Alli in Ecuador

Adios

2011-05-31T18:35:00.001-07:00

As most of you know, I left Peace Corps Ecuador at the end of January. It was an honor and a pleasure getting to know Ecuador, and I will always remember my months in the Valle de Casanga. To my wonderful host family, los Quevedos, and the singular Profesora Meny, thank-you so much for your friendship. It was a pleasure to know you. I can't thank-you enough. Knowing you was the best part of my Ecuadorian life. Mil gracias para su amistad. Fue un placer conocerse. No hay como agredecerse suficamente, pero creame, ustedes fueron los mejores partes de mi vida ecuatoriana.

I write today from my new room at my old alma mater where I am once again a student, fresh from orientation as a law student. I am so excited to begin my legal training, and I hope the horizon-expanding experience that was Peace Corps will keep me grounded and compassionate in my career as an attorney.

Thank-you to all of you who read my blog, and in so doing, furthered the Peace Corps mission to bring the experience back to the States. I hope my stories pleased you, and I hope you know your comments were greatly appreciated.

Chao, y nos vemos!

The Family Visits Ecuador

2011-01-12T06:27:00.000-08:00

My family came over Christmas and I'm lending my blog to them for this post, to get a fresh look at la vida ecuatoriana!

Mom says....

Ecuador was for me my first trip below the equator and, although I was an exchange student in high school, also the first time I was going to visit a country where I didn’t speak the language and wasn’t going to be there long enough to have any expectation of learning it.

The south of the equator aspect of the trip was fine; we did check, indeed, water goes down the drain in the opposite direction. One of my daughters actually filmed it. The warmer weather was also a pleasant respite from the freezing Michigan temperatures we left behind. Despite relatively thorough sun screen usage, I did get a sunburn one day when we simply walked along the river for a half an hour at most. The sun is definitely intense near the equator.

The language was kind of funny. Several of us had experiences where someone greeted us or did something for us, and instead of responding with the Spanish greeting that we did actually know or gracias, the Spanish for “thank you”, we either stood there with a deer in the headlights look, or started to respond with words from other foreign languages we know better than Spanish. I feel like our brains, at least as far as languages go, have a foreign language file, and if there isn’t an easily accessible word in the Spanish file, it just looks for the word in another foreign language file. It was embarrassing responding with “merci” (French thank you) or “hai” (Japanese yes) when with a little thought the Spanish was within my grasp.

A food that we all discovered we loved wasn’t one of the indigenous foods. My daughter lives in an area of Ecuador that grows peanuts. One food that she missed, but hated paying a lot for at the Super Maxi grocery store, was peanut butter. So, she developed her own recipe for peanut butter from the locally produced peanut paste. It’s fabulous! Jif has nothing on this stuff, and it came in very handy several times along the way.

Things I learned in Ecuador:
· Cows can graze on steep mountain slopes; we called them “mountain cows”
· People who grow bananas put a plastic bag over the clump of bananas as they are growing
· Two songs being sung at the same time on the same bus is truly annoying
· There are bijillions of types of humming birds
· It’s impossible to avoid the Ecuadorian equivalent of Montezuma’s revenge
· The Andes are gorgeous!

Dad says....

Surprises---------

Cell Phones in use everywhere

How stark the Andes appear approaching from the coastal plain with very steep slopes

How developed the big cities are including Guayaquile, Quenca and LojaThe efficient public bus system on main roads that ran on-time (better than our jetplane rides)

Bus drivers passing on narrow mountain roads at dark in fog (Eeeks!)

"Mountain" cows (my name for them) that manage to graze even near mountain peaks

A farmer plowing his field with a single-point plot attached to two cows

Banana plantations appear to pre-wrap the growing banana cluster in a plastic bag

"Mature" movies playing for the many families on the bus to Loja

Palm trees dotting the crestline of most of the mountains we saw

Little boroughs with high concentrations of foreigners like Vilcabamba

Outdoor festivals and numerous fireworks in celebration of New Year's eve

Lack of insect swarms on the edge of the jungle

How skilled Alli has become at hailing taxis and "hitch-hike" rides in pick-ups

How many strangers recognized MSU whenever I wore my MSU Track T-shirt

Not-So Surprising-----------------

Beautiful scenery supplied by the Andes mountains and valleys

Friendly welcome at Alli's site by her host Aunt and Uncle at their house in Catacocha

Miles and miles of banana plantations on the coastal plain, also papaya and pineapple

Talkative lady with granddaughter on her lap on bus to Quenca who didn't care that I speak almost no Spanish, but said a friendly "Hola" to (fortunately Alli rescued me for a while)

Multitude of birds visiting feeders on the edge of the jungle

Very few English-speaking people anywhere

Iffy tap-water most places

Theresa says....

Transportation in Ecuador for us consisted mostly of bus riding - hours upon hours of it. The music played in the background reminded me of this computer game, Tropico, that I used to play a lot, developing islands as "El Presidante" in the tropics. Whoever designed that game must have spent some time on the busses in Ecuador.

Another mode of transportation was hitch-hiking, which we got to experience for the first time in the back of a pick-up truck, hiding under our raincoats while it was pouring. Even in bad weather, I still found the experience thrilling, especially going around turns on the edges of mountains in thick fog.

We met Alli's host aunt, uncle, and cousin and shared a delicious Ecuadorian dinner with them. Ecuadorians by the way, are into their carbs. Rice and fries seem to be their traditional side dishes, and their fries are delicious, and I'm willing to say, gasp, better than McDonald's!

I had been looking forward to seeing the jungle, and our eco-friendly cabana surrounded by it, was perfect. We had banana trees, hammocks, horses, and plenty of rainforesty looking vegetation, birds and bugs to meet my expectations, and I have the bug bites to prove it! Our hike through the jungle where I got to slide down a hill to discover a waterfall left me a happy camper.

What I think was my favorite part of the trip we stumbled upon in Guayaquil while wasting time before our flight home on New Year's Eve. Guayaquil was having an all day celebration in the street next to the gorgeous boardwalk on the bay. There were live performances, from belly dancers, a meriotche band, clowns, and dance groups, a shake your butt competition, and even a place to take your picture inside a mock-up of the device used to rescue the trapped minors in Chile.

My favorite Ecuadorian tradition was the Año viejos which were human-sized and bigger stuffed dolls that they light on fire on New Year's Eve. We found out from numerous loud bangs that set off car alarms, that they were filled with fireworks. The tradition is to stuff things from the ending year into the doll and burn it. The outside however is just decorated for fun, so it was hilarious seeing some Woody and Buzz Lightyears, Shrecks, and Ecuadorian Presidents strapped to cars all around Ecuador.

This trip was definitely a stark contrast from my last trip which was full of five star hotels in China, but it was an experience, I learned some Spanish, it was beautiful, and I happily did not encounter any tarantulas at Alli's site!

La Novena

2010-12-21T15:12:00.000-08:00

In a few days I´ll celebrate my first Christmas fuera de (outside of) the States. This past week I´ve enjoyed Ecuadorian and American Christmas traditions around Loja Province.

Beginning December15th, Ecuadorian families gather nightly for nine days to celebrate la Novena (the ninth night) with oraciones (readings/prayers), songs and food. I joined my extended host family of the first night of the Novena. After reading, prayers, and songs, we ate cake with a slice of cheese in place of frosting - a delicacy I´m rapidly warming to - then admired my host aunt´s Christmas decorations. In the courtyard, a mechanical snowman sweeps the walk while a creche, complete with multi-colored twinkle lights, adorns the living room. The creche is joined by an artificial Christmas tree, and even a shake-your-hips Santa Claus. Such US-import Christmas decorations are everywhere, right down to the icicle lights at my friend Peggy´s site... who lives in the jungle and will be enjoying a 90 degree with high humidity Christmas.

