This Is The End

I've said it several times before. I don't think that I can fully process, appreciate, wrap up, or realize how my time in the Peace Corps has affected and will affect me. Like any so called "life changing" experience, the aftershocks will reverberate for a long time, and the residue will never fully wash off.

I think about Ecuador all the time. Every glass of water I drink out of the tap in the US comes with the thoughts, "Wow, I wish I was able to do this for the last two years!" and, "Man, how much different would peoples lives be in Ecuador if they all could get a clean glass of water when they wanted it?". I have to stop myself from bringing Ecuador into almost every conversation I have. Its just that that's all I know and everything is so different here that it almost doesn't seem real.

I'm sure that it will take some time to adjust, but the transition hasn't been that hard. My Brother, Mother, and Father hosted a Welcome Back party in St. Louis at the same bar that they threw my Going Away party. It was great to catch up with a lot of my friends that I haven't seen since I left in 2007, and since it was at the same bar, it really closed everything up nicely. Thanks to everyone who attended either of those parties.

I also want to take a moment to say thank you. To everyone who kept up on my life by reading the blog, to everyone who sent me a package, an email, a text message, a card, wished me well, or said a prayer...THANK YOU. My first couple months away from home were hard and I don't think that I could have done it without the support of my friends and family. You guys have all been great, and I appreciate how lucky I am to have such great friends and to be part of such a loving family.

So, now I'm back in the United States of America living at my parents house for the first time in years and starting the job search. If you happen to be swinging through St. Louis and want to hear some stories about eating grubs and Guinea Pigs, pooping worms, getting drunk with corrupt cops, being the laughing stock of an entire community, and being one tiny cog in a huge government bureaucracy, feel free to give me a call.

My new phone number is.... (314)766-2289

Again, thank you so much to everyone. This has been an amazing two years. Hopefully jayinecuador has helped you to understand a little about the Peace Corps and the beautiful and diverse country of Ecuador. And, to end on a funny note. On the flight back home, I sat next to a dentist from St. Louis. He was a nice guy with his family and since the turbulence was bad, he was good enough to talk to me for most of the flight (to take my mind off my irrational fear that the wings are going got fall off the plane). About 5 minutes into the conversation he starts to talk to me about my "energy". He then measures said "energy" without touching me and then raises my "energy" by meditating (all the while he is sucking back a rum and Coke). Then he tells me that in 2012 a large asteroid/comet called Planet X is going to pass near the sun and thereby cause intense devastation worldwide. Fortunately, a select few will be chosen to survive by living in the large underground bunkers that the Federal Government is building. He finally measured my "energy" again and confidently said that I'll be among the chosen few.

I just tell that story as a reminder that for all the messed-up stuff I did and interesting characters that I met in South America, we still grow 'em crazier up here.

The month of Jay - Part 4: Isla de la Plata

Sitting 25 miles off the coast of Ecuador, Isla de la Plata is known as "The poor man's Galapagos" because it has a lot of the wildlife that can be found in the Galapagos, but is a lot less expensive to visit. We caught a small boat in the coastal town of Puerto Lopez and spent a day walking around the island and then did a little snorkeling before heading back. We didn't get to see as many animals as we would have in the Galapagos, but for $35 you can't expect too much.

Plata in Spanish means silver. It also is used as a slang for any type of money. Therefore, Isla de la Plata means Silver Island or The Island of Money. There are several stories why the island is called that. Some say that Francis Drake buried treasure there and that's why they call it Isla de la Plata, but I believe the other story...that all the bird droppings on the island give its cliffs the appearance of silver from afar.

The biggest attraction of the island is its Blue Footed Boobies. These birds are endemic to the Galapagos and a few other Pacific islands. Humpback Whales also mate near the islands, but the peak season is in July and August, so we didn't get to see them.

This short trip to the coast was the final event in the Month of Jay. It was a fantastic way to end my time in Ecuador, and as you may have noticed I had some company for my travels. Casey is a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer who lives in the oriente in the city of Puyo (you may have noticed that I've recently spent a lot of time out there). We have been dating for about 7 months and it has been going great. Casey visited the Galapagos with her Father a couple of months ago, so she was able to explain a lot about the animals that we were able to see.

I really can't describe how cool it was to see all the different types of birds up close, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Casey and I on the boat to the island

A pair of Boobies

You can see here how close you can get to the birds

A Nazca Boobie and its chick

This is not a Sea Lion

The fish we snorkeled with

Th Month of Jay - Part 3: Adentro

Almost a third of Ecuador lies in the Amazonian Basin. This area called the Oriente or Adentro, Inside, is populated by several indigenous nationalities. The Shuar, Achuar, Waorani, Andoa, Shiwiar, and Zaparo peoples consider themselves members of their nationality and only recognize Ecuador as the country that has political control over their lands...they are NOT Ecuadorian in their minds.

They have their own languages, cultures, traditions, and only recently have been in contact with the Western World. Missionaries have Christianized the population to a certain extent and the Ecuadorian government assists them with medical issues. I was lucky enough to be invited on one of the government's trips adentro to help with a medical survey.

Like Peace Corps Volunteers, the Ecuadorian Department of Health needs to figure out where problems are and what are the needs of the community before they can begin working. To this aim, the Department of Health sends doctors and sociologists to jungle communities to talk with the residents about what their health problems are, when these problems are worst and what they think could be done to alleviate these problems. I was there doing some research for another PCV who will be working with community gardening in these communities. I wanted to find out what the farming practices were for the Achuar people, what plants they cultivated, and anything else that would be helpful for the PCV.

We flew about an hour in a small 5-seater plane from Puyo to the small Achuar community of Charapacocha or Turtle Lake. The view from the plane was amazing as we flew deeper into the Amazonian Rain Forest. We could see small and large rivers snaking down from the mountains and tiny communities consisting of a few houses surrounding a small landing strip.

When we arrived at Charapacocha we set up tables in a large open building that was recently constructed by the community for the Achuar Nationality Congress. The doctors with us were gong to have people from 8 surrounding communities draw community maps, make calendars of typical diseases and the months when they are most prevalent, and had them draw pictures of they way life used to be and the way they would want it to be. The sociologist with us was then going to compile everything and present the data to the heads of the provincial health department so that future programing could be planned and communities with the most problems could receive the most help.

It was interesting to see how the Achuar communities saw themselves and their future. I didn't really help too much with the diagnostic, but it was worth the trip. I told the PCV who will be working with the Achuar that she will have to focus on very small family plots that will hopefully fortify their typical diet of plantains, yuca, and taro root. Fertilizer will be a big problem, so dry toilets that can be designed to use human urine as a fertilizer may be an option. I'm sure the PCV will have a lot of problems getting the communities to change their ways, but it will surely be an adventure.

The plane we flew in on...God help us

Creating a community needs assessment

Looking at the finished product

The house where we stayed...nicest room in town (you can see the building where we worked in the background)

Eating lunch

More drawings

This is a fish they caught in the river. It is called bagre and we had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days.

A small indigenous community from the air

Notice the airstrip to the pilot's left

First Class...Ecuadorian style

Puyo as seen from the air

The Month of Jay - Part 2: Jumandy Caves

During the war in the 1500's between the invading Spanish Conquistadors and the many indigenous tribes of Ecuador, several leaders emerged. One of the most famous was a man called Jumandy. Jumandy led the indigenous Quichwa of the Amazonian Basin against the Spanish who were slowly moving down from the highlands into Quichwa territory. Jumandy burned the towns of Baeza and Archidona (now these two towns are Peace Corps volunteer sites) and moved the local populations into hiding. This was done to prevent the Spanish from stealing supplies and manpower. Jumandy was able to unite the tribes of the Oriente for a common defense...basically he was the William Wallace of Ecuador.

Jumandy attempted to get the indigenous tribes of the Sierra to help him, but when he went to their lands, they double crossed him and told the Spanish where he was. Jumandy retreated to his strong point, the caves now named after him. Unfortunately for Jumandy, the Spanish captured him at the caves, transported him to Quito, and executed him there.

Today the caves are a major tourist attraction and you can take a guided tour for $4. I had taken the Trainees who went on the Oriente Technical Trip to the caves, but it was worth going back. The coolest thing about the caves is that you can go anywhere. its not like the US where you have to stay on the path. We climbed in with our guide, Ramon, and hiked around for about an hour. We took a swim in a hole carved out by the stream that flows through the caves, bathed in a small waterfall, rubbed "medicinal" mud on ourselves, watched the bats flying all around, and generally had a good time.

The Month of Jay - Part 1: Quilotoa

Between my COS on the 4th of May and flying home on the 28th, I had some time to visit parts of Ecuador that I haven't been to yet and to say my final goodbyes to my friends. It was a great month and so busy that I didn't have time to publish posts as I traveled. To keep from borring you with a giant post on the whole month, here's the first in the series...

The month started with a visit to the Quilotoa Loop south of Quito. I'd hiked the Loop and visited Quilotoa Crater last year (see post "Happy Old Year!"), but some friends wanted to check it out, so I figured I'd act as a guide. The weather was about the same as the last time I went, but we didn't get nearly as lost on the hike because we ran into a local. He was walking home and I talked to him for a couple minutes. He said that we could walk with him to his town which was near where we were going. It worked out well and we got to the hotel right before it started to pour down rain. Here are some pictures.

Another good thing about going to Quilotoa is that it is nearish to La Libertad. After the hike I went to visit my old neighbors and friends in La Libertad. I had dinner with one family and spent the night at my neighbor's house. It was good to see them one more time. I don't know if I'll ever see them again, but I hope I do. (My plan is to visit them in 6 years when their oldest daughter turns 15. A girl's 15th birthday, or Quinceanera (the n should have a ~ over it, but my keyboard doesn't have spanish letters...sorry) is very important in Latin culture, so they want me to come.

Jay Verhoff - RPCV

As of May 4th, 2009, I am officially and forever a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV). It took two years and three months to get that “R”, but it was worth it.

The Close of Service (COS) procedure was relatively painless for me seeing as I hadn´t had any health problems during my service. I had to go to the dentist and doctor for exams (all went well…no cavities, no HIV), close my bank account, turn in my cell phone, get almost everyone in the office to sign a sheet saying that I had concluded all work with them, talked to the nurses about post-Peace Corps health care, and finally had an interview with the Country Director to go over my Description of Service (DOS) document and give her any feedback I had about my service.

Here is my DOS if you´d like to see what I did (or at least said that I did during my two years in Ecuador)…

(OMNIBUS 97)
DESCRIPTION OF PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER SERVICE
Jay L. Verhoff
PROGRAM No. 518-07-01 - ECUADOR

After a competitive application process stressing applicant skills, adaptability and cross-cultural understanding, Jay Verhoff was invited into Peace Corps service in Ecuador. Jay Verhoff entered training on February 5, 2007, participating in an intensive 12-week program of community based training in Cayambe, Ecuador which included intensive instruction and field work in Spanish, cross-cultural studies, personal health and safety, and the technical skills required in the Sustainable Agriculture Program.

Jay Verhoff successfully completed training and was sworn in as a Volunteer on April 20, 2007. During his service in Ecuador, he was assigned to the Asociación de Mujeres (Women’s Association) - La Libertad, Cotopaxi, where he served as a technical consultant.

During his two year service, Jay Verhoff acted in a wide variety of work roles and responsibilities. The first and often hardest of these tasks, was to integrate himself into a small mestizo community high in the Andes Mountains. Faced with such difficulties as adapting to the cultural norms, building trust and confidence with an entire community, and perfecting a new language, Jay not only survived, but in fact thrived. By the end of his two year service, Jay had fully integrated himself into the fabric of La Libertad and was considered not as an outsider, but as a community member. He even was asked by his neighbors to be a co-Godfather to two of their daughters, a great honor in Ecuadorian society.

Working with his counterpart agency, the Asociación de Mujeres, Jay was able to participate in the daily operations of a local community bank. The bank was started in 2004 with US Government funds in the form of a PL-480 loan and with the help of a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Jay’s tasks included helping with computer problems and maintenance of their accounting system. Jay spent several days a month helping the women manage client payments and report the bank’s financial status to PL-480 officials. With over $130,000 in capital from the original loan and accrued interest, the bank stands as a great example of a successful Peace Corps project and demonstrates the sustainability and inter-volunteer cooperation that Peace Corps stresses.

Jay also assisted the teachers at La Libertad’s grade school and high school. Although Jay never received any formal training in the teaching of English as a second language, he successfully completed two years as an English professor at the local grade school. During his first year in La Libertad, Jay worked with the school’s oldest two levels. During his second year, he was asked by the principal to expand his curriculum to be able to work with four grade levels. Jay also taught nutrition, health, and agriculture classes at the local high school. Outside of a classroom setting, Jay taught computer and cooking classes to members of the Women’s Association and to any adults who asked for these courses.

One of the biggest problems facing rural Ecuadorians is the rising price of food. According to recent studies, up to 80% of Ecuadorian children already suffer from slow growth rates and an inability to concentrate at school due to Anemia. The problem of under-nourished children will only worsen with Ecuadorian inflation at close to 9% in 2008. In order to help alleviate in a very small way some of the pressures placed on Ecuadorian families by rising food prices and to improve childhood nutrition, Jay started school and community gardening projects at 15 locations near la Libertad.

Most of the communities that Jay worked in did not have a strong agricultural tradition and did not maintain any small gardens for household consumption. Jay consulted and planned with teachers and parents to determine the best method for implementing the school gardens. With the input of local communities, Jay and another PCV were able to work with students, teachers, and parents to clear land, plant, manage, and harvest their crops. In many ways, the actual gardening was the easiest facet of this project for Jay. What proved more difficult was that, because he was working in communities where he did not live, Jay had to build new relationships and show the community members that he was there to help and not to exploit them. After over a year of working, several of the communities took the initiative to plant gardens on their own at the schools or at individual’s homes. Now that the communities have confidence in Peace Corps’ commitment, Jay has passed this project on to his successor to begin expanding the program to include composting, soil erosion prevention, and pest management.

While in La Libertad, Jay also started a small scale yogurt project whose aim was to increase family incomes. Most families in La Libertad own cows and have a small amount of milk production that is sold for a very low price. Jay constructed a fermentor and researched the process involved in converting milk into yogurt, which would be much more profitable for the members of his community. Jay produced many sample batches and taught several of his neighbors how to produce yogurt. Although, the project did not reach the point where product was being sold, he did arouse interest in many women from his community and his successor will be able to build on that success, insuring that Jay’s efforts will continue to have an effect after he leaves.

Not all Peace Corps projects are successful, and Jay worked hard on one project that was finally deemed unfeasible. Many of the women that Jay worked with showed interest in starting egg production in their homes. Jay visited similar projects, researched costs and procedures, and performed market and feasibility studies. After analyzing the proposed project, Jay realized that it would not work as designed. Jay and the women made many changes to the proposal and their concept of what the project would entail. Finally, Jay wrote and presented a detailed study of their proposed project to Peace Corps officials. Unfortunately, the project was rejected because of the inability of the women involved to dedicate the sufficient amount of time to the management of the project due to their numerous domestic and work commitments.

The last four months of Jay’s service were quite different from his first 20. Jay applied for and was offered the position of Peace Corps Volunteer Technical Co-Trainer for the group of Trainees that arrived in Ecuador in 2009 to replace Jay’s Omnibus. The Co-Trainers provide a first-hand view for Trainees of Volunteer life and role of the Volunteer in development work, and assist in cross-cultural adaptation, the community entry process, safety and security aspects, and other job and Volunteer life-related issues. They also assist Technical Trainers in the design and execution of technical training, in collaboration with the other training components.

Prior to the arrival of the newest group of Trainees, Jay and the other Co-Trainers prepared and planned technical sessions, technical trips, reviewed technical materials, and advised other staff members on ways to improve the training plan. During training they assisted in the implementation of the training sessions, and after training, assisted in the final reporting and evaluation of the training program. Participating in training allowed Jay to pass on much of his knowledge, insights, and experiences to future PCVs. This was a rewarding and enjoyable way to end his 27 months in the beautiful country of Ecuador.

Pursuant to Section 5(f) of the Peace Corps Act 22 U.S.C. 2504(f), as amended, any former Volunteer employed by the United States Government following his/her Peace Corps Volunteer Service is entitled to have any period of satisfactory Peace Corps service credited for purposes of retirement, seniority, reduction in force, leave and other privileges based on length of Government service. That service shall not be credited toward completion of the probationary or trial period of any service requirement for career appointment.

This is to certify in accordance with Executive Order 11103 of April 10, 1963, that Jay Verhoff served successfully as a Peace Corps Volunteer. His service ended on May 4, 2009. He is therefore eligible to be appointed as a career-conditional employee in the competitive civil service on a non-competitive basis. This benefit under the Executive Order extends for a period of one year after termination of Volunteer service, except that the employing agency may extend the period for up to three years for former Volunteer who enters military service, pursues studies at a recognized institution of higher learning, or engages in other activities which, in the view of the appointing agency, warrants extension of the period.

Everything went well that day, but it took forever. It was a strange feeling to walk out of the office and know that I completed what I had set out to do so long ago. It was late in 2005 when I resigned from my job in Chicago with the intention of doing the Peace Corps. Now, all that is behind me and I´m ready for the rest of my life to begin.

The Century

As you all know, I’ve had a lot of time to read while being in the Peace Corps. I recently reached a goal I had set for myself two years ago…to read 100 books. Some of the were long (War and Peace), some of them were boring (anything by Proust), and some of them I loved (The Lonesome Dove series). Here is a list of all the books I read…

1) The Civil War; A Narrative. Vol. III. Red River to Appomattox – Shelby Foote
2) The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
3) Walden and Civil Disobedience – Henry david Thoreau
4) Galápagos – Kurt Vonnegut
5) The Brothers Karamazov – Fydor Dostoyevsky
6) Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
7) Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
8) A Room with a View – E.M. Forster
9) Collapse – Jared Diamond
10) The Mousetrap – Agatha Christie
11) The Panama Hat Trail – Tom Miller
12) Airframe – Michael Crichton
13) Frankenstein – Mary Shelly
14) The Conquerors – Michael Beschloss
15) The Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
16) Murder in Three Acts – Agatha Christie
17) Blackhawk Down – mark Bowden
18) Mayflower – Nathaniel Philbrick
19) Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut
20) Pudd’nhead Wilson – Mark Twain
21) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
22) Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
23) The Prophet – Kahlil Gibram
24) Poirot Investigates – Agatha Christie
25) The Iliad – Homer
26) The Odyssey – Homer
27) Ulysses – James Joyce
28) Ulysses Annotated – Don Gifford
29) Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
30) Sleeping Murder – Agatha Christie
31) The Hunt for Red October – Tom Clancy
32) The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
33) War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
34) Goodbye Columbus & Five Short Stories – Philip Roth
35) A Dollhouse – Henrik Ibsen
36) A Bridge Too Far – Cornelius Ryan
37) Grant and Sherman: the Friendship that Won the Civil War – Charles Bracelen Flood
38) The Book of Useless Information – The Useless Information Society
39) The Lost World – Michael Crichton
40) The Great Adventure of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
41) Remembrance of Things Past: Swann’s Way – Marcel Proust
42) Remembrance of Things Past: Within a Budding Grove – Marcel Proust
43) Remembrance of Things Past: The Guermantes Way – Marcel Proust
44) Remembrance of Things Past: Cities of the Plain – Marcel Proust
45) Remembrance of Things Past: The Captive – Marcel Proust
46) Remembrance of Things Past: The Sweet Cheat Gone – Marcel Proust
47) Remembrance of Things Past: The Past Recaptured – Marcel Proust
48) The Anatomy of Fascism – Robert O. Paxton
49) The Carolina Way – Dean Smith
50) Beyond Belief: Islamic excursions among the converted peoples – V.S. Naipaul
51) Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling - Ross King
52) The Ultimate Book of Useless Information – The Useless Information Society
53) Women in Love – D. H. Lawrence
54) Bush at War – Bob Woodward
55) The Best American Short Stories: 2001 – Various Authors
56) Girl with the Pearl Earring – Tracey Chevalier
57) Top Secret Tales of World War II – William B. Breuer
58) Private Parts – Howard Stern
59) Great Book of Whodunit Puzzles – Falcon Travis
60) The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
61) I Am America ( And So Can You!) – Stephen Colbert
62) The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
63) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
64) Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
65) Peter the Great: His Life and His World – Robert k. Massic
66) The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
67) Nemesis – Agatha Christie
68) Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle – Moritz Thomsen
69) As I lay Dying – William Faulkner
70) Diary: A Novel – Chuck Palahniuk
71) The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America – Joe Posnanski
72) Exodus – Leon Uris
73) Dead Man’s Walk – Larry McMurtry
74) The Shining – Stephen King
75) The Devine Comedy: Hell – Dante Alighieri
76) Alexander Hamilton: American – Richard Brookhiser
77) An Enemy of the State – Henrik Ibsen (Adapted by Arthur Miller)
78) Comanche Moon – Larry McMurtry
79) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs – Chuck Klosterman
80) God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
81) Confessions – Saint Augustine
82) The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
83) The Last of the Mohicans – James Fennimore Cooper
84) East of Eden – John Steinbeck
85) The Bourne Identity – Robert Ludlum
86) The Devine Comedy: Purgatory – Dante Alighieri
87) Villa Incognito – Tom Robbins
88) Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
89) Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic – Tom Holland
90) Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith – Jon Krakauer
91) The Conscience of a Conservative – Barry Goldwater
92) Operation Shylock: A Confession – Philip Roth
93) The Devine Comedy: Paradise – Dante Alighieri
94) Stolen Season: A Journey Through America & baseball’s Minor Leagues – David Lamb
95) An Ordinary Man – Paul Ruseabagina
96) Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
97) Sanctuary – William Faulkner
98) Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy
99) True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
100) Scoop – Evelyn Waugh
101) Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis
102) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Training Terminated...Almost

I know that I just wrote about my Sister being pregnant with twins and that she was due in June. Guess what? I’m an Uncle already! A couple weeks ago I was on a bus heading home, when I got a phone call from my Sister saying that she had delivered two boys that morning. Ryan, Owen and my Sister are all doing well, but the twins are going to be in the hospital for a while. If you would like to read more about the twins, you can check out the blog that my Brother-In-Law, Matt, is doing. The site is http://www.carepages.com/carepages/TheMcAvinTwins

It has been pretty hectic for the last couple of weeks with Training. We have had a bunch of Technical sessions to plan and implement, and from April 12th to the 20th we were on the Technical trip (my favorite part of Training). The first three days of the Tech Trip were in Puerto Quito which is about four hours west of Quito near the coast. It was hot as Hades down there and we all got bitten a ton by the bugs. We spent those days working at an organic farm near where we were staying. It was interesting and fun to get our hands dirty, but the heat was almost too much. We’d work from 8:00 to 5:00 and then jump in the pool, cool off, and then play soccer until it got too dark. After soccer, we’d have dinner and pass out in bed and spend all night sweating.

