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
sábado, 17 de noviembre de 2007
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.
martes, 9 de octubre de 2007
eso es
so it´s been a while since my last blog. . i havent had much time or money to use internet. this one won´t have a theme so much as just random ranting. i´ve been accustoming to living in tena, still not usued to working here. the people here are cool for the most part. it´s a really nice place, and if u can stand the humidity i recommend visiting. although, there are no good parks, they have a park in the center of a town butu it´s all paved and really not that big and its not really a park anyways, basically just a town square. there is a small park right across from my house that they´re abouut to finish remodeling, but it´s a little kids park and theres not much grass. maybe thats a project i can start, plant some grass in the city´s parks.
my dog yana gave birth to 13 puppies, and all of them ended up living. its crazy because when she gave birth several months earlier it was only one puppy, so this time we were only expecting 3 or 4 at most. unfortunately and a little ironically i was busy castrating pigs (which is another story) up at fabian´s house in baeza and his cabin in cosanga when it happened. when i got home that night my neighbor and landlady pati told me there was good news, and i heard her say there were 4 boy puppies. i said that´s cool , wondering what the bad news was. i walked over to the doghouse where yana and her puppies were and to my amazement i saw 13 puppies. i guess i missed the part where she said there were 9 girl puppies too. and there was no bad news. ok, i just realized i wrote this in the last blog. so read that.
fast forwarding to a couple months later, we have given all of the puppies away. i gave one to another volunteer named andrew living nearby in a kichwa community, one to a guy in his community, and one to a coworker. the other 10 we gave a way to neighbors, so once in a while i´ll see one of yana´s little offspring strolling around. i was saving one of em for elliott up in baeza but he´s usually not in his site but a few days a week at most and he wouldnt be able to take care of one well. i was thinking about keeping one for myself, but i´ve already got 2 dogs, and there´s also 2 cats that have started visiting my apartment whenever i put food out for the dogs. its funny cuz sometimes i´ll turn around and theres 4 sets of animal eyes looking longingly at me waiting for food. stupid cats.
only one of the dogs turned out looking like yana after the 5 weeks we kept most of them. one of them definitely turned out to be the mut, but she was really pretty with dark brown skin and green eyes. shes at one of my neighbors and about half the size of her siblings now. and a couple of them turned out to be large and portly. i gave one of those to andrew, and he named it ms. eleanor dashwood after a character in pride and prejudice. but the indigenous in his community cant pronounce that, so they just call her eli. andrew´s not gay by the way, but he jokes that since he´s started drinking wine whenever he comes into tena, he´s grown his hair long, and he named his dog ms. dashwood, somehow living in the jungle has made him metrosexual. the indigenous are notorious for not feeding their dogs anything more than rice or yucca so that the dogs remain hungry and voracious hunters of rats and snakes and other such jungle animals. since andrew feeds her actual dog food, at just 2 months ms. dashwood is already the size of most 6 month-old dogs in his site.
the social life in tena is is still slow but its picking up. i hardly go out at nights even though there a few bars and clubs here. i usually only go to bars when the nearby volunteers are in town, when we can vent our frustrations about ecuaudorian society and the world at large. the attractive girls here are usually the younger ones. it seems as soon as they hit age 20, its downhill from there. half of em get knocked-up by then. and a lot of times when they look like theyre 20 theyre 17 and when they look 23 theyre 20. especially with the indigenous girls i think, cuz in their cuulture theyre really expected to be married and have kids around the age of 15/16 so they try harder to look more sexually mature.
so i get some of those girls coming at me, and then i also get the older women, in or near their 30s, who didnt marry or divorced. one of my neighbors is a single mom near her 30s and made a pass at me. she recently found out shes pregnant (not mine) again, and the due date is around my birthday. she jokingly (i hope) asked me if i would be the dad, and i told her that if its born on april 19th and she names it jason then i will be the dad. unfortunately the child-support laws here arent very strict. the men here are pretty bad too, every guy i work with (even the married ones) that knows i have 2 sisters coming to visit in december has asked repeatedly to meet them. here´s a typical convo translated:
womanizing ecua guy (weg): do u have any siblings?
me: yes, i have 2 sisters. one is 26 and the other is 16.
weg: are they married?
me: the older one is married but the younger is not.
weg: are they coming to visit u while you are here?
me: yes, in december they are coming.
weg: that is good, you must introduce me to your sisters. you said the younger is not married?
me: that is correct, she is not. alas she is just 16 and it is not customary to wed at that age in the US.
weg: ahh, 16 is a good age. you know, we can wed at age 16 here.
me: yes, i did know that. but she is not from here, and she will only be here a few days.
weg: u know, it is not important here that your older sister is married in the US. she can have an ecuadorian husband, too.
me: right. u have 4 other women besides your wife, correct? but men usually only have one wife in the US. except in Utah. besides, her husband is coming as well.
(long pause interrupted by awkward silence)
weg: i was thinking, when i have a child with your younger sister, i will name him marco antonio, like the singer. his name will be marco antonio shiguango kaminsky. what a good name. i still haven´t got any sons. did you know that, brother-in-law?
me: no, i was not aware of that.
my dog yana gave birth to 13 puppies, and all of them ended up living. its crazy because when she gave birth several months earlier it was only one puppy, so this time we were only expecting 3 or 4 at most. unfortunately and a little ironically i was busy castrating pigs (which is another story) up at fabian´s house in baeza and his cabin in cosanga when it happened. when i got home that night my neighbor and landlady pati told me there was good news, and i heard her say there were 4 boy puppies. i said that´s cool , wondering what the bad news was. i walked over to the doghouse where yana and her puppies were and to my amazement i saw 13 puppies. i guess i missed the part where she said there were 9 girl puppies too. and there was no bad news. ok, i just realized i wrote this in the last blog. so read that.
fast forwarding to a couple months later, we have given all of the puppies away. i gave one to another volunteer named andrew living nearby in a kichwa community, one to a guy in his community, and one to a coworker. the other 10 we gave a way to neighbors, so once in a while i´ll see one of yana´s little offspring strolling around. i was saving one of em for elliott up in baeza but he´s usually not in his site but a few days a week at most and he wouldnt be able to take care of one well. i was thinking about keeping one for myself, but i´ve already got 2 dogs, and there´s also 2 cats that have started visiting my apartment whenever i put food out for the dogs. its funny cuz sometimes i´ll turn around and theres 4 sets of animal eyes looking longingly at me waiting for food. stupid cats.
only one of the dogs turned out looking like yana after the 5 weeks we kept most of them. one of them definitely turned out to be the mut, but she was really pretty with dark brown skin and green eyes. shes at one of my neighbors and about half the size of her siblings now. and a couple of them turned out to be large and portly. i gave one of those to andrew, and he named it ms. eleanor dashwood after a character in pride and prejudice. but the indigenous in his community cant pronounce that, so they just call her eli. andrew´s not gay by the way, but he jokes that since he´s started drinking wine whenever he comes into tena, he´s grown his hair long, and he named his dog ms. dashwood, somehow living in the jungle has made him metrosexual. the indigenous are notorious for not feeding their dogs anything more than rice or yucca so that the dogs remain hungry and voracious hunters of rats and snakes and other such jungle animals. since andrew feeds her actual dog food, at just 2 months ms. dashwood is already the size of most 6 month-old dogs in his site.
the social life in tena is is still slow but its picking up. i hardly go out at nights even though there a few bars and clubs here. i usually only go to bars when the nearby volunteers are in town, when we can vent our frustrations about ecuaudorian society and the world at large. the attractive girls here are usually the younger ones. it seems as soon as they hit age 20, its downhill from there. half of em get knocked-up by then. and a lot of times when they look like theyre 20 theyre 17 and when they look 23 theyre 20. especially with the indigenous girls i think, cuz in their cuulture theyre really expected to be married and have kids around the age of 15/16 so they try harder to look more sexually mature.
so i get some of those girls coming at me, and then i also get the older women, in or near their 30s, who didnt marry or divorced. one of my neighbors is a single mom near her 30s and made a pass at me. she recently found out shes pregnant (not mine) again, and the due date is around my birthday. she jokingly (i hope) asked me if i would be the dad, and i told her that if its born on april 19th and she names it jason then i will be the dad. unfortunately the child-support laws here arent very strict. the men here are pretty bad too, every guy i work with (even the married ones) that knows i have 2 sisters coming to visit in december has asked repeatedly to meet them. here´s a typical convo translated:
womanizing ecua guy (weg): do u have any siblings?
me: yes, i have 2 sisters. one is 26 and the other is 16.
weg: are they married?
me: the older one is married but the younger is not.
weg: are they coming to visit u while you are here?
me: yes, in december they are coming.
weg: that is good, you must introduce me to your sisters. you said the younger is not married?
me: that is correct, she is not. alas she is just 16 and it is not customary to wed at that age in the US.
weg: ahh, 16 is a good age. you know, we can wed at age 16 here.
me: yes, i did know that. but she is not from here, and she will only be here a few days.
weg: u know, it is not important here that your older sister is married in the US. she can have an ecuadorian husband, too.
me: right. u have 4 other women besides your wife, correct? but men usually only have one wife in the US. except in Utah. besides, her husband is coming as well.
(long pause interrupted by awkward silence)
weg: i was thinking, when i have a child with your younger sister, i will name him marco antonio, like the singer. his name will be marco antonio shiguango kaminsky. what a good name. i still haven´t got any sons. did you know that, brother-in-law?
me: no, i was not aware of that.
domingo, 5 de agosto de 2007
expect nothing and anything
i realize i´ve been a bit negative about my experience in ecuador so far, but really its not a bad place. it has its advantages, for instance:
after 2 years i will be an expert in balancing myself in the bed of pickup trucks. seated, standing, crowded in with 25 other people, halfway hanging off the side, grasping on at 60 miles an hour, in the rain, in the dust, securing a water barrel full of fish, it doesnt matter.
peeing in public is much more common than in the US. there is a lack of restrooms here and so its just more accepted that when u gotta go, u gotta go. but sometimes u have to watch out where u go. one time i peed on the side of someone´s house and was almost killed by the owners´ dogs.
being able to speak english with other volunteers without others knowing what ur saying. it comes in handy sometimes, like when u don´t particularly like someone. i like to talk trash on the basketball court in english esp. when other gringos are playing too. occasionally i talk trash in spanish too. it´s amazing how quickly ur words can switch to spanish when u need it. and my vocabulary somehow gets 10 times better when i try to argue a call.
even though i dont play basketball anywhere near as frequently as i used to, my game is definitely above average for an ecuadorian, and this has helped me ´integrate´ into my community a little as i play for the provincial government team. we just had a game on friday night in which we played teams from different parts of the province like archidona, baeza, and el chaco. my team is pretty good, i scored 9 points wearing running shoes (i need to buy bball shoes soon but its tough to find size 11 shoes in tena). so its pretty fun playing ball and getting to know some of my coworkers. supposedly we´re gonna go up to the province of ibarra next month and play in a tournament of consejo provincials from all over the country.
this country is ridiculously rich in natural wonders. for being only the size of colorado, it feels alot bigger. of course, this is due to the fact that its cut in half by the ginormous andes mountains which in part make the travel times alot longer (to get from tena to quito, which is 100 miles, it takes 5 hours on bus. there is an elevation change of nearly 2 miles. stupid andes). anyways, the parts of this country that have been left relatively unspoiled are are incredibly beautiful. theres tall waterfalls, ripe rainforest, snowcapped volcanoes, rampaging rivers, cavernous caverns, majestic mountains, and parched paramo. and thats not even including the coast. last week on my way from tena to quito, slowly ascending the eastern flanks of the andes, i went from seeing waterfalls in the humid tropical rainforest to icy and barren paramo to the snow-capped volcanoes that surround metropolitan quito. the trip is quite humbling.
last sunday i ran an 8k (5 mile) race in quito. it was cool, a little unorganized but im used to it, but i was happy with my time of 39 minutes, just under 8 minutes a mile (plus it was windy and the altitude doesnt help). although it was a flat race, running all on paved streets so that helped too. theres a 10k coming up next month, and supposedly a bunch of the new health and youth volunteers are gonna participate (the day after their swearing-in) so i might try to make it up there for that.
it seems northamericans are more sheltered than most ecuadorians. for instance, how many americans have killed a chicken. i know i havent. but here i have already seen several killed right in front of me, and im fairly sure that i will kill one or two myself before i leave. really what i mean to say is, living in ecuador, unless u live in one of the large cities, is a lot like living on a farm. i live in a city of 15,000 people and still theres chickens cooped up outside my apartment. (for people from so cal, tena reminds me a little of artesia in this respect).
on wednesday this week i went up to my counterpart´s farm. my counterpart, by the way, is fabian he´s 26 or 27 and is kind of a spaz but hes pretty dedicated to the project. anyway, we went up there to deliver 400 baby chicks. fabian is originally from baeza so we went up to his family´s house and set up a little chick coop and put a heater above them to keep them warm. (on a long tangent, baeza is a couple hours north of tena. its smaller than tena and the people are much friendlier. in tena only once in a while will a stranger say buenas dias or buenas noches to you, but in baeza as in most small towns its much more common. baeza is mountainy and much colder than tena, being at maybe a mile altitude compared to tena´s 500 ft. my best PC friend, a volunteer from my omnibus who also lived in olmedo during training, elliott, is stationed in baeza although hes usually in tena about once a week cuz the parkgaurds he works with have meetings in the environment office here and also cuz theres more nightlife here. but i half-joke with him that we should switch sites in a year cuz baeza is just that nice. yeah.) when would i have the chance to see or participate in that back home??
