You Might Be in Peace Corps Ecuador If...

... Friends send you texts that say things like, ¨I have fleas¨

... Your travel plans have been interrupted by landslides/floods/indigenous protests

... You are no longer phased by amoebas

... You carefully examine your poo, as you are phased by worms

... You can make your own peanut butter

... Your host mother has microwaved refrigerated Coke because it was ¨too cold¨

... In photos with Ecuadorians, you look like you had an un-checked growth hormone imbalance

... You teach English to Spanish-speakers, but don´t really speak Spanish

... You´ve watched an entire TV season of Weeds/The Office/House/etc. in the past week

... You know that Cuerpo de Paz dice muchas cosas.


If you aren´t in PC Ecuador, you´re likely extremely happy about that fact after my uplifting symptoms of PC Ecuador volunteerism, but actually, la vida ecuadoriana is pleasant enough. I spent a few days last week in Cuenca for PC-sponsored resiliency training (that left much to be desired, but was still a free trip to a UNESCO World Heritage city with great food and a chance to hang-out with 50+ other PCVs). My host family continues to be welcoming, my host aunts/running buddies continue to make me look tragically out of shape, and my Spanish is coming along slowly, but steadily. I had my first PC visitor out at my site on Friday, a fellow Lojano who´d like to bring a women´s group he works with out to the Centro for a yogurt and cheese making presentation. I also popped into Loja for some grocery shopping and a chance to make a fool of myself running a 10k that passed by Loja´s churches. Kayla, another Lojana PCV, kindly went snail´s pace with me and joined in the fun game of ¨find the course¨that was the last several kilometers of the race (apparently only serious runners do the Loja 10k, and the follow-up car whizzed past us at about km 2).

This evening I´ll be occupied in the kitchen making my host family fettuccini alfredo. I made spaghetti with meatballs last week and learned that Ecuadorian kitchens do not have pepper shakers for a reason. I figure bland fettuccini will still be good (since the tastiest ingredient is fat :).

Happy dia de la independencia de Pichincha/Memorial Day to everyone, tomorrow!

Chao,
Alli

Pluckin´ Chickens and Other Campo Fun

Pick-up by feet, insert in hot water for 10 seconds, pluck, pick-up by body, insert feet in hot waterfor 10 seconds, peel feet, repeat.

That´s what I learned as part of a plucking squad that plucked 50 chickens this past Tuesday. I joined a group of visiting high school students at the Centro for the chicken slaughter and processing session, and can say with confidence that you get used to freshly-dead chickens pretty quickly. I don´t think the slaughtering method used at the Centro would meet animal rights guidelines, but it was still fairly quick and chickens just aren´t that cute to begin with. I squirmed and held my breath as I oh-so-daintily plunged the first one into hot water, but by my tenth, I grabbed ´em without hesitation and had the feathers off in minutes. The Ecuadorian high schoolers all had previous experience and were amused by my novice skills. I´ve tried to imagine how a similar American field trip would play out, but every scenario ends in some sort of child abuse lawsuit.

And thus begins the Campo edition of alliinecuador :). If you´re feeling queasy, don´t worry; there isn´t anything else in the post likely to turn your stomach. I arrived in the afternoon of April 24th at my new host family´s house, a few hours west of Loja. My new host parents are Gustavo and Paulina nad htey have a quaint three-story house one block from the Parque Central (Central Square - every city here has one, as the Spanish were into them). My room overlooks a charming interior courtyard from its third-floor perch. Besides my host parents, a doctor who lives in Loja most of the time rents a room for his rounds in the campo, Gustavo´s oldest brother, Lucho, has the room beneath mine, and the domestica (maid - what can I say? I´m in the Posh Corps forthe next 3 months!) has a room nearthe Doctor´s. Gustavo is a veterinarian and Paulina is a biology teacher at one of the two local colégios (middle/high schools). They also own the shop next door, an appliance and housewares place.

My new host-town is small, lively and has a reliable supply of internet cafés and shops. There´s a great produce and basic amenities market on Sundays that I hit-up with Paulina and Martita, the domestica, to buy my breakfast supplies. I´m trying to geta handle on all the varieties of potatoes and bananas sold here, but there are many. My favorites thus far are a small, sweet banana called an orito and a sweet potato whose flesh changes from a white outer layer to a deep purple center. Though potatoes are eaten with gusto, they aren´t grown at the low elevations down here. The fields are full, instead, of maize, caña (sugarcane) and mani (peanut). With all the mani crops, prices are low and I can purchase mani molido (ground, roasted peanuts) fro $0.50. It´s not quite peanut butter, but I´m perfecting my recipe for its transormation. I can buy peanut butter in Ciudad de Loja, but am unwilling to shell-out the gringo price associated with such a gringo food. My host family seemed taken with my peanut butter and I´ll get more feedback tomorrow when I share it with a group of local English teachers.

I´ve been out to the Centro, a forty-five minute bus ride away, several times and introduced myself to the one-room schoolhouse (elementary grades only) nearby where I now teach English classes twice a week. I hope that spending time out at the school will help me get to the know the rural community surrounding the Centro, but it´s been frustrating teaching 6-10 year olds. I knew my calling in life was not elementary education as soon as I quit being an elementary student, myself, but I´m hoping to learn to like it. If you have any advice for classroom management, please pass it along. Seven-year-olds in the Ecuadorian campo are so far not responding favorably to silly gringa requests for individual work and refraining from running out of the classroom whenever a road grater/pig/goat rolls through. And the goat, at least, is bound to show-up at least twice a day....

