the last few months have been a little better in work. the main project ive been working on is building dry latrines in a small kichwa community called cuya loma. most of the 12 latrines we´re constructing are made with concrete and metal roofs, and are ´dry´- they dont use water. we refers to mary fifield, coordinator of a ngo called global pediatric alliance in ecuador, chris kennedy, an american now living in puyo, a few other PC vols, the community, and myself. about once a week for the last 6 weeks the community has had a ´minga´, a kichwa word for group work project. mary is mostly organizing it - she´s been living in tena about 5 years and was already friends with the community. chris kennedy is the ´maestro´ (expert) on latrines - he´s already built dozens in small indigenous communities. he´s friendly and really knows his stuff, and really stands out in a kichwa comm´ty with his long, gray beard. he´s been contracted for 2 mingas.other vols have made a visit out to help also - sadie, kelly, kristin, jeremy, roger, susan, and the other mary. the first minga went extremely well as far as turnout goes - there were 7 pc vols, maybe 15 comm´ty members, and even a few guys from the municipio that mary invited.
we´ve utilized chris´s design since he´s got tons of experience, the construction materials are readily available in tena, and they come out very strong and durable, something necessary when building raised latrines. we´ve used tiles for the base and cut 2 holes for the poop to fall thru - there are two 90 cm tall chambers it goes into. under the holes are plastic funnels made from cut-out clorox bottles. every 6 months the waste accumulates - supposedly odorless - and then can be removed & used as fertilizer for crops. sawdust or another natural agent will be thrown in periodically to speed-up the decomposition process and it could take away some odor. its funny, i said alot of volunteer talk revolves around the toilet, and now even my work is.
ive been impressed with the community´s efforts thus far. most kichwan comm´tys are tough to get working, but cuya loma jumped right on this project. its been slowing down a it, esp after the first minga. i think its taken a lot longer than they expected to build latrines. i expected it would take 4 or 5 mingas, and now we´re at our 6th with one or two to go. also, construction materials are a little expensive, especially the metal bar (¨armex¨) circumference (theyre round latrines). for a couple latrines weve decided to leave out the metal armex and use wood poles as supports. then we just put chicken wire and plastic around the circumference and plaster on the cement. we were also thinking of building with clay, which seemed too labor-intensive, or a wire-bound rock-based base, which was too expensive (for the wire).
having not worked with the consejo for a few months, mary from GPA is pretty much my new counterpart. we´ve been the only gringos to attend all the mingas in cuya loma, she´s introduced me to some people around town, and i plan on doing more work with her. after the latrines are finished and fully-functional, i plan to give a few environmental ed charlas (educational discussions) on how to maintain the latrines, how to utilize the fertilizer, and some other env topics. and i may also teach the kids some env ed a few hours a week. the kids are also very friendly, fun, and photogenic, as you can see in my photos on snapfish (lmk if u want a link). and there´s a project coming up in another comm´ty installing potable water rain catchment systems. the idea is since it rains here all the time, to catch the rain in 500-liter water tanks (that are fairly common in rural parts) and send it thru tubes and a filter down to the house. sounds simple, and could significantly change lives.
jueves, 19 de junio de 2008
viernes, 30 de mayo de 2008
Little Things
a lot of times it's the little things about life in ecuador that interest me the most. most people here are modest and subtle, and after living here over 15 months, it's sometimes easy to overlook ecuador's subtleties. for instance, when having a convo with most ecuadorians, they say "ahh. . ya, ya" and an ambiguous-sounding "uh-uh" versus the american "yeah/right" and "mm-hmm". especially the "ahh. . " part, they say to mean "you dont say!" and they inflect a high-itched "mmmmm. . " a lot to mean "i don't know/well what do ya know".
one of my favorites to use is "chuta", which means "jeez", or perhaps even "shit". i would feel bad if it meant shit, except that adults here have no problem cussing around kids. kids here arent sheltered - they live & learn, they dont have earmuffs and if they fall off their bike theyre rarely consoled.
theres also machismo here thats not so subtle - it leads the bus drivers to sometimes race eachother even on busy & unsafe roads, and when they play a movie on a bus it's usually a bad action flick starring jackie chan, jean-claude van damme, steven segal, or bruce willis.
people use nicknames a lot here, im still learning what some of them mean - last week i just learned that people say "suca" to mean blonde, hence they call my neighbor alexandra "suca". it makes life a little more interesting when you're working with guys named duck, cat, clown, fingerling, horse, and froggy. my name isnt as cool, but some friends call me "mishky", because it sounds like kaminsky. it's a kichwa word meaning "sweet".
when people greet (women) here, as with many latin american countries, you kiss on the left cheek. but not every woman does it all the time, which makes it awkward when you're goin for the handshake and theyre goin for the peck. it's a fraction of a second, but not the most distinguished way to meet.
when they pick up trash in the afternoon in tena, they play music on the truck to let people know theyre coming. unfortunately, it's a an annoying 1-minute song that plays over & over. like dane cook, i was inspired to write some lyrics to it, "briiing out your traaash, weee'd like to eat. whateeever you gooot, wiiill be delicious." it's not as good as "horse on a forklift" or even "force ona horklift", but it's a start. honestly though, i like the idea of playing music on the garbage trucks, espacially in the afternoon. early morning is another story. but i dont see why american cities don't do it.
when people are eating here other people typrically greet them with "buen provecho" (which is also the name of a good cookbook we got). one could translate it into "good appetite" , aka ¨bon apetite", but i rack my brains sometimes trying to translate it into enlgish. i realized we don't really say anything like that in america. "good appetite" just sounds weird, maybe "good eatin" if you're from the south, but if anything you would just say "bon apetite".
my 94 year-old neighbor is in surprisingly good health, despite the herpes rash he had on his torso last week. anyways, ive been reading on the porch at night lately, and whenever he sees me as he's walking up the stairs to his apartment, he always says "acabando los ojos" (finishing the eyes) in an tired-old-man voice. i usually reply "si. . claro", with a grin. it's one of the few things he says that i can understand. i just think it's amusing. maybe i should heed the advice of a 94 year-old that can still see, and not to read as much.
one of my favorites to use is "chuta", which means "jeez", or perhaps even "shit". i would feel bad if it meant shit, except that adults here have no problem cussing around kids. kids here arent sheltered - they live & learn, they dont have earmuffs and if they fall off their bike theyre rarely consoled.
theres also machismo here thats not so subtle - it leads the bus drivers to sometimes race eachother even on busy & unsafe roads, and when they play a movie on a bus it's usually a bad action flick starring jackie chan, jean-claude van damme, steven segal, or bruce willis.
people use nicknames a lot here, im still learning what some of them mean - last week i just learned that people say "suca" to mean blonde, hence they call my neighbor alexandra "suca". it makes life a little more interesting when you're working with guys named duck, cat, clown, fingerling, horse, and froggy. my name isnt as cool, but some friends call me "mishky", because it sounds like kaminsky. it's a kichwa word meaning "sweet".
when people greet (women) here, as with many latin american countries, you kiss on the left cheek. but not every woman does it all the time, which makes it awkward when you're goin for the handshake and theyre goin for the peck. it's a fraction of a second, but not the most distinguished way to meet.
when they pick up trash in the afternoon in tena, they play music on the truck to let people know theyre coming. unfortunately, it's a an annoying 1-minute song that plays over & over. like dane cook, i was inspired to write some lyrics to it, "briiing out your traaash, weee'd like to eat. whateeever you gooot, wiiill be delicious." it's not as good as "horse on a forklift" or even "force ona horklift", but it's a start. honestly though, i like the idea of playing music on the garbage trucks, espacially in the afternoon. early morning is another story. but i dont see why american cities don't do it.
when people are eating here other people typrically greet them with "buen provecho" (which is also the name of a good cookbook we got). one could translate it into "good appetite" , aka ¨bon apetite", but i rack my brains sometimes trying to translate it into enlgish. i realized we don't really say anything like that in america. "good appetite" just sounds weird, maybe "good eatin" if you're from the south, but if anything you would just say "bon apetite".
my 94 year-old neighbor is in surprisingly good health, despite the herpes rash he had on his torso last week. anyways, ive been reading on the porch at night lately, and whenever he sees me as he's walking up the stairs to his apartment, he always says "acabando los ojos" (finishing the eyes) in an tired-old-man voice. i usually reply "si. . claro", with a grin. it's one of the few things he says that i can understand. i just think it's amusing. maybe i should heed the advice of a 94 year-old that can still see, and not to read as much.