On the 15th we (by we, I mean myself and all the Trainees who are going to be living in the Oriente) left Puerto Quito. Here is our itinerary…

Wednesday, April 15th
- Breakfast in Puerto Quito
- Travel to Puyo via Quito (Lunch in Quito)
- Check-in “Gran Hotel Amazonico”
- Dinner in Puyo at O Sole Mio – meet with Volunteers from the Puyo area who can talk about their experiences.

Thursday, April 16th
Natural Resource Trainees
- Breakfast at Hotel
- Visit CERFA Orchid Park – take a tour of and speak with the owner, Omar Tello, about how he constructed and maintains his park and conducts tourism operations.
- Lunch in Puyo
- Visit Estación Biológico Pindo Mirador – discuss native tree species
- Dinner in Puyo

Sustainable Agriculture Trainees
- Breakfast at Hotel
- Visit CERFA Orchid Park – take a tour of and speak with the owner, Omar Tello, about how he constructed and maintains his park and conducts tourism operations.
- Lunch in Puyo
- Visit sugar cane processing facilities at El Vallecito
- Dinner in Puyo

Friday, April 17th
- Breakfast at hotel
- Go to Centro FRATES
- Visit La Libertad – do Abono charla with community members. Learn how to build a cobertizo and learn about sugar cane cultivation, organic agriculture production, and agro forestry in the Oriente.
- Lunch
- Go to San Pedro for a charla by PCV Jason Kamisky and community members on how to build and maintain fish ponds, as well as, how to raise fish.
- Visit the Reserva Hola Vida
- Dinner at the Centro FRATES

Saturday, April 18th
- Breakfast at the Centro FRATES
- Return to Puyo and check in to Gran Hotel Amazonico
- Visit Waorani store and Manuela Ima (President of AMWAE) about artesenia and maintaining a small business
- Lunch
- Visit Parque OMAERE – Take a tour with Chris Canady (Vice President) of the ethnobotanical park. Receive charla and work with Chris on composting toilets, trail maintenance, and soil erosion prevention.
- Dinner in Puyo

Sunday, April 19th
- Breakfast at hotel
- Travel to Tena
- Check in Hotel Los Yutzos II
- Travel to Archidona
- Work with the Association Ruku Kausay on cacao, fish ponds, small animal management, and eco-tourism
- Traditional lunch prepared by the Association Ruku Kausay ($3.50/person)

(These Pictures need a caption - We are eating Chonta Curos, or grubs...delicious!)
- Visit Jumandy Caves ($3.00/person with tip)
- Return to Tena

Monday, April 20th
- Travel to Quito/Cayambe

As you can see, the trip was packed with interesting and fun stuff. The Trainees said that they learned a lot and really enjoyed themselves. This trip was the biggest thing that I had to plan for training, so I’m glad that it went well. After we got back, the Trainees gave presentations on their trips. The kids who went with me gave a nice presentation and even wrote a poem to thank me. That meant a lot to me.

Now that the Tech Trip is done, the Co-Trainers are pretty much done too. We were supposed to help out with the final evaluations and reporting, but they decided that they just wanted to PC staff to do that. The Trainees Spear-In on Wednesday the 29th, so that will be our last day of “work”. I have to do my final medical stuff before I can COS (Close Of Service), so next week I’ll be spending most of my time at the Doctor, Dentist, or talking to the PC nurse. My COS date is on May 4th, so I’ll be in the office that day to have all my bosses sign me out, turn in my cell phone, and finish up any other paperwork that I have to do. One more week and the Peace Corps will be behind me.

I also recently found out when I’m going to fly home. I have a flight booked for May 28th at 9:15am. I should be arriving in St. Louis that night around 9:00pm. I can’t wait to see everybody and to meet my nephews. First though, I’m going to do some traveling. I plan on going south to some of the cities in Ecuador that I’ve never been to and also to go to the Isla de la Plata (otherwise know as The poor Man’s Galapagos).

It’s going to be a fun month, hence it’s new name…The Merry Merry Month of Jay

Response to a Comment

Anonymous said...

"It's kind of strange to think that in two hours we decided the next two years for 20 PCVs, but I guess that's how things go in a government gig."

And probably disturbing to those whose loved ones are in your hands.

This was the comment that was posted on the blog after my last post "Un-Zamboined Ice and Impropperly Oiled Lanes". The quote is directly from my post, and the commentary was added by "Anonymous".

First off, I want to thank everyone again for reading my blog. I know that at times it can get a little boring or repetitive (I try to keep it interesting and funny), but writing this all down helps me to process all the emotions that I´m going through, and your reading it helps to fulfill one of Peace Corps´ objectives, to increase American´s understanding of foreign cultures.

I also want to thank those who go through the effort of posting comments. There haven´t been that many, but I do take them seriously. I´m not sure who posted this comment, but I wanted to take a little time to clarify things. I´m assuming that whoever posted this was either a family member of one of the current Trainees, a concerned party, or just someone who thinks that I shouldn´t have taken so jocular a tone with that issue.

Because they are taking this seriously, I´m going to take it seriously too.

I need to remind people of the disclaimer that is at the top-right of the blog, and at the very bottom as well. This blog represents MY OPINION ALONE. I´m going to talk a little bit about the inner workings of the PC later, and I want to make sure that this is clear.

I would like to respond first to the commentator using the phrase "whose loved ones are in your hands". I need to say that the responsibilities of the Technical Co-Trainers is very limited. We assist in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the Technical session, we have planned the Technical Trips, and we act as extra resources to assist the PCTs in cultural and professional adjustment in Ecuador. To say that their lives are in our hands is a gross overstatement.

I also hope that this comment is not insinuating that the Peace Corps takes its responsibilities lightly when it comes to the health and safety of all PCVs. From Washington all the way down, everyone at Peace Corps is committed to the PCVs and puts this factor first in all the decisions that they make. That being said, the person most responsible for the well-being of the PCV is the PCV themselves. Everything that we do during training is to ensure that the PCVs will be able to handle life at the future work sites, but if they do not follow the instructions given to them, they may put themselves at risk.

Instead of giving a short one-liner about the site determination process, I´ll now give a fuller explanation. Before the PCTs arrive in country, we are given access to their resumes and aspiration statements. By reading these, we (and when I say we, I mean relevant PC staff) are able to get a feel for the Trainees skills, abilities, and personal goals. When the PCTs arrive, we are constantly watching them to see how they interact with fellow PCTs and PC staff and noting their participation levels during training sessions. We then have introductory interviews where we can talk face to face with the PCTs to clarify their background and find out what they would prefer in their site (for example hot vs. cold climates, city vs. rural, working with a NGO vs. a community). We also do a skills assessment and have frequent individual conversations to get to better know the PCTs and if they are having any problems adjusting.

Training is an intense period where the PCTs learn a large amount of material on a multitude of subjects very rapidly. It is almost like cramming for an exam in college. For the staff it is the same. We are trying to get to know 45 PCTs in the weeks before the sites are determined.

When it comes to actually picking the sites, first we can assign the married couples to the few sites that can accommodate them. Then we assign PCTs who have special skill sets (computers, animals, business, chemicals) to the sites that have specifically requested a Volunteer with these skill sets. We are able to place the majority of the PCTs without much discussion because they are clearly a good fit for a certain site.

Several of the remaining PCTs were assigned based on their desire or ability to learn a third indigenous language.

The rest of the PCTs were placed based on a combination their site preferences and abilities. At the end of this process there were only one or two PCTs whose sites we felt could have been changed.

After the Co-Trainers and Technical Trainers had created this list, we submitted it to our boss. I have to be honest here. I do not know what decisions or meeting take place at the HQ level on site assignation. I would assume that the PC nurses and Safety and Security Coordinator have a say in the site determination, but because of privacy issues, we are not, nor should we be, privy to that information. In the case of the current PCTs, the final site assignments were the same as what we had decided.

We are faced with difficult decisions and have a limited amount of time to make them, but I feel that we did a good job getting to know the Trainees and made the right choices with the information that we had. I´ve heard the other countries make this determination before the Trainees are even invited to join the PC. When I received my PC invitation it just said "Ecuador", but I think they feel that if the PCT knows from day one where they are going, they can be better prepared for their service. Another model would be to give the PCTs their sites at the very end of training so that we can use as much time as possible to get to know the PCTs. I think our system of assigning sites at the middle of training is the best option, but each of them has its benefits and down sides.

So there is the real story. We do take this very seriously. As I said, I think we did a good job placing the PCTs, but the reality is that the Peace Corps experience is what the Peace Corps Volunteer makes of it. They will be put in a variety of situations and all have the opportunity to use (or not use) their skills where they feel they can be productive. Sometimes its scary, and often you may hate your site at first only to grow to love it.

It is a crazy two years, but what do you expect from a government gig!

Un-zambonied Ice and Impropperly Oiled Lanes

Where to begin?


First off, Training is still going good. It's hard to believe, but we are already halfway through. As I write this, the Trainees are all at their future sites. Things have gone great so far, but the real problems will beginning after they get back from their sites. That will be when they start to complain if they don't like where we put them.

It was sad last week because we said goodbye to seven members of my training group who all flew back to the USA. A couple of us who weren't leaving came in to Quito to give them a nice send off. We let one of my friends decide how to celebrate, and she picked...bowling and ice skating! It was fun, but the bowling alley lanes were drier than your grandady's scalp and the ice was gouged up. I know I shouldn't expect too much, but I was disappointed that I couldn't show off my patented spin-ball and triple axel.

After that we went out for a bit of dancing.

I went to the airport at 6:00 am the next day with some friends to say goodbye. I don't know if it was the headache or the heartache, but it was hard. I think a lot of it was realizing that my time is soon to come to an end as well.

One good thing about a friend of mine leaving was that he gave me a couple bottles of Guinness that he had just received, but wasn't going to drink. I shared them with the other Co-Trainers. It wasn't like a good draught pint, but good enough.

After seeing them off, I went down to La Libertad for the day. I wanted to give the new PCV who is living there, Russ, some contact information for the schools that I worked with and also to attend the La Libertad grade school "Sports Day". As it turns out, Russ wasn't there that day, but the "Sports Day" was fun. When I showed up, all the kids from the grade school and high school were in the center of town watching the grade school teachers playing the local police in volleyball. As I walked up to the court, a ton of little kids came running out to greet me. They all were yelling my name and asking if I was coming back to teach them more English. It was nice to know they remembered me, but I think that I'd have to teach them "some" English before I could teach them "more" English. I said hi to all the parents and teachers and got a sore hand from high-fiving all the kids.

After saying hi to my neighbors, one of the teachers asked me to be the referee for the next game. I tried to get out of it, but was unsuccessful (as always). The game was a basketball game between the female teachers at the high school and grade school. As soon as they started to play, I knew I was in trouble. They were fouling and double dribbling all over the place. I decided that since I would either have to blow the whistle every 15 seconds, or not at all, I'd go with option two. Most of the male teachers watching started to yell that I should call more fouls, but I stood by my guns and only called two fouls in the first half. I don't know how many I would have called in the second half because they fired me at halftime and let someone else do it...fine by me.

The best part about going to La Libertad was seeing my neighbor's kids. They were all doing good, and Karla, the middle girl, won the "Sports Day" beauty contest. The youngest daughter was confused to see me again. I think she couldn't quite remember me, but when I picked her up and asked her my name she said "Jay" right away, and then it all seemed to come back. Overall it was nice to be back for a day, but one day was enough.

Last week we had a session on small animal management. We did some work with chickens and cuyes. I think the Trainees enjoyed the hands on experience, but they were a little grossed out when yours truly castrated two guinea pigs. I don't have a lot of experience doing this, but it's not that hard. I'll be more than happy to give lessons when I come home.

Here is a picture of some of the guinea pigs with their babies (these were un-castrated of course) and a picture of Mount Cayambe that I took from near the farm.





The biggest thing we have done recently with training was assigning the sites to the Trainees. As I said, they all seemed happy with their sites, so Mary and I are pretty happy. We sat down for a couple of hours two weeks ago and put together a list of where we thought the Trainees would work out best. We gave the list to our boss expecting that he'd make some changes, but he kept them all the same. It's kind of strange to think that in two hours we decided the next two years for 20 PCVs, but I guess that's how things go in a government gig.

NOTES:
-I finished my taxes for 2008 recently. Surprisingly I owed Uncle Sam nothing again. That is one nice thing...the taxes on nothing are very low.

-I also wanted top say thanks to everyone who sent me a card, a phone call, or an e-mail on my birthday. THANKS !!!!!

-I haven't made a big deal about it on the blog, but I wanted to finally write about something that has been very exciting for my family. We found out in December that my sister was pregnant...with twins!! Everything has gone well so far and she is due to deliver in June. Here are some pics of babies and mother.

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Hear That Training a Comin’

The Trainees finally arrived on February 25th. It has been a fun and intense two weeks since then. The other Co-Trainers and I have been preparing, implementing, and evaluating most of the technical aspects of the training. I have to admit that working in the office before they got here was pretty boring and I wasn’t too motivated, but now things are a lot better.

From the moment they got here, I have been living in a cloud of déjà vu. Almost everything that the new trainees are doing, we did two years ago. The night they arrived, we sat at the Airport waiting for them. I remember when we walked off the plane. There were so many thoughts and worries going through my head all mixed in with excitement and curiosity. I remember the Co-Trainers for our group meeting us and telling the baggage handlers in Spanish where to move our bags. I was impressed to see Gringos speaking so well, and being so organized. Now, I was one of those Gringos. It was a good feeling, but a little weird.

We spent the first couple days in Quito listening to presentations by the Country Director, PC staff, and some representatives from the US Embassy. We didn’t have a lot of stuff to do, but it was good to see the Trainees and answer their questions. We also spent those days finishing up the plan for the first week of training. There are 45 Trainees from all over the US, a couple of them are older, and there are two married couples. It is a lot like our Omnibus. The difference is that these guys “seem” a bit more low-key than we were. I used quotes around seem because it is impossible to say how they act when the training staff isn’t around, but I don’t think they drink quite as much beer as we did.

After getting them prepped in Quito, we moved all the Trainees bags to their home-stay families around Cayambe. It was a lot of work, but we were able to move our stuff as well (that was a lot better than moving all our crap in buses again). It was nice to move out of the house in Quito, but as a parting gift, the owners of the house I lived in only charged me $180 for repairing the Kohler faucet I broke. It was only a small piece of plastic, but repairing anything from the US costs an arm and a leg down here.

The new house we are living in is huge (except for my room). The three girls have big rooms that are all the same and mine is on the small size (small enough that I can touch all four walls at the same time). I worked out well (for the girls), but I can’t complain (outside of parenthesis).

The good news that we all received was that the Peace Corps will be giving us a 9% raise effective in March. The inflation has been pretty bad down here, so that extra $28 a month will really help.

In Cayambe we have had a couple technical sessions where we have had to present to the Trainees. Some of it is stuff I know well, but some of it is on topics that I haven’t had to work with since our training. Its nice to review those topics and now that I understand Spanish, I’m learning a lot of things that I didn’t pick up on the first time around.

I had to give a short session on grafting and pruning the other day. I hadn’t done anything with trees in La Libertad, so I had to do some research. I think I did a good job, and one of the other Co-Trainers asked me afterwards, “Wow, I didn’t know you knew so much about trees!” That was the good, the bad was when one of the Trainees asked, “Jay, how many grafts have you done during your service?” I answered that including the six demonstration grafts I did during the session, I had done six. He looked at me and said, “That’s what I thought”.

Another interesting thing is the La Libertad already has its replacement PCV. One of the Trainees has been a Peace Corps Volunteer several times, starting in 1984. He has been in Ecuador as a PCV and even worked in the office. Since he knew almost everything already, they decided to let him skip training and go right to his site. They decided that la Libertad was the best fit for him due to his small gardening experience and desire to work with a woman’s group in the Sierra. I hope it works out for Russell and I plan on heading down there soon to give him my contact lists and advise him on projects I tried, what I had hoped that he would continue, and the basic logistics of La Libertad. Its crazy to think of him sleeping in my bed, but its his bed now.

Martes De Grasa

Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras. In whatever language…good times. Working in the office paid some major benefits for this festival. We got off work Monday and Tuesday, so the rest of the co-trainers and I left for the extra-long weekend to various parts of the country.

I left to go out to the jungle community of Tena to meet up with 10 friends. We took it easy the first night and then on Sunday morning we jumped on the back of a truck and took the half hour ride to the indigenous town of Misahuallí. Misahuallí is known for the craziness of its carnaval, and it did not disappoint. They had a park on the big river that flows through town cordoned off with food vendors, beer stands, music stages, and of course, people selling the carnaval necessity…foam spray.

Luckily we were on the river, because we were covered with foam, paint, and oil after being at the party for 10 minutes. About every hour I would jump in the river to cool off and get clean. The group of us instigated a war between a bunch of little kids who were playing near us. The water and foam flew, it was a good time.

We left around 4:00 before the real insanity began. The next day we heard on the radio that three people drowned that night. Unfortunately, Ecuadorians can’t have a real party without there being some fatalities.

On Sunday night a couple of us went to a different town to see what was going on there. On Monday morning we got up to go watch a professional soccer game, but on the way there people started throwing stuff on us. I was wearing nice clothes and didn’t want them ruined by the dye in the foam, so I asked people not to spray me. A 6’2” gringo in nice clothes was too big a target, so the Ecuadorians pelted me anyway. At this point I lost it. I started cursing at people in English and in order not to kill someone, I had to go back to the house. It probably was for the best because I’m sure that at the game it was worse. I think my frustration level has reached its maximum.

Instead of going to the game, we watched Slumdog Millionaire. It was good, and I can still say that I’ve seen all the Oscar Best Picture winners. Another piece of culture I saw was the Provincial Ballet of Pastaza and their new work “Puyu”. It was about what you’d expect from the Provincial Ballet of Pastaza, but worth seeing. The ballet told the story of the Shwar Indians and their relation to the Catholic missionaries, Spanish settlers, and oil companies. It was interesting, but I was scared the whole time they were dancing around. They were jumping with spears and bows, I thought somebody was going to get knocked out. (Again, Ecuadorians love them some danger).

I got back last night, and today we are finalizing plans for the new Omnibus’ arrival. They get in at 8:00 tonight…now the fun begins

Quito – Chattanooga of South America

Looking down the valley from La Libertad at night, I could see the lights of Quito in the distance. I would sip on a cup of hot tea or coffee and wonder what it would be like to leave the boredom of La Libertad and live there. I always treated Quito as my Mecca and would daily pray for a little excitement in my life. Now that I’m here, I’m glad that I didn’t live in the Capital during my entire service. It’s not that I want to move back to La Libertad (I’ve had my fare share of guinea pig and muddy roads), but I think that I wouldn’t have had a “real” Peace Corps experience if I had lived in the city, or even in a touristy small town.

That being said, it has been interesting living here, so interesting in fact, that I haven’t had much time to write in the blog. Sorry for the delayed post and here are the highlights of my life in a mid-sized US city surrounded by hills that somehow got transplanted in South America.

I say that it seems like a US city because of all the conveniences that we have and how much American stuff is around (fast food, american stores, and gringos, gringos, gringos). Quito though is a pretty big city (1.5 million people), but after 10:00, there isn’t a lot of stuff going on. One thing we did do a couple times since we got her was to go to an Irish pub for their Pub Quiz. We came in second two weeks ago and our team won this week. It was fun, and we won free dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant that is owned by a couple Irish guys. We went the next day to enjoy our free feast. The food was great, and it was interesting to talk to the owners about the new import restrictions that the Government just implemented. They are having problems getting a lot of the ingredients that they’ve been using, so they have had to change the menu. I know that’s not a big deal, but it’s a sign of the leftist government's desire to cut Ecuador off from the global market.

