Aquí Vacilando

It is getting harder and harder to write these blogs because my life is pretty unexciting now.  I am actually quite happy here and really feel a part of the community so my day to day life is not really out of the ordinary.  I went to a cacao farm on the cost a couple weeks ago to learn about national cacao (the variety of cacao that has the better taste and aroma) rather than the genetically altered variety we have here in BA.  It was interesting to see because the national cacao normally doesn’t produce as well as the altered variety but at this farm they really had their act together and the trees were perfect and producing lots.  It was cool to see, but I don’t think that I will be able to convince anyone to switch over to national.  I have been working with the cacao organization in my town.  They are starting to buy and sell cacao so I am helping with the bookkeeping, money, and business side of things.  Although they aren’t profitable yet it is good that they are willing to learn how to properly manage the organization to avoid problems and/or corruption in the future. 

I am still working with the gardens, but I really am not doing that much.  Jefferson is being controlling again and I can’t start my classes until people are less busy he says.  But there are a few gardens where the people really got into it and are producing some pretty awesome veggies.

I started a recycle club with the kids.  So far we have made some super cool wallets out of juice boxes and chip bags.  And we set up an irrigation system with plastic bottles.  The kids in the club have been showing people around town the things they have made, thus lots more people have been showing up to my house asking how to make things.  And I have seen kids around town picking up and saving trash to make more stuff.  It is just a little project but the kids are actually into to it.  I keep hinting that they should make more and more to try and sell, we shall see if they get into that or not.

I met with the muni again about working on the sewage project.  I sent in an oficio for the workspace and did all the official stuff they asked of me but they are still being difficult.  I feel as though they haven’t even started the study like they said and are trying to buy time so that they can catch up to the point that they claimed they were at.  We shall see if anything comes of that, but I am not holding my breath.

Other than that, I have been tubing with the kids in the river on the weekends, helping harvest cacao and corn, and I went to visit another volunteer in her site for her birthday last week.  Sorry that wasn’t the most exciting post, but here are some pictures! https://picasaweb.google.com/100931733724063278429/October182011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCKuJncfI3svHiQE&feat=directlink

Random Thoughts:

·         BA seemed to be the beginning of lots more fiestas because since our fiestas there has been a number of them in the neighboring communities.  Thus, I have gone to more bullfights and more moto races.

·         I pay about $5 a month for electricity and $1 for water.

·         Bucay has a huge veggie, fruit, and meat market on Sundays and I have my certain people that I go to each week to buy my food.  My veggie lady brings me special zucchinis every two weeks because nobody else has them.  Next week I am bringing her zucchini bread.

·         My cat basically lives with the neighbors now. 

·         The guy that harvests snake venom got my number and won’t stop calling me.

·         New neighbors moved in a couple of weeks ago.  The 50ish year old dad ran with me one day and ran me into the ground.  I guess he used to run for hours and hours every day.

·         My host-mom broke my Kindle with her butt implants.

·         I see a new type of bird in my yard every day.

·         The drunk has shown up at the house a few more times asking for beer money.  I have remained strong and told him no.

·         It has gotten quite a bit colder here.  I actually wear pants and a long sleeve shirt in the mornings.

·         My neighbors joke that they are going to grill my cat for Christmas dinner.