miércoles, 7 de mayo de 2008
the coast, mas
as i was saying in my last blog, i went to the coast. for the ecua-unsavvy, the country is generally divided into 4 geographic regions. where i live - the jungly oriente (east) - the andes-mountainy sierra that runs through the middle, the hot & humid coast, and the galapagos 600 miles off the coast. i had been to the 3 other regions - the galapagos most recently in december when my fam visited. so i was anxious to get to the coast, the only part i didnt know. i feel now that ive seen much of ecuador (even if most of it's been looking out from a bus). of course, going to the beach was a good enuf motivation in itself.
so we hung out at andrea's house for a couple days, going for a hike in the forest reserve se works with, and visiting her neighbors. her community is afro-ecuadorian and small (~200 ppl), and like most small communities , visiting neighbors is about the only thing they do as a pasttime (besides futbol). the afro part comes from centuries ago when spanish settlers brought with them slaves to do grunt work like mine gold that was supposed to be in the region. the slaves escaped and were liberated , and now manyoftheir ancestors live on the coast, especially in and around the northwest province of esmeraldas (which i hope to visit someday). taking a bus south to jama, we could see huge football field-sized shrimp ponds that dwarf the tilapia ponds at my project (~300 m2). once in jama, we bought 2 bottles of ' rom pom pom', that is, directly quoting andrea, "the best spanglish rum-flavored alcohol with essence of coco in the world". we proceded to kill one bottle on the bus ride to canoa, between 5 people (andrea's ecua boyfriend from nearby came, too). it's actually really good, especially for just $1.25 a bottle. too bad they don't sell it in tena.
arriving in canoa, there were far fewer people than i expected. hey, more beach for us. had we gone the following week im sure thered be more people for spring break. it looked like your typical small beach town, except for maybe more loose dogs and smaller shops. we found a $5pp hostal a block from the beach, bought a jaba (12 pack of pilsener beers), and finished that and the other bottle of rom pom pom. ah, the beach life. with nice buzzes, we went down to the water, which was theperfect temperature. the sand was perfectly textured. the waves were even the perfect height, about 5-6 ft. there were surfers, but not many. after an hour of frolicking, we went tothe bar for happy hour & watched a beautiful sunset. the bar seemed to be the place for gringos, being maybe 1 ecuadorian for every 10 gringos. after a few drinks there we got another jaba and went back to the hostal. we killed those beers, and i subsequently puked. most of the night is pretty hazy. ah, the beach life.
if there's anything better than drinking in canoa, and the beach in canoa, it's the food in canoa. there's several small restaurants serving mariscos like ceviche, calamari, fish, and crab, of course with the abundant verde (platano) chips. and street vendors sell empanadas, fresh fruit juices, and one of my favorites, corviche - an empanada made with verde and filled with fish. 4 could fill me, and they only cost 25 cents. that's another thing about canoa - the food is cheaper. i dont really know why, but tena is just more expensive. with all this goin on, it kinda makes me wish i was living out on the coast. but then i realize it probably wouldnt be as cool if i actually lived there. i might think tena is a great site if i lived in canoa. nonetheless, i must return to canoa before i leave.
so we hung out at andrea's house for a couple days, going for a hike in the forest reserve se works with, and visiting her neighbors. her community is afro-ecuadorian and small (~200 ppl), and like most small communities , visiting neighbors is about the only thing they do as a pasttime (besides futbol). the afro part comes from centuries ago when spanish settlers brought with them slaves to do grunt work like mine gold that was supposed to be in the region. the slaves escaped and were liberated , and now manyoftheir ancestors live on the coast, especially in and around the northwest province of esmeraldas (which i hope to visit someday). taking a bus south to jama, we could see huge football field-sized shrimp ponds that dwarf the tilapia ponds at my project (~300 m2). once in jama, we bought 2 bottles of ' rom pom pom', that is, directly quoting andrea, "the best spanglish rum-flavored alcohol with essence of coco in the world". we proceded to kill one bottle on the bus ride to canoa, between 5 people (andrea's ecua boyfriend from nearby came, too). it's actually really good, especially for just $1.25 a bottle. too bad they don't sell it in tena.
arriving in canoa, there were far fewer people than i expected. hey, more beach for us. had we gone the following week im sure thered be more people for spring break. it looked like your typical small beach town, except for maybe more loose dogs and smaller shops. we found a $5pp hostal a block from the beach, bought a jaba (12 pack of pilsener beers), and finished that and the other bottle of rom pom pom. ah, the beach life. with nice buzzes, we went down to the water, which was theperfect temperature. the sand was perfectly textured. the waves were even the perfect height, about 5-6 ft. there were surfers, but not many. after an hour of frolicking, we went tothe bar for happy hour & watched a beautiful sunset. the bar seemed to be the place for gringos, being maybe 1 ecuadorian for every 10 gringos. after a few drinks there we got another jaba and went back to the hostal. we killed those beers, and i subsequently puked. most of the night is pretty hazy. ah, the beach life.
if there's anything better than drinking in canoa, and the beach in canoa, it's the food in canoa. there's several small restaurants serving mariscos like ceviche, calamari, fish, and crab, of course with the abundant verde (platano) chips. and street vendors sell empanadas, fresh fruit juices, and one of my favorites, corviche - an empanada made with verde and filled with fish. 4 could fill me, and they only cost 25 cents. that's another thing about canoa - the food is cheaper. i dont really know why, but tena is just more expensive. with all this goin on, it kinda makes me wish i was living out on the coast. but then i realize it probably wouldnt be as cool if i actually lived there. i might think tena is a great site if i lived in canoa. nonetheless, i must return to canoa before i leave.
lunes, 28 de abril de 2008
half-way done!
one year of service has come and gone in ecualand. it´s weird to realize that, because the days themselves seem to go by slowly, yet the weeks and months are flying by. i´m still not ´working´ much, but i have prospects and remain optimistic. basically the last few weeks i´ve been trying to work less with the consejo, and meet contacts myself. i´m a lot more confident in my spanish that i was when i got to tena a year ago (one year and one week ago today - i arrived here on april 22 2007). it´s not that my spanish vocabulary is outstanding now, and i´m definitely not fluent. i feel more comfortable, knowing what´s usually said in an average ecuadorian converstion and knowing that i´m gonna make some mistakes. it´s cool to know another language, but it would be cooler if i didnt have to work at it still - like if i didnt have to concentrate as much, or if i could speak ´street spanish´ better or if i didnt have to practice by reading spanish subtitles in movies. but it´s progressing with time.
i´ve been to the town outside puyo with the dam a couple more times since the last blog. i finally remembered the name of it now - urki churi, or something like that. interesting name, i know - it´s a kichwa name for a type of bird, they tell me. anyway, me and jeremy went back last month to check out the dam they built. they got money for diesel for a tractor and in one day they bulldozed a bunch of dirt & rocks near where the old dam was. the first time we returned jeremy and i were pleasantly surprised to find the 10 fish ponds full of water (no fish) and the dirt dam they made looking pretty good. of course, it wasnt our design, with bags of soil and clay that would make it dense and fairly erosion-resistant. so we still told them our concerns and advises them to put a layer of clay where the water met the dam. we were pretty impressed, the dam was about 15m long and 5m wide, apparently constructed easily with the use of the machine.
we arranged a ´charla´, or discussion session, aboutfish farming and environmental topics for a few weeks later, and left feeling pleased yet a little worried about the durability of this new dam.
sure enough, we come back a few weeks later to do the charla, and there´s no water in the fish ponds. great. inspecting the dam, it´s still holding up, but now the problem is where the pipes on the side of the reservoir catches the water to send it to the fish ponds. water is now slowly flowing under his cement catchment basin, and basically going around the dam. so somehow they gotta patch-up that leak (and pray the actual dirt dam portion holds up). i gave my fish presentation to 10 community members (they originally said 30 would show up) in 1.5 hours. i wrote it in a powerpoint show and jeremy brought his laptop and a projector from his office to present it on a screen. i even incorporated a little educational game halfway through. i think it went really well. of course, i wish more people had shown up, and we´ll have to wait for them to get water in their ponds to see how well they´ll raise fish.
after a chicha break, jeremy gave his presentation on environment issues such as global warming & pollution for 30 minutes. i loved when he explained to these people who live in the jungle (yeah, theyre cutting it at alarming rates, but theyre still living much more sustainably than the average american) how america is the #1 polluter, but it´s affecting people everywhere like themselves. we drank some more chicha and discussed perhaps a potable rainwater collection system for them, then got on a bus back to puyo. i for one was feeling pretty damn good (it was my first charla, jeremy has given several before). i´d say it´s probably the most productive thing ive done in my service yet. hopefully they can actually get their damn dam fixed and some fish into those holes in the ground.
