After a 27-hour bus ride to cross the Peru-Ecuador border to renew my visa, I really only spent two days in Guayaquil, the largest and apparently most dangerous city in Ecuador. What I’ll especially remember from those two days was my afternoon in Seminario Park.
This poor iguana is swarmed by birds when a kid throws birdseed on top of him.Seminario Park dates back to the late 1600s when it was inaugurated as Guayaquil’s Plaza of Arms or main square over a century after it was founded by the Spanish conquistadors. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that they changed the name to Simón Bolívar Park after a statue was erected in his memory to commemorate independence from the Spanish. Only six years later in 1895, the park would make one final identity change when Manuel Suárez Seminario donated money to have the plaza fenced and renovated.
And now? Although it’s officially called Seminario Park, the signs at the entrance welcome you to Simón Bolívar Park and it’s best known by tourists and Guayaquileños alike as Iguana Park.
This iguana's tail has seen better days at Guayaquil's Iguana Park.I estimate that there are over 50 green iguanas living freely in that plaza. It seems like a peaceful existence as they laze about on trees, grassy patches or even on the park pathways. It’s indeed peaceful for a lizard until a kid throws bird food on you, so you’re swarmed by pigeons. And all those non-existent tails and tail stubs speak of children past who stepped on them or pulled them off.
Nevertheless, I interpreted the iguanas’ “laziness” as a zen-like take-life-as-it-comes attitude and imagined their dewlaps as beards, symbols of their grandfather-like wisdom. After all, what do they possibly do all day other than meditate and reflect on the grandness of life? That iguana underneath the flock of birds didn’t bat an eye at the sudden onset. There was patience there. So we put our thinking caps, sat on a park bench and lazed the afternoon away alongside those wise lizards.
Check out this video clip of our visit:
What has recently inspired you to stop and think?
If you’re considering a green iguana as a pet, I highly recommend Your Complete Iguana Survival Guide!
They tell me that they were still using typewriters in Peru in the late 90s. (That was the year I set up my computer with Windows 98). Each student brought their own typewriter to school for typing class. A row of old men with typewriters competing for business in various parks around Lima were in charge of producing the city’s official contracts, letters and documents.
Old school typewriters were the norm in Peru in the 90s.It helps to explain why I spent an hour in the deacon’s office last week as he painstakingly wrote an official letter for me by hand, giving me permission to study at the local university as an auditing student. I promised to help him access his email and search Google on the days I’m there for classes. He later invited me to the library where I noticed that all the thesis papers before the millenium were also typewritten.
Even today, tech guys in Huancayo get a lot of work doing tipeos (type-ups). Sometimes, people pay just to get their documents typed out faster, but there are still many adults who don’t have any experience with computers at all. In 2007, the Peruvian Ministry of Education joined the “One Laptop per Child” (OLPC) campaign. I was first introduced to the infamous XO laptops when I visited a friend of mine in Miraflores, a rural village outside of Huancayo.
Children use these XO laptops during computer class.The idea behind the campaign is that giving laptops to rural children will help equalize their educational opportunity. I thought it was a good idea at the time and I still think that it has many advantages, but the OLPC campaign stimulated a heated discussion among the students at the conference I attended in Chile.
These were some of the arguments:
1. Teachers weren’t being trained. I noticed this in Miraflores. The task for computer class was to copy what the teacher had written on the board and if there were any software problems, the teacher asked some of the more computer-savvy children in the class. I liked how the children developed independent problem-solving skills.
2. Laptops take time away from playing outdoors. It’s a strange sight, seeing a child in the middle of rural farmland with his or her fancy new laptop. Some parents even encourage their children to use their laptops at home to keep them occupied. Though still a relatively new phenomenon, we’re starting to see the development of couch potato habits.
3. Children devalue their hometown. Owning a laptop can make these children feel more equal to children in the big cities, but it also means that many children lose appreciation for their own village or lose respect for their less-educated village elders. Migration out of the Andes has long been an issue in Peru, but we can’t stop children from dreaming big.
What are your thoughts? Do the advantages of the OLPC campaign seem to outweigh the disadvantages? Do you feel strongly about any of these arguments?
I’d also love to hear about your experiences with technology when you were younger. =)
I had the privilege of spending these past two weeks in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, assisting at a conference that endeavored to apply research to education. The Latin American School for Education, Cognitive and Neural Sciences brought together not only recognized authorities from around the world, but also an international group of PhD candidates and new professors. They gathered in the small town of San Pedro (population: approximately 5,000) in the middle of the Atacama Desert.
San Pedro de Atacama is surrounded by miles and miles of desert.
There’s something about being in the middle of nowhere that amplifies similarities and fosters connections. We were all affected by dry skin and an unreliable Internet connection, awed by the expansiveness of the desert and the actual number of potentially visible stars in the night sky (San Pedro is one of the best places in the world to stargaze), and afflicted by the earthquake in Japan. For the purposes of the conference, the aura of fellowship encouraged thoughtful discussion about applying the learning and intellectual sharing to the real world. The atmosphere generated ideas, cultivated future research collaborations and motivated each participant to pass on new knowledge to their respective areas.