A few days after my first Novena, I joined fellow Lojana, Liz, to travel out to Santi and Kayla´s exceptionally isolated site. Santi and Kayla are a married couple from my omnibus, and PC stuck them at the end of a dirt road nearly six hours from Loja, but only one mountain pass from Peru. Our journey came with a purpose - gingerbread houses! We constructed a small gingerbread town, including a post office, church, house, pond, and train. Some very moist frosting and over-loaded roofs led to structural difficulties. As a civil engineer, I´m a bit embarrassed by this, but in my defense, I did not have access to a building code for recommended coconut snow or frosting loads. Kaylas´s English students thought the gingerbread village a smashing success, however, as its imperfections meant they were welcomed to eat it this morning, which, according to Kayla, they did with relish.

Tonight I´m off to Guayaquil, Ecuador´s biggest city, to pick-up my parents and siblings. I so look forward to sharing Ecuador iwth them and hope that they´ll lend their pens to my next post, sharing their impressions with all of you.

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo!

I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again!

2010-11-10T10:30:00.001-08:00

I try to keep my blog posts upbeat, though admitedly, I occasionally do some whining. Unfortunately, the past couple of months in Ecuador have been a constant mental battle, and I´ve been losing. I´ve even found myself considering ¨decisiones drasticas,¨ as PCVs euphamistically call going home early. Work has been slow and tedious, and I´m disgusted with my own sloth and general lack of animation. I never realized how hard it would be to get going in the morning when the usual consequences of not (like losing a job, failing a class, and so on) are absent, but these consequences aren´t a part of Peace Corps life, and striving on without them is tough.

That said, I got a major motivation this afternoon from an unlikely source. An SUV picked me up on my way into town for English club and the driver and passengers turned out to be ingeñeros (engineers, though the term encompasses a much wider swath of professions than its English equivalent) driving from Piura, Peru, to Loja, Ecuador. They were a lively crew and blasted a collection of mostly English songs throughout the trip. The familiar "We´ll be singing, while we´re winning," opening line to Chumbawamba´s song came through the speakers and my heart lifted. Bobbing my head to the music, a welcome wave of optimism and determination swept over me, as I decided that, damn it PC, you´re never gonna get me down!

Beyond the mental challenges of PC, the States threw a serious curve ball my way a few weeks ago in the form of bad health news on my grandma. I don´t yet know what course of action will prove best there, but while I´m here, I´m determined to make the most of the experience and try to do some good in my little corner of Ecuador. And if you´re familiar with the rest of "I Get Knocked Down," don´t worry, my plan of attack involves neither whiskey drinks, vodka drinks, lager drinks, nor cider drinks!

The plan does involve a little rest and relaxation that will be happening Stateside over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you´ll be around the A2 T-Town area, hope to see you there!

Creepy Crawler

2010-11-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

I was tidying my room recently, preparing for a visit from PC buddies over Halloween. I picked up my fallecido (dearly departed) computer and noticed something blackish-brown and furry lurking in the computer´s vacated spot.

Like the Michigander idiot that I am, my mind first concluded that a fake tarantula was in my closet. Next I wondered who could have left a fake tarantula in my closet, and where on Earth they had found such a realistic looking one. Finally, and startlingly, it dawned on me that I live in the tropics and, by golly, they have real tarantulas here! The monster in the closet (if not yet under the bed) was real! Mierda! Puta madre!

I stood doing nothing for a few moments, carefully watching the beast to assure myself that it wasn´t about to scurry off. I fumbled about for my camera and got in as close as I dared to capture this very anti-Hallmark Moment. Picture secured (see right), I got out the flashlight for a better view. The harsh LED crank light didn´t make the critter look any friendlier, and while I remembered reading a blog about a tarantula catch and release undertaken by a PC couple in similar straits, I knew I needed backup.

Luckily, Silvia, the farm manager´s wife was outside reading a magazine. I approached her painfully conscious that a proper ecuatoriana would deal with the stupid thing on her own, but I had to admit to myself that I am not, nor do I anticipate approaching, proper ecuatoriana status.
Silvia came back with me to my room and watched on as I shone the flashlight into the closet depths once again. A few seconds of observation assured her that the gringa did, at least, know what a tarantula was, and said I should "matalo, no más" (kill it, of course). In a flash, she grabbed my machete, made a quick chop, brushed the creature onto my shovel, and deposited the remains outside. All that was left to do was find some papel higenico (toilet paper) to clean-up the small mess left by the machete action.

I thanked Silvia, confident that her assistance would be amply repaid in amusement. I also, and quite foolishly, inquired further about the general prevalence of tarantulas in the area, particularly preoccupied with worries of this fellow's friends or descendents sharing his home. Silvia recommended shaking out my clothes, then recounted a story about a child who was bit in the neck by a tarantula and died. If you think it odd that Silvia would relate this story at such a time, you need to meet more Ecuadorians. Of course, who knows if my species was even the same species (Silvia grew-up in Peru) and I am at least twice as big as Ecuadorian adults, but still, my skin still occasionally crawls at the memory of my furry visitor.

Elaboración de Miel de Caña, or Making Sugar Cane Honey

2010-10-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

I set out this morning to a neighboring barrio (rural collection of houses with an elementary school) to find out how long I´ve committed myself to hiking to teach a new set of English classes. It took an hour and fifteen minutes, uphill. I admit the uphill was only one way, but all the same, I will be forced into shape.

As I arrived back in my barrio, legs aching and feeling the effects of the sun, my neighbor called me over and invited me to help out in some sort of project involving a pile of sugar cane and a machine. The engineer instinct took over and I hurried around the fence. It turned out my neighbors (many were filtering through to assist) were making sugar cane honey. The first phase, harvesting the sugar cane, happened elsewhere, as the caña is thin on the ground in my dry area. However, in the well irrigated places or valleys hugging rivers near me, the stuff grows well and I´m used to seeing it. Up close, it looks a bit like bamboo (see the pile to the right).

To make the honey, you cut the end at an angle, then feed through a mechanical press, slanty-end first. The press devours the caña, shooting dry-ish sticks out one end and lots of juice out the bottom. The juice at my neighbor´s poured into a 15 gallon kettle, from which it was seived into buckets and transported to the "stove," two concrete basins atop a leña (wood) fire (see picture at right). The juice was boiled down to a syrup, and then it´s ready. The miel de caña is sold throughout Ecuador as sweetner either in the honey form, or reduced further until it´s solid and called panela. Panela, when shaved, is the brownish sugar that Starbucks puts in the "natural" colored wrappers labelled cane sugar. Here, it´s the norm. Even the white sugar comes from sugar cane and is simply processed further (the smaller the pieces get, the whiter they appear – I think much of Michigan´s sugar comes from sugar beets and am not sure what color the sugar from these begins).

I got to feed the sugar cane into the press and have the picture to prove it! OSHA, I´m outside your jurisdiction and have no comment on the gear that may or may not have popped out of the press two times in thirty minutes.

After elaboración de miel de caña, I put in some quality hammock time with the gatita before setting out around two for the canton capital to help at a middle school English club. My camioneta initially only had one other woman in the back seat, and I rode in comfort for ten minutes. Then a woman got in with her one-year-old and seven-year-old. With five squished in the back seat, the comfort quotient took a big hit, and then the baby started crying. Even I could tell the kid was doing his "my tummy hurts" cry (he sounded a bit like the moaning I associate with hugging toilets) and sure enough, he projectile vomited all over his mother and the seat that was mine until the vomit claimed it. I spent the remaining 15 minutes of the trip clinging to the driver´s bench to avoid backsliding into the mess, head straining towards the only open window. I was pretty glad to get out of that truck.

English club was a blast – we drew floor plans of our houses and learned all the words to label the rooms and furniture in English. If you´ve ever seen my notebooks, napkins, or placemats, you know that this activity was right up my alley. Now I´m writing to all of you and will be back in miel de caña land in a few hours. All in all, a fantastically Peace Corps-ish day.

Attempted Coup!

