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.