What happens when you live in the jungle beyond where the
road ends, where there is no electricity, and your child gets ill? Chances are
you get in a canoe and travel down the river to the nearest large city and
figure out some way to pay for the services, possibly with the combination of
fish, yucca, and fruit--all of which are plentiful near your home. That was 10 years ago.
Fast forward to the present and we now see a road carved
through the primary rainforest to your house. Electricity was installed two
months ago in your community, and your youngest children have been able to
attend school right across the river, as opposed to the 5 hour trek that your
older children used to make each week to a boarding school. It would seem, by external measurements, that
your life is improving, that you are taking advantage of the wave of development
that is washing over Ecuador.
But let's look closer.
Your production methods on the three acres of farmland that you have
always maintained are still the same. You use a machete to cut down weeds, bury
new yucca shoots, and cut grapefruits from the shade tree towering over your house.
However, selling a sack of robusta
coffee beans and criollo cocoa every
few months is no longer enough to cover your needs. Sure, you can still eat
well from the chickens that run through your fields and the bountiful variety
of fruits and vegetables that grow on your 50 acres of rainforest and cleared
land, but now you have other expenses.
When electricity came into the community, you purchased a
refrigerator, a flat screen TV, and a computer in the provincial capital. A savings and loan cooperative in the city loaned
you the money at 20% annually, which means you will be paying them back $45 a
month for the next 3 and a half years.
Your children also cost more now--they attend a public
school for which they need uniforms each year.
Whereas the missionary-run boarding school your eldest children attended
provided uniforms, the government's free uniform program does not extend to
your community and you must invest $100 every September on uniforms and school
supplies for each of your 4 school-age children.
There are other needs, too--those 90-minute trips into town
each month on a bus to make your loan payment make you wish you had a
motorcycle, and each time you are in town, you usually spend a few dollars on
food or clothes or something for the house. Looking at your current situation,
you wonder how you could earn more money to purchase those things that would
make life easier.
A logging company came by your community last week and
offered you $2,500 for all the trees on your land. Doing the math, that would allow you to buy a
few pigs to raise and sell for additional income, plant another acre of cocoa,
and ensure your children go to school next month. While you love the forest,
where your family has lived for generations, you wonder if this might be the best
choice for your children. Right now you
are debating sending only 2 of the children to school next month, and the income
from selling yucca, corn, plantains, and pineapple in the market downstream
barely covers your monthly loan payment.
With development and new opportunities you have more expensive, and
maintaining primary rainforest on your land is not making you any money.
So therein lies the question--what do you do when development
brings new opportunities, but the old production methods do not result in the
income you need to fully participate in the new opportunities that have come
with development?
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