2010-10-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay - life sin computadora has been a bit trying, and September was a busy month! Since posting last, I've attended a Reconnect Conference in Quito with my Omnibus, said goodbye to one COSing (regular end of Peace Corps service) and four ETing (leaving early) volunteers, attended my host cousin's quincenera (15th birthday party), spent a little over a week stuck in site on account of national police strikes and an attempted coup, got some good news on future work projects, and taken my first by-myself nightbus to Quito for a long weekend, from where I am writing this post.

I'm saving more details on the quincenera and work developments for another post, and will devote this one to the attempted coup. Last Thursday, September 30, Peace Corps sent out a message telling all volunteers to go on standfast, the first phase of our evacuation plan. Standfast entails pinpointing all volunteers' locations, then telling them to stay put until either consolidation in provincial capitals and possible evacuation, or an all-clear returning us to normal life. The standfast was enacted in anticipation of unrest likely to arise because of a planned national police strike.

I awoke Friday morning to the usual quiet laziness of my rural site, but shortly thereafter received a text from my mom asking "Did u hear about coup attempt? Is everything ok by u? Has pc said anything?" The text was the first I'd heard of the coup, and I had run out of saldo (phone minutes) the day before, so I couldn't call anyone to find out quickly. I was scheduled to help prepare the soil at one of my schools for a new garden, but decided to head into the town where I lived with my host family to buy saldo and hear the news (this sort of travel is allowed on Standfast - I have to go into town to buy food). The camioneta (pick-up truck) driver and high schooler with whom I shared a ride were discussing the coup and I learned that the national police force kidnapped Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, in a quasi-coup attempt on Thursday night (I'm unsure if the goal was to take over the government or just force Correa to repeal a new law they don't like). The kidnapping was short-lived and by my Friday morning camioneta ride, the military had already rescued him from the police kidnappers and the South American and international communities had expressed their support for the elected president.

Because of the coup, school across the country was cancelled, so my day was free and I spent time on the internet, then went over to my host parents' house and watched the news with my host mom. I really enjoyed talking with her about the coup. She was feeling shaken by the coup attempt, and not terribly proud of Ecuador, but I actually helped her feel better, pointing out that the coup's failure was probably a good sign for Ecuador - that the country was stable enough to withstand such an assault. She reflected on that and agreed, remembering the occasions in the not that distant past when Ecuadorian governments did not fare so well when faced with affronts to their power.

The country was placed under an "exceptional state" following the coup, meaning that the military took control of security throughout the country and retains it until tomorrow, Saturday, when the police force is scheduled to return to its normal duties. I'm not sure what the difference between an "exceptional state" and marshal law is - they seam awfully similar to me - but the official name for the state of affairs here has been the former. In Quito and Guayaquil the military was roving the streets picking up groups bigger than 2, at times, and there were a few gun fights and a big uptick in robberies. Out by me, life was unchanged except for a few more people from the ejercito (army) walking around, though there wasn't any obvious unrest for them to contain. Friends in Ciudad de Loja said all they heard of happening was a bank and mini-mart robbery. My province is super tranquilo, as they say in Spanish, and when it comes to political instability, I'm happy with things this way.

So, that was my experience with a coup attempt. Interesting in a far-away sense, but pretty unevently in my physical relm. Let's hope things remain calm!

A Quick Update

2010-09-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

So, my very elderly computer kicked the bucket a little under two weeks ago. I lost my movie theater, picture editor and ability to pre-type blog posts. As a result, my posts may be a bit slighter and farther between until the computerlessness is resolved, but here´s a quick update on what´s up in la vida ecuatoriana:

My first two batches of personal compost are complete and a small but sturdy crop of green beans, tomatoes and a kidney bean plant that survived composting are coming along well. I´ll be transplanting a few of the tomatoes to the closest school garden tomorrow.

The school garden´s compost pile has been destroyed twice by rummaging chickens, forcing me to move it inside the garden walls. This is fine, except that now the land under the compost is no longer available for growing things.

I´ve started a World Wise Schools exchange with the Spanish teacher at my alma mater. Please feel sorry for the third year Spanish students of THS who are subjected to my atrocious attempt at writing in Spanish.

I´ve caught something that feels flu-ish, but as I´ve been vaccinated against everything under the sun, it must be a cold. My Peace Corps-issued mini-pharmacy is getting me through, and I´m pretty sure I´m on the mend already.

Next week I head up to Quito for a weeklong training/reconnect seminar with my omnibus. I´m looking forward to catching up with my fellow 7-months-in-Ecuadorers and getting some help on project planning.

I ordered a Kindle and am having it shipped via the Peace Corps Express, meaning it and it´s cell-phone network enabled internet connection should arrive next week when Liz gets back from wedding attending in los Estados Unidos. I´m pretty psyched by the prospect of internet on demand.

That´s all for now, but I´ll try to get some photos up somehow for the next post. Que les vaya bien!

PC Rage, Closeness, Openness

2010-08-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

Peace Corps can, at times, feel like an emotional roller coaster worthy of top billing at Cedar Point. The highs are really high, and the lows can be crushing. As most PCVs do, I live in what still feels like a new and dramatically foreign culture and must figure out how to cope largely on my own, at least in geographic terms. In response to the pressures of PCV life, I’m prone to fits of rage and extreme openness, and, at least among those I see, other volunteers are too.

Rage

It comes on suddenly, and then lashes out. I’ll be going about my day, not particularly perturbed by the more irritating parts of my host culture, then all of a sudden, one too many men hisses at me and the caged rage tiger breaks free. I instantly despise the crudeness, pettiness or injustice of some action and I have to find an outlet for my irritation. I’ve taken up voicing the obscenities I desperately want to say, but refrain from translating them. A beauty of the cultural divide is that as long as I pronounce things properly and quickly (which is pretty much guaranteed in an outburst), nobody but me is any the wiser, and I feel immensely better.

I fell back on this coping mechanism during a recent encounter with the bus system. I was attempting to return home after a day trip to Loja last weekend in the mess of the Virgen del Cisne (virgin on the swan) pilgrimage. Swarms of devotees had come in from all over Ecuador to accompany the Virgen on her annual journey from El Cisne to Loja, and while they pour money into the local economy (yea!), they make travelling a nightmare (boo!). The Loja bus terminal bore a striking resemblance to O’Hare on the Friday before Christmas when Denver’s closed down by a snowstorm. My bus was delayed by more than an hour, but did eventually leave.

However, for reasons that did not appear to satisfy my fellow passengers, and which I couldn’t quite understand, our chofer (driver) pulled over about 30 minutes after leaving Loja, sat doing nothing for another 20, then announced that we were returning to Loja. I was proud of my initial staidness, patiently resigned to the absurdities of Virgen del Cisne time as the bus went back down the mountain. But, as we pulled back into the terminal, and the chofer had no explanation for what we should do, I remembered that the next bus wasn’t for 3 hours and was likely already full, the rage rose up inside and I joined the other passengers sharing their displeasure with the driver. I said my piece in English, though, so while I felt just as self-righteous and justified as my fellow complainers, the driver was no worse for the wear.

A fellow Lojana volunteer shared the story of a rage-fueled fit she threw because a mini-mart wouldn’t let her take the small tote bag she carries as a purse into the store, though streams of women carrying purses that doubled as bowling ball bags flowed through. As she described it, the fact that her bag wasn’t "stylish" enough for the bag-checker’s purse standards was what set her off. She lost it after her explanation that her tote was small and contained the wallet she would need to pay fell on deaf ears. Her Spanish flew immediately out the window as she through the sort of indignant tantrum usually reserved for the exclusive use of middle-aged women at Black Friday sales in Wal-Mart. She felt comfortable sharing this bout of poor behavior with me because: A) she was sure I’d behaved similarly poorly in similar encounters with Peace Corps Rage, and B) PCVs tend to tell each other anything and everything, which brings me to my second topic….

