Yasuni Volunteer Project

Myself with Rosa from the community and Don Luis from PUCE. Photo courtesy of Manuel Cardenal.

As a Fulbright U.S. Student Scholar teaching English, I am also responsible for developing a supplemental project related to service.  Excited for this opportunity, I decided my project would revolve around my interests on indigenous education.  From March 20-26, 2017, I had the opportunity to travel to Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest with the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE).  Yasuni is considered to be the most ecologically diverse forest in the world and there I was tasked with teaching the community Guiyero to a group of Waorani children. 

 

The Waorani are a small indigenous group from the Amazon area of Ecuador.  For a long time, they were an isolated group.  I had the great honor to teach the primary and secondary students in the community of Guiyero, located near one of the largest rivers in Ecuador's Amazon, Napo.  The trip to arrive there totaled ten-hours and included a ferry crossing and an additional drive of two hours until we arrived to the PUCE scientific station. 

Once I arrived to the station, Juan Carlos, the volunteer coordinator, took myself and another English teacher to see the community school.  Upon arriving, I could see how much energy was present in this school.  Several young students began running onto the basketball court where the morning assembly took place.   Juan Carlos asked us to introduce a song to them.  I suggested the Hokey Pokey.   We taught the children how to do the dance and they all started to follow the movements.   After the assembly, Juan Carlos showed us the classrooms and the facilities.  It was a very small school, but had a library with several books that needed some organizing.  I tried to convince the other English teacher, a former librarian, to organize it during the weekend, but sometimes convincing others can be very hard!...Once we saw the classroom we were to teach in, we started to set up our game plan for the day.  

Our lessons over the next three days consisted of several creative art activities that my partner had prepared.  On the first day, we decided to work with drawing and storytelling for the primary students.  For the adult class, we decided to introduce vocabulary in both English and Spanish as well as learn from them the Wao version.  During the classes, I had to provide a lot of the translation for the other teacher and proved to be key for the next several days.  

Because of my strong belief in bilingual education, we reviewed vocabulary in Spanish, English, and the Wao tongue.

During the second day there, we had the opportunity to participate in an inauguration event at the school where the community members performed a traditional dance for the guests in attendance, including the (uncomfortable) presence of the oil company Repsol . 

Myself with some of our students from primary class. 

 Aside from time teaching, I also made some incredible friendships with the researchers and students staying at the scientific station.  One of the great moments was being able to go up a tree with fellow Fulbright scholar, Kevin McLean, who utilizes camera tramps to capture mammal movement.