The pigs are now 50 days old and for the first time are separated and eating separate foods. For their first fifty days (25 with mom, 25 by themselves) they were together and eating Pronaca Starter feed. In the past 25 days we've been seeking out the nutrition information for the following inputs which are available in El Empalme:

Rice bran ($0.14/lb)

Rice meal ($0.14/lb)

Corn meal ($0.25/lb)

Fish meal ($0.25/lb)

Soy meal ($0.35/lb)

Chifle or cooked green plantain powder ($0.12/lb)

Passion Fruit meal ($0.15/lb)

Palmiste or Oil Rich Fibrous Residue of African Palm ($0.12/lb)

Fortunately we have been able to find data on all of these despite there relative obscurity in tradition pig rations mixed in the United States.

Here is the scoop on our first mix:

Pigs between 20 and 60 lbs need a diet of at least 18% Protein, 6% Fat, 0.75% Phosphorus, 0.9% Calcium and 1591 kcal/lb, and at most 4% Fiber, and 8% Ash. As you can see our numbers are slightly off on 1591 kcal./lb. and Fiber but good or great for everything else. The plan was initially to buy 35 lbs of soy, which would have brought the kcalories up and kept the fiber low, but at the store they only had 22 lbs of soy to sell so I bought 3 more lbs of fish meal to cover the weight and protein requirements.

All of the mixing was easily done by hand. 87.5 lbs (40kgs) was the goal weight because Pronaca foods come in 40kg sacks.

Freddy's VisitOur program manager, Freddy, has been on a tour of all of the Agriculture volunteers in our group over the past three months and we were some of the last he came to visit. While here we introduced him to the students we've been tutoring, some of the kids raising pigs with the Young Farmers Association, and showed him the pigs we're raising for our experiment.

Freddy gave me permission to switch counterparts which I had all-but-officially done. I'll now officially be working with Ismael on my projects instead of Don Dario, my neighbor and land lord.The Last Day of Vacation SchoolIn other news, last Thursday was the last day of vacation school, which Stacie and I taught through February and March. School usually runs from the beginning of April through mid-January and six students signed up for our help with English and Math. To celebrate we watched Rio and Tin Tin in Spanish, ate cookies and corn puffs, drank Tang and Kola Gallito, and got our faces and arms painted by Stacie.

Installing a Water TankI finally worked up the courage to put in an elevated water tank to try to deal with our total lack of water pressure. I decided to try out the system with a small tank and then upgrade to a bigger tank if it works well. The tank is in now with mixed results. Our sinks and shower do have better pressure now than before, but because water has to flow up higher to fill the tank, it often doesn't flow at all. The tank empties quickly, but a bigger tank would fill even less frequently because the water would have to climb even higher. From here the only solution will be to borrow Dario's pump and pump water into the tank, which would involve regular visits with him...something I usually avoid.

In the top photo here I'm cleaning up a post I found to use it to support the tank. In the bottom phone the green tank is now on top of this platform. Water comes to it via garden hose from my neighbor's cistern and from there drains into the house via the hose you see connected to the back wall.

Gusanos VerdesRecently these huge green caterpillars have been plaguing the community. Everyone is afraid of them because they bite and sting and either one of these will leave a painful welt/burn on you that will last a week. We found this guy in our shower. I have no idea how he got there because it seems like a long walk from the front door for a caterpillar!

Before joining the Peace Corps, I talked with many returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCVs). Often I was told not to expect to start any projects until the second year. Year one is mostly adjustment and getting to know your community. In my head I was saying, "That was your experience, I'll probably hit the ground running."

Sure enough, when we got to site we were lucky enough to inherit the pig and bee projects from the previous volunteer and with her help started a third project, the community bank. For the past year we have been adjusting and getting to know our community like I was told by so many RPCVs even while we've been managing the three projects above.

I'd like to say that I was vindicated and that I did hit the ground running, but so far I haven't felt like the projects I have to work on are really mine. Well, I've finally got that sense of ownership about a project, for better or worse, and we're just getting started now.