Openness and Closeness

I know some alarmingly intimate facts about my fellow PCVs. I can give a fairly detailed report on the diarrhea bouts of the Loja cluster, have seen scars from hideous puss-producing allergic reactions, and know that the average time between volunteers’ showers hovers around 48 hours for those in warm climates and 96 hours for those in the cold. Why do I know this? Because volunteers share so openly. Since this openness is so widespread, I suspect it’s related to coping with life abroad, but whatever causes it, it has some wonderful consequences.

Firstly, since bizarre illnesses are a probable reality, it’s actually nice to know what to expect in the puss and poo department. Secondly, volunteers are eager to share more personal info of the emotional variety, along with bodily functions. I’m amazed by how well I know those volunteers I get to see with some regularity. I know all about their past experiences and future plans, frustrations and triumphs here in Ecuador, and a lot about their extended families. In fact, with the possible exception of whining about Peace Corps policies, our favorite conversation topic is our families – what they’re like, what they’re up to back in the States, etc.. Sadly, I know we talk about them because we miss them (me too! I miss you guys!), and realize we’ve elected to miss two years of time we could had spent near them, but with all the joyfully shared information, it’s easy to get to know people. I value the knowledge I’m gaining about Ecuador and its culture, but I also love getting to know the eclectic and charming group of Americans who also said, “Sure, I’ll live and work in Ecuador for two years!”

Miscellaneous Moments

2010-08-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

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.

What Am I Doing Here?

2010-07-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about that question a lot in the past month. I wish I could say that the extended delay between this and my previous post was due to an over-abundance of work, but the truth is quite the opposite. I’ve been in a rut, puttering around with a variety of English-teaching activities and not much else, quedando (remaining) without anything interesting to relate. For the time being, my Ecuadorian adventure lacks just that. With a bit of good-fortune, things will fall into place this week for my permanent living-arrangement, and I’ll move out of my host family’s city-digs for a place out in the country near the Centro. My hope is that the change of scenery will be more conducive to finding work in sustainable agriculture, and will jolt me back into an ambitious mode of living.

So, what sorts of agricultural work can a civil engineer whose only conocemiento (knowledge) of farming is based on gardening hope to share with a population of life-long farmers? Well, not tons, but more than I initially thought. The results of the community assessment survey I conducted show that very little fertilization of any variety, and no pest control outside of fumigation, takes place in my community. Peace Corps did a nice job of teaching its trainees to make organic fertilizers and pesticides, as well as ideas for pest-control based on integrated planting techniques, so I hope to share this knowledge through two organic community gardens. I won’t pretend to be an organic fanatic, but in my community where family incomes hover around $100/month (I live on more than three times that and am not wealthy by local standards), the cheapness of organic fertilizers and pesticides is very attractive.

One of the gardens I mentioned in a previous post, and it is already fenced in, tilled, and set-up to be a fairly traditional vegetable garden. The other would be new, and my hope is to make it container-based (probably old, halved truck-tires) focused on intensive, micro-scale production. I hope the gardens will serve as hands-on teaching facilities for fertilizer and pest production, and also as inspiration for family gardens that could diversify the overly-starched, rice and yucca diet of the area, while simultaneously providing food security.

I’ve also talked with my counterpart at the Centro about helping out a few days a week with poultry production in order to learn how to go about it. My community wanted the local Parroquia (township, sort-of), to fund a micro-empresa (micro-business) raising chickens, but funding fell through. I hope to get the project going again, and maybe coordinate with two cajitas de ahorro (micro-savings banks) run by women’s groups in the community to provide the loan needed to begin the project. If it goes well, there’s a slim chance I could actually use my engineering background to design and build chicken coops!

Though the view of work from where I sit has been a bit gray, life at my host family’s has been cheered by the arrival of Poleth (pronounced Paulette) and Matthew, host niece and nephews from Quito who came at the beginning of July and are spending the summer with my host parents. In the picture to the right, the niños (kids) are waiting for bus to take them and me out to my community for a picnic to celebrate the end of exams for the students I teach in the campo. They had a blast, and I ate my first salad prepared in un-boiled river water. To my surprise and delight, Montezuma did not exact his revenge, so, apparently, I have a fully-integrated stomach. If only the rest of me were so well adjusted....

The picture to the right is of Poleth helping me make cinnamon rolls. I got an excellent recipe from Emily, a fellow volunteer in Loja Province, and have made them a number of times in a campo oven. A campo oven is just a pot, but I put rocks and bricks on the bottom to store heat, close the lid tightly, and it bakes fairly well. Instructions for its construction came in the literature PC gave out at swear-in, as ovens are rare in Ecuador. In my life of hot water, microwave, and basic cable, I enjoy using the campo oven to feel a bit more like I’m in the rustic Peace Corps of my imagination, rather than the Posh, but isolated, Corps of reality.

Geography / History

2010-06-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

I have thus-far neglected to give a decent overview of Ecuador as a country, but this post should rectify the situation....

Geography

Ecuador is on the northwestern coast of South America and is roughly the size of the state of Colorado. It shares a northern border with Columbia, a western border with the Pacific Ocean, and eastern and southern borders with Peru. There are four geographic regions: the Galapagos Islands, the Costa (coast), the Sierra (Andes Mountains), and the Oriente (jungle; also called Amazonia, as the rivers in this region are part of the Amazon basin).

The capital city, Quito, is located in the northern Sierra, less than 100 miles south of the Equator. Many parts of the Sierra are home to indigenous peoples and their cultures dominate small-town life and enjoy a growing influence in the politics of this region, which has the highest population density of the four. The picture to the right is of Shuar people, the indigenous group that lives closest to me. The weather in the Sierra varies from hot and dry in the lowest valleys (like my site) to extreme cold and snow at the highest elevations and on the many volcanoes (six are currently active) that dot the countryside.

The Costa is dominated by mestizo culture, with the exception of Esmeraldas Province, which is home to most of the Afro-Ecuadorian population. It has a humid, tropical climate with a flood-prone monsoon season. The largest city in Ecuador, Guayaquil, is located in the Costa on a natural bay, west and south of Quito. The coastal culture is known for greater openness and boisterousness than either the Sierra or Oriente, but also for higher crime rates. My fellow volunteers from this region assure me that the accent in this region is much harder to understand than that of the other regions.

The Oriente is the least densely populated region of Ecuador, and also the location of most of the country’s oil reserves. There is an ongoing struggle between the indigenous peoples of the region, environmental groups, and oil companies (run by the state) as to how the reserves should be managed. The Oriente has a uniformly humid climate, and the climate is hot, with the exception of the cooler cloud forests that hug the western slopes of the Andes. Many of the volunteers working in this region are promoting the blossoming eco-tourism industry with Peace Corps’ Natural Resources program.

The Galapagos Islands are dry, warm, isolated islands located more than 1000km west of the rest of Ecuador. The wildlife here evolved without humans and are remarkably unperturbed by their relatively-recent arrival. I liked one description I came across that compared the islands’ animals’ response to humans to the way stars deal with annoying paparazzi. These animals inspired Darwin to write his Theory of Evolution, and the islands now attract an enormous crop of tourists interested in swimming with the turtles and seeing a blue-footed booby. There are so many tourists that the Ministry of the Environment regularly introduces new regulations designed to protect the islands from them. They generally achieve this by raising admission prices, making the Galapagos a major splurge for volunteers.

History

Ecuador became an independent nation in 1830. Since then, it has undergone nearly 100 changes in government and 20 constitutions, the most recent of which went into effect in 2008. My Lonely Planet claims that the volatility stems from strife between the conservative, Catholic Sierra and the liberal, secular Coast, and from disputes with Peru. I am yet to visit the Coast, so I don’t have much to add to that first proposed cause, but animosity with Peru is certainly ripe. The Centro I work at was founded after the most recent war with Peru (peace accords signed 1998) with the goal of improving conditions in the border region. I am often told about the dire poverty, crime, and general yuckiness of Peru by my Ecuadorian neighbors (I live in the border region).

Before 1830, Ecuador was part of Gran Columbia, a nation composed of present-day Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador. Gran Columbia was the united, idealistic dream of Simon Bolivar, a Venezuelan, who led the struggle for independence from Spain. He and his army fought from 1820, achieving the complete expulsion of the Spanish from Ecuador in 1822.

