‘The Isabela Project’ by Kaffe Matthews and children on Isabela island, 2009.
The_Isabela_Project

7am departure from Santa Cruz to Isabela, the light already bright and bouncing off the water, the harbour full of the sounds of the organising ferry men, excited tourists, the local commuters, seals, swooping birds and fast breakfasting. But the ferry ride is not the smooth glide o’er ocean swelI she’d imagined at all. Three hours in a 12ft fibre glass boat with 4 x Yamaha 60HP engines, on un-cushioned fibre glass seats at full blast means slamming from crest to crest, the spray a-flaying, engines screaming, fumes gathering at the bow. The locals sit silent and forard.

Option 1. Sit under shade in bows away from noise of engine, but in capture space for engine fumes.

Option 2. Sit in stern in full sun with engine noise, wind and sea spray. She opts for 2 but swaps half way through with large tourist suffering hugely from seasickness. They discover that its easiest not to look or talk to anyone and stare as camels at the horizon.

DAY 1.

Maybe it’s the brutality of the ride that makes the arrival such a moment of feasting. Isabela has to be the antithesis to Santa Cruz.
Bright blue lagoon, green tropical branches dipping in to sip, marine iguanas digesting black on rocks, and of course the ubiquitous seals, fat and sleeping lustily on small moored boats. The harbour is a single wooden jetty, festooned, surprisingly, with flags from around the world on tall poles Brussels style.

A man in a van from CDF is ready to meet them, tosses their bags in the back and they bump along the sand road to the hotel. Not a tourist in sight. Just people being every day, palm trees, vines, pink and orange flowers and miles of white sand beach, the ocean crashing, a dog barking. They are sickened from boat fumes and wobbly legged but gather to meet Daniel Rivas,host and fixer for the 5 day music making workshop that is about to come.

He takes them to the not quite finished new Escuela Municipal Jacinto Cordillo.  Circular coloured plaster classrooms under straw rooves stand round a large sand yard. In the growing dusk they are shown their building. There are no window frames just big open spaces, the descending night sounds pouring in. The Headmaster is Angel Gunsha who is giving them 10 x 11 year olds to work with tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAY 2 .
Some of the senior students are giving a performance and the entire school plus parents are standing outside to listen. It’s 9am and Mothers Day. A big celebration in the whole of Ecuador and here everyone’s really happy about it. Some of the teachers are weeping as the formation dancing rises to an enthusiastic finale. Mama’s are proud.

Finally their group gathers.  They introduce themselves, smile a lot and Kaffe tells them about the project. About how she’s been underwater with hammerhead sharks, that it was her first time, how it was amazing, not scary and how she’s come to work with them to make some music together. Are they up for it? Yes! Do they have any shark stories? Yes! She wants to play them her underwater sounds and shark films, and can they make their own underwater music? Sure! yes !

So  they watch her films and listening to some recordings, and talk about how surprising it is that what you hear underwater is not at all what you hear in air, on land, on the sand. And what about sound underwater? How does it work? And do sharks hear? And if so what do they hear? They agree the underwater world is a completely other one, and it’s right outside the door here. That you can dip into it as soon as you swoop beneath it’s surface, but watch out for los tiburones. They will nip you in the surf.

photo Richard Vera.

They all close their eyes and listen to what’s in the room, in the space, for minutes at a time. As ever, it’s hard to talk about what it is they’ve heard, language for sound, is so limited even when speaking the same one. So they listen again, then try to write it down, have another go then make marks and drawings and finally scores of what they’ve heard. Kaffe also introduces the idea of where the sound comes from in the listening space. Can you draw that in? How do you deal with time?

Then they’re in small groups performing their scores, and they’re rolling. As ever some kids don’t want to leave the adventure they’ve created from the things they hear or what their friend says, but day One, and four are yes, grasping the sounds that they hear now, just as sounds and describing them in space.

She wasn’t sure how her lack of Spanish would cope with this, but Elke is brilliant with quick translation, everyone seems to understand, and they’ve just begun. They’re starving so the plantain and salad and fish and rice at The Oasis is better than ever.

“Mother’s Day celebration”, Puerta Villamil, Isla Isabela, May 8th 2009.

