs, he rolled the whole thing up, like a giant candy-wrapper. The final product looked like a sausage the size of a campfire log, which also went to the fire, together with all the other cuts. He told us that this was his favorite part of the process of a fresh kill and he called it “amortajado”, which is something like the “shroud” around a mummy.
Then came breakfast, which was fresh liver with onions and cilantro and “Caldo de Costilla”, which is rib-and-potato soup, with “arepas” and hot chocolate. This was really good and was a perfect preparation for the cold and rainy horseback riding to come. Dad, Pex, Don Efra, Herney, and I all jumped on our horses to go herd all the cattle from the pastures to the corral. On our way out, a few drops of water came down, and then more, and more and more until there wasn’t a single dry spot on me or on my horse. We rode way out into the pastures without seeing a single cow, until Don Efra told us to split, so he and Pex went one way and Herney, Dad and I went another. This way, we could group all the cattle into one herd. Once we had the herd all together, our job was to bring all of them back to the corral without letting any escape back into the pastures. We did this by forming a wall in C-shape all around them, so that they can only head in one direction, and to get them to move we had to whistle and shout the whole way. Every time one or two tried to get out of the herd, we had to run past and around them to make them go back to the group. Finally, after a couple hours in the pouring rain, we got every last cow back to the corral, where I noticed that the bottom half of my pants were pink, because the rain had let the dye of the saddle come out and into my pants. We were welcomed back from the cold rain with a hot cup of black coffee made with panela, which is like a giant block of brown, raw sugar, called a “tinto cerrero”, which felt really good after being wet and soggy. This whole experience re-built my confidence again for horseback riding, because last time I had done it my horse reared up like the Ferrari symbol and tried to throw me off, so I was a little nervous this time before we started.
After a good lunch of fresh ribs and sirloin, we headed back to the corral to separate, count, vaccinate and mark the ears of the young calves of the herd. At first, I was pretty nervous to jump into a closed pen with bulls and mothers protecting their calves, because my job was to separate the little ones from their mothers by grabbing them by their ears, which was not easy at all, especially with the mother staring and getting ready to charge. But after a few calves, I got used to it and had on problem. After we finished all the calves, it was time to push all the mothers and bulls through the shoot to get them vaccinated by Don Efra, but this was easier because all I had to do was whip their back-ends from the other side of the fence to push them in. By the time we were done, I was super tired, muddy and blistered, but it was totally worth it and I would do it again anytime, because I loved learning how to handle the calves and doing all the cowboy work.
After some more good meat for dinner I was completely ready to go to sleep and prepare for my joropo, arpa and cuatro lessons of the following days. I am very thankful for Pex & Luisa, Mariela & Fabio, Jaime and his wife, Don Efra, Gabriel and Herney for hosting me and giving me this awesome experience!
Internal Martial Arts
Almost every morning Dad and I practice Internal Martial Arts as one of my unit studies for my home schooling. Internal Martial Arts are different from other martial arts, like Taekwondo and Karate, because of a few things. First, in there combat application, they focus more on safety instead of attack, meaning that if you practice Internal Martial Arts you are a lot less likely to get hurt. Also, some Internal Martial Arts have non-combat applications that can help you not get energetically or emotionally hurt. But the main difference is that Internal Martial Arts are based off of energetical power, instead of physical or mechanical, so a lot of the movements are designed to help your energy flow through your body better.
So far, during our morning sessions, we’ve been practicing “Cloud Hands”, which is the short name for “Floating Clouds, Flowing Streams”, a form in which your hands move like clouds and streams in front of your torso. “Cloud Hands” is a part of “Grasping a Sparrows´ Tail”, which is a part of a complete sequence called “White Crane Flaps its Wings”, which I learned some years ago with Dad. This shows how each tiny little movement has so many tricks and applications, that if you learn a whole sequence, then it is incredible how many secrets there are. So far, while practicing, this is what I’ve learned:
First, I learned about “Grounding my Chi”, which means to set my mind on lowering my energy, so that I sink down and have a better stance and balance. When I ground my energy, I exhale while keeping my mind focused on my energy gently lowering to my center and my stance roots and my knees bend automatically.
