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