the next day we went over to his farm to check out his father´s tomate de arbol farm (yes, in ecuador the tomatoes grow on trees. no joke.) it was pretty impressive, although it looked like they use a heap of pesticides which maybe someday i can get them to change. then we went to castrate pigs! well i didnt really do the castrating, an agricultor came along to do the actual surgery but i helped tie the pig up and held him down. i even twisted one of the testis off, which u can see in of of my pics on snapfish [*warning some are pretty graphic]. it wasnt too gruesome having dissected several animals in biology lab, although those animals are usually dead, and the cry of the pigs wasnt pleasant. after that we injected all of them with a vaccine against pig viruses and such ailments with which pigs are afflicted(?). so fabian had to grab the pigs (some of them as big as, well just think to the largest pigs u´ve ever seen) by the ears in front and i come in from behind and make sure it doesnt back out by basically grabbing its flanks. and oh the screeching. then they would kick their legs trying to escape and in the process kick, yes, pig crap onto we. so thats what i mean by sheltered..
i fell in love with one of fabian´s family´s puppies, a 4 month old named rufo. he rode with me in the back of the pickup to the farm, just me and him after another dog riding with us mysteriously jumped out at 30 miles an hour (he was fine, but rode inside the truck the rest of the way). little did i know that back in tena the night before, my own dog (well, half-dog. . me and my landlords share responsibility for her) gave birth to puppies of her own. 13! it was at 4am, i wish i could have been there for it. and we were expecting only 3 or 4. so i´ve been a little preoccupied with taking care of them and feeding yana, but mostly with just watching 13 puppies. they have their own dog house under the stairs, dry and obviously warm, where they make adorable little whimpers and barks. its amazing i´ve never been around so many puppies, i wasnt even sure a dog birth would go, do u need to help the mom or what? but for people here living with and raising animals comes second nature, theyve been doing it all their lives.
living on my own is pretty cool. its the first time ive ever had my own place and i must say i like it. besides the cockroaches, roosters (which i am slowly getting used to), and the occasional roof leak, i really like where i live. its big and has a nice view, its in a central location, and my neighbors and animals are cool.
after 2 years i will be an expert in balancing myself in the bed of pickup trucks. seated, standing, crowded in with 25 other people, halfway hanging off the side, grasping on at 60 miles an hour, in the rain, in the dust, securing a water barrel full of fish, it doesnt matter.
peeing in public is much more common than in the US. there is a lack of restrooms here and so its just more accepted that when u gotta go, u gotta go. but sometimes u have to watch out where u go. one time i peed on the side of someone´s house and was almost killed by the owners´ dogs.
being able to speak english with other volunteers without others knowing what ur saying. it comes in handy sometimes, like when u don´t particularly like someone. i like to talk trash on the basketball court in english esp. when other gringos are playing too. occasionally i talk trash in spanish too. it´s amazing how quickly ur words can switch to spanish when u need it. and my vocabulary somehow gets 10 times better when i try to argue a call.
even though i dont play basketball anywhere near as frequently as i used to, my game is definitely above average for an ecuadorian, and this has helped me ´integrate´ into my community a little as i play for the provincial government team. we just had a game on friday night in which we played teams from different parts of the province like archidona, baeza, and el chaco. my team is pretty good, i scored 9 points wearing running shoes (i need to buy bball shoes soon but its tough to find size 11 shoes in tena). so its pretty fun playing ball and getting to know some of my coworkers. supposedly we´re gonna go up to the province of ibarra next month and play in a tournament of consejo provincials from all over the country.
this country is ridiculously rich in natural wonders. for being only the size of colorado, it feels alot bigger. of course, this is due to the fact that its cut in half by the ginormous andes mountains which in part make the travel times alot longer (to get from tena to quito, which is 100 miles, it takes 5 hours on bus. there is an elevation change of nearly 2 miles. stupid andes). anyways, the parts of this country that have been left relatively unspoiled are are incredibly beautiful. theres tall waterfalls, ripe rainforest, snowcapped volcanoes, rampaging rivers, cavernous caverns, majestic mountains, and parched paramo. and thats not even including the coast. last week on my way from tena to quito, slowly ascending the eastern flanks of the andes, i went from seeing waterfalls in the humid tropical rainforest to icy and barren paramo to the snow-capped volcanoes that surround metropolitan quito. the trip is quite humbling.
last sunday i ran an 8k (5 mile) race in quito. it was cool, a little unorganized but im used to it, but i was happy with my time of 39 minutes, just under 8 minutes a mile (plus it was windy and the altitude doesnt help). although it was a flat race, running all on paved streets so that helped too. theres a 10k coming up next month, and supposedly a bunch of the new health and youth volunteers are gonna participate (the day after their swearing-in) so i might try to make it up there for that.
it seems northamericans are more sheltered than most ecuadorians. for instance, how many americans have killed a chicken. i know i havent. but here i have already seen several killed right in front of me, and im fairly sure that i will kill one or two myself before i leave. really what i mean to say is, living in ecuador, unless u live in one of the large cities, is a lot like living on a farm. i live in a city of 15,000 people and still theres chickens cooped up outside my apartment. (for people from so cal, tena reminds me a little of artesia in this respect).
on wednesday this week i went up to my counterpart´s farm. my counterpart, by the way, is fabian he´s 26 or 27 and is kind of a spaz but hes pretty dedicated to the project. anyway, we went up there to deliver 400 baby chicks. fabian is originally from baeza so we went up to his family´s house and set up a little chick coop and put a heater above them to keep them warm. (on a long tangent, baeza is a couple hours north of tena. its smaller than tena and the people are much friendlier. in tena only once in a while will a stranger say buenas dias or buenas noches to you, but in baeza as in most small towns its much more common. baeza is mountainy and much colder than tena, being at maybe a mile altitude compared to tena´s 500 ft. my best PC friend, a volunteer from my omnibus who also lived in olmedo during training, elliott, is stationed in baeza although hes usually in tena about once a week cuz the parkgaurds he works with have meetings in the environment office here and also cuz theres more nightlife here. but i half-joke with him that we should switch sites in a year cuz baeza is just that nice. yeah.) when would i have the chance to see or participate in that back home??
the next day we went over to his farm to check out his father´s tomate de arbol farm (yes, in ecuador the tomatoes grow on trees. no joke.) it was pretty impressive, although it looked like they use a heap of pesticides which maybe someday i can get them to change. then we went to castrate pigs! well i didnt really do the castrating, an agricultor came along to do the actual surgery but i helped tie the pig up and held him down. i even twisted one of the testis off, which u can see in of of my pics on snapfish [*warning some are pretty graphic]. it wasnt too gruesome having dissected several animals in biology lab, although those animals are usually dead, and the cry of the pigs wasnt pleasant. after that we injected all of them with a vaccine against pig viruses and such ailments with which pigs are afflicted(?). so fabian had to grab the pigs (some of them as big as, well just think to the largest pigs u´ve ever seen) by the ears in front and i come in from behind and make sure it doesnt back out by basically grabbing its flanks. and oh the screeching. then they would kick their legs trying to escape and in the process kick, yes, pig crap onto we. so thats what i mean by sheltered..
i fell in love with one of fabian´s family´s puppies, a 4 month old named rufo. he rode with me in the back of the pickup to the farm, just me and him after another dog riding with us mysteriously jumped out at 30 miles an hour (he was fine, but rode inside the truck the rest of the way). little did i know that back in tena the night before, my own dog (well, half-dog. . me and my landlords share responsibility for her) gave birth to puppies of her own. 13! it was at 4am, i wish i could have been there for it. and we were expecting only 3 or 4. so i´ve been a little preoccupied with taking care of them and feeding yana, but mostly with just watching 13 puppies. they have their own dog house under the stairs, dry and obviously warm, where they make adorable little whimpers and barks. its amazing i´ve never been around so many puppies, i wasnt even sure a dog birth would go, do u need to help the mom or what? but for people here living with and raising animals comes second nature, theyve been doing it all their lives.
living on my own is pretty cool. its the first time ive ever had my own place and i must say i like it. besides the cockroaches, roosters (which i am slowly getting used to), and the occasional roof leak, i really like where i live. its big and has a nice view, its in a central location, and my neighbors and animals are cool.
sábado, 14 de julio de 2007
rotas
this week has been filled with things breaking. i haven´t been able to withdraw money from the atm for a week because my bank´s only atm in town has been broken. i´ve gone to attempt drawing money every day with no luck. so slowly but surely my money, food supplies, and patience have been dwindling. finally this afternoon after eating a huge bowl of oatmeal for breakfast i decided to try the banco del suisa atm, which didnt work either.
jueves, 5 de julio de 2007
tena vida
fotunately 2/3 of my job is cultural exchange. as a pc volunteer, we have three motives: to share american culture with ecuadorians, to share ecuadorian culture with other americans, and offer technical assistance (ie habitat conservation). after 5 months here in ecuador i at least feel im doing pretty well at those first 2 objectives. even though i dont have a lot of friends here in town, i have met some new and interesting people mostly through my neighbors´ family and working with the consejo provincial. we really arent expected to get much work done in our first few months in site anyways, just to get oriented and make connections.
to rationalize my ecuadorian development, strangely, i relate each month that i am in ecuador to being one year in my life. so u could say i was conceived when i first arrived in washington dc for orientation, i was born when i got off the plane in quito back in february, and right now after 5 months in ecuador i am but 5 years old. it kind of makes sense really, when i leave after 26.5 months of service i will be 26 years old. the first few months of training, i feel, we were treated like babies and in a sense we were. we had trouble controlling our bodily functions and we couldnt speak well, we werent allowed to do much of anything by ourselves. being 5 years old now, we are mostly just expected to grasp the language, make connections, make sense of this society and to start learning at a higher curve, much like going to kindergarten. between 16 and 26 months we should be more mature and accept a larger role in society - to have found our ´niche´ both in society and actual work. anyways, thats my crazy rationalization, it at least comforts and make sense to me.
my spanish is coming along, im definitely not fluent and sometimes i cant speak as well as i wish i could, but i can understand pretty much everything they´re saying as long as there´s not too much slang or theyre talking too fast. im also still learning kichwa, the local indigenous language, going to a weekly class along with 2 of the other volunteers that really live in kichwa sites in the jungle, at a former volunteer´s fiancee´s house here in town. those classes will be over next month when our yachachuk, or teacher, and his kichwa fiancee go back to iowa (what a shock it will be for her to go from the jungle to iowa. well, maybe iowa isnt that different. . ). im definitely not fluent in kichwa either but i can catch a few words and phrases here and there that sometimes give me insight into the conversation. my most common phrase is ´ansa ansa runa shimi rimani´ meaning ´little by little i speak kichwa´. i can also say i raise fish (´ñuka aichawa mirachik ani) and the ever-important ´ñuka siki muchay´ (kiss my butt). i also like that they call english ´supay shimi´(devil´s mouth).
i have 2 dogs that i share with my neighbors/landlords, yana and sami. they are pretty awesome. yana (meaning black in kichwa) is a black and tan german shepherd and sami is a small white albino dog. yana is 1.5 years old female and was originally the dog of the volunteer that lived in the apt b4 me. shes really affectionate to the point where she´ll jump up on you, i still havent figured out how to train her from not doing this and scratching/dirtying people. she had one puppy 6 month sago that i got the chance to briefly see when i did my site visit in march. it was really cute. . but they gave it to another volunteer that lives 15 minutes north of tena. sami is either 7 years old or 2 years old depending on if u ask my landlady or her grandson. but im pretty sure hes around 7. he reminds me more of a cat really, he loves to rub up on you, i feel its a symptom of his being albino and that he cant see well during the day so he relies more on touch(?). he has red eyes too that make him look a little evil. sami is really calm and fury and seems warmer, like a cat. sometimes i call him cat-dog. or shmee.
i´ve been spending a lot of time reading and running lately. not at the same time. in the past month ive read 7 books. i read one in spanish called ´la selva´ about the history and the legends of the indigenous people right here in the province of napo. it was really informational and the facts and i especially enjoyed learning about how they view their once-abundant environment. i read ´living poor´ about an pc volunteer that lived on the coast of ecuador in the 60s in a really really poor village. that book was pretty depressing. ´running with scissors´ was a good one i´ve wanted to read, a really funny memoir. ´animal dreams´ was decent. 100 years of solitude by garcia marquez was okay, i liked the first half of it but became a little disinterested and confused by so much history of so many characters with similar names. ´a clockwork orange´ was good, a little hard to understand all the slang at first but surprisingly u catch on to it (especially if u read the book in 2 days). plus it included the last chapter that wasnt seen in the movies or printed in the U.S. by advice from the U.S. publisher. yesterday i began and finished ´the 5 people u meet in heaven´, it had a good storyline and really good imagery.
ive been running about every other day, 3-5 miles a day. i only have two routes i run, theres no trails that meander into the forest near my house, so i just run along the mostly unoccupied streets. at first i wanted to start running in the mornings cuuz i figured it would be as hot at that time, which it isnt. but i never was a morning runner and i have only been able to get out a couple times in the morning. i run between 4-6 pm when the sun starts to go down and i only have to worry about the humidity. if u´ve never ran in the jungle , i would recommend it. theres obviously some great scenery, and i feel like theres more oxygen getting in my lungs. like i said i dont really run in the jungle, but close enough. im kinda training for an 8k (miles) coming up on july 29 in quito, when we´re actually allowed to leave our sites after being grounded for integration purposes. i also have other errands to do in quito so it will be good to get out. the altitude will be tough though, quito´s about 1.5 miles high, and tena is only about 500 meters above sea level. so my expectations arent that high, just to not walk and to be under 45 minutes, which is 9 minutes a mile.
