Miscellaneous Moments

It seems I’ve had a string of goofy, amusing, “I’m not in Kansas anymore” moments of late, so this post is devoted to regaling you with my tales, but first, a quick update on the nuts and bolts of my Peace Corps existence. Last Saturday I said goodbye to my second host family and moved to my host aunt and uncle’s finca (farm, in this case, sheep farm) out in the campo, about a 15 minute walk from the Centro. I should be living here until I close Peace Corps service in 2012 and am starting in earnest with agriculture projects, beginning with a compost pile by the all-set-to-go community garden. Now, on to the stories!

About a week ago I found myself seated, once again, on a little plastic stool at my favorite lunch stall in the market, awaiting my pechuga ampanada (breaded and fried chicken breast served with rice, salad and an avocado slice – que rico!). A tiny, adorable Ecuadorian girl smiled at me shyly a few times before getting up the courage to speak to the scary, freakishly tall gringa. When she finally got up the nerve, she asked me if I was from the circus.

I’m a Peace Corps volunteer, which, until I became one, always made me think of rustic-sorts fetching water from distant wells to cook over pit fires in mud huts. Rather than a mud hut, I have a swimming pool and live in a charming adobe house complete with hammock (see photo) and kitchen equipped with an oven (there goes my campo stove…), fridge and running water. I could sort-of claim to be roughing it since I have to go outside to reach the bathroom, and the shower doesn’t have hot water, but since the mid-day temperature here is always in the upper 80s, the cold water is not really a hardship.

A toad lives in my inodoro (toilet). He (or she, how do you tell?) has been spotted hopping off the rim as the light went on twice, and surprised me once in a more, er… alarming manner.

I imagine most of you already know this, but if, perchance, a few do not, I am not what anyone would call an animal person. I’ve never done well with animals more exotic than dogs, and have had a number of embarrassing incidents here in Ecuador because of lingering wariness towards cows, pigs, bees and campo dogs. However, I spent this past Friday morning walking up and down my camino (dirt road) collecting poo from these very animals in a little plastic baggie. Moreover, as poo is an important ingredient in compost, bocashi and bioles, I’ll be continuing my poo-treks for the duration of my Peace Corps service.

The sheep at my new life down-on-the-farm were originally all of the non-wooly variety. However, one of the breeding males died and was replaced with a new, wooly guy. Now the herd is full of wooly and non-wooly hybrids. You’d think that such mixes would have slightly more puffy “fur” than a non-wooly sheep, but less than a traditional wool producer. Instead, the mix produces sheep with bodies that are only partially wooly. They all look like someone got bored halfway through sheering them.

My landlords warned me about a bug that lays eggs on uncovered dishes and causes some sort of incurable disease. Now I obsessively close and cover everything in my kitchen. My fruit bowl, drying wrack and cutting board are all wearing towel clothes.

The Caserita (farm manager's wife) at my new place is 17-years-old, married and expecting a baby in September. I’m not sure which one of us was more amazed by the answer each gave to the question “cuantos años tienes?" (how old are you).

I tried out the pool at my new place for the first time Friday morning after hiking. As I sunned myself poolside after a dip, I had a hard time believing I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Then I went to do my laundry (by hand – a long and tedious event) and mixed my compost pile and was once again confident that I was, indeed, an agriculture volunteer.

Making compost requires chopping up hierba (plants/organic material), and for this, the tool of choice is the machete. I stopped in at a host cousin’s ferretería (hardware store) on Wednesday and explained what I needed. I was told that a small machete would serve my purposes best, and was assured that I could indeed travel on the bus back home in the company of my machete, as long as I didn’t assault anyone. The machete and I, therefore, boarded the bus without incident, road home, and I felt like a badass. I’ve had an absurd urge to swashbuckle ever since. I might have gotten a bit carried away staging the photo to the right.