Supply Side Economics and the Lasting Effects of the 2008 Recession on Hiring Practices

Donald Trump has branded himself a champion of the Working Man. He claims that he can create jobs, more jobs, by applying supply side economics to give “job creators”, or large corporations, tax benefits and other incentives to remain in the U.S. or expand their operations here. I hypothesize that supply side economic policies designed to expand job growth will be more ineffective in the post-2008 economy than before due to a lean, efficient workforce born from hard cuts during the recession, and a reticence from employers to overreach in hiring and be forced to lay off more people in the event of a second recession.

Supply side economic policies function by reducing the regulatory and tax burdens on corporations, increasing their available stream of revenue, and theoretically giving them a greater chance to expand and hire new employees. The phrase “a rising tide lifts all ships” springs to mind. At a glance, this seems like sound logic. However, I think that the current business culture needs to be taken into account before it can be assumed that businesses will take all their profits and put it back into the company.

During the recession many companies were forced to reduce their workforces when the markets collapsed. The long and deep recession was a bottleneck event. Only companies that could become lean, efficient machines survived the recession and they took the lessons learned from those experiences with them into the post-recession economy. I think proof of this can be found in the percentage of people working multiple part-time jobs because they cannot find full time employment. Why hire a full-time employee with benefits when you can pay lower wages to a part-timer with no benefits? Even more, part-time employees are often easier to fire and would have lower severance costs. Companies are very aware of the liability of excess or under utilized employees and have kept hiring tightly in check post 2008.

Even though the recovery after 2008 was the quickest non-wartime economic comeback in history, growth is relatively slow and the markets still have lingering doubt over whether or not the gains made since 2008 are permanent or if a relapse is immanent. I think this mood is exacerbated by de-regulation of financial and banking industries, which has precipitated the last two significant recessions.

This is not helped by the mixed economic messages coming from the Trump Administration, which vacillate between complete protectionism and cautious participation in free trade with the caveat that the U.S. be the largest benefactor in any deal, which is a decided deviation from all previous modern foreign economic policy. Uncertainty is the bane of the stock market and employers are reticent to make large investments in labor because they are uncertain of the future of the economy. They are unwilling to risk the large liabilities related to employment if they will need to lay them all off in the near future.

With the combination of these two conditions, I believe that the efficacy of supply side economics will be significantly hampered. Already corporations are announcing that they will be using the tax benefits to give out bonuses, buy back stock, or fluff up their rainy day funds. I do not believe there will be above average job growth compared to the growth rate of the economy as a whole. There is too much uncertainty in the markets, and employers are too good at efficient work force management to grow quickly.

Bad Science Isn't Free Speech

On May 18th, "13 Science, Space, and Technology Committee Republicans sent letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight environmental activist organizations. The letters request documents related to the groups’ coordinated efforts to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists and scholars of their First Amendment rights and their ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution." (from a press release from the same committee)

The letter accuses the "Green 20", a group of environmentally minded legislators and activists, of restricting first amendment rights in order to push a political agenda coping with climate change.

Honestly, I think my title covers most of the point I want to make. Yes, Americans have the right to say whatever they want without fear of persecution from the government, and I would not want to live in a country without that inalienable right. However, purposefully using wrong and misleading information under the guise of free speech to exploit the people is morally untenable and a laughable charade.

If there wasn't a scientific consensus, or if the data was not so conclusive that quite nearly all the scientists in the world agreed, I would welcome a hearty debate on the subject based in fact and research efforts. However, the science is in on climate change. 98 percent of climate scientists agree that anthropogenic forcing is causing the shifts in the climate that we are observing. There is no longer a debate to be had. From this point on, any law or policy maker denying climate change might as well be trying to say the sky is not blue, but rather pink, and the scientific community is just trying to push its blue agenda to destroy American jobs.

I do not think you should be able to cite freedom of speech as a reason to use false information to allow policy makers to maintain the status quo. It's cherry picking at its finest and that practice should be beneath the policy makers of this country.

