Asakiyume mita

Do you remember I compared low-ish water in July 2022 with high-ish water in March 2023 for the little tributary that connects Letícia to the Amazon?

( Here the two photos are again, as a reminder )

September is a very low-water month, close to the lowest, if not the lowest. And here's what that same area looks like now:



Barely any water at all. The buildings on the left are the ones that were floating in the other two pictures.

(Photo from this Facebook page.)

I finished my six-page picture book about planting eggs and incubating avocado seeds. Behold! The egg grew into a tree that has eggs on it:



And the avocado seeds that the hen sat on hatched some avocado chicks:



I sent the text and pictures to my friend and Tikuna teacher and said if she wanted to put it into Tikuna, we could create a dual-language book ;-) (And I said she should tell me if I'd messed up the Spanish, which is highly probable.)

The complete PDF is too large for me to send to my guides, let alone my friend, so I will try printing it up here and mailing it--though I'm not sure postal mail will reach anyone. But in any case, they have the pictures and (minimal) text to get a smile out of, and if my friend does put it into Tikuna, I'll add that in and send her the text and pictures again.

It's been a while, but I finished the next illustration for my Semillas y Huevos picture book, where the kids plant an egg and put an avocado seed under a chicken to hatch.

It took extra long because I finished one drawing but was dissatisfied with it, so had to start over. (I like this one better)

Here the kids are, planting the egg.

When we went to the Amazon in July, we took shelter from a downpour at the Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas SINCHI--the Sinchi Amazonic Institute of Scientific Research, "a nonprofit research institute of the Government of Colombia charged with carrying out scientific investigations on matters relating to the Amazon Rainforest, the Amazon River and the Amazon Region of Colombia for its better understanding and protection." There we met Dr. Clara Patricia Peña-Venegas, who gave me a copy of her extremely informative dissertation on cassava.

When I went back in March, I met with Dr. Peña and asked her what new things she was working on.

WELL. She's working on developing biodegradable, sustainable packaging alternatives to plastic for Leticia and the surrounding communities. Plastic trash is a huge problem for Leticia because (as noted in the post on the world's smallest Coca-Cola bottling plant) everything has to be shipped in and out of Leticia, but that's very expensive, so plastic trash just... piles up.

So she and other researchers at Sinchi have been working on various substitutes, using, among other things, cassava starch--and they have prototypes! These samples look a little battered, but that's because they've undergone various stress tests.

tray made from a palm leaf:



tray made from plant fibers:



Stiff-plastic substitute made from cassava starch. This could be used for things like cups:



5-second video of a flexible-plastic substitute, also from cassava starch:



She said they've tested various different types of cassava, and the starch from all of them works equally well--which is good, because it means that local farmers could keep on growing whatever they're growing now, but some of their produce could go to make these products--assuming there's a way to produce these materials affordably for local hotels and businesses. They have a test plant in the nearby town of Puerto Nariño to try to make this happen.

What's cool about this initiative is that they're not trying to find THE ONE TRUE PLASTIC SUBSTITUTE or dominate the world packaging industry: on the contrary, they're trying only to develop something that will work in this immediate region. This is important because it means it would be self-limiting: you wouldn't get people clear-cutting vast swaths of the rain forest to grow cassava for plastic substitutes, which would be a terrible unintended consequence. But if it's solely for local businesses to use, then it would provide farmers with additional income without too much damage to the forest, it would provide job for people in manufacturing, and it would provide hotels and businesses with an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic, one that would biodegrade and wouldn't clog and pollute waterways.

... On our (motorized) boat ride back from the flooded forest, we were moving through large patches of water hyacinth, and floating in the water hyacinth was... lots of trash. At one point the engine stalled out. Why? Because a plastic bag had wrapped itself around the propeller. That experience highlighted just how bad a problem plastic trash is.

I would love to see other hyper-local plastic substitutes developed. Cassava starch doesn't make much sense for my locale, but maybe potato starch? Things that can be locally produced, so there's not the pollution and expense of shipping. And things that biodegrade. (And of course they need to be produceable without huge amounts of petrochemical inputs, or that, too, defeats the purpose....)

This tweet contains a longer video from SINCHI, where Dr. Peña talks about the program (in Spanish).

In the Amazon, everything is always falling apart as soon as it's made: termites attack wood, metal rusts, roads disintegrate. And everywhere, new life is always pushing up. This is true everywhere, I realize... just slower

...Here, grass is sprouting on the canoe I was in. (Apologies to those of you who have seen this photo already on Twitter) A good image of resurrection.

I discovered I have a pair of photos that makes a good comparison of the lower water levels of the Amazon in July and the higher levels in March. Same location, different times of year! (Note: this isn't the actual Amazon, it's a little ingress--you navigate out of this and to the main river.)

Look at the difference between how much land there is between the houses on the far shore and the water. At peak water rise in most years, the water will cover the island those houses are on. (You can click through to see everything larger.)

