Así Es

Alright, it’s been a long time…lots to write about.  FYI- I posted two blogs, Así Es and La Colcha.

I have been in my house about a month now and it is awesome!  I have a garden planted and it is growing fast.  I planted lots of different veggies and I also have some papaya and pineapple growing (I will have to wait about a year for both of those though).  Jefferson and another guy in town built me a concrete wash tank for all my clothes washing needs.  I love the fact that I can cook my own food, and the little kids in town like to come over and bake with me.  My house is still pretty bare inside but it suits me just fine.  Eventually I might get around to actually painting…another volunteer and I have this ridiculous Ecuador mural theme planned out.  I still have bats, but I managed to get the one out of my room.  My neighbor, Luis, will come over and spray and kill some, but they just keep coming back.  I guess I will just have to learn to coexist with the little guys.

Most of the families in town have their gardens planted.  Things didn’t really work out the way I wanted them to with the seeds though.  The MAGAP guy just showed up and started handing the seeds out to people, whereas I wanted to have a meeting to go over some gardening basics and if they showed up to the meeting they would get the seeds.  Now everybody just has the seeds and doesn’t really know what to do with them.  I guess this has given me some more work to do though since I have been going around house to house helping plant.  I still want to have more meetings about composting and other fertilizers but since the families already have the seeds, there really isn’t much interest.

I am starting work at the municipality next week because I finally got Jefferson to sit down with me and write a work plan.  He is a good guy and has my back, but he is super controlling and wants to keep me in Buenos Aires doing things that I don’t think are worthwhile.  So hopefully the municipality gig works out. 

I am also trying to get soil studies done for each person’s farm.  Right now people either describe their soil as rocky or as dirt and are throwing random fertilizer on their crops hoping that it will help.  With the soil analysis, I hope to get people to switch to fertilizers that have the nutrients that their particular soil/crops need so they save money and don’t keep bombarding the ground with chemicals.  

I had some volunteer friends visit me in my new place a couple of weeks ago.  It was great to see them and great to show them my town.  Word spreads so rapidly in my little town and everyone either came to meet them or was asking me all about them later on.  The day after my friends were here, I went to the beach.  A third-year volunteer’s dad bought a condo on the beach and said that the volunteer, Miguel, could use it.  He had never been to the place before so we basically had no idea where we were going.  We were on a little bus in the middle of what looked like the desert and then all of a sudden these two huge high-rises appear out of nowhere and the bus driver tells us this is place.  The place was a newly built resort set right on the beach.  I wasn’t in BA anymore.  The complex itself was super ritzy and nice, but since Miguel’s dad just bought his condo and left, it wasn’t completely finished…there wasn’t any electricity.  So even though I had left the campo and ended up at a super nice resort, I was still kind of roughing it.  We met up with another volunteer and explored the nearby towns and just hung out on the beach.  One of the towns about a half-hour away was basically like Ecuadorian Miami.  After two days at the beach I packed up and headed back to BA.

Within about an hour of getting back to site, Jefferson informed me that we had to fix the water.  Side note: Most everyone’s water in BA comes from this huge pipe coming from the mountains to a water treatment facility.  BA drilled a hole in the pipe (before it reaches the treatment plant) and attached a hose.  The hose then crosses through cattle grazing land, to the banks of the river, crosses the river held up by bamboo sticks, and then goes up the large embankment to a network of underground hoses that go to each house.  The whole system works pretty well, except when it rains.  The connection of the hose and large pipe tends to get clogged because more sediment is being carried down the pipe.  Also, during the rainy season when the river crests, the bamboo gets carried down the river…dragging the hosing with it. 