The Spanish, in turn, had concurred Ecuador from the Incan Empire. If you can remember back to your world history class, you may recall (as I did not) that Conquistador Francisco Pizarro led Spain’s defeat of Incan Emperor Atahualpa with greatly-outnumbered troops and a kidnapping scheme. Pizarro’s conquest began in 1532, and by 1534, Pizarro had made his way to Quito. The city had been razed by its fleeing Incan rulers, so Pizarro re-founded it on December 6, 1534, which is celebrated today as the Foundation of Quito. The Spanish Colonial period was characterized by extensive church-construction on former Incan religious sites, flourishing agriculture and the arts, and extreme oppression of the indigenous and mestizo populations.

In truth, when the Spanish ousted them, the Incans had only recently arrived, as they had conquered indigenous groups called the Cañari, beginning in 1463. Though they ruled for a relatively short time, the Inca had a great influence on the indigenous cultures, introducing the Quechua language, which is still spoken by many indigenous people as a primary language, and which peppers Ecuadorian Spanish even outside of indigenous populations. The Incans also changed land-ownership standards and introduced many crops now commonly associated with Ecuadorian agriculture such as cocoa, sweet potatoes (camote, the most common variety is available in my local market and has white outer flesh and a purple interior – see the picture to the right), and peanuts.

Fiesta Time

2010-06-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

June is the month for fiestas in my neck of Loja, so this post is about my experiences partying it up in my site!

Reina del Canton

My cantón, or county, elected a new queen a few weeks ago in an elaborate ceremony attended by everyone I know in the town and judged by a panel including the vice-prefect of the Province of Loja. My ticket claimed the festivities began at 8 pm, so I foolishly arrived at a few minutes to eight. The stage was set-up and a few people were milling around, but the pageant was definitely not about to begin. I spent the next hour chatting with people I knew as they arrived and took a seat by my host aunts around 9, though the show didn’t begin until 9:30.

The pageant started, as everything with even a hint of officialness does here in Ecuador, with a longwinded speech in which each and every dignitary in attendance (and there were many) was welcomed individually and the virtues of the cantón were pondered at length. Eventually, though, the long-winded MCs couldn’t come up with anything more to say and the contestants made their first appearances. The pageant had three rounds: dancing in headdresses, swimsuit, and evening gown/message. To the right is a group photo of 5 of the 6 contestants decked out in their headdresses. In this phase, the contestants came out one-by-one to intense cheers from their barrios (neighborhoods), walked about doing pageant-y poses, then came out on the catwalk to do a little dance.

Between the first and second rounds of the pageant, a woman sang a variety of traditional Ecuadorian ballads. She was a decent singer and my host aunts informed me that her song selections were good.

The swimsuit competition followed a very old-school format, giving out each girls’ measurements as she posed. I say girls quite seriously, as five of the six contestants were 16 or 17 years old. The pageant rules state, in fact, that contestants must be between the ages of 16 and 25, but the most elderly contestant was an 18-year-old college freshman.

My favorite part of the evening followed the swimsuit competition. An aging, but engaging Uruguayan band called the Iracundos performed a well-rounded set of songs that the audience knew well and to which they could sing -along. The band’s performance was very polished, and while they did feel the need to give a speech, it was beautifully brief.

The atmosphere was upbeat heading into the final round and the contestants did a nice job with their mensajes (messages). One poor contestant forgot hers halfway through, but the audience was indulgent and an MC kindly commented that the stress of being a contestant can be quite a burden. Listening to the mensajes was the first time I heard Ecuadorian Spanish spoken as elegantly as possible, and it was impressive. Though the mensajes were uniformly about why the cantón is charming and why the contestant was so orgullosa (proud) to represent her barrio, the ‘Rs’ rolled out with incredible skill and the timing was fabulous.

As the clock struck 1 am, the judges turned in their cards and the contestants learned their fate. The runners-up were named the Señoritas (Misses) of this and that, while Reina (Queen) was reserved for the winner. The 1st runner up’s barrio felt she had been cheated and ripped off her Srta. Cantón sash when she went to join them in a bit of amusing indignation. This started chatter among my host family about past problems with rigged pageants and judges in assorted pockets. And considering what a big deal the pageant was in the town, I can imagine that happening.

Though the party apparently went well into the wee hours of the morning, I was tuckered –out, much like my host cousin, Santi, at right, and headed home shortly after the Reina was crowned.

Fiesta at the Escuela

A few days later I attended a different variety of fiesta out at the rural school where I teach English. Classes ended very early and families started pouring in at 11 am weighted down with chickens, veggies and herbs to start preparing the feast in honor of the end of an improvement campaign loosely associated with the Centro.

As soon as I arrived, my students eagerly led me to a spare room where the food-of-honor, a whole pig, was awaiting preparation. I tried to feign excitement, but was actually a bit overwhelmed by the tale, head, and faint smell. The only events I’ve attended in the past that featured a whole pig were pig roasts and I understood that this method of preparation required a great amount of time. I was, therefore, surprised to see the pig completely uncooked, but it turned out that this pig was destined for a giant fritada, or pan-frying (see right), a much quicker method of cooking.

The students had prepped a couple of dance routines to perform at the fiesta and I got a number of adorable photos of them at their final dress-rehearsal. They did a traditional dance to a pasillo, a ballad-like Ecuadorian type of music, and some hip-hop to a reggatone song. Watching the computer teacher instruct the little 8-11 year old boys on how to best dance hip-hop was hilarious. She had them looking like quite the group of bad-boys.

Misstaken that this was an afternoon-only fiesta, I’d made plans to go jogging with my host aunts in the early evening, so I had to go just as the habas of cervesas (cases of beers) arrived, but I’m told that like the beauty pageant, this fiesta also danced its way to the wee hours.

Cantonales

In honor of the 80th or so anniversary of the founding of my canton, a series of small fiestas has been going on for the past few days. The highlights were definitely a caballeros (cowboys) show in which one of my host uncles took part and a multi-day arts-and-crafts fair that features beautiful wooden goods and woven items typical of the indigenous tribes of the Sierra, or highlands areas. The fair also features food J I’m in love with the Ecuadorian equivalent of the elephant ear. Rather than large and flat, this sweet, yucca-based dough is formed into little balls, deep fried, then coated with sugar. It’s called huevitos chilenos, or Chilean eggs.

A Day in the Life

2010-06-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

*The following ‘day’ is a compilation of several memorable days in Ecuador *

I got up this morning around 6:30 am and stumbled my way into a few pieces of my uniformly drab wardrobe (see right) before heading downstairs to make breakfast. The domestica, Martita, was already there and we performed our daily too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen tango. I enjoyed my English muffin (they don’t sell them here, but PC gave out a cookbook full of recipes for the stuff you usually buy) with an over-easy egg and tea while I watched a bit of the French Open on ESPNla. Except for the maid and the Spanish commentary, I could have been in the States.

I headed out around 7:30 am and walked the four blocks between my host family’s home and the bus stop. There’s a fountain in the square by the bus stop that is never on, but instead is used as a waiting room, so I nabbed a spot and watched the morning bustle. The highlight of the wait was definitely an open-backed truck that went by around 8 am. It was transporting four large pigs, one of whom had his front feet propped up on the cab to better enjoy the breeze. He looked just like a dog with its head out the window, and I’d swear he even had his tongue lolling off to one side. At 8:30 am, 60 minutes and three buses going the wrong direction later, I got on a bus headed out towards the Centro and the surrounding community where I work.

PC wants all volunteers to do a community assessment survey during our first several months in site, so I hiked over to an as-yet unvisited house and shouted out what I hoped was a friendly-sounding ‘hola!’ An older gentleman tottered out of the small brick-and-mortar house and sized up the freakishly tall gringa smiling down from his gate. He gave me the benefit of the doubt and invited me to sit in one of two plastic chairs next to the house. I introduced myself with my usual speech about how I’m the girl who teaches English at the local school and am from PC’s Sustainable Agriculture program, and would he mind answering a few questions. As usual, he looked suspicious about the survey, but curious about why on Earth I was there, so he agreed.