I have a thought experiment to help show why cherry picking information can have disastrous consequences.

Let's say there is an ageing bridge crossing a river. It looks structurally sound, but you want to be sure before your drive your new Lexus on it. You call up one hundred engineers and ask them to inspect the bridge. All but two of the engineers say the bridge will collapse if you drive across it. Who would you listen to with your life and your car in the balance?

To be more pointed, would you rather trust three or four scientific studies paid for by oil and petroleum companies with dubious methods and results, or the thousands of studies run by the leading climatologists in the world that have been corroborated over and over again by the scientific method that tell us that greenhouse gasses released by humans are causing global climate change?

Even beyond that, what are the consequences of shifting our energy sources to renewable and green technologies? Would it be so bad to have a cleaner environment, without smog and oil spills, just for that fact alone? Yes in the short run it will be painful. People will lose jobs in the oil industry, and prices of energy will go up, but we will create new jobs in the renewable energy industry, jobs that can be created in the US not in Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Technological innovation driven by competition will drive down prices again just as they do with the oil industry.

It will not be easy, but to paraphrase JFK, we do not do things because they are easy, but because they are hard. We have a chance to work towards a better, cleaner future but we must stop letting bad science and misinformation cloud our judgement. Bad science isn't free speech, it is misinformation told to keep you complacent with the status quo.

Bathrooms and Bigots

I wanted to continue my thoughts from The Fallacy of an Equality Compromise and get a little more specific now that the arguments against transgender bathroom use have become more solid.

First, let's start with some of the opposition arguments that I have heard. The most common by far is that people are worried about the safety of bathrooms without strict gender separation. More specifically, people are worried about the safety of women if "men" can enter female bathrooms. (I used quotations around men because transgender women are not men.) The second, more bigoted opposition is that allowing transgender people to use whatever restroom they identify with "legitimizes" a lifestyle choice that goes against some religious teachings.

The first argument seems legitimate but I would disagree wholeheartedly for the following reasons.
First, no one has made sexual assault inside a bathroom legal. If we believe that punishments are prohibitive, as many opponents of bathroom ordinances do, then why would having all people of the same gender, whether chosen or biological, increase the assault rate? I argue that it wouldn't. Assault still carries the same punishment, and therefore still has the same prohibitive effect regardless of where the crime occurs.

Second, trans-gender people that have completely transitioned to their chosen gender have used the bathroom of their choosing for years now. It was not forbidden until recently, and for the most part you can't outright identify a transgender person from their appearance so they can freely do whatever they want. These bathroom ordinances are "fixing" a problem that doesn't exist. There has been no increase in sexual assaults since transgender men and women have been using their respective bathrooms, in fact both rape and sexual assaults have declined markedly in the last few decades (U.S. Department of Justice. National Crime Victimization Survey. 1993-2013).

So, if there is no increased danger from transgender men and women using whatever bathroom they want, why are we enacting discriminatory laws that mitigate this danger?

The rest of the arguments against the bathroom ordinances are all religious in nature. They vary from opposition to "legitimizing transgender lifestyle choices" to "'God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated' (Cardinal Robert Sarah) in reference to homosexual and transgender equality laws". I cannot understand how giving human beings the right to live the lives they want with no deleterious effect on anyone else can be wrong. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as well as the freedom of and from religion in this country. We are not a christian nation even if a majority of the population is. We have a secular government that is separate from religion, or should be according to the constitution. Religious arguments should hold no sway in this environment as legitimate means to discriminate against non-traditional gender identities or sexual attractions.

While I cannot abide restricting transgender access to bathroom facilities, I find that locker room situations are much more complex and require more nuanced policy than bathrooms, and I would be remiss if I didn't cover the subject. The distinction between the two is the access to privacy. Privacy is common to bathrooms, but much less common in locker rooms. In any public restroom structures exist to maintain privacy during urination and defecation. However, locker rooms seldom have private changing areas and this could lead to unwanted exposure from both parties. I would say that I have nothing against transgender persons using either locker room and would only encourage the use of private changing stalls if the persons genitalia do not yet match their identity.