a few weeks ago i went to the coast for the first time. it was really nice. i planned to go with elliott and his girlfriend trinity , but he had to work, so just me and trinity went. like elliott, her and i are good friends (she always lets me stay at her place in quito when i´m there, and vice versa). her & elliott were going out in the states (colorado), and when he came to ecuador for PC she signed up for teach for america here too. it´s a program where u pay $ to teach english in other countries, and they pay u back as u live and work in that country. shes not a big fan of quito´s cold weather, but generally likes ecuador. and i like having a free place to crash in quito.
so the bus ride took 9.5 hours, from quito to a small town named tabuga, outside jama, in the province of manabi. normally it would have taken 7 hours, but it had been raining heavily the week before and mudslides closed the main road to the coast. we stayed w a PC vol andrea, who´s also a godd friend. as soon as we arrived she served us ceviche - a typically coastal soup with huge shrimp grown nearby, yuca, lime juice, and platano chips, or ´verde´. we hung out a while in her small, quaint hut and slept while andrea and her brother alex, who´s been living w her since january, went to work in the forest reserve nearby. i´d only slept 4 hours on the night bus we took, so her hammock was very nice. it´s funny, andrea´s mom got to know me through hammocks. her family visited tena in december, and while we were having cocktails together at araña bar she mentioned something about my hammock. how did u know i have a hammock? i asked. turns out she´d read about it in my blog before she came. g2g for now. ¡chao!
i´ve been to the town outside puyo with the dam a couple more times since the last blog. i finally remembered the name of it now - urki churi, or something like that. interesting name, i know - it´s a kichwa name for a type of bird, they tell me. anyway, me and jeremy went back last month to check out the dam they built. they got money for diesel for a tractor and in one day they bulldozed a bunch of dirt & rocks near where the old dam was. the first time we returned jeremy and i were pleasantly surprised to find the 10 fish ponds full of water (no fish) and the dirt dam they made looking pretty good. of course, it wasnt our design, with bags of soil and clay that would make it dense and fairly erosion-resistant. so we still told them our concerns and advises them to put a layer of clay where the water met the dam. we were pretty impressed, the dam was about 15m long and 5m wide, apparently constructed easily with the use of the machine.
we arranged a ´charla´, or discussion session, aboutfish farming and environmental topics for a few weeks later, and left feeling pleased yet a little worried about the durability of this new dam.
sure enough, we come back a few weeks later to do the charla, and there´s no water in the fish ponds. great. inspecting the dam, it´s still holding up, but now the problem is where the pipes on the side of the reservoir catches the water to send it to the fish ponds. water is now slowly flowing under his cement catchment basin, and basically going around the dam. so somehow they gotta patch-up that leak (and pray the actual dirt dam portion holds up). i gave my fish presentation to 10 community members (they originally said 30 would show up) in 1.5 hours. i wrote it in a powerpoint show and jeremy brought his laptop and a projector from his office to present it on a screen. i even incorporated a little educational game halfway through. i think it went really well. of course, i wish more people had shown up, and we´ll have to wait for them to get water in their ponds to see how well they´ll raise fish.
after a chicha break, jeremy gave his presentation on environment issues such as global warming & pollution for 30 minutes. i loved when he explained to these people who live in the jungle (yeah, theyre cutting it at alarming rates, but theyre still living much more sustainably than the average american) how america is the #1 polluter, but it´s affecting people everywhere like themselves. we drank some more chicha and discussed perhaps a potable rainwater collection system for them, then got on a bus back to puyo. i for one was feeling pretty damn good (it was my first charla, jeremy has given several before). i´d say it´s probably the most productive thing ive done in my service yet. hopefully they can actually get their damn dam fixed and some fish into those holes in the ground.
a few weeks ago i went to the coast for the first time. it was really nice. i planned to go with elliott and his girlfriend trinity , but he had to work, so just me and trinity went. like elliott, her and i are good friends (she always lets me stay at her place in quito when i´m there, and vice versa). her & elliott were going out in the states (colorado), and when he came to ecuador for PC she signed up for teach for america here too. it´s a program where u pay $ to teach english in other countries, and they pay u back as u live and work in that country. shes not a big fan of quito´s cold weather, but generally likes ecuador. and i like having a free place to crash in quito.
so the bus ride took 9.5 hours, from quito to a small town named tabuga, outside jama, in the province of manabi. normally it would have taken 7 hours, but it had been raining heavily the week before and mudslides closed the main road to the coast. we stayed w a PC vol andrea, who´s also a godd friend. as soon as we arrived she served us ceviche - a typically coastal soup with huge shrimp grown nearby, yuca, lime juice, and platano chips, or ´verde´. we hung out a while in her small, quaint hut and slept while andrea and her brother alex, who´s been living w her since january, went to work in the forest reserve nearby. i´d only slept 4 hours on the night bus we took, so her hammock was very nice. it´s funny, andrea´s mom got to know me through hammocks. her family visited tena in december, and while we were having cocktails together at araña bar she mentioned something about my hammock. how did u know i have a hammock? i asked. turns out she´d read about it in my blog before she came. g2g for now. ¡chao!
jueves, 28 de febrero de 2008
unpredictable
work has been really slow lately, almost non-existent. I started off going to the consejo´s office every morning, usually staying until the afternoon. then i started skipping days and leaving before lunch because we hardly did anything if we hadnt done so by lunch. then i realized i hardly did anything most days and went to the office only a couple times a week. now ive also been lazy and its been 2 weeks since i last went; significant work is so few and far-between that most days its not even worth going.
so, ive been reading a ton lately, ive finished 4 books in the last 2 weeks. my total for the year i´ve been here is at 37. ive been rating them too, from 1-5, with 5 the best:
ender´s game: 5
me talk pretty someday: 5
secret life of bees: 2
white fang: 4
savages: 4
harry potter 7: 5
kite runner: 5
sidharta: 5
the forgotten: 5
fast food nation: 5
running with scissors: 5
lamb: 3
la selva: 2
animal dreams: 3
you shall know our velocity: 5
100 years of solitude: 4
living poor: 4
chavez: 4
memoirs of a geisha: 5
confessions of an economic hitman: 5
don´t kiss them goodbye: 1
lonesome dove: 4
lord of the flies: 2
killing pablo: 4
the 5 people you meet in heaven: 4
imperial america: 3
minus man: 3
into thin air: 5
a clockwork orange: 5
franny and zooey: 1
i am america: 5
count of monte cristo: 2
born standing up: 3
a short history of nearly everything: 5
angela´s ashes: 3
fluke: 4
lord of the rings 1: 5
most books come from volunteers in my group living nearby in th jungle, andrew and sadie. we have a ´book club´, where basically they get books sent from the US, read them, and leave them at my place til i get around to reding them. their tally is around 65 now, so i have a lot of books at my house waiting. im not trying to catch up with them, but at the rate im at now i just might.
on february 7 we celebrated our 1-year anniversary of being in ecuador. time has been going by faster, and now that there{s a new batch of habitat and agriculture volunteers in country (theyre still trainees, technically), i kinda feel like a veteran, and i guess i am, in a way. i mean, im not the best at getting things done and developes, but as far as the culture goes, i pretty much know what to expect (unpredictability, mainly). on an irrelevant side note, my program name got changed from ´habitat conservation´ to ´natural resources conservation´ recently - my boss says it´s cuz some ecuadorians dont know what ´habitat´ means and that natural resources is just a better term. i´d agree that if there´s anything we´re saving it´s natural resources like water and soil, more than jungles or forests from deforestation and the like.
back to working, i´d say the last ´work´ i did might be what got me into this funk in the first place. a few weeks ago i went down south 2 hours (which is a terribly bumpy bus ride, by the way) to Puyo in the neighboring province of Pastaza. on another side note, Puyo seems like a nice city, a little larger than Tena, more metropolitan, and cooler. my co-volunteer Jeremy lives down there with his wife, also working with environmental projects. a little town was interested in getting some some advice for building a dam so they could get running water in the homes and water to fill their fish ponds, and jeremy invited me to come out to help. we got out there, and saw the stream and the dam that was almost demolished after a big storm came. i{ll be brief here, if you wanna know details check out jeremy´s blog site, http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/Puyo/blog-248730.html
but basically we took some measurements, told them we´d come up with some designs for a new dam, and were on our way.
our (jeremy and i) idea was to make the dam/dike out of ´earth bags´: very basic, that is, just take some big mesh bags, fill them with soil, stack them, put a little clay over them , and voila - a dam. it would be pretty cheap, i estimated $150-$250 mostly just for the bags, although potentially time-consuming. nonetheless, us gringos decided it was the bestbet considering it´s very strong yet simple, and the resource missing was money, not time.