About two-thirds of the way through my questions, his wife walked out and took over. I asked if migration existed in the area and she said no. Seconds later, she said that she did not know what migration was and that yes , she had family who had migrated. I’d long ago given up trying to make sense of this very common series of responses, so I smiled and went on to ask her what projects she thought I could do to improve the condition of agriculture in the area. She told me that I should help the community get a priest (not allowed by PC), and that I could help with the community garden the Parish (in the Louisiana sense of the word) had started but not completed. My eyes lit-up. A community garden ready to go!? The women led me behind her house to a small school, crossed its courtyard, weaved between the buildings, and popped out next to a lovely garden patch freshly tilled and enclosed with a barbed-wire fence. It was perfect.

English classes at the local school begin between 10:30 and 11 am, so I thanked the woman profusely for her input and made my way to the camino (pathway/dirt road) that leads up to the school, basking in the glory of the new-found garden. I love this hike (even if I am always dripping in sweat by the time I reach the hilltop-perched school). It winds up a hill in the center of a beautiful valley full of semi-arid smaller hills while graceful, dark green mountains look down from all sides. I veered-off onto a steeper but more direct cow path and was spit out onto the final stretch to the school a few minutes and a few hundred vertical feet later.
Blocking most of the path were five cows, one of whom was an enormous bull with horns that twisted menacingly in my direction. The cows stared at me as I approached and made a few grunting noises. I think the bull even stamped a foot, but he might have just been transferring his weight. Panic-stricken, I edged over to the fence along the road and called out towards the nearest house. A young mother walked out to see what the fuss was about.

“Es bravo el torro?” (Is the bull aggressive?) I spluttered. She looked at me confused. I tried again, this time adding that I needed to reach the school and was it safe to pass around the bull.

“La vaca?” (The cow?) she asked. She gently told the cows the Spanish equivalent of ‘shew’ and they moseyed away. As the torro turned to go, I noticed that ‘he’ had a lovely set of utters. Oh. I’m an idiot, what can I say? Who knew cows had horns? Certainly not this former city-chick.

“Oh well,” I thought to myself, “now there’s at least one more person in the community who thinks I’m an idiot. At least they don’t grow potatoes at this low of an elevation, so I can’t confirm my agricultural ignorance by mistaking one for a weed (it’s hard to tell the difference!).”

A few minutes later I made it to the school, having carefully avoided looking the bravo campo dogs in the eyes (thanks for the advice, Holly!), and gave an English lesson to my eager and remarkably apt students. I left at 1 pm with the intention of conducting another interview before catching a bus back into town for a late lunch. The survey went well and I got to meet a set of my students grandparents who were both well into their eighties.

We’re now in the dry season here and it’s been several weeks since the last substantial rainfall, so the path is dusty and loose. Distracted by the beautiful scenery, I stepped on a particularly loose patch of dirt and my foot slid out from under me, and with it, all the hope and good humor I’d collected that day. I landed with a thud on the dusty road. Suddenly my surroundings were foreign and unpleasant, not exotic and beautiful. My work was meaningless and silly, rather than delightfully unstructured, and the people I’d met were uneducated and uninterested in change, rather than welcoming and hopeful. I sat in the dust wallowing for a few minutes until the bought of overwhelming homesickness passed, then picked myself up, brushed off the dust, and started back down the hill. The path is, fortunately, long. I had time to locate a bit of the hope and humor that had slipped out before I reached the bottom.

After lunch in the market and a trip to an internet café back in town, I changed into workout clothes and met my host aunts, Mariuxi and Tania, to go ‘trotando’ (jogging). Mariuxi is in her mid-thirties and Tania her early-fifties and the two are fast becoming my best friends in Ecuador. The fact that they can outrun me by about 6 miles is also shaming me back in shape. We jog on the dirt track that surrounds the local soccer field. Mariuxi and Tania have adorable, pink, matching MP3 players that wrap around the back of their heads, and they always manage to look cute in their running attire. I jog around in the hodge-podge collection of gray, white and black workout clothes that found their way into my suitcase and wear a pair of large, black, mismatched headphones that snake down to my second-hand iPod (thanks Theresa!). Needless to say, I don’t look cute while I’m jogging.

I managed to run diez veultos (10 laps, or 3.3 miles!), then retired to do my abdominals y flexions (sit-ups and push-ups). Tania and Mariuxi each ran 25 laps, or a little over 8 miles, while I walked. On the way home, we chatted about weekend plans, food, and from which parts of our bodies we wanted to lose weight. Mariuxi turned and asked me in all seriousness which part of her body she needed to work on. I burst out laughing, stunned and embarrassed by the question. I explained that that kind of honesty was just not something I was used to. Mariuxi and Tania explained to me that among good friends in Ecuador, that’s exactly the sort of thing you actually say to each other. They said it was good encouragement to look their best. I remembered learning about similar openness among close friends in France and now wonder if this is a romance-language phenomenon. Who knows, but I need to take care. Apparently, I now have two friends who won’t hesitate to tell me if they notice I ate one too many ice creams….

Trotando was followed by a quick shower. On a side note I saw a TV show a few years ago that claimed we wash our hair too often, so, until very recently, I was limiting myself to a maximum of two shampoos per week in a sort-of ‘why not?’ experiment. According to the show, shampooing strips your hair of all its natural oils, thus provoking excessive oil production in a sort of vicious circle. This is crap. After six weeks of limited shampooing, all that happened to my hair was that it constantly looked greasy. I will admit that after about three days of oil build-up, it doesn’t look any greasier, but a three-day build-up is still gross. Needless to say, I’ve terminated that experiment.

Next came dinner with my host parents (rabbit – que rico! (how delicious)), then a little TNT movie-action in Spanish followed by a brief foray into Spanish study before giving it up as a bad job (I get plenty of practice going about life here) and snuggling under the covers (see right). Lights out – approximately 11 pm.

You Might Be in Peace Corps Ecuador If...

2010-05-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

... 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

2010-05-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-05-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

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

Tech Trip

2010-04-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

PC Southern Sierra Ag Tech Trip, or Twelve Days with 2 Pairs of Pants

“To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture.” – Roshi Suzuki. It appears the Peace Corps heads this advice, as they culminated two months of training in the cozy communities of Cayambe with a nearly two-week voyage around Ecuador. I spent the trip with the rest of the Cuenca and Loja area Aggies: Brian, Cael, Jamie (Jaime), Jennifer, Matthew (Mateo), Michael (Miguel), and Tony, as well as three PC staffers. The trip began with another charming eighteen hour voyage from Cayambe to my site near the Peruvian border.

The Centro hosted the lot of us for five days and gave us sessions on everything from cuyes (gunea pigs) to coffee. The most noteworthy of the many sessions were desparacitando (de-paraciting) goats and vaccinating piglets. I actually caught goats by the horns while my compatriots stuck a squirt-gunesque device into their mouths to administer the anti-parasite liquid. It was cool!

The piglets were more of a personal accomplishment, as I have assiduously avoided swine barns for the past 20+ years following a terrifying encounter at the Lenawee County Fair, but the animals were little pains in the neck and it was not ‘cool’. I don’t remember what we vaccinated them against, but the shot was only a subcutaneous one (on par with a flu shot), so it can’t possibly have hurt much. The piglets, however, screamed bloody murder and required two people to hold their legs still and mouths together while a third injected the vaccine. One of the piglets got so panicky that it started pooping and Cael now holds the unhappy distinction of being the first to be pooped on during the trip (although now that I think about it, a cow pooped on Joe and the Cangahua facilitator, Javier, during a one-night trip to a town called Nono).

We also had interesting sessions on abonos organicos, or organic fertilizers, where we saw worm beds, fed dozens of tomato plants through a shredder to make bocashi, a fermented compost, and stirred estiercol (manure) for a very long time to prepare bioles, natural direct-to-plant application fertilizers and pesticides.