I think these bathroom laws are a sham that serve only to bring attention to a non-issue. Transgender people have, and will continue to use the restroom that suits them and it hasn't been an issue up till now. The arguments against equality are facades designed to rouse a religious political base.

The Fallacy of an Equality Compromise

I recently listened to an Iowa Public Radio session about the Houston, Texas "Bathroom Ordinance" that was recently voted down in city elections. The ordinance is a measure to ensure that no group can be discriminated against, and provides a direct route through city services to address complaints without involving lengthy trials. There are scores of other cities across the country that have laws like this and they suffer no ill effects.

The lynch pin on the Houston ordinance being voted down was that the law would entitle trans-gender individuals to use the bathroom, shower, or locker room facilities of the gender with which they identify, and not the gender that they were born with. An aggressive campaign against the ordinance insisted that this would open the door for male predators to pose as trans-women and enter women's bathrooms to assault women and girls despite a lack of evidence that this eventuality would occur..

There was a commentator in the IPR session that kept speaking about "common sense" solutions to this problem, something to assuage the LGBT community while not upending the status quo. He suggested we build additional, separate bathrooms for trans-individuals to circumvent male/female bathroom issues. He called it a common sense compromise to maintain equality.

That phrase sounded familiar to me, and I recollect that I heard it during the height of the campaign to bring about marriage equality. I heard many "common sense" compromises that involved a separate institution, like a civil union, for same-sex couples. A middle ground that opponents and supporters alike could stomach.

I want to address this. This fallacy of a middle ground on equality. Equality is a binary condition, meaning that one is either totally equal under the law with all other citizens or we are all unequal to varying degrees. There is no in middle ground. Forcing a trans-gender person to use a separate bathroom than the gender they identify with because they have a medical condition is inherently discriminatory.

To be more broad, anytime you create an institution or laws that prescribe behavior for a person or group of people that is determined by characteristics that they cannot control you are promoting inequality. It does not matter if it is under the guise of perceived safety, it does not matter if the majority of the country is opposed to it. The constitution guarantees all citizens be held equally under the law regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc.

We have fought over this basic fact for decades in this country. Whether it be women's suffrage, or the civil rights movement, marriage equality, and now trans-gender access to bathrooms, we have fought over who the freedoms and rights in this country apply to time and time again. Is it now time for us to realize that we should extend the rights to all citizens, regardless of any detemerining factors over which they have no control? If we are not all equal, we are unequal and that must not be tolerated. It is the duty of the government to extend the rights and freedoms of this country to all citizens regardless of popular opinion.

A War On Christians

In the United States of America there is no War against Christianity. However, if you google the phrase "War on Christianity" you will see hundreds of news articles saying the exact opposite. I would like to express my opinion that this country still strongly favors Christianity, and that losing some previously held privileges does not amount to discrimination.

First, let's start off with some background information. According to a 2014 study done by the Pew Research Center, 70.6% of people in the U.S. identified as christian. Of that 70.6%, 25% identified as evangelical protestant, 20.8% identified as catholic, and 14.7% identified as mainline protestant. The next largest group are classified as "nones" which include atheists, agnostics, and unaffiliated which comes in at 22%. So we see that in the U.S., Christians hold close to a 50% majority over the next largest "religious" group.

If it weren't enough to have a huge population majority, the constitutional protections for the freedom to practice your religion are iron clad in the Constitution. In fact, it is the first amendment to the constitution and is one of the founding values of this country. Why did the Pilgrims leave England? To avoid religious persecution.

So, why would a group that makes up an exceptionally large majority of our countries' population feel discriminated against?

At the very core of the issue is the perceived loss of rights, which are actually just privileges that were granted by denying basic equality to other demographics of the population.

One argument you see often in the news is that Christians are being discriminated against by being forced to performs services in connection with LGBTQ events like marriages, or for reproductive health issues like providing birth control to employees. Let us look at two fairly recent examples to examine whose rights are being violated by whom.