It was a beautiful example of how the strength of similarities could overcome differences and the beauty lies in getting past stereotypes to experience a true willingness to learn from and through others. There was less identification with divisive labels, such as Costa Rican versus Uruguayan, student versus faculty and scientist versus educator. Instead, the conversation shifted from a comparison about what each person could or couldn’t do to a sense of teamwork with a focus on how people could work together to achieve more than one could on his or her own. We became humbled learners who recognized the essential humanity that bonds us together as part of the same global community.
Achieving openness can be facilitated by a purpose, such as the aim of the LA School, but I believe that this phenomenon can actually happen anywhere. It just requires that you step outside of your comfort zone, outside of the categories that your mind has already formed. The surprises you’ll find can diminish fears, break barriers and, most importantly, construct a sense of connectedness that has the power to lead to positive changes.
Have you been surprised by similarities you share with another? How have you seen or experienced the power of connectedness?
P.S. I made it back home to Huancayo safely and am slowly settling back into the groove of things. Thanks for your patience!
I promised to blog for a cause for International Women’s Day. In the days leading up to today, I thought of all the strong, inspirational women I knew… and felt fearful and weak in comparison as I started my trip down south from Huancayo to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It was going to take over 50 hours to get from one place to the other via three buses, which turned out to be four, that arrived late at each destination. I imagined I would use all those extra hours to think about this blog post, but traveling is exhausting, especially when you’re on the verge of fear.
I was afraid about traveling alone as a woman, meeting the wrong people, turning into one of the tragic tales that grace the front cover of daily newspapers and being a victim of the fallibility of developing countries. I’m neither a traveler nor an adventurer; I prefer to settle in and make myself a cozy nook in another country. I chose to purchase tickets from more reputable bus companies, put a lock on my backpack and sleep with my foot slipped through the backpack strap, but there are no guarantees here.
Thankfully, I made it from one end of the Andes to the other smoothly and in one piece even though I can only catch around 50% of what Chileans (and Spaniards and Cubans) say because they speak so quickly. I wondered why I was worried in the first place and am trying to convince myself that the trip back in two weeks will be easier now that I know what to expect. On the way over the Peru-Chile border in a shady-looking mafia car, one of the men I was traveling with told me I was brave for traveling alone. Maybe I really was brave if a person can be brave and afraid at the same time. Today, I want to recognize all brave female travelers and adventurers who aren’t afraid of taking risks, being alone and living without plans.
A couple months ago, I had the chance to meet with a professor in Vancouver who grew up and studied in South America earning her Master’s before moving here. At one point in the conversation, after demonstrating my Spanish ability, I share that I would like to take some courses while in Peru, but that I have a really difficult time with academic articles in Spanish. I feel comfortable conversing with others and defending my opinions, I even recognize most of the vocabulary, but I always finish reading feeling as if I hadn’t understood.
To my surprise, she completely understood and had an unexpected (to me) explanation. How could a born-and-raised South American ever feel the same as I do about reading in Spanish? It turns out, it all has to do with writing style. In North America, there is a clear introduction outlining the body of the paper, then each issue one-by-one, and then a conclusion summing everything up. That’s the way I learned to write and communicate. On the other hand, a respected academic paper in South America can have a lot of back-and-forth arguments with only the mere suggestion of a point – one has to interpret what the author is trying to say. It was why she had a hard time translating an article written by her Peruvian colleague for a North American audience.
To me, it was a concrete example of how a circular or cyclical worldview could permeate a lifestyle and it only made me more excited about what other new ways of being and knowing I will discover.
A good friend of mine lent me his Teaching Company DVD on the Conquest of the Americas. The professor, Dr. Marshall C. Eakin, is talking about the key factors that led to European expansion and eventual colonization of the Americas – political centralization, economic dynamism (capitalism, trading), technology (ship features, astronomy, math), and culture/mentality.
This last factor was the most complex and the most interesting to me. It encompasses the development of modern science (the world should be manipulated and dominated) and the role of religion (aggressive evangelism). It became clear that it wasn’t only science promoting the premise that the natural world was ours to understand, when Dr. Eakin quoted Genesis 1:28 – “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it.”
Both science and religion also follow a linear and progressive worldview. There is a beginning and an end, a strong belief in cause-and-effect. It’s the notion of being on a path and that one will finally get “there.” In fact, I can see how this kind of uni-directional point of view permeates many (all?) different fields and ways of knowing. It’s at least one way of understanding what’s behind these ideas: that I achieve by setting excellent goals, success = completion, the drive for “conquering” or “finishing”, or that it’s possible to have the “answer(s)”.
Dr. Eakin contrasted this with the cyclical and seasonal worldview of Asians, Africans, and Native Americans, at least at the time. Their focus was on recurring patterns, balance between different factors, and fluidity. It was less time-oriented and they valued intuition.
It’s why the idea of living and learning in another country is so appealing to me. Of course, I learn the language as best as I can and I learn about the customs and traditions, but beyond that I absorb an entirely new way of being that affects how people express themselves, how decisions are made, how relationships function, and so much more.
