To the Jungle (Parque Manu)

Huzah! After 5 days of scouring hostal Loki, replacing a broken memory card, partying hard for my standards (I went to sleep at noon the other day), I'm finally headed to the jungle. I'll be going with the group Bonanza tours that Gaberiel recommended, led the extremely nice William, with Johanna from Berlin and Mark from Wales (not england he likes to remind me). Frankly, I think I derserve a cut of the profits since I worked my butt off to put this tour together, but I know they appreciate it and I have a real good feeling about the trip.

So thats the quick skinny on what I've been up to, just got to mention for my own memory's sake that I had a real rewarding talk the other day. I was hanging out in Loki around 10am after a night out at a club called uptown (Yes Ben, I did eventually make it to Bar7 too, and no, I've never seen anything like that before), and I was talking with an American from Mississippi named Carlos who works at Loki. We talked about music, which of course always finds its way into philosophy with me, and ended up talking about his two tours of duty (2 years) that he spent in Iraq. The best way that I can describe parts of the conversation is that it was sort of like the movie Freedomland in person. I really benefited from hearing his stories about the daily grind, the lack of action, the mischief and just utter humaness of all his experiences. I came away with a respect for how different some people's experiences of life are then mine, but more importantly, a realization of how similar they are, how everything in the war is just done by people, people who make mistakes, people who are nice and thoughtful, and those who aren't as well. He worked as a communications officer and spent a lot of time relaying information from all over the war front. Stories of note: his friend who was telling him about Abu Ghraib before the story broke and how his friend went from being concerned to utterly unsympathetic after one of their friends was killed by a roadside bomb. It demonstrated to me the power of violence to control one's mind and influence them to dehumanize others in response. Something he said that stuck with me was that the power of the army is that it

'exploits the enoumoursly strong bond that you have with the other members of
your team, that if someone was pointing a gun at them, you would kill that man
to protect them, to make sure that they get home to their new wife and kids,
even if the situation isn't even as clear as that.

We talked for a long time, and I found it to be the closet interaction I've had to the war my country is fighting. We also talked about the Jon Stewart effect, how the news can be so crazy, so overwhelming, that it can paralyze you, that you just have to sit there and go 'Whhhaaa???'. That all Jon Stewart does is point out how ridiculous these things that happen are. But that in the end of the day, these things don't feel like reality, they're just too hard to actually believe, so there's a disconect, but what I got from talking with Carlos is just how much of a reality these things are. That they're just real people, not always intellengent, honorable, or compassionate people either, just doing real things with other real people, in one seriously messed up situation.

(insert brilliant segway back to mundane things)

Just so everyone knows, after a little helpful prodding, Ben Lawson's finally got his act together and has started posting pictures and movies from our time in Ecuador/Cuzco. So head on over to his blog (Link is posted at the right) and check it out. I don't know why, but I really like this shot he took of me. Its got the whole 1000 words thing for me personally.


Ciao for now and wish me luck in the jungle!
Jesse