Second, I learned about “Triple Harmony”, which is when my legs, body and arms are in perfect harmony with each other, keeping themselves balanced and moving smoothly and connected. When in Triple Harmony, my feet and legs are grounded, my Dantien and body rotate, and so my arms sway with the energy of the Dantien and as a result it is both smooth and powerful.
Third, when I asked Dad about combat applications for Cloud Hands, we watched a video of my Dad´s Sifu demonstrating them. Then, Dad taught me some of them and explained how they are all based on the principle of “Yielding”. “Yielding” in Internal Martial Arts is a sequence of movements in which you absorb, you neutralize and the redirect. “Absorbing” means to initially get out of the existing danger by rotating and changing your center of gravity in harmony with the attack, so that the attacker can follow through but not hit you. Once their energy has been spent in that first attack, then it is your opportunity to “neutralize”, which means to gently change the direction of the attack, controlling it to prevent a follow-up attack. Finally, you have the option to “re-direct” the attack back at the initiator or to control them to stop the fight.
Fourth, Dad taught me a key trick to help increase power without using physical strength, which is called “Follow Momentum with your Dantien”. For example, when my Dad trapped my arm with a movement called “Old Eagle Catches Snake” and I couldn´t get out, all I had to do was imagine that my Dantien was the head of a snake, which went in the same direction as the pressure of my Dad´s grasp. Immediately, my body followed my Dantien to freedom, like the body of a snake always follows the head.
Along with “Cloud Hands”, we have worked on combat sequences including “White Snake Shoots Venom” and “Precious Duck Swims Through Lotus”, which are really fun and fast. At the end I was able to go full speed and strength with Dad, without getting hurt!
Then, a few days ago, when I was in Bogotá, I went to my first whole Chi Kung workshop taught by Dad. This was awesome because I had taken Taijiquan courses with him before, but never had I experienced one of his whole Chi Kung courses.
First he told us about what Imperial Chi Kung is, what it’s for, and how it is different from other types of Chi Kung. After that, we started off by practicing different types of Chi flows. The first one we practiced was the most gentle one - Flowing Stillness. Then we went on to more powerful ones, like Flowing Breeze, Swaying Trees and Self-manifested Chi movement, which I got to help demonstrate. After that, he taught us two techniques that we practiced a ton. The first one looked like a butterfly opening its wings, and had a seemingly backwards-breathing pattern. The second one, was one where you spin one way then the other which made me really, really dizzy.
Apart from the awesome kibbes that we got during the break and I ate like twenty of, one of my favorite parts was seeing how everyone looked at my Dad as a teacher, because I always thought of him as a dad. Another interesting thing was when my Dad showed how to undo an energy blockage with Nico. A couple of days before we had been at his house, where he told us that the birth of his son had been very difficult and he was very nervous. So when my Dad helped open up some of his energy points and gave him a strong wave of energy, even though I was in a Chi flow I could not help but hear how strong his movements were. After his strong Chi flow, everyone started asking him why and how and what it felt like to have a strong flow like that, and he said that he was very happy to be relieved of all that anxiousness.
The following weekend after our Chi Kung course, when we went back to the holistic science place, where the theme was Energy in Human Interactions and Non-Violent Communications. Dad’s part in that was teaching how to yield when speaking. Obviously, when you are speaking you don´t have to worry about getting punched, but you can still “yield” a verbal attack to stop an argument that is not leading anywhere, because it is just two people who want to prove a point and prove the other one wrong. Since we didn´t want to get into actual arguments, Dad taught us how to use a “secret language”, which is just made up by a bunch of random noises, with no meaning behind. With this language we slowly learned how to use many different factors, including orientation and opening and closing your flow of energy to change the balance of the conversation. I thought it was awesome to see how the words that you are saying aren´t the only things that affect the conversation, but the energy does, too.