Working in the office has been different. We are in front of computers all day, so my eyes are having to get used to the strain. Also, since all the other PCVs have to come here if they have any problems, we hear about all the gossip and PCV/PC HQ issues. One of the big stories that is going on in the office right now is that PC Washington has inspectors here auditing the entire PC Ecuador administration. Apparently there were some complaints about the previous Country Director (he left Ecuador in November). The inspectors were here for a week, went back to DC, and are now coming back. I’m not sure what they are looking at (we probably never will know exactly), but they have been interviewing some of my friends about how policies were or weren’t implemented and followed. It makes me wonder how much stuff wasn’t correctly handled during my service, but at least there will be some accountability (after the fact).

On the topic of Country Directors, we had lunch at a Japanese/Thai fusion restaurant with her. The food was great (I had some Unagi for you Nate!) and it was a good opportunity to talk to the CD about a lot of our opinions. She was interested to hear what we had to say, which was a nice change from the old CD.

Things are OK with our host family, but mostly because we don’t spend a lot of time there. I did have a small accident at the house the other day. I broke the handle off the kitchen sink (what can I say, I’m a strong guy). It still works, but I’ll have to pay to get it fixed. I hope it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg, but it is a Kohler faucet. They probably don’t have replacement parts, and just to get a guy to come here to look at it will cost about $25. Maybe I’ll just pack my stuff up during the night and quietly slip away.

NOTES:
- We had a meeting with the families that will be hosting the Trainees in Cayambe. I got to see the family that I lived with. It was nice to see them, but my old host “mother” said that her husband had finally passed. That was sad to hear, but he had been sick so long that it was a blessing.

- Ecuador –US relations hit a new low this week when the second member of the US Embassy was expelled from the country. You can read all about it at… http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmmx1kqv2xD-vKb4MBwu6HltV9YwD96GQ8503 . It seems that the Chavez/Morales/Correa triumvirate is feeling pretty good about themselves after victories in the Venezuelan/Bolivian/Ecuadorian constitutional referendums in the last 6 months. They are getting closer to Iran and Russia and running away from the US and Europe as fast as they can. We’ll see what that does to the Peace Corps presence in Ecuador, but it doesn’t look good.

- Speaking of looking good, I saw El Presidente Correa while I was running the other day, and last week we saw him sitting in the front seat of an SUV in his motorcade. We waved at him, and he waved back…good thing he couldn’t read my mind.

Movin' On Up

Quito, Ecuador – This is the city I’ve had to go to go get anything done for the last two years. If I wanted peanut butter, I had to go to Quito. If I needed to get my mail, I had to go to Quito. If I wanted to have a cold beer, I had to go to Quito. Now this is my home…life is good.

I got the last load of my stuff to the office on January 17th, and then headed back to La Libertad for one final night. On the 18th at 4:00 the other three Co-Trainers and I met up at the PC office to get a ride to our home-stay houses. Usually they had the Co-Trainers stay close to the office, but this time they decided to try a different location, so we are now living a bit north of the office.

The four of us are living in two houses that are right next to each other, so it is convenient to get together to cook and hang out. Andrea and I are living with a Mother and her 21 year old son. Andres and Graciela are nice, but…well, we’ll get to that later. Susan and Mary live with an older woman who is sweet as well. When we showed up at their houses we had tea and cake and both the old ladies told us how grateful they were that we had come. Graciela kept saying that she had prayed for God to send her some angels, and that we were a blessing.

To start off, the houses are AWESOME. Ours is three stories, fully furnished, and we have a washer and a dryer. I about soiled myself when I saw that. The first night we took a cab to a sports bar to have watch the NFL game. I spent the next day organizing and doing laundry. I can’t explain how nice it is to live near restaurants and bars, and to have such decadent luxuries as consistent water and electricity.

We cooked two big meals for the two families, and everything was going great with them. Work was good too. We spent the first week getting things organized for the new Omnibus’ arrival in February. There is a whole team involved, but we are the only ones with recent experience as PCVs. Right now we are updating the training manuals, revising vocabulary lists, planning the Technical Trips, and soliciting advice/input from other PCVs.

A couple examples of how different my life is here…
In the two weeks since we got here, I’ve ran almost every day
In the two weeks since we got here, I’ve read only six pages of the book I’m reading
In the two weeks since we got here, I haven’t taken a nap

So after a fun and productive first week, I got off of work on Friday afternoon and had nothing to do until Monday morning. I took a weekend trip (like any normal American), and came back to a different world. During the weekend the girls had gone out dancing and didn’t come back until very late. Graciela was pissed! She talked with Andrea and we thought things were cool, but she called up one of the PC bosses and then came in on Monday to bitch about us. She said that we were using too much water, too much electricity, were coming home late, and worst of all, that I was using the washer and dryer too much.

We had to have a meeting about it with some of the PC staff and decided to talk to Graciela. I sat down with her to explain the situation (and hopefully come to an agreement about laundry). We came to an agreement, but unfortunately the agreement was that I am no longer allowed to use the washing equipment, and that we have to tell her where we are at night. I don’t mind telling her where we are at, but the laundry thing is horrible. I tried to convince her to let me pay per load, but she said she’d rather me do it somewhere else. There are laundromats near the PC office, but it was so nice to live the dream of in-home laundry, if only for a week.

I did talk to my old La Libertad neighbor’s kids twice since I moved here. They just wanted to say hi, but I think they miss me.

Note:
Ecuador just initiated a 35% tariff on over 600 imported goods. The hope is that Ecuadorian producers will get more business, but I’m sure that they will just raise their prices too. When we found out about the price increases, we all went to the supermarket to stock up on foreign products that we like. One of them is a Chilean boxed wine called "Clos" that is very popular with PCVs. We were scared that they would stop selling it if people stopped buying it because of the higher price. We rushed to the store right before the tariffs hit because we had, as I called it…Clostrophobia

Freedom From La Libertad

"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatsoever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy – that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

- John Steinbeck
East of Eden

After 21 months in La Libertad it is finally time for a change. This quote may be a pretty depressing way to start out my last blog about life in La Libertad, but when I look back on my time there, it does seems that only yesterday I got off the bus for the first time. The days flew by, but all the important events, births, deaths, pregnancies, anniversaries, etc. that affected my life over the last two years, all of them happened in the US. Was this because I never really “Integrated” into Ecuadorian society, or maybe I always knew that I’d soon be leaving, and didn’t want to make any connections. Or was it that everything is so different down here that the whole experience gets all rolled up in my head, and there are no specific “posts” to hang my time on because this will end up being the biggest life-changing time of my life. Either way, like I said after a year in site, I don’t know how to process the time I spent in La Libertad yet. I’m sure that six months after I return to the US, I’ll have a different perspective.

“In all times and places, the outsider [is] disproportionately disposed to comment on life.”

- Richard Brookhiser

As a stranger in a strange land, you develop a critical mind. Things that confused, humored, or plain pissed me off here probably wouldn’t have caused such an effect on me in Missouri, Illinois, or California. Because I was and always will be a Gringo to Ecuadorians, I was forced to be an outsider (being a foot taller than everyone in town also hurts assimilation). I became a lot more self-critical as well. Seeing the stupidity in others made me try to keep the dumbness in myself down to a minimum. It is going to be hard to come back to the US and just be a normal person and not get stared at everywhere I go, but hopefully this self-observation won’t end when I get on the flight home.

“There should be no unnecessary talk or chatter, but only talk of the matter in hand. Moreover, if someone begins to speak, another shall not interrupt, but shall allow him to finish, behaving like orderly people and not like market women.”

- Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725)
Instructions to the newly formed Russian Senate

How do you try to get a group to work together when it consists of nothing but “Market Women”? My biggest disappointment of my time in La Libertad was that I was unable to get the Women’s Group that I worked with to organize themselves better. If they continue to fight amongst and against each other, they will never be as strong as they could be.

“Early one morning Byron left me at the bus station…he was a good kid, but he was enveloped in the sadness that brooded over that dark country.”

- Moritz Thompsen
Living Poor - On leaving a Peace Corps Volunteer’s site in Sierran Ecuador

The “Dark Country” was especially dark for my last two weeks there. It rained everyday and because one of my neighbors cut down the trees that lined the road to town and didn’t clean up the branches and leaves that then blocked up the drainage ditches, the road was nothing more than a muddy swamp. To get out of my house we had to walk through a 100 yard morass. Since I didn’t have my boots on the last day, and didn’t want to arrive in Quito covered in mud, I put some plastic bags (double bagged for extra security) over my shoes. I looked a little ridiculous walking to the bus, but I arrived clean. As I was taking my last steps before hopping on the bus to Machachi, the bags came loose and my final gift to La Libertad was four plastic bags stuck in the mud. A fitting end.

That´s A Wrap !

It is all finishin´ up here in La Libertad pretty rapidly. A couple of weeks ago I talked with my counterpart and neighbors about having my despidida or going away party. We decided that the best day for everyone was Sunday the 11th. Unfortunately, this was also the first day of my Omnibus´ C.O.S. (Close Of Service) conference in Quito. I told my neighbors that we could have the party, but that I´d need to leave by noon. They said that wouldn´t be a problem and that we´d start at 10:ooAM. Of course on the day of the party, I showed up at 10:00 at the community bank, and they hadn´t even started cooking. I played with the kids a bit (my 17 year old neighbor´s kid like me a lot) until we were ready to eat at 12:30. The food was good and they actually made me potato tortillas and roasted pork instead of the traditional boiled potatoes and cuy. That was very nice and thoughtful of them to make something special just for me. We ate, made some toasts, and the broke of a couple cases of beer. I kept insisting, "One more, then I have to go!", but of course that didn´t work. At 4:00 and half drunk, I had to catch the bus. As I walked out of the bank, all the old ladies were telling me not to go. I think some of them thought that I was leaving for good. It was sad, funny, frustrating, heart-touching, and a bit ridiculous all at the same time...just like the rest of my time there.

The COS conference was short and sweet. We went over transitioning back to the US, reverse culture shock, health stuff, receiving our "Readjustment Allowance", finding a job (Good luck, right!!), and also got to meet the new Country Director. If was very quick, and packed with info. After the meeting we went out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner and then back to the hotel to hang out together as a group for the last time. we tried to make our last night special by buying a keg from a Micro-Brewery near the hotel. I went up to the pub called Santa Espuma or Holy Foam with a couple friends. The beer was good, but the price for a keg was pretty high. We talked them down a bit, got the quantity and style of beer figured out with the people back in the hotel, and the figured out how we were going to pay of it all. After all this negotiating, one of the guys went up to place our order and then came back shaking his head...apparently they needed a days advance notice to fill the kegs. We ended up going to a corner store and bought a couple cases of cheap beer instead.

Since I´ll be in or around Quito for the next couple of months, I´ll get to see almost everyone again, but after the meetings, some people had to say their final goodbyes. That was sad.

When I went up to COS, I brought a couple bags of my crap to leave in the office. Since I´m moving all my stuff via bus/public transportation, it has been a bit frustrating. I figure it will take four trips to get it all moved, so I´m going to come up on Saturday and then finally bring one last bag on Sunday.

More exciting news from Ecuador. It seems that a large percentage of Indigenous are going to protest the government´s new Mining Law. They feel that the law will effect them negatively, so in order to rectify the situation, they are going to protest on January 20th. Their protest will consist of them shutting down the major roads in the entire country. This used to be a more common practice, but my group has been luck and they haven´t had any since we´ve been here. For more information, look at http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=1797 Because of the strike and possible violence, the Peace Corps has ordered us all to stay in our sites starting on the 19th. For me this is no big deal since I´ll be in Quito. You don´t have to tell me twice to stay there!

Finally, you may have noticed in my last pictures that I had grown out a beard again. Here are the pictures of me shaving it off. Enjoy!!

Christmas in The Jungle, New Years on the Beach

I have been successfully keeping my goal of staying out of La Libertad since Christmas So successful that my neighbor asked me, "Do you still live here anymore?"

One exciting thing that happened in La Libertad recently was that my soccer team, Reina de La Paz (Queen of Peace) won our club league championship. Although I didn't play in the Finals (I didn't play at all in the second half of the season), it was nice to see the guys win it all. After the Finals, we had a big party and we all got medals. I won't mention my lack of playing time, just that I was a member of a South American Championship fútbol team.

The big news in Ecuador is that the President decided in December to default on Ecuador's bonded debt. For more info, check out http://www.rgemonitor.com/latam-monitor/255019/the_curious_case_of_ecuadors_default__and_why_it_matters . With the rapid fall in crude oil prices, the leftist Correa government is up the proverbial creek. They've been promising a lot (and delivering) to the poor and indigenous populations. Now the money may start to run out. If things don't get better, I could see Ecuador practicing its national pastime...kicking out the current President.

I spent Christmas Eve in La Libertad with my neighbors. It is Ecuadorian tradition to have turkey for Christmas, but turkey is so expensive that usually only city folk can afford it. My neighbor Carlos decided to splurge, and got a turkey this year, so it was a big deal. When he brought it home, I asked how he was going to cook it. He said, "I don't know. I was hoping that you'd cook it." After that, I put myself in charge of dinner. I baked the turkey and a chicken, made gravy and mashed potatoes, bought some cranberry sauce, and baked some cookies. That along with some veggies and a couple of bottles of good wine that Carlos got from his work made it a special occasion. There were 15 of us piled into their kitchen stuffing ourselves and laughing. It was one of the best nights I've had in La Libertad.



On Christmas day I went to the jungle to visit some friends. We made dinner of chicken, stuffing, tatters, and my now famous corn, butter, cream cheese, and garlic side dish, "This is delicious...and so low in calories!!" The next day, a lot of people from my Omnibus showed up and we all went out of the city to a cabin near a nature reserve where we all had Christmas again. More good food and good times.

I hung out at the jungle enjoying the weather/weekend until New Year's Eve when we went down to the beach. It was hot and beautiful and at midnight we were all standing on the beach underneath several fireworks displays...what a way to ring in 2009.

Now that I'm back in La Libertad I'm going to get stuff organized for my move to Quito. We finished work at out last garden, so now all I have to do is figure out who is going to get all my stuff (some of it I already promised to certain neighbors...as much as a year ago)

I hope you all had a fun and relaxing Christmas and New Year. I'm looking forward to seeing you all before 2009 gets too old.

Believe it or not, Jay isn´t at home!

Starting with Halloween, I decided that my goal for my last two and a half months in La Libertad was to spend as little time as possible IN La Libertad. That sounds like a horrible thing to say, but I really don´t have enough time to get anything major started here and I'd rather focus my time and energy on the gardens we have already started. Halloween, my friends´ visit, Mama Negra (twice), Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year´s Eve, meetings, and other short trips will keep me out of L.L. most weekends until I start working in Quito on January 19th.

The day that Susan, Kari, Nate, and Scott left Quito, I ran the Mitad del Mundo Media Marathon (Middle of the World Half Marathon) in Quito. The race started near the Peace Corps office and ended at the Equator. That combined with the fact that the race´s starting line was over 9,500 feet in elevation made it an interesting race. (You may notice that I didn´t mention my finishing time...there is a reason for that)

Thanksgiving was at a friend´s house in El Chaco (the same place we had the Halloween party). There were ten of us and the food was great.

I went to the rescheduled Mama Negra after Thanksgiving. It wasn´t as fun as last year, but at least I successfully avoided getting pulled out into the parade while a group of men danced around spitting booze on me (see post: Mama Negra).

St. Nick came again to my neighbors´ kids. They remembered the tradition from last year, but I still couldn´t convince them that it wasn´t me putting candy in their shoes.

Last week I went out with six other PCVs to another Volunteer´s site in the Transisitional Zone (the area between the Sierra and the Coast). We were celebrating two of my friends´ birthdays, so we had a little party on Sunday night. On Monday we got up at 5:45 AM to help out with a census the government is taking. We spent the morning and afternoon sorting papers and then filling them out with the information from individuals in a community called El Paraíso, The Paradise.

It was interesting to see how another community lives, but I had a small problem that day. I had slept on the floor the night before and when I went to put on my jeans in the morning, I noticed a bunch of bug bites on my legs. My body not being used to bug bites, went crazy. Three of the bites looked bad, and one formed a huge blister. PCVs are pretty used to seeing gross stuff, so I got a little concerned when everyone saw the blisters and said, "Wow!!". Fortunately, some Hydrocortisone and Antibiotic creams helped. Although I still have some red splotches on my legs, the blisters are gone.

Enough of my fun, I´ve been working too. We´ve been transplanting the gardens that we planted in October and its been going well. I´ve been able to show the parents what to do, and since the plants are growing well, they believe now that I actually know what I´m talking about.Since we usually have a ton of plants, we are able to transplant a lot at the schools and still have a bunch to give to the parents to take home. They can transplant near their houses to start gardens to feed their families. We surpassed our goal of gardens planted (14) and have given away thousands of plants to the parents that we´ve trained. I feel like I accomplished something (albeit something very small) with this project. With the schools being on vacation from December 19th to Jaunuary 5th, I only have two weeks left to work on the gardens. I´m pretty sure we´ll get it all done, but if not, John will be able to get the rest. Also, I´m going to pass along the project to the next PCV in La Libertad to continue if they want to.

My fish came with a head!

Hey all,

Last week, four friends from the US came down for a visit. We had a great time, and I want to thank Susan, Kari, Scott, and Nate for everything. I get so caught up with my work and the frustrations of living in a foreign country that I often forget how lucky I am to be here. Showing them around and seeing how they reacted to what has become a "normal life" for me was a fun and needed refresher. Anyway, enough with my babble. The rest of this post was written by my friend Kari...

I knew the minute Jay was accepted to the Peace Corps, Scott and I would definitely pay him a visit wherever he was going to be placed (apparently also assuming we would be invited :) When we found out he was going to be in Ecuador, I had no idea what to expect. This was probably a good thing as visiting a Peace Corps volunteer and visiting a country are definitely two different adventures. I would love to say Nate, Susan, Scott and I saw Ecuador through Jay’s eyes, but even that would be a stretch—a glimpse is what we got—a tiny, miniscule glimpse of life in this beautiful country.

We saw a market full of unfamiliar fruits and veggies, a sampling Jay would prepare for us in the morning which served as the catalyst for Nate’s incessant quest for Tomate De Arbol juice for the rest of the trip. “Fresh” was also newly defined for me as Susan nudged me at the market and pointed to a man walking by carrying his dinner (whatever it was, it was already skinned and waiting to be fried). We saw fifteen Ecuadorian women lined up to sell fried plantains and we listened to Jay as he told us of the time he tried to buy two potatoes. Apparently, one cannot purchase anything less than the 25 lb bag—no matter what the price. If the market doesn’t have what one is looking for, Jay showed us what his recourse was—planting everything himself. In fact, the entire salad that Jay made for dinner that evening was pulled right from his own garden!

We ate some wonderful dishes including fresh seafood on the coast. Excited to try some of the fish, I ordered the fresh tilapia only to find it presented to me in its entirety—from the head to the tail. Before I could faint, scream or fall into a state of shock, Scott quickly removed it from my plate only to have Jay reach over, grab it and suck everything out of it—eyes and all! Nothing is wasted in this country and I admire them for that (not enough though to begin eating fish heads.)

Along with the fresh fish, the Ecuadorian coast greeted us with plenty of pineapple drinks, fresh roasted coffee and a secret path to a black sand beach (about a 10 minute walk :). The scenery was as breathtaking as the waves were refreshing.

We traveled throughout the country by bus. Climbing through the mountains and descending toward the coast, we were kept on alert by a cacophony of Spanish discotheque tunes. There was no need to worry about finding a place to eat while on the road because the townspeople would jump on the bus as it slowed in order to sell fresh pastries, chocolates and chips. Sales were not impeded by a crowded bus either—somehow salesmen found a way to squeeze through the aisle. It was as if that one yogurt-pop sale was the most important of the day—talk about dedication to one’s work.

The five of us lived in very close quarters for the duration of our trip and adjusting to the shared bathrooms and cold showers really reminded us how much we take modern conveniences for granted. Even the preparations for the trip taught me this as I trekked down to the travel clinic for Typhoid Fever and Hep A shots. Those along with the malaria pills and mosquito nets we slept under made me nervous—nervous about diseases that I don’t even think twice about now—diseases that kill over one million people each year. According to the World Health Organization a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. I couldn’t get over thinking about how sheltered and disconnected from the world I am.

The Ecuadorian people were wonderful and from the little time I spent here, I thought they seemed genuinely happy. They were kind, the children were full of hope and they truly seemed to be living life in the moment. Jay is doing some incredible work down there with the Ag program and community gardens, but I think the most impressive thing about him is that his goal isn’t just to “help” but to effect change by creating something sustainable. Since this can only be measured over the long term, I imagine the day to day tasks can be quite daunting; however, Jay does them successfully and was able to share many of his insights with us; for this I’m grateful.

Someone told me once that “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” I’m not sure who originally said this, but it was an eye-opening trip full of firsts and I am so glad I was able to see Jay and this miniscule glimpse of his life.