July 2022


March 2023


What the heck, have a photo of the actual river in all its mighty mighty majesty, from a popular lookout spot in Tabatinga, Brazil:

Last year, when wakanomori and I went to Amazonas, one thing I really loved was fariña, a preparation of cassava made by grating it, then roasting it. After returning home, I found a great video on the making of it among the Tikuna (I wrote about it here; the entry had screenshots from the video). And I knew that was something I really, really wanted to participate in if I ever got the chance.

And I did get the chance, and it was (a) just like the video and (b) lovely, and (c) I made a great friend who had nearly the same name as me.

First went to a little shop in a residential part of Letícia to get rubber boots for me. Then we went by taxi to a point in the middle of apparent nowhere, and the taxi let us out. There was a tiny path leading into the landscape, and we set out on that:

( four photos: little shop, taxi, and two of the path )

All along the way there were wild fruits we could just reach out and eat. Here, granadilla, a type of passion fruit. This one isn't ripe, but we had some ripe ones.



And there were garden patches and fields all along the way, too, but blending right in to the riot of other growing things. Here, pineapples:



There was also sugarcane, bananas, and... cassava! Here's a bunch which even I could see was a grouped planting (you can see some small bananas in there too, though):



At last we came to the place where the fariña roasting was happening. You can see the machine used for grating the cassava--just like in the video! But they were past that stage. The big roasting pans are also just the same! And the paddles for turning it. They graciously let me take a turn. My new friend Francy and her mom are feeling the fariña to see if it's still damp, or if it's dry. If it's dry, it's done.

You can see that the fariña is being roasted over a fire that's contained by a wall of corrugated metal that's then insulated with a mud-grass mixture. Very cool.

( the roasting area--three photos )

When it's done, it gets strained to take out the large lumps, the quiebra muelas, or tooth breakers. But one of my guides likes snacking on those, and they can be good if you soak them in something, like açai juice. Açai was in season, and people were selling the juice (actually somewhere between a juice and a puree) everywhere. People like to have it mixed with ordinary fariña (not the tooth breakers) and a little sugar--wonderful.

You can see that the sieve is handmade. Beautiful.

And then it's ready to be put into a sack to take home. Francy used a scoop made from a gourd to put it in the sack, a beautiful item. On another occasion I had cassava beer, which we drank out of gourds like that, coated on the inside with a local resin. They filled a 50-lb sack with fresh-made fariña. They also had buckets of cassava starch (used to make that beer, among other things).

( straining the fariña, scooping it, plus the starch (three photos) )

At some point before we left, we took a little walk around, looking at the fields. When the cassava is grown, you can walk underneath it, like in the first picture. They told me that it's ready to harvest when all but the top leaves have fallen off.

One of my guides was asking about different types of cassava, trying to correctly identify ones that were sweet (don't need to soak to remove the cyanide) from the ones that are bitter (that do need to soak). They looked at things like the leaves to be able to tell, and I was reminded of the dissertation by Clara Patricia Peña-Venegas that I've been reading, which has this diagram of all the places indigenous people look to make distinctions between types.

In her disssertation, she also said that special landraces (local cultivars) get given special names, and I saw this! "Does this one have a special name?" my guide asked of one plant, and Francy's father said, "pajarito."

Under the cut is the diagram, and also: a cleared area for farming, some stems of cassava, which are used for planting (each one is cut into smaller sections for planting), an example of one of those in the ground, and what it's like under a canopy of cassava.

( cassava agriculture (five photos) )

When we were finished, we waited for a long time for transport to come. Francy's parents had huge loads: her dad carried the 50-lb bag of fariña, and her mon was carrying a similar amount of firewood. The mom, Mateas, and the bag of fariña went off with one motorcycle taxi, and the dad, the firewood, and Francy went off on another (I think: memory hazy, now). Francy's boyfriend (brother of one of my guides) and my guides and I went back in ... I can't remember now if it was a taxi or a tuk tuk!

Waiting

I have so much in my head that the words pile up behind... my mouth? or my typing fingers? jostling to be first to come out. So before I try to say anything, I'll just share two clusters of photos, first an assortment of four I shared on Facebook (but you guys here get more context!)

( The Facebook Four )

And here is a lower-water, higher-water comparison. The first photo is one I took in July, when we went when the water was low, but not as low as it gets. The second is a photo in the same spot that I took this trip. I thought March was the highest-level time, but it turn out that's in April. So this is high--but not as high as it gets!

( lower and higher )

More to come ... and slowly slowly I will also be reading entries I've missed while away (though probably not all...)

On December 14 wakanomori shared a Guardian article with me about Joaquim Melo, the 64-year-old owner of a remarkable bookstore in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon. The bookstore, Banca do Largo,

serves as a refuge for Amazonian writers and activists alike, pushing to protect the region from exploitation.​ By promoting local literature, particularly works by Indigenous writers, Melo believes he can help spread new ideas about societal organisation and the environment that are different from the capitalistic frameworks prevalent in the west.