i´ve also been playing sports with coworkers at the consejo on fridays. work is over after lunch here, so fridays are half days. we go to the field and play a little soccer, im not good, fortunately theyre not that good either. then we go to a basketball court and play, its pretty fun, overnight i became perhaps the best basketball player in the city. we won our first game like 44-40 and even though i scored maybe half the points people were still telling me to shoot more. and the people that watch (maybe 50 people) get really into it and sometimes cheer for me. so whenever i start coaching (or maybe training refs) im sure i´ll have a strong fan base. plus, theres a covered basketball court and volleyball net right by my house to hold practices. also, i´ve decided that the weird croaking ive been hearing behind my house that sounded kind of like a baby hiccuping is probably a duck. shoulda guessed
to rationalize my ecuadorian development, strangely, i relate each month that i am in ecuador to being one year in my life. so u could say i was conceived when i first arrived in washington dc for orientation, i was born when i got off the plane in quito back in february, and right now after 5 months in ecuador i am but 5 years old. it kind of makes sense really, when i leave after 26.5 months of service i will be 26 years old. the first few months of training, i feel, we were treated like babies and in a sense we were. we had trouble controlling our bodily functions and we couldnt speak well, we werent allowed to do much of anything by ourselves. being 5 years old now, we are mostly just expected to grasp the language, make connections, make sense of this society and to start learning at a higher curve, much like going to kindergarten. between 16 and 26 months we should be more mature and accept a larger role in society - to have found our ´niche´ both in society and actual work. anyways, thats my crazy rationalization, it at least comforts and make sense to me.
my spanish is coming along, im definitely not fluent and sometimes i cant speak as well as i wish i could, but i can understand pretty much everything they´re saying as long as there´s not too much slang or theyre talking too fast. im also still learning kichwa, the local indigenous language, going to a weekly class along with 2 of the other volunteers that really live in kichwa sites in the jungle, at a former volunteer´s fiancee´s house here in town. those classes will be over next month when our yachachuk, or teacher, and his kichwa fiancee go back to iowa (what a shock it will be for her to go from the jungle to iowa. well, maybe iowa isnt that different. . ). im definitely not fluent in kichwa either but i can catch a few words and phrases here and there that sometimes give me insight into the conversation. my most common phrase is ´ansa ansa runa shimi rimani´ meaning ´little by little i speak kichwa´. i can also say i raise fish (´ñuka aichawa mirachik ani) and the ever-important ´ñuka siki muchay´ (kiss my butt). i also like that they call english ´supay shimi´(devil´s mouth).
i have 2 dogs that i share with my neighbors/landlords, yana and sami. they are pretty awesome. yana (meaning black in kichwa) is a black and tan german shepherd and sami is a small white albino dog. yana is 1.5 years old female and was originally the dog of the volunteer that lived in the apt b4 me. shes really affectionate to the point where she´ll jump up on you, i still havent figured out how to train her from not doing this and scratching/dirtying people. she had one puppy 6 month sago that i got the chance to briefly see when i did my site visit in march. it was really cute. . but they gave it to another volunteer that lives 15 minutes north of tena. sami is either 7 years old or 2 years old depending on if u ask my landlady or her grandson. but im pretty sure hes around 7. he reminds me more of a cat really, he loves to rub up on you, i feel its a symptom of his being albino and that he cant see well during the day so he relies more on touch(?). he has red eyes too that make him look a little evil. sami is really calm and fury and seems warmer, like a cat. sometimes i call him cat-dog. or shmee.
i´ve been spending a lot of time reading and running lately. not at the same time. in the past month ive read 7 books. i read one in spanish called ´la selva´ about the history and the legends of the indigenous people right here in the province of napo. it was really informational and the facts and i especially enjoyed learning about how they view their once-abundant environment. i read ´living poor´ about an pc volunteer that lived on the coast of ecuador in the 60s in a really really poor village. that book was pretty depressing. ´running with scissors´ was a good one i´ve wanted to read, a really funny memoir. ´animal dreams´ was decent. 100 years of solitude by garcia marquez was okay, i liked the first half of it but became a little disinterested and confused by so much history of so many characters with similar names. ´a clockwork orange´ was good, a little hard to understand all the slang at first but surprisingly u catch on to it (especially if u read the book in 2 days). plus it included the last chapter that wasnt seen in the movies or printed in the U.S. by advice from the U.S. publisher. yesterday i began and finished ´the 5 people u meet in heaven´, it had a good storyline and really good imagery.
ive been running about every other day, 3-5 miles a day. i only have two routes i run, theres no trails that meander into the forest near my house, so i just run along the mostly unoccupied streets. at first i wanted to start running in the mornings cuuz i figured it would be as hot at that time, which it isnt. but i never was a morning runner and i have only been able to get out a couple times in the morning. i run between 4-6 pm when the sun starts to go down and i only have to worry about the humidity. if u´ve never ran in the jungle , i would recommend it. theres obviously some great scenery, and i feel like theres more oxygen getting in my lungs. like i said i dont really run in the jungle, but close enough. im kinda training for an 8k (miles) coming up on july 29 in quito, when we´re actually allowed to leave our sites after being grounded for integration purposes. i also have other errands to do in quito so it will be good to get out. the altitude will be tough though, quito´s about 1.5 miles high, and tena is only about 500 meters above sea level. so my expectations arent that high, just to not walk and to be under 45 minutes, which is 9 minutes a mile.
i´ve also been playing sports with coworkers at the consejo on fridays. work is over after lunch here, so fridays are half days. we go to the field and play a little soccer, im not good, fortunately theyre not that good either. then we go to a basketball court and play, its pretty fun, overnight i became perhaps the best basketball player in the city. we won our first game like 44-40 and even though i scored maybe half the points people were still telling me to shoot more. and the people that watch (maybe 50 people) get really into it and sometimes cheer for me. so whenever i start coaching (or maybe training refs) im sure i´ll have a strong fan base. plus, theres a covered basketball court and volleyball net right by my house to hold practices. also, i´ve decided that the weird croaking ive been hearing behind my house that sounded kind of like a baby hiccuping is probably a duck. shoulda guessed
lunes, 2 de julio de 2007
tena trabajo
living and working in ecuador can be summed up pretty easily in one word: ridiculous. this word doesn´t mean good or bad, it just means different. very very different. after 2 months here in tena, i´ve done very little work in the strict sense of the term. but hey, i´m just adapting to ecuador. i have seen much of the southern part of the province riding in the back of the consejo´s pick-up, and i have played a very very small role in helping some communities merely by handing over tilapia fingerlings raised by the consejo. but i am still struggling to find my niche and determine just what the consejo solicited my services for. my goal is to ultimately work with some of the communities within the vicinity of tena by helping them build and maintain fish ponds (by overseeing the quality of the water and health of the fish, etc). but the consejo has done very little in directing me as to which communities i can help do this. and it would be tough to just go out there and figure it out myself, cuz i don´t even know where the communities are much less the people that live in them. i even wrote out my goals for to the consejo 2 weeks ago. but ever since then i´ve come to the office at 7:30 in the morning, ready for a briefing on where we´ll be going and what we´ll be doing, and they have no plans for me or the communities, no goals.
yeah, its just been frustration as far as working goes. and sometimes bewildering. every day i wake up to go to work, i can honestly say i have no idea what we´ll be doing, where we´ll be going, what to expect. every day of work is different. needless to say, it´s a big change from working in the front end of a grocery store for the last 3 years. i would have to say one thing i can expect though is to be riding in the back of a pick-up.
so the consejo is located in the tourism office of the province of napo, and i´ve at least come to know the people that work there fairly well. but i´m still waiting for them to actually give me some work. i´m thinking maybe i can help in some area of tourism for the province, which is not going so bad as it is afterall the rainforest and people are already drawn to that. but it could be better, i feel the office could offer more help to the communities in coordinating eco-tourism projects. the director of the environmental projects said i could help measuring the water quality in the nearby area, but i havent heard from him in a few weeks. and another guy working with after school programs said i could help teach some environmental science to kids age 6-18, but of course he would mostly just want me to teach kids english vocabulary, and i havent heard from him in a few weeks either. so far i feel like my biggest assets to the consejo have been my english, my basic knowledge of computers that´s above-average for ecuadorians, and my camera.
i have done a lot of travelling with some interns studying tourism from the local universidad, and although they already have one camera, my extra one has come in handy. so i´ve taken several dozen pictures with that, and they might use some on the web page of the tourism dept for the province. maybe i can help translate what they´ve got into english, i´ve translated a few things for them already. i´ve become pretty good friends with one of them, an 18 year old named david. his dream is to start a tourism agency here, but since his family is poor he´s also planning next year to sign up to be a cop, which is pretty good pay and little work. he also wants to learn english as it would obviously help him with tourism. so while i know little about tourism, in an effort to promote eco-tourism i´ve offered to teach the interns english, but david is the only one that has shown up for a ´class´. i´ve told him that he should follow his dream of eco-tourism but that i also understand that he needs a job as a cop til then so he and his family can live.
most of the people i meet here who know that i´m a volunteer and that i know english want me to teach them. even as i type this there are probably 9 or 10 people that want me to teach them, and its hard sometimes to turn them down. they told us in training that people will want u to teach them english, and that unless its related to your program (ie habitat conservation / agriculture) you shouldnt do it because there are other programs and volunteers out there that are there specifically designed to teach english, whereas we are not. nonetheless, i have tutored david a few times and he´s slowly learning, and i´ve taught my neighbors´10 year old nephew a few times as well. it gives me a satisfaction to know that i´m directly helping someone here, something i´ll hopefully get the chance at with helping raise fish.
yeah, its just been frustration as far as working goes. and sometimes bewildering. every day i wake up to go to work, i can honestly say i have no idea what we´ll be doing, where we´ll be going, what to expect. every day of work is different. needless to say, it´s a big change from working in the front end of a grocery store for the last 3 years. i would have to say one thing i can expect though is to be riding in the back of a pick-up.
so the consejo is located in the tourism office of the province of napo, and i´ve at least come to know the people that work there fairly well. but i´m still waiting for them to actually give me some work. i´m thinking maybe i can help in some area of tourism for the province, which is not going so bad as it is afterall the rainforest and people are already drawn to that. but it could be better, i feel the office could offer more help to the communities in coordinating eco-tourism projects. the director of the environmental projects said i could help measuring the water quality in the nearby area, but i havent heard from him in a few weeks. and another guy working with after school programs said i could help teach some environmental science to kids age 6-18, but of course he would mostly just want me to teach kids english vocabulary, and i havent heard from him in a few weeks either. so far i feel like my biggest assets to the consejo have been my english, my basic knowledge of computers that´s above-average for ecuadorians, and my camera.
i have done a lot of travelling with some interns studying tourism from the local universidad, and although they already have one camera, my extra one has come in handy. so i´ve taken several dozen pictures with that, and they might use some on the web page of the tourism dept for the province. maybe i can help translate what they´ve got into english, i´ve translated a few things for them already. i´ve become pretty good friends with one of them, an 18 year old named david. his dream is to start a tourism agency here, but since his family is poor he´s also planning next year to sign up to be a cop, which is pretty good pay and little work. he also wants to learn english as it would obviously help him with tourism. so while i know little about tourism, in an effort to promote eco-tourism i´ve offered to teach the interns english, but david is the only one that has shown up for a ´class´. i´ve told him that he should follow his dream of eco-tourism but that i also understand that he needs a job as a cop til then so he and his family can live.
most of the people i meet here who know that i´m a volunteer and that i know english want me to teach them. even as i type this there are probably 9 or 10 people that want me to teach them, and its hard sometimes to turn them down. they told us in training that people will want u to teach them english, and that unless its related to your program (ie habitat conservation / agriculture) you shouldnt do it because there are other programs and volunteers out there that are there specifically designed to teach english, whereas we are not. nonetheless, i have tutored david a few times and he´s slowly learning, and i´ve taught my neighbors´10 year old nephew a few times as well. it gives me a satisfaction to know that i´m directly helping someone here, something i´ll hopefully get the chance at with helping raise fish.
miércoles, 13 de junio de 2007
palabras cheveres
over the last month or so when i have free time i´ve been coming up with a list of words or phrases in spanish and kichwa that i thought were funny, cool, or ironic. yes, i am weird.
super-(insert any adjective here): ecuadorians, especially the cool ones, love to put super in front of anything to make it sound cooler.
cosmo-vision: i´m not positive about this word, but i think it means world view. its not that chevere, i just think it sounds cool. i would personally rather use cosmo-vision in english than ´world view´ any day.
cacao: its the fruit from which chocolate comes from. they take out the seeds and dry them, and do some other things im not exactly sure what, to make choco. but anyways, i thought cacao is a cool word cuz its almost spelled like cocoa. coincidence??
perezoso: as an adjective it literally translates to lazy. but it also means ´sloth´ here, which is a good fit for those lazy creatures.
volar: it can either mean to fly or to explode. hopefully not at the same time.
ya mismo: this phrase is more of the ´mismo´rant i had a couple blogs ago. i 4got to include this one is which is also common and possibly the most confusing. i think it means right now, but it never, ever means right now, at least not here. it usually means more like in 10-30 minutes.