Anyways, Jefferson told me that water pressure was low in the houses and that the hose was clogged so we went to unclog it.  I grabbed my rubber boots and headed out.  We macheted our way through the forest to the hose crossing at the river.  Well, the river was a little deeper at this point in the season and the current was a little stronger than Jefferson thought.  He disappeared into the brush and came back out with two large sticks.  He told me we had to use them to brace ourselves against the current as we cross.  Keep in mind that this river has some pretty decent rapids (I’ll post pictures eventually).  Little Jefferson (probably no taller than 4’8”) started wading into the river and was immediately shoulder deep and using a lot of strength to brace himself, but he made it across.  I followed and lost my footing a few times but eventually made it as well.  We continued on through the forest until we got to a barbed wire fence, a pasture, and a ton of mean looking cattle.  We climbed a tree and made noise to shoo the cattle away.  After, we jumped the fence and made our way through the pasture.  After a couple of close calls with some bulls we arrived at the water connection.  I didn’t really know what I was expecting but the connection is priceless.  I guess the municipality drilled the hole in the large pipe for BA and attached a valve.  At the valve, BA put a plastic adapter and a shoved a rubber hose onto it and wrapped the connection in rubber, plastic, and wire so that it would hold and wouldn’t leak a lot.  The whole thing just looks like a mess but I guess it works relatively well.  After we unclogged the hose and put everything back in place we made our way back to the river.  We walked upstream a bit to try and find a shallower, gentler area to cross.  Jefferson started wading in and immediately got carried by the current and started swimming like mad.  He made it to the other side a long ways downstream from me.  I decided I guess I might as well try and walk across and see what happens.  Well, I got carried by the current too and had to start swimming.  Keep in mind that I am trying to swim in rubber boots and work pants.  As I was making my way across I realized that my boots were coming off, so I rolled over on my back (I am now on my back head first going down rapids) and tried to pull them back on.  At this point I went over a drop and decided I guess I should just forget about the boots and get to the other side safely.  All the while, little Jefferson was splashing along the shore next to me trying to pull me in.  I finally got to the other side, but I lost a boot in the process.  I had to walk the whole way back through the forest barefoot with one boot in my hand.  As I was crossing the soccer field back to my house, a couple men in the community saw me with my boot and immediately knew what had happened.  For the next couple days everybody had a grand-ole time making fun of me for losing my boot.  Everybody kept telling me I should just go downriver to the next town to try and find it washed up onshore.

Random Thoughts:

·         The drunk who used to pass out in my house showed up one night.  He went on a drunken rant about how awesome he is and then asked me for a dollar so he could buy more beer.

·         ACDIVOCA the cacao organization that I was supposed to be partnered with ran out of money and now all of the technical people that are in the organization with no money have mutinied and formed TECHNIVOCA.  A representative came to BA and held a meeting one day and apparently now I am working with the newly formed organization.

·         People show up at my house at all hours with plates of food.  The think that since it doesn’t take me hours to make a meal that I am not eating properly. 

·         Marbles and POGS are popular games here.

·         When I went to Riobamba I met a third-year PCV that is working with an awesome water NGO.  She helped with a drinking water treatment plant, a wastewater treatment plant, and a watershed management plan.  I will hopefully be doing a tech-exchange with her and getting lots of contacts (fingers-crossed).

·         My cat has some severe attachment issues.  Every time I leave the house he follows me and howls.  When I got back from the beach he had torn up my place and was missing.  Turns out he went to my old host-family’s house in search of me...crying the whole way.

·         I played volleyball with some men in my community the other day.  I have realized that to hang out with people here, I just have to make a fool out of myself sometimes.  It is actually pretty great, because people here tend to be pretty sarcastic.   

La Colcha

Buenos Aires.  The BA.  This place just keeps getting more and more ridiculous.  I don’t really know what to think of this town.  They think that they are so independent but at the same time they are so dependent on the government.  I feel for them because of their geographic location.  They are only 2 hours away from the biggest port city in the country and are only 5 km away from another fairly large community, whom they try to emulate.  The problem is that they are still located in the campo.  They are still a rural community no matter how hard they try to fit in with the ‘big city’ folk.  And the city folk look down upon them as poor campo people.  I feel as though the people BA can help themselves, but instead they rely upon handouts from the wide array of government organizations that Ecuador has to offer.  And when they don’t have a government organization or the municipality to go to, they spend their hard earned money on frivolous things.  One of these things is their yearly festival.  A three-day long event for a town of less than 200 people…a little over the top? I think so. 