why did the original dam fall, you might ask? the municipality of puyo had apparently given them funds a couple years ago to build one, but hadnt provided them an engineer to consult them. so they built it out of expensive concrete - approximately 25 feet long, 4 feet tall, and 6 inches wide, essentially just a 90-degree wall sitting in the stream. now, i´m not an expert on dams, but i couldve predicted that the center of the wall would crack and fall due to the great pressure on it from the very strong rain storms that frequently hit Puyo. over the last year theyve been trying to put it together, but it just keeps falling with the storms. so jeremy and i found some resources online and in books on building this new earth bag dam, with a 45-degree slope to relieve pressure, dense, with a strong base anchored below the ground, and came back after a couple weeks to present our ideas.
the community leaders seemed to hear us but not listen. after all we had done to help design a durable dam, they told us they wanted to use a bulldozer to basically push soil and create a large strip of land where there was now a stream. they could get the bulldozer for free for a day, they just needed money for the gas. if anythig ive learned from working in ecuador its that it´s unpredictable, so i wasnt entirely surprised by this, and in fact i had told jeremy on the way there that i just hoped they wouldnt ask us for money. needless to say, we explained that we´re just volunteers and didnt have the funds, plus if we´d said yes they only wouldve asked for more later. jeremy and i still pushed the earth bag idea, as their idea might have rocks and materials in the soil where water could penetrate and crack it, and it wouldnt be dense enough, but they seemed set on their idea and we were set on not giving them money. we did tell them that whenever they are ready to bulldoze land we could come back to check it out, but nothings happened yet.
i feel bad for them, because they are the ones in poverty, they are the ones we are here to help, yet rather than accept our help they are stuck on the idea that money overrides knowledge. i hope they dont have to find out the hard way, again, but it seems thats what will happen. at least theres only about 40 people in their community. there are many points to this story - #1: working apart from the consejo can potentially be rewarding and allow me to see more of the country. #2: some institutions dont do a good job of really helping communities. #3: most communities would rather take money, especially from gringos, than sound advice thats better for the long term. #4: work here is unpredictable and in general sucks, yet im still trying to find my niche.
so, ive been reading a ton lately, ive finished 4 books in the last 2 weeks. my total for the year i´ve been here is at 37. ive been rating them too, from 1-5, with 5 the best:
ender´s game: 5
me talk pretty someday: 5
secret life of bees: 2
white fang: 4
savages: 4
harry potter 7: 5
kite runner: 5
sidharta: 5
the forgotten: 5
fast food nation: 5
running with scissors: 5
lamb: 3
la selva: 2
animal dreams: 3
you shall know our velocity: 5
100 years of solitude: 4
living poor: 4
chavez: 4
memoirs of a geisha: 5
confessions of an economic hitman: 5
don´t kiss them goodbye: 1
lonesome dove: 4
lord of the flies: 2
killing pablo: 4
the 5 people you meet in heaven: 4
imperial america: 3
minus man: 3
into thin air: 5
a clockwork orange: 5
franny and zooey: 1
i am america: 5
count of monte cristo: 2
born standing up: 3
a short history of nearly everything: 5
angela´s ashes: 3
fluke: 4
lord of the rings 1: 5
most books come from volunteers in my group living nearby in th jungle, andrew and sadie. we have a ´book club´, where basically they get books sent from the US, read them, and leave them at my place til i get around to reding them. their tally is around 65 now, so i have a lot of books at my house waiting. im not trying to catch up with them, but at the rate im at now i just might.
on february 7 we celebrated our 1-year anniversary of being in ecuador. time has been going by faster, and now that there{s a new batch of habitat and agriculture volunteers in country (theyre still trainees, technically), i kinda feel like a veteran, and i guess i am, in a way. i mean, im not the best at getting things done and developes, but as far as the culture goes, i pretty much know what to expect (unpredictability, mainly). on an irrelevant side note, my program name got changed from ´habitat conservation´ to ´natural resources conservation´ recently - my boss says it´s cuz some ecuadorians dont know what ´habitat´ means and that natural resources is just a better term. i´d agree that if there´s anything we´re saving it´s natural resources like water and soil, more than jungles or forests from deforestation and the like.
back to working, i´d say the last ´work´ i did might be what got me into this funk in the first place. a few weeks ago i went down south 2 hours (which is a terribly bumpy bus ride, by the way) to Puyo in the neighboring province of Pastaza. on another side note, Puyo seems like a nice city, a little larger than Tena, more metropolitan, and cooler. my co-volunteer Jeremy lives down there with his wife, also working with environmental projects. a little town was interested in getting some some advice for building a dam so they could get running water in the homes and water to fill their fish ponds, and jeremy invited me to come out to help. we got out there, and saw the stream and the dam that was almost demolished after a big storm came. i{ll be brief here, if you wanna know details check out jeremy´s blog site, http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/Puyo/blog-248730.html
but basically we took some measurements, told them we´d come up with some designs for a new dam, and were on our way.
our (jeremy and i) idea was to make the dam/dike out of ´earth bags´: very basic, that is, just take some big mesh bags, fill them with soil, stack them, put a little clay over them , and voila - a dam. it would be pretty cheap, i estimated $150-$250 mostly just for the bags, although potentially time-consuming. nonetheless, us gringos decided it was the bestbet considering it´s very strong yet simple, and the resource missing was money, not time.
why did the original dam fall, you might ask? the municipality of puyo had apparently given them funds a couple years ago to build one, but hadnt provided them an engineer to consult them. so they built it out of expensive concrete - approximately 25 feet long, 4 feet tall, and 6 inches wide, essentially just a 90-degree wall sitting in the stream. now, i´m not an expert on dams, but i couldve predicted that the center of the wall would crack and fall due to the great pressure on it from the very strong rain storms that frequently hit Puyo. over the last year theyve been trying to put it together, but it just keeps falling with the storms. so jeremy and i found some resources online and in books on building this new earth bag dam, with a 45-degree slope to relieve pressure, dense, with a strong base anchored below the ground, and came back after a couple weeks to present our ideas.
the community leaders seemed to hear us but not listen. after all we had done to help design a durable dam, they told us they wanted to use a bulldozer to basically push soil and create a large strip of land where there was now a stream. they could get the bulldozer for free for a day, they just needed money for the gas. if anythig ive learned from working in ecuador its that it´s unpredictable, so i wasnt entirely surprised by this, and in fact i had told jeremy on the way there that i just hoped they wouldnt ask us for money. needless to say, we explained that we´re just volunteers and didnt have the funds, plus if we´d said yes they only wouldve asked for more later. jeremy and i still pushed the earth bag idea, as their idea might have rocks and materials in the soil where water could penetrate and crack it, and it wouldnt be dense enough, but they seemed set on their idea and we were set on not giving them money. we did tell them that whenever they are ready to bulldoze land we could come back to check it out, but nothings happened yet.
i feel bad for them, because they are the ones in poverty, they are the ones we are here to help, yet rather than accept our help they are stuck on the idea that money overrides knowledge. i hope they dont have to find out the hard way, again, but it seems thats what will happen. at least theres only about 40 people in their community. there are many points to this story - #1: working apart from the consejo can potentially be rewarding and allow me to see more of the country. #2: some institutions dont do a good job of really helping communities. #3: most communities would rather take money, especially from gringos, than sound advice thats better for the long term. #4: work here is unpredictable and in general sucks, yet im still trying to find my niche.
sábado, 17 de noviembre de 2007
cosas
i bought a hammock for my apartment recently and its awesome. before all i had were 3 plastic chairs to go along with my plastic table. the first day i had it i took a 2hour nap in it. the $12 i payed is probably the best investment ive made here. besides having my wallet picked in a quito trolley in september, ive only lost a few other things. for some reason i cant manage to keep track of sunglasses, umbrellas, or basketballs here. ive lost 2 of each. i bought a cheap bball for $4 and it got a hole in it the very same day. a few weeks later i bought a nicer one (spalding) for $15. so before i had a chance to write my name on it, i took this ball to the gym for a game. an hour later i didnt see it, and searching for it, i caught a kid leaving the gym w/ a ball similar to the one i just bought in his hands. i went up to him and asked if it was his. he said yes, then his mom comes up and shes like, ¨his dad gave it to him¨. i still had a feeling it was mine, so i asked the kid, ¨youre sure its yours?¨, and he said yeah again, so i let it go. but after looking for 5 more minutes i realized id been duped.
there seems to be a lack of good bballs around here, despite the sport´s semi-popularity, which is understandable given the economic conditions and $15 price tag. but i especially cant believe that the mom would lie like that, too. a week later i bought another of the same ball, this time i wrote my name nice and big on it. i took it to the gym again, and it turned up missing again. i was pretty distraught. a week went by and we had another game, and to my relief, a teammate told me my ball was in the storage closet. it may sound petty, but $15 is about 8% of my monthly stipend. so im reluctant to even take it outsie my place now.