Hail, Proust, Cows, and other things that can ruin your day

Unfortunately, this week has consisted of one small annoyance after another (sprinkled with good news). First, classes were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday of the week because of an Ecuadorian holiday, so I had some time to get caught up on some chores on Monday. Monday night, my friend John called me up and asked if I wanted to climb El Corazón (15,700 feet) on Tuesday since we were free. It seemed like a good time to finally do it, so I left my house at 8:00AM on Tuesday, met up with John in El Chaupi, and we started to climb. Most of the way we followed a road, but then we had to follow a ridgeline covered with tall grass and spongy mounds of high Andean plants. The “real” climb started around 1:00PM when we left the grassy part of the mountain and started to climb the bare-rock trail. The weather was cloudy, but we were determined to get to the top. After seven hours of climbing, we made it to the top. The view was….of nothing but clouds. We couldn’t see anything, and to top it off, it started to hail. We hightailed it back down about 100 meters, and the miraculously the clouds blew away and we got a great view of Machachi, El Chaupi, La Libertad, and the valley around my house. Then the clouds rolled back in and we had to walk another four hours soaked and pelted by sleet, but it was worth it.

I think I’ve reached Critical Mass on the amount of damage I’ve done to all my worldly possessions, because everything is starting to just fall apart. My backpack, sleeping bag, jeans, all my shoes, camera, radio, CD player, cell phone, and every one of my embarrassingly “holy” socks are all in some state of disrepair (if not completely broken). I guess that shows that I’m really living the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer. The latest thing to go was my new iPod. I’ve been using it as an external hard drive and I think that hooking it up to my neighbor’s computer filled it with viruses. I grabbed some stuff of a friend’s computer the other day, and his anti-virus software deleted a bunch of infected files before I could stop it. It looks like some of the deleted files are necessary for it to run, because I can only get one song to play…ABBA’s Dancing Queen. Talk about worthless. This shouldn’t be a long-term problem because on Thanksgiving I’ll see a friend of mine who said he’d let me download a new copy of iTunes and all his music. Keep your fingers crossed!

Nine months ago I had planted some Broccoli by my house. Normally it takes about 3-4 months to harvest, but the cold really stunts growth up here, so the first ones weren’t ready until after seven months. I harvested all but two of them which were still very small and I didn’t think would produce. To help these two, I fertilized them a lot, and they started to form heads. They were almost ready this week and I had planned to serve them to my friends who are coming to visit (more on them later). After NINE months, FOUR days before I was going to harvest them, my old neighbor tied up her cow next to the broccolis and it ate them. I’d be upset, but stuff like that happens so often that you just have to throw up your hands.

The good news this week was that I went to check out one of the school gardens that we planted in October. Everything was growing well and they had already harvested most of the radishes for the kids’ lunches. We set up a date for the parents to come back and then we’ll show them how to transplant the plants into different beds at the school and also give them plants to take home. This is where the real goal of the gardens is accomplished. If the parents can see that they can grow more than corn/potatoes/ onions, it will make them more likely to continue with the gardens in their own houses after I’m gone. Any extra vitamins in their kids’ diet will make a huge improvement. If this first garden is an indication, I’ll be busy setting-up work dates, transplanting, and showing the parents how to do the whole process on their own land for the next month. Hopefully it works out like this and the time before I start working on training will fly by (and be the most productive period of my service).

Also, my neighbors just bought a pick-up truck. It is a 2001 and has over 100,000 miles on it, but they are proud. Sara doesn’t know how to drive a stick, so I told her I’d show her how…this should be interesting.

This week I finished the longest book I’ve ever read, Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Where to begin? Remembrance of Things Past is over 2,200 pages, and nothing really interesting happens. It basically consists of a guy talking about French society of the late 19th and early 20th century. It has been called the “Major novel of the 20th century”, and Steve Carrell’s character in Little Miss Sunshine calls Proust the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Maybe, but I thought it was wretched. At least I read the whole thing, so I can say that with authority. The funny thing is that the copy I had was signed on the cover “Marjorie Harden – 1941”. As I was reading the second volume, I started to have to separate many of the pages in order to read them. They weren’t stuck together with gum or jelly. When the book was printed, the bottoms of those pages were never cut apart. Therefore, in the 67 years since Ms. Harden signed it, NOBODY had read the book!!! I don’t care how smart a critic you are, great literature has one requirement…people must read it.

Finally, I mentioned that I was going to have visitors. My friends Kari, Susan, Nate, and Scott are coming down from Chicago for a week. It is going to be fun showing them around. The next post will hopefully detail their trip in their own words.

Change is Good?

First off, congratulations to everyone who voted last week. It’s good to see Democracy at work. Although I didn’t vote for Obama, it has been interesting to observe the reaction from Ecuadorian citizens and the Press. The day after the election, everyone I know was asking me about the first “Presidente Negro”. I told them that I didn’t vote for him, and they asked why. I told them that I thought he would raise taxes and that I always voted for Republicans. I think they just thought that I didn’t want a black President. This country is about as racist as you can get (they refer to people from the coast, where most Afro-Ecuatorianos live, as Monos, or monkeys), so I think that they feel that we should be the same. The Press talked a lot about how “historic” our election was and that a lot of things will change. They never elaborated on what would change though…I guess they bought into the hype as well.

I was with a friend the other day and we ate lunch at a restaurant run by an Afro-Ecuatoriano. We asked him how he felt about a black President. He just said that he thought that Obama would help poor people in Ecuador. I know that all Presidents have a tough job, but putting Ecuador’s problems on his shoulders as well, may be a bit too much.

My boss came to visit La Libertad this week. The purpose of his visit was to confirm that we would be getting a new PCV after I left. I had told him already that I didn’t think that they really needed a new volunteer here. I’ve had to leave L.L. to find a lot of my work, and the people haven’t been very receptive to some of the changes I thought they should make if they wanted to improve, so I was worried about what a new PCV would do. The people here wanted another volunteer here very badly though, mostly I think that they want a new PCV because they have had one for so long. They’re not receptive to change, so they want to keep their PCV status quo.

My boss wanted to put another PCV here because (this is just speculation on my part) he needs to find sites for 21 new PCVs before the end of April. Putting another PCV here in L.L. makes his job that much easier. Since my boss and the whole community wanted to put a volunteer here, I kept my mouth shut. In the back of my mind, I thought that maybe the problem was more with me than the community. Maybe a new PCV would find all kinds of work that I never got involved in. Then I remembered that Mike, the PCV before me, had similar problems.

It’s going to be hard training the new group of volunteers and then telling one of them that they are going to live here. Hopefully I’ll be able to make sure that the new PCV likes to work with children because there are a ton of opportunities here to work with kids and adolescents.

The Halloween party last week was a blast. One interesting thing was that like last year there appeared to be an unplanned general theme among the costumes. Last year, there were about 10 guys in drag (I was not one of them). This year there was a very religious feeling. There were two guys dressed like Jesus, one dressed like Biff, Jesus´ best friend (To get the reference, you have to read the book Lamb), some Mormon and Evangelical missionaries, a couple witches, an angel, a devil, a nun, the Virgin Mary, and one very handsome Priest.

Finally, Mama Negra, the biggest parade and party of the year in Latacunga was scheduled on the 8th of November. Unfortunately, two nights before the parade a 13 year old was killed at one of the pre-parties. It is still unknown exactly what happened. What is known is that a firework exploded and hit the kid in the head. Some say it was an accident and others say it was done on purpose by a rival high school. Either way, the parade and party were cancelled by the head of the Province for the next three years because of security concerns. The people in Latacunga were upset about the decision, and I can’t blame them. A lot of people had bought food and beer to sell to the thousands of tourists who would come to the party. This has to be a big income generator for the town and surrounding communities, not to mention a great time. It would be like cancelling the 4th of July on July 3rd.

(NOTE: As I write this, I was just informed that the party has been rescheduled for November 29th)

Be Afraid (Of Ghosts, Not Barack) !!

Voting in a foreign country turned out to be a bit more complicated than I had hoped. Unfortunately, the State of Missouri is not the most technically advanced State in the Union (Surprising, I know!) A bunch of my friends were able to order their absentee ballots on line, receive them as a PDF, vote, sign the ballot, and then just mail it in. I had to print out a form and then mail it to the Board of Elections. I had hoped that they would only require a signature, so I had the ballot mailed to my parent´s house for them to complete. So much for planning, Missouri requires all absentee ballots to be co-signed by a Notary Public or other official authorized to administer oaths. Therefore, my Parent´s had to mail the ballot to me to get the appropriate signature. I thought that someone in the Peace Corps office would be able to do this, but nobody is so authorized. I looked for an American Notary in Quito, but without luck. I had to have one of my friends scribble a crazy signature where the co-signer was supposed to sign, hopefully this will work.

While I was in the office committing voter fraud, I turned in a ballot from one of my friends who I knew who had voted for Obama. I have to admit that I was tempted to tell him that I turned his ballot in and then throw it away. While I was thinking, I had a moment like in a cartoon. Karl Rove dressed like a devil appeared on one of my shoulders. He whispered in my ear, “Pitch it! He´ll never know”. Then Dick Cheney popped on the other shoulder dressed like an angel. “That would be a disservice to Democracy, Jay. You know better than that”, he said. I turned the ballot in…thank you Mr. Vice President.

With Halloween approaching, I thought I´d retell a story I recently heard. It is about the Hacienda where I had lunch with the new Ambassador (Post: Make Cotton Soff – In Word) you can also see the website at http://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=3692

"La Cienega" is a Spaniard hacienda built on the province of Cotopaxi-Ecuador. Two hundred years ago this hacienda served as home of Spaniard conquerors, they had thousands of indigenous people working on huge fields.

These haciendas were the heart of the economics in that time. Now, this hacienda is a touristic site, because is a building which has history. This hacienda has not been remodeled or modified it has been kept the same way as it was two hundred years ago. The hacienda works as an inn, and has the name of "la cienega".

It was late October; I went to the cienega to spend a weekend outside the city. My younger sister and brother were scared because they knew this place was supposed to be haunted.
There is a legend which says, that the Africans and indigenous people who worked on this hacienda suffered everyday, they were slaves, and working schedules were so harsh, most of the slaves died in the middle of the task. And their bodies were buried in the fields.
It was Saturday in the night, after we at dinner in the hacienda restaurant, my parents went ahead to their room with my sister. Five minutes later, I went with my brother. As we were walking through a hallway, my brother just fell to the ground, he said he felt something grasping his foot.

There was no one, and there were no doors on that hallway, from which, a prankster could play a joke. I felt cold, and seen. I continued to walk very fast to our room. That midnight my brother woke up screaming because he said that he felt that someone was pulling his feet. I calmed him for a couple of minutes, and took him to my parent's room. I returned to my room.

I went to the bathroom to pick up a bottle of water because I was thirsty, when I stared at the mirror. At my side I saw a face, the face was ugly and seemed to be rotting, and I simply fainted. I woke up at nine o clock. I checked my arms and they had scratches, as like those of a cat, but instead, these were only two lines in each arm. I was freaked out.

That next day I talked to a staff member and told him of what happened the other night. For my surprise, he simply told me that these kinds of experiences are weird. Although, that hacienda has a certain reputation of haunted.

A week later, I learned that this place gets its name "la cienega" from the translation from the Spanish, what means is "the swamp" because the Spaniards not only buried corpses on the ground, but mainly on a nearby swamp, which is about a five miles from the main house (where the inn works). And local people say that the spirits which inhabit the hacienda are enraged spirits who seek vengeance from their cruel masters.

I have to admit that I don´t believe in ghosts and didn´t feel anything crawling up my neck while we were walking around the Hacienda´s grounds, but it is still pretty interesting.
Speaking of Halloween, I hope you all have a good one. I´ll be leaving La Libertad this Friday and heading out to my friend´s site, El Chaco. I´ve been there twice before, and it is nice and the weather is hot. About 70 volunteers from all over the country are heading there for a big Halloween bash and the next day we are going to have a rafting contest down the Quijos River. It should be fun, and after the last couple of weeks, it will be a nice break from planting gardens every other day.

Speaking of gardens, John and I planted our 12th one this week. That was our target number when we started the project so I´m pretty happy. We have two more lined up next month and then hopefully we will start transplanting. The next big hurdle will be getting the parents to plant gardens in the own yards. We´ve taught them the techniques, now it is up to them (with a little prodding from us).

What it is like to bathe once a week

Towards the middle of last month, the water pressure in my part of town dropped significantly. There was still enough water coming out for us to cook with and even enough to shower with, but the pressure was not high enough for my hot water heater to work. The sensors in the heater weren’t tripping when I turned the water on, so I couldn´t get any hot water. This was a pretty big problem for me since it has been cold and rainy lately. I tried to take a cold shower one night, and I barely got my head wet before I ran out of curse words to yell. Instead, I used my neighbor´s shower which still worked. The problem with theirs was that it would run for about 10 seconds and the hot water would cut out. Then I´d have to shut the water off, let the heater reset, and try again. I ended up getting semi-clean, but it took a while and I ended up colder than I started. Since it was such a pain to shower, I ended up taking one shower a week for about the last month. I smelled pretty bad some days, but that´s life. I was contemplating “re-wiring” the heater Tim Allen style. I figured I could hook the gas up directly to the burners and light it with a match. This may have worked, but more likely it would have just blown up and killed me.

Fortunately, the head of the water committee spent a couple hours this week digging up a stretch of tubing and fixed the problem. I took a shower on three consecutive days…ah, the simple pleasures of the poor.

Another problem that I´ve failed to mention is that my camera broke (I say mine, but it really was my brother´s). It had been acting up for a while, and I knew it was a matter of time. The humidity here is so bad that pretty much everything breaks sooner or later. Some days I´d have to set the camera outside in the sun before I could take a picture because the inside of the lenses were all fogged up. That´s is why I haven´t had many pictures in the last month´s posts. I thought about getting a new camera, but I would end up just breaking that one too. Also, I´ve decided that taking pictures makes me look even more like a tourist, so not having the camera helps a little.

I talked to my boss the other day about the project proposal that I recently submitted. He said that the proposal was well written, and there were only a few things that I needed to modify. Then we started talking about some of the concerns that I had. He said that the profit margin on projects like ours was shrinking because the price of feed was going up. I told him that I didn´t think the ladies understood the risks and amount of work that was involved. He then asked about the other activities that the ladies were currently doing. I told him, truthfully, that all the ladies are busy constantly now and think that they can add the chickens without a problem. He said that they would need to drop all their other work to be approved, which they won´t do. That put an end to the conversation and to our project as well. I´m actually happy that it ended this way because I think doing anything with the ladies in my town would have turned into a disaster.

I was not looking forward to telling my neighbors and “friends” that I had accepted the job helping with training and was going to be leaving La Libertad earlier than I had planned. I finally had an opportunity to talk to my neighbors, Sara and Carlos, alone this week. We were driving to pick up some onions and a told them my plans. Carlos didn´t say anything, and Sara just said, “So, does this mean we are going to get a new volunteer earlier?” I had expected them to be upset that I was leaving, or at least kid me about wanting to live in the city. I was glad to see that in my 18 months here I made such a deep impression on them that they are more concerned with the next guy than me. Maybe this has something to do with them getting attached to Mike and then him treating them like shit and never visiting. Hopefully I´ll be able to break them of those feelings.

Speaking of the next guy, now is the time when we have to apply for a new PCV. I´ve talked to a couple of people about it, and I´m trying to talk them out of the idea. I´d feel sorry for the poor bastard that has to live here after me. In order to get anything accomplished, I´ve had to leave town. That´s not the way that it should work, so I´ve told them that if they want another PCV, they have to have concrete ideas of what they would do (I wish the previous guy had done that!). We´ll see what they come up with.

Two Small Failures & One Big Success

A couple of weeks ago one of my friends sent me a text message about climbing one of the big Ecuadorian mountains (Cotopaxi, Chimborazo, or Cayambe). Since you need a guide, equipment, and a couple hundred bucks to climb the big guys, I really don´t want to. The way the weather is down here, you are more than likely to get to the top and not be able to see 10 feet in front of your face. Instead, I suggested that we climb the Ilinizas which are easier to do and don´t cost anything. My friend liked the idea, and what started out as two or three people hiking turned into eleven of us.

We spent the night at a hostel in the town near me and woke up the next day at 5:30. The weather was bad the night before, but it looked like it was going to clear up. Unfortunately, it got worse as we climbed. About half-way to the refuge (which itself is about half-way up the mountain) it started to snow. We hiked another hour or so up the trail in the snow and wind. It was nice to see a little different weather, but once we got to the refuge, it was clear that we had to turn around.

Of course, the next day the weather was better, but that´s they way it goes.

It was nice to see everyone, and five of the volunteers from my group got to see my site for the first time. A couple people mentioned that if they were stuck in La Libertad, they wouldn´t have been able to take the cold and the rain and probably would have quit. That strikes me as funny because one of the girls who said that lives in the jungle and her entire town is infested with rats. I know for sure that I couldn´t have lived there. I think we all are able to adapt to whatever difficulties that we have, but think that we couldn´t deal with someone else´s situation…the grass is always browner on the other side!

Another nice thing about the visit was that one of the girls who came is an expert in yogurt manufacture. I organized a workshop for the ladies in my town to learn what we need to do. I invited around 15 women to come to my house the day before our hike, but when we were supposed to start, only 2 showed up. We still did some stuff, but it definitely was a lost opportunity.

So, those are the two failures, now for the success. A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a job with the Peace Corps office. The position is called “PCV Co-Trainer” and this week my boss called and told me that I got the job. Basically, two volunteers are chosen from each program to help with the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the training of each new Omnibus. As of January 19th, I will be leaving La Libertad to work in Quito and the training site (I don´t know exactly where this will be, but it has been in Cayambe for the last couple years). I very excited about the opportunity and it is going to be a huge lifestyle change. Not only will I be working in cities, but I´ll also be in a lot of meetings, I´ll have more specific responsibilities, and I´ll be living with at least three other Americans (the other Co-Trainers). This is going to look great on my resume, and it is going to help with my transition back to a “normal” life after the Peace Corps. Also, I will only need to stay in Ecuador for a couple more weeks (I´m not sure of the details, but I think instead of finishing on April 20th, I´ll be done sometime towards the middle of May). It will also be nice because I´ll leave La Libertad, but be able to come back and visit. Mike, the previous volunteer here, left and even though he was working in Quito, never came back. I think this did a lot to damage the way people here think about his time in town. Instead of remembering all that he did, they just talk about him never visiting.

Anyway, I only have three months left here, and although I´m sure I will miss some of the people, I can´t wait to start on something different.

Finally, it was great to see that the Cubs were able to continue their hot streak in the Playoffs. 100 years of futility…wow!!! Here is a picture of a hat I bought to rub the Dodger´s victory in the face of a friend of mine who is a big Cub fan.

Green Thumb?

This gardening stuff has really taken off. Since the beginning of the school year John and I have been to 11 schools and still need to visit four or five more. One school actually already had plans to work with a group of University students from Latacunga, but asked us to “manage” the project. Its amazing to think that last year I grew my first crops and now I´ve been bumped up to a management position. Another 10 months and I´ll probably own my own farm.


Some of the schools had even organized formal work days, or Mingas for all the Parents to come and help. The mingas are pretty common down here, but when they set one up for you, it means they´re serious. Two of the schools we visited for the first time were kind of funny. They were both near some tourist destinations, so I think they were used to gringos being around, but not communicating with them. The whole time we were working, they parent´s kept assuming that we didn´t speak Spanish. They even would talk about us in front of us, thinking that we couldn´t understand. In another town they asked where I lived. When I told them that I lived in La Libertad, they were amazed. “Really? In the pueblo?”, one guy asked. I think that made me seem a little more credible in their eyes because I didn´t live in the city.


Other than the gardening, I was busy the last week finishing up our grant proposal. I turned it in to my boss, but honestly I hope we don´t get it. The thing is that no matter how hard I try to explain to the ladies, I don´t think they understand the risks and work involved in the project. The proposal is for constructing 13 chicken houses. The women would then be responsible for buying the chicks, feed, and other supplies. I figure that should run to about $500 in the first two months. Then we´ll start selling the birds and recouping the money. There was another small chicken project in my town recently, and about 40% of the birds died due to poor care. I told the ladies who had the birds a few things they needed to change, but the didn´t listen. My worry is that once the ladies have the cash, they´ll just do there own thing, a lot of the birds will die, and then they´ll stop the project because they lost all their money. I had to turn the proposal in though, because they ladies kept hounding me. I´ll have a meeting soon with my boss where I can explain my doubts. Maybe we can try to get the project´s scope decreased.


Notes:
The election we had down here over the weekend went off without a hitch. The new constitution was approved overwhelmingly and they are going to start changing the laws in the next couple weeks. We’ll see how things go, but either way it is kind of crazy to live in a country while they are changing the rules you have to live by.


Also, I just liked this picture of some of the kids in my town

Dannon Ain´t Got Nothin´On Me

There are some things in life that scare me: airplane travel and rodents mainly (funny that I took three flights to come to a country where we eat rodent for dinner regularly). I had an experience recently though that was scarier than all those other minor tribulations. As I stared into a pot full of light purple creamy goo, stuck a spoon into it, raised that spoon to my mouth, and ate what it was holding, I thought to myself, “This could be the last thing I do”. That´s right, I ate blackberry yogurt that I made with my own hands.