I have been hearing about these parties since I got here.  There is a specific Directiva with President, VP, secretary, and treasurer, just to plan these parties.  I first got a taste of how serious they take these parties when Leonor handed me a typed letter addressed to me.  It was a solicitation for me to buy a ‘colcha’ for the winner of the bull fight.  Yes, my little town is set to have two full days of bull fighting.  And I have to supply one of the prizes.  I expressed my opinion about how I don’t agree with bull fighting because they are hurting/killing the animal for absolutely no reason and because they are chopping down part of the forest to make an area for the arena, but nobody seemed to care and I still had to buy the colcha.  The colcha.  When Leonor first gave me the letter I asked what a colcha was and she described it as a blanket that you hang on the wall so that the bullfighter can remember his accomplishment.  I then asked her where I get one of these and how much it costs.  She very calmly informed me that I will have to go to Riobamba to get one.  Riobamba is a 2.5-3 hour bus ride up into the mountains.  And then she said she didn’t know how much it costs, but that I have four weeks to save up money before I have to buy it…sounds expensive right?  At this point I am annoyed.  I am trying my best to integrate into this town, but clearly they still think of me as the rich Gringa who is here to offer handouts.   As I walked away I realized how ridiculous of a situation this is.  I am supposed to find some random thing called a colcha and give it to some drunk dude that decides to fight a bull? 

About a week later I was put on a commission to go to the municipality to ask them to bring in machines to clean up the streets and the arena for the bulls.  As soon as I walked in the door of the Mayor’s office, I immediately regretted my decision to go with.  The president of the community basically groveled at the feet of the sleazy mayor asking if such a great man as the mayor could be so kind and compassionate to lend some machinery to BA to get ready for the festival.  It was pitiful.  Three adults from BA were basically at the feet of the people in the municipality begging.  And they wonder why nobody takes them seriously in Cumandá.  The mayor agreed to the machines and the next day a huge tractor/tiller thing showed up to ‘clean’ the streets.  Basically the machine just tilled the gravel streets and turned all the trash under the ground.  The next day another machine came to cut down all the brush and trees around the corner from my house for the bullfighting arena. 

During the week I forgot all about the colcha until there was a community meeting about the festival.  At this meeting they handed out a brochure with all of the events and all of the names of the donors of prizes.  I should really take a picture of this brochure, because it is intense.  The events go from sunrise to sunrise and they last three days.  The whole point of the meeting was basically just to read through the events of the festival.  In addition to the events, the names of everybody who are donating things were listed.  There my name was…the only person actually living in Buenos Aires with a name listed as donating, so much for fitting in.  At this point I realized I couldn’t really get out of buying the colcha and decided to make my way up to Riobamba.

I asked around town to make sure that Riobamba really was the closet place that I can buy this thing, but nobody really knew since they have never had to buy one.  Most people in town didn’t even know what one looked like.  So I got on a bus and headed out on a wild goose chase to find the colcha.  I got off the bus and started wandering around town.  I was told that every Wednesday (the day I went) there is a fair for colchas, so I began asking around for the location of the fair.  Well most people had no idea what I was talking about.  I would ask for colchas and people would send me to people selling blankets and sheets.  I would then explain to the sheet vendor that I was looking for some prize for bull fighters.  This person would then send me away to some random location that I could never find.  After 2.5 hours of wandering, I stumbled upon a store front with some glittery fabric-poster things with images of bullfighters.  I step in and ask if these were the colcha prizes for bullfighters, and indeed I had finally found the right place.  I asked a few more times just to make sure that this actually was the thing I was looking for, since it looked nothing like a blanket (as it was described in BA).  The lady asked me what design I would like and what I want it to say.  I told her and she informed me that the colcha would be ready to be picked up on Saturday (3.5 days later).  I explained to her that I don’t live in Riobamba and that I needed the thing that day.  She looked a little perplexed but then said that I could buy one of the pre-made example colchas and she would just need a couple of hours to put the name of my community and date on it.  I chose the ‘star’ shaped colcha with the image of a bullfighter and bull on it; the bull is wounded and bleeding red glitter.  So I pulled out the festival brochure, and we decided what to write on the colcha.  The women in the store were really getting a kick out of the random Gringa sent to Riobamba to buy a colcha.  I paid for the thing (ended up being $40…expensive for here, but not absurd) and went to wander for another 3 hours while they finished making the colcha.  Luckily, a volunteer works in Riobamba a couple weeks every month and happened to be there while I was there so I had someone to hang out with.  I went back and picked up my colcha, and walked to the hostel.  I unveiled the colcha from the plastic garbage bag it was in to show the volunteer.  We both just sat there a while laughing and looking at this ridiculous thing.  It was at this point, that I truly realized how ridiculous my life must seem to other people.

