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. 

Que Bestia

Last Saturday we had a bingo baile to raise money for the week long festivities that will happen in September.  Before the bingo there was a soccer tournament for men and for women.  When I say soccer, I really mean ‘indoor.’  This is the sport played more regularly than soccer here.  It is on a concrete court a little bit smaller than a basketball court, with small goals, and a small, heavy soccer ball.  All of the kids in the community raved about how hard I could kick a regular soccer ball, so I was put on a team.  My team lost to the women’s team from Cumandá 4-0.  One of the goals was definitely my fault and I screwed up a lot of other things as well.  Needless to say, the women on my team were not too happy with me…whoops.  When people asked me later about why I was so bad, I just blamed it on the fact that the court and ball are too small for a giant like me to manage.  Later that night was the bingo baile.  Everybody played a round of bingo and then would dance to a couple songs and then play around round of bingo and then some more dancing, etc.  I got bored around midnight (after only the 2^nd round of bingo) and left, but when I woke up at 6 in the morning I could still hear the music going.  Apparently Leonor was there until 5 in the morning dancing, and she wasn’t the last one to leave.  I guess Buenos Aires knows how to party…I need to get with it.

I will be moving out of my host family’s house soon.  The new house that I am moving into is a MIDUVI house, a government projects house.  It is literally the concrete shell of a house.  There is an open area with a sink against the wall that is supposed to be the kitchen/living room, and then there are two bedrooms.  To get to the bathroom you have to walk outside but it is an enclosed room that backs up to the house with sink, toilet, and shower.  Currently there is no water or electricity hookup, but that should be getting fixed soon.  And there is no septic hookup (but there is a large hole behind the house that they are going to connect to the toilet with some tubes and top with concrete…everything problem here is solved with a layer of concrete).  Currently the only thing in the house is the town drunk.  So after I kick him out I have to think about buying furniture, counters, a stove, a fridge, plates, and countless other things that the concrete shell of my house currently lacks. 

On the project front, things are still pretty slow here.  I did get a promising call from another volunteer though.  She has a woman in her site that is super gung-ho about building septic tanks with leach fields.  Apparently, one community had a communal septic tank that collapsed and everything is now going into either the river or the irrigation canal.  The government said that they will help out financially with the tanks but the lady needs to submit plans and calculations…that is where I come in!  Hopefully within the next month or so I’ll go out to her site (in the Oriente) to figure out how exactly we are going to proceed.

Random Thoughts:

·         We finished planting cacao on Pepito’s land.  He wants to set up an irrigation system so I’ll be helping with that soon.

·         Leonor’s nephew showed up at the house one day with a pack of cigarettes and a fifth of vodka.  I am not really sure why he was at the house, but he just sat at the table chatting, smoking, and drinking.  Later, after he was about two-thirds of the way through the bottle, he professed his undying love for me.

·          It is funny how there are absolutely no regulations here.  No littering laws, no noise regulations, no emission regulations, etc.  The most amazing one though is building permits.  I was walking back in the jungle one day when I saw my neighbor cutting down some caña.  He told me he was building a house and invited me to check it out.  Turns out he needed some extra room for people to stay at the hostel so he decided to build a house, thought about it for a couple hours, and then bought some nails and started building.  The house it actually pretty awesome and quite impressive.

·         I was out exploring one day and found the other river that borders Buenos Aires.  It is super pretty because it is set back in the forest and apparently when it rains a lot there is a really pretty waterfall.

·         My neighbor’s dog got hit by a truck the other day.  The owner’s weren’t home when it happened so Danny just dragged the bloody corpse in front of their house and left it.  Later in the day I saw the older woman who lives across the street dragging the dog by the feet with one hand and using her cane with the other.

·         My cat’s name is officially Milly.  Short for Milagro because it is a miracle that the cat has survived the torment of my host siblings.  (Props to Kate for coming up with the name)