Now I am really excited for Dad´s next course “¡Con la comida no se juega…!” to experience even more how energy matters in everything.
Ngala
Our second lodge was also in the Kruger National Park in a reserve called Ngala. This time we had a local Shangane tracker – Elvis – who sat up in a seat on the hood of our open vehicle watching for any signs of animal activity that we could follow and see. Driving the vehicle was Jenni – our ranger – who is a really nice and funny biologist born in Indonesia, who grew up in Australia and has been awarded as the best ranger of &Beyond, which is a large company that owns 33 lodges all over Africa and India.
One night, while were driving back from a game drive, for some reason I decided to ask Dad what he was thinking about and I was almost embarrassed that both he and Lina were both thinking about how lucky we were and what a great time we were having, while I had just been sitting there making noises with my mouth and just thinking about that. That night at dinner, Dad asked me what I thought the process was to make something magical happen, because we had been very lucky on all of our trips and adventures. This, of course, was one of Dad´s tricks to get me to start answering a series of questions to finally lead me to understand what he had been lately thinking about.
After a couple of hours we finally ended up talking about how the combination of gratitude and awareness is the secret to life. He told me about how by focusing your attention on gratitude before, during and after a little miracle, they will continue happening one after another, because the Universe appreciates when you show gratitude and will return your appreciation in the form of magic. But gratitude alone is not enough - it needs to be paired with a good awareness of what happens around you, so you can flow accordingly.
A good example of this was what happened to us on our second safari at Ngala. Many people come to Africa to try to see the Big Five, which is an old hunting term for the five most dangerous animals to people on foot in the bush – elephant, buffalo, rhino, lion and leopard. If you can add either cheetah or African wild dogs to the Big Five, then you have the Spectacular Six and if you happen to see them all, then you have the Magnificent Seven. Most people who come never get to see the Big Five, and of course of the few people who do, way less get to see the Spectacular Six, not to mention that to see all of the Magnificent Seven on a five-day safari is almost impossible.
Even though our focus was not to check animals off a list, like some people do, we kept a list as a result of all the amazing sightings we had. We ended up having seen 82 new bird species, 35 mammals, including all of the Magnificent Seven and several others, which I thought were very special. Like the spotted hyenas, the hippos, giraffes, three species of mongoose, civets, bush babies and a honey badger. We also got to see cubs and puppies of the wild dogs, leopards, lions, cheetahs, hyenas, as well as baby elephants, hippos and baboons. On of the hardest animals to see is definitely the African wild dog - there are only 200 individuals in the whole Kruger National Park – and we got to see 17 two-month old puppies in front of their den, sleeping and playing in the sun along with three adults that were guarding.
But our experience cannot be fully explained in numbers, because as I like to say it was one big long Miracle Moment that lasted two weeks! Some of these experiences that cannot be put in numbers are for example our elephant-dung throwing and impala-poop spitting competition and our awesome experience in our last morning game drive.
That morning we drove over to one of the watering holes to hopefully see a big herd of buffalo, because our ranger Jenni had said that we had pretty much seen it all and so she didn´t know what to take us to. When we finally got to the waterhole, we saw a hippo out of the water and a wildebeest running off into the bush. We realized, as we drove closer to the hippo, that it was out of the water because it was protecting its family from a little pack of four African wild dogs that were near the water´s edge. Then my Dad spotted the real reason that the dogs were there – an impala had been chased into and across the water by the dogs, who had ran around to where it was now laying down, cold and exhausted, under the protection of the big hippo.
Suddenly, the hippo went back in the water and all four dogs came rushing over and bit the impala on all of its limbs and ripped away chunks of meat while it was still alive, right in front of our eyes. The impala was dead in seconds and was almost completely gone within three minutes, but of course, as if this wasn´t exciting enough, two young spotted hyenas and a big tawny eagle came to try to steal anything they could. After chasing off the hyenas a few times, the dogs rushed back to the den to regurgitate most of the meat that they ate to feed the puppies and the rest of the pack and immediately the hyenas and the eagle finally got in and each grabbed all the leftovers until all that was left was the inedible stomach. This all happened within 8 minutes and we were there to experience this all because we had just been at the right place at the right time.
