Out, out damn spot!

Back to Ixiamas, the last capitalistic outpost 120 kilometers down a long dirt road going nowhere. We are here to conduct another taller (workshop) to inform people about the land-use planning documents blah blah blah. My role is to film the event, and, with the magic of movie-making, turn it into a thrilling, informative film documentation.

As Fabiana is in a meeting with the mayor, I’m given the car and the driver for the afternoon. I remember passing a logging and cutting station a ways down the road to El Tigre so I request to be taken there.

Clemente pulls the truck to a stop outside the gate to the giant sawmill whose front yard is littered with piles of tree trunks some 3-4 feet in diameter. There is a driveway entering into the fenced-off premise with a giant sign reading “Entrance Prohibited.” Parked outside, I climb onto the roof of the truck and set up the camera tripod. I film some shots of the piles of logs, some giant piles being burned, men sending logs shooting through some giant buzzing machine.

Then I take the camera and tripod, climb down from the roof, and tell Clemente to wait for me, I’ll be right back. Clemente tries to tell me that the sign says entrance prohibited, but I tell him not to worry.

At the gate a man wearing a Yankees baseball cap stands up from his rocking chair when I approach. I attempt to smile charmingly and innocently, but I’m really not good at it. Fortunately this turns out to be unnecessary. I bust out my classic intro speech:

“Hi, I’m a graduate student and I’m working on a documentary. I was wondering if I could speak to someone who works here to ask some questions about logging.”

NEVER mention the words “ENVIRONMENT” OR “CONSERVATION” when trying to interview loggers. Atleast not in the first ten minutes.

He lets me into the complex and points to the “office,” a tiny shack behind machinery. Inside, two men are seated behind desks, the only other item in the room being a poster of a bikini-clad blonde purring at the camera. There must be a shortage of pin-ups in the country because the mayor of El Tigre has the same calendar in his office.

So I give my little speech again, hamming it up a bit by adding that I’m really interested in learning how a sawmill works. He agrees to an interview in fifteen minutes and lets me loose on the premise to film.

I wander over to the giant buzzing machinery and film the destruction of 200+ year-old trees. Then it appears for the first time: the “clean heads” message, flashing insistently in red on the camera screen. Damn you camera. Why do you fail me?!

Later I return to the office to interview the manager. He talks the party line. Everyone blames the illegal wood-cutters for killing the forest and not cutting sustainably. But strangely, no one will admit to buying these illegal logs.

I exit the asadero to the chorus of workmen’s whistles (I’m sure I look very sexy in a giant red raincoat). Once in the truck I mess with the camera but it is fucked. The image is totally streaked and un-usable. Clemente, who was napping behind the wheel, wakes up and asks enthusiastically in his puppy-dog chirping mannerism: “Salio?”

I explain resignedly how the camera isn’t working. Damn dust. Damn humidity. Now I am stuck in Ixiamas for three days with a taller to film and no working camera. After I explain three times that we can’t go to the next community because the camera is working Clemente changes his tack of questioning.

After a pensive moment Clemente shrieks: “Aire!” and gestures at the camera. He decides that we should clean out the dust by using air. I reflect on this and agree that it is worth a shot. He wants to go to a mechanic’s shop and use a tire pump, but I suggest a peluqueria to find a hairdryer.

Talking with Clemente at times is like trying to reason with a deaf-child. He zooms off down the road and back into town. Then he pulls up to a guy on the street fixing his motorbike and asks him for air. I try to explain that we can’t use this air, it is too harsh, but he is on a mission. Anyway, there is no electricity in town during the day (to conserve the town’s one generator) so nothing would work anyway.

I receive a lot of strange looks when I ask around for a hair-dryer, and feel obligated to explain that it isn’t for my materialistic desires to beautify myself (I am proudly sporting jungle-fro) but for my camera. Finally I find a small house that cuts hair. The man inside indeed has a hairdryer, but tells me that the electricity won’t be on until 6pm.

The story only gets longer from here. It evolves to involve: a bicycle-tire pump, a bread protest which shuts down the mayor’s office, a small man who claims to work with cameras, drinkable rubbing alcohol and a pig.

But the end result is that the camera still has dust in it.

And this was a week ago. Now I am back in the office in Rurrenabaque. I went to the local TV stations (they show the WORST telenovelas I have ever seen) begging for a head cleaning-tape but not only do they not have any, there is nowhere in town that does. Pancho (boss-man in La Paz) said he would buy me a tape when the civil strike ended and stores re-opened.

Tape was purchased and sent to the airline Amazonas to be shipped. However, due to intensive rain storms which show no signs of letting up, no flights are arriving in Rurrenabaque for the foreseeable future. The runways are grass. When grass gets soggy planes cannot land.

Thus I wait.