A couple months ago I went to visit a friend and saw a small scale yogurt project that some women from her town were doing. It wasn´t that complicated and would work well in my town since a lot of people have milk cows. They way things work here is that families will have 2-10 cows that they keep by their houses and everyday someone takes the cattle to their grazing lands. Every night they bring the cows home, milk them, and then the next morning a guy drives around in a truck and picks up the milk to take to one of the plants that packages the milk or makes cheese, ice cream, etc. Right now they are getting about $0.32 per Liter of milk. Then of course, they take that money and buy food with it. One of the things that is very popular in town is yogurt. So, my idea is to cut out the middle man and have people make their own yogurt.

The process basically consists of pasteurizing the raw milk, adding a bit of plain yogurt, and then letting it sit at 122-130° F for about five hours for the culture to work. It’s the five hours at high temp that are a bit of a problem up here. To do this I made a wooden box with three light bulbs inside. With an attached dimmer switch, I can keep the temperature pretty constant (would you expect less from a chemical engineer?). The first couple batches turned out OK, but not perfect. I´m going to keep working out the kinks, and hopefully we are going to start selling our 100% natural yogurt at the grade school to replace the artificially colored and flavored stuff that they sell now. And the best news is that after that first bite, I´m still around to write this post.

¿Should I Be Teaching Spanish?

Things have been semi-busy in the last couple of weeks. Since school started we have been visiting 3-4 schools a week setting up times to start planting our gardens. There has been a lot of interest, and it looks like we´ll surpass our goal of 12 gardens. A big opportunity came this week in Latacunga. There was a meeting of all the school Directors in the area. John and I were able to give a 7 minute presentation on our gardens and afterwards we talked to a bunch of Directors we hadn´t met yet about planting at their sites.

In La Libertad things are OK. I´ve been busy with the English classes and on the 1st day of each class at each grade, I´ve been giving tests…on the Spanish alphabet and writing numbers in Spanish. Most of the kids were able to do it without any major problems, but it´s sad to see older kids who after 5-6 years are still unable to write out the alphabet. My goal is to get these kids some extra help while I´m teaching English. Let´s face it, if they don´t know their own language, they´re not going to succeed in another.

A good/bad thing is that the grade school is expanding. Next year, they plan on having an 8th grade (right now, the school only goes to 7th grade). Each year after that, they plan on adding another grade until 10th. The thing is, the High School will probably close since all the students they would have will still be in the grade school. Because of this, there is a small feud starting between the two. Mostly it is the High School teachers bad mouthing the school. I told them about the results of the ABC tests, and they said, “Well, what do you expect with the teachers there. We don´t know what they do all day!”. It was funny since they told me this while we were sitting in the office during the middle of the day watching TV.

Last weekend I went to Quito to watch the Notre Dame vs. Michigan game. It was a great game, and I finally got to see the Irish win. It was especially nice since I watched the game at a bar owned by a Michigan graduate and was surrounded by Wolverine fans.

You may not have heard, but it is a crazy time in Latin America. First, some Russian bombers flew to Venezuela last week http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article4753363.ece The US Government said that there was no nuclear weapons onboard, but with the US-Russian relations as they are and Hugo Chavez being no friend of America (or democracy), you could see how he wouldn´t be against another Cuban Missile Crisis. It would definitely drive up oil prices (which would give his and Russia´s governments a lot more cash to spend on keeping their huddled masses under control).

In Bolivia there have been protests for and against the US and the Bolivian President, Evo Morales. Here are some links that explain better what is going on http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2008/09/17/bolivian_governor_arrested_peace_corps_volunteers_evacuated/ . and http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/16/bolivia.peace.corps/ The Peace Corps just evacuated all the Volunteers out of the country, and with the way things are down there, I don´t see them coming back anytime soon.

Here in Ecuador, the debate over the new Constitution is heating up. The referendum is on the 28th of September. I don´t see us having any problems, but you never know. During the weekend of the Election, the Peace Corps is making us stay in our sites to keep us out of trouble. Also, I´m going to stock up on rice and canned goods…just in case.

Make Cotton Soff - In Word

Besides the low rent and inexpensive food, a great thing about Ecuador is the cheap (prices and quality) Chinese made clothes that can be found all over. Pretty much all the T-Shirts down here are American knock-offs of name brands, sports teams, or they just have English writing on them. I was walking through the market the other day and saw a $5 shirt with the title of this post written on it (misspelling included). I have no idea what it means, but how could I pass up a shirt like that…it is now my favorite.

Had another fun/life threatening experience with my neighbor Carlos the other day. His outdoor hot water heater was on the fritz, so we decided to take a look at it. We figured out what the problem was and were taking apart one of the gas valves when a friend of mine sent me a text message. I was standing next to Carlos responding to my friend while he was fiddling with another valve. He apparently turned to water on while the gas valve was disconnected. When the water came on, another gas valve opened to light the pilot and then WOOOOOSHHHH!!!!! I turned and saw a jet of flame shooting out the side of the heater and climb up to the second story of Carlos´ house. We both ran and Carlos turned off the gas at the tank. I was unscathed, but Carlos singed most of the hair in the front of his head. Someday that guy is going to kill me.

What does it take to win “Mother of the Year” at the high school that I work at? I´m not 100% sure, but just remembering your kid´s name and Birthday will get you in the Finals. I was working up there registering students for the new year, and a bunch of the parents when we asked them what their kid´s Birthday was, they had to look up the date on the Birth Certificate. Some parents even had to look at the paperwork when we asked them their kid´s name, unbelievable. Another crazy thing is that to register the older students, they needed copies of their ID. Unfortunately, they are unable to get IDs now because there is a shortage of materials to make IDs in the WHOLE COUNTRY. Nobody can get a license or ID for at least a month.

The good news is that school started this week, so I´ll be busy again until I leave. I´m still going to be teaching English at the grade school and along with nutrition/heath classes every once in a while in the high school, I´ll also be teaching “Logical Reasoning”. If you remember, a couple of months ago, I helped the high school teachers prepare for a logic test they had to take. They liked it so much, I´m stuck doing it. Actually, it should be fun. On Tuesday I went there to see when they wanted me to start. The Director looked at me and said, “Now!”. They were busy getting paperwork ready for the parents, so I had to teach a one hour class without materials or preparing. I was pretty happy that I pulled it off.

I´m planning mostly on doing word and math problems with the kids and Brain-Teezer type puzzles, so if you have any, please send them to me jayverhoff@msn.com .

Another highlight of the week was that on Thursday, my friend John and I got to eat lunch with the new US Ambassador to Ecuador. Here is her profile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_M._Hodges. We met her at the 300 year old Hacienda Cienega “Swamp House” between La Libertad and Latacunga. The owner gave us a tour and explained some of it´s history. It was interesting. You can see pics of the Hacienda at http://www.hosterialacienega.com/html/en/hotel_cotopaxi_ecuador.html. We then had a really nice lunch with the Ambassador, two members of her staff, and the owner. The lunch cost about $25, but the owner was trying to impress the Ambassador, so he picked up the bill. Unfortunately, the owner talked most of the time, and since he was there, we talked mostly in Spanish. We only really talked about what John and I are doing for about two minutes, but for free filet migñon I´m not complaining.

Finally, here is a quote from the comedian Lewis Black that I just heard. It is a couple years old, but it reminded me that no matter how bad it gets down here, I still went to college in a worse place…just kidding.

“If you´re thinking of killing yourself, Rolla is the place to go. Because when you get there, you´ll take one look around and say, ´I want to end it all´. You can´t even get there directly. You fly into St. Louis and then drive two hours south on Route 66. They wrote a song about it…but not that part of the highway.”

- Lewis Black on Late Night with Conan O´Brian

From The Neck Of The Moon

I think that I mentioned a while ago that I joined the recently formed Agricultural Task Force (ATF). Since the group is new, we don’t have any set responsibilities yet. I suggested that one thing we could take on was helping with the training of the non-agricultural Omnibuses. The Peace Corp big shots loved the idea, so last week, five of us went back up to Cayambe to give a 3 ½ hour presentation on agricultural themes. During our training, we received a couple days of health and education training, but the Youth & Families and Health programs don’t receive any significant Ag training. I talked about school and home gardens, inter-program cooperation, and a little about nutrition. The rest of the group talked about composting, value added products, and chemical use and protection. It went really well, and several of the trainees told us that our presentation was the most practical session they had during their training.

The bad news is that the training may be the last function of the ATF while I am here. I talked to my boss the other day and he said that the budget of PC Ecuador is going to be cut by Washington and there is no money to fund our activities. We are going to try to find other sources of funding and we have ideas for cheap projects, but I think we will be limited to training activities and information dissemination. I did just write an article for the Youth & Families Program’s newsletter about school gardening, so I can hang my hat on that.

Last weekend was the Festival de San Juan in La Libertad. The festival was the same as last year except they didn’t do the Maypole dace, so they didn’t need me to act as the pole. The one notable thing was that at Mass on Friday and Saturday, the Priest told the story of John the Baptist. For those of you who don’t know, John was preaching in Galilee and got in trouble with the ruler and his wife. John was arrested and during the ruler’s birthday party he was beheaded and his head was brought to the ruler’s wife on a platter. The Priest told the story twice because after the first time he asked a couple of questions and nobody knew the answers. Then he started an hour long rant about the town. He said that it was improper to celebrate the death of John the Baptist at a party by having another party. He said that most kids memories of the Feast of John the Baptist were, “Dad got drunk and fought with Mom”. Instead of drinking, the Priest said that we should take time to reflect on the past year with our families. Of course this went over well. Most people weren’t paying attention anyway, and as soon as he left, everyone started drinking. I didn’t stay long because of what the Priest said and also one shot of homemade sugar cane alcohol is enough to last me for a while. The thing about that whole situation that strikes me is that these people will not listen to their own Priest and I’m supposed to get anything accomplished here!

The Priest also went on to criticize the town’s leadership for deciding to build a new church without saving enough money to repair the current church (it started to rain during mass and water was coming down on the alter through the giant whole in the roof). Next he jokingly said that he hoped somebody died during this year’s festival so that next year we could celebrate that death AND the death of John the Baptist. It wasn’t exactly at the Fiesta, but a guy from my town did die that weekend. It was Sunday morning after a soccer game and the guy was trying to cross the Pan-American Highway on his way home and he got hit by a car. He was drunk at the time. I’m sure it was from drinking at the Festival till early in the morning and then continuing at the game. I went to the wake, and people were drinking there, I guess the Priest was right next year will be a blast.

I went with my buddy John and a group of 60 High School kids from Latacunga to Mt. Cotopaxi last Sunday. John set the whole thing up and got funding from the US for two buses to pick us up, guides, and lunch. It was great because the kids had never been there and the weather was not very cloudy. We climbed from 15, 090 feet to about 15,944. That’s where the snow line is, so we got to climb around the glacier. I took the Priest’s advice and went off on my own away from the kids for a while. Standing on the glacier, listening to the ice crack and water run underneath me, while looking out at the snow-capped peaks in the distance made me think, “Man, my feet are cold!”. I did learn an interesting fact. Cotopaxi, the name of the Volcano and of the Province that I live in means “Neck of the Moon” in Quichua. Pretty cool.

Finally, congratulations to Jefferson Peréz, Ecuador’s most famous athlete, on his Silver medal in the Men’s 20K Walk in Beijing. This is Jeff’s second medal (and I believe the only ones for Ecuador). I know its not on par with Michael Phelps, but we take what we can get down here. I do feel a little silly though admitting that I watched a bunch of guys walking around in circles for a hour and a half…with interest.

Erradicating Child Labor...By Making Kids Work

I´ve been busy and bored at the same time for the last couple of weeks. With the schools on vacation until September, I have a lot more free time during the day, but I´ve been trying to keep occupied. Even though we are allegedly in the “Dry Season”, the weather has been overcast and it has rained every week lately.

Since I had some time and the weather hasn´t been sunny, I took my laundry to Latacunga last week to wash it at the laundry mat. My buddy John had dropped of the ad we made for the cleaners earlier, so when I showed up, they didn’t charge me. The free laundry was nice, but when I talked to John, he said that he just gave them one copy of the advertisement. The owner assumed that we had handed out a bunch of copies. John said that we would de that, so I had to come back to Latacunga another day to give out the ads. We spent a couple hours going around town giving the ads to all the hotels and tourist agencies that foreigners usually go to. Also, we hung up about 50 copies around town. After we posted a flier, we´d walk away and almost every time we´d look back and see a couple Ecuadorians looking at the ad. The ad was totally in English, so I know they couldn´t understand it, but I guess the novelty of a couple gringos hanging up fliers was too much for them to resist. We even gave out a few ads to people who came up to us on the street and asked for one to take home.

I went into Quito last week to see the new Batman with some friends. The movie was good, and while in Quito I bought a couple more movies and the entire 4th and 5th seasons of “The Office” (All for $14. You gotta love pirated DVDs!!) Also in Quito, I bought a thermometer to use with the yogurt project I´m trying to get started. Out of curiosity, I had some water boiling and took its temperature. It was boiling at only 188° F. At sea level, water boils at 212° F. Living at an elevation of 11,200 feet does some crazy things.

Other than watching “The Office” and reading, I´ve been trying to practice my Spanish a little. I bought a copy of the Instant Immersion CD/CD-ROMs. It said “Advanced” on the package and I though it would help with my vocabulary and maybe get rid of my accent (I´ve been told by Ecuadorians who live in the city that I sound like the Ecuadorian version of a redneck). Unfortunately, my Spanish is above the level of the CDs, so I don´t think that they´ll do me much good.

Another thing that I´ve been doing is working on the gardens around my house. I have two new ones going and I was finally able to harvest some broccoli that I´ve been growing. I steamed some for dinner the other day and I have to admit that it was the best tasting Broccoli that I´ve ever eaten. The problem is that it took almost 7 months to grow. In the States it should only take about 2 ½ months from seed to harvest. The short days, lack of sun, and cold temperatures really screws me here.

I did also get a little publicity for the gardens we are doing near Latacunga. There was a half page story (mostly pictures) on them in the July issue of Social Responsibility magazine. I think the head of the project that we are using to get our contacts in the schools wrote it up using pictures that I had taken. The funny thing is the magazine´s purpose. Social Responsibility has it´s mission statement printed under the title on the front page. It says that the magazine is dedicated to “Eradicating child labor in Ecuador”. Of course, most of the pictures in the article show kids from the schools working in the gardens. I guess a garden can´t count as a sweat shop even if the kids are sweating.

The last piece of semi-exciting news is that JayInEcuador is now the top Google result when you search my name. Finally!

I´m Back Baby!

After a three week vacation, I´m back in Ecuador (for better or worse). I had a blast in the States and want to thank everyone who hosted a BBQ, gave me tickets to a ball game, let me sleep on their couch, drove me around, let me barrow their car. bought me a beer, took me out to lunch/dinner, gave me a hug, said they enjoyed reading the blog, and generally made my trip home the best time I´ve had in a while.

The trip back was pretty uneventful except for a lot of turbulence over the Gulf of Mexico (Thanks Dolly!) and when we landed in Quito, the woman across the aisle from me asked me in Spanish, "What time is it?". I answered her, but she just looked confusedly at me. I repeated the time, but again, she didn´t understand. Then she held up nine fingers and said, "nueve". I said yes, and then she started talking to me very fast. I only understood about 1 word in 50 and thought, "Holy S___! I lost all my Spanish while I was in the US". Then a Mexican lady behind me started talking to us. Her, I could understand. She asked if I understood the other lady and I said no. She then asked the lady where she was from. She didn´t understand and showed us her passport...she was from Hati! She was speaking French the whole time with a little Spanish thrown in, Thank God!

I got to my house too late to visit my neighbors, and since I was tired from the trip, I just went to bed. THe next morning, I awoke to my neighbors knocking on my door asking me to get up. I opened the door, and two of my neighbors were carrying pots and pans and asked me to come with them to another neighbor´s to kill some Guinea Pigs for a fiesta that night. Well, if you´re going to get back in the swing of things, you might as well go all the way. (Note: I went to a pet store in the US and saw that Guinea Pigs go for $34.50 a pop. Outrageous! I can get a Guinea Pig cleaned, cooked, and with two side dishes for $6). After killing them, my neighbor asked if I could go to her daughters graduation that afternoon to take picture. They had another neighbor´s camera, but didn´t know how to use it. I changed out of my killing clothes and we took off. We got to the high school at noon, but of course the ceremony didn´t start until 4:00. After the graduation, which was really more of a fashion show since the school´s curriculum was clothing design and manufacture, we went back to my neighbor´s to eat (oh, guinea pig and potatoes how I didn´t miss you!) .

Later, the DJ started up and we drank and danced until 3:00 AM. Itried to leave earlier, but they insisted that I stay. I just kept thinking that two days earlier I had dinner at a nice Chicago sushi restaurant with 12 of my friends. Good food, good wine, good conversation and a lot of laughs. Now, I was dancing all night to music I didn´t like with a belly full of rodent. The thing is, earlier in the night when we were making toasts, my neighbor raised her glass to congratulate her daughter and turned to me and said, "Jay, I´m glad you made it back in time to help us celebrate because you are a part of our family". That got to me. As much as I miss my friends and family, I´m glad I here for now. I only have nine months left to work, and its going to fly by. I don´t think I´ll miss the food or unpunctuality when I leave, but I know that I´ll miss being a part of this messed-up World.

Random Notes

Sorry that it has been a while since I updated, but the last couple of weeks have been thankfully busy. I´ve been working or traveling a lot which has kept me from spending all my time thinking about my trip home next month (July 1st through the 22nd). Here are some of the highlights...

->We finally got all the numbers together for the chicken project and I did a feasibility study on the business (who says you have to have an MBA?). I found that we´d make money, but only in the long term. During the first year each member of the group would have to fork out almost $900 of their own money and then wouldn´t recoup it all until the third year. I think that is way too much money and too long a time for people in my site to stay with the idea, so it looks like that project is a bust. Instead, we now are looking at working with broilers instead of laying hens. I haven´t done the study yet, but hopefully the numbers will be better.

->I just joined the recently formed PC Agricultural Task Force which will be working with country wide agricultural training. I still don´t know a ton of Ag stuff, but I hope to help with organizing and setting goals for the new group. My first idea about slightly changing the format of Pre-Service Training has received a lot of good buzz, and I think it will be implemented.

->I went down to Ambato for a friend´s birthday party a couple of weeks ago. It was nice to see everyone and while I was in the city, I picked up a $1.25 bootleg copy of the new Indiana Jones (Sorry George Lucas). I was excited to see the movie since I´ve always been a fan, but was very disappointed. The only redeeming quality in my mind was that it was set not far from here and there were several small bits that had connections to Ecuador (Francisco Orellana, the explorer, and the Quichwa language which they still speak here).

-> I traveled to the northern part of Ecuador last week for a couple of days to visit some friends. It was nice to see a different side of life and feel some warm weather. It is usually pretty dry there, but it rained almost every day...I must have brought it with me. The area where my friends live is called the Chota Valley and is famous for being the home of almost all the Ecuadorian Nation Soccer Team´s players. Since a lot of the residents are Afro-Ecuatoriano, the culture is very different and I could have conversations with people, look them in the eyes, and not have to squat...how bizarre! We basically just hung out, but I did get to see one of my friend´s yogurt projects. She showed me how to do everything, and its pretty easy. When I get back from vacation I think I´m going to try it out in my town. I think that I´ll do it all on my own and later on I´ll get others involved (there will be a lot less headaches that way).

Other than that I´m getting stuff ready for the trip. I have some garden work to do next week and then some packing.

I´m looking foreward to seeing everyone and if you are planning on being in Chicago or St. Louis in July, send me a line.

P.S. - This will be the last post until I get back from the States, so until then, Hasta Luego!

The Body of Who??

I had just finished teaching at the grade school last Tuesday when the Director asked me if I was going to "Corpus". I told him that I didn´t know what that was, so I didn´t know if I was going or not. He explained that it was a big party this weekend outside of Latacunga. Since I didn´t have anything to do on Saturday, I went to check it out. The name turned out to be short for Corpus Christi, Latin for Body of Christ. And the festival was allegedly to celebrated the feast of the Eucharist, but in reality it celebrated beer, booze, and dancing to bad music. The parade started right on time (2 hours late) and was pretty much the same as the Mama Negra parade in Latacunga, but with a little less booze. There were a couple of other PCVs there, and it was a good time. The funny thing was that they didn´t try to hard to make it look like they were celebrating a religious feast. The only guys wearing anything religious were the guys (sorry, I don´t know what their official name is) wearing these huge hats with pictures of the Virgin and Jesus on them. They are traditional to the Pujili area (where the parade was).

While we were walking around we met an Israeli guy who had just started traveling around South America. Since he didn´t speak much Spanish, he tagged along. It was amusing to see how shocked he was at the way people were acting. He refused all the drinks people piled on us, kept asking if people always sold food uncovered on the street, wondered why the police just stood around while fights were breaking out, and generally questioned what he got himself into. None of this stuff bothered or surprised us PCVs. I guess that shows that we have integrated.

The traveler left before us and later as I was changing buses in Latacunga I ran into him again. I asked if he got back without any problems and he just shook his head. He said that on the bus ride back to town he fell asleep and someone stole his hat. He couldn´t believe how that could happen...lesson learned for him.