Afterwards, Jenni told us how incredible it is to see a kill at all, and especially to witness the wild dogs hunting. Without knowing about our conversation about gratitude and awareness the night before, she said she thought we were able to see all this because we were not confined to checking off the Big Five, but were open to experiencing the bush as a whole, including the birds, the plants, the insects, and the connection between them all. I agree that this happened to us because we were always aware of the big picture and actively grateful to everything and everyone.
I still can´t believe what an amazing experience we had and that this winter it was just a dream of mine to one day go to Africa with my Dad. And speaking of gratitude, I´d like to specially thank one more time Jenni, Elvis and the whole staff at Ngala for our incredible adventure.
And to my Dad for making one of my dreams come true!
Endemics of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
“…Although smaller than the state of Connecticut, Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Range is home to the planet’s highest concentrations of threatened and endemic birds and amphibians… numerous scientific publications and every major international conservation organization has identified the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta as the planet’s single most important site for threatened and endemic biodiversity. Boasting the highest rates of bird endemism in the world, the range is home to over 600 bird species, including more than 20 found nowhere else…” – Rainforest Trust
This weekend, Dad and I went up to the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to try to see some of its twenty-five endemic species of birds. The Sierra is Dad´s favorite place in the world and he would live there if he could, and of course part of the reason he loves it so much is because how special its biodiversity is. This biodiversity, when just thinking about birds, is incredible because out of the 1900 bird species in Colombia, over 600 live on the slopes of this single mountain and out of the 87 endemic species in Colombia, 25 are endemic to the Sierra Nevada (almost 30% of Colombia´s endemic species!). This makes it a “birdwatcher´s paradise” and a perfect place to continue my exploration of biodiversity. At the reserve we met birders from Germany, Canada, France, Zimbabwe and England.
The reasons for this high biodiversity and endemism are first, because the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a natural “land-island”, meaning it is a mountain away from all the other mountain ranges in Colombia. Second, because it goes all the way from the beach to the highest peaks in Colombia at 5775 meters above sea level, going through all the biomes, temperate zones and natural vegetation types of Colombia – Tropical Desert, Tropical Dry Forest, Equatorial Rain Forest, Sub-Andean Forest, Andean Forest, Páramo and Tropical Glaciers with permanent snow. It is like a little replica of the top half of the world, because at the very top it is freezing like at the North Pole, just below that is the very cold Tundra, then the evergreen forests, then the temperate deciduous forest, then the deserts and plains, then the swamps and jungles, all on a single mountain.
On our long drive up from Santa Marta to El Dorado Bird Reserve, on some curves of the road we could even experience these differences. We could see all the lines of change of vegetation, separating the dry-forest from the rainforest and the rainforest from the cloud forest and feel the temperature change between the different ecosystems.
Upon our arrival, José, our guide from Jardín, came out and greeted us, which was a total surprise because he was there with his own tourist group from Zimbabwe and we had Lorenzo, who agreed to be our guide for the next few days. It was awesome to see Jose again and share stories and magic moments with him.
Within the first ten minutes of being there, we saw an endangered species and several endemics including the super rare Black Backed Thorn-bill, a hummingbird. In the garden there are a ton of hummingbird feeders and about one hundred hummingbirds flying all around, which none of I had seen before, so I was immediately able to write down six new and different species with Lorenzo’s help. Then, I came up with the idea to lie underneath the feeders and take pictures of them flying up against the sky. The pictures turned out awesome, but it turns out that if you spend too much time underneath a swarm of hummingbirds, after not too long you will get pooped on. I learned that when I got pooped on the face twice, which my Dad called “the baptism into my wildlife photography career.”
The next day we drove down the mountain to coffee elevation to try to see some more endemics and new species. That day, we added 38 new species to my list, including a rare white tipped quetzal, two more parrots and the endemic black fronted wood quail, which were some of my favorites.