as i write this ive been sick for a few days. i think ive got ´bichos´, which is a proliferation of ´bugs´or amoebas in the stomach. i probably got them when i drank 2 bowls of chicha being passed around in a community on friday. they can cause giardia, from bugs living in dirty water, which could have been used for the chicha. giardia symptoms include being constantly bloated, gassy, nauseous, with greyish diarhhea, symptoms i definitely have. i probably had giardia a few months ago as well. i felt so nauseous while eating delicious pizza, i couldnt even finish it, and i had to crash at a hostal 5 minutes away rather than walk the 10 minutes home. i had to use the bathroom once an hour the whole night. i probably lost 10 lbs in those 4 days alone. that was definitely the sickest ive been here because i had a fever too; it was perhaps the worst ive ever felt. its weird how PC vols´conversations tend to revolve around the toilet. there is an over-the-counter medicine called fasogen in tena that works pretty well against bichos. i've been eating a lot of ají, raw onions, and papaya seeds lately, they're supposed to kill bichos, too. and all volunteers get 'deparasitized' after a year of service, so i'm looking forward to that.
speaking of feeling under the weather, the weather is weird here. obviously i expected a lot of rain living in the rain forest. but i expected more or less rainy seasons and dry seasons.so far i would say there has been a wet season and a wetter season. when i got here in spril it was wetter, usually raining a couple hours a day, up until august, whihc was dry, it only rained 4 or 5 days the whole month. the 'dry' season is supposed to go til january, but october was a very wet month, probably the second wettest behind only May. and there were some spectacular lightning storms on display from my 2nd story window. i have a great view facing the east, towards the amazonian jungle. it seems that's where i see most of the storm clouds come from, although i'm not sure about the meteorology around here. i'm assuming that once the clouds from the east hit the andes to the west of tena they precipitate, but i'd really like to see a map of the weather patterns around here (i've yet to see a weather forecast on tv in ecuador).
one day last month, as coworkers and i were about to leave tena to drive north to lago agrio (which is 7 hours away and just 15 miles south of the colombian border), we werehit by a hailstorm. yes, a hailstorm. in the jungle. it began with rain, then the winds picked up, then harder rain and harder wind. sitting in the pickup (fortunately i wasnt in the back this time) we watched as kids walking home from school were soaked by rain and force 2 hurricane 35mph winds. then came the hail, pelting the truck for about 10 minutes. if i hadnt seen it i wouldnt have believed it. after the storm, driving out of tena, we saw several trees fallen, one onto someone's house, and a few roofs blown off. when i got back to tena 3 days later, my landlady told me half my roof (the aluminum sheeting covering the wood) had been blown off. her and her nephew frantically tied it back on , covering my bookcase & clothes with my shower curtain to avoid the deluge. at least my house got a nice little shower while i was away.
a couple weks ago another pc vol moved in tight next door to me, in the same apt complex. mary is a health vol from omnibus 96, the group that came ahead of mine. they arrived in ecuador in june of '06. mary had been living in a community outside of archidona called rucullacta until she couldnt put up with her 'slimeball' landlord that kept hitting on her. my landlady pati offered her an apt, and after getting a relocation approval from the pc bosses, theres another gringo in tena. she is also the owner of yana's first offspring; i first saw mia in march during my first visit when she was just a month old puppy. now she's back for a family reunion, and she looks a lot like yana. at first they didnt get along when mary brought mia over, but now they play all the time, it's pretty entertaining. it's too bad, one of the cats died a week ago he ate some poison left out by the city for the alley dogs that run astray at night. there's a pet population control problem in tena and ecuador and leaving poison out is the usual solution. i'm gonna get yana an injection soon that's supposed to prevent pregnancy for 3 months at a time. but its been cool walking the dogs with mary, despite all the male dogs that follow and bark at us.
another omnibus came in june, 98, and they got to their sites in august after 2 months training. 2 of them are in my 'cluster', or regional group of volunteers, but they live way out in the jungle, 3-4 hours to the east of tena. the health & families vols (ie omnibus 96 & 98) have to live with a host family for at least the first 3 months in site. and i thought not being able to leave the vicinity of our site for the first 3 months sucked. a couple newbies, a married couple a few hours north, were living with their counterparts, the mayor & his wife. apparently, they argued all the time because the mayor & his wife demanded them to work at the clinic 40 hrs/week, even though vols arent personal employees and set their own schedule. theyve now found another place, 'not soon enough' according to the mayor's wife. thank god im not living with fabian, the 20 or so hours/week i work with him are more than enough.
perhaps the funnest thing, or at least funniest thing to do in tena is go to karaoke bars. theres at least 12 here in tena, and every decent-sized city ive been to has at least a dozen, too. what can i say, ecuadorians love to drink and sing. ive been to karaoke bars probably 8 times, and ive sung maybe 10 songs, including 'como te extraño' and 'eres' by cafe tacuba, coolio's 'gangsta's paradise' 'is this love' by marley, and my all-time favorites 'unchained melody' 'ill be watching you' and 'one more night'. the selection of songs in english, aka 'baladas ingles', is very limited here. the bars in tena all have the same playlist, and it's only got about 20 songs in english. and to make it worse, a lot of those are 80's songs, by cyndie lauper or madonna, or are more adult contemporary 'ballads'. i guess ballads are the thing to have, because karaoke here is all about ruing the day one's significant other left and sulking in one's misery.
the first time i went to karaoke with some coworkers, we were plastered from drinking beers and a strong local drink called pajaro azul. when we got to the bar we ordered more pilseners and i sang a couple songs (in spanish, too) without hesitation, and it was a blast. on another occassion, when i was much soberer, i realized that theyre mostly not to enjoy oneself, but to drink til you cant feel your feelings. case in point, there were 2 middle-aged guys at a table downing beers the whole night. one of them starts singing a depressing ballad about a woman leaving, then he's slurring his words, then tears roll down his cheeks, and by the end of the song he's bawling on the table. while consoling him, his friend knocks over a mug with his elbow and it shatters on the floor. dios mio
there seems to be a lack of good bballs around here, despite the sport´s semi-popularity, which is understandable given the economic conditions and $15 price tag. but i especially cant believe that the mom would lie like that, too. a week later i bought another of the same ball, this time i wrote my name nice and big on it. i took it to the gym again, and it turned up missing again. i was pretty distraught. a week went by and we had another game, and to my relief, a teammate told me my ball was in the storage closet. it may sound petty, but $15 is about 8% of my monthly stipend. so im reluctant to even take it outsie my place now.
as i write this ive been sick for a few days. i think ive got ´bichos´, which is a proliferation of ´bugs´or amoebas in the stomach. i probably got them when i drank 2 bowls of chicha being passed around in a community on friday. they can cause giardia, from bugs living in dirty water, which could have been used for the chicha. giardia symptoms include being constantly bloated, gassy, nauseous, with greyish diarhhea, symptoms i definitely have. i probably had giardia a few months ago as well. i felt so nauseous while eating delicious pizza, i couldnt even finish it, and i had to crash at a hostal 5 minutes away rather than walk the 10 minutes home. i had to use the bathroom once an hour the whole night. i probably lost 10 lbs in those 4 days alone. that was definitely the sickest ive been here because i had a fever too; it was perhaps the worst ive ever felt. its weird how PC vols´conversations tend to revolve around the toilet. there is an over-the-counter medicine called fasogen in tena that works pretty well against bichos. i've been eating a lot of ají, raw onions, and papaya seeds lately, they're supposed to kill bichos, too. and all volunteers get 'deparasitized' after a year of service, so i'm looking forward to that.
speaking of feeling under the weather, the weather is weird here. obviously i expected a lot of rain living in the rain forest. but i expected more or less rainy seasons and dry seasons.so far i would say there has been a wet season and a wetter season. when i got here in spril it was wetter, usually raining a couple hours a day, up until august, whihc was dry, it only rained 4 or 5 days the whole month. the 'dry' season is supposed to go til january, but october was a very wet month, probably the second wettest behind only May. and there were some spectacular lightning storms on display from my 2nd story window. i have a great view facing the east, towards the amazonian jungle. it seems that's where i see most of the storm clouds come from, although i'm not sure about the meteorology around here. i'm assuming that once the clouds from the east hit the andes to the west of tena they precipitate, but i'd really like to see a map of the weather patterns around here (i've yet to see a weather forecast on tv in ecuador).
