An update on CACE´s research: From resin to perfume

This week we turned black, lumpy, sticky resin into an essential oil.

First, Campbell, Julie and five community members from Brillo Nuevo searched the surrounding forest for copal trees with resin lumps. These lumps form when weevil larvae eat through the bark, enabling the tree´s resin to ooze out. This resin is perfect for caulking boats, and also for creating fragrant oils.

The team used GPS to map its progress and to divide the forest into lots. As a result, we now know how many copal trees are in each 100m X 1000m lot, and the community will be able to use this information in the future. When the team found a copal tree, they tagged it and harvested about half of the resin lumps. They made sure not to collect more than half, because that might endanger the weevil larvae and any other species that relies on the resin lumps for its survival.



You got to hand it to this team - this work was not easy. They searched the forest for at least seven hours per day for five days. I joined them on the first day, and it was exhausting! We tried to stick to trails as much as possible, but for most of the search we had to bushwack it through the jungle. And there were obstacles, like angry wasp nests and thin slippery logs that we had to navigate to cross the rivers.

We collected a total of about 10 kg of resin lumps. Then Julie and Campbell documented the weight and type of the resin lump - fresh or dry. Julie picked through the resin for hours in search of weevil larvae and other bugs. Meanwhile, Campbell collected dozens of samples of resin and bugs in tiny glass bottles.

And then came the most exciting part - the distillation! This is when we get to transform sticky resin into perfume. Campbell brought along a monstrous copper distillator that we affectionately call "mother." We heated mother up on a gas stove, and she gave birth. After about eight hours and a lot of anger from mother in the form of escaping vapor, mother sucked the oil out of the resin and neatly spewed it out into the glass flask.


We looked like crazy scientists, tending to mother in the dark with our headlamps. Everytime she coughed up a little steam from her seams, we sealed her up with yuca mass. When the yuca mass began to dry and fall off, we tried silicone and a plumber´s sealant. Eventually she stopped fuming.

We carried out four experiments - two with dry resin, and two with fresh resin. We got an average yield of oil of about 5%, which is approximately what Campbell expected.

I think this oil has potential as a perfume. It smells like a prarie in bloom with a hint of earth, like a grassland just before a rainstorm.

Now we have some more questions to answer:
Is there a market for this oil?
If there is a market, how can the community manage the harvest of copal resin lumps to ensure that the production of essential oil is economically and ecologically sustainable?

Find our more about CACE´s copal resin research.

Photos © Campbell Plo9wden / Center for Amazon Community Ecology

not all south americans are born to tango

Campbell is belting a Bruce Springstein remake and stepping to the beat, double time. His arms are flailing. Of course, I have to join in.

In a discoteca in Pebas, Campbell, my dance partner, and I are the life of the party, hands down.

All the stools around the dance floor are filled. But no one else is dancing. I don´t even see feet tapping under the tables. Most of the shadows lurking by the tables aren´t drinking. They just come in to sit and smoke since there´s no cover charge.

My Peruvian dance partner takes off his shirt and does a back flip. Then he stops and points to me, as if to say, ¨Now show me what you´ve got.¨ Well, I can´t top that. I dip back, limbo style, and throw in a shimmy. He gives me a thumbs up. Ok, I think I passed!

This place is cheesy. There are drawings of flourescent women in thongs on the wall, lit up by blacklights. And there´s a painting of a tick. It takes up half the wall, and it´s creepy. The music is pumped up to max volume, and it´s crackling.

And then it all stops at 11 o-clock sharp. That´s when the electricity shuts off in Pebas, we learn. The building goes black and everyone shuffles out. Now it´s just Campbell, Julie, and me, and a random middle-aged woman that we somehow picked up on the way here. We sit in the dark bar, alone, pouring Pilsen beer into flimsy plastic cups.

Pebas shocked me when we arrived here a few hours ago. I expected it to look like Brillo Nuevo, but bigger. But instead of embarking on a muddy bank beside a wooden house with a palm-leaf roof, we unloaded our boat at a floating gasoline station. Inside, a mother and son were watching a murder mystery on TV. It was nightime, but the town was lit up with lightbulbs and flashing ¨hostal¨ signs. There were even a few motorcycles cruising over paved roads. Sensory overload.

Only 1500 people live here, but this town is pretending to be something more. It wants to be the center. It is where small-town folks from communities like Brillo Nuevo meet to drink, buy clothes and sell lumber or meat.

I try not to overanalyze the situation. A pàrt of me is dissapointed to see such overdevelopment. But the other part knows that I can´t judge these people for wanting stores and bars. I also like clean clothes and iced-cold drinks.

It is what it is.

We are just passing through from Brillo Nuevo to Iquitos. We only have one night here in Pebas. And we´re determined to make the best of it. We dance and laugh, and then grope our way back to our beds in the darkness.

Meet Monica

"Well of course I´ve seen an anaconda," Monica Chichaco says, as she weaves an anaconda design from memory. "It´s three, maybe four, meters long," she adds.

Monica´s husband, Beder, has prepared her workspace by banging a few nails into the floorboard in the living room. Monica uses these nails to secure her chambira fibers for the maroon and white anaconda belt. Beder says that he and his wife always work together. "Of course, she is the master," he adds. "I just help."