After dinner, Dad and I decided to go on a night hike with Lorenzo to try to find the Santa Marta Screech Owl, which is not only endemic to the Sierra, but one of the 16 critically endangered bird species in Colombia. We were also hoping to find the endemic Tayrona Glass Frog, which would be amazing, because I had heard about glass frogs being see-through on their bellies on TV, but had never actually seen one and froggies are one my favorite animals. It turned out we did not get to see the Screech Owl, but totally lucked out because we saw a few tarantulas and TWO Tayrona Glass Frogs inside some bromeliads. I even got to hold them and look at their see-through undersides – THAT WAS SO AWESOME!!!!
The next morning, we got up at four o´clock in the morning to drive up to the top of Cerro Kennedy, at 2800 mts, to hopefully see the sunrise on the snow capped peaks and try to see a few more endemics. On our way up, before it had even turned light yet, we had stopped our car and got out, because Diego Calderón, the man who helped us identify the Ortalis garrula, had just pulled over to try to spot the Screech Owl with his group of birders. When they were done, we went over and used the playback to try to spot it, and heard it call back again and again, until suddenly we could see it fly right over us against the early morning sky. We all were really happy to see such a special and rare bird to start off our final day!
Finally, we arrived at the peak just before dawn to see the beautiful golden sunrise on the snow on the very tip of the mountain. We started off ahead of the other groups to see if we could spot some of the endemics at that elevation, when suddenly this little ball with legs comes hopping out into the road right in front of us. All of a sudden, Lorenzo went crazy because usually it takes hours of using a playback to maybe get a glimpse of this bird called the Rufous Antpita, another rare bird. We followed it for a few minutes until we noticed that it wasn´t scared of us at all and even, at one point, it came hopping through Dad´s legs, so close that he could take a good picture with his phone´s camera. As soon as we were thinking that things could not get any crazier, the Santa Marta Antpita – another rare endemic - came hopping out along with the rufous and walked in front of us, until we caught up with Diego´s and Jose´s groups, who went crazy taking pictures, because of how rare this was. Along the way, in between the antpita sightings, we managed to see ten more endemic species.
The only endemic we were missing from that elevation was the impossible to see endangered Santa Marta Parakeet. But Lorenzo, who had worked there as a ranger before, knew the perfect place to try to spot them. As we were arriving to the spot, we heard them call far down in the valley, but could not see them from where we were. After doing a little bit more of hiking down, all of a sudden, from the other side of a ridge, flew a flock of not just one or two, but FORTY of them and landed on a tree RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!!!
In this awesome trip I got to see 17 of the 25 endemic bird species of the Sierra Nevada and over 80 new birds for my list. I think, thanks to my awesome Dad, I am starting to understand why he likes the Sierra so much!
Organic Garden
A few weekends ago we went back to La Guaca – the holistic science place – to do a full-day workshop on organic gardening. We were there for two reasons – One, to continue our learnings about conservation and sustainability, and two, to learn about their garden so that we can apply some of their concepts at our garden at Dad´s house.
The day was set up in parts:
First, we sat down and heard about how the garden is set up holistically and how it works. One of the interesting things that I remember is that they spent years preparing the soil through different processes to turn the area from a parking lot into a garden that feeds several families and a few restaurants.
Second, we explored the garden and got to see the rotation of which they plant the different kinds of vegetables and fruits, which is something we had already seen before in the garden class the other weekend.
Third, we spent a lot of time preparing the soil and learning how they make compost. We started off learning how the process of the compost is very similar to making lasagna, in which you need many layers along with the sauce. We first started making the “sauce” in a big barrel, where we mixed together cow manure, water, molasses, stinging nettles and garden scraps and branches cut in small pieces. This mixture we had to stir together like a witch stirring a cauldron for a long time, until it made this horrible smelling goop. Once our “sauce” was ready, we started putting down the layers. First, branches and sticks to allow some air to come in. Then, leaves, grass and all the weeds from the garden, then a layer of our “delicious sauce”, sprinkled with ashes and agricultural lye. These layers are stacked up in that order until you have a pile taller than me, which sits for a few months until it turns to soil.