                           

Pelucones

So a lot has happened the past couple weeks; I have actually been quite busy.  I guess I will go in chronological order.  Two weekends ago I went to the annual Gala in Bucay (the town across the river from Cumandá, about 6 km from my site).  Every year each town celebrates their founding day with a week of festivities.  The Gala is final big event of their annual festival.  I went with the health volunteer that lives in Bucay.  We got dressed up and headed out to the high school where it was held.  We met up with some of her friends there and danced the night away.  It was actually quite a bit of fun, but it made me appreciate living in BA because all the people there were the rich, Pelucones from Bucay.  Whenever someone learned that I was living in BA they told me that they felt sorry for me that I was living out there…psh I like living in the campo.

I moved into my new house!  It has taken quite a bit of work, but I am officially in my house and out of my host family’s house forever.  The week before I moved in I called up a ‘contractor’ guy to come out and make a septic tank because before there was just a 6 inch tube coming out the back of the toilet.  By build a septic tank, I really mean line a hole with bricks, cover it with concrete, and connect a tube from the toilet to the hole.  After the septic tank was built I figured that my moving out was about as official as it could be so I decided to tell Leonor that I was moving out in less than a week.  She actually took the news quite well (maybe she hated living with me as much as I did?) and was super helpful.  She even went with me into town two different times to compare prices of appliances.  Eventually I ended up buying a mattress, a stove/oven, and a fridge ($775 total…the guy even threw in a gas tank, hose, pillows, and a comforter).  Peace Corps gave me $462 to buy all the essentials to move in, but luckily I have been saving quite a bit of money living in a town of 200 people so I was able to afford the goods.  I also spent a day in town buying dishes, pots, food, machetes, bathroom stuff, a plastic table, etc.  Before I moved all my stuff in I did a thorough cleaning since essentially no one has lived there since the place was built (other than the town drunk that would pass out on a bed frame at night).  Since the house is just a concrete shell there was a ridiculous amount of concrete dust so I decided to whitewash the walls to help cut back on the dust that I’ll be inhaling for two years.  To whitewash I bought a sack of powder stuff and a gallon of glue.  I mixed the two together with water and then painted all the walls.  Even though the paint job is horrible and super uneven, it is amazing how much the little bit of white cheered up the place.  Since the house was empty for over a year, it was infested with bats.  I tried smoking them out by burning trash inside the house at night and I tried scaring them out by leaving the lights on all night, but neither thing worked.  So one afternoon my neighbor, Luis, came over with a spray bottle of some sort of toxin, a ladder, and a long black tube.  He started by shoving the tube into a hole in one of the eaves of the house.  He shoved the tube back and forth a few times and then pulled it out with a bat impaled on the end.  A few more bats started to scurry out of the hole and were batted to death by Luis’s kid with a broom.  Luis then took the ladder inside the house and sprayed along the line of the roof.  A few more bats flew out of the hole outside and a few more escaped inside the house and were batted to death.  After about fifteen minutes and eleven bats later, it seemed as though my house was pest free (other than the handful of cockroaches, a tarantula, and a couple salamanders that I have killed/set free since).  The next night I heard something chewing/breathing above my mosquito net/bed, I turned on my flashlight and was greeted face to face with a bat hanging above my face…oh well one left is better than eleven.  Other than my little infestation, there isn’t too much work to do inside the house except build a counter.  Outside, I will be planting a garden and cleaning up the yard.  Check out some pictures…https://picasaweb.google.com/100931733724063278429/August12011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIiogt3J6YyC8AE&feat=directlink

