Ki-na! Ki-na!

It’s once more two weeks that I couldn’t write on my blog, as last weekends had been very busy and also during the week it’s ever harder to have an evening on myself. On the 14th of June I took a boat to the frontier with Brazil and Colombia, as I don’t have a visa for Peru and I had to get out of the country before the 15th – during the trip to the Putumayo River we visited some Colombian villages, but there it’s not possible to get your passport stamped. The cheapest way to do this quickly is to take a fast boat that can get you to the border in about 10 hours. At 6 o’clock in the morning the boat left the port in Iquitos to follow the Amazon River to the Peruvian village of Santa Rosa. There you can take a small boat to cross the river to one of the twin villages of Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil). I spent my two nights in a small hostel in Tabatinga, but you can easily walk from one village to the other without any formalities. Once more it was significant how Santa Rosa, on the Peruvian side, was a small village without cars and hardly any commodities, while Tabatinga and Leticia are very developed, with good roads and lots of cars and motorcycles. Also at the Putumayo River it was very clear that most of the money is to be found on the Colombian side.

In Iquitos the most significant event of last two weeks was the general strike that was held on Thursday the 11th of June in support of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Strikes in Iquitos are generally started in proper way at midnight with a march through the streets. When it’s a worker’s strike usually the streets look like a war has passed the next day, as people start throwing around all they can find on the streets. This time however the people crossed the streets quietly holding candles to remember the victims of the violent clashes that had occurred in Bagua. Another march was organised during the day in the afternoon and attracted a huge crowd that filled the streets of Iquitos. Unions, universities, secondary schools and indigenous and other social organisations were all present and the march was concluded by speeches of indigenous leaders at Plaza 28 de Julio, the biggest square in the city.

At the office we’ve been mostly working on the legalization of the Board of Directors of OISPE and on the search of new markets to sell the artesanía of the Secoya communities. Also I started giving computer classes to the two new indigenous students that are staying in Iquitos, to prepare them for the moment they will have to make their first papers for university. Unfortunately it’s about three weeks now we’re waiting for the telephone company to come and install the internet connection at our new office, which isn’t making our work much easier.

Last weekend was dominated by festivities in the honour of Father’s Day and my birthday. On Friday afternoon, one of the days I went to help in the children’s house, classes were cancelled and a big barbeque was organized. After this the children were free to play and a tournament in both volleyball and football was organised. On Saturday morning I was invited to go with a small organization, founded by Marina and her friends to help young children in their studies, to visit a centre that’s working to protect the endangered manatees living in the Amazon basin. In the evening I had a first drink to celebrate my birthday and the next day we continued with another barbeque (a Peruvian weekend tradition), an original birthday cake (made from cookies, ice cream and wine) and even a few presents (which solved my ‘shortage of t-shirts’-problem).

Hasta la próxima,

Jeroen