Last, we quickly went through the other processes of weeding, planting and harvesting to see the whole spectrum of an organic garden.
I think, the funniest part was that after we had worked making the compost, we made our own lasagna for lunch with some ingredients from the garden, which turned out really good.
Now, back at home, we have our own compost beds in the garden as well as a hummus pile with the scraps from the kitchen that are looking really good.
Hola Nico... Como te lo dije ayer, estaba esperando tu escrito sobre el curso "Con la comida no se juega".
Excelente resumen!!!
Sigue compartiendo tus experiencias... Sonrisas de corazón
Miriam Luisa
Gran exploración, la confirmación y la ampliación de muchas conocimientos q yo llevo adentro de mi.
Y se que para muchos fue una revelación y hasta un gran acto de valor.
Sin fuego no hay cocción y sin el hombre del fuego (ALIAS FIDEO) no hubiera podido cocinar los 17 platos que salieron como un sueño. Salieron de mi corazón, pues nada mas que me guste q enseñar mi arte.
Transformar algo no muy agradable a la vista a lago realmente delicioso, hermoso y lleno de valor nutricional, que nos habla, que nos dice q lo comamos... que CON LA COMIDA NO SE JUEGA!!!!!
Ortalis garrula?
Behind Dad’s house is a creek that feeds the La Fe reservoir, which is one of the water sources for Medellín. The creek, which is a deep ravine, has to be protected and so does the forest around it, to protect the purity of the water. About three meters form the window of the dining room is a ledge dropping off to the edge of the forest, so that from inside our dining room you can see the whole canopy going down to the creek. Because of this protected forest, lots of animals come and pass right by our house, going up and down the ravine.
A few days ago, Dad and I decided to put up a platform bird feeder, on which we put chunks of plátano comino (giant bananas), and under it hangs a bird-seed dispenser and a hummingbird feeder. The first few days, several birds came in to explore the “new neighborhood restaurant”, but only a few actually dared to try it. But once they got accustomed, we started to get tons of really cool and endemic rare birds and animals. Examples of these are several species of colorful tanagers, crowned motmots (at one point three came!), giant band-tailed pigeons, super rare end endemic chestnut wood-quail, and the endemic red bellied grackle, along with a lot of pavas maraqueras (sickle-winged guans), which are the equivalent to a Colombian turkey.
But this afternoon, while we were cross-referencing the birds we had seen in Jardín in our three fieldguides and the computer, along with the usual pavas came a third one that looked completely different from the others. The pava maraquera is black with a blue mask, has a chestnut red belly and chest, bright red legs and a black tail, but this one was brown with a rufous head and wings, chestnut tips of the wings, white belly, and a greenish-brown tail with a white tip.
Dad had not seen it before and didn´t know what it was, so we looked it up in the books. It had all the same colorations, shape and size of the guacharaca caribeña (chestnut-winged chachalaca – Ortalis garrula), but the books and the computer said it was endemic to the very Northern coast of the country and only lives below 800 meters above sea level. Dad´s house is in the middle of the country on the Central Cordillera, up in the Andes, where the elevation is about 2,200 meters above sea level.
The characteristics were exactly the ones of the Ortalis garrula and we knew that for sure, because it flew three feet away from us up on to our windowsill and walked up and down for a few minutes, but the distribution was not at all, so we decided to contact the experts.
We send e-mails and pictures to Doug – the birdwatcher who owns the lodge in Jardín, José – our birding guide, and Nico – a friend of ours who studied ornithology, and even got to talk to Dra. Botero – the executive director of the Sociedad de Ornitología de Antioquia, to see if this could be possible.