Hasta los Colores

Two weekends ago I went up to Quito to visit my old host family and go to Julian’s baptism.  I stopped in a friend’s site on the way up.  His town is about an hour and a half from Tumbaco/Quito area and is tucked in a valley in the middle of the Andes.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  In the morning we went up the hill/mountain to an indigenous community to help a man plant his potatoes.  The view was awesome, but the altitude was not so nice.  By midmorning I was on my way up to Tumbaco to my old house.  I walked in and was greeted by people I knew and liked and who liked me; it was great.  The baptism party was going to be held at the house so I helped them make some food for the night and chatted.  My family has a new volunteer so I got to meet her as well.  After, we all got ready and headed out to the church.  The baptism was kind of strange because it was just a whole bunch of kids and a few family members for each all there to get baptized.  So basically the priest just walked around from kid to kid and did his little ritual thing and then it was all over.  I was the official Gringa paparazzi for the ceremony because Johana wanted lots of pictures.  The ceremony went fine and we were all getting ready to leave when Julian’s father (who wasn’t invited since he doesn’t financially or emotionally support Julian) walks up to Julian, hugs him, gives him a gift, and walks out.  At this point Julian starts screaming because he saw his dad and then he left.  Johana starts crying.  And Sylvia and Fausto are looking worried and angry.  Everybody trudges out to the car, collects themselves, and by the time we are back at the house everything is back to ‘normal.’  The other relatives started showing up at the house and it was great to see everybody again and show them that I can kind of speak Spanish now.  Everybody enjoyed the fact that I am getting married off and that I have a love kitten.  Fausto and Sylvia both forbid me, saying that I don’t have permission.  The night was great.  There was lots of good food, good music, dancing, and lots of laughs.  The night ended with all the girl relatives dancing in a circle to Lady Gaga…classic.  The next morning I woke up and hung out with the family a bit and then they drove me to the bus stop and I was on my way back to site.  The trip back was quite the adventure.  I was going a different way because I wanted to avoid going into the bus terminal in Quito because it is a hassle.  This meant I had to switch buses a lot and get on in random spots that I had never been before.  Everything went well and I made it on all five different buses ok.  One of the buses was full except for the co-captain seat next to the driver, he insisted that I sit there and get the great view of the drive through the mountains.  Throughout the 2 hour drive the bus driver decided we were going to get married in a week, go on a honeymoon on the coast, he was going to teach me Quecha, and then I was going to teach him English and take him back to the States.  He didn’t show up for the wedding a week later, bummer.  On the next bus, this driver decided to chat me up also.  People here are so forward and within a minute of meeting you, they are asking for your cellphone number (I always claim I don’t have one).  After long hours on the bus, throwing up children in the seat in front of me, and screaming babies I finally made it back to Buenos Aires. 

I had made a point of getting back late Sunday night rather than Monday because I was supposed have a meeting and get the seeds for the community gardens that day.  Well, of course, there were no seeds and no meeting.  People here do not like to stick to schedules and it is really starting to frustrate me.  I broke down to Leonor one day with my frustrations and she was actually understanding.  Since then things have been better with her.

Nothing much else is new.  I am planting cacao with Pepito on his land near the river.  In the Escuela de Campo we got materials to make biol.  The kids had their first English test; it didn’t go too well.  I went out into the campo to pick some breadfruit.  There also have been a lot of papaya and tangerines to pick lately. 

Random Thoughts:

·         I have a ridiculous amount of bug bites on my legs.  My sheets are stained with little drops of blood from when I scratch them in my sleep.  My sheets are also stained with squished bodies of gnats and other bugs that make it through my mosquito net.

·         Both dogs at the house died within a period of two weeks.  The first started having seizures and then completely lost it mentally.  And the second got hit by a car and then got an infection from a worm/slug thing.

·         A taxi driver told me one day that I am being a really good example for the kids in town.  He said that he has seen me running with them and picking up trash with them and that I am teaching them things that their parents won’t ever teach them.  It was encouraging to hear.

·         My cat went missing one night.  I looked around for a while and just decided that she would come back in the morning.  In the morning Lizbeth told me that she knew where the cat was the whole time but didn’t want to tell me because she wanted to see me worried and hoped that I would cry.

·         There have been various occasions where men come to the house and shamelessly take out their cellphones, take a picture of me, and then just walk away.

·         My house is on a fairly busy road.  When I am sitting on the porch reading, people will drive by and gawk at me like I am a zoo animal.

·         Pepito and I were out looking at his corn one day and this groundhog/rodent thing ran by.  Pepito chucked his machete at it hoping to kill it because I guess it eats his corn and it tastes real good.  It got away.            