After playing in poo for a long while, we cleaned up and went to a session on processing primary products into items that sell better. To illustrate this, be made dulce de mani, a snack-food of peanuts boiled with lots of sugar and a little water, then stirred for nearly an hour while the sugar liquefies, solidifies, and eventually sticks to the peanuts. Stirring the peanuts over an intense flame left me sweatier than I ever remember being, but the dulce de mani was worth it. I hope to try my hand making mantequilla de mani, or peanut butter, while I’m here.

After five long and informative days at my hot, humid site, everyone was ready for a respite, and it came in the form of three nights at the Rendez-Vous Hostel in Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is a hippie-tourist hot spot just south of Ciudad de Loja and it’s known for its food, hiking, and long-lived population. I think the food was the best part, though my $5.00 manicure, given while I sipped a Cuba Libre (rum and Coke), was highly enjoyable. If any of you make it down here to visit, you should definitely check out the town, and you won’t have to twist my arm hard to get me to accompany you :).

Each morning in Vilcabamba, following a deliciously French-influenced breakfast at the hostal, we set off for a small community near Vilcabamba where two PCVs are stationed. One works in coffee and cuy production, and the other with a women’s group that processes coffee and produces recycled paper products. At the women’s group’s headquarters, after an initial presentation on making recycled paper and processing coffee, Jennifer and I pulled-out the girl card and secured spots making recycled paper picture frames and bookmarks for the afternoon. You can see my handiwork to the right. It was a genuinely fun afternoon.

In the evening of the same day, we hired a truck to drive us a few kilometers south of Vilcabamba to a small resort called Izhcayluma. It’s owned by Germans, and I enjoyed the best Bavarian Stroganoff and Spaetzle of my life. Now I’m wishing I’d brought my spaetzle maker, but somehow, it didn’t make the packing list.

After Vilcabamba came a six-hour bus ride up to Cuenca, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its plentiful and well-preserved colonial architecture. We had no technical training in this city, stopping only to wander around the city and break-up the trip back north. Cuenca celebrates Halloween/Dia de los Difuntos (Day of the Dead, for those of you familiar with the Mexican Version) with gusto and I hope to get there this fall for the festivities.

Our final stop was in a small town about an hour south of Quito and fantastically close to Volcán Cotopaxi. This volcano, visible from Quito on clear days, is nicely cone shaped and topped with a Nevado, or snow cap that fades into the mountain’s ridges and valleys. We travelled on the Pan-American Highway and got great views of the volcano from the road, then discovered more views of the mountain over a ridge behind the hostel building. The Northern/Central Sierra Aggies joined us here, and we enjoyed an evening of Cuarenta, an Ecuadorian card game, and Pilsner, an Ecuadorian beer, before a morning lesson on building simple A-frame levels and greenhouses. The trip ended when everyone piled into pick-up truck cabs and beds for the final hour trip into Quito, for swear-in week. The stories from that will have to wait for another post.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you’re still curious about.

Chao chao,
Alli

2010-04-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed from facebook photos that I’ve sworn in, and, indeed, I’m writing this from my site. However, I’m rather behind on blog posts, so let’s go back a few weeks to Semana Santa, or Holy Week, with my host family in Cangahua. Isa and Andres, my host siblings, had the week off from school, but the town’s festivities didn’t begin until Maundy Thursday. I went to mass Thursday night with Katy, one of my host moms, and we made excellent pew mates, each poking the other to point out (and giggle at) the sleepers while wiggling uncomfortably in the stiff, wood-plank pews. Also sharing my pew were Reid and Joe. Christina, several inches shorter than the rest of the Cangahua PCTs, sat one pew ahead and towered over her average-in-Ecuador height host-sister. I can only imagine how freakishly tall my pew appeared. I’m going to be the giant gringa for the next two years.

The mass was interesting – I’ve never been to Catholic Easter-time services before and was surprised to see 12 boys and men of Cangahua dressed up as the apostles, and to watch the Padre spend 20 minutes washing each of the “apostles’” feet. The alter area was decorated with hundreds of roses (which are grown in greenhouses all around Cayambe and cost a few dollars for two dozen) and a choir was up in the narthex singing over the congregation. My favorite part of the service though, was leaving (no snickering). The church sits atop a small hill overlooking the central plaza of Cangahua and, farther off, the valleys around Volcán Cayambe. In the darkness, the lights of all the Cayambe communities sparkled.

Along with the kids, the Peace Corps trainees enjoyed a brief respite from the drudgery of training with fours says free from security briefings and Spanish lessons. I took advantage of my free Saturday and visited the market in Otavalo, the best-known market in Ecuador. The streets of Otavalo were covered for blocks and blocks with stalls selling traditional fabrics, alpaca clothing, hammocks, Panama hats (which are made in Ecuador), and a huge variety of handicrafts and jewelry. I purchased a (supposedly) hand-woven belt and a slightly over-the-top, but highly functional hat. You’ll be seeing in it many future photos of my life in the Ecuadorian campo (countryside). The picture to the right shows a fellow trainee, Eddie, descansando (relaxing) in a hammock in the courtyard of a pizzeria that hosted quite a few PCTs.

During the break, I also joined some PCTs in Pesilla, one of the training communities near Cayambe, for a hike into the mountains surrounding the town. It was a beautiful hike, and I discovered that a lunch of panecita with avocado and tomato is exceptionally delicious at 3000+ meters. My out-of-shape and vertigo-prone self, however, decided to go down after lunch, so I enjoyed the thunderstorm that crept up later in the afternoon from the comfort of a Pesilla bar in the company of Reagan, a PCT from Michigan/Washington, who accompanied me down. The rest of the group avoided the thick of the storm, but had to trudge through a bog on the way down, leaving Cara in the condition you see on the right.

My host family doesn’t attend mass often, so Thursday was it for them, but they did observe Easter with a large family gathering of Teddy’s siblings, nieces and nephews, and traditional foods. On Saturday and Sunday, everyone had cake and fanesca, a stew-like soup made with chunks of dried, salted fish and twelve grains, each representing an apostle. It was tasty, but one of the most filling foods I’ve encountered. It left me with food twins.

Next on the agenda (and coming very soon): Tech Trip.

Chao chao,
Alli

First Visit to My Future Home!

2010-04-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Ya sé, hace mucho tiempo sin mensaje. Discúlpame por favor. Era viajando mucho….

Sorry for the delay in posts – these last few weeks have been a blur of travel.

So, I completed my site visit in Loja Province, near the Peruvian border, the week before Semana Santa, or Holy Week. My overall impression is that the site has great promise, but will be really challenging, though in none of the ways I expected. My counterpart organization, from hereon known as the ‘Centro’, is an affiliate of a university in Ciudad de Loja and is actually extremely developed. There are 57 students and about a third as many staff, administrators and farm hands working (and living, at least during the week) at the site, though the surrounding area is extremely rural. The students are doing hands-on study of integrated, ecological farming practices at the Centro’s 50ish hectares of cultivated land and 150 hectares of forest. They study there for three-and-a-half years and have the option to complete another year-and-a-half at the university to earn a titulo, or degree, in applied agriculture.

The Centro is in a barrio, or neighborhood, that consists of the Centro, two tiendas (shops), an elementary school and the odd farmer. After much discussion and shuffling of plans, it appears I’ll be living with a host family in the nearest town, about 45 minutes away from the Centro by bus, for my first three months of service. My task is to work with the Centro’s extension programs, specifically in irrigation systems, in surrounding high schools, and I’m going to look for ways to work with the school and neighboring communities as well. In addition, the staff at the Centro would like me to help with the repair of a failing reservoir (yea civil engineering!) and with AutoCAD classes for the Centro’s students. The CAD classes should be interesting, as I haven’t used the program since junior year of high school. I’m hoping it’s not too different from MicroStation, the program I used now and then with USACE, but I really don’t know. For better or for worse, the docents, or professors, at the Centro seem to have extremely high expectations of me. I hope this will prove more motivating than stressing.