We got three answers - Nico says he thinks we saw the very first sighting in this area and elevation for the Ortalis garrula, because he explained to me that distribution maps and elevations aren´t set rules, but are based on previous sightings and can always change, and Dra. Botero said that the Ortalis garrula are endemic to the Colombian Caribbean coast, but from the characteristics that we saw there is nothing else it could be, so her only logical explanation would be that someone brought one long ago and now there might be a small local population here, but ours would be the first sighting. Also, José said that he was away guiding somewhere else, so he needed to check when he got back, but so far he thinks it was a juvenile of the Ortalis columbina, because of the maps and distribution.
We needed to check Jose´s hypothesis, so this morning dad and I went outside, because we heard the O. columbina calling and when we saw them they looked totally different – they have scales on the chest and neck, and their tails are brown with rufous side; there is definitely no white belly and no white tips of the tail, which would be perfectly visible when they flew right over us. When we got back to the house, we checked the images on the computer and confirmed that what we saw was not the O. columbina. And so, when we called up Doug, he said that he too was out o town, so we should facebook Diego Calderón. Of course Dad and I didn’t have the patience to facebook him, so we looked up his phone number and called him right away.
It turned out, Diego is one of the best ornithologists in Colombia and is the owner of Colombia Birding, a birdwatching tour company for expert birders. It also turned out that he lives in the next town over from us, so he knows this area very well. When Dad talked to him and sent him the pictures and he said “efectivamente es Ortalis garrula!” (He is positively sure it was the Ortalis garrula!) and he too thought it was because someone brought some and there is now a small population of them in this area. He also told us about other cases of this happening, like the Orinoco goose in the Cauca Valley, which he had seen and told us to keep an eye out an monitor them as much as we can.
Dad and I hugged each other and were jumping up and down with smiles glued to our faces and I even did three "victory laps" around the house, because we had just gotten confirmations from Nico, Dra Botero and Diego Calderón - three independent experts - about our incredible sighting!
Sailing with Mauro García
When I started out my homeschooling, I thought it would be cool to do my Dad´s idea to go sailing with my parent´s friend Mauro García, because sailing is fun and I had heard a lot of stories about him. Someone might think that we were going to go sailing around the beach on a little sunfish or a small catamaran for a day with a regular weekend sailor.
First, I think it´s best if I describe our host. Mauro is about my Mom´s age, a nice, funny guy, who loves to take all kinds of crazy risks. I don´t mean little risks, I mean for example to learn white water kayaking, he went down the most difficult river in Costa Rica with two professionals and ones he learned how to hang glide, he tried to land in a town square, where he ended crashing against the church. His chest is covered with scars, some are of operations of his dislocated shoulders, but the majority are from a native ritual called the sun dance, where a group of dancers poked holes through the skin of his chest with sticks and hoisted him up a tree until the skin broke and he fell. By now he has done this four times, so he has eight scars all across his chest and is looking forward to going back this year again.
Second, I like to say that his boat is a big, old Tartan 37, of which almost everything possible is made by himself, because of his motto that says that things don´t need to look good, as long as they work very well and last very long. For example, instead of the common small Zodiac with a motor as a ferry to and from the boat, he has a little rowboat, which he transformed with a bunch of PVC pipes and fiberglass into a mini sailboat, with a spider web of little ropes going everywhere and holding everything. The inside of the sailboat looks more like a crazy-man´s workshop, than the fancy cabin of a boat. There are mini hammocks with fruits and vegetables hanging from the walls, shelves full of old books and maps, a tiny little kitchen with old pots that have always been washed with sea water, so that there is a little salty crust on everything, harnesses hanging from the walls, a bunch of stained pillows and cushions, giant yellow bags holding different sized sails and soup spoons holding open the portholes.