As she weaves, Monica nurses her six-month-old baby, Mayronela. When Mayronela cries, Monica swings her to sleep in the hammock and then returns back to work. Monica´s 11-year-old son, Willy, and four-year.old daughter, Darcy, peer over her shoulder.
The entire family is gathered in the living room, sitting on the floor beside a baby stroller, a boat motor, and a pile of palm leaves that Beder will use to fix the roof. Ten pairs of baby jumpers hang overhead on a clothesline.

This is where Monica works and lives with her family, together.

What´s so funny?

The interviews go something like this:

I drew a little map of Brillo Nuevo on half a sheet of looseleaf paper. It tells me where all the artesans live, approximately.

Once I arrive in the approximate place of the artesan´s house, I start asking around:
Excuse me sir, good day. Could you tell me where Graciela lives?
Oh, in that house over there.
Which house over there?
Oh, in that one.
(The Bora don´t like to point.)

Graciela is not home.

Excuse me sir, good day. Do you know where Graciela is?
In Segundina´s house.
And where does Segundina live?
Oh, in that house over there.

There´s five women sitting in Segundina´s house. Their toes and fingers are tied up in chambira as they weave their handicrafts.

I talk in Spanish, and Graciela answers in Spanish. I know when I make a grammatical mistake: The kids make sure to tell me. Each woman has a toddler clinging to her forearm or playing with her hair. When I say something wrong, the toddlers erupt in giggles.

The women don´t laugh when Im talking. They laugh when I am listening or watching. They look over at me, start talking in Borra all at once, and just laugh.
I ask:
What´s so funny?
And that brings a second, bigger wave of laughs and chatter.

Once my brain is fried and emptied´of curiosities, the women start asking me questions. I show them photos of my friends and family in the States.
They start up again in Bora, but this time it´s more serious. After a few minutes they stop and say:

Natalya, only girls have long hair. Your boyfriend has got to cut his hair.

This time I laugh with them.

Breakfast, lunch and supper

The food isn´t anything to write home about. Fruits and veggies are scarce in the dry season. There´s a lot of noodles, but they taste a little funky. (We spilled gasoline on them during the boat ride over.) We have too many eggs. We´ve eaten them boiled, fried, and scrambled with sugar and powdered milk. Most of the meat tastes the same - salty.

The setting makes up for the taste:

Breakfast
Felicita fries eggs over a fire. Slits of light filter into her kitchen.

Lunch
It´s raining. It´s pouring. And in a matter of minutes the sun will beat down and pretend the storm never happened.
Supper
Clouds and sun stitch a patchwork quilt in the sky, blanketting the jungle.

"This book is all about you."

All Peruvian students in public schools learn how to make friends and how to masturbate. Their textbooks tell them how.

A series of five government-issued books entitled "The Individual, Family and Human Relations" describes how to choose a career, think more creatively and improve your attention span. The book also discusses homosexuality, teen pregnancy, nutrition, alcohol and drugs. There´s a chapter on the importance of aesthetical harmony in nature, people and art. There´s another chapter entitled "You are forbidden to stop dreaming."

Nieves Flores, the prinicipal of the school at Brillo Nuevo, says that Individual, Family and Human Relations is just as important as the other eight classes that the school offers (math, history, language, religion, science, art, civic engagement and physical education). "It´s where they learn how to get along with other people," Flores says. "Most importantly, it´s where they are forced to question who they are."

It´s hard to tell how the lessons are affecting the community. We can take a look at an issue and ask the Bora for their viewpoint, but it´s difficult to distinguish the causes from the effects.
Take homosexuality, for example. The Bora accept homosexuals and do not discriminate against them, says Rolando Ruiz, former president of Brillo Nuevo.
Sixteen year-old Lisbet describes homosexuals as "different, but ok." Did the school lessons influence Lisbet´s opinion, or is acceptance of homosexuals just part of Bora culture? "I don´t know, the classes are just... classes," Lisbet answers, furrowing her brow.

Or we can look at teen pregnancy in Brillo Nuevo. The grandmothers in Brillo Nuevo each had 5 to 9 children, and they started giving birth around age 15. But their granddaughters had only two or three kids. Most gave birth to their first child around age 18. I only met one teenaged mom in Brillo Nuevo, and she was 19 years old.
So are the lessons about family planning working? Or is it the government´s free handouts of birth control pills that are making the difference?

Probably a combination of both, and it probably doesn´t matter.
What´s impressive about these books is that they get 12 year-olds talking about themselves and their relationships with other people.
The lessons are all things I figured out, eventually. But I wonder if growing up could have been a lot easier if it had been socially appropriate to discuss all of this with my peers. It would have certainly felt less lonely.

My favorite chapter is called, "Thinking about what makes me happy."

Yes, the bugs really are that bad.

This is a nice mixtue of mosquito bites and chiggers.

Chiggers are relatives of the tick. Chigger larvae attach onto an animal (like me), form a hole, and eat the inner skin. They like to dwell where your clothes pinch your body, like under your socks, bra and belt. After about 3 to 5 days, the larvae detach and then mature into adults.

They´re most active at night, and that´s when the real itch begins.