The two cases I would like to use are the LGBTQ Community v Kim Davis, and Hobby Lobby v Birth Control. In Kim Davis' case, the LGBTQ community in her county of Kentucky couldn't get a marriage license because Davis felt it would go against her religion to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple. Here we see Davis expecting a privilege by denying basic equality to the LGBTQ community. In the case of Hobby Lobby, the Christian owners believed that providing birth control through health care plans to employees went against their beliefs, so they denied access to birth control to women employees to uphold their religious ideals.

Martin Luther King Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, said "An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself".

I opine that Christianity in this country is both a numerical and a power majority that has until very recently held certain demographics to codes that it would itself not follow. Moreover, when those laws are thrown down and over turned, whether in court cases or by the elected legislature, it does not constitute discrimination against the majority, but a correction of the scales, bringing them back into the balance of equality.

In the same Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King goes on to say "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed." I do not believe that demanding equality is discrimination, and therefore this "War on Christianity" is but a facade for those not yet willing to give up their prejudices and accept that we should all be given equal rights under the law.

Why the U.S. Needs a Mulitparty Political System

The U.S. presidential election has historically been a battle between the two big parties leaving little room for a viable candidate from a third party. Consider the historical example of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party that cost liberals an election by siphoning votes away from their main candidate. This threat looms over the two party system, trapping us with a mind game. Do I vote for the candidate I truly think will be the best president? Or do I vote for the most viable candidate that I agree with more than I disagree?

Since the last presidential election, it has been almost a given that Hillary Clinton would run as the next democratic nominee. However, continued "rough patches" for her campaign have been making it increasingly unlikely that she can actually win the election. Her most potent opponent, Bernie Sanders, runs under the banner of socialism, which already scares a decent proportion of Americans away from voting for him.

On the republican side, Donald Trump continues to poll well above the other participants even though he comports himself with grace of a beached tuna. Then you have the run of the mill Tea Party candidates like Cruz and Rubio that are increasingly overshadowing the more moderate candidates like Kasich and Graham.

In the upcoming 2016 election, the two party system shows its ugly underbelly for us all to witness. At the moment there is but one viable candidate for the democratic nomination: Hillary Clinton. She has boatloads of cash, a long political history, and she is a fairly middle of the road democrat. However, scandals follow her like dementors. We're not entirely sure she is viable as a candidate any more, but because she has been the front runner for so long we don't really have a choice. Bernie has a lot of good ideas, but he is fairly extreme in the American political sphere. I think he would have a hard time getting moderates, especially those with conservative leanings, to vote for him.

The Republicans have a much more difficult decision to make if Trump continues to run high polling numbers. Trump in no way would make a good president and most of the true political candidates know this. However, Trump has insinuated that, were he not picked to be the GOP nominee, he would run as a third party candidate. Now, in a two party system that is a significant threat. Were Trump to run an independent campaign he could very well pull enough votes away from the GOP nominee to lose the race for conservatives and hand it to the liberals. Are the GOP party heads willing to take a risk like that?

Essentially, what the two-party system does is that it requires the American public to pick between the least offensive candidate. You may not like the candidate you vote for, but they're an awful lot better than the other guy. In a multi-party system there would be options for more candidates to have viable presidential runs, as well as necessitating compromise and deal-brokering to accomplish anything. We would turn a "winner take all" race into a power sharing system where more Americans are represented at any one time.

Congress would also benefit significantly from a multi-party system in the same way the presidential election would. One of the biggest issues in Congress right now is the massive amount of partisan bickering that occurs and routinely causes idiotic situations like the government shutdown. If there were even three parties in congress no single side could hold the government hostage, nor could they pass anything without the help of one of the other groups. This would necessitate cooperation instead of scorched-earth policies we see today. You would also get a wider spread of candidates into the house for greater representation and introduction of ideas.

In conclusion, I would hate to see an obviously poor candidate be a 50/50 chance away from the white house because polling numbers gave them the upper hand in a game of chicken between the two existing political parties.

