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. . .

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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

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