A Quick Update

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

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

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?

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

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

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

*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.