Week 3

June 18, 2007

Margaret Novak

Last week was my third week with Ecotrackers. I started out the week translating documents into English and uploading the finished products onto Wikipedia. In the middle of the week, the two kids from England that volunteered in the Shuar community of Kuamar came back to tell me about their experience. They uploaded all of their photos onto the computer and I started to create a new Kuamar page for the web-blog with their photos. At the end of the week, however, I got really sick. I came down with a horrible fever and went home early on Thursday and stayed home on Friday. Luckily, my mom and my sister are visiting, so my mom was able to take care of me. I just came back into work today, and everyone is rushing to get the signatures from Esmeraldas into the computer system so that all of their hard work to change the law will not go to waste. I hope we can get everything done in time!!

The End of My Second Week

June 8, 2007

Margaret Novak

It is now the end of my second week with Ecotrackers. This past week was pretty interesting. On Monday, a man named Manuel came in to talk to Max about setting up a project site in Kuamar, a Shuar village in the southern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon. It is about an 8 hour bus ride from Quito, followed by an 8 hour hike through the jungle. There is going to be a huge Shuar cultural festival next April, and so Manuel also wanted to talk about setting up for that event. Later on that day, a couple of kids from England showed up and wanted to do a volunteer project in the jungle, so we sent them off with Manuel. They will be helping to teach Shuar children English by giving them key words related to nature, like butterfly for example, and then taking them on a small jungle trek to find the butterflies in order to put an object to the word. They will also be helping to set up for the upcoming Shuar cultural event. It was really interesting to see how just like that we were able to get a project started up in a remote Shuar village. I plan on visiting Kuamar sometime in the near future, as I am sure an 8 hour trek through the Amazon jungle would be quite an adventure. I also talked with Max about going to a scuba convention in Salango at the end of June. I would be able to get scuba-certified, and apparently it is whale season! That sounds like a ton of fun! We also talked about a 9 day Amazon River trip, where we would take a raft all the way down to Peru; that would be pretty awesome too! I am not visiting any site this weekend as my mom and my sister are coming to visit, but I do plan to visit as many as possible after they return to the States. We are also trying to get the constitution changed in order to protect the disappearing coastal rainforest in Esmeraldas. There isn’t much time left and we need about a thousand more signatures (Max is there right now trying to get some more) and then we need to enter them into the computer system. Yesterday I helped Juan Carlos enter some names and numbers into the system; I didn’t realize how much work it takes to change a law or part of the constitution- it takes a lot!! Anyways, the sun is shining now, so that is good; it isn’t quite as cold as it was last week! I can´t wait to see what next week brings!

The First Week of My Internship with Ecotrackers

June 1, 2007

Margaret Novak

It is Friday, and I have just finished up my first week interning with Ecotrackers. I was a little nervous coming into this internship, as working in another country can be a little scary, but after being here for a week, I am very happy with it. It is wonderful to work with so many intelligent, passionate, and kind people. This is exactly the type of organization that I would like to work with in the future.

My first day, I spent most of the time listening to Max, the Director of Projects and my supervisor, explain how Ecotrackers works and what the organization encompasses. I learned quite a bit and everything that he had to say was extremely interesting. The next day, we talked more about what kind of work I would be doing, including translating documents into English, working on the Ecotrackers website, and attending to volunteers. I will also be able to spend the weekends visiting various sites, which I am excited to do. At one point a couple of men from Esmeraldas came in for a meeting to talk about a new project. They want to set up a program to save ancient trees in Maldonado. Apparently there is a huge problem with deforestation in this poor community because the palmafricana companies are buying trees for only $10.00 each in order to cut them down and make room for their business. This is devastating as some of the trees are 300 years old. With their proposed project, people would be able to ¨adopt¨ a tree for only $20.00, twice as much as the community is currently getting per tree, and then that particular tree would be protected. They talked about starting a website and promoting it to various universities in the United States, specifically those with large African-American populations (as Esmeraldas has a large Afro-Ecuadorian population). This was a very interesting meeting, and I am glad that I was able to be in on this new idea. I think that it would be very exciting to work on such a project. The past few days I have been working on translating a couple of documents. Their contents are extremely interesting, and I have enjoyed learning more about intelligent tourism and the issues facing Ecuador. Some of the abstract concepts have been slightly challenging to translate, but I like a challenge.

The only downfall to my current situation is that I spend about 3 to 4 hours on the bus commuting in and out of work everyday, as my Uncle lives in Pifo. Since I come in from 9:00am to 5:00pm, I have to wake up at 6:30am and then I don’t end up getting home until around 7:30pm. It is also very cold in Quito. I am glad that I am able to wear sweatshirts and jeans to work, but I think I need some mittens. However, the long days and the cold weather are a small price to pay for the experience that I am receiving while working with the Ecotrackers organization. It has only been one week and I am already learning a lot, I have met people from all over the world. Everyone here is really nice and I know that I am really going to enjoy interning with Ecotrackers this summer.