MothersDay_Isabela

In fact it puts me in such a good place that later I have to go follow the loud music playing across town. It’s the Mother’s Day fiesta I discover, in a huge metal warehouse, seating stadium style, at the top of the town. Most people are sitting in family groups round the edge, with a podium and DJ’s and a long table in the middle. The music is joyous and Latin of many dancing types. Children play and pass big bags of popcorn and everyone drinks beer. I’m wondering if any of my kids are here. I notice that the central table is gradually being filled with small grey haired women who are being picked out of the crowd and escorted there by younger ones. The one now being moved in is wobbly on her feet but has a luminous pink cardigan, brown checked trousers, green boots and a multi-coloured scarf on her head with a yellow flower at her neck. After the celebratory speeches over the reverb to die for metal warehouse acoustic, she is the one that wins the Mother of the Year competition and is given a garland and a bundle of things and we all wave and cheer. She looks more than she deserves it. Then its DJs and dancing all night, and the families are in for the duration.

 

 

 

 

DAY 3.

I have been moved to the stunning beach house The Seagull, the twin peaked red tinned roof guest house right on the beach. I cannot believe my good fortune. I even have a room in one of the red peaks and waking in the morning, poke my head out of the triangular window and yell. Gotta swim! to the pounding aquamarine surf. Running out on the icing sugar sand, I am amazed. Again, its only me swimming with, again, a few iguanas. I am alone on the epitomy of beaches. Can it be brutal waters out there? I leap in with care and discover the softest sweetest of oceans I have yet met. And she’s huge, lifting and dropping me gently in her aquamarine embrace.

 

 

 

 

She has discovered soft tamarind which with oats makes the perfect booster breakfast needed for the day, the kids all too soon arriving outside the house, the Bus hooting. Pedro’s dad is the bus driver, and he’s more than punctual. Daniel has organised a room for them out at the CDF building beyond the old flamingo pond, (old as the flamingos are long gone.) ( It’s only now she realises that she never discovered exactly what happened to them,) – as well as managing to borrow a pair of computer speakers for them.

Now they have 3 days out here, with Radio Isabela confirming that they can broadcast their material on the final day. However today they’ve lost 3 of the kids. There’s a conjunctivitus bug going round which seems to be flu with a red and painful eye infection. It’s very infectious and takes about 5 days to recover from. Watch out.

DAY 4.

They have got into a good routine of listening, performing and critiquing to each other. The kids are fast with the technology, to compete, to draw, to score and to lose concentration. Kaffe has three hand held recorders, three pairs of headphones and Daniel’s computer speakers, one of which doesn’t work. There is no internet connection and the only accessible one is at the Mayor’s office some 4 miles away.

They work in small groups that change daily with the absences but the core group is keen and funny. They’re also really motivated and have taken on a mission to devise an idea, write a plan, a score, gather and prepare the sounds and then come instruct Kaffe on the computer to organise the sounds for them. In other words, she is the engineer and they are the composers, musicians, producers. It works well and they all work so differently.

Today they get pretty excited by the baby tortoises. Meicy and Pedro are precisely recording short sharp purposeful sounds and logging everything carefully. Fiorella and Daniel are running around tied together by the headphones on one and the recorder held by the other, recording running water, bouncing a ball in a yard which makes a brilliant instrument for aurally describing it, a massive squeaky door, seed heads that they pop and the baby tortoises that they return to again and again, thinking that because they are so alive they should make more sound than they do. The trio of boys are standing outside recording things that move often very very quietly. And often not recording at all.

 
DAY 5.
Its been a scramble, but they have three pieces to broadcast. They’re due live on air at midday and at 11am are mustard keen at the studio but there’s no engineer in sight. People run around trying to find him. A woman sitting outside in the shade says he went to get his mum from the dentist. They sit and wait. Then get anxious and try again to find him. Finally his assistant comes and they get in plus play their tracks with brilliant compéring, sonic debate and hilarity directed by Pedro. The engineer seems amazed at what we have and what we have done.

The owner of the Seagull says that her 92 year old Mother (aged 92)shouted, “What’s that funny thing on the radio? Turn it up, I want to hear !”