Pepinos y Pimientos

There was a dengue outbreak in Buenos Aires.  Nothing too major, but about 5 adults and a few kids were stuck in bed for about a week with the sickness.  Leonor freaked out when she first heard and started yelling at me about how I have to go get someone to fumigate for them.  Now, I realize that the white-American card can work in my favor sometimes here with the higher-ups but she tries to use it a little too frequently for my liking.  It turns out they didn’t need my help anyways, the medical center had to get the positive results from the people with dengue and then I guess they are required to come out and fumigate.  I don’t really know what I had in mind when they said fumigate, but I definitely was not expecting a thirteen-year-old boy with braces to show up with a motorized backpack sprayer.  The whole thing was a really strange experience.  I was napping when I hear a banging at my door and Lizbeth thrusts my cat in my arms saying to keep it in my room so it doesn’t die of fumes.  I’m still half asleep and don’t really make much of it but keep the cat in my room and go back to bed.  I wake up to the sound of a lawnmower, which is strange because they don’t have those here (except for when the municipality brings in one to mow the soccer field every month), in the house.  I feel as though I’m dreaming it but I decide to get up and investigate.  I open my bedroom door to a child with a huge backpack sprayer on his back walking in the house spraying his chemical concoction.  I freak out close the door, throw open my windows, and try not to inhale too deeply.  Pretty soon my eyes and nose start to burn and I decide I need to get out of the house into some fresh air.  I go out to the porch and am greeted by the same fumes, fog, and a drizzle.  Parked in the road in front of the house is a truck marked as Malaria Prevention and there are men in silver hard hats with clipboards walking around putting chalk marks on the houses across the street.  The mixture of having just woke up and the toxic fumes is making my head spin and I’m not sure if any of this is real.  But then Leonor shows up with a large grin of satisfaction on her face and tells me then just got done spraying the whole school.  It begins to rain harder and I shrug and tell Leonor it was a waste for them to fumigate today, and she smiles and assures me that all the chemicals will stick because they mixed them with diesel.  I just shake my head and she says well it’s better than dengue.  A few days later, the concrete floor in the house still shines with diesel and the puddles outside have that wonderful rainbow film of gasoline on the surface.

I have had a lot of free time and have been reading a lot of books lately.  But eventful things that I have done in the past couple of weeks include starting a garden at my host family’s house.  Leonor kept nagging me about the garden and I kept telling her we don’t have seeds yet.  So she tells me to get the ground ready and she will buy the seeds to plant.  Well, I spent two days clearing the remnants of years of burning and dumping trash into the area she wanted to be her garden.  I added what was left of my compost pile (the chickens got into it and destroyed/ate most of it) and sweated through all of my clothes.  When I told her the ground was ready, she hands me two old packets of cucumber and bell pepper seeds that her son had brought over from Germany.  I asked where the rest of the seeds she told me she would be buying were.  This is when she decides to tell me she ran out of money and couldn’t buy the seeds.  She couldn’t have told me this while she watching me sweat buckets preparing the ground for a garden? Nope, that would be too easy.  So, right now she has some beautiful raised beds that are growing weeds. 

Since the chickens destroyed my compost pile, I decided to make a wormbed.  Pepito dragged some lumber from the fields and we spent a morning building a large box with rotting wood and rusted nails.  I got some red worms sent to me and now I have a wormbed.  Except, Leonor will not let her organic stuff rot a little before she puts it in the box so currently the box is swarming with gnats.  Hopefully, she will figure it out sooner or later since she won’t listen to me.

The guy in charge of the canal project showed up at my house one day to drop off AutoCAD plans for me to look over.  It was so satisfying to unroll the sheets on the kitchen table and stare at them.  Efrian, the canal guy, told me that these were project plans.  In reality, it is just the location of the proposed canal and the existing ground profile.  There are no calculations whatsoever.  There was a meeting later that day where BA asked the Secretary of the Ministry of Water to come and look over the project and discuss funding options.  The Secretary almost laughed in their faces as he asked where the calculations, material list, and costs were.  Apparently, Efrian had no idea he needed such things, he just thought he could estimate the canal project at a couple million dollars and go from there.  So the Secretary basically said actually come up with a project plan and then call me up and we will talk money.  This is promising for me because I hope to help with the project plan since they have no money to hire Ecuadorian engineers…woohoo.  Things are super slow moving here though (it took 2 years to write a study on the need for irrigation) so who knows if I will actually get to do much in the 2 years that I am here.             