We planted another garden last week and all went well. I also got some good news from my boss. Since I´m having to travel a lot more to go to all these gardens, I´m paying a lot more on bus fares. I asked for a raise to cover these extra expenses and it was approved. I will now be receiving $10 more a month...huzzah!!!

Schoolyard Taunts Ecuadorian Style..."Ok, who brought the wet shit?"

I went to another small school outside of Latacunga this week. The school was in a town called Tanicuchi and was very poor. THey already had a small garden, unlike the other schools we are going to work at. Their garden was planted January by a group of university students from Latacunga. In it´s 15´x 30´foot area there were only about 12 small plants growing. It was pretty sad looking, so we dug it up and started from scratch. I asked if the university students had ever come back, and they said no. Now, I don´t know the whole story behind the students working there, but this is similar to the story of most development work. People come in, spend a day working(or some other short period of time), leave feeling that they´ve accomplished something, and then never come back. In actuality, they accomplished nothing sustainable and do more harm than good. The school is a good example. The garden sucked and was taking up space. Also, the kids and the teachers didn´t work as hard or seem as interested as the other schools we´ve been to and I don´t think the trust us to come back. We told them they need to water the plants every day, but after their first experience they may not. If they don´t, nothing will grow and the cycle will continue.

Anyway, we got the garden planted and fertilized with manure the kids brought. AS we were dumping the plastic bags of crap out, one bag was full of fresh cow manure. The rest of the bags were full of dry (and therefore less smelly) manure. As the wet turds plopped out, some of the kids looked around at the others and said, "OK, who brought the wet shit?" I had to laugh as the other kids furiously denied it.

I spent last weekend working at the community bank´s charge days. Everything went well, and at the end of the last day I closed up shop and took the keys home with me. Normally, at the end of the day, one of the ladies will come and take the money we´ve collected and take it home to deposit the next day. We had over $6,000 that day, but nobody came to collect it. We put the money in a box in the bank and when I got home, I gave the keys to my neighbor in case anything happened (I didn´t want to get the blame).

The next day at 6:30 AM one of the ladies from the bank started tapping on my window. She asked me to come out and talk. I went outside and she asked me for the keys to the bank. I explained that my neighbor had them and went back to bed. About 10 minutes later, she was back knocking on my window. Again I went outside, and she asked me where the money was because she had to make the deposit. I told her where we put the money and was starting to go back inside. She then asked me to come with her. I asked her why and she told me that she didn´t know where the money was. I explained again (I know I said it right because it wasn´t hard to say in Spanish), but she kept whining that she needed me to get it. I was starting to get pissed at this point, but I told her, "Let´s go!". She said that she had to go to her house first and would be back at 7:00. I changed clothes and was ready to go at 7:00, but she didn´t show up till 7:40. Now I was steaming. I started walking to the bank at my normal pace (about 3 times faster than Ecuadorians walk) and she asked me if I was mad and I said yes. She couldn´t understand why I was pissed even after I opened the bank and got the money from where I said it was. She got me up at 6:30 AM for five seconds of work at 8:00, so I think I had the right to be pissed.

I was talking to a PC friend later that day and told her the story. She said that she has heard similar stories recently from other PCVs in our group. I think we are all getting to the point where we are comfortable enough with our Spanish, our sites, and we have seen enough ignorance that we now are getting mad and telling people about it. I don´t know if that is the right thing to do, but such is life in the Third World

Red Country - Dead Meat

The new Government of Ecuador has been making a lot of changes lately. (Note: The Constitutional Assembly that is writing the new Constitution is still hard at work. You can tell that it is hard at work because that´s what the commercials say. Yeah, they have to have advertise! The country overwhelmingly voted for the new Constitution, but after the Assembly dissolved the Congress, took it´s power for themselves, and several members have been involved in scandals, I guess they feel that they need a little good publicity.) From tougher rules for the mining industry to possibly kicking out one of the country´s biggest cell phone companies (my cell phone company) the new guys are turning everything upside down. They even declared a new National Holiday on May 1st. May Day is now the “Day of the Worker” in Ecuador…Communism City here we come.

Another smaller change that they have made deals with the customs department. They have made it a lot harder and much more expensive to get something out of customs. Therefore I want to repeat the rules for sending packages down here. DO NOT SEND ANYTHING OVER 2 KILOGRAMS (4.4 POUNDS) OR DECLARE A VALUE ON ANY PACKAGE. Please don´t take this as a plea for gifts. I don´t need anything and since I´ll be in the Status in July, I´ll be able to get everything I need for the rest of my time down here then. I just don´t want anyone to send a $10 gift that would cost me $50 to get out of hock (I probably would just leave it there).

If you will remember from my post a couple of weeks ago, we had to say good-bye to one of my good friends. She had been traveling too much and the PC bosses kicked her out. The day before she left we had a going away party in Quito for her. One of my other good friends came up from down South to see her off. Unfortunately he didn´t have permission. He traveled a lot too and when he called his boss to tell him that he was coming, his boss said that he couldn´t. He came anyway, and sure enough, the PC found out and he got the boot as well. That takes my original training group of five down to two and the whole Omnibus from 46 to 28.

Speaking of my Omnibus, we had our Mid-Service meetings last week in Quito. It was nice to see everyone and share stories/experiences, but from a “work” standpoint, it was a waste of time. At this point everyone´s situation is unique and what everyone is trying to do is so different that it is better just to call someone up on the phone if you have questions about a project that may be applicable in your site. Also, there are a couple people in my group that love to hear themselves talk. Any session that should have taken one hour inevitable took two or more. By the end of the second day everyone was exhausted and a lot of people were getting frustrated.

Thankfully, yours truly suggested an post-meeting activity for everyone, and it turned out well. We all met up at a bar after dinner and had a Pub Quiz. If you don´t know what that is, it is basically a trivia contest with some beer thrown in. All but two of the PCVs in our group came, and even though my group came in third, I had a good time.

The interesting culinary store of the last two weeks happened the other day when I walked in to my neighbor´s house and she was frying up some meat. She asked me to eat a bowl of rice and meat. It was surprisingly good and I asked what it was and where she got it. She said that it was sheep and our neighbor gave it to her. I was surprised that someone gave away that much meat, so I asked why the neighbor did that. Rosa then explained that a dog got into the neighbor´s flock and killed a bunch of sheep. There was too much meat for her to eat, and you can´t sell dead animals in the market, so she gave it all away. I´m not 100% sure, but I think that was the first time I´ve ever eaten and animal killed by another animal.

The Great Gringo Goalkeeper experiment may be over. I got benched last week. I probably shouldn´t be upset seeing that the other guy has been playing all his life and I have a grand total of ten games at goal under my belt, but I don´t like being told that I´m no good at anything (especially since I´ve given up less goals so far than he has). Anyway, I probably will just play when the other guy can´t make it.

Invoking God´s Wrath...One Trash Fire at a Time

We have trash pick-up here every Wednesday. A truck come through the center of town and will pick up any bags of trash by the road. I usually take my glass and metal trash to be picked up while I compost my organic trash and burn the rest. I was starting a fire last week with old newspapers to burn my trash (Thanks Steph and Matt for the gift that keeps on giving!). My old and half-senile neighbor came by and tried to take the newspapers I was balling up out of my hand. He kept saying, "Give me your Comercios" (El Comercio is the Quito paper). I tried to tell him that the papers were in English and he couldn´t read them, but he was insistent that I give them to him. Now, this isn´t the first time that he has asked me to give him stuff, so I kept telling him that I needed the papers and the were no good for him. I eventually used all the papers to start the fire and then moved away from the smoke. Don Alfredo walked over to me, looked me hard in the eyes, and told me a story. He said that before he got married, he worked for a Frenchman who owned all the land around the town. He said the one day the Gringo brought out a huge bag of money and asked Don Alfredo to separate it into piles of old and new bills. The man then put the new bills in his safe and took the old bills outside. He then lit the pile of old money on fire while Alfredo watched. Don Alfredo said the he asked the man to give him the money, but the man said that the money was old and useless. Don Alfredo said he still couldn´t understand why the man would rather burn his money that give it away. Then Don Alfredo pointed to a small hill by my house and said, "A week later, the Gringo was driving his tractor on a hill like that. The tractor fell over on the Gringo and he was crushed to death." Don Alfredo then patted me on the shoulder, nodded knowingly, and then asked again for some newspapers. Like I said, he is only half-senile. The story worked, and he got some of the papers I had in my house.

I went back to Tilipulo to transplant the plants that we planted in February. They were doing well and we ended up making 7 more beds. This time we worked with the parents of the kids in the school because they said that the kids hadn´t showed them how to make the beds. It went well and the parents said that they learned a lot. As you can see from the pictures, we made a big difference. The plan is to come back in September after Summer Vacation to plant twice the area. Also, some of the parents said that they were going to make gardens by their houses. This is my real goal for working there. Hopefully with their own gardens, they can improve the diets of the families (especially the children) of that town.

I was in the High School this week, and some of the girls of the third year (15-16 years old)were making maps on big pieces of paper. One of the maps was of all the mountain ranges of North and South America. They were copying it out of their Goegraphy book, and it looked nice. I complemented them on it and asked where Ecuador was on the map. One of the girls said, "Jay, this is a map of mountains!". I said I knew that, but where was Ecuador on the map. She didn´t understand what I ment until I pointed it out and said, "Here!". Then I asked if she knew where the US was. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "Jay...this isn´t a map of Europe!". My Fault.

It isn´t hard to figure out why a 16 year old would think that the United States of AMERICA is in Europe when you consider their teachers. I next went into the office and the teachers were huddled around a sheet of paper saying, "Victoria is taller than José, but shorter than Maria. Pablo is taller...". I listened for a minute as they argued over who was the tallest. Finally, I told them the answer and explained it. They were amazed and asked another question. Apparently the teachers have to take an IQ test next week and wer working on practice tests with some difficulty. Since I could get the questions, I am now teaching logic classes to the teachers every day until the test. They dodn´t have experience with these types of tests, and since their raises depend on the results, they are excited to learn.

I actually like the problems. Here are a few examples that they couldn´t get. Fill in the blanks with the numbers that continue the sequence. The answers are on the following post. Good luck.

1) 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27, 16, __, __, __

2) 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, __, __, __

3) 2, 3, 4, 9, 16, 29, 54, __, __, __

4) 0, 1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 13, 24, __, __, __

Answers to the Questions

I hope you got them all...

1) 81, 32, 243

2) 4, 12, 13

3) 99, 182, 335

4) 44, 81, 149

The 1 Year Countdown

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that only from the mountain top can you see the valley, and only from the valley can you see the mountain top. As I try to sum up my experiences from the first year in La Libertad (April 20th 2008 - 2009), I keep thinking of this line. It may be a cop-out, but I don’t know if I can fully grasp the significance of being here for myself or the people I know. Although I live at over 11,000 feet, often I feel like I’m right at the bottom of the valley. Either way, I don’t think I’ll "see" what I’ve been doing here until I’m out of it. I’ve heard that most PCVs quit right away or at the 1-year mark. I think that there are a lot of people who want to quit earlier, but want to stick it out at least a year. We have already lost two this last week, and I’ve heard a couple of other friends say that they may leave.

I’ve also heard that a lot of people don’t get going on their projects until the second year. I hope I’m on this side. I’ve had work the last 12 months, but nothing too spectacular. The chicken project, the gardens in Latacunga, and possibly with the Government hopefully will make my last 12 months memorable.

I would like to take this milestone to thank everyone who sent packages, cards, texts, phone calls, and well wishes down here. Without the support of friends and family, I don’t know where I’d be. (That goes for a lot more than just Peace Corps service!) I hope this message finds you all well up North and enjoying the first tastes of summer.

I miss you all and can’t wait to visit in July, but first I have to get to work.

Right now, it arrives...summer !

¡Ya llega verano! I heard this, which translates into the title of this post, a couple of times this week. This is good news because that means hopefully that it will stop raining. Winter here means clouds, rain, and mud, while summer means clouds, wind, and dust. neither is ideal, but at least I'll be able to dry my laundry.

I went into Quito on tuesday for my friend Maria's going away party. We had a good time, but it was tough to say good-bye at the end of the night. I then went on wednesday morning to Mindo, a town 2 hours west of Quito. There is another PCV from my Omnibus there who is working on a chicken project. I wanted to get some ideas and any excuse fro going to the tourist haven of Mindo wasn't going to slip through my fingers. I've heard that Mindo is beautiful and I wasn't disappointed by the scenery or the project. The weather was great and other than all the bug bites I got, everything went great. The project is a lot bigger than what we will start with, but I picked up some hints and more importantly some contacts in Quito.

Both schools in La Libertad were on vacation this week, so it was a good time to visit Mindo. The lack of school and the drier weather also meant that it was a good time to play baseball. My buddy John wanted to come up to visit the kids he works with in Latacunga on the radio, so he came up too. It was fun to play, and luckily it didn't rain until after we finished.

I think old age is catching up with me! Two weeks ago I jumped for a ball while playing soccer and was undercut by the other team's Forward. He banged my Quad pretty hard and the next day I could hardly walk. It is still hard to squat, but doesn't hurt too bad. Last week the only goal I gave up in a 3-2 Reina de la Paz victory went in off my middle finger and jammed it. It hurt after the game, but nothing too serious. I was visiting my neighbors when one of the ladies saw me looking at my finger. I told them what happened and she took my hand, asked for some cooking oil, and then started very roughly rubbing the oil in the joint. The pain was intense, so I pulled my hand away. The ladies were all disappointed that I couldn't "take it", and said that it would help. I couldn't look like a whimp, so I gave her my hand back and sheprocedded to manhandle it for 10 minutes. Needles to say, when I woke up in the morning, it looked like I had a giant purple sausage growing out of the end of my palm. Ecuadorian home remidies to the rescue again.

I don't think I'll let them work on the sprained ankle I got this week.

Chiquito Postito - Small Post

Things have been busy here (I can tell by the lack of progress on the collection of short stories that I´m currently reading), but slow (I can tell by the lack of stories to write about) this week. I was able to go top Latacunga las Saturday to watch the UNC game. Unfortunately, Carolina lost, and even more depressing was that that was the first full live college basketball game I saw all year.

We are getting started on the chicken project finally. I had a short meeting after we finished working all day in the community bank this week. We now have a rough idea of the next few steps that we have to take. Everyone is excited to get started (including myself). I´m trying to keep their expectations low because we may not get funded. I talked to my boss about the project and she said it was a good idea and suggested that everyone work individually instead of in a big group. She thinks that this will cause less problems amongst the group and even though we will lose some of the "team building" benefits, it will work out better. The ladies were all very excited to learn that they could work by themselves which shows how little they trust each other (even Sisters were happy they didn´t have to work together).

Also, my boss and I talked about trying some value-added projects with the onions we grow. She said that she had just talked to a guy who works for a large food processing company in Ecuador that is always on the look out for more product to buy. She said that his company sells onions packaged in vinegar and can´t get enough raw material. She thought it´d be a good match, so she started to write down his information for me. I said that I´d never seen the long white onions that we grow packaged that way. She stopped writing, looked at me, and then throw away the guys info. "I forgot that you only grow those types of onions. You can´t do anything with those." she said.

Got some bad news this week. One of my friends decided to quit. His work wasn´t going well and his Grandmother recently got very sick. He thought he´d be of more use at home, so he left. Another very good friend got kicked out of PC. She had been traveling a lot without telling anyone. She wasn´t happy in her ste and had an Ecuadorian boyfriend in the city near her, so she spent a lot of time there. It sucks that she is leaving because she was one of the few people I talked to regularly, but I think she´ll be happier in the US.

Bush League Bullfighting

How do Bullfighters get started? Is there a Minor League of Bullfighting? I'm sure questions such as these have kept you up as many nights pondering as they have me. Fortunately, I can now answer both of these questions. Last week I went into Machachi on Saturday morning to see "7 Brave Examples of Local Bullfighters". I had seen the signs proclaiming this in La Libertad and decided that I had to go. A friend and I got there at 12:00 (That's when the sign said that it was going to start, but this being Ecuador, the festivities didn't start until around 1:00). When we got there, we were the only ones there except guys setting up the DJ equipment. We were able to get the best seats in the house. I say seats, but the "stadium" was really just a ring with grassy knolls around it that were formed into stands. The day was nice, and sitting there by this small bull ring shaded by trees and the mountains looming in the distance was pretty cool.

Finally the fights started and I realized that the "7 Brave Examples" were a little better at being brave than being examples. It was just like minor league baseball. A lot of young guys working on their game, with a couple of over-the-hill guys trying to hang on, and one stud prospect. They all had the Matador gear on and tried to do all the moves, but ended up getting pretty beaten up by the bulls. Luckily nobody got hurt. It was funny to see one of the kids get flipped and then run to the side of the ring. While the helpers kept the bull occupied, he was talking to his coach in the stands. I couldn't hear the conversation, but I imagine that it went a little like this...

Bullfighter - Coach, I'm getting killed out there. What should I do?

Coach - Well, do you see those horns on the end of the bulls head?

Bullfighter - Yeah.

Coach - I'd try to avoid those.

Bullfighter - Thanks.

Before the fights, I was hoping that they would kill one of the bulls. Once I got there, I changed my mind. I didn't think that these guys were good enough to cleanly kill the bull, so instead they rushed the bull and tapped it on the back in the same spot that they would have stabbed it. That was a lot safer, and the bulls didn't have to suffer. They have bigger fights in Quito and Riobamba that I now want to attend to see the real deal.

Happy April Fool's Day! I hope you all had a good day because I know I had fun. I got three of my friends good, and one rumor that I started is still making the rounds. What can I say, I got to have something to keep me busy.

Work has been OK lately. I finally got the High School to let me teach some nutrition classes. My plan is to get them to use the vegetables that they grow for lunches for the kids instead of just rice, potatoes, and candy like they serve now. Also, I want to do a health fair with the kids making food for the teachers and parents to taste test. We'll see how it goes. I think I may finally start assisting with Chemistry and Physics too.

My buddy John went the other day to see the garden that we had planted in Tilipulo. He said that it is doing great. I'll be back there in a week or so to transplant the new plants. Hopefully this will be the start of more outside work.

I was walking through town the other day and a truck pulled up next to me. It was a government truck and a guy from the Ecuadoran Agricultural Ministry was driving. He said that he was visiting my town and heard from some people that I was doing some experiments in crop diversification. I showed him what I was doing with alternative crops (to little success). He was interested and asked me to come by his office in Machachi to see how we could work together. I think he wants me to organize Ag classes in La Libertad. Nothing really exciting, but any work is good work.

Finally, To add on to the pile of bad/odd things that have happened to Ecuador since I got here, the main traffic hub in the south of Quito was heavily damaged this week when a water tunnel running under it broke and then created a huge hole in the middle of the Trebol or Clover. You can see pictures at http://www.interactive.net.ec/noticias/crater_en_el_trebol_en_quito_incomunica_a_la_capital.html

and

http://www.ciudadaniainformada.com/ciudadania/ciudadania-despliegue-noticias/ir_a/ciudadania/article//quito-en-emergencia-por-colapso-de-colector-del-trebol.html

It is going to take a while to get this fixed and will make my travel to and from Quito a little harder.

P.S. - We tied last week's soccer game 1-1, but I didn't give up a goal in my half

Holy Water, Holy Week, Holy Cow!

First off, sorry that it has been a while since I updated the blog. It has been a hectic couple of weeks, but since time flies when you are having fun, that is a good thing. To start off, thanks to Ellen Christ for a great week. She (My good friend Jeff´s Sister) was in Quito working for a medical mission and stayed a week longer to travel. It was great to have another friend visit.

Ellen came at a perfect time, and everything worked out well. The first reason it was a good time to visit was that my neighbors baptized their two youngest daughters on Ellen´s first day here. They had originally asked me to be the Padrino or Godfather. This is a very big deal in Latin America, and I was honored that they asked me. We talked about it a little more and they decided that it may not be the best idea. Usually the Godparents will be involved with Confirmations, 15th Birthday´s and Weddings. I told them that I wasn´t going to come back for these parties to participate, so they decided to have a couple from Quito that they know be the Godparents. The problem was that the couple doesn´t know the girls at all, so they had me be the "Semi-Godfather" and help out at the Baptism. Also, for the next 13 months I will see the girls everyday, while there official Godfather probably won´t see them till they turn 15.

The day before the party I was sleeping and awoke to my neighbor beating on my door and yelling, "Jay, wake up! We´re going to peel the pigs!". Now, how can you not get up for that? That was around 7:30, and commenced 17 hours of killing animals and cooking food for the next day. I personally killed 2 pigs (what they called "Peeling", was gutting and burning off the hair with a blow torch), 25 chickens, and a couple Guinea Pigs.

The next day I got up and went with the family for the Baptism. At the Church I met Ellen and I let her describe the rest of the week in her own words. (Note: Ellen´s account is in red, and my comments are in white...

First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAY!

Jay asked me to write a post for his blog to tell you about my Ecuadorian experience... I first spent a week in the poor villages of Southern Quito on a medical mission while staying in Quito for the week and seeing a few sights around the city. It was an amazing experience, especially seeing the drastic economic change from the modernized city of Quito to the poverty stricken areas of Southern Quito.