Iranian Nuclear Deal

As it has been all over the news the past few days, many of you will know about the new anti-proliferation treaty between the U.S. and Iran. The treaty will reduce the crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for a reduction in centrifuges and access for international inspections, among other benefits. Proponents say it will increase Iran's breakout time, as well as provide a significant amount of international oversight on weapons manufacturing. Opponents say the treaty will open the door for Iran to sponsor terrorism and emerge as a threat in the Middle East.

The perceived threat here is that Iran is a known state sponsor of terrorism, including supporting groups like Hamas, Hezzbolah, and others. Iran also has a very aggressive regional policy in the Middle East including making threats against Israel. This aggressive policy has prompted a small arms race among the nations in the immediate area and there are worries a lack of economic sanctions would open up large amounts of money to be used by Iran to purchase arms.

Now, while all of these are legitimate grievances against Iran here is my take on the situation: would we rather barely contain nuclear proliferation through economic sanctions and threats of violence or attempt to mend relations with Iran so that they don't want to attack us?

"Sam, don't be naive, Iran will just hide their weapons when there are inspections. They want to attack the U.S. and our allies"

The treaty isn't about giving Iran a free ticket to run wild after the sanctions lift either. There will be rigorous inspections by international watchdogs to make sure that Iran is cooperating, as well as the fact that Iran will have to get rid of a good portion of both its enriched uranium and the centrifuges used to create it.

"But Sam, Iran has said Israel should be 'wiped off the map' and they called the U.S. 'The Great Satan'. They hate us!"

You know what makes people hate you a lot less? Not threatening to blow their country up when they want to advance their energy program. Maybe we could even be helpful and help the build non-nuclear power plants so they don't even have an excuse for nuclear research. It'd also be hard to blame the U.S. for causing all the economic hardships in the country when we no longer block all imports and exports.

"But we need to protect Israel from attack! They're our allies!"

First off, Netanyahu is a fear monger. Second off, Israel has done enough sketchy things in the last twenty years that I think we should seriously re-evaluate our big brother policy (Israel has committed possible crimes against humanity), and third off Israel can handle itself. The last time Middle Eastern countries attacked them Israel beat five countries at once in six days. They also happen to have a nuclear bomb, so if you want another deterrent to attacking Israel, there you go.

Iran isn't without some serious flaws (they deny the holocaust, among other things) but I would much rather have open, mostly-honest interaction with the international community than sticking them with a bunch of sanctions and just holding our breath till they come up with a way to blow it back in our faces. But hey, why foster positive relationships when we spend 600 billion dollars on the military every year and need an excuse to drop some freedom on someone?

Shuar Mythology

One afternoon after Cesar and I had finished eating lunch, he brought out a series of hand drawn pictures of various monsters from Shuar mythology and explained them to me a little bit.

The Iwia is essentially a crazy cannibal that lives in the jungle. Cesar said they have a smell that can knock a man out and they hunt children for the most part. The Ecuadorian government has an elite jungle unit called "iwia" made up of Shuar soldiers. They draw their name from this monster and from what Cesar told me they are an especially deadly bunch, with both Shuar traditional warfare and modern tactics. This statement holds more weight when you know that the Shuar have never been conquered. Neither the Inca nor the Spanish conquistadors were able to  defeat the Shuar in the jungle. When the Spanish made their first forays into Shuar territory, they broke through several skirmishes and made camp on a river. The Shuar then went upstream and put a poisonous plant into the water which drifted downstream and killed many of the Spaniards. The next day the Spaniards left and never returned. Jungle warfare is often abrupt, brutal, and deadly for those not raised in the jungle.