I ran into the vice-mayor of Cumandá one day and he invited me to go into the municipality the next day to meet with the Public Works Department.  In the meeting, they basically told me that if I wanted they would set up a space with a computer for me to work on the sewage system/potable water studies for Buenos Aires.  They just needed a signature from PC so that I could be official.  Awesome, real engineering stuff!  I told Jefferson about my news and he decided to make my life a lot more complicated.  He supported me going to work with the municipality but he wants a contract written between BA and the municipality so that they have an obligation to help finance whatever projects/plans I come up with.  Jefferson basically thinks that I am doing a huge favor for the municipality by doing a lot of work that they should be doing, but I think of it the other way; I think that they are doing me a huge favor by giving me work to do and a space to do it.  So things are still getting sorted out with that, but hopefully I will be working in the office and drawing up plans soon!

While I was still living with my host family, Leonor’s sister from Cuenca and about 8 other members of the family came up to BA one weekend for a surprise visit.  And by visit I mean that all of them expected to stay in the house and be fed by Leonor…I actually felt bad for her.  I went with some of the family members to a larger town about a half hour away one morning to go to the bank.  As we were leaving to head back home, Leonor decided she wanted to pick up some fish at the market.  My host-cousin, the driver, got into the left lane to do a U-turn.  Right as he is turning a motorcycle crashes into the side of the truck, right against the door that I am smooshed up against since there are four adults in the back seat.  We were on the main street in town so there were tons of people that saw it happen and tons of people that immediately swarmed over to the truck and the motorcycle.  A store owner started screaming at my host-cousin and the guy on the motorcycle got up, hopping on one foot because the other ankle is turned the wrong way, with a bloody nose and he started screaming at my host-cousin too.  After about 5 seconds all four of us are out of the back seat, people are carrying the guy into the backseat and Pepito is running after the truck and jumping into the bed as it drives away to the hospital.  Meanwhile, my host-aunt, Leonor, and I are left in the middle of the street in the middle of the crowd of people.  No police came, the crowd dragged the motorcycle to the side of the road, and we started walking toward the hospital (which happened to only be about 10 minutes away).  When we got to the hospital, there was another large crowd there mingling outside and inside watching the guy get treated…no privacy laws here.  After about 2 hours the guy was treated, (my host-cousin had to go to the pharmacy to buy the medicines), and his family showed up demanding money from my host-cousin.  In the end I think he paid them a couple hundred bucks, the guy was fine, just a bump on the head, and we were on our way back home.  No police, no report, just some money.

Random Thoughts:

·         I finally got the seeds for the family gardens from the MAGAP dude.

·         My roof is made of asbestos.  

·         Pepito went hunting for Watusa again, and actually came back with a kill.  The thing looked like a dog-sized rat, but tasted like beef.

·         I moved into my house before my stove got delivered so I ate sandwiches for a day.  Luis came over right as I was finishing my sandwich for lunch, told me that I can’t eat cold things because they will hurt my stomach, and insisted that I come over and eat a ‘hot’ lunch with his family.

·         I went to Quevedo (about 5 hours, by bus, north of me) one day to go to a cacao fair with some other PCVs.  All the high school kids kept coming up to us to get their pictures taken with the Gringos.

·         I got invited to go to an integrated farm with a neighbor and her kids one day.  We caught our own fish to cook, picked oranges, yucca, and pineapple, and made a really good lunch.  It was fun, but the whole time my neighbor kept introducing me as The Gringa (The White Person) and paraded me around like I was her prize pig at a fair. 

·         I went out to a farm to pick oranges with Pepito one day.  The guy paid Pepito $0.50 for every 100 oranges that he picked and he could take home as many as he wanted….now I have lots of fresh oranges!

·         Since I moved into my new place, people in the community keep bringing me fresh fruit…it is awesome!  And my gossip-queen friend, Monica, loaned me a juicer to use while I am here.  It’s no Jack LaLane…but it is pretty darn close!

·         Apparently my house is the cool place to hang out for the teenagers.  They come over to play cards frequently.

·         I use the old refrigerator that doesn’t work as a dresser/armoire.