Fasting is a very old tradition within many faiths, including my own. Fast to cleanse the body and clear the mind, as an offering in times of mourning, in times of preparation--the forty days of fast before feasting. Physical hunger as a reminder of the finitude of this world--pains that bring one inward, to that space that would never be filled by the bread of humans. By depriving one's body, one's soul was able to focus on that which is beyond, the seventh chakra, God--to prepare for that celebration.

There is just no way to get around it--despair is a thick sap that creeps over a people forgotten. If we came here to listen, we´ve got to hear--no hay ningun esparanza. There isn´t a single hope. You know, we like happy endings, or at least bittersweet ones. But the happy ending that colonos (colonists from other regions of Ecuador who ´pioneered´ into the rainforest when the oil companies started building roads) look for, and I am basically quoting, is death.

La companía has left us with nothing but illness and destruction. We just wait around to die.

At dusk, on the Rio Aguarico, there are women sitting on stools in the water, their skirts folded up, their laundry in wet heaps beside them. They pound it with paddles, and the soap makes swirls in the brown-green water. Children splash around in their underwear, push each other in, make a joyful racket. A man and his two boys scrub down with soap, jump

What a strange day.

In twenty minutes we dropped some 8,000 feet, from Quito to Lago Agrio, the dingy oil town in the northern Oriente. We are in the selva, the jungle. And here is this crawling town, built on oil and narcotrafficking and the crowd that follows. Not far from the Colombian border, we are staying in at night (the one night we are here) and going no where alone.

Occidental Petroleum...the Cofan, Sionas, Secoyas, Shuar, Quichua indigenous peoples...loss of biodiversity...roads through the jungle that bring colonists...class-action law-suit against Texaco, the first of its kind...missionaries...the Rio Aguarico slick with oil...international debt...the Conquest...

It’s beginning. I leave for the SeaTac airport in appoximately 5 hours. I’m already foreseeing that not much of that will be sleep. It’s always amazing to me that as much as I prepare for every new travel adventure, I never feel as ready as I should be. What if, in the ten days I’ve been home from Mexico, I’ll have already forgotten all my Spanish that four months in Mexico gave me? What if I can’t understand the Ecuadorian accent? How will our journey be perceived by those with whom we hope to meet? How can we as outsiders learn to see and hear with compassion in such a short time, with such brief contact? Living in Mexico, I learned a lot about what it means to let the voices of those most marginalized be heard.

Up until today, Ecuador has seemed so very far away--both physically and mentally. I am in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I have been here for the last four months. I have spent time on the border, talking to undocumented migrants and maquila workers. I have climbed through Aztec ruins at Xochicalco and Teotihuacan. I have been a participant in a Nahua ceremony, where we prayed to all four directions, the earth and sky and our hearts. I have met with the only lesbian woman to serve in the Mexican government. I have walked in El Mazote, El Salvador, where 1000 people, mostly women and children, were massacred by U.S. trained death squads. Mexico and El Salvador gifted me with so much knowledge, so much newness--the least I could do was be present to them.