My official goal hereis to teach about and facilitate the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices in the communities alrededor del Centro, especially as relates to irrigation. As with many Peace Corps goals, though, the likelihood of starting an irrigation project in a community as tiny, poor, and rural as mine is slim. I´m excited to try, but it will be awhile before the community and I are well enough acquainted to start forming organizations capable of building and maintaining an irrigation system. My initial agriculture goals are to start a community garden through my contacts at the school.

Unfortunately, a part of my first two weeks in site were devoted to medical worries, as my host-niece caught pneumonia and was hospitalized at the same time that my grandmother spent a few scary days in the ICU Stateside following a nasty allergic reation to anti-rejection drugs. Both host-niece and grandmother are now (thankfully) on the mend. I visited my host-niece ast the hospital and took the opportunityto survey the local medical facilities. The hospital was small, run-down, and not nearly as clean as one would want, but the nurses were attentive and it was kind of nice to be in a hospital whose entryway couldn´t double as a hotel lobby. I´d love to see a cost comparison between my host-niece´s treatment here and back home.

My first two-weeks in-site concluded with a Loja-cluster reunion in a town just north of Ciudad de Loja. Liz, a Peace Corps Madagascar transplant (PC Madagascar closed recently following a Coup d´Etat) invited us over for a lasagna-filled welcome lunch. It was lovely (and not boring, as the picture of a snoozing Tony and Adam might suggest - they just looked funny on their matching couches). As we waited for the bus back to Loja after lunch, we witnessed the birth of a calf in a nearby valley. The attending farmer actually helped pull the calf out, then let the mother cow lick the newborn clean. Within half an hour, the little guy was stading, albeit shakily, on his own four legs.

Having met most of its members, I´m really pleased with the Loja cluster of volunteers and look forward to occasional fun-filled weekends in town with them. The trip into town is useful on its own merits, too, as it affords me the opportunity to stock up on Nutella (which I haven´t found a way to fake, yet) and check my mail.

The picture on the left is of me standing nextto my host mother, andto the left of her are Danielo and Diana, host-family friends, with their daughter Amelia. We´re out at a river near a town called Las Coches which has a colégio and nice collection of houses, but is accessible only by means of a steep, muddy, lengthy dirt road. As usual, I look collossally tall next to my Ecuadorian hosts.

Hope all is well en sus casas and I would love to hear your news!

Chao,

Alli

Swear In!

It’s official! On Thursday, the 22nd of April, in the shade of a tent erected on the beautiful lawn of the US Ambassador to Ecuador’s home, I became a Peace Corps volunteer. Leading up to today were two months of intense, consuming training, but they’re done and my 52 fellow Omnibus 103 trainees are now the 103rd group of volunteers to serve in Ecuador! On Friday we dispersed to the far corners of Ecuador, but on Thursday we celebrated our new (not-at-all lucrative) jobs.

The swearing-in ceremony took place in the morning and Ross, a Texan and one of my fellow Cangahuans, gave a hilarious speech on behalf of the Natural Resources folks that began, “Qué tal y’all?” The ceremony was followed by a breakfast of bagels from a Quito shop owned by former PCVs. Most of the gentlemen of Omnibus 103 (and Cara, by means of a skillfully drawn fingerstache) sported 70’s porn-star/pedophile mustaches for the event. They convinced Parmer, the Country Director of Peace Corps Ecuador, to join them. On my facebook page are great group shots of the ‘staches, but the picture to the right is closer-up and really does the mustaches justice. I enjoyed dressing up for the ceremony, as it was my first non-REI clothes event since arriving. It’s nice, but odd to have such a casual job after months of business clothes in the McNamara building. High fashion among PCVs is limited to ‘Patagucci’ and ‘Arc’teryx and Gabbana’.

Volunteers from other Omnibuses (Omnibi?) organized a barbeque for us at the Peace Corps office after events at the ambassador’s and served us delightfully American delicacies like cheeseburgers, veggie kebabs and s’mores. Yumm…. In the evening, everyone set-out for Quito’s Mariscal District, a fantastic place to eat, drink and be merry (though the petty criminals have noticed the abundance of semi-intoxicated gringos and wealthy Ecuadorians who frequent the area – the Embassy now bans official Americans from the area between 2am and 6am. We didn’t have any issues, though J). If you’ve seen any of the photos I’m tagged in on facebook from that night, you already know that a good time was had by all. I really should write to thank the Black-Eyed Peas for writing “I Gotta a Feeling” because it is a wonderful (if overplayed) way to get the dance floor going.

Before swearing in were a few days of final medical, safety, and language tests and evenings of great Indian food in the Mariscal. If anyone has a good recipe for Chicken Masala or Vindallo, please send it to me! I fell in love with both dishes at The Last Great Indian Restaurant, Quito. We also did a little sight seeing in Old Quito. The photo to the right is me in one of the churches visited.

Next up: life in the campo.

Alli