one day last month, as coworkers and i were about to leave tena to drive north to lago agrio (which is 7 hours away and just 15 miles south of the colombian border), we werehit by a hailstorm. yes, a hailstorm. in the jungle. it began with rain, then the winds picked up, then harder rain and harder wind. sitting in the pickup (fortunately i wasnt in the back this time) we watched as kids walking home from school were soaked by rain and force 2 hurricane 35mph winds. then came the hail, pelting the truck for about 10 minutes. if i hadnt seen it i wouldnt have believed it. after the storm, driving out of tena, we saw several trees fallen, one onto someone's house, and a few roofs blown off. when i got back to tena 3 days later, my landlady told me half my roof (the aluminum sheeting covering the wood) had been blown off. her and her nephew frantically tied it back on , covering my bookcase & clothes with my shower curtain to avoid the deluge. at least my house got a nice little shower while i was away.
a couple weks ago another pc vol moved in tight next door to me, in the same apt complex. mary is a health vol from omnibus 96, the group that came ahead of mine. they arrived in ecuador in june of '06. mary had been living in a community outside of archidona called rucullacta until she couldnt put up with her 'slimeball' landlord that kept hitting on her. my landlady pati offered her an apt, and after getting a relocation approval from the pc bosses, theres another gringo in tena. she is also the owner of yana's first offspring; i first saw mia in march during my first visit when she was just a month old puppy. now she's back for a family reunion, and she looks a lot like yana. at first they didnt get along when mary brought mia over, but now they play all the time, it's pretty entertaining. it's too bad, one of the cats died a week ago he ate some poison left out by the city for the alley dogs that run astray at night. there's a pet population control problem in tena and ecuador and leaving poison out is the usual solution. i'm gonna get yana an injection soon that's supposed to prevent pregnancy for 3 months at a time. but its been cool walking the dogs with mary, despite all the male dogs that follow and bark at us.
another omnibus came in june, 98, and they got to their sites in august after 2 months training. 2 of them are in my 'cluster', or regional group of volunteers, but they live way out in the jungle, 3-4 hours to the east of tena. the health & families vols (ie omnibus 96 & 98) have to live with a host family for at least the first 3 months in site. and i thought not being able to leave the vicinity of our site for the first 3 months sucked. a couple newbies, a married couple a few hours north, were living with their counterparts, the mayor & his wife. apparently, they argued all the time because the mayor & his wife demanded them to work at the clinic 40 hrs/week, even though vols arent personal employees and set their own schedule. theyve now found another place, 'not soon enough' according to the mayor's wife. thank god im not living with fabian, the 20 or so hours/week i work with him are more than enough.
perhaps the funnest thing, or at least funniest thing to do in tena is go to karaoke bars. theres at least 12 here in tena, and every decent-sized city ive been to has at least a dozen, too. what can i say, ecuadorians love to drink and sing. ive been to karaoke bars probably 8 times, and ive sung maybe 10 songs, including 'como te extraño' and 'eres' by cafe tacuba, coolio's 'gangsta's paradise' 'is this love' by marley, and my all-time favorites 'unchained melody' 'ill be watching you' and 'one more night'. the selection of songs in english, aka 'baladas ingles', is very limited here. the bars in tena all have the same playlist, and it's only got about 20 songs in english. and to make it worse, a lot of those are 80's songs, by cyndie lauper or madonna, or are more adult contemporary 'ballads'. i guess ballads are the thing to have, because karaoke here is all about ruing the day one's significant other left and sulking in one's misery.
the first time i went to karaoke with some coworkers, we were plastered from drinking beers and a strong local drink called pajaro azul. when we got to the bar we ordered more pilseners and i sang a couple songs (in spanish, too) without hesitation, and it was a blast. on another occassion, when i was much soberer, i realized that theyre mostly not to enjoy oneself, but to drink til you cant feel your feelings. case in point, there were 2 middle-aged guys at a table downing beers the whole night. one of them starts singing a depressing ballad about a woman leaving, then he's slurring his words, then tears roll down his cheeks, and by the end of the song he's bawling on the table. while consoling him, his friend knocks over a mug with his elbow and it shatters on the floor. dios mio
sábado, 10 de noviembre de 2007
habla serio, pues
I havent been able to keep up with my blogs as much as I would like to, so I´´m gonna go back in time with this one. It´s already been 9 months that Ive been in Ecuador. I can´t really say it´s been the fastest 9; the 2.5 months of training were really slow. The last few months have gone by faster, and they say that after the first year it just breezes by. Rather thatn look at it in terms of speed though, in the next 1.5 years I just hope to get the most out of the experience.
It´s been tough, the hardest thing I´ve done. Sometimes not only do I kçnot know what I´m doing, I don´t always know what´s going on and what to expect. And I´m not even in one of the tougher sites. I could be working only with indigenous peoples that don´t like to work or speak much is spanish, like my PC friends Andrew and Sadie are, living out in the jungle. Or I could be in Africa, where I bet the govt is even slower at getting things done. Basically, whenever I feel like life sux, I tell myself, ¨hey, it could be a lot tougher.¨
Back in the summer I taught a couple classes at a kids´ summer program. I showed up the first day without any materials or a lesson plan, mostly cuz I wasn´t sure what exactly they expected of me, but also cuz I´ve never taught before. The director approached me and he´s like, ¨you want to teach environmental ed?¨ and I replied yes, so he takes me to a group of kids around the age of 8 and introduces me as the teacher, turns aroundand tells me to get started, and hurries away to check on another class. Seeing as how I dom´t have a lesson plan, I just resort to introducing myself. ¨Hi, I´m Jason, I am from the US. I come from the state of California, which is located on the west coast of my country. I have 2 sisters, they are 25 and 16 years old, and 2 parents that live in Texas. I also have a dog names Lucy and a cat named Unica. I work with the consejo provincial raising fish that we give to nearby communities. I like listening to music, watching movies, and playing sports like basketball, soccer, and running. Now I want to know your names, age, and a sport you like to play.¨ At this point I call on a kid that doesn´t seem to be able to get past giggling along with his friends, so I call the next kid, a girl whom I can´t hear a word she says, so after a minute of this Iñm just like, ökay, who likes playing soccer?¨, to which amazingly 90% of the class raises their hand. The the directo´´s voice booms out that it´s time for a recess. Saved by the bullhorn.
There were about 150 kids at this camp, running amock in between classes of music, dance, health, safety, crafts, english, and my science/env ed class. The best way to describe it is mayhem. After recesses, the kids were so worn out they barely pay attention. Most times only a handful of the 20-30 kids even attempted a response to questions I asked them. I hear that´s common in schools around here and probably the world for that matter. But hey, I tried. I was a little hesitant to come back after that first day, and honestly, I only came back about once a week. I tauught once about the water cycle, and trying to demonstrate the hydrology, drew the Earth on a whiteboard and got lost on tangents - ¨why is the Amazon a rainforest? why is this area so humid? 70% of Earth is water, and without water there is no life, that´s why we must protect the water we have and not put our trash in it. plants need water to live, just like us, that´s why it´s important to drink at least 8 cups of water per day¨, and so on and so forth. I think the best time I had there though washelping a Canadian volunteer teach english. HE has made flashcards with animals on them, held them up to the class and said what the word in english was. For a lot of the words, though, he didnt know how to say it in spanish, so I helped translate and boosted my self-esteem a little.
I still never said how the govt tourney in Ibarra went. It was cool - they (the consejo provincial de napo) gave us really nice warm-up suits with Napo written on the back, and a couple more jersies. I now have 4! We also stayed at a nice hotel in Ibarra. A lot of times I felt bad for getting hooked-up so nicely, I felt a little corrupt. But i guess most of the funds came from the govt workers´ association. The first day we paraded down to the stadium. All of the provinces were represented except for Los Rios, Bolivar, and Galapagos. Of course, as with every other event in the country, they had to elect a queen from the candidates from each province. I think Ms. Tungurahua won. Ecuadorians love their parades and beauty pageants. They also love to not plan things out, so when they had a schedule of events ready for us I was shocked. We had a bball game later that day vs Cotopaxi at 4. Of course, nobody on my team told me at 11 as we were leaving our hotel to watch our men play soccer to bring our shoes and uniform. So I had to take a bus back and get those, and by the time I reached the gym at 4, my team wasnt even there. We ended up winning by about 20 even though I didnt play that well.
That night, most of the bball team crammed into the hotel hot tub. Not exactly something I expected to be doing in the PC. We went out to eat, and some coworkers, Fabian and July included, went to the local whorehouse. More on that later. . So the next day I watched track & field events, like the 100m dash, shotput, and long jump. I wouldve ran an event, but all they had was the 100 (which I wouldve gotten smoked at) and the 5000m (which I didnt feel like running with my bball game later that day). An 800m or mile wouldve been good. We played Imbabura that afternoon and lost pretty badly. They were the hosting provincial team this year. It changes each year, last year was here in Tena, Napo, and the next year is supposed to be in Esmeraldas, on the northwest coast, which should be cool. I only scored 2 I think. They ended up winning in bball vs Loja the next day. I think if we practice more and get our center to come we could win next year. The girls´ team did better, their full court press got Cañar´s team so upset they that they got 5 tech´s and forfeited in the 1st quarter. And out girls got 2nd in soccer. As a whole, Napo placed 3rd in medals behind Manabi and Imbabura. Supposedly we kicked butt in swimming, playing cards, and chess.