Photo of the bookshop, from its website:



I was delighted--I went looking for more and found this video (in Portuguese) about the place. You might click on it just to hear the ambient noise--birds, animals, people, and traffic. And you'll also get to hear Mr. Melo talking <3

I started following the bookstore's Instagram, which updated rather overwhelmingly frequently, always with pictures of Mr. Melo with his customers--locals and tourists alike.

( smiling faces )

Then--nothing! I attributed that to algorithm bullshit. But then I went looking and discovered that the account had posted a death notice--Mr. Melo passed away on New Year's Day.

On the death notice was a quote from Chico Buarque (whom Wikipedia tells me is a Brazilian singer-songwriter):

Não há dor que dura para sempre!
Tudo é vário. Temporário. Efêmero.
Nunca somos, sempre estamos.

(There's no pain that lasts forever!
Everything is various. Temporary. Ephemeral.
We never are, we always are ...

I love what Spanish and Portuguese make possible linguistically by having a permanent-state verb "to be" and a temporary-state verb "to be." Because it's so true: we're never an immutable thing, we're always changing. We are dot dot dot

Sometimes you learn of a person just 18 days before they leave the world. Judging from the comments on the post of his death notice, he was well beloved. I hope his bookshop is able to continue.

One of the things I loved when first we went to Colombia was the fruit--so many fruits I had never heard of or tried. And one of the things I loved when we went to Leticia was the fruit--so many *new* fruits I had never heard of or tried--and also: the fruit as ice cream.

For instance, at Helados Nai Pata (not actually in Leticia but in the town of Puerto Nariño): You can have araza (Eugenia stipitata), camu camu (Myriciaria dubra), and copoazu (Theobroma grandiflorum), none of which I'd heard of before arriving in Amazonas, or maracuya (passion fruit), guanabana (soursop), coco (coconut), and mora (which means "blackberry," but that picture is clearly a (red) raspberry, so who knows).



I was longing for tropical ice cream when we got home, so I looked to see if any of our local roadside ice cream shops had tropical flavors. Answer: no. This surprised me. I would have thought that the combination of cosmopolitanism from the local colleges and the large Puerto Rican community nearby would mean someone had created one. Maybe my search wasn't good enough? Well, in any case, I then moved to searching online for ice cream with tropical flavors, and I found (cue angel choir)
Frutero
(~ ~ its website ~ ~)
Passion fruit! Guanabana! Coconut! Guava! Mango! I was so excited. And they had stores in my area! I went to one, searched the ice cream aisle ... nothing.¹ Desperate, I went and ordered myself a six-pack.

And so it came to pass that one day a whole box of ice cream, preserved with ~ ~ dry ice ~ ~ arrived at my house:



And one of the two founders included a letter asking me to let him know what I thought--and after I tried the guanabana (which took me RIGHT BACK to Colombia), I wrote him an effusive letter, and THEN he set up a one-on-one focus-group session to collect my thoughts on ice cream, Frutero, its various flavors, and so on, all of which charmed and delighted me even more.

Meanwhile, I was noticing things about the ice cream. For instance, that it makes where it sources its fruit part of its package design (and most of it comes from Colombia) and how many of each fruit is in a pint:

( guavas from Colombia--four pink guavas! )

I went back to the company's website and discovered that supporting farmers in Colombia as part of their mission. (I understand that claiming something is not the same thing as accomplishing it, and that how accomplishment is judged is a whole other issue, but at the very, very least, it shows that you want to appeal to people who care about the mission, and if those people are your customers, they are liable to keep you honest.) So I was even more favorably disposed to the company. Meanwhile, they sent me a bunch of coupons and explained to me why I hadn't been able to find their ice cream in the supermarket I'd tried (see footnote below).

( stuff about Frutero in supermarkets )

As you can see, I like the ice cream a whole lot--I think the coconut has the most intense flavor, followed by guava, and I really like the guanabana and passion fruit too. The mango is very nice, but not quite as intensely mango-y as, for example, the guava is guava-y. The tangerine is very good but familiar, and the pineapple I haven't tried.

I wanted to share in case YOU TOO would like to have some tropical ice cream. If you have a store near you, you can click on the link at the website to get a coupon for two dollars off two pints. The store are mainly in the northeast and California, but there's a scattering thought the south and southwest. In the north or in other countries, alas, you cannot access this (though people like anna_wing no doubt have access to local tropical ice cream).

Because I'm in promotor mode, I'm also going to interview the founders. I admire people who create things, and I'm very interested in aspects of their story (like the connection with Colombia), so look for that in November 😌

¹There was a good reason for this: the supermarket I was looking in (Stop & Shop) carries it in its natural foods section instead of its ice cream section.