The Jurijri is a human like monster that lives at the behest of forest spirits. The first encounter with the Shuar occurred with two brothers and their wives one day as they were out hunting. The brothers were excellent hunters and had amassed a bountiful harvest during the day. They created a fire to cook with and soon set to the task of cooking the various different animals they had killed. One of the wives went to go collect firewood for the fire, and while she was out in the forest a spirit appeared in front of her. It asked her why her party had killed so many of it's brethren. Angered, the spirit said that it would send soldiers to kill them at midnight unless they hid themselves in a tree surrounded by fire. The wife ran back to camp and warned her company about what she had witnessed. Neither the two brothers nor the other wife believed her and continued cooking their feast. The wife prepared a tree as an escape, then rejoined the others to eat and sleep. At midnight the wife was awoken by a furious rainstorm. Lightning and thunder ripped through the sky and the wife knew that the spirit had come to seek vengeance. She woke her companions then ran to the tree she had prepared. Once in the tree she couldn't see through the dark and the rain, but none of her companions joined her in the haven. When morning broke, the woman got down from the tree and inspected the camp. Their shelter had been ripped open and there were footsteps leaving camp. She followed the tracks and eventually came across a cave. She peeked into the cave and saw a group of people sitting around a fire eating her companions.
Horrified, she ran back to her village and told the town what she saw. No one in the town believed her, and they blamed her for killing her husband and his brother. However, they needed proof so they traveled to the cave to verify what happened. When the group arrived at the cave they saw the remains of the feast and the group of people asleep. Angered, they went back to the village, armed themselves, returned, and killed all the people in the cave as revenge. When they checked the dead bodies they found that the Jurijri had another mouth behind their hair on the back of their head that they used to eat the Shuar. As the Shuar were about to leave, a small girl walked into the clearing. She didn't speak, so the Shuar assumed she was some escaped pray of the dead Jurijri. They took her back to their camp and gave her food to eat. The girl wouldn't eat in front of them, but when they turned their backs the food would disappear almost immediately. After a few weeks in the village, the Shuar left the girl in charge of a young child while the mother went to look for food. When the mother returned the child was gone. Suspicious, the Shuar checked the girl and found blood on her hands so they killed her. Behind her hair was a mouth. She was another Jurijri. After that Jurijri commonly live in remote caves and eat Shuar who come across them in the jungle.

 The chikiaku iwianch is a rather strange monster. Cesar said that it only materializes on the night of the full moon and stands with its arms out and looks up at the moon. It is said that those that can run between its legs get special powers, however the chikiaku will try and scoop you up with its arms and eat you if you try. What makes it more scary is that it's about 3m tall.

Cesar referred to this one only as "diablo" the Spanish word for devil. He told me that this diablo has been seen on multiple occasions in recent years. One year at the Macas foundation festival a child saw a man dancing in the middle of a crowd, however, his feet were the wrong way. He brought this fact to the attention of the mother. When the mother looked the man had disappeared. Cesar also said he had seen the tracks of this monster. It lives deep in the jungle away from civilization. It prefers swampy terrain, which is where Cesar saw the foot prints. He told me if you see the monsters footprints you have to walk in the direction they face in order to get away from it. If you go the opposite direction you'll eventually find the monster. I am under the impression it eats people because Cesar said that if you encounter it you are supposed to give it your shirt with a knot in it. It will try and put the shirt on and this will give you time to escape.

The ujea is a weird mix between a bear and a human. Apparently the Shuar used to hunt these. As you can see in the picture the stench was enough to knock a grown man unconscious. These aren't dangerous to humans as they eat the nectar of flowers.

This last one is a particularly brutal form of iwianch. This one has lost its arm in an accident or a fight. It thinks if it can find its old arm it can put it back and be whole again. To this end it goes around ripping off arms of Shuar to see if they fit on its body. Cesar told me that for a while there were organ harvesters that killed several children in a different area and this type of iwianch was blamed. When the Shuar caught the group of people that were actually committing the crimes they thought they were this monster and killed them all. I think the moral of this story is to never wrong a Shuar because the retribution is usually swift and very lethal.