I´ve been doing a little work monitoring rivers in the area, which mostly consists of measuring the width of the river, tying a rope from one end to the other, and at one meter intervals measure with a device with a small turbine on the bottom of it the velocity and depth of the river, grabbing the rope if the current is too strong. Of course, we do this only in rivers where we can reach the bottom, which excludes Rio Napo. Then, we record the dissolved oxygen, temperature, and pH. It´s pretty fun playing in the rivers for work, if not slightly dangerous in stronger currents. And like most instances involving my job, I rarely ever know in advance if I´m going to be doing something particular that day, so I don´t have the chance to wear something on my feet and walking on the rocks sucks. We´ve discovered that the rivers are fairly clean before they get to the city, then they get dirty.
I feel bad that I still don´t know the names of half the people I work with after 6.5 months in Tena. Well, the few people I actually work with I know, but everyone else in the office, 30 or 40, I haven´t remembered their names. I´m sure it´s easier for them to remember the one gringo´s name.
I think the craziest experience I´ve had here so far was taking a jungle hike through mud without boots, at night, without light. It started out as an ivitation that I wasn´t sure if it was serious. Fabian tells me there´s a party that night, that there´s gonna be dancing and food, so I tell him I´m there. He says it´s gonna be at Shitig, the indigenous community that´s the namesake for our project. It´s where the workers for the project live, and itñs fairly isolated in the jungle. So when Fab says to meet at the market at 8pm to go there and to bring my boots, with a grin on his fae, I´m like ´yeah. . ok buddy´. I dressed casually, but didnt bring my boots, suspecting that the party wouldn´t be outside of Tena. A word of advice to anyone thinking of working in Tena: Ecuadorians generally arent sarcastic people. If they tell u something so strange that you don´t think it´s true, then it probably is. That´s why I have no doubt that most of my coworkers are seriosu about marrying my 16 year-old sister. Anyways, I show up at the market and it´s apparent we´re bunching up in the pickup to drive somewhere. To Shitig, I´m told, I´m like ´alright, the project isnt too jungly, I´ll be fine´.
We get to the project and are met by one of the workers with his big waterproof boots on and holding a flashlight. I´m like, great, if HE needs those and he lives IN the jungle, then I´m screwed. So we start on hte path to community Shitig, and by the lone flashlight all I can se of the ground is mud. I leave my shoes at the project, roll up my jeans to the knees, and follow the 5 guys, 5 girls, and 2 kids in our party. Maybe I could have asked to borrow the boots, but there´s no way they would´ve fit. It´s hard to find shoes my size here (I knida like that, though, it makes me feel like a giant), and the Kichwans are already small people. This is great, guys, I´m walking barefoot in mud through the jungle at night with hardly any light, is all I´m thinking. And occasionally when I step on a rock or twig, I talk in english ¨Dammit. What the hell? This is stupid.¨Granted, they told me to bring boots, but flashlights?? Come on people, we´re going to the jungle at night, someone´s got to think of that. I had one at mt apt just collecting dust. Ecuadorians - not the best planners. But that´s just a generalization.
After about half an hour of trying not to slip in the mud or get bitten by a snake, the sound of a river convinces me we´re almost there. We get to the river and I can barely make out a bamboo bridge, maybe one foot wide, with another bamboo pole propped up as a rail, stretched 40 feet across the river. At this point, one of the poor girls, a pregnant intern from the local university, decided to march with her sister through the mud back to the truck. I´ll be honest, I considered returning, too. It was too dark even to see how far below the river was, my guess was about 20 feet, which may have been enough to knock me out and drown me in the river. All I know is that after making the hike there, seeing Gato briskly crossing while carrying one of the little kids over his shoulder, then with another, and then one of the interns crosing, I had to go. The oerfect thing to do with muddy feet. So, one muddy foot behind the other, clutching the one rail, I slowly made my way laterally across the bamboo bridge. Really though, it wasnt too bad, focusing on taking slow, deep breaths, small steps, and not looking down. When I got to the other side, I felt pretty proud. But when one of the girls checked my pulse she said it was doubletime.
After that, we had to walk 10 more minutes up a muddy hill. The party ended up being a baptism party for one of the worker´s sons, around 4 years old. When we arrived we were obliged to shake everybodys´ (30) hand. I was just glad they didnt pass around any chicha. They did have Pilsener though, the omnipresent beer in Ecudor. It´s not that good but I´ve gotten used to it. And they had boxed peach wine. Bleh! I´d almost rather have chicha. They also had aguardiente, aka puro, aka ¨veinte shinco¨. It´s a clear, cane rum that is commonly homemade and sold in shops for 25 (veinte y cinco) cents per cup. I´m not sure why, but whenever I say ¨veinte shinco¨ people smile or laugh. So they had a few people go around with a plastic cup 1/4 full of beer, wine, or a shot of puro for people to drink. After you drink, they go to the next person until they´re out of alcohol. Almost everybody does that here, even in small groups, it´s known among gringos as the beer circle.
They urged me to dance once they got the speakers up and playing some lame kichwa ´pop´ music (which they joke literally sounds like ¨pop-a-rop - a-rop-a-rop¨ (?)). After downing a cup of veinte shicno with about 3 shots in it, I was uo and miving. When Fabian and Gato saw me drink all of it they shouted to me, ¨not all of it, Jason. It will hit u hard.¨ This veinte shinco is hard, strong stuff, but it´s still better than gross peach wine. While dancing my coworker was mcíng, shouting in th mic ¨guests dance, community members dance, everybody dance. Jason, volunteer from California dance¨ over and over. Around midnight, with the baptised boy practically asleep, they were given gifts. Besides a xylophone, what they were I can´t recall, or most of the rest of the night, for that matter. When we headed back to the truck at about 12:30, however, I can remember not looking forward to the hike or crossing the bridge again. When I got there though I wasn´t as nervous as before, the liquor had my blood already flowing, and I crossed quickly and a little unsteadily. To give this hike a little perspective, the handful of workers at the project do it on a daily basis, and I think the same hike at night is ridiculous. Nonetheless, it was a surreal experience.
It´s been tough, the hardest thing I´ve done. Sometimes not only do I kçnot know what I´m doing, I don´t always know what´s going on and what to expect. And I´m not even in one of the tougher sites. I could be working only with indigenous peoples that don´t like to work or speak much is spanish, like my PC friends Andrew and Sadie are, living out in the jungle. Or I could be in Africa, where I bet the govt is even slower at getting things done. Basically, whenever I feel like life sux, I tell myself, ¨hey, it could be a lot tougher.¨
Back in the summer I taught a couple classes at a kids´ summer program. I showed up the first day without any materials or a lesson plan, mostly cuz I wasn´t sure what exactly they expected of me, but also cuz I´ve never taught before. The director approached me and he´s like, ¨you want to teach environmental ed?¨ and I replied yes, so he takes me to a group of kids around the age of 8 and introduces me as the teacher, turns aroundand tells me to get started, and hurries away to check on another class. Seeing as how I dom´t have a lesson plan, I just resort to introducing myself. ¨Hi, I´m Jason, I am from the US. I come from the state of California, which is located on the west coast of my country. I have 2 sisters, they are 25 and 16 years old, and 2 parents that live in Texas. I also have a dog names Lucy and a cat named Unica. I work with the consejo provincial raising fish that we give to nearby communities. I like listening to music, watching movies, and playing sports like basketball, soccer, and running. Now I want to know your names, age, and a sport you like to play.¨ At this point I call on a kid that doesn´t seem to be able to get past giggling along with his friends, so I call the next kid, a girl whom I can´t hear a word she says, so after a minute of this Iñm just like, ökay, who likes playing soccer?¨, to which amazingly 90% of the class raises their hand. The the directo´´s voice booms out that it´s time for a recess. Saved by the bullhorn.
