The other day I quit my job after seven months. Seven months of frustrating, exhausting, sweet, and heartfelt moments as an Assistant Director with a middle school after school recreation. While I wish I could join the thousands of other people who post and say that quitting their job was the best thing they have ever done, I am now without a job and so unsure of what to do that I feel like I'm going crazy. Like a lot of recent college grads, I went through my first two years of school unsure of what I wanted to accomplish with my time at college. I went through English-History-Women's Studies-Psychology and eventually landed on Environmental Geology. I still have no idea how I got there, no idea why I stuck with it, and no idea if I even like it anymore. But the best thing I have done with my life in the last 5 years was study abroad. If you are one of the students in this country who was given the incredible opportunity to spend time outside of the United States, then I know that you can relate to this in every single way. Getting to live in another country, speak another language, eat incredible food, get horribly sick, deal with culture shock, and acknowledge your own insane and ridiculous privilege is/will be one of the greatest times of your life.
I spent one month while in Ecuador living in the Amazon rain forest. And yes it was muddy, sticky, and full of spider. Honestly, my first week there I absolutely hated every inch of jungle. I hated the thickness of the humidity that fills every pore and makes it hard to breathe. I hated the suffocating heat that reaches its peak at 2 pm. I couldn't understand why I had agreed, no, volunteered to spend time in a place filled with caiman, ants and spiders (for which I have quite real arachnophobia). My first night there, our teacher took us for a night walk and after he pointed out our first tarantula I threw my hands up in the air, said fuck that, and ran back to my cabin where I sat on my bed under the mosquito netting crying. Looking back with my present feelings about the Amazon I feel bad for that poor girl sobbing into her knees because by my second week in the Amazon I was so incredibly happy; the happiest I can remember being in the last 5 years.
There is a reality to the Amazon that I think the majority of people romanticize, both positively and negatively. The Amazon basin is not a place that will instantly clear your conscious or exists for western medicinal and spiritual pleasure. It is home to some 20 million people both urban and rural, 40,000 plant species, 2,000 birds/mammal species, 378 reptile species, and 2.5 million insect species (Wiki source). With the introduction of technology and the insatiable need for oil in the west, there has been an influx of western culture and a rapid decline of the indigenous youth continuing the local traditions and cultures. Many people who decide to travel to the Amazon enter with one assumption: Westernization of indigenous cultures is wrong and we need to save their traditional ways at all costs. I was one of those people who entered Ecuador, and then the Amazon, under the impression that drilling for oil and building infrastructure was destroying the Amazon. What people always forget is that there are 20 million people, regular every day developing power needing people, that want nothing more in the world then roads, education, jobs, and electricity. So if we look at the Amazon community as we would a general developing country, no one would condemn them for wanting roads and Internet. So why do naturalists and environmentalists like us look at the Amazon as our own personal conservation project? It is a very unpopular opinion when I say that by trying to deny the people of the Amazon access to basic human amenities, we are being the worst kind of condescending and elitist western idealist possible. It is unpopular, and extremely difficult for me to say that while drilling for oil has atrocious environmental side effects, we as westerners have no right to walk into a community and tell them they shouldn't do it.
I have seen with my own eyes what happens after an oil company has finished with a community. I have seen tar pits, oil spills, and forest decimation. I have seen cancer statistics that made me shudder, and have watched people eat from rivers that are obviously so contaminated from drilling runoff that I knew I shouldn't be standing where I was. Yet the loudest message I received from the communities and villages I visited was that they wanted control over their own lives. Am I allowed to walk into a community that lives in the rain forest and tell them they aren't allowed access to the amenities that I take for granted every day because it could destroy an ecosystem? I can of course attempt to explain this to them without sounding authoritative, but the end message is still the same. "You should refuse to advance your standard of living in order to conserve the Amazon". How would you respond? Would you nod, agree, and tell the companies building roads to your village 'no'?