judas: it means traitor. i´ve never actually heard anyone say this word, i just found it in my dictionary one day and thought it was amusing.
guacala: i´m not sure to spell this word, but u say it ¨wa-ca-lah¨. it means gross, and it sounds kinda gross, no? it could be a kichwa word?
achachay: this is a kichwa word that means cold, or that u feel cold. my family in olmedo said it all the time cuz it usually was cold there. i heard someone say it here in tena the other day when we were riding on the back of a truck in the rain. but she was saying achchchchchay, and i started laughing. its their way of saying brrrrrrrrr. they also say araray, which means it´s hot.
ama wakachichu: this phrase it purely kichwa. it also sounds funny. it means ¨dont cry¨. it reminds me of waka waka waka every time i hear it.
entonces: it means ´then´ or ´so´, but people here also use it as a filler between words, much like saying ¨umm¨ in english. the kichwa also have this in their language, they say ¨shinakpi¨.
chuta: it means shoot. i often say this word in conversations because i dont know what other bad words are proper to say at the time.
tranquilo: it means nice, quiet, cool, calm, good. so it can mean a lot and people use it a lot here. people ask me if i like tena, and i say ¨si, es tranquilo¨ and they understand what i mean.
chevere: pronounced ¨che-ve-ray¨, i learned about the popularity of this word in south america b4 i came here. it means cool, but i didnt really believe it was that popular here cuz it doesnt sound cool. but it is. i prefer to say ¨bacan¨ which also means cool, but i think they say that more in chile.
sacamuelas: i´ve also never heard this word b4, but found it in the dictionary. it means a cheap dentist.
que bestia: this phrase translates to ¨how bad¨ or ¨how sucky/gross¨. i think. everytime i hear it and try to translate it, it seems weird. theres not really a good english translation, but i guess its the message that counts.
chao: it means bye. im not sure how they decided to take it from the french, but its here. and i dont think ive ever heard ´adios´ here.
shamangaraunguichichu?: this is a kichwa word that means ¨are you guys going to come?¨ i learned this in my weekly kichwa class. ´shaman´ stems from the verb shamana (to come), ´garaun´ expresses the future tense, ´guichi´ refers to you guys, and ´chu´ is used at the end of yes/no questions. niiice.
mandarina: its the nickname of a guy who is whipped. i dont know why this word, which translates to ´tangerine´, but i thought it was amusing.
super-(insert any adjective here): ecuadorians, especially the cool ones, love to put super in front of anything to make it sound cooler.
cosmo-vision: i´m not positive about this word, but i think it means world view. its not that chevere, i just think it sounds cool. i would personally rather use cosmo-vision in english than ´world view´ any day.
cacao: its the fruit from which chocolate comes from. they take out the seeds and dry them, and do some other things im not exactly sure what, to make choco. but anyways, i thought cacao is a cool word cuz its almost spelled like cocoa. coincidence??
perezoso: as an adjective it literally translates to lazy. but it also means ´sloth´ here, which is a good fit for those lazy creatures.
volar: it can either mean to fly or to explode. hopefully not at the same time.
ya mismo: this phrase is more of the ´mismo´rant i had a couple blogs ago. i 4got to include this one is which is also common and possibly the most confusing. i think it means right now, but it never, ever means right now, at least not here. it usually means more like in 10-30 minutes.
judas: it means traitor. i´ve never actually heard anyone say this word, i just found it in my dictionary one day and thought it was amusing.
guacala: i´m not sure to spell this word, but u say it ¨wa-ca-lah¨. it means gross, and it sounds kinda gross, no? it could be a kichwa word?
achachay: this is a kichwa word that means cold, or that u feel cold. my family in olmedo said it all the time cuz it usually was cold there. i heard someone say it here in tena the other day when we were riding on the back of a truck in the rain. but she was saying achchchchchay, and i started laughing. its their way of saying brrrrrrrrr. they also say araray, which means it´s hot.
ama wakachichu: this phrase it purely kichwa. it also sounds funny. it means ¨dont cry¨. it reminds me of waka waka waka every time i hear it.
entonces: it means ´then´ or ´so´, but people here also use it as a filler between words, much like saying ¨umm¨ in english. the kichwa also have this in their language, they say ¨shinakpi¨.
chuta: it means shoot. i often say this word in conversations because i dont know what other bad words are proper to say at the time.
tranquilo: it means nice, quiet, cool, calm, good. so it can mean a lot and people use it a lot here. people ask me if i like tena, and i say ¨si, es tranquilo¨ and they understand what i mean.
chevere: pronounced ¨che-ve-ray¨, i learned about the popularity of this word in south america b4 i came here. it means cool, but i didnt really believe it was that popular here cuz it doesnt sound cool. but it is. i prefer to say ¨bacan¨ which also means cool, but i think they say that more in chile.
sacamuelas: i´ve also never heard this word b4, but found it in the dictionary. it means a cheap dentist.
que bestia: this phrase translates to ¨how bad¨ or ¨how sucky/gross¨. i think. everytime i hear it and try to translate it, it seems weird. theres not really a good english translation, but i guess its the message that counts.
chao: it means bye. im not sure how they decided to take it from the french, but its here. and i dont think ive ever heard ´adios´ here.
shamangaraunguichichu?: this is a kichwa word that means ¨are you guys going to come?¨ i learned this in my weekly kichwa class. ´shaman´ stems from the verb shamana (to come), ´garaun´ expresses the future tense, ´guichi´ refers to you guys, and ´chu´ is used at the end of yes/no questions. niiice.
mandarina: its the nickname of a guy who is whipped. i dont know why this word, which translates to ´tangerine´, but i thought it was amusing.
lunes, 28 de mayo de 2007
choques
thus far my time in ecuador has been surreal. in all my adapting and adjusting and learning, i generally don´t stop and think about where i am. ecuador. south america. the rainforest. but every now and then i have those moments, choques de cultura (culture shock) that strike me when i see or am doing something out of the ordinary for the typical norteamericano. whether they be good, bad, humorous, sad, frustrating, or just plain weird, some notable choques include:
walking into a store and having the first words out of the vendor´s mouth be ¨¿que deseas?¨ for those ingleses it translates to ¨what do you wish for?¨ i´ve kinda gotten used to this, as i probably will get used to all of these choques, but it still bugs me cuz if its a store im not familiar with, i dont know what i ¨deseo¨ (desire). i just want to look at what u have. my typical reply, if i dont know what i want, is ¨estoy mirando¨ (i´m looking). and then the vendor follows u around while ur looking at their goods. it sounds trite and maybe it is, but when u go into 5 or more stores in a day and they all do the same thing, it bugs. but i realize it´s just a difference of cultures is all, maybe an ecuadorian in an american store would be bothered by the lack of it.
washing dishes in my bathroom. i don´t have a sink in the room i call my kitchen, thus, i soak my dirty dishes in a 15 gallon-tub and after a few days when im out of dishes (usually the spoons go first) i have to wash them in my bathroom sink. its not so bad, but when my sink gets clogged i resort to the shower, which seems really odd to me (like the episode of seinfeld where kramer starts cooking in the shower), but at least its pretty effective. i also hang my clothes to dry in my living room. there´s a wire stretched across it at 6.5 feet above the floor. its weird, but hanging stuff outside would take twice as long to dry.
the lack of change, specifically loose change ($). good luck trying to pay for that $3 sandwich with a 20. vendors just dont carry change. dollar bills are like gold here. technically, many of the dollars really are gold, they have an abundance of the gold dollar coins, which is actually good and i kinda wish the US used em more. at least ecuador uses the US dollar as its currency. but its pretty ridiculous when you have to buy twice as much as you wanted just to make sure a store can give u change for your 5 dollar bill. so if u ever visit, ur advised to bring as many dollar bills and loose change as possible.
people love coca cola here. for every cup of water i try to drink per day (8), the avg ecuadorian probably drinks 4 cups of coke per day. the large bottles also only sell in 3 liter bottles. obviously this isnt good unless u own stock in coca cola, as many people here have diabetes. plus, if i drink soda i´d rather have sprite.
pickup trucks (aka camionetas) are popular here, esp. in Tena. i´d say 75% of the autos on the road here are pickups. and a lot of those are owned by govt workers, as tena is the provincial govt. the others are taxis. car ownership isnt that high here. people do have motorcycles here though, which PC volunteers arent allowed to ride. but we are allowed to hop in the back of a pickup and ride into the jungle with 20 other people (15 of them indigenous kids), as i did last week. and pretty much every day i work with the consejo provincial i can expect to be riding in the back of a camioneta for at least an hour, sometimes having to sit on huge bags of fish food or getting soaked by huge tubs of fish-filled water. and getting soaked by the rain. good times.
people don´t like the police here. yeah, this isnt so much a choque, most ppl in the states dont, either. but people here dislike them more, they say cuz theyre more corrupt, which they may or may not be. they call them ´chapas´ here, its like the ecuadorian version of a ´pig´, or 5-0. sometimes they stand around and just hold big automatic guns, its kinda intimidating. yesterday i saw a policia running down the street with an m-14. too bad i didnt have my camera.
having to put a mosquito net over my bed to avoid getting eaten up. actually in the city itself theres not too many bugs. but as a precaution mosquito nets are good. it took me a couple hours to assemble mine. some of my partners that live in the jungle defintely need one. one of them woke up in the middle of the night with a mouse licking her hand through the mosquito net. and there´s always the slight slight chance we get malaria, although its not common at all here. we have to promise our nurses that we´ll take our malaria meds (mefloquine) once a week. and if we dont we can be removed. we started taking malaria a few weeks after we knew we were going to mosquito-infested areas. a side-effect of mefloquine is that it can give u weird dreams, and i would definitely say i had those the first few times i took it. one time i literally knew i was dreaming, but i felt myself being able to control my dream and make it, kind of, into a vivid movie in which i was the director. all i can really remember of it is that it took place mostly in high school and that it lasted longer than i wanted it to.
people here think it gets cold. guess what tenians. . u live in the jungle. it doesnt get cold here. well thats not entirely true, on very rare occassions it gets a little cold here at night, usually when its raining. and if u happen to be riding in the bed of a pickup truck while its raining as i have a few times. but other than that, i´d say its a very constant 75-85 degrees (with humidity, of course it feels hotter). and i thought californians were spoiled about their weather. it gets 50 degrees in so cal and people think its freezing. here when its 70 degrees they think it is. and i tell them, ¨nunca hace frio en tena (its never cold here in tena)¨ , and they just look at me like i´m crazy.
the machismo is ubiquitous. we had a little social studies lesson in training where we learned a little cultural history of south america. i had actually forgotten a lot of the little south american history i ever knew, but we were told that the conquistadores who came from spain came to the new world in search of gold. and some of them were pirates. they didnt come here to escape religious persecution like the pilgrims up north. they came here to reap the benefits of the land. thus, they didnt bring along their families as the pilgrims did, and they often ´conquered´ the indigenous women. anways, what im trying to get at is that some of this conquistador attitude has remained in ecuadorian society, and very often the men whistle, hoot, stare, oogle, hound, and offer themselves to the women (and sometimes girls) here. sometimes one of my coworkers, whose nickname is ¨don gato ¨(because he has green eyes), literally howls at women. and its more than just cat-calls to girls, its in the way the men drive (without fear), how they challenge eachother to drink the most, etc. i know a lot of other places are like this, i´ve just never had to live with it. it´s gonna be strange going back to cali and not completely turning myself around to check out half the girls.
the breastfeeding women. the indigenous women here have many many kids (if u have less than 7 kids people here wonder why so few), and are completely comfortable with just whipping out their boob at a social gathering or just walking down the street. when i go out and visit the kichwa communities and there are say, 25 women in eyesight, 15 of them are holding a child, and of those 15, 5 are freely breastfeeding. i´m not gonna complain, or lie, sometimes i look. lol. but yeah, i definitely get some culture shock at those times.
eating rabbit, cuy (guinea pig), snails, deer, alfalfa, and chicha. i had rabbit along with my fellow oriente volunteers during our technical trip. we killed 2 of them with blows to the head with a hammer and skinned em. im not gonna get into much more detail than that, it was pretty unnerving. we ate it in a soup, it actually tasted pretty good, like chicken but more gamey. i had deer here in tena, in a soup as well, served by a kichwa family i met. it was also gamey as one would expect, but didnt taste as good. i def wouldnt have eaten it had it not already been prepared and served to me unexpectedly. i ate guinea pig back in olmedo where we had training. its more common there in the sierra, its more of delicacy that they serve on special occassions. i had it twice, both times when my host family had extended family visiting. luckily i didnt have to see one killed or skinned. it tastes alright, i dont really see why theyre so popular, id rather eat a chicken. but theyre not too bad, quite salty as are most things in the sierra. snails i also ate in olmedo on one occassion. theyre called chorros. i ate small ones, about the size of raisins, with the shells on, their boiled, and then u just suck them out. i ate em with lime, salt, and aji (hot sauce) out of necessity. not good, slimy as one would imagine. the kichwa outside of tena also eat snails, which are larger, as big as the size of a fist. unfortunately i havent gotten the chance to consume one of those. alfalfa i drank as a ´smoothie´ in olmedo where my family grew lots of alfalfa to feed their 15o+ guinea pigs. it was bright green and actually quite tasty. nonetheless, i felt like a cuy drinking it. then theres chicha which is totally mind-boggling to me. chewing up yuca or chonta, spitting it out, letting it ferment a few days, and drinking it. i´ve now had it 4 times, each time it seems to get worse, although the yuca is slightly better than the chonta version. i will never understand drinking someone else´s spit, no matter how fermented/alcoholic it is.
and last but not least, hearing techno versions of random american songs. from what i hear from my sister, some of europe has the same thing, and the cds themselves probably come from europe. i´ve heard many strange techno cuts, but the weirdest so far are probably ´sounds of silence´, ´if you´re going to san francisco´, and ´losing my religion´. dont ask me. . .