Las Fiestas

For a town of only 200 people, Buenos Aires knows how to party.  Two weekends ago, we had the yearly festivals of Buenos Aires and they really did live up to all the hype they got in the preceding weeks.  At 4 am on Friday morning, I awoke to a band parading through the streets of BA, led by a man setting off bottle rockets.  The theory behind this was for everyone to wake up happy on the first day of fiestas.  Well, waking to a band playing outside my front door at 4 am isn’t quite the happy start to the fiestas that I would have chosen, but maybe I am just not a morning person (fact).  Later Friday morning the elementary school kids had a program.  Some of them recited poetry, others sang, and some preformed dances.  The whole thing was super cute, except for the fact that they kept playing some weird Cumandá propaganda music during the breaks.  It is creepy how much of an influence the mayor and Cumandá have on BA.  That afternoon there were ‘indoor’ soccer games for men and women.  I wasn’t invited to play on the BA women’s team…I am just not up to par with them.  That night was the Reina competition.  This is a big deal in Ecuador and almost every fiesta or event has a Reina competition which is basically like a beauty pageant.  However, I guess there was not that much interest among the girls of Buenos Aires to compete so they just picked the Reina before the night even began.  Thus, the ‘competition’ simply consisted of the four girls being escorted on stage by their dates, then strutting in a circle to show off their dresses, and then the old Reina crowning the new Reina.  Once that was over, there were a few different acts.  A man from Cumandá sang and played the guitar, there was a Michael Jackson impersonator (super good dancer for what appeared to be a 10 year old), a lady who sang, and then there was a comedy group.  The comedians were great and they got a lot of the kids involved which was fun.  They even poked fun at the creepy guy in town that I can’t stand…awesome.  I left around 12:30 at night, but the DJ played all night until the band started up again around 4:30-5ish in the morning. 

The second day of the fiestas was definitely the best.  During the day there was a soccer tournament.  There also was a parade with a band, horses, and some creepy dancers.  I actually happened to be in Cumandá while the parade was getting ready to head into BA.  It was pretty funny to see a whole brass band (10+ people) packed in the back of a pickup truck, playing music as they drove down the road to BA.  Packed in the back of another truck were all of the dancers wearing some strange masks.  When I got back to BA all of the parade members had disembarked from the trucks and were parading around the town into the church with some saint figurine leading the way.  The masked people stopped outside of the church and danced for a while.  Someone told me they were supposed to depict demons…not really sure why. 

After a costume change the dancers emerged again in what can only be described as KKK outfits, however the hoods that they wore were colorful rather than white.  Every person had a white robe and a different colored hood/pointy hat/mask/whatever you call it.  They danced in a circle for a while and then the mass in the church started.  It was all kind of creepy so I went back to watching soccer.  Once the soccer tournament was over the crowds all went over to the bull arena.  The bullfighting was priceless.  First off, to watch, a ridiculous amount of people perched themselves precariously in the stands made from caña.  The particular beam I was sitting on with my old host-family and others was at least 10 ten off the ground and severely bowed in the middle from the amount of weight being placed on it.  At one point during the day a caña beam full of people actually snapped clear in half and people tumbled to the ground.  My host brother said he saw a baby fly up in the air and then land on the ground.  Not sure if that is actually true, but I guess everybody was ok.  Anyways, let me try and describe the ‘bullfighting’ event that I witnessed on both Saturday and Sunday of the fiestas.  To begin the fight the Reina and her court all rode horses into the arena and paraded around a bit.  The Reina was super scared of the horse she was on and that actually caused the horse to kick her off in the middle of the little parade thing…whoops.  After that little incident they brought in the bulls.  The bulls hey used were actually quite small; youngins that were still growing.  They only let in one bull at a time but they must have had at least 6 or 7 that they rotated between.  The bull would come out of the truck and anyone who wanted could climb into the arena to ‘fight’.  This basically meant that a ton of drunken men would hang off the caña into the arena and yell at the bull, but as soon as it came anywhere close to them they would haul themselves back up into the stands.  So, when the bull decided to run in a circle around the arena it looked like a strange version of the ‘wave’ as people frantically hoisted themselves up into the stands.  The really drunk men or the somewhat experienced bull fighters would actually stand in the middle of the arena with one of those red cape things to fight the bull.  Well there was only one guy who clearly knew what he was doing and was able to ‘fight’ the bull without getting hurt.  The other men were not so lucky.  One drunk was trying to run away from the bull and ended up get trapped up against the wall and beaten for a while until he was able to roll on the ground under the beams out of the arena.  He stayed on the ground and passed out in that same spot for the remainder of the bull fight (at least a couple of hours).  At one point a bull actually rammed its way through the caña and starting running away through the streets of BA.  All the people outside of the arena who weren’t ‘safely’ up in the stands started frantically running away and a group of men started chasing the bull.  Eventually they caught the bull behind the school and it took a large number of men to drag it back to the arena.  There were also some professional clowns that came in to mess with the bulls.  The highlight was this ‘T’ see-saw thing that two of the clowns would hang on.  When the bull charged to one end the guy would jump off the ground and hang just above the bulls head until the bull decided to charge to the other end where the other clown was now on the ground.  After the clowns left one particular man decided he wanted to use this contraption too; basically, he would just scurry up the pole and hang there, while the bull rammed the pole trying to knock him off.  This particular man was also the same one that ended the bull fighting festivities for the day.  He ended up getting trapped against the wall and the bull rammed him and impaled him right about the heart.  Everybody started screaming and the announcer guy started yelling for the ambulance.  Well, of course there should have been an ambulance, but this is BA, so of course there was not one.  So as people are yelling for an ambulance, hoards of people are leaving the stands to go crowd around this guy and gawk.  Eventually a group of men carry the man over to a truck, throw him in the bed, and they speed away to the little health center in Cumandá.  People were telling me that he had a huge hole in his chest, and that it was so deep that they could see his heart beating.  It turned out he was ok, and had to get 4 stitches on the inside and 8 on the outside.  He was back at the fiestas later that night drinking some more.  (He actually continued to drink all weekend until Sunday night when he told me his wound hurt badly, so he was going to drive his motorcycle home.  I took his keys away and let him pass out in the middle of town instead.)       