I then headed to meet Jay for yet another look at the Ecuadorian culture....I met Jay in Machachi for the baptism of two little girls that are his neighbors, went back to Jays house (that he is too tall for!) and got ready for a "real Ecuadorian party". (By "real Ecuadorian party", Ellen means a real sierran party. On the coast and in the jungle they do things a lot different) Jay´s neighbors threw a HUGE baptism party, there had to have been 150-200 people there. To give you a few highlights to the party: a massive 3 story cake with a fountain underneath, a live band, watching people eat guinea pigs, passing out to-go grocery bags at dinner to all the guest who proceeded to eat 1/3 of their food then put all the rest of the food mixed together in the bag, dancing and taking shots all night (I learned that it is rude to say no to a dance or drink so I danced and drank all night...even double teamed by Ecuadorian men...thanks Jay!), then going to bed at 4am only to be out lasted by the 80 year old grandma who was still taking shots and dancing!

Day 2 we headed out to the town of El Chaco in the national forest. The bus ride out there was beautiful, there were many waterfalls in the lush forest. That night we went to Palm Sunday mass up on the hill of the town and then had pizza and beer with Jays Peace Corp friend and his Ecuadorian friends.

The next day (St. Patricks Day!) we woke up and went rafting on the Quijos River in the cloud forest. Apparently the rivers in El Chaco are known for world class rafting. (The 2005 Rafting World Championship was held on the same stretch of river that we rafted on) The rafting was amazing and the scenery was breathtaking, through the forest and canyons. During our trip down the river we hopped off the raft at a distillery literally in the middle of the jungle. The locals were making a sugar juice and a strong liquor called puro. They were very friendly and we help crush sugar cane, take shots of puro, and see the distilling process (quite barbaric compared to the AB brewery!) Then after starting St. Pattys day with a few shots of puro we headed back down to the rafts and finished the river. That evening we headed to the town of Tena to meet a big group of Jays Peace Corps friends for again pizza, beer, and some of Tena's famous cocktails.

Tuesday we headed out to the Amazon Rainforest to a town called Compana Coche. It was a trek to get there, a bus, a canoe, then smashed in a truck bed full of Ecuadorians and animals. Another one of Jays friends lives out there and we stayed at her house. In her hut she has living with her bats and rats however I am sure she keeps herself safe with one of her many machetes she has. We then walked around town and drank Chicha with the locals. This is probably where I most likely will get some worm or parasite, but like I said before it is rude to refuse a drink. This drink this community drinks is basically a plant called Yuca (Cassava in the US) that the women chew up in their mouths, spit out, ferment in there Amazon river water and drink as an alcoholic beverage out of a shared bucket! The girl that lives at this site drinks this all day, I am surprised she isn't dead. I should have opted for a guinea pig, that would have been a wiser choice. We then ate dinner, drank beers, then Sadie and I slept under the mosquito net while Jay slept in the hammock with the rats and bats all night.

The next morning we woke up only to find Jay on the hammock under a plastic sheet for protection from the rodents, pretty funny. (Not really!) We then walked more that morning to an amazing view point of the Amazon (Actually the Rio Napo, a tributary of the Amazon, but pretty much the same thing) before we left Campana Coche in the pouring rain. My bag got soaked in river water and I literally thought our canoe was going to tip because we took it across river with 20 school kids rocking the boat. But we made it across and it was well worth the experience. We then took a bus to Baños and had another beautiful bus ride from Puyo to Baños in the forest with tons of waterfalls. That night in Baños we walked around, saw the volcanic ash from Tungurahua, ate dinner and went out for drinks.

Thursday morning we woke up and Jay took me for a real Ecuadorian breakfast, llapingachos (cheesy fried potato pancakes, fried eggs, and rice). We then hiked up around Baños and caught some really great views of the city. In the afternoon we caught a bus back to La Libertad and then Quito for the evening. In the huge city of Quito we had a night outside of the Ecuadorian culture in what Jay calls 'gringolandia', La Mariscal: dinner at an Indian restaurant, watching NCAA at a sports bar, then drinks at an Irish Pub.

My last day in Ecuador we woke up and had another real Ecuadorian breakfast, Bólon de verde (fried cheese and plantains). We then headed out to Mitad del Mundo, middle of the world, to see the equator actually at 12:00 on the Equinox. Couldn't have planned it better! After walking around the equator we went back into Quito to see some of the holy week festivities Quito had, the city was packed. The afternoon ended with watching some of the procession through the city (basically miles of Ecuadorians dressed in what looked like a purple Ku Klux Klan outfits carrying the crucifix these guys are called Cucuruchos), eating Fanesca (a traditional soup during holy week made with 12 types of grain to represent the 12 apostles), then going to Holy Friday mass at Iglesia de la Compania (a beautiful church in historical Quito). It was really interesting to seeing the traditions of Ecuador during a holiday week.

Long story short, you need to come visit Jay! I had a great time and Ecuador is a beautiful country. It was amazing to see the many cultural differences with in the different regions of the country and I only skimmed the surface. Thanks Jay for a great second week of my trip!

Ellen

Thanks again to Ellen for bringing down a couple bottles of Sierra Nevada. And not getting too grossed out by seeing fried rodent and drinking previously chewed food.

After Ellen left, things calmed down for a day or two. Easter was pretty much a bust. I woke up early and told my neighbors "Happy Easter". They looked confused for a second, and then said, "Oh yeah, today IS Easter". Apparently not that big a deal. I did make some hard boiled eggs, but didn´t bother decorating them. Then I played soccer (We lost and I gave up two goals. I must have some bad Karma from telling all my soccer friends how east their game is) and then went to work at the bank. Easter dinner was a delicious plate of cuy...what more can you ask for on a holiday.

As Ellen said, this Monday was my 30th Birthday. I´m not really big on Birthdays, but I figured that 30 was a little different. I didn´t want to spend it in La Libertad, so I took a bus to Cuenca and met up with a bunch of friends. We spent Monday night hanging out and Tuesday we walked around Cuenca and then went to my late birthday dinner at a new sushi place (My first sushi in 13 months, so it was a treat). After dinner, we hopped on night buses back to our sites. Thanks to everyone who sent Birthday wishes, but let´s never mention that my 20´s are in the past.

Note: I finally got my flight back to the US. I´m landing in Chicago on July 1st and heading back here on the 22nd of July. My plan is to spend 1 week in Central Missouri, 1 week in St. Louis, and 1 week in Chicago. Save the date, and I´ll see y´all in three months!

Projects

The last week and a half have been interesting because it seems that everyone now wants to start a project with me. As I mentioned before, the bank group wanted to do something with me. We had another meeting (this time with only 12 people) and it went better. We settled on doing a chicken project. A lot of people already have chickens here, but they are mixed or creole breeds that don´t produce much. The creole breeds are very hearty though and are able to live outside people´s houses off bugs, worms, and a little grain given them by their owners. Our project idea is to build a large

building with space for the chickens, coops, and storage for the feed that we will need to give the ore delicate "Pure-Breed" chickens. Our next step is to find a location that works for everyone and then begin writing the proposal in Spanish.

Also, at the High School, two teachers asked me last week why I wasn´t working with them on their project. They made it sound like I was being lazy. This pissed me off, so I told them that they had all the paperwork that we need to complete on the school´s computer for months, but they hadn´t even read it. They claimed that they didn´t know that the files were there, but I explained that two other teachers were with me when I downloaded it. I also, told them that another teacher had told me that they didn´t want to start the project, because they didn´t know what was going to happen to the school after the new constitution was finished (apparently there is some talk of school closing and combination). The teachers acted surprised about this and said that they´d talk to the teacher who told me that. Then, another teacher came in and said that I spent more time at the grade school and that I liked them better. I then told the , sarcastically, "When you spend three weeks practicing for programs, what am I supposed to do?". They then dropped the subject and haven´t asked again about the project. I´ve pretty much given up on working with them.

Finally, one of the police officers who started working in La Libertad about three months ago asked me if I could help him and the Grower´s Association he is a part of with a project. I asked, what is the project? He said that they didn´t know, but they wanted to do a project with me. I knew what they really wanted...free money. I told him I´d see what I could do. Since he lives about an hour away from me, I told him later that my boss said I couldn´t help. (I never actually talked to my boss, but I imagine that´s what he would say, and it is always better to put the blame on someone in Quito. Especially when your dealing with your town´s cop.) Instead, I´m going to get them and help them complete the paperwork to request and PCV to live and work there. I actually think that it would me a good site because it is a bigger and warmer town with an existing agricultural organization.

Last week, one of my friend stayed in La Libertad for a night. He had a friend flying into Quito and didn´t want to pay for a hotel. I was glad for the company, and the weather was clear, so I got to show him around town for a look at the mountains. I don´t know why, but every time somebody comes to visit, the weather gets better.

This week I was also able to get some work done on my garden (I´m growing Brocolli now) and do some more computer work. Next week, my neighbors are Baptizing their two youngest daughters. I helped Carlos print out the invitations on his computer. He wanted to put a picture of his middel daughter on the invitation, but in the background of the picture there were other kids. He didn´t like that, so I spent an hour or so "PhotoShopping" out the offending kids. It turned out nice, and Carlos and Sara were impressed. Unfortunately, when we printed out the invitations, after two or three, the print cartridge ran out of yellow ink. The invitations looked crappy, but they needed to go out the next day. So much for my work.

I hear that Ecuador has been getting some press over the Ecuador/Columbia border situation. If you don´t know, basically Columbian forces probbed 1 mile into Ecuadorian teritory last weekend to kill some members of FARC (Columbian Armed Revolutionary Forces - A marxist guerrilla group) who were hiding in Ecuador. Columbia almost immediately apoligized and said that the forces didn´t know that they were in Ecuador (yeah, right). Ecuador and Venezuela then started to mobolize their forces to the Columbian border to defend against Columbian agression. Some people were saying that it could lead to war, but I didn´t think that it would amount to much. Peace Corps HQ didn´t even issue a warning, and they warn us about everything. Last Friday, at a big meeting of Latin American Presidents, everything got worked out and the "crisis" is over. In the end, all that happened is that a handfull of drug-running communist terrorists were killed by Columbia while somehow living safely in Ecuador.

Soccer update: We´ve played two more games since my last post and we are 1-0-1. I played both second halves and gave up one more goal (a high arcing shot of my defenseman´s head that I didn´t even see because of the sun...excuses, excuses)

Disorganized Nazis and Apathetic Royalty

As I mentioned in my last post, I was getting extremely low on clean clothes. It has continued to rain here every day, so I did go to Quito to drop my clothes off at a laundry mat ($10.90 for 24 Lbs.). It was nice not to have to beat them on my neighbor´s concrete slab, but they ruined my brand new Ecuador soccer shirt that was yellow and blue, and now is purple and gold (Go Cougars!).

My goal-less streak in South American soccer ended 33 minutes into my second game. It was a good shot and I didn´t have a chance, so I´m not too upset. We were tied 1-1 after the first half, but lost 3-2 with the other goalie playing the second half. We played the game at the field by my house, and this week there were actually a lot of fans watching. As we started, I got "heckled" by some of the fans about my height and pasty white skin. My first opportunity was a crossing pass that I grabbed out of the air (about 3-4 feet above everyone else) at the top of the box. A lot of the ladies behind the goal started yelling "Bravo!!". I was laughing as I went to kick the ball down the field and I shanked it...right into the back of one of my defender´s heads. They did not "Bravo" me again after that.

We had a meeting at the community bank this week to discuss bank matters and also an ides I have to start a "Producers Association" in La Libertad. Since pretty much everyone grows onions here, I thought it would be a good idea to group together to get a better price for supplies and instead of having 20 people selling onions next to each other every day in Machachi, we could have a few people sell everyone´s onions. My whole presentation boiled down to, "We are stronger together as a team". As I was talking, everyone nodded in agreement, but when I opened the floor for comments, a couple of people said that they didn´t want to work in a group because the lazy people wouldn´t do their share. As we went around, everyone said the same thing and that they just wanted money from Peace Corps to buy a cow, pig, or goat. This was the exact opposite of what I had in mind and I had already said that the funds would be only for "projects" and not for buying feed, seeds, etc. We are hopefully going to have another meeting next week, so I need to think of some new ideas, or this will be another work opportunity lost.

Another thing I had to keep me busy this week was helping my neighbor Carlos with some homework he had from an Excel course that he is taking through the Army. He had a spreadsheet with several problems (finding averages, tabulating ages, and creating a sample grade book). The last problem was actually difficult and involved Macros and complex functions. Carlos let me do all this on my own (I was happy for a mental challenge). The problem is that Carlos´computer runs a pirated version on Windows XP that I´m not familiar with (Instead of the Flying Windows on the screen as you boot-up, his computer has a scull and crossbones). It took a while just to find where all the functions wereand how to use them in Spanish (For example, "If" statements are called "Si" statements). I got it all done though, so score another one for my Spanish.

I´m glad to have other work to do because I haven´t done anything at the high school for two weeks and at the grade school for one week. They have been practicing for the ceremonies on February 27th commemorating the Battle of Tarqui (February 27th 1829 fought against Peru while Ecuador was still part of Gran Columbia). During the ceremony, the kids take an oath and the oldest kids kneel before the flag, kiss it, and say either "I swear" or "I promise". They practiced marching sequences all week and the day of, had the flags flying, the patriotic music playing and everyone in uniform marching in step ready to subvert themselves to the flag of the nation.

Right now, I´m reading a book on the roots of fascism. It goes into detail about how pageantry and conformity were big parts of fascist doctrine. Since I had that on my mind, the ceremony was a little erie, but I have to think the National Socialist wouldn´t have been pleased when the programs started 1 1/2 hours late and there were stray dogs walking through the formations.

The week before, the High School had spent

everyday practicing for their Beauty Pageant where they would elect the Queen of the High School. I was invited to be a judge and with

that came the honor of buying the Queen´s sash ($12). The pageant was typical for Ecuador and had traditional dancing, an evening gown portion, Q&A, and choreographed dance routines. The odd thing was that for all the preparation, the girls participating didn´t seem that thrilled. When they announced the winner, the Queen didn´t even smile. She definitely wasn´t going to get 15 yards for excessive celebration, but that´s taking "Act like you´ve been there before" to extremes.

NOTES:
- I did my taxes this week. It took all of 45 seconds to look at my Peace Corps W-2 and verify that I made WELL below the minimum required to file. In your face, gainfully employed!

- My buddy Jeff had a date with an Ecuadorian girl that he just met. They had lunch, played Volleyball with her family, and just hung-out. Ha called her later to say that he had a good time and wanted to do it again. She agreed and said that she had been, "Praying to God everyday to send her a husband". And they wonder why I´m single.

Jay Verhoff: Maker of gardens, Keeper of goals.

It has been a fun, satisfying, and depressing week in La Libertad. Last friday I went back to the small town outside of Latacunga called Tilipulo with my buddy John. This is the same town that we went to a couple of weeks ago (See Post- You Dirty Rat). I had asked the teacher there to have the kids gather some manure to act as a fertilizer for the poor soil there. When we got there, they showed us 7 huge bags of cow shit that they had collected. I was happy because this showed that they actually listened and were willing to put in some effort on their end. We hit the ground running and started digging and mixing in manure in a small area by the school to make some seed beds. I dodn´t know how well things are going to grow there, so we are going to start off small (as you can see by the pictures). The kids and teachers were great and as they say down here Super Pilas or energetic. We planted lettuce, carrots, beans, radishes, beets, and cucumber seeds that John and I had bought in Latacunga ($3) and then I went over some basics of gardening because none of the teachers or kids had ever made a raised seed bed. I´m planning on heading back after Easter to hopefully transplant the baby plants into some new beds that we will make. I also have a feeling that I´ll be doing more of this around the Latacunga area, which would be a good thing.

It was cool too that while I was in Latacunga before and after working, I ran into 10 people that I knew. I kind of feel "local" now because I will usually get a couple, "Hola Jay"s just walking around Machachi or Latacunga.

One of the 10 people I ran into was a former PCV who is in Ecuador teaching a mountaineering course. We had met while climbing up Illiniza Norte and now he is done with the class and traveling around for a couple weeks. He had spent the previous night in Latacunga and told me that he was spending another night because he met an Ecuadorian girl who wanted to take him out dancing. He asked me and John to come out too, so we met up later that night. Now, the guy was a PCV in New Guinea, so he spoke very little Spanish (I had to translate for his temporary "Girlfriend") and he´d only been on his own here for a day, but already he had met a girl. This reinforced the depressing part of the week.

I had three conversations recently with teachers at the grade and high school (which makes me think that they are talking about me). Twice seperate teachers asked me if I was gay. I asked why they would think that, and they said that I´ve been here for a year and I didn´t have a girlfriend. They also compared me to the previous La Libertad PCV, Mike, and his many girlfriends (I asked Mike about this, and he said that wasn´t true). I didn´t know what to say because I couldn´t tell them that unfortunately I don´t find 29 year old overweight women who are 4 1/2 feet tall with missing teeth and no education and look like they are 50 to be my "type". I just explained that I was unlucky and left it at that.

The third conversation was worse. The Director of the grade school talked to me 1 on 1 for about 30 minutes about how I was wasting my life. He started with my lack of a girlfriend (the conversation was instigated by me mentioning that I needed to do laundry and him telling me that I needed a woman to do that for me), but then moved on to the fact that I rarely leave La Libertad. He pulled out a map of Ecuador and pointed out all the places I´ve never been to and implored me to, "Live! Enjoy Life!". He actually made some good points and got me thinking that I need to get out more. He then told me that money wasn´t everything and that I wasn´t in Ecuador to save a pile of cash. I had to disagree with this part of his argument because even if I saved up all of my $230 a month for 2 years, I don´t think I´d be able to swim in my money bin Scrooge McDuck style.

Also depressing is the weather. It has rained here literally every day for almost 5 weeks. The President just declared a State of Emergency on the coast because of flooding and there are massive land slides in the mountains in the south. Fortunately it is just a muddy inconvienience for me, but I think I´m starting to get Seasonal Affective Disorder. Every day we usually will get 5-10 minutes of sun. When I see the sun come out, I run outside a try to soak as much in a possible.

Like I said, it´s muddy here. There is a stretch of road on the way to town that is especially bad because they cut down the trees that lined the road and blocked the ditched with leaves and branches. I´ve been meaning to clear the blockage and hopefully get rid of some of the mud, but I know what people in town would say if they saw me do this. There is a very mentally challenged man in town who cleans the main road from the Pan American and may be the hardest working guy around, but he can´t talk and is kind of a joke. Anyway, as I was working, a couple of ladies from the bank came by and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was cleaning the road and they started laughing and saying, "You´re just like Sam!". Sam of course being the other guy, and them referring to him was not a compliment in their eyes. I helped the mud situation, but I´m not too happy to now have people referring to me as the gay, retarded gringo.

Because it has been raining so much, I haven´t been able to do laundry for a while. My neighbors actually built 3 new clothes lines because all their clothes have been hanging out to dry for weeks. I´m getting close to "Commando" time, so I´ll probably be heading to a laundry mat soon.

I went to the high school the other day for class, but as I arrived, the teahers were leaving. It was raining (of course) and one of the female teachers asked me for my umbrella. I told her no because I was using it. She got all pissed and said that it was customary in Ecuador for a gentleman to get wet before a lady. I then said that it was customary in the US for people who lived in a climate where it rained EVERY DAY to always have an umbrella. (I know that this is mean, but she´s a pushy B).

Back to the good news. I had my first soccer game last Sunday. I had expected to mainly watch the other goalie play and only get in during blow-outs, but when I got to the game, the coach told me I´d be starting! I got a little nervious seeing as I´d never played goalie before and the last time I had shin guards on was in the sixth grade (15 years ago). As we were getting ready to start, the Manager came up to me and asked if I knew the rules. I said yes, but as he was walking away I yelled, "I can use my hands, right?". He didn´t think that was funny.

I played the whole first half and didn´t give up a goal! We were up 2-0 and switched out 6 people and ended up winning 7-1 (2 of our goals were accidently kicked in by the other goalie). I was happy being the best out of the 3 goalies who played that game, but I need to work on my free kicks. I can actually throw the ball farther and more acurately than I can kick it. Also, we got our uniforms. Instead of putting the Cardinals logo on them, the Coach put the logo from an American Movers add that he found in my Cardinals GameDay magazine. Kind of funny to have "American" on the front of the jersey that I thought I´d be keeping as a memento of Ecuador.

The Poor Man´s New Orleans

Last week as I´m sure you all know was the begining of Lent. Lent here seems pretty much the same as the rest of the year (no fasting or giving up ice cream and Ding Dongs), but Carnaval, the time leading up to Ash Wednesday, is huge. It was the same last year in Cangahua, but now I´m a little more integrated and less busy, so I can appreciate it more. I didn´t write about it last year, so here is your description of Mardi Gras Ecua-Style. First, Carnaval lasts a couple of weeks before Fat Tuesday and consists solely of throwing water balloons, handfulls of flour, and eggs at each other. The stores also sell can of stuff like "Silly String" that people spray on each other. Although Ecuadorians love this, it seems to me that all we are doing is creating a lot of dirty laundry. I tried to avoid "Playing Carnival" as they call it as much as possible. This has saved me a lot of clothes washing, but it is a bit embarrasing walking in town constantly looking over my shoulder and then running away from pre-pubecents armed with the ingredients for a cake. I told my friends and neighbors that I only played on the last day of Carnival, so Fat Tuesday (School was out for Carnaval on Monday and Tuesday, so I was free) I put on some dirty clothes and proceded to get soaked and covered with flour. It was actually kind of fun chasing people around, but I was glad when it was over and I can walk the streets without fear.

