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