Rio Negro

Saturday 02.03

Human without electricity = fish without bicycle!

Around two weeks ago we first arrived in Rio Negro. The scenery is majestic: 2 big mountain lines with a river in the middle. An overfloaded river, due to the stupid dam, which we had to travel for around 45 mins by boat in order to arrive to the "aldea" of Rio Negro. A community completely built in a couple hillsides of the mountains. You can take a look here:

However is the summer period, the hot is unbearable for 3-4 hours per day, and thus the mountains quite dry. This dissapoints us a little bit, in terms of our research but also in terms of the jungle that we expected to live in. Every obstacle for good. Let´s see. Life here seems easy.

Around 17 families with 90-100 people in total (yes families are overpopulated!) live here. The men sustain families with agricultural ativities and fishing while women cook and kneat beautiful and colourful guipils, bags, belts and other things that they can sell in close markets tha once in a while visit.
As you can understand electricity exists sparsely (for any turist group activity, or any celebration through generator), internet is an unknown word and mobile signal only for selective mobiles in one spot of the village. Our living spot is the "house of adobe" in the educative center of the village. A beautiful "cob" style hut mostly built out of mud , containing few beds and a table.

When we are not working with villagers, we pass most of our time in our verada, on a table which we use to study, make interviwes, eat and play cards. And these are the stuff we do when we are not around the village.
Just under our house is located a "kitchen" where different women of the village cook for us 3 times/day.

Our food is really simple and repetitive. We eat beans with pasta for breakfast, fish with rice for lunch and beans with eggs for dinner. Always with big amount of tortillas. that´s all. Every day. Every week. Yes we got bored already and we miss cooking and eating what we want and the times that we want. But is a minor problem.
The people of the village are different. The men are quite open and willing to share the knowledge, the women more closed, and we feel that we have to "gain them" somehow in order to interview them. The young people lost between religion and the wannabe westernalised and for the kids we are the "weirdos": they look at us, they inspect us and they play around us.We are something completely new and different for them, and we also enjoy it when we play with them!!

Actually we enjoy a lot the tranquil life in the silent village. here you can get plenty of time to think, to read, to have beautiful conversation, to reflect. There is no big light apart from the moon, so you can take the advantage and see millions of stars every night. Here I encountered the most star-full sky of my life and the most free time to spent looking at them. And something that we have misses: The most time to spend with each other under them!! And is wonderful!
And take some photos till next time:

This is our friend Patty or Pulgi!!! :D

This foto is dedicated to my friend Ilias who was ensuring me that I can find plenty of tobacco, filters and  rolling papers in such a country!! This is my rolling paper! Is baking paper which I had to buy from a bookstore!!!! Yes I lick a lot, and it is not always working!!! 

People we miss you all, and we send you lots of kisses and hugs!!