.
walking into a store and having the first words out of the vendor´s mouth be ¨¿que deseas?¨ for those ingleses it translates to ¨what do you wish for?¨ i´ve kinda gotten used to this, as i probably will get used to all of these choques, but it still bugs me cuz if its a store im not familiar with, i dont know what i ¨deseo¨ (desire). i just want to look at what u have. my typical reply, if i dont know what i want, is ¨estoy mirando¨ (i´m looking). and then the vendor follows u around while ur looking at their goods. it sounds trite and maybe it is, but when u go into 5 or more stores in a day and they all do the same thing, it bugs. but i realize it´s just a difference of cultures is all, maybe an ecuadorian in an american store would be bothered by the lack of it.
washing dishes in my bathroom. i don´t have a sink in the room i call my kitchen, thus, i soak my dirty dishes in a 15 gallon-tub and after a few days when im out of dishes (usually the spoons go first) i have to wash them in my bathroom sink. its not so bad, but when my sink gets clogged i resort to the shower, which seems really odd to me (like the episode of seinfeld where kramer starts cooking in the shower), but at least its pretty effective. i also hang my clothes to dry in my living room. there´s a wire stretched across it at 6.5 feet above the floor. its weird, but hanging stuff outside would take twice as long to dry.
the lack of change, specifically loose change ($). good luck trying to pay for that $3 sandwich with a 20. vendors just dont carry change. dollar bills are like gold here. technically, many of the dollars really are gold, they have an abundance of the gold dollar coins, which is actually good and i kinda wish the US used em more. at least ecuador uses the US dollar as its currency. but its pretty ridiculous when you have to buy twice as much as you wanted just to make sure a store can give u change for your 5 dollar bill. so if u ever visit, ur advised to bring as many dollar bills and loose change as possible.
people love coca cola here. for every cup of water i try to drink per day (8), the avg ecuadorian probably drinks 4 cups of coke per day. the large bottles also only sell in 3 liter bottles. obviously this isnt good unless u own stock in coca cola, as many people here have diabetes. plus, if i drink soda i´d rather have sprite.
pickup trucks (aka camionetas) are popular here, esp. in Tena. i´d say 75% of the autos on the road here are pickups. and a lot of those are owned by govt workers, as tena is the provincial govt. the others are taxis. car ownership isnt that high here. people do have motorcycles here though, which PC volunteers arent allowed to ride. but we are allowed to hop in the back of a pickup and ride into the jungle with 20 other people (15 of them indigenous kids), as i did last week. and pretty much every day i work with the consejo provincial i can expect to be riding in the back of a camioneta for at least an hour, sometimes having to sit on huge bags of fish food or getting soaked by huge tubs of fish-filled water. and getting soaked by the rain. good times.
people don´t like the police here. yeah, this isnt so much a choque, most ppl in the states dont, either. but people here dislike them more, they say cuz theyre more corrupt, which they may or may not be. they call them ´chapas´ here, its like the ecuadorian version of a ´pig´, or 5-0. sometimes they stand around and just hold big automatic guns, its kinda intimidating. yesterday i saw a policia running down the street with an m-14. too bad i didnt have my camera.
having to put a mosquito net over my bed to avoid getting eaten up. actually in the city itself theres not too many bugs. but as a precaution mosquito nets are good. it took me a couple hours to assemble mine. some of my partners that live in the jungle defintely need one. one of them woke up in the middle of the night with a mouse licking her hand through the mosquito net. and there´s always the slight slight chance we get malaria, although its not common at all here. we have to promise our nurses that we´ll take our malaria meds (mefloquine) once a week. and if we dont we can be removed. we started taking malaria a few weeks after we knew we were going to mosquito-infested areas. a side-effect of mefloquine is that it can give u weird dreams, and i would definitely say i had those the first few times i took it. one time i literally knew i was dreaming, but i felt myself being able to control my dream and make it, kind of, into a vivid movie in which i was the director. all i can really remember of it is that it took place mostly in high school and that it lasted longer than i wanted it to.
people here think it gets cold. guess what tenians. . u live in the jungle. it doesnt get cold here. well thats not entirely true, on very rare occassions it gets a little cold here at night, usually when its raining. and if u happen to be riding in the bed of a pickup truck while its raining as i have a few times. but other than that, i´d say its a very constant 75-85 degrees (with humidity, of course it feels hotter). and i thought californians were spoiled about their weather. it gets 50 degrees in so cal and people think its freezing. here when its 70 degrees they think it is. and i tell them, ¨nunca hace frio en tena (its never cold here in tena)¨ , and they just look at me like i´m crazy.
the machismo is ubiquitous. we had a little social studies lesson in training where we learned a little cultural history of south america. i had actually forgotten a lot of the little south american history i ever knew, but we were told that the conquistadores who came from spain came to the new world in search of gold. and some of them were pirates. they didnt come here to escape religious persecution like the pilgrims up north. they came here to reap the benefits of the land. thus, they didnt bring along their families as the pilgrims did, and they often ´conquered´ the indigenous women. anways, what im trying to get at is that some of this conquistador attitude has remained in ecuadorian society, and very often the men whistle, hoot, stare, oogle, hound, and offer themselves to the women (and sometimes girls) here. sometimes one of my coworkers, whose nickname is ¨don gato ¨(because he has green eyes), literally howls at women. and its more than just cat-calls to girls, its in the way the men drive (without fear), how they challenge eachother to drink the most, etc. i know a lot of other places are like this, i´ve just never had to live with it. it´s gonna be strange going back to cali and not completely turning myself around to check out half the girls.
the breastfeeding women. the indigenous women here have many many kids (if u have less than 7 kids people here wonder why so few), and are completely comfortable with just whipping out their boob at a social gathering or just walking down the street. when i go out and visit the kichwa communities and there are say, 25 women in eyesight, 15 of them are holding a child, and of those 15, 5 are freely breastfeeding. i´m not gonna complain, or lie, sometimes i look. lol. but yeah, i definitely get some culture shock at those times.
eating rabbit, cuy (guinea pig), snails, deer, alfalfa, and chicha. i had rabbit along with my fellow oriente volunteers during our technical trip. we killed 2 of them with blows to the head with a hammer and skinned em. im not gonna get into much more detail than that, it was pretty unnerving. we ate it in a soup, it actually tasted pretty good, like chicken but more gamey. i had deer here in tena, in a soup as well, served by a kichwa family i met. it was also gamey as one would expect, but didnt taste as good. i def wouldnt have eaten it had it not already been prepared and served to me unexpectedly. i ate guinea pig back in olmedo where we had training. its more common there in the sierra, its more of delicacy that they serve on special occassions. i had it twice, both times when my host family had extended family visiting. luckily i didnt have to see one killed or skinned. it tastes alright, i dont really see why theyre so popular, id rather eat a chicken. but theyre not too bad, quite salty as are most things in the sierra. snails i also ate in olmedo on one occassion. theyre called chorros. i ate small ones, about the size of raisins, with the shells on, their boiled, and then u just suck them out. i ate em with lime, salt, and aji (hot sauce) out of necessity. not good, slimy as one would imagine. the kichwa outside of tena also eat snails, which are larger, as big as the size of a fist. unfortunately i havent gotten the chance to consume one of those. alfalfa i drank as a ´smoothie´ in olmedo where my family grew lots of alfalfa to feed their 15o+ guinea pigs. it was bright green and actually quite tasty. nonetheless, i felt like a cuy drinking it. then theres chicha which is totally mind-boggling to me. chewing up yuca or chonta, spitting it out, letting it ferment a few days, and drinking it. i´ve now had it 4 times, each time it seems to get worse, although the yuca is slightly better than the chonta version. i will never understand drinking someone else´s spit, no matter how fermented/alcoholic it is.
and last but not least, hearing techno versions of random american songs. from what i hear from my sister, some of europe has the same thing, and the cds themselves probably come from europe. i´ve heard many strange techno cuts, but the weirdest so far are probably ´sounds of silence´, ´if you´re going to san francisco´, and ´losing my religion´. dont ask me. . .
.
jueves, 17 de mayo de 2007
ecuador no mas
u may be wondering why this blog has such a seemingly weird title, and rightly so. ecuador no mas literally translates into ¨ecuador no more¨. but u see in ecuador, as in most other latin american countries, spanish has many nuances. the phrase ¨no mas¨ is perhaps one of the most used, and most bewildering phrases i´ve encountered here thus far, along with the word ¨mismo¨. ecuadorians can use the phrase ¨no mas¨ after almost any verb they like, for instance, when i first got to my community training site in olmedo, my host mother told me to ¨siga no mas¨ which literally means ¨follow no more¨, and even with my intermediate spanish i was like ¨whaa??¨ it took me a few seconds to figure out what siga meant, and i didnt fully appreciate what the ¨no mas¨ part meant until a few weeks later when our language facilators explained that its just an expression they use. my fellow volunteers and i jokingly like to add no mas after our verbs now, like ¨coge no mas¨(take it no more), ¨diga no mas¨ (tell me no more), ¨borrache no mas¨ (get drunk no more), and ¨mire no mas¨ (look no more). and its a little ridiculous when people here say ¨ya mismo¨ or ¨ hoy mismo¨, cuz technically they mean, well im still not sure exactly what they mean, but when people say them theyre referring to ¨now¨ and ¨today¨, respectively. . but very seldomly when they say ya mismo and hoy mismo is it true. i was waiting for the bus to leave cayambe one day, and asked the ¨chofer¨ who is the bus driver, when the bus would leave, and he said ¨ya mismo¨. . and i took that to mean ¨now¨, or at least soon, but i waited 35 more minutes for that bus to leave. and of course, hoy mismo usually means sometime within the next 4 days.
i think i´ll devote most of this blog to my observations of ecuadorian nuances thus far, the differences and some similarities with ´north´american life. it is very important to greet everybody in a room personally with a handshake and if theyre a female a kiss on the cheek, especially when in an atmosphere thats more than casual. in olmedo, as with most other small towns, people walking down the street greet eachother with either a ¨buenos dias¨, ¨buenas tardes¨, or ¨buenas noches¨, even people indoors say it to people outdoors. it seemed very important for little kids to say this to their elders to show respect, but the elders very rarely do likewise. the automobiles, especially the buses and trucks, seem exhaust more pollution, possibly because of relaxed or ¨falta¨ (absent) smog laws. in most cities theres more litter, people are either ignorant of pollution or unable to find waste receptacles as its very common to see people walking down the street and throw their water bottle into the gutter, and i dont think ive been on a bus ride over an hour (and ive taken several dozen of those already) where somebody didnt throw a piece of trash out the window. but its also that theres just not a lot of trash receptacles which also reflects the govt but im not gonna get into that. at least tena is gonna start separating the trash they collect into organics and non organics in june.
children are very common here, if theres not at least 5 kids in a family everyone wonders why. and the kids are everywhere and play everywhere, like on the sidewalk where sometimes u can see them just laying down right on the dirty sidewalk, playing with their toy cars or dolls while people walk by. this isnt uncommon in the states, but literally every block here in tena u can count on at least one kid laying or sitting on the sidewalk while their mom/dad tends to their store inside. ive only been to misa, or church mass, here once. 97% of ecuadorians are catholic, 1% are christian, 1% are other like jewish, and 1% is actually evangelical, and that percentage seems higher - or maybe theyre just more involved with the kichwa communities around here. alcoholism is a big problem in some kichwa communities, but i guess in communities where theres evangelicals its not a big problem. so anyway, the first full day i was in olmedo was a sunday and my ¨sister¨ invited me to go to mass with her and her daughters, aka my sobrinas. i´ve been to catholic mass b4, but man was this boring. perhaps its becuz it was all in spanish and i wasnt very ´spanished´ back then. the priest would read some scripture and the kids would just repeat what he said, and they did that for about 20 verses, then they went up to take communion or whatever it is, and then the priest read for what seemed like an eternity whilst the kids didnt pay attention at all save for maybe 4 out of the 120 or so of them (i forgot to mention this was kids´mass). during this time especially, i´d say at least 20 of them were staring at me at any one time, and when kids here stare at u, they stare @ u, like ur a martian or something, for a good minute, not even making an expression. once in a while i´ll stick my tongue out at them or something and sometimes they react, sometimes they´ll look away, or sometimes theyll just go right on staring.
dogs are everywhere, the vast majority un-fixed and some just freely roaming. ive actually gotten a little desensitized to this unfortunately, but most of the dogs are skinny and could use a bath or 7. in houses (mostly in olmedo not so much here in tena, it was amusing and quite self-boosting to have to duck about 4 inches under the doorways when passing through rooms. only a few times did i forget and hit my head, my comrade wasnt as lucky and hit his head at least once a day. i guess theyre taller here in tena(?). as i mentioned b4, theres a lot less punctuality here than the states. if a bus is supposed to pass every hour on the hour , theres about a 75% chance it will. and lunch breaks are usually 2 hours here, which is actually really understandable for people who work outdoors, because as i found out on monday while digging holes to plant lemon trees during the morning and afternoon, if it aint raining, u do not wanna work outside between 12 and 2.
