cosas

i bought a hammock for my apartment recently and its awesome. before all i had were 3 plastic chairs to go along with my plastic table. the first day i had it i took a 2hour nap in it. the $12 i payed is probably the best investment ive made here. besides having my wallet picked in a quito trolley in september, ive only lost a few other things. for some reason i cant manage to keep track of sunglasses, umbrellas, or basketballs here. ive lost 2 of each. i bought a cheap bball for $4 and it got a hole in it the very same day. a few weeks later i bought a nicer one (spalding) for $15. so before i had a chance to write my name on it, i took this ball to the gym for a game. an hour later i didnt see it, and searching for it, i caught a kid leaving the gym w/ a ball similar to the one i just bought in his hands. i went up to him and asked if it was his. he said yes, then his mom comes up and shes like, ¨his dad gave it to him¨. i still had a feeling it was mine, so i asked the kid, ¨youre sure its yours?¨, and he said yeah again, so i let it go. but after looking for 5 more minutes i realized id been duped.

there seems to be a lack of good bballs around here, despite the sport´s semi-popularity, which is understandable given the economic conditions and $15 price tag. but i especially cant believe that the mom would lie like that, too. a week later i bought another of the same ball, this time i wrote my name nice and big on it. i took it to the gym again, and it turned up missing again. i was pretty distraught. a week went by and we had another game, and to my relief, a teammate told me my ball was in the storage closet. it may sound petty, but $15 is about 8% of my monthly stipend. so im reluctant to even take it outsie my place now.

as i write this ive been sick for a few days. i think ive got ´bichos´, which is a proliferation of ´bugs´or amoebas in the stomach. i probably got them when i drank 2 bowls of chicha being passed around in a community on friday. they can cause giardia, from bugs living in dirty water, which could have been used for the chicha. giardia symptoms include being constantly bloated, gassy, nauseous, with greyish diarhhea, symptoms i definitely have. i probably had giardia a few months ago as well. i felt so nauseous while eating delicious pizza, i couldnt even finish it, and i had to crash at a hostal 5 minutes away rather than walk the 10 minutes home. i had to use the bathroom once an hour the whole night. i probably lost 10 lbs in those 4 days alone. that was definitely the sickest ive been here because i had a fever too; it was perhaps the worst ive ever felt. its weird how PC vols´conversations tend to revolve around the toilet. there is an over-the-counter medicine called fasogen in tena that works pretty well against bichos. i've been eating a lot of ají, raw onions, and papaya seeds lately, they're supposed to kill bichos, too. and all volunteers get 'deparasitized' after a year of service, so i'm looking forward to that.

speaking of feeling under the weather, the weather is weird here. obviously i expected a lot of rain living in the rain forest. but i expected more or less rainy seasons and dry seasons.so far i would say there has been a wet season and a wetter season. when i got here in spril it was wetter, usually raining a couple hours a day, up until august, whihc was dry, it only rained 4 or 5 days the whole month. the 'dry' season is supposed to go til january, but october was a very wet month, probably the second wettest behind only May. and there were some spectacular lightning storms on display from my 2nd story window. i have a great view facing the east, towards the amazonian jungle. it seems that's where i see most of the storm clouds come from, although i'm not sure about the meteorology around here. i'm assuming that once the clouds from the east hit the andes to the west of tena they precipitate, but i'd really like to see a map of the weather patterns around here (i've yet to see a weather forecast on tv in ecuador).

one day last month, as coworkers and i were about to leave tena to drive north to lago agrio (which is 7 hours away and just 15 miles south of the colombian border), we werehit by a hailstorm. yes, a hailstorm. in the jungle. it began with rain, then the winds picked up, then harder rain and harder wind. sitting in the pickup (fortunately i wasnt in the back this time) we watched as kids walking home from school were soaked by rain and force 2 hurricane 35mph winds. then came the hail, pelting the truck for about 10 minutes. if i hadnt seen it i wouldnt have believed it. after the storm, driving out of tena, we saw several trees fallen, one onto someone's house, and a few roofs blown off. when i got back to tena 3 days later, my landlady told me half my roof (the aluminum sheeting covering the wood) had been blown off. her and her nephew frantically tied it back on , covering my bookcase & clothes with my shower curtain to avoid the deluge. at least my house got a nice little shower while i was away.

a couple weks ago another pc vol moved in tight next door to me, in the same apt complex. mary is a health vol from omnibus 96, the group that came ahead of mine. they arrived in ecuador in june of '06. mary had been living in a community outside of archidona called rucullacta until she couldnt put up with her 'slimeball' landlord that kept hitting on her. my landlady pati offered her an apt, and after getting a relocation approval from the pc bosses, theres another gringo in tena. she is also the owner of yana's first offspring; i first saw mia in march during my first visit when she was just a month old puppy. now she's back for a family reunion, and she looks a lot like yana. at first they didnt get along when mary brought mia over, but now they play all the time, it's pretty entertaining. it's too bad, one of the cats died a week ago he ate some poison left out by the city for the alley dogs that run astray at night. there's a pet population control problem in tena and ecuador and leaving poison out is the usual solution. i'm gonna get yana an injection soon that's supposed to prevent pregnancy for 3 months at a time. but its been cool walking the dogs with mary, despite all the male dogs that follow and bark at us.

another omnibus came in june, 98, and they got to their sites in august after 2 months training. 2 of them are in my 'cluster', or regional group of volunteers, but they live way out in the jungle, 3-4 hours to the east of tena. the health & families vols (ie omnibus 96 & 98) have to live with a host family for at least the first 3 months in site. and i thought not being able to leave the vicinity of our site for the first 3 months sucked. a couple newbies, a married couple a few hours north, were living with their counterparts, the mayor & his wife. apparently, they argued all the time because the mayor & his wife demanded them to work at the clinic 40 hrs/week, even though vols arent personal employees and set their own schedule. theyve now found another place, 'not soon enough' according to the mayor's wife. thank god im not living with fabian, the 20 or so hours/week i work with him are more than enough.

perhaps the funnest thing, or at least funniest thing to do in tena is go to karaoke bars. theres at least 12 here in tena, and every decent-sized city ive been to has at least a dozen, too. what can i say, ecuadorians love to drink and sing. ive been to karaoke bars probably 8 times, and ive sung maybe 10 songs, including 'como te extraño' and 'eres' by cafe tacuba, coolio's 'gangsta's paradise' 'is this love' by marley, and my all-time favorites 'unchained melody' 'ill be watching you' and 'one more night'. the selection of songs in english, aka 'baladas ingles', is very limited here. the bars in tena all have the same playlist, and it's only got about 20 songs in english. and to make it worse, a lot of those are 80's songs, by cyndie lauper or madonna, or are more adult contemporary 'ballads'. i guess ballads are the thing to have, because karaoke here is all about ruing the day one's significant other left and sulking in one's misery.

the first time i went to karaoke with some coworkers, we were plastered from drinking beers and a strong local drink called pajaro azul. when we got to the bar we ordered more pilseners and i sang a couple songs (in spanish, too) without hesitation, and it was a blast. on another occassion, when i was much soberer, i realized that theyre mostly not to enjoy oneself, but to drink til you cant feel your feelings. case in point, there were 2 middle-aged guys at a table downing beers the whole night. one of them starts singing a depressing ballad about a woman leaving, then he's slurring his words, then tears roll down his cheeks, and by the end of the song he's bawling on the table. while consoling him, his friend knocks over a mug with his elbow and it shatters on the floor. dios mio