All the Bull Fighters

Dragging the Escaped Bull Back to the Arena

The See Saw

The Guy who was Hurt Later using the See Saw

After everyone dispersed from the bull fighting, people went home to get ready for the grand ball and the fireworks.  I was about to leave my house when a huge group of kids came running to the side of my house to put out a fire.  They were setting off paper globe/hot air balloon things in the park, and one happened to catch fire and land in my yard.  Once we took care of that, I went to watch the firework display.  Ecuador has this thing called the Vaca Loca (translates to Crazy Cow).  It is like a saddle thing that a person puts on their back that shoots out fireworks.  So the man is running around with this contraption on his back while fireworks are being shot out all around him…quite entertaining and quite dangerous.  After a few people participated in that, they set off the Castillo.  It was this large tower of fireworks that was pretty awesome to watch.  And of course there was no caution tape of anything of the sort, so I watched with my neighbors right next to the thing with the sparks showering down all around us.  There were a few actual fireworks in the sky too and that was the firework display.

Afterwards the ban came on.  They were great; it was a really lively brass band from some other province in Ecuador.  They even had a couple of go-go dancers to keep the drunken men entertained.  It was super fun because this was the first time I actually hung out with kids my own age and it wasn’t awkward.  Of course I still hung out with the old men like I always do, but it was also nice to be able to meet some new friends that aren’t either over the age of 50 or under the age of 16.  I got home late, but the music was still going when I woke up around 8.  Sunday was a low key day since most everyone in town was either still drunk or really hung over.  The motocross race was supposed to start around 10 but since nobody was awake until later, it started around 1 instead.  Everybody was allowed to race, there were some older men and there was also a 10 year old boy that was able to hold his own with the older guys.  After the race was the second day of bull fighting.  This day was actually pretty boring because there weren’t that many men that were gutsy enough to actually fight with the bulls, but this was the day I had to give away my colcha.  It was the last prize of the day, so it was a little tough to get men out there since everybody was ready to go home.  But with a little persuasion by the announcer a group of guys went out there to compete for the colcha.  A guy ended up getting pinned up against the beams by the bull and got his pants ripped down the back.  So once he was awarded the colcha, (I chickened out of actually giving it away) he wore it around like a skirt to cover up the large hole in the back of his pants.  As everyone was leaving I was going to go out into the arena to take a picture of the guy with the colcha but he started violently vomiting in the middle of the arena so I decided to forgo the picture and let him be.  Later that night there was another dance with a DJ but since it was a Sunday night there weren’t all that many people there, only the die-hards, like my Leonor and Jefferson.  