Random Thoughts:

• Turns out my family lied about my cat breaking the chick’s leg.  The little girl that lives across the street stepped on it accidently.  This does not explain why they cut off the cat’s whiskers.
• We are confused about the gender of my cat.  Eventually I’ll take it to the vet and he’ll figure things out.
•    Danny left.  Leonor locked Vito out of the house one night on purpose (the poor kid is emotionally and physically abused on a regular basis).  I stepped in and opened the door for him because I was sick of how Leonor treats him.  Danny was just coming out of his room and must have agreed with me and starts yelling at Leonor.  I take this as my cue to go in my room and shut the door.  From what I could make out between the sobs and screams, Leonor expects to be treated with respect from an adult like Danny and that she is super hurt that his is questioning her parenting skills, etc.  The argument ends, I hear Danny go into his room and pack his things.  He was gone before anyone got up in the morning.  It’s been about a week and he hasn’t come back yet.
•  My program manager from the Peace Corps came to BA for a general site visit to fill out some more papers to send to good ole Washington DC.  He told me after the visit that I do indeed live with the devil.
•  Patricia and I have been bonding over the new house she is building.  I went with her to a tile store in town and we spent all morning picking out the tile for her kitchen and bathroom.  When we got home though, Leonor said the colors were ugly.  I have also helped Patricia pick up other odds and ends and arrange her furniture in the house.
• The kids and I picked up trash around town one day.  We cleaned all of the school, the park, and part of the soccer field and it looks a lot better now, but there is still a lot of trash in town to pick up…I might make it a weekly thing.  And most of the town has built their platforms trash.
•   I am getting pretty good at being sarcastic in Spanish.
• Pepito has been going out to hunt wild boar lately.  He carries this super old shotgun around and claims he always hears the noises but has get to see the boar to shoot it.

Olla Número 40

There are councils/groups for everything in my town.  There is a general town council, a school council, a church council, a men’s group, two women’s groups, an agriculture group, an irrigation canal council, and two different potable water councils.  On each of these different councils there is a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and a head vocal.  Most people in town currently have, or have had at least one or two positions on the councils.  Leonor used to be the treasurer for one of the potable water councils.  This meant she was in charge of the money, as well as the tangible items the council owned.  This included a stove, rope, a couple of knives, and a large pot.  These items were used in the past to cook meals for the workers that were digging the well for water.  A couple of weeks ago the current president, secretary, and treasurer of the water council came to the house to collect the items that Leonor still had in her possession.  She forked over the stove, rope, and knives but was missing the pot.  She claimed that the last president had borrowed the pot and never returned it.  The council members argued with her for a little bit but then accepted the excuse and left. 

The next day there was a water meeting.  The meeting began as every other meeting does; there was a list of topics to be covered and each topic was discussed in turn.  The meeting was coming to a close when the last topic came up; the missing pot.  This is no ordinary pot, this is a pot of size 40, and apparently that is a big deal.  The current president begins with the fact that they recovered the stove in bad condition from Leonor.  Well, Leonor is conveniently not at this meeting and Pepito is there in her place.  Thus, Pepe is put on the spot and asked why the stove was in such awful condition and asked where the pot is.  Well, Pepe runs through a slew of excuses about how if you don’t use something for a long time it is going to rust/get damaged/etc.  And that the old president took the pot.  At this point all the attention turns to the old president.  Keep in mind that this is a large meeting of about 85 people who are all wondering the whereabouts of the pot, size 40.  The old president is caught off guard and claims he never took the pot.  At this point a lot of people start arguing and yelling and it’s hard for me to catch everything but I’m pretty sure he changed his story and said that he did use the pot, but that he returned it.  The meeting is in absolute chaos.  Finally, one wealthier and slightly crazy farm owners speaks up.  He yells out, “I’ve got lots of pots.  What size pot is it again?”  The group responds, 40.  He says, “Well, alright I’ve got tons of 40 pots.  I’ll just give you a size 40 pot.”  You have to know this guy to truly appreciate how comical this was.  But basically it was just this old guy saying, “Enough already, you want a pot?  I’ll give you a damn pot.”  Some people tried to protest saying the person who took the pot had to give it back, etc.  But finally someone changed the subject and the meeting ended normally.  Still though, two weeks later people are talking about the pot.  I was walking back from a cacao farm just the other day, when Jefferson and another lady starting discussing the whereabouts of the pot.  I have never seen a size 40 pot, but, geez, it must be something.             

Random Thoughts:

• My cat broke the leg of one of the chicks in the house while I was gone for the day.  Luckily my host family did not kill my cat, but they did cut off half of his whiskers.
• All the people in Guayas (a province of Ecuador) got together to grill at a pool in Bucay a couple of weeks ago.  It was great to meet new people and eat some great food next to the pool.
• While playing soccer with the kids the other day I was told that I run too fast for a girl.
• We are approaching summer right now which means cooler temps.  And by cooler I mean that I can now eat my soup at lunch without sweating into it.  People are amazed and extremely grossed out by how much I sweat.
• People normally ride 4 people to a motorcycle.  Sometimes women in skirts ride on the motorcycle sideways with a baby in their lap.