Right before Carnaval, I tried to get down to Latacunga to watch the Super Bowl, but after waiting two hours on the PanAmerican for a bus (it usually takes 5 minutes), I figured that it wasn't my day, and I went back home. The big city on the other side f Latacunga, Ambato, has the biggest Carnaval in Ecuador, so all the busses were full of Quiteños heading South for the festivities. Long story short, I missed the best Super Bowl since the Rams won because half the population of Quito wanted to throw water balloons at each other in a different city.

Not only was Super Bowl Sunday and Ash Wednesday last week, but Thursday was also my one year anniversary in Ecuador. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this. This has been probably one of the least productive years in my life in terms of "work" accomplished, but I've learned so much down here that it is hard to comprehend. I remember the first day here, I tried to call home, but I didn´t know how to tell the guy at the hotel desk what I wanted to do. Now, not only can I do this, but I can also bitch out the guy when he tries to overcharge me! It doesn't seem like it's been a yearsometimes, and at other points it feels like I've been here forever. April 20th will be my one year anniversary in La Libertad, which is a bigger date because it also means I have only one year left. I'll do a little more reflecting before then and try to be more philisophical with my writing, but today there is too much stuff to write about.

Last Wednesday I went to Quito to help greet the new Omnibus. Omnibus 99 is another Sustainable Agriculture/Habitat group with about 50 volunteers. Like they did for us, a group of PCVs went to the airport to yell as they walked out of the terminal and hand them roses ($3 a dozen, so why not). My buddy Andrew and I are not big yellers, so we had a contest to see who could be the least enthusiastic. I think I won because I was depressed after I found out that the North Carolina vs. Duke game wasn't on TV in Quito (The real reason I came in town).

The next day I had my Mid-Service Medical Exam and dental cleaning. I got a clean bill of health (no internal parisites or cavities), but a lot of my friends are now on Fasigyn, a deparisiting medicine. Also, the girls had to go to the Gyno, which turned gave us some funny stories. The Dr. is an older Ecuadorian and apparently very nice, but his English isn't so great, so his phrasing comes off a bit odd. I've heard from three friends that after the exam he told them that they had, "A healthy cervix", "A perfect uterus", and "A beautiful vagina". I guess that´s better than the alternative.

Also, I asked the nurses to run a red blood cell count on me to see what living at 2 miles high was doing to me. I got the results back and have a hemoglobin count of 16.5. As far as I can tell the normal range for this is 14-18, so I'm not as high as I thought I'd be. If any of the urses out there can give me a better idea of what this means, I'd appreciate it.

After Quito, my friend Jeff came to L.L. for the night. We just hung out, made chili mac, and drank a six pack of fresh Budweiser (3 months old) that I found in Quito. The next day we went to Ambato to vist a friend that lives there. She has an awesome place in the city, and since most bars in Ambato have $7-$20 cover charges, we stayed at her place and watched pirated movies that we bought on the street for $1.25. It was fun, but I think we paid $0.30 too much for Rambo IV.

P.S. - The PC puts out a volunteer run newsletter every 3 months down here called El Clima or The Climate. There is a lot of stuff in it, and they print funny articles that PCVs write. I got two in the last issue, and the one that I think you all may understand more of is about the tendencay of Ecuadorians not only to breastfeed their children everywhere (Church, at meetings, on the bus, etc.), but also to extend the period of breastfeeding to kids that are WAY too old. The parts in red I added as translation.

GUIDE FOR NURSING MOTHERS

No matter what your opinion towards public breastfeeding is, a cause I feel we can all get behind is ending the public breastfeeding of children too mature to be partaking in this sacred activity. Therefore, in homage to the greatest American humorist of our generation, Jeff Foxworthy, I have developed a set of rules for nursing Mothers that I like to call, "Your kid may be too old to breastfeed if...". Enjoy!

If while sitting down, your child can stand next to you and eat lunch without problems...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If you are continually getting nipple cuts since your child got braces...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If while having a snack, your kid reads "The New Yorker"...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If your child enters a meeting you´re at and says, "Buenas tardes con todos, solo necesito un poco refregerio" "Good evening everyone, I just need a little snack"...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If your child is able to unbutton your shirt AND unhook your bra...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If your child´s lip stud keeps getting in the way...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If your child takes off it´s colegio High School uniform sweater before eating breakfast because they are afraid of getting milk on it...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If your husband is starting to get jealous...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If you have to be at your child´s soccer games to help ward off dehydration...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If you ever receive a text message that says, "Mom, I´m hungry"...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If you insist that your son shaves before dinner because his five o´clock shadow scratches...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

If feeding your son on the bus is especially difficult, because he is driving it...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

Finally,

If your child claims that breast milk cures their Chuchaqui Hangover...
...your kid may be too old to breastfeed!

Top of the World, Ma!

Last week was pretty slow and on Sunday I was supposed to have my first practice with my soccer team, so I didn´t have much to write, or time to write it. I´ll fill you in for two weeks with this post.

Starting with the soccer team, we ended up not having a practice, but I did find out what position I´ll be playing...back-up goalie! I had told the coach, my neighbor Carlos, that I´d played Defense before (I didn´t mention that that was in sixth grade), but he thought that with my height, I should play goal (It is ridiculous how many balls go over the five foot tall goalies they have here, so I understand his logic). We then talked about our new uniforms. I have a 2006 StL Cardinals World Series Banner (Thanks Sam and Linda!) hanging in my kitchen, and Carlos said that he liked the design and wanted to put it on the front of the new uniforms since our team won the Championship last year. I asked if he just wanted the "Champions" part, but he said that he wanted the whole thing "Birds on the Bat" and all. I let him barrow a copy of Cardinals GameDay that I got from my Brother-In-Law so he can show the printers a copy of the design. I´d be surprised if they are able to do it, but we´ll see. Also, he told me that I´ll be #12 (After my favorite 1980´s QB Randall Cunningham).

Last week I was at a meeting at the Community Bank. The President asked me if I could go to Quito the next day to drop off the bank´s 6 month accounting report to the PL-480 office. I said it wasn´t a problem, so the next day at 7:00AM I took off. I got to the office after three hours on three different busses, and literally spent 45 seconds there handing in the report. Then I spent three hours going home. To call that process inefficient would possibly be an understatement.

This week I played some softball with the kids at the high school for the first time. It went better and worse than I expected. The very first day, we just messed around in the center of town. After they took turns, they asked me to hit a few. I tossed the ball to myself and hit a line drive that headed straight for this little girl who I hadn´t seen running towards where we were playing. The ball mised her by a couple feet. I told the kids to take her away from where we were playing. They did, and I hit again. This time it was a pop foul that landed far to my right about 10 feet from where the girl was now standing. I decided right there that we couldn´t play in the center of town any more, so we have moved the game to the "Stadium" as they call it. Really just a flat dirt patch above town where the soccer games are at.

While practicing the next couple of days, two students got hit in the head, and one got a bloody nose. Also, after taking about 20 swings, one of the teachers came back the next day and complained that her whole body hurt and she wouldn´t play anymore.

The good news is that a lot of the kids liked playing and after a couple of days, they got a lot better. They even asked me to keep playing after school was out, so I´m hoping that this is going to work.

This Wednesday, I got a call from another PCV who I didn´t know. She told me that her and some other PCVs were planning on climbing one of the mountains by me, Illiniza Norte. She wanted directions to El Chaupi, the town you go through on your way up, and then asked if I wanted to come too. I wasn´t busy, so I said yes. We (6 other PCVs {3 of whom´I already new} and I) met in El Chaupi on Friday night. We satyed at a hostal that I´d booked the previous day, and at 5:00AM on Saturday, we jumped in the back of a truck that took us up to La Virgen or The Virgen. This is a parking area about a third of the way up the mountain. We got very luck and the weather was great. It has been raining every day for the past two weeks, so I thought that when we got the The Virgen, the conditions would be so bad that we´d just hike a little and then come back.

First we hiked 3 hours up to the refuge between Illiniza Norte and Sur. The view was beautiful because the clouds were low, so we could see Cotopaxi perfectly and a lot of the other large mountains were visible over the clouds. We could even see the ash spewing from Tungurahua. Amazing! From the refuge, it was another 3 1/2 hours to the top, but since we were all feeling well, we decide to go for it. Illiniza Norte is not a very difficult mountain to climb, and most people who are going to climb the other bigger mountain will climb Norte first to acclimatize.

We were doing good for the next two hours, but two of the girls started gettting headaches from the altitude, so the went back down. Then I started to get a bad stomache ache (from the french fries I had in my town for lunch the day before). I was almost to the top and realized that I´d have to go to the bathroom ASAP. Unfortunately, this mountain did not come equiped with a Johnny-On-The-Spot. I ended up finding a convieniently shapped rock and did my business. Also unfortunate was my failure to bring any TP with me. The only luck I had was that I brought an extra pair of socks that were not used for their original purpose. After getting that out of my system, I felt better, but had to stop every couple of minutes to rest. We got to the top and the view from 16,800 feet was amazing. I went to grab my camera to take a few pics, but it was not in my pocket. I figured I dropped it when I was on the rock, so on the way back I stopped there and found it next to my other "deposit". It only took 3 1/2 hours to get all the way back to The Virgen and from there we grabbed another truck to take us back. It was a great spur of the moment trip and everybody had a great time despite the headaches from the lack of Oxygen.

P.S. - If anyone can figure out how the titles of my last two posts are related, I bring them a fried cuy leg when I come home.

You Dirty Rat

One of the things Peace Corps stresses is that volunteers from multiple programs work together. In that spirit, the PCV from Latacunga and I decided to look into some projects around there. He is in the youth and families program, so he travels to a bunch of schools around Latacunga. A couple have asked him for help setting up small gardens near the school. He knows even less than I do about horticulture, so he asked me to help out. Our first visit was to a small town called Tilipulo. I thought that things were rough in La Libertad, but it was much worse there. John couldn´t remember the exact directions to the school, so he went to ask a family. The Mother offered her son as a guide for 20 cents. We declined the offer and walked another 50 feet to where the school was. My idea was to take a quick look around to see what was growing and what we would need to do, but as soon as the word that there were a bunch of "gringos" in town spread, we were surrounded by locals. We explained what we were doing and then they told us there plans. They wanted to start planting a nearby field right away with seeds that of course we would provide. I said that we wanted to start smaller and work mainly with the kids.

We looked around a little bit more, but they kept treating us like tourists. One of the ladies was spinning wool on a hand reel and some of the other ladies kept asking us if we wanted to take pictures of her (I we did, then they´d ask for money). As we were leaving, one of the ladies asked for a dollar so she could buy a coke. I said that I didn´t have any money. She then said it wasn´t a problem and told us that when we came back she would grill a cuy for us. I know she wouldn´t charge us for the guinea pig. It is such a strange thing down here when people will beg for small change, but then offer you a meal that costs $7 at any restaurant in the city.

The other night I was in bed almost asleep when a moth started buzzing around my bed. I laid there a bit before motivating myself to get out from under my warm covers. While I was laying, I heard a rustling sound in my room. I´m used to having to kill a moth pretty much every other night, but I hadn´t heard this other sound before. I turned on the light and first turned to see the moth. It was caught in a web by my bed and a big spider was crawling towards it. Also, there was a massive slug squirming up the wall by my light switch and to top it all off, I found out what was making the rustling sound in my room. As I turned to swat the moth, I saw a rat sitting in the middle of my room.

I HATE rats and mice. I wouldn´t cal lit a phobia, but it is close (now you know why I´m not a big fan of eating Guinea Pig).

After a slight pause of revulsion, I went after the rat. It was a fast mother and took off into my bathroom to hide. I ran into my kitchen and grabbed a broom, killed the moth/spider combo and the slug, and then went into the bathroom. The rat immediately ran out, and thus began a 40 minute midnight rumble to the death. I pretty much destroyed my room as the rat went under everything, ran up my walls, and climbed my shower curtain (which I ripped off the wall with a swing of the broom). I finally clipped it and then finished the job after spitting out every expletive in Spanish and English that I know. The rat was over a foot long from nose to tail and I don´t know how it got into the house, so now at night whenever I hear a noise, I get a little freaked out.

A couple of my friends from the southern end of Ecuador were in Quito for meetings last week, so I spent the night on Thursday hanging out with them. It was nice to catch up and also to pick up my mail from the office for the first time in a while. I got a bunch of packages from my family with Christmas presents and a big box from a college friend with softball bats, Chicago style 16" softballs, and matts for bases and home plate. I´m planning on playing softball with the kids at the high school. I hope they like it because I´d like to play all the time.

Thanks Mom, Dad, Steph, Matt, and Kyle for the Christmas presents and thanks Vaughn for all your work getting this sent to me Belyew, Bosone, Schriner, and Kruzic for the softball gear. I´ll post some pictures of the kids playing (or more likely, trying to play) softball soon.

Also while in Quito I was able to get the battery changed on my watch. I went to the Fossil store in the mall so that I could be sure to get the right battery put in my Fossil watch. As I was waiting, I thought to myself, "Do they really need Peace Corps Volunteers in a country where I can take a bus and get to a Fossil store in 3 hours?".

Checkmate!

Thanks to John, the PCV who lives in Latacunga, I now have something to occupy my nights. He found some cheap chess sets and gave me one. I´m currently trying to teach the kids next door how to play chess, or ajedrez, in Spanish. I´m on a pretty good winning streak against them, but the are starting to pick it up.

It has been a busy week and a half, starting off with another first for me. I got to help slaughter my first hog! I went to visit one of the families in town the other day, and right as I got there, they were getting ready to kill the pig. We muscled it to the ground and then the 60-something mother of the family stabbed the pig in the heart. It took only a minute for the pig to die, and then we put it in a wheelbarrow and poured boiling water over it. We had to keep moving the pig in the barrow to get the water over all of it, so I was glad that the clothes I was wearing were already dirty and therefore didn´t mind the bloody/shitty pig water getting on me. Next we ripped the hair and epidermis off the pig. We couldn´t get all the hair off, so my job was to shave the pig with a Bic razor (an activity I´m out of practice with as you´ll read). Then we ripped off the hoofs and cut it open and removed the guts to feed to the dogs. Next we separated the skin from the meat and rubbed it all over with spices before sending it to the next town over where they have big ovens that can roast a whole pig. The typical roast pork dish down here is called hornado and is very tasty. The family said I could come back the next day to eat, but unfortunately I had plans. My payment for shaving their pig instead was a plate of boiled potatoes with a couple of chunks of the pigs fried kidney. Not only did it smell like piss, but it was super tough (I only managed to try one small bite). Thankfully there were a couple dogs in the house who took care of the meat for me.

The other day my neighbor, Carlos, came into my house and asked me to help him cook some "American Food". He showed me a package with Mareican Army rations that he got from his work. Apparently the Ecuadorian Army is trying out some new MRE´s and Carlos got picked to see how they taste. The problem was that the instructions on how to heat it up were in English. I translated and we used the chemicals in the kit to heat up a nice spaggetti dinner. While WE were doing this, Carlos´wife, Sara, was gutting and ripping the hair off a couple of Guinea Pigs for their real dinner. When the pasta was ready, I offered some to Sara and she pulled away, shook her head, and wouldn´t eat. Disembowling a large rodent for your meal=OK. Chef Boyardee=Disgusting.

Another example of cultural differences happened on the bus back from the market this week. On the Pan-Americanthere was a bad accident about half a mile in front of us. As soon as our bus stopped in the traffic, litteraly 75% of the pasengers jump off the bus and sprinted up the road to the accident site to see the crashed cars. It wasn´t just the people in my bus, the side of the road was full of people running to try to see a dead body. I know that people will rubberneck in the States, but this is a whole different level. I don´t know, they think I´m odd when they see me outside on a clear night staring at the stars.

I spent my one free afternoon this week picking the radishes we planted last month. As I suspected, the ones I planted with a lot of space between them were huge, and the ones my neighbor planted were tiny. It didn´t matter to them though, because we fed them all to the rabbits. I found out that nobody in the family likes radishes, but then either do I. I then cleared and fertilized some more land for my new garden that I´m planting with lettuce, zucchini, broccoli, cucumber, and pumpkins. I´m goign to try covering this garden with a half assed plastic greenhouse that I´m making. I think it will help the non-lettuce plants especially, and may be an option for the families here if it works.

NOTES:
-I added another PCV´s blog link to the frontpage of my blog. He was a science teacher before he and his wife came down here. The blog is good, and I especially like the pictures of the poker game we had the other week. Check it out at http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/Puyo/blog-232911.html and scroll down to the pictures.

- Tungurahua, the volcano I passed on my way to the jungle for the Christmas party, is gettign ready to erupt. It is only about 40 miles away from me, and I can see it from the hills near my house, but I´m in no danger.

- This week I finally used up the first can of shaving cream that I brought down here. I hate shaving, and since nobody cares what I look like down here, I rarely shave. That is one of the benifits of life in the Peace Corps, but it does put you at a disadvantage when you have to shave a whole pig.

Happy Old Year!

Well, here we are in 2008. I hope y´all had a great New Year´s Eve wherever you were. There were no dropping balls or midnight kisses down here, but it was still interesting. The festivities started a couple of days earlier with a group of guys walking around town wearing brightly colored clothes and human and animal masks. These payasos or clowns were supposed to be representing the muñecos or dolls that were to be burnt on NYE. It is an Ecuadorian tradition (I´m sure going back to at least Incan times) that on NYE everyone burns an effigy of someone, usually a family member. This is supposed to get rid of all the bad luck from the previous year. People take it pretty seriously (although it is all for fun). The family I live by made a life size doll representation of my neighbor (see the picture a the top of the post), Carlos, complete with his clothes and an Army hat.

Back to the payasos so these clown walked around town a couple of times every day scaring the kids and giving out booze to all the adults they met. The day before NYE I was visiting a family and a group pf payasos asked me to help them build a toll gate on the road into town. After it was done, they used it to stop traffic into town and force the drivers to pay them some small change. I stayed with them a bit to watch the drivers reactions. Most laughed it off, but a truck with some tourists came by and the climbers in the back didn´t know what to think when they got stopped on the road by a bunch of clowns and a white guy asking for spare change. I didn´t ask what the money went to, but I imagine it was more booze.

On NYE I was invited to a party that was supposed to start at 3:00. I got there at 3:45 thinking that I´d be a little early, but nothing was set up yet, so I helped get things started and then went home. It rained hard the rest of the day, so I stayed in and read. After dinner, my neighbor told me that we were leaving. I couldn´t understand where she said we were going until I asked again as we were driving away on the back of a truck. I was then pleased to learn that we were headed out of town to spend NYE at a wake for some lady I didn´t know. Normally these things don´t take too long, so I wasn´t concerned. Unfortunately, we stayed at the wake for a couple of hours just sitting in silence. I didn´t get home until after 11:00 and then walked into town. There was a DJ playing Ecua-Rap and the teenagers were dancing, so I walked home. I then met my neighbors and helped them bring the muñeco back to town to burn it. I looked at my watch as were were walking and saw that it was past midnight. I can say that I spent the first moments of 2008 dragging a life-sized doll up a dirt road. We got to the center of town and while trying not to pass out from the fumes off the flaming piles of nylon and denim, we burnt Carlos and the bad vibes of 2007.

The next dayI went to Latacunga and met some other PCVs. We then grabbed a bus to the town of Chugchilán. Chugchilán is a small town just south of me (about 20 miles as the crow flies, but around 4 hours by bus). It is starting to become a tourist destination for hikers doing the Quilotoa Loop and visiting Lake Quilotoa. I attached a picture of Roger (the old dude), his two kids who were visiting, and Jeremy and Susan (a married couple from my group). For some more good pictures of the lake go to http://www.ecuador-images.net/lake.quilotoa.htm . Another PCV lives in Chugchilán and we stayed at a hostal that is owned by his friends. We spent the first night hanging out and playing cards.

The next day, we took a truck to Lake Quilotoa, walked around checking out the view, and then hiked back. The five hour hike was beautiful and we only got a little lost. We got back to the hostal in the rain and after drying out and eating dinner, we spent our last night playing some more cards. Apparently the PCV who lives there is a good card player and never loses (some other PCVs even refuse to play with him). Even the owners of the hostal told me that he has never lost there. Anyway, I beat him head to head at Texas hold ém both nights (I won all of $10). With the lack of really juicy gossip and the way that things spread through all the PCVs down here, I´m sure that within a month I´ll be known as the greatest poker player around. I think I´ll have to go into retirement to keep my reputation, "I choose not to play!"

NOTES:

-I just finished reading War and Peace (Thanks Chacho!). For 1,455 pages, it really flew by. It was very interesting, although one wonders if it would have been as successful with it´s original title War, What is it Good For?

- For the first time in a month I had a free Saturday and could listen to the Saturday opera on Quito radio. They play an opera every Saturday at 1:30, and from December to April it is broadcast live from the Met in New York complete with commentary and plot explanations in English. Saddly, this is one of the highlights of my week. They actually broadcast the same program all over the US, so if you would like to listen along with me you can find a station near you at http://www.operainfo.org/stationfinder/northamerica.htm .