Interruption

As I shared last week, I was on an extended travel to a beach house in a little village named Dalipuga in Southern Philippines. While I was there, so many things happened back in the States (both in business and personal matters) that needed my attention so by the first week I was already pinning to go back home. It was an excruciating countdown to return to the USA.

Despite the short “prison term” I made good use of my time. Almost every morning I had a goal to accomplish for that day. And so for the next couple of weeks, I intend to share some lessons from my stay over there. I hope that’s okay.

My brother Paco
That isn’t his real name but that’s what his friends called him. To me he was always Gary, my little brother who thought a lot, laughed a lot and dreamed a lot. His philosophy in life was greatly influenced by Atticus in the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In fact, that was one of his names. He became a lawyer and a scientist … a Director for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in Washington DC for about 30 years. A series of events (like his dissatisfaction with the previous administration who “didn’t believe in science”) made him quit his job and he found himself alone in a village called Mindo in the jungles of Ecuador which is the northernmost tip of the great Amazon Rain Forest. All throughout his career, he saw the importance of preservation. He made feasibility studies of Ecuador, and then plans which he presented to scientific bodies and received a huge grant from MIT. Two of his articles are published in Travelingboy.com. He was building his dream of a sanctuary for birds and lost souls (people with broken hearts). He invited all of us siblings to retire there. He would shoulder all expenses –“come … just come … all I want is your presence here” he said with excitement. One of my sisters and Paco’s daughters planned a trip this September. I too was seriously considering a trip early next year.

In the morning of June 9, I got a call from my sister. She was sobbing uncontrollably. “Raoul, I need you to sit down. I have some very bad news … Gary is dead. He’s dead!”

“What?!? We were just talking to him a few days ago. Dead?!? How?! Why?!?” My questions rattled out in rapid succession.

The hotel maid found Paco dead in his room just a few hours ago:  his face peaceful; his body wrapped inside his blanket; his right hand clenched. Apparently, it was his first and last heart attack. Paco had no enemies. In fact, the whole village knew him and loved him. He was last seen alive playing with the children of the village. Later, we learned from his wife that Paco had a history of unchecked high blood pressure and cholesterol. We assumed he was healthy because he would hike 45 minutes up and down the hill that he purchased almost everyday. We were wrong. And he was gone. My dear sweet genius of a brother had gone on to be with the Lord.

Night fell and I could not sleep. I crept out of the house around 2 in the morning and walked to the beach and looked at the dark horizon. The stars were hidden by the clouds. I asked God so many questions. I started to write a song with the thought that “it should have been me.” Gary had so many wonderful plans for mankind. My dreams were nothing compared to his. It should have been me. I’ve lived a long enough life. No more mountains to climb. I’m near retirement. My kids are grown and independent. My wife could survive without me … in fact, I always joke around that she could benefit from my insurance. My different circle of friends (including YOU) would miss me for a time and then life would go on. Life is short.

In the gospel of Luke chapter 20, Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool who had plans to increase his storage for more profit:
v.20
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’ Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.”

Paco had done his research. Out of all the spots in this great big planet, Ecuador was where he could make the biggest impact for society. But beautiful and noble though his plans were, they were not God’s plan.

What, may I ask, are your plans? What are you to do today? Tomorrow? What does your big picture look like? Is it centered around you?

Luke 20
³³ “Sell your possessions and give to those in need. This will store up treasure for you in heaven! And the purses of heaven never get old or develop holes. Your treasure will be safe; no thief can steal it and no moth can destroy it. ³⁴ Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

I’m thinking about this myself. Perhaps our plans may not be as grandiose as saving the planet but take heart —we are not all called to save the planet. God called some of us to be Kings and some to be pawns.  Both are important. Some of our plans are never meant to come to fruition but the process is meant for us to grow closer to the Lord. Let’s not miss the sign posts in our life journey. Think about it: Why have you survived Covid? Why do you still occupy space among the living?  Whatever our purpose, let’s do it well.  Let’s ponder it together.

TGIF people!

Raoul

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Peter Paul of South Pasadena, CA for these riddles.

Parting Shots

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

Thanks to Maling of Manila, Philippines

Thanks to Efren of Manila

The post 2 British Riddles appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Ecuador ranks 25th in the list of Covid-related deaths per capita per nation, according to the Johns Hopkins University. But my friends here in Mindo doubt this statistic. “The death rates are much higher,” they insist. “Look at all the coffins outside the hospitals. There are so many uncounted deaths.”