Vito with the Colcha

Early Monday morning after the fiestas I got on a bus to head to Tumbaco for our Reconnect workshop.  I have been in site about 4.5 months, so PC has what they call Reconnect where everybody gets together for a week, we present on our projects from our communities and we have some training/workshops.  I had to bring a community representative with me as well.  Jefferson made up a bunch of excuses why he couldn’t go so I ended up bringing another guy in town named Jaime.  We presented on BA and got some good advice from PC and that was that.  It was great to see all my fellow volunteers again and to share stories and to hear that it sounds like everybody is going through a lot of the same struggles.  I got to stay with my old host family which was super nice…Julian is getting so big and is talking now!  After Reconnect I went to Quito to hang out for the weekend.  I ate some great Thai food, went to a soccer game at the US Embassy, went for a nice long run at altitude through the streets of Quito, went to a potluck and played some touch football, and had an amazing tailgate with awesome food at the PCVLs apartment where we were able to watch the Michigan/Notre Dame game (no Iowa, bummer) through the wonders of the internet (and something called a sling box?).  I decided I did not want to head back to site yet, so I went and visited another volunteer’s site on Sunday afternoon, and then headed to Riobamba on Monday.  Tuesday morning I decided I couldn’t procrastinate any longer so I hopped on a bus back to the good ole BA.

It was nice coming back because everyone expressed how it was different not running into me for a whole week and that they missed me...aww.  Since I have been back I have gone to a meeting with APROCAI and realized that they have some major issues that need to be worked through so I will be helping them come up with a large cost-benefit analysis to basically show them that they aren’t going to make any money anytime soon.  The problem with all of these cacao organizations is that they get some money from the government and they build a facility and want to start buying/processing cacao without doing any sort of calculations.  No studies whatsoever were done so now they have this deal/contract with the government that they are going to process cacao.  However, with the tools they have right now, they are not going to be profitable.  Other than that, I am making recycled stuff with the kids in the school, baking/cooking with people in town, and working on the family gardens.  Still no word from the municipality about the sewage plans since Jefferson decided to make them sign a contract with me.              

Random Thoughts:

·         I swam in the dirty Chimbo River with my neighbor kids one day.  We found a natural pool area where there aren’t many rapids.  It was super fun and I surprisingly came back free of skin fungi.

·         I still get tons of food brought to me.  And sometimes they even watch me to make sure that I eat it all. 

·         I went fishing with Pepito one afternoon, we ended up catching four pretty good sized fish and they were actually pretty tasty, although it probably isn’t the safest to eat fish that grow up in super polluted water.  Pero no pasa nada.

·         I have all kinds of things growing in my backyard including oritos, mandarin oranges, lemons, quinces, ají peppers, and cacao.  And soon I will have lots of veggies.

·         When I was gone my neighbors took care of Milly for me.  I came back to lots of stories about how he spilled soup, climbed up mosquito nets, harassed the puppies and chickens, and countless other things…whoops.

·         My neighbors watered my garden for me while I was gone and I didn’t even ask them to.  And Luis came to my house one night with a machete because he thought he heard someone trying to break in.  I really got lucky with such good neighbors.

·         I have gotten used to the two piles of bat poop that I have to sweep up every morning.

·         I was leaving the school one day when a group of chickens got smashed by truck.  Leonor was watching and made me bring her the dead chickens.  She started to pluck the mutilated things and said she would cook them for dinner.

·         A meteorite hit near Bucay a couple weeks ago.  Everybody in town is talking about how it’s the sign for the beginning of the end.

·         An evangelical ‘brother’ came to my house one day to preach to me.

·         I woke up one morning to two rat heads and two sets of hind legs and tail on my bedroom floor.  I guess Milly is a good hunter, but only likes the top half of the animals.

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.