Once I saw all this, I realized why my Dad insisted so much on making sure we could do this, because it was much more than just learning how to sail. At the beginning of this week, my Dad asked Mauro to share with us what sailing meant to him and why he liked it so much. These are the three concepts that I understood from what he said:
Self-sufficiency & ongoing learning
The most basic part of spending any amount of time on a sailboat at sea is learning to be self-sufficient, because in the middle of the ocean there is no one you can call to fix your broken plumbing system or broken lamp. In order to understand all of this, Mauro has disassembled and reassembled every mechanism in his boat, to make sure he can fix it if it breaks or make a better one. This being so, this week I learned through experience, again and again, every little detail I could about everything on the boat – tying knots, lifting and setting anchors, hoisting and managing sails, steering and finding optimal paths, calculating times and distances with the compass and the slider, making changes in the sail position, opening and closing the plumbing system, setting up and sailing the dingy, aligning the mast, climbing it to watch out for reefs, creating a route on the map, setting the points on the GPS, checking the wind to see when and where to sail, planning itineraries, cleaning and scaling fish and conchs, cleaning the fridge from a rotten fish, and even making coffee for my Dad while tipping back and forth. During the first few days, Mauro had to come with me to teach me how to do everything, but afterwards he even gave me the role of assigned captain for a day, to decide what we needed to do and make it happen.
Flowing with the Laws of Nature and not necessarily abiding by the rules of man
The second reason Mauro likes sailing so much is because what you do and what happens to you is determined by the Laws of Nature and your own capacity to read them well and flow with them. His example was that it doesn´t matter if you are jumping naked around the boat, as long as you can read the wind and adjust the sails accordingly. A lot of our time we spent learning how to read the waves and use that to help us sail. Generally speaking, there are three types of waves – the big widespread waves that get built up from going all the way across an ocean, the little waves that are a result of the big waves bouncing back from land, and the tiny shingle-like ripples, which show the exact direction of the wind at that place at that time, which is the most important information you can have. We also learned to look at the differences between cloud formations, the directions of flying birds, the movement of wind on the sails, the distance and directions of thunderstorms, and all the messages that nature gives for us to make decisions. This is why one day we decided to leave to go sailing at two o´clock in the morning, because the conditions were perfect for our long journey to Tintipán.
Balance between freedom and responsibility
The main reason Mauro likes sailing is because of the feeling of total freedom that comes with total responsibility. When you are out in the middle of the ocean you are totally free to do what you want, but if you don´t flow with the Laws of Nature and constantly learn, then your freedom will turn dangerous. It is just like in life when you make calculated risks. Without risks, life is no fun, but if you don´t calculate the consequences of your risks, you are putting yourself or others in danger. One of the many examples of this was one night, when we set up the dingy to go learn how to sail it in the dark. This was a risky move, but my Dad let me go out because he completely trusts Mauro and he told me to wear a lifejacket and a headlamp in case anything happened. My highlight of the calculated risks was when we were going so fast on the big boat, that we tilted so much that the water level was all the way up the side and splashing in, while we were racing up and down the big waves. Even though it felt really risky, it was still “calculated”, because the three of us were working together to keep the sails aligned and the steering spot-on to get the most speed possible, without going beyond a safe angle.
Apart from all the sailing we did, some of my other highlights of this week were snorkeling through the coral reefs and mangroves. In the reefs we tons of beautiful, brightly colored fish, urchins, sea cucumbers, giant sea worms, and we even got to see a big squid go from looking like a piece of coral to looking in shape and color as a fish, an even swimming like one.
Also, I would like to thank my Dad so much for all the awesome food he made while we were on the sailboat. Our self-proclaimed cruise-cook even made punta de anca in the middle of the ocean, with no salt or a grill, by boiling the sea water down to a crust of sea salt and using the pot as an oven to cook it to perfection. Most incredibly, and for the very first time for even Mauro, Dad made us quesadillas, juice and coffee for breakfast while we were sailing in the waves.
Finally, along the way, our week was filled with constant jokes, some of which were the best I´ve ever heard (like Disco Night with Jonas, the Kontiki plankton eater and the fainting mountain goats). Some of the other jokes that we had were not created for entertainment, but just because my dad always forgot the nautical names for everything and created his own (“…the Skimper says pull the Willie Watson to bring in the Spelunker…!”).
Thank you so much to Mauro for this whole week of learning and having a great time. The Little Sapsucker is looking forward to sailing and playing “cows” with you again soon!