There were about 150 kids at this camp, running amock in between classes of music, dance, health, safety, crafts, english, and my science/env ed class. The best way to describe it is mayhem. After recesses, the kids were so worn out they barely pay attention. Most times only a handful of the 20-30 kids even attempted a response to questions I asked them. I hear that´s common in schools around here and probably the world for that matter. But hey, I tried. I was a little hesitant to come back after that first day, and honestly, I only came back about once a week. I tauught once about the water cycle, and trying to demonstrate the hydrology, drew the Earth on a whiteboard and got lost on tangents - ¨why is the Amazon a rainforest? why is this area so humid? 70% of Earth is water, and without water there is no life, that´s why we must protect the water we have and not put our trash in it. plants need water to live, just like us, that´s why it´s important to drink at least 8 cups of water per day¨, and so on and so forth. I think the best time I had there though washelping a Canadian volunteer teach english. HE has made flashcards with animals on them, held them up to the class and said what the word in english was. For a lot of the words, though, he didnt know how to say it in spanish, so I helped translate and boosted my self-esteem a little.
I still never said how the govt tourney in Ibarra went. It was cool - they (the consejo provincial de napo) gave us really nice warm-up suits with Napo written on the back, and a couple more jersies. I now have 4! We also stayed at a nice hotel in Ibarra. A lot of times I felt bad for getting hooked-up so nicely, I felt a little corrupt. But i guess most of the funds came from the govt workers´ association. The first day we paraded down to the stadium. All of the provinces were represented except for Los Rios, Bolivar, and Galapagos. Of course, as with every other event in the country, they had to elect a queen from the candidates from each province. I think Ms. Tungurahua won. Ecuadorians love their parades and beauty pageants. They also love to not plan things out, so when they had a schedule of events ready for us I was shocked. We had a bball game later that day vs Cotopaxi at 4. Of course, nobody on my team told me at 11 as we were leaving our hotel to watch our men play soccer to bring our shoes and uniform. So I had to take a bus back and get those, and by the time I reached the gym at 4, my team wasnt even there. We ended up winning by about 20 even though I didnt play that well.
That night, most of the bball team crammed into the hotel hot tub. Not exactly something I expected to be doing in the PC. We went out to eat, and some coworkers, Fabian and July included, went to the local whorehouse. More on that later. . So the next day I watched track & field events, like the 100m dash, shotput, and long jump. I wouldve ran an event, but all they had was the 100 (which I wouldve gotten smoked at) and the 5000m (which I didnt feel like running with my bball game later that day). An 800m or mile wouldve been good. We played Imbabura that afternoon and lost pretty badly. They were the hosting provincial team this year. It changes each year, last year was here in Tena, Napo, and the next year is supposed to be in Esmeraldas, on the northwest coast, which should be cool. I only scored 2 I think. They ended up winning in bball vs Loja the next day. I think if we practice more and get our center to come we could win next year. The girls´ team did better, their full court press got Cañar´s team so upset they that they got 5 tech´s and forfeited in the 1st quarter. And out girls got 2nd in soccer. As a whole, Napo placed 3rd in medals behind Manabi and Imbabura. Supposedly we kicked butt in swimming, playing cards, and chess.
I´ve been doing a little work monitoring rivers in the area, which mostly consists of measuring the width of the river, tying a rope from one end to the other, and at one meter intervals measure with a device with a small turbine on the bottom of it the velocity and depth of the river, grabbing the rope if the current is too strong. Of course, we do this only in rivers where we can reach the bottom, which excludes Rio Napo. Then, we record the dissolved oxygen, temperature, and pH. It´s pretty fun playing in the rivers for work, if not slightly dangerous in stronger currents. And like most instances involving my job, I rarely ever know in advance if I´m going to be doing something particular that day, so I don´t have the chance to wear something on my feet and walking on the rocks sucks. We´ve discovered that the rivers are fairly clean before they get to the city, then they get dirty.
I feel bad that I still don´t know the names of half the people I work with after 6.5 months in Tena. Well, the few people I actually work with I know, but everyone else in the office, 30 or 40, I haven´t remembered their names. I´m sure it´s easier for them to remember the one gringo´s name.
I think the craziest experience I´ve had here so far was taking a jungle hike through mud without boots, at night, without light. It started out as an ivitation that I wasn´t sure if it was serious. Fabian tells me there´s a party that night, that there´s gonna be dancing and food, so I tell him I´m there. He says it´s gonna be at Shitig, the indigenous community that´s the namesake for our project. It´s where the workers for the project live, and itñs fairly isolated in the jungle. So when Fab says to meet at the market at 8pm to go there and to bring my boots, with a grin on his fae, I´m like ´yeah. . ok buddy´. I dressed casually, but didnt bring my boots, suspecting that the party wouldn´t be outside of Tena. A word of advice to anyone thinking of working in Tena: Ecuadorians generally arent sarcastic people. If they tell u something so strange that you don´t think it´s true, then it probably is. That´s why I have no doubt that most of my coworkers are seriosu about marrying my 16 year-old sister. Anyways, I show up at the market and it´s apparent we´re bunching up in the pickup to drive somewhere. To Shitig, I´m told, I´m like ´alright, the project isnt too jungly, I´ll be fine´.
We get to the project and are met by one of the workers with his big waterproof boots on and holding a flashlight. I´m like, great, if HE needs those and he lives IN the jungle, then I´m screwed. So we start on hte path to community Shitig, and by the lone flashlight all I can se of the ground is mud. I leave my shoes at the project, roll up my jeans to the knees, and follow the 5 guys, 5 girls, and 2 kids in our party. Maybe I could have asked to borrow the boots, but there´s no way they would´ve fit. It´s hard to find shoes my size here (I knida like that, though, it makes me feel like a giant), and the Kichwans are already small people. This is great, guys, I´m walking barefoot in mud through the jungle at night with hardly any light, is all I´m thinking. And occasionally when I step on a rock or twig, I talk in english ¨Dammit. What the hell? This is stupid.¨Granted, they told me to bring boots, but flashlights?? Come on people, we´re going to the jungle at night, someone´s got to think of that. I had one at mt apt just collecting dust. Ecuadorians - not the best planners. But that´s just a generalization.
After about half an hour of trying not to slip in the mud or get bitten by a snake, the sound of a river convinces me we´re almost there. We get to the river and I can barely make out a bamboo bridge, maybe one foot wide, with another bamboo pole propped up as a rail, stretched 40 feet across the river. At this point, one of the poor girls, a pregnant intern from the local university, decided to march with her sister through the mud back to the truck. I´ll be honest, I considered returning, too. It was too dark even to see how far below the river was, my guess was about 20 feet, which may have been enough to knock me out and drown me in the river. All I know is that after making the hike there, seeing Gato briskly crossing while carrying one of the little kids over his shoulder, then with another, and then one of the interns crosing, I had to go. The oerfect thing to do with muddy feet. So, one muddy foot behind the other, clutching the one rail, I slowly made my way laterally across the bamboo bridge. Really though, it wasnt too bad, focusing on taking slow, deep breaths, small steps, and not looking down. When I got to the other side, I felt pretty proud. But when one of the girls checked my pulse she said it was doubletime.
After that, we had to walk 10 more minutes up a muddy hill. The party ended up being a baptism party for one of the worker´s sons, around 4 years old. When we arrived we were obliged to shake everybodys´ (30) hand. I was just glad they didnt pass around any chicha. They did have Pilsener though, the omnipresent beer in Ecudor. It´s not that good but I´ve gotten used to it. And they had boxed peach wine. Bleh! I´d almost rather have chicha. They also had aguardiente, aka puro, aka ¨veinte shinco¨. It´s a clear, cane rum that is commonly homemade and sold in shops for 25 (veinte y cinco) cents per cup. I´m not sure why, but whenever I say ¨veinte shinco¨ people smile or laugh. So they had a few people go around with a plastic cup 1/4 full of beer, wine, or a shot of puro for people to drink. After you drink, they go to the next person until they´re out of alcohol. Almost everybody does that here, even in small groups, it´s known among gringos as the beer circle.
They urged me to dance once they got the speakers up and playing some lame kichwa ´pop´ music (which they joke literally sounds like ¨pop-a-rop - a-rop-a-rop¨ (?)). After downing a cup of veinte shicno with about 3 shots in it, I was uo and miving. When Fabian and Gato saw me drink all of it they shouted to me, ¨not all of it, Jason. It will hit u hard.¨ This veinte shinco is hard, strong stuff, but it´s still better than gross peach wine. While dancing my coworker was mcíng, shouting in th mic ¨guests dance, community members dance, everybody dance. Jason, volunteer from California dance¨ over and over. Around midnight, with the baptised boy practically asleep, they were given gifts. Besides a xylophone, what they were I can´t recall, or most of the rest of the night, for that matter. When we headed back to the truck at about 12:30, however, I can remember not looking forward to the hike or crossing the bridge again. When I got there though I wasn´t as nervous as before, the liquor had my blood already flowing, and I crossed quickly and a little unsteadily. To give this hike a little perspective, the handful of workers at the project do it on a daily basis, and I think the same hike at night is ridiculous. Nonetheless, it was a surreal experience.
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