i just got into the internet cafe after watching a parade celebrating the founding of tena. its weird, because a lot of the barrios in tena and even a lot of the communities way outside of tena are celebrating the same thing this month. maybe its more a province thing, i dunno. it was pretty cool, it was mostly kids dancing as they walked down the main street which is near my house. so i been going out to the fish project with the provinvicial govt, on friday i went out with them to a kichwa community an hour north of here to give them some tilapia fingerlings for their ponds. i had chicha for the first time, and as bad as fermented yuca saliva sounds, it was a lot worser. i really dont understand why anybody would want to drink it, but to have it offered and refuse it is disrespectful, so my counterpart and i drank it. it actually wasnt chewed up yuca it was chonta, some kind of fruit. . and the color was orange, i doubt the yuca tastes better. i do like un-chicha´ed yuca though, and they served that along with a chicken soup, so i took a few gulps of the saliva concoction and quickly followed them up with a mouthful of the yuca and chased that with the soup to neutralize the taste. alas, i was only able to finish half of the large cup they gave me. after i told them ¨pagaracho¨ (thankyou) and walked away, i heard them giggling, i think cuz they checked to see i only drank half of their spit. later that night i had a few beers and a margarita with some other gringos and threw up around 3am, i did have a lot of beers but im still pretty sure the chicha did me in for that night.
on sunday, which is also mother´s day here, i went with a neighbor to watch a futbol game in a kichwa community named ´nueva guinea´. they were actually playing ´indoor´ futbol, which is usually outside here just on a slightly smaller field then normal. they were pretty good, i think i coulda taken some of them. yeah right. at least they didnt offer me chicha. later we went to an even smaller community and i played a game of futbol (on an even smaller field and with a smaller ball) with all ecuadorians for the first time, and scored a goal. it was pretty muddy too and i slipped several times. i saw my first wild monkey swinging in the trees here, although supposedly it wasnt really wild cuz it was someone´s pet, but it was wild-looking enuf for me. in a city of misahualli thats 15 minutes away theres supposed to be 15 or so monkeys in the town square that will climb ll over u and take ur stuff. i wanna go there.
on monday i went to the consejo and they said the truck we get out to the project with was broken, so we went out on a TRACTOR. not only was this my first time riding in a tractor, it was my first time riding a tractor through the JUNGLE. lemme tell u folks, not fun. usually the trip in truck tkes 30 minutes, this took 75 minutes and was just a little bumpy. here´s me sitting on the side with one hand clutching a bar, with my wrist keeping same bar from digging into the back of my knee whilst bouncing over jungle rocks and mud, and the other hand grasping the roof , while making sure my foot doesnt slip into the tire, riding through paved tena at 10 mph for 15 minutes, people staring at the gringo ridin on the side of a tractor, dogs barking at us and chasing us. and then we get into the jungle and as u can imagine it only got more comfortable. and riding back was worse cuz i was already sore from the trip out there and digging holes all day. so on tuesday i was too sore to go to work and mostly did sudokus and taught a neighbor some english. yeah, its been an adventure
i think i´ll devote most of this blog to my observations of ecuadorian nuances thus far, the differences and some similarities with ´north´american life. it is very important to greet everybody in a room personally with a handshake and if theyre a female a kiss on the cheek, especially when in an atmosphere thats more than casual. in olmedo, as with most other small towns, people walking down the street greet eachother with either a ¨buenos dias¨, ¨buenas tardes¨, or ¨buenas noches¨, even people indoors say it to people outdoors. it seemed very important for little kids to say this to their elders to show respect, but the elders very rarely do likewise. the automobiles, especially the buses and trucks, seem exhaust more pollution, possibly because of relaxed or ¨falta¨ (absent) smog laws. in most cities theres more litter, people are either ignorant of pollution or unable to find waste receptacles as its very common to see people walking down the street and throw their water bottle into the gutter, and i dont think ive been on a bus ride over an hour (and ive taken several dozen of those already) where somebody didnt throw a piece of trash out the window. but its also that theres just not a lot of trash receptacles which also reflects the govt but im not gonna get into that. at least tena is gonna start separating the trash they collect into organics and non organics in june.
children are very common here, if theres not at least 5 kids in a family everyone wonders why. and the kids are everywhere and play everywhere, like on the sidewalk where sometimes u can see them just laying down right on the dirty sidewalk, playing with their toy cars or dolls while people walk by. this isnt uncommon in the states, but literally every block here in tena u can count on at least one kid laying or sitting on the sidewalk while their mom/dad tends to their store inside. ive only been to misa, or church mass, here once. 97% of ecuadorians are catholic, 1% are christian, 1% are other like jewish, and 1% is actually evangelical, and that percentage seems higher - or maybe theyre just more involved with the kichwa communities around here. alcoholism is a big problem in some kichwa communities, but i guess in communities where theres evangelicals its not a big problem. so anyway, the first full day i was in olmedo was a sunday and my ¨sister¨ invited me to go to mass with her and her daughters, aka my sobrinas. i´ve been to catholic mass b4, but man was this boring. perhaps its becuz it was all in spanish and i wasnt very ´spanished´ back then. the priest would read some scripture and the kids would just repeat what he said, and they did that for about 20 verses, then they went up to take communion or whatever it is, and then the priest read for what seemed like an eternity whilst the kids didnt pay attention at all save for maybe 4 out of the 120 or so of them (i forgot to mention this was kids´mass). during this time especially, i´d say at least 20 of them were staring at me at any one time, and when kids here stare at u, they stare @ u, like ur a martian or something, for a good minute, not even making an expression. once in a while i´ll stick my tongue out at them or something and sometimes they react, sometimes they´ll look away, or sometimes theyll just go right on staring.
dogs are everywhere, the vast majority un-fixed and some just freely roaming. ive actually gotten a little desensitized to this unfortunately, but most of the dogs are skinny and could use a bath or 7. in houses (mostly in olmedo not so much here in tena, it was amusing and quite self-boosting to have to duck about 4 inches under the doorways when passing through rooms. only a few times did i forget and hit my head, my comrade wasnt as lucky and hit his head at least once a day. i guess theyre taller here in tena(?). as i mentioned b4, theres a lot less punctuality here than the states. if a bus is supposed to pass every hour on the hour , theres about a 75% chance it will. and lunch breaks are usually 2 hours here, which is actually really understandable for people who work outdoors, because as i found out on monday while digging holes to plant lemon trees during the morning and afternoon, if it aint raining, u do not wanna work outside between 12 and 2.
i just got into the internet cafe after watching a parade celebrating the founding of tena. its weird, because a lot of the barrios in tena and even a lot of the communities way outside of tena are celebrating the same thing this month. maybe its more a province thing, i dunno. it was pretty cool, it was mostly kids dancing as they walked down the main street which is near my house. so i been going out to the fish project with the provinvicial govt, on friday i went out with them to a kichwa community an hour north of here to give them some tilapia fingerlings for their ponds. i had chicha for the first time, and as bad as fermented yuca saliva sounds, it was a lot worser. i really dont understand why anybody would want to drink it, but to have it offered and refuse it is disrespectful, so my counterpart and i drank it. it actually wasnt chewed up yuca it was chonta, some kind of fruit. . and the color was orange, i doubt the yuca tastes better. i do like un-chicha´ed yuca though, and they served that along with a chicken soup, so i took a few gulps of the saliva concoction and quickly followed them up with a mouthful of the yuca and chased that with the soup to neutralize the taste. alas, i was only able to finish half of the large cup they gave me. after i told them ¨pagaracho¨ (thankyou) and walked away, i heard them giggling, i think cuz they checked to see i only drank half of their spit. later that night i had a few beers and a margarita with some other gringos and threw up around 3am, i did have a lot of beers but im still pretty sure the chicha did me in for that night.
on sunday, which is also mother´s day here, i went with a neighbor to watch a futbol game in a kichwa community named ´nueva guinea´. they were actually playing ´indoor´ futbol, which is usually outside here just on a slightly smaller field then normal. they were pretty good, i think i coulda taken some of them. yeah right. at least they didnt offer me chicha. later we went to an even smaller community and i played a game of futbol (on an even smaller field and with a smaller ball) with all ecuadorians for the first time, and scored a goal. it was pretty muddy too and i slipped several times. i saw my first wild monkey swinging in the trees here, although supposedly it wasnt really wild cuz it was someone´s pet, but it was wild-looking enuf for me. in a city of misahualli thats 15 minutes away theres supposed to be 15 or so monkeys in the town square that will climb ll over u and take ur stuff. i wanna go there.
on monday i went to the consejo and they said the truck we get out to the project with was broken, so we went out on a TRACTOR. not only was this my first time riding in a tractor, it was my first time riding a tractor through the JUNGLE. lemme tell u folks, not fun. usually the trip in truck tkes 30 minutes, this took 75 minutes and was just a little bumpy. here´s me sitting on the side with one hand clutching a bar, with my wrist keeping same bar from digging into the back of my knee whilst bouncing over jungle rocks and mud, and the other hand grasping the roof , while making sure my foot doesnt slip into the tire, riding through paved tena at 10 mph for 15 minutes, people staring at the gringo ridin on the side of a tractor, dogs barking at us and chasing us. and then we get into the jungle and as u can imagine it only got more comfortable. and riding back was worse cuz i was already sore from the trip out there and digging holes all day. so on tuesday i was too sore to go to work and mostly did sudokus and taught a neighbor some english. yeah, its been an adventure
martes, 1 de mayo de 2007
que fue
after being here for a week i realize its not gonna be a vacation. although to be honest i havent really done much work yet, mostly just buying stuff for my place, arranging stuff, and exploring the city. i´ve been surpsrised to discover that it´s actually louder in my tena apartment than it was in my olmedo home. granted, there´s not a bus rolling by 10 feet away from my window every 15 minutes, but there are at least 10 roosters surrounding my apartment waking me up early in the morning and even keeping me awake at night. and then there´s some other bird in my neighbor´s backyard that, no joke, sounds like a baby´s burp for one second and then turns into a baby´s high pitched cry another 2 seconds. that bird croaks at any time of the day, and its loud cuz my walls dont touch the roof all the way around my room for jungle ventilation purposes. and last nite my next door neighbor´s 6month old baby was crying from 4am until 5am. needless to say, with the roosters and the baby crying there was no possible way i could have slept, even had i used my ear plugs. at 4:30 i decided since im not gonna be sleeping, i might as well listen to my ipod and tune it all out, and even though its almost as difficult to sleep with my headphones on, it helped me relax. so thanks for those headphones, dad.
i started to build a futon this weekend cuz i had an extra small mattress and wanted a furniture that i could recline in instead of my two plastic chairs. after searching for a place to get wood, i got two boards about 1¨ x 1´ x 7´, and carried them back home half a mile in the rain. i quickly realized that #1 i would need to buy about 6 more pieces of wood like that at 2.50 a piece and carry them home; #2 sawing thick wood is incradibly hard, and specifying measurements in sketchy spanish to the 12 year old boy that worked at the woodshop wouldnt be easy; #3 i would have to find a way to adhere the two boards together end on end which means i couldnt simply nail them together. so after buying wood glue and sitting on the boards together for an hour failed to to stick them together, i decided to postpone my carpentry efforts until later. the next day, i found out that the mattress i´m using on my bed right now isnt really mine, the volunteer here before me told a friend she could have it, so sometime this week im gonna have to use that spare mattress anyways. so i might just give up on the futon. the same day my roof was leaking a little and got the mattress wet and now its kinda smelly, so im not too upset.
my apartment is fairly big, its got 3 rooms, my bedroom in the back is 14 x 9 ft, then there´s a ´living room´ in the middle that´s 9 x 9 ft, and at the entrance is the . . well, i dunno, its just a room, thats 14 x 9 ft but 1/4 of it is my bathroom. there´s actually a door, wall, and window that separates the living room and my bedroom, except there´s no glass in the window (it doesnt even have an outside view) so i really dont see the point to it. i guess maybe more circulation thru the house. but its def not a bad place to live, esp for being in the jungle. i just wish my neighbors were quiter. sounds like im complaining alot huh?
i still havent worked with the provincial goverment building fish ponds yet, but i have been to a couple meetings of the parkgaurds of the sumaco national biosphere reserve, which spans about half of the napo province and some of orellana and sucumbios to the east. theyre planning to do basically a poverty survey of communities within the reserve, funded by the UN´s cifor project which aims to decrease global poverty. for more info on the project, check here: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/pen/_ref/home/index.htm
basically i hope to go out with the parkgaurds to some of the communities outside tena, which is within the reserve´s limits, and learn about their life and find out what they need. i might also teach the parkgaurds to enter the data on computer if they need help. there´s 2 other volunteers from el chaco and baeza whose counterparts are the parkgaurds so they´re gonna be working on it too. there´s a german guy pretty much coordinating the project, its cool hearing him speak spanish, and sometimes there´s moments in the meeting when there´s english, german, spanish, and kichwa being spoken. we´ll see how it goes and what my role will be. they only survey 15 days a month for every 3 months, so i wont be working on this a lot. but it could be a good way to enter the communities and keep me busy later if i cant find other things to do. but im still gonna meet up with the provincial gov this week.