A few months ago, I nervously watched two coffins borne past the town plaza and into the local church. “Oh, no!” I thought. “The virus has finally invaded this remote pueblo!”

I asked a friend about them. “Not Covid,” he assured me. “They were driving drunk on a motorcycle.” He shrugged. “These days, what else is there to do? There are no jobs.”

My friend is a chef in Mindo. Locals know him as Signor Crab because he sautés crabs in coconut milk and spices, in the style of his coastal village. Before the pandemic, we barely had time to talk because he was too busy serving his signature dish to tourists visiting the pueblo. Nowadays, I see him sitting alone in Mindo’s formerly bustling, now silent, plaza. Without a job, Signor Crab asked me if he could cook for me in exchange for money. He told me he needed to buy medicine for his two sons.

I am in Mindo to study the cloud forests around me. Each cloud forest is a unique habitat, a home to scores of plant and animal species that are found only in Mindo. Over eons, these forests formed when the Pacific Ocean’s warm vapors wafted against the cooling Andes peaks, creating the ideal environment for orchids, bromeliads, and ferns. These mountains are home to Guadua Augustoflora, the South American bamboo that, with greater efficiency than most plants, sucks carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts it into material used to build local houses.

Before leaving the United States, I worked on environmental, computational models. Now, I use Artificial Intelligence and satellite images to track tree cover loss in these forests. My studies suggest that in the past two years, in a place about a third the size of Washington, DC, Mindo lost tree cover in an area equivalent to more than 3000 tennis courts (Tracking Cloud Forests With Cloud Technology and Random Forests).

These trees are victims of the perfect storm brewed by joblessness, poverty, record gold prices, Covid, and climate change. The desperate poor hunt for gold in illegal, artisanal mines. The rich raze forests to build country homes to escape Quito, Ecuador’s congested capital, where infection rates are at an all-time high. Beyond these immediate threats, climate change insidiously destroys Mindo’s ecosystem. With warmer temperatures, the clouds to which the trees have adapted over thousands of years are dissipating.

The same week I witnessed the funeral of the two victims of the motorcycle accident, the International Panel for Climate Change issued its report, referred to by the United Nations’ Secretary General as a “code red for humanity.” Destroying the Andes cloud forests amounts to a negative, feed-back loop: the forests around me can potentially buffer the world against the effects of greenhouse gases; but they are being destroyed partially because climate change is wreaking havoc on local farms that must contend with dramatic, climactic changes.

At the end of each day, I watch the clouds drift down from the heavens to rest upon Mindo. They are like feathery intimations of hope. As long as the clouds persist, so too will the forest ecosystem.

Similarly, I see hope in the stoic persistence of Signor Crab and of my other friends on Mindo’s streets: the shopkeepers; the Venezuelan refugees; the artisans and buskers. They stake their lives on ecotourism. They know that without the trees, the tourists will not return if and when the world regains some version of normalcy after the pandemic.

Stubbornly, I make the deliberate choice to cling to hope. On Tuesdays, I muster hope by teaching data science and Artificial Intelligence to a small group of students. They are graduates of Mindo’s school for at-risk families. All of them are healing-from poverty’s ills; from familial instability; from domestic abuse; from the violence of classism, racism, colonialism, and sexism.

My ambitious students are my heroes. With each backpacking, laptop-toting tourist they see in Mindo, my students are reminded that opportunities exist beyond their threatened mountains. They talk about this as they type their code and run their algorithms, using my project to monitor deforestation as an example of Artificial Intelligence’s power. They muse that perhaps in the future, they might conquer the virtual, data-intensive world of rich nations, in the way their ancestors’ lands were once conquered by white Europeans.

My students dream of the future. They want to conduct non-extractive, profitable, sustainable work. They want to produce knowledge-based goods and services for the world. My students-who have lived their entire lives among the marginalized and the discarded-long to conduct creative, intellectually challenging work…while being nestled within Creation’s embrace…while being nurtured by the Divine work unfolding among the clouds.

For more on Mindo, Ecuador, read Mr. Pasky Pascual’s scientific journal of Life in Mindo, Ecuador.

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