Soapbox Post

As I sat this past January in my hotel room at the base of Tungurahua volcano in Baños, Ecuador, listening to her (as the locals refer to the volcano) active rumblings, I was both fascinated and apprehensive. It is beautiful and terrifying to see the red glow of lava overflowing the crater, as we did from four miles away several days later. It gave me a new perspective, however, on the purpose of our trip to Ecuador – funded by the U.S. Embassy in Quito and the Technical University of Ambato – which was to begin a dialogue leading to the establishment of a community-based science center for children.

What do children in Tungurahua Province (so-named, of course, on account of the volcano) need to know about science? Clearly a place-based educational center featuring science would include the volcano, which is being closely monitored by the country’s Geophysical Institute in Quito, which centralizes the information in the capital, rather than in the community affected by the volcano. How might data from the volcano be incorporated into science education? Would making this information more accessible assist farmers in knowing when and how to protect their crops? The largest amount of damage that the volcano has done recently is to eject a large quantity of ash that is ruining newly planted crops of potatoes, corn and onions, which for some farmers amounts to their entire savings invested in seeds and equipment. What they are asking for now is help in cleaning off the fledgling crops. How would more scientific knowledge help them?

The rumblings of the earth at such close range remind one of the intangible elements involved in understanding our physical environment. It is easy to see why the indigenous of the region called the mountain ‘throat of fire’ and believed it to be a god. Perhaps too, it is the local, ancient knowledge that can help inform on the meaning of this natural phenomenon to this community in Ecuador?