my tapwater is pretty dirty, i asked my landlady where it comes from and she didnt know, but im guessing its from a river. its not dark brown, only light brown : D so i boil that and drink it, it´s not quite as good as sparkletts. half of what ive been eating is the teddy grahams and granola bars i got from my family (thx) and of course, pb & j sandwiches, which reminds me, i need to start looking for a place to buy pb here before i run out. i havent cooked anything yet cuz i didnt have too many utensils before but now i do so i might give it a try, starting off with oatmeal, of course. the other half of what i been eating is a german-owned cafe with some really good american/european- style food like sandwiches and chili and crepes, and another really really good (in my opinion, or maybe its just that ive gotten tired of ecuadorian food already) italian place that has good pizza and pasta. either way, i cant be eating at those places everyday on a pc volunteer budget, so i think pb & j (and tuna) sandwiches will be staples of my diet.
if i find down-time, i wanna learn to play guitar, theres a place to buy em here, although i havent looked at the prices. i should have plenty of time at night. . plus, it will block out the sound of my neighbors when im practicing in my apt. i also wanna start training for a marathon, well, just a half-marathon to start. there´s one coming up in october and there´s an 8k (5 miles) in quito in july. i have to get new shoes first, my old ones shrank when they got wet. on most nights when there´s not much to do (i dont have a tv and dont plan to get one, but do want to get a laptop to watch movies) i usually do sudoku puzzles (thanks ambdrew/andrer) . . im gettin pretty good at them, last nite i finished a medium puzzle in 8 minutes (i only time the ones im making haste on) , and finished my first ´hard´ puzzle for the first time ever. thats about it for now. hope ya´ll are doin well. peace
i started to build a futon this weekend cuz i had an extra small mattress and wanted a furniture that i could recline in instead of my two plastic chairs. after searching for a place to get wood, i got two boards about 1¨ x 1´ x 7´, and carried them back home half a mile in the rain. i quickly realized that #1 i would need to buy about 6 more pieces of wood like that at 2.50 a piece and carry them home; #2 sawing thick wood is incradibly hard, and specifying measurements in sketchy spanish to the 12 year old boy that worked at the woodshop wouldnt be easy; #3 i would have to find a way to adhere the two boards together end on end which means i couldnt simply nail them together. so after buying wood glue and sitting on the boards together for an hour failed to to stick them together, i decided to postpone my carpentry efforts until later. the next day, i found out that the mattress i´m using on my bed right now isnt really mine, the volunteer here before me told a friend she could have it, so sometime this week im gonna have to use that spare mattress anyways. so i might just give up on the futon. the same day my roof was leaking a little and got the mattress wet and now its kinda smelly, so im not too upset.
my apartment is fairly big, its got 3 rooms, my bedroom in the back is 14 x 9 ft, then there´s a ´living room´ in the middle that´s 9 x 9 ft, and at the entrance is the . . well, i dunno, its just a room, thats 14 x 9 ft but 1/4 of it is my bathroom. there´s actually a door, wall, and window that separates the living room and my bedroom, except there´s no glass in the window (it doesnt even have an outside view) so i really dont see the point to it. i guess maybe more circulation thru the house. but its def not a bad place to live, esp for being in the jungle. i just wish my neighbors were quiter. sounds like im complaining alot huh?
i still havent worked with the provincial goverment building fish ponds yet, but i have been to a couple meetings of the parkgaurds of the sumaco national biosphere reserve, which spans about half of the napo province and some of orellana and sucumbios to the east. theyre planning to do basically a poverty survey of communities within the reserve, funded by the UN´s cifor project which aims to decrease global poverty. for more info on the project, check here: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/pen/_ref/home/index.htm
basically i hope to go out with the parkgaurds to some of the communities outside tena, which is within the reserve´s limits, and learn about their life and find out what they need. i might also teach the parkgaurds to enter the data on computer if they need help. there´s 2 other volunteers from el chaco and baeza whose counterparts are the parkgaurds so they´re gonna be working on it too. there´s a german guy pretty much coordinating the project, its cool hearing him speak spanish, and sometimes there´s moments in the meeting when there´s english, german, spanish, and kichwa being spoken. we´ll see how it goes and what my role will be. they only survey 15 days a month for every 3 months, so i wont be working on this a lot. but it could be a good way to enter the communities and keep me busy later if i cant find other things to do. but im still gonna meet up with the provincial gov this week.
my tapwater is pretty dirty, i asked my landlady where it comes from and she didnt know, but im guessing its from a river. its not dark brown, only light brown : D so i boil that and drink it, it´s not quite as good as sparkletts. half of what ive been eating is the teddy grahams and granola bars i got from my family (thx) and of course, pb & j sandwiches, which reminds me, i need to start looking for a place to buy pb here before i run out. i havent cooked anything yet cuz i didnt have too many utensils before but now i do so i might give it a try, starting off with oatmeal, of course. the other half of what i been eating is a german-owned cafe with some really good american/european- style food like sandwiches and chili and crepes, and another really really good (in my opinion, or maybe its just that ive gotten tired of ecuadorian food already) italian place that has good pizza and pasta. either way, i cant be eating at those places everyday on a pc volunteer budget, so i think pb & j (and tuna) sandwiches will be staples of my diet.
if i find down-time, i wanna learn to play guitar, theres a place to buy em here, although i havent looked at the prices. i should have plenty of time at night. . plus, it will block out the sound of my neighbors when im practicing in my apt. i also wanna start training for a marathon, well, just a half-marathon to start. there´s one coming up in october and there´s an 8k (5 miles) in quito in july. i have to get new shoes first, my old ones shrank when they got wet. on most nights when there´s not much to do (i dont have a tv and dont plan to get one, but do want to get a laptop to watch movies) i usually do sudoku puzzles (thanks ambdrew/andrer) . . im gettin pretty good at them, last nite i finished a medium puzzle in 8 minutes (i only time the ones im making haste on) , and finished my first ´hard´ puzzle for the first time ever. thats about it for now. hope ya´ll are doin well. peace
martes, 24 de abril de 2007
bienvenidos a tena y entrenamiento parte dos
i´m finally here in tena for the next 2 years after 10 weeks of brutal training. no, it wasnt that bad. i forgot to go over the logistics of training for anyone who cares. when we first got to quito we stayed the first night together in a hostel near the airport. the next morning we briefly visited the pc office in quito, learning rules, filling out forms, and taking LPI tests (language proficiency interviews). then we took a bus up to cayambe where we stayed for 2 nights, going over more pc policies and learning some ecuadorian culture and basic survival spanish. we learned where we were going to be for our training, based on our preferences of if u like a big family or small family, if u like animals, kids, and if ur willing to live in ´rough´conditions. i answered big, yes, yes, and yes. it was also based on ur language level, they tried to place volunteers on the same level in the same town. . there´s 9 levels: low beginner, medium beginner, high beginner, low intermediate, and so on up to high advanced. none of us were high advanced, the highest people were low advanced. i tested at high beginner, but i really didnt like the way the interview was designed. but after 10 weeks of training we had another interview and i tested out at low advanced.
it was kinda weird that 3 people from wisconsin (who all went to the univ of wisconsin) were in my training site of olmedo. im pretty sure the trainers put them together on purpose though. the wisconsinians were really cool though. our main trainer, i suppose the training coordinator, was dale who has decent spanish language but is funny to hear speak cuz hes from east texas and has a bad accent. we would always imitate the way he said ¨entonces. . ¨ and ¨cosas asi. . ¨. his title was actually ´duty officer´, and during one of the personal health lectures someone asked who we´re supposed to give our stool samples to if the nurses werent available, to which the answer was ¨the duty officer¨. other ´dale quotes´ we found amusing were ´lo siento, mi español es basura´, ´this slide is basura´, ´hell, i thought about goin home 10 minutes ago´, and my personal favorite dale-ism, ´hell, anything can kill ya¨. maybe theyre not quite so funny to people that werent here. if ur reading this dale, u are awesome.
so in all 9 of the cbt (community-based training sites) there was a ´training facilitator´(all native ecuadorians), who came to help us with our spanish and cultural integration a few times a week. and on fridays we would all go into cayambe to have technical training in habitat conservation, agriculture, health & safety, community integration skills & culture, and small business development. the first 5 weeks went by pretty slow cuz none of us knew exactly what site we were going to, and we mostly just stayed in our communities. but then in the 6th week they finally told us where we were going and then we spent a week going to the site, then another 10 days going on a technical trip into the jungle learning about habitat and agriculture there. so the last 5 weeks went by a lot faster.
the way they chose our sites was based mostly on our skills/education and partly on our preferences. during he 2nd week of training the program directors, basically our supervisors, interviewed us on our aspirations and skills, and our preferences of whether we prefer small or big towns, if we have a fear of bugs, rodents, snakes or anything like that, and then if we preferred to go to the oriente (or jungle, which is where i am), the sierra (which is where i was for training) or the coast (which i havent been to yet). i answered the oriente, cuz im fascinated by the rainforest and the biodiversity here, plus i already knew there was an aquaculture project here, plus the climate is nice if not a little humid. then in the 4th week at which point we still didnt know to which site we would be assigned, they brought in counterpart agencies from ecuador whom solicited the service of peace corps volunteers. we had a full week of hearing about 20 presentations (they divided the volunteers into our respective programs of habitat and ag., which have about 20 people each) from the counterparts regarding their site and the kind of work that could be done there. during that week we were to tell our supervisors, and perhaps at their suggestion ´bribe´- j/k - them into which site we wanted to go to.
even b4 the presentation of tena by my counterpart i already had it as my highest preference cuz thats where the aquaculture project was, and the presentation just solidified it. but there were a few other sites, on the coast and in the oriente, where i would have been happy with going to as well. so yeah, the week after that they presented all of our sites and i was definitely happy cuz i got my first choice. . most people got the site they wanted except a few people. . but i dont think any1 was devasted by their site. omnibus 97 (which is our entire group of volunteers who were assigned to go to ecuador at the same time, dont ask me why its ´omnibus´, i dont know why. . and 97 cuz we´re the 97th group to come to ecuador since pc started here) began with 45 people and now we´re down to 39, split almost exactly evenly between habitat and ag volunteers and between male and female. the reasons for people leaving our various such as family probs, lack of desire, and lack of discipline, to which i wont get into the specific details of in this blog cuz i might be censored by my boss and cuz this blog is already pretty long. but everything here in tena is going well so far, i love it here and can easily see myself staying here and working here for the next 2 years. so if anyone happens to be going thru ecuador and needs a place to stay drop me a line in tena. . it´s niiice.
it was kinda weird that 3 people from wisconsin (who all went to the univ of wisconsin) were in my training site of olmedo. im pretty sure the trainers put them together on purpose though. the wisconsinians were really cool though. our main trainer, i suppose the training coordinator, was dale who has decent spanish language but is funny to hear speak cuz hes from east texas and has a bad accent. we would always imitate the way he said ¨entonces. . ¨ and ¨cosas asi. . ¨. his title was actually ´duty officer´, and during one of the personal health lectures someone asked who we´re supposed to give our stool samples to if the nurses werent available, to which the answer was ¨the duty officer¨. other ´dale quotes´ we found amusing were ´lo siento, mi español es basura´, ´this slide is basura´, ´hell, i thought about goin home 10 minutes ago´, and my personal favorite dale-ism, ´hell, anything can kill ya¨. maybe theyre not quite so funny to people that werent here. if ur reading this dale, u are awesome.
so in all 9 of the cbt (community-based training sites) there was a ´training facilitator´(all native ecuadorians), who came to help us with our spanish and cultural integration a few times a week. and on fridays we would all go into cayambe to have technical training in habitat conservation, agriculture, health & safety, community integration skills & culture, and small business development. the first 5 weeks went by pretty slow cuz none of us knew exactly what site we were going to, and we mostly just stayed in our communities. but then in the 6th week they finally told us where we were going and then we spent a week going to the site, then another 10 days going on a technical trip into the jungle learning about habitat and agriculture there. so the last 5 weeks went by a lot faster.
the way they chose our sites was based mostly on our skills/education and partly on our preferences. during he 2nd week of training the program directors, basically our supervisors, interviewed us on our aspirations and skills, and our preferences of whether we prefer small or big towns, if we have a fear of bugs, rodents, snakes or anything like that, and then if we preferred to go to the oriente (or jungle, which is where i am), the sierra (which is where i was for training) or the coast (which i havent been to yet). i answered the oriente, cuz im fascinated by the rainforest and the biodiversity here, plus i already knew there was an aquaculture project here, plus the climate is nice if not a little humid. then in the 4th week at which point we still didnt know to which site we would be assigned, they brought in counterpart agencies from ecuador whom solicited the service of peace corps volunteers. we had a full week of hearing about 20 presentations (they divided the volunteers into our respective programs of habitat and ag., which have about 20 people each) from the counterparts regarding their site and the kind of work that could be done there. during that week we were to tell our supervisors, and perhaps at their suggestion ´bribe´- j/k - them into which site we wanted to go to.
even b4 the presentation of tena by my counterpart i already had it as my highest preference cuz thats where the aquaculture project was, and the presentation just solidified it. but there were a few other sites, on the coast and in the oriente, where i would have been happy with going to as well. so yeah, the week after that they presented all of our sites and i was definitely happy cuz i got my first choice. . most people got the site they wanted except a few people. . but i dont think any1 was devasted by their site. omnibus 97 (which is our entire group of volunteers who were assigned to go to ecuador at the same time, dont ask me why its ´omnibus´, i dont know why. . and 97 cuz we´re the 97th group to come to ecuador since pc started here) began with 45 people and now we´re down to 39, split almost exactly evenly between habitat and ag volunteers and between male and female. the reasons for people leaving our various such as family probs, lack of desire, and lack of discipline, to which i wont get into the specific details of in this blog cuz i might be censored by my boss and cuz this blog is already pretty long. but everything here in tena is going well so far, i love it here and can easily see myself staying here and working here for the next 2 years. so if anyone happens to be going thru ecuador and needs a place to stay drop me a line in tena. . it´s niiice.
