The Inti Raymi celebration lasts a whole week and culminates in a huge street party known as San Pedro or la noche San Pedrina. I was invited by Edwin and his family to party with them in Tabacundo where this ritual is particularly famous. So last weekend I went to the family farm and had a chance to spend some quality time with my ecua-family. I naturally helped around as much as I could by preparing their weekly deliveries of fresh produce. There was a couple that had recently moved in from the States coming with the new PC group of youth & family program. It was a refreshing experience to come back to my roots here in this country and leave behind my work with the Awá for a few days.

On Sunday night we all went out, the two little girls for dressed up with the traditional skirt and we were all ready to dance in the streets of Tabacundo. It takes the form of a large parade where different indigenous groups and organizations present their musicians and dancers. We tagged along one random group and were warmly welcomed. This is a quite touristy event and they used to seeing the gringo make a fool of himself. The party was great but the amount of alcohol served around was ridiculous but an unfortunate tradition of San Pedro. People keep sharing cups of the cheapest, nastiest peach wine that give you the worst hangover you’ll ever get. Well I guess it got me as I wasn’t much use on Monday and had to cancel important meetings with the Awá education department. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one not to show up and it got postponed.

Work has been catching up with me as we are wrapping up key projects and have to present progress made at the upcoming FCAE general assembly. I helped out a lot with education piece making two presentations and printing the draft of the environmental education facilitator’s guide. The Awá education director was struggling with powerpoint: he had 32 slides filled with text! I reminded him that most of the Awá leaders at the assembly are illiterate and would be bored out of their mind if he showed them this presentation. We got rid of the text, added pictures and cut down the presentation to 13 slides.

I have high expectations for this assembly and am prepared to play a more active role in it. Not only do I have tangible results to share but this will be my third FCAE assembly so I think I understand the Awá cultural context much better and should be better able to contribute constructively to the discussion. I have always looked at such spaces as sacred and dedicated to the Awá for them to discuss different issues and make key decisions with minimal external intervention. I would never intervene if I did not feel I could truly contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way for the Awá’s sake. There is an African saying that goes: when you show up in a village for the first time, keep your mouth shut and listen. Many foreign development agencies ignore this wisdom completely and believe to have the answers to problems they barely understand, ignoring the socio-cultural context. I have been listening for over a year now, I certainly don’t grasp all the idiosyncrasies of Awá culture but the little knowledge I have could perhaps be beneficial for them, giving them perspective on certain issues.

On July 4th, the day I posted this blog entry I joined my Peace Corps buddies from the North Squad to celebrate the US national holiday. As the tradition obliges we cooked up a barbeque and played US sports throwing a football and baseball around. We all met up at the Yahuarcocha lake right outside Ibarra and were lucky to have a beautiful sunny day for the occasion. I actually got a pretty bad sunburn. It was great to check up on all these people I only see ocasionally and a bit sad as well since some were giving their farewell to all of us as their time has come to leave the country. I stayed as long as I could but kept reminding me to keep a low profile as I had a tough hike the next day in yet unknowed Awá territory.