My Final Days in Ecuador

First, I would like to say that I have made it home safe and sound! I left Quito at 11:30pm on July 1st and arrived in Minnesota at 12:30pm on July 2nd. Despite my flights going off without a hitch, my route from Macas to Quito was fraught with a few more difficulties. Due to some recent legislation by President Correa, the Shuar Community near Macas decided to host a series of protests to attempt to boot Correa from power. These protests took the form of "paros" or road closings where protesters don't let anyone through until they get what they want. Since myself and another volunteer had flights looming in the near future, we decided it would be best to leave a few days early from Selvavida to give us time to negotiate any roadblocks. We also took the night bus to Quito because even protesters have to sleep at some point. I didn't sleep on the bus so I arrived in Quito on four hours of sleep from the day before.

In Quito I visited some of more common tourist attractions. My first day I walked around the old historic city center, visited a few of the churches, and got to see the VP of Ecuador give his weekly address to the citizens. I also visited El Panecillo, which is a large statue of a virgin looking over Quito from "Cerro Gordo" a 200m high hill in the Quito valley. On my second day I visited the "Mitad del Mundo" or the center of the world. It's where the Equator bisects through Ecuador. We also hike up to an old volcanic crater which had some pretty amazing views. On my last day I visited some of the museums in Quito and ate my last lunch in the city.

National Theatre in Quito

La Ronda, a street famous for food and handicrafts

Presidential Palace

View overlooking Quito from El Panecillo

One half to the north, the other to the south

Thinking like a globie at El Crater

In my final week Cesar decided that I should learn to be a little bit more of a jungle man so in the afternoons after teaching at the school we took tours of medicinal plants near the project, learned how to set traps for birds and animals, and of course learned some traditional Shuar face painting.We used a seed pod which was filled with the orange paint-like substance to create the designs. Cesar also told me a little bit about the mythology of the Shuar. I might do another blog post just about those stories later.

Traditional Shuar designs for celebrations or war

We found a termite ball, Cesar for scale.

The termites were really cool because you can rub them on your skin and they release an oi that acts as a mosquito repellent. In fact, some mosquito repellents today are derived from chemicals in termite oil.

 On my last Friday before leaving, the students held a "despedida" for me and we took a bunch of pictures. Here are a few:

8th and 9th grade

They killed a small snake and wanted to show it off (It is poisonous so they killed it for safety)

8th, 9th, and 10th grade with the professor and school director

Here's a little wildlife tour from the jungle:

The tarantula was hunting cockroaches in the roof (about the size of your hand)

Found this big guy on the path to the road

Poisonous scorpion on the stairwell wall in my room

Butterflies were the one family of nice insect

This guy was about 3 inches long and above my clothing

A little coral snake on the path to the bathroom

Here are some examples of the food I ate while in Ecuador:

Fresh fruit salad with hand squeezed fruit juice

Arroz con pollo y legumbres (Chicken and rice with vegetables)

Fried Yuca, Rice, and Lomo, or beef with a bottle of Ecuadorian beer

Carne asada, yuca frita y salsa de cebollas (roast meat, fried yuca, and onion salsa)

I'm glad to be back in the U.S.  Happy 4th of July everyone!

Teaching English and Digging Canals

I`m in Macas again this weekend after spending 2 weeks at Selvavida. I`m getting more and more used to the jungle, and after the first 70 mosquito bites (42 of which were concentrated on my right hand), my body is slowly learning to tolerate them as well. For this post I´m going to talk a little bit about what I have been working on for the last two weeks concerning my actual internship, as well as what I did last weekend.