domingo, 15 de abril de 2007
entrenamiento
hola norteamericanos,
i´m still alive, not so well, here in ecuador. after my last blog it sounded like i might have scurvy, which the peace corps nurses doubted cuz they said it takes some serious vitamin c deficiency for over a couple months. but it´s still possible. . i always wanted to have scurvy. but that problem went away a couple days later. actually i´ve been doing really well health-wise the last 3 weeks or so, up until 2 days ago. i started getting a fever, and i got bloated and burpy, and then the runs. i think it´s giardia, which is pretty common among the volunteers that aren´t used to the bacteria-infested water here, at least 5 others have gotten it. the symptoms include having gross poo, feeling like poo, and having burps that more or less smell like poo. but its not fatal and its getting better lately. unfortunately on my two excursions to the jungle so far i didnt get to try chicha (the fermented yuca saliva) or have my head shrunken by a shaman.
when i was in tena the first time ´working´ with the provincial government, they drove me out there so i didnt get to hike 1.5 hours. sorry, the chronology of this blog is gonna suck, i think its the lack of food in my body from the giardia. so i guess im gonna live in an apartment in tena, i was gonna live right below another volunteer, but he ended up going home a year early cuz his mom was really sick. so im actually gonna live in his place on the second floor (it seems like i always get those places). for peace corps standards i would say its pretty fancy, it even has running water and an indoor bathroom (but no hot water). i forget if i described it last time, and if i didnt i´ll describe it more in my next blog. sorry, i didnt get pics of it yet, but i will when i actually get there in a week.
yeah, so really looking forward to getting out of olmedo/cayambe and the cold/high sierra in general and into the hot/humid, oxygen-rich world of the jungle in tena. we (all of the habitat conservation and sustainable agriculture people, = 8 volunteers, 2 language facilitators, and one technical trainer) took an awesome 10-day tech trip out there to the oriente, not exactly tena, but about an hour east along the rio arajuno just 4 days after we got back from our solo site visits. damn, the internet cafe is closing soon. . gotta wrap it up. anyways, we´ll be in quito for 6 days next week beginning tuesday, wrappin up our training and then finally swearing-in as official volunteers. k, gotta go, chao
i´m still alive, not so well, here in ecuador. after my last blog it sounded like i might have scurvy, which the peace corps nurses doubted cuz they said it takes some serious vitamin c deficiency for over a couple months. but it´s still possible. . i always wanted to have scurvy. but that problem went away a couple days later. actually i´ve been doing really well health-wise the last 3 weeks or so, up until 2 days ago. i started getting a fever, and i got bloated and burpy, and then the runs. i think it´s giardia, which is pretty common among the volunteers that aren´t used to the bacteria-infested water here, at least 5 others have gotten it. the symptoms include having gross poo, feeling like poo, and having burps that more or less smell like poo. but its not fatal and its getting better lately. unfortunately on my two excursions to the jungle so far i didnt get to try chicha (the fermented yuca saliva) or have my head shrunken by a shaman.
when i was in tena the first time ´working´ with the provincial government, they drove me out there so i didnt get to hike 1.5 hours. sorry, the chronology of this blog is gonna suck, i think its the lack of food in my body from the giardia. so i guess im gonna live in an apartment in tena, i was gonna live right below another volunteer, but he ended up going home a year early cuz his mom was really sick. so im actually gonna live in his place on the second floor (it seems like i always get those places). for peace corps standards i would say its pretty fancy, it even has running water and an indoor bathroom (but no hot water). i forget if i described it last time, and if i didnt i´ll describe it more in my next blog. sorry, i didnt get pics of it yet, but i will when i actually get there in a week.
yeah, so really looking forward to getting out of olmedo/cayambe and the cold/high sierra in general and into the hot/humid, oxygen-rich world of the jungle in tena. we (all of the habitat conservation and sustainable agriculture people, = 8 volunteers, 2 language facilitators, and one technical trainer) took an awesome 10-day tech trip out there to the oriente, not exactly tena, but about an hour east along the rio arajuno just 4 days after we got back from our solo site visits. damn, the internet cafe is closing soon. . gotta wrap it up. anyways, we´ll be in quito for 6 days next week beginning tuesday, wrappin up our training and then finally swearing-in as official volunteers. k, gotta go, chao
sábado, 24 de marzo de 2007
bienvenidos a tena
buenas tardes de ecuador,
this is my first blog from the equator, i´ve been really busy and inaccessed to internet thus far. im in an internet cafe in Tena right now, on a ´site visit´to my community where i´ll be for the next 2 years beginning next month. it´s really cool here in tena, not literally though, it´s pretty hot and humid and very rainy so far. i´ve been staying in a very small room in a hostel here while visiting with my counterpart agency whose role is usually as a foot-in-the-door in the community but i think i will actually be working with them a lot. theyre the provincial government of the province of napo. . i kinda see them as the county govt, rather than the state govt because ecuador itself is actually pretty small. in an earlier email i wrote that i would be working with the municipal govt which was incorrect because thats the city govt of tena, and apparently they´re pretty competitive to the point where, according to another volunteer who´s been here for a year and has worked with the municipal govt, they would get so much more done if they worked together and shared projects but instead they don´t get much done apart. my english seems to be sucking in this blog, i think learning spanish for the last 1.5 months and quichua for 3 days last week is starting to take its toll. sorry if my grammar is sucky.
thus far my visit has seemed kinda like a vacation, a vacation to florida to be more precise. imagine florida but with twice the rain, and that´s the weather here. tena itself has about 15,000 residents, with about 15,000 more in small outlying communities that speak quichua as their main language. compared to olmedo, my small, cold, sleepy home in the andes, tena seems large, much warmer, and very much vibrant. there are lots of tourists here, mostly european (and mostly germans i think), and accordingly there are a few european karoakes here (i know how much they love their david hasselhoff). i have been growing a beard for the last 5 weeks, its pretty full now, and i needed it for the cold in olmedo and just cuz i am lazy when it comes to shaving. . but i think i will shave it off as soon as i am oficially living here (in 4 weeks), firstly to not be as warm, and secondly i have a goal of not being suspected by the locals and other tourists of being a tourist myself. i doubt an ecuadorian wont be able to tell im foreign, but im hoping the tourists will think i am ecuadorian, or at least south american. i have been getting plenty of sun the last 5 days and getting pretty bronzed, i think its possible for me to be as dark as some of the locals. too bad it wasnt this sunny in sb for our bet, liz ;)
yeah, so pretty frikin excited about living here for the next 2 years. unfortunately the internet here is 90 cents an hour here compared to 50 cents/hour in cayambe. o well, thats what i get for living in a tourist trap. peace corps found a place for me to live here this finally, actually, it was the volunteer thats been living here a year that found it, and thats cuz its the apartment right below him. its been unoccupied for the last month, and its pretty moldy-smelling and unattractive right now, but the landlady said she´s gonna clean it this weekend, and she´s gonna give me a bed so i just gotta worry about getting some basic stuff like a table and chairs and dishes and drapes when i move in. its got a very small bathroom with no hot water, a medium-sized living room thats about 15x15 feet and a connected kithen thats basically just a sink, and then theres a little doorway that leads to the bedroom thats about 10x15 feet. it kinda reminds me of amber´s old place in iv except it doesnt have any closets or anything, its just 2 medium rooms. and by medium i mean PC/ecuador standards. theyre actually quite small, but i´ve seen volunteers with smaller. actually, i was just staying in a smaller place with a volunteer down south near puyo a few days ago, and her place was probably half the size and had spiders all over and bats in the ceiling that kept me awake at night. so even though its gonna cost $80/month (im gonna try talking her down to $70 {we´re supposed to have $50/month apts in tena but PC was pressed for time to find a place for me} im happy with the place. but im still gonna look for a diff´t place for at least the first couple months. . can´t hurt to look.
for the last week my mouth has been weird, i had 2 cold sores on both cheeks that have finally started going away, my tongue has felt all scratched up and had a few small blisters on it, and my gums have and still are very swollen. i have drinken salt water to try to disinfect it if in case its an infection, and i ate a few grapefruits too even though it burned like hell. . i have pretty much only been able to eat pasta for the last few days, other foods here are a little too flavorful. . and its really just anything that has lots of flavor, even bananas that bother my mouth. yesterday at the advice from my fellow Olmedian volunteer Elliot who was visiting Tena that i probably need more vitamin C, i bought a couple apples and an avocado to see how that would be, and i loved the apples. . apparently theyre not too flavorful and they kinda feel good against my gums. the avocado was ok, but it was a little too flavorful. so over the last 24 hours i have eaten 5 apples, and am about to buy 5 more. now i know what they mean by an apple a day keeps the dentist away. okay, i´m getting hungry now. . chao
this is my first blog from the equator, i´ve been really busy and inaccessed to internet thus far. im in an internet cafe in Tena right now, on a ´site visit´to my community where i´ll be for the next 2 years beginning next month. it´s really cool here in tena, not literally though, it´s pretty hot and humid and very rainy so far. i´ve been staying in a very small room in a hostel here while visiting with my counterpart agency whose role is usually as a foot-in-the-door in the community but i think i will actually be working with them a lot. theyre the provincial government of the province of napo. . i kinda see them as the county govt, rather than the state govt because ecuador itself is actually pretty small. in an earlier email i wrote that i would be working with the municipal govt which was incorrect because thats the city govt of tena, and apparently they´re pretty competitive to the point where, according to another volunteer who´s been here for a year and has worked with the municipal govt, they would get so much more done if they worked together and shared projects but instead they don´t get much done apart. my english seems to be sucking in this blog, i think learning spanish for the last 1.5 months and quichua for 3 days last week is starting to take its toll. sorry if my grammar is sucky.
thus far my visit has seemed kinda like a vacation, a vacation to florida to be more precise. imagine florida but with twice the rain, and that´s the weather here. tena itself has about 15,000 residents, with about 15,000 more in small outlying communities that speak quichua as their main language. compared to olmedo, my small, cold, sleepy home in the andes, tena seems large, much warmer, and very much vibrant. there are lots of tourists here, mostly european (and mostly germans i think), and accordingly there are a few european karoakes here (i know how much they love their david hasselhoff). i have been growing a beard for the last 5 weeks, its pretty full now, and i needed it for the cold in olmedo and just cuz i am lazy when it comes to shaving. . but i think i will shave it off as soon as i am oficially living here (in 4 weeks), firstly to not be as warm, and secondly i have a goal of not being suspected by the locals and other tourists of being a tourist myself. i doubt an ecuadorian wont be able to tell im foreign, but im hoping the tourists will think i am ecuadorian, or at least south american. i have been getting plenty of sun the last 5 days and getting pretty bronzed, i think its possible for me to be as dark as some of the locals. too bad it wasnt this sunny in sb for our bet, liz ;)
yeah, so pretty frikin excited about living here for the next 2 years. unfortunately the internet here is 90 cents an hour here compared to 50 cents/hour in cayambe. o well, thats what i get for living in a tourist trap. peace corps found a place for me to live here this finally, actually, it was the volunteer thats been living here a year that found it, and thats cuz its the apartment right below him. its been unoccupied for the last month, and its pretty moldy-smelling and unattractive right now, but the landlady said she´s gonna clean it this weekend, and she´s gonna give me a bed so i just gotta worry about getting some basic stuff like a table and chairs and dishes and drapes when i move in. its got a very small bathroom with no hot water, a medium-sized living room thats about 15x15 feet and a connected kithen thats basically just a sink, and then theres a little doorway that leads to the bedroom thats about 10x15 feet. it kinda reminds me of amber´s old place in iv except it doesnt have any closets or anything, its just 2 medium rooms. and by medium i mean PC/ecuador standards. theyre actually quite small, but i´ve seen volunteers with smaller. actually, i was just staying in a smaller place with a volunteer down south near puyo a few days ago, and her place was probably half the size and had spiders all over and bats in the ceiling that kept me awake at night. so even though its gonna cost $80/month (im gonna try talking her down to $70 {we´re supposed to have $50/month apts in tena but PC was pressed for time to find a place for me} im happy with the place. but im still gonna look for a diff´t place for at least the first couple months. . can´t hurt to look.
for the last week my mouth has been weird, i had 2 cold sores on both cheeks that have finally started going away, my tongue has felt all scratched up and had a few small blisters on it, and my gums have and still are very swollen. i have drinken salt water to try to disinfect it if in case its an infection, and i ate a few grapefruits too even though it burned like hell. . i have pretty much only been able to eat pasta for the last few days, other foods here are a little too flavorful. . and its really just anything that has lots of flavor, even bananas that bother my mouth. yesterday at the advice from my fellow Olmedian volunteer Elliot who was visiting Tena that i probably need more vitamin C, i bought a couple apples and an avocado to see how that would be, and i loved the apples. . apparently theyre not too flavorful and they kinda feel good against my gums. the avocado was ok, but it was a little too flavorful. so over the last 24 hours i have eaten 5 apples, and am about to buy 5 more. now i know what they mean by an apple a day keeps the dentist away. okay, i´m getting hungry now. . chao
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