There are of course protests by thousands of indigenous peoples every year who see the deforestation and oil drilling for the environmental degradation they bring. There are people who understand the costs, and choose to fight for conservation even if it means a snail like pace for technological advances. It's not a truth that some people are willing to face or discuss, nor is it an easy topic to bring up. People in the liberal and environmentally aware cities that I spend time in become furious with me when I bring up these points of view. They have every right to be angry with me. I do not support a popular opinion, and I'm still constantly changing my mind. Yet I refuse to compromise the lessons I have learned while abroad because it is controversial. It's something to think about while this is read on computers that are powered by electricity that we expect to be available every day. The question; Should we be able to dictate if people are allowed access to higher standards of living because of the ecosystem they happen to live in? The answer; I have no idea, and don't even know if I should have an opinion.
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| Intag cloud forest, Ecuador |
I spent one month while in Ecuador living in the Amazon rain forest. And yes it was muddy, sticky, and full of spider. Honestly, my first week there I absolutely hated every inch of jungle. I hated the thickness of the humidity that fills every pore and makes it hard to breathe. I hated the suffocating heat that reaches its peak at 2 pm. I couldn't understand why I had agreed, no, volunteered to spend time in a place filled with caiman, ants and spiders (for which I have quite real arachnophobia). My first night there, our teacher took us for a night walk and after he pointed out our first tarantula I threw my hands up in the air, said fuck that, and ran back to my cabin where I sat on my bed under the mosquito netting crying. Looking back with my present feelings about the Amazon I feel bad for that poor girl sobbing into her knees because by my second week in the Amazon I was so incredibly happy; the happiest I can remember being in the last 5 years.
There is a reality to the Amazon that I think the majority of people romanticize, both positively and negatively. The Amazon basin is not a place that will instantly clear your conscious or exists for western medicinal and spiritual pleasure. It is home to some 20 million people both urban and rural, 40,000 plant species, 2,000 birds/mammal species, 378 reptile species, and 2.5 million insect species (Wiki source). With the introduction of technology and the insatiable need for oil in the west, there has been an influx of western culture and a rapid decline of the indigenous youth continuing the local traditions and cultures. Many people who decide to travel to the Amazon enter with one assumption: Westernization of indigenous cultures is wrong and we need to save their traditional ways at all costs. I was one of those people who entered Ecuador, and then the Amazon, under the impression that drilling for oil and building infrastructure was destroying the Amazon. What people always forget is that there are 20 million people, regular every day developing power needing people, that want nothing more in the world then roads, education, jobs, and electricity. So if we look at the Amazon community as we would a general developing country, no one would condemn them for wanting roads and Internet. So why do naturalists and environmentalists like us look at the Amazon as our own personal conservation project? It is a very unpopular opinion when I say that by trying to deny the people of the Amazon access to basic human amenities, we are being the worst kind of condescending and elitist western idealist possible. It is unpopular, and extremely difficult for me to say that while drilling for oil has atrocious environmental side effects, we as westerners have no right to walk into a community and tell them they shouldn't do it.
I have seen with my own eyes what happens after an oil company has finished with a community. I have seen tar pits, oil spills, and forest decimation. I have seen cancer statistics that made me shudder, and have watched people eat from rivers that are obviously so contaminated from drilling runoff that I knew I shouldn't be standing where I was. Yet the loudest message I received from the communities and villages I visited was that they wanted control over their own lives. Am I allowed to walk into a community that lives in the rain forest and tell them they aren't allowed access to the amenities that I take for granted every day because it could destroy an ecosystem? I can of course attempt to explain this to them without sounding authoritative, but the end message is still the same. "You should refuse to advance your standard of living in order to conserve the Amazon". How would you respond? Would you nod, agree, and tell the companies building roads to your village 'no'?
There are of course protests by thousands of indigenous peoples every year who see the deforestation and oil drilling for the environmental degradation they bring. There are people who understand the costs, and choose to fight for conservation even if it means a snail like pace for technological advances. It's not a truth that some people are willing to face or discuss, nor is it an easy topic to bring up. People in the liberal and environmentally aware cities that I spend time in become furious with me when I bring up these points of view. They have every right to be angry with me. I do not support a popular opinion, and I'm still constantly changing my mind. Yet I refuse to compromise the lessons I have learned while abroad because it is controversial. It's something to think about while this is read on computers that are powered by electricity that we expect to be available every day. The question; Should we be able to dictate if people are allowed access to higher standards of living because of the ecosystem they happen to live in? The answer; I have no idea, and don't even know if I should have an opinion.
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