After Julien left (he was the French volunteer at Selvavida when I arrived) Cesar asked me if I wanted to volunteer at the school in Tunantz, a village about 20 minutes away by bus from Selvavida, as an English teacher for grades 8 to 10. I accepted and have been teaching the students there for two weeks now. Classes run from 9 to noon most days so my mornings are spent in Tunantz. The prior knowledge of English is very minimal, consisting of a few memorized phrases like "good morning" and "good afternoon" etc., however there is very little knowledge about how the language works, or even how to spell in English. I have decided to try and rectify the situation as best I can during my time here with a lesson in phonetics, to try and get the students to learn how to sound out words so they can spell more proficiently, as well as verb conjugations in the present tenses so they can begin adapting themselves to the language, rather than using memorized phrases. I think the most frustrating aspect is the lack of retention between classes. I can spend 30 minutes going over 3 or 4 very similar verbs, and next class period the students won`t even recall the meaning of said verbs, let alone the conjugations. There are a few students who seem to be able to pick up what I teach fairly quickly, but the rest are a significant challenge. Even though I can tell there is interest in learning English (they constantly ask me to translate phrases from the bible or books for them) there is very little learning occurring at the school. I have two weeks left of teaching and I am going to try my best that they remember at least a few new things from my time with them. What they need though is a full time teacher with adequate materials and time to devote to working on pronunciation, spelling, and grammar, rather than rote memorization of useful phrases.

With teaching occupying my mornings, Cesar and I work for 2 to 3 hours in the afternoon on various projects at Selvavida. Recently Cesar has been hit with a bit of bad luck regarding various business ventures and computer errors resulting in him not having access to his bank accounts until the 23 of June. With this setback, we haven`t been able to by the tanks required to build the grey water filters I came here to make, so we have improvised a little. Cesar is in the process of constructing a meeting house in the manner of a traditional Shuar building. One of the issues he was facing was the the ground underneath the hut is very waterlogged. My first project has been to construct a series of drainage canals to dry out the soil, as well as an erosion reduction measure to ensure the extra water flowing over the ground doesn`t cause more erosion than already exists on the property. It`s not what I planned on doing, but I´m feeling more or less satisfied with what I have accomplished so far. Cesar has also asked me to compile some plans for a future, larger filtration system that he wants to build when he has sufficient money and volunteers to finish it. In this way I feel like I am at least using my knowledge to benefit Cesar, even if I can`t be around for the actual construction.

One theme of working in the jungle is that no matter what you are doing, everything is more difficult. Whether it be walking, digging, cutting, building, there is always some aspect of this place that makes tasks range from difficult to downright horrible. This "property" of the jungle makes getting anything significant done take about twice as long as it should. It`s frustrating, but there`s nothing I can do to change it so I have mostly accepted it.

So that`s what I have been up to during my "working time" here. This past weekend I didn`t have to work so Cesar and I did some recreational activities. We hiked about an hour through the jungle to get to a waterfall that I can only describe as a paradise. The water was clear and cold, spilling down the trunk of a massive tree caught in the trough of the falls.

Part of the way to the waterfall.

The waterfall itself.

With no anacondas to worry about Cesar and I disrobed and went swimming for a bit. During our swim, we decided to climb higher, to the next set of falls which were equally impressive. On our way back from the falls Cesar pointed out a snake curled up on a log, he warned me that the triangular head signifies a deadly snake. We got close to take a picture anyway.

It`s a snake.

Cesar also had to make a phone call, which means trekking to the top of the mountain that guards the Macuma River Valley. There are several look outs from the mountain and you can look out to the east until the curvature of the earth hides the horizon. Rio Macuma eventually makes its way to the Amazon River to the east. The sense of unending forest for hundreds of miles before me gave me a very ethereal feeling. It was, at the same time, awe inspiring as well as moderately frightening to think about the ancient things that stalk between those towering trees.

The Rio Makuma can be seen meandering its way to the Amazon Basin

Before I left my mother suggested I start a list of the animals I have seen and I think I will present the beginning of that list here.
I have seen:

Tracks of an ocealot (Is that babou?!)
Tracks of wild pigs
Toucans
Amazonian Parrots
Several species of snake
Glasswing butterflies, one of the trillion species here, but my personal favorite.
Scorpions
Tarantulas
Cockroaches the size of mice (they live in the leaves of the roof)
Armadillo ( I have eaten it, too)
This is just a summarization of the more notable things I have seen. The biodiversity of the forest is amazing, and I am constantly in awe of the immense range of flora and fauna I encounter on a regular basis.

To finish, I´m now mostly acclimatized to the jungle, I`m finding my "niche", so to speak, and am having a great time.