The climate at my site is subtropical, and, as it’s currently the rainy season, extremely humid. I didn’t check any thermometers while there, though they have a very sophisticated field weather station (as I said, very developed site), but I think temperatures at mid-day were in the mid to upper 80s. Afternoon rainfalls were a welcome relief, as they cooled things off to much more pleasant conditions. There is no hot water at the site, but in the heat, that’s ideal. I took at least two showers a day while there. The cold water was the only source of air conditioning :).

I didn’t have a lot to do during my week’s stay, so I spent a lot of time studying Spanish from my 30 Days to Great Spanish book (which is, by the way, awesome. Miles gracias, WCC Conversation Class, for suggesting it) and stumbled across some Spanish words that left me laughing at the names of some well known places in the States. For example, Nevada means snowfall, Las Vegas means fertile plains, and Sacramento means sacrament. I’m convinced that the first settelers of Nevada had great senses of humor, but I can’t figure out what is sacred about Californian politics. Another fun one is Cañaveral, as in Cape Canaveral, which means cape of the cane/reed patch. Does anyone remember if there was sugarcane in the fields surrounding the launch pads?

Besides studying, I spent time chatting with the professors and playing with the Centro’s puppy, Ceibo. A Ceibo is a type of tree typical in the dry forests surrounding my site. I’m writing this from Quito, my location until I swear in as a real, live, genuine Peace Corps Volunteer at the end of the week. After that, I’m off to my site and my host-town has internet cafes!

Hasta luego, y por favor, envíeme sus preguntas!

I’ll write again soon, and please, send me your questions!

Two Weeks of Travel

2010-04-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hi all! I´m leaving in half an hour for a two-week long tech trip with the other agriculture volunteers from my omnibus (group - who knows why PC Ecuador uses omnibus). We´ll spend a few days at my site, a few in Vilcabamba, then up to Cuenca and back to Quito, the capital. Once in Quito, I´ll have a few days of final administrative rubish, then I swear-in and become an official Peace Corps Volunteer on the 22nd of April. I´ve got quite a few stories to share, but am short on time. Hope you all had a happy Easter and are enjoying the apparently unseasonably warm spring Stateside!

Chao,
Alli

2010-03-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

Exciting news – I’ll be spending the majority of the next two years in Loja Province at an education center. The center is the working branch of the University of Loja and an agreement with Peru to do training exchanges, I think. The Peace Corps Ag Program director is very excited about my site, and I am too. It´s considered a new site, but I think a volunteer was there several years ago. I’ll find out more this week, as I’m heading for Loja tonight! I’m told it’s a 2.5 hour trip from Cayambe to Quito, then 12 hours in a night bus from Quito to Loja, then another 2-3 hours from Loja to my sitefor a total of 17 hours of travel!

The gentlemen of Cangahua left early this morning for their site visits in the Oriente and Costa in the center (north-south) of Ecuador. Christina and I, the ladies of Cangahua, are both in the south and leave for Loja from Quito tonight. We´ll all return to Cangahua/Cayambe next Saturday or Sunday, and remain there for a week. After that, we have a two-week long tech trip travelling with the other people in our area and program, so I will be with the aggies in the southern sierra. The final step of training is a week in Quito before the swearing in ceremony at the Ambassador´s residence. (The ambassador, Heather Hodges, came to speak to us last week and was very interesting. I hope I get the chance to hear more about our embassy, but PC likes to keep its distance.)

For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been living with Teddy Caladera in the apartment above her restaurant in Cangahua, a little Pueblito about 30 minutes outside of Cayambe. Cangahua is high up (over 3000 meters), but not terribly cold. The days usually make it into the 70s and the nights are around 50 F.

Teddy runs her restaurant with the help of her friend Katy Diaz who lives here part time (I lucked out, foodwise :). Katy is from Salinas, near Guayaquil, on the coast and has two children named Isabel and Jean Andre. She´s divorced and her ex-husband lives in New York, NY. The shop next door to Teddy´s restaurant sells shoes, and Teddy’s brother Orlean, his wife, Silvia, and their sons, Jaime and Emanuel live above it. The two houses share a staircase with a half bath in the cubby under the stairs. We have our language classes in Teddy´s living room, and the guys have gotten a good chuckle out of the difficulties of peeing under a slanted roof. I´m hoping for a toilet seat in my next location :) Teddy’s restaurant is on the northeast corner of the town square, and around the corner is the house of her mother, who died about two months ago. The house is now rented by a group of engineers who are working on a large irrigation system about an hour east of Cangahua, near the edge of the Oriente, or jungle. In a courtyard between the restaurant, shoe shop, and mom’s house is a courtyard with a lavadoria (concrete clothes washing thing) and a “spa” bathroom. “Spa” here means big shower with a gas-powered hot water heater, but I must say it’s been lovely.

The other aspirants in Cangahua (Brian, Christina, Ross aka Arroz, Reid aka Rigo, and Joe, aka Tío) and I have hiked up into the surrounding hills a couple of times and gotten fantastic views down to the valley of Cayambe and Rose farms, and occasionally of the volcano Cayambe, though it spends most of its time shrouded in clouds. We took a terrifying, but beautiful busride out to a hot-springs town called Oyacachi last weekend for a good soak. Oyacachi is in the Oriente, but it´s quite high up and is colder than Cangahua. The agua termale caliente was a very welcome contrast to the air.

Spanish is coming along; though, of course, I still sound like a two-year-old and have to ask ¨mande?¨every two seconds. I´m looking forward to getting out on my own in a month and studying the things I need work on (grammar!). Talking with my host family is great for learning to listen in Spanish, and they´re very good about correcting me, as I´m the 8th aspirante (Peace Corps Trainee) to stay with them, and they know what helps.

I hope all is well with you and would love to hear from you via comments to this blog, email, or facebook!

Hasta luego,
Alli

On Sunshine and Cynicism

2010-03-07T11:32:00.001-08:00

"There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures." - James Thurber

The light in Ecuador, at least according to my beleaguered skin, is of the obscuring glare variety. The E cuadorian sunshine puts the harshest June light in Michigan to shame. To date, I hve burned a necklace around my neck (twice), the tops of my feet, the radial (for all of you current and future medical professionsals) side of my left wrist, my right knuckles, the place on my scalp where my hair swirls, my lips, left earlobe, and a strip on the inside of each arm. And this was with what I considered assiduous sunscreen application. Essentially, it´s pretty incredible what a little time in the Ecuadorian sunshine at 3100 meters can do.

Act I: Scene I: (The O´Leary family sits around a dining table at an Ann Arbor restaurant)

Alli: What´s the opposite of cynical?
Dad: (Without missing a beat) Stupid.
Alli: (Dissolves into peals of knowing laughter)

So - cynical, pragmatic, cultural sensitivity under-rating individuals don´t make up a significant portion of PCVs, incredibly enough. Since I am such a person, I´ve found myself baffled, at times, by the idealistic, optimistis attitude of my PC colleagues. The fact that I don´t secretly hope to change the world and live in the developing world for the rest of my life seems to depress some of them. Others inform me that all PC volunteers are idealistic; that it´s necessary.

I´m curious about this assumption. A dedicated pragmatist, I´m not much for idealism, and my fall of pop-econ reading (yea Malcolm Gladwell!) certainly didn´t make me any more inclined to it. I do think Peace Corps is an excellent opportunity for the people who serve in it, and the countries we serve in are getting a crop of enthusiastic volunteers, but I wish the attitude among volunteers was a bit more about cultural exchange, and less about escaping rampant guilt over being from the first world.

(I realise this is a very pondering post, and many of you would like details about la vida ecuadoriana. My prepped post on that is long, and the slow computer I´m on won´t copy and paste. I´ll try to find a way to upload photos soo, too! Thanks for reading, and please excuse the typos - I´m trying to go fast!)