Pig feed ExperimentSpurred by the crisis of not being able to sell our group's piglets, Stacie and I decided that this might be a good opportunity to try an experiment of our own. I bought four of the six piglets in order to experiment with mixing our own pig feed.

ProblemCommercial pig feeds sold in El Empalme and produced by companies Pronaca and Improsa are expensive though nutritionally balanced. In search of alternatives, farmers are attempting to mix their own pig feed with knowledge of neither their pigs' nutritive requirements nor their available ingredients' nutritional composition. Furthermore, the Farmers Cooperative, 30 de Junio, which was aided by a Peace Corps couple twenty years ago to resolve this problem, is now defunct.

This problem is emphasized further by the fact that El Empalme is at the heart of Ecuador's grain belt and the headquarters of pig feed producer Pronaca. The same farmers are growing and selling for cheap the pig feed ingredients they later cannot afford to buy.

GoalMy goal is to seek out and use nutrition information for the potential pig feed ingredients available in El Empalme to elaborate a set of pig feed recipes that farmers can use to mix their own pig feed on their own farms. These recipes will allow farmers to feed their pigs equally or more nutritional food for less than the would pay for commercial feed. The recipes must be possible to mix on the farm without the use of machinery in order to increase farmer independence.

HypothesisIt can be done.

MethodWe decided to buy four pigs and Stacie has described them well in her blog. Janet, Oscar, Wilbur, and Peanut will be divided two and two. Janet and Oscar, the largest, will be fed a diet of Pronaca pig feed: Starter, Growth, and Finishing feeds. Wilbur and Peanut will be fed with the various recipes Stacie and I will work out to satisfy their nutritional needs.

Rule number one is that our feeds will always be less expensive than Pronaca.

Rule number two is that we will not sacrifice quality in order to beat Pronaca's prices. If it occurs that we are not able to meet the nutritional needs of the animals without exceeding Pronaca's prices, then my hypothesis will be proven wrong.

Rule number three is that we will try to diversify the feed inputs as much as possible without complicating the recipes. This is because I agree with Newman Turner who illustrates the insanity of trying to squeeze all the nutritional requirements of an animal out of one or two crops and a supplement. We don't do that, and any grazing animal allowed to graze wouldn't do that, so my hypothesis is that between more and less ingredients, more ingredients is to be preferred.

Rule number four is that this is applied science and I am not trying to discover the best possible pig feed to be had. I am hoping to fulfill a need I see in the community with the best research my four year liberal arts education allows.

Part I: Slaughter

An inevitable part of raising pigs is slaughtering and butchering. This month I finally had the opportunity to witness and participate in the final moments of a pig's life.

It started when one of the pigs raised by our neighbor Yaritza, one of the girls in the young farmers association, had a hernia. Like a human hernia, the intestines tore through the abdomen and were bulging out beneath the skin on the animals belly. While surgery is an option for both humans and pigs, the cost of the surgery for pigs is greater than the cost of the pig, so to avoid the risk of having the hernial sack rupture, Yaritza decided we'd better just kill the pig and sell the meat.

Here the pig is being delivered to Ismail's house.

We tied the pig up by it's back legs before killing and draining it. I have pictures of those things too but decided not to share them. A few people have asked me how the pig was killed so I'll share with you. We Peace Corps volunteers were told that the humane way is to stab the pig in the heart and the inhumane way is to slit its throat. Perhaps there is no humane way to kill anything, but these pigs are raised for meat and that's that. This pig was stabbed in the heart, down for the collar bone. As it was positioned in this picture, the stabbing was actually an upward thrust.

I held one arm and one ear to keep it from moving too much as the blood drained quickly into a pot. Once the pig had succumbed, we took it down and shaved it by pouring scalding water over the body and scraping the hair off with knives and machetes. Afterwards we tied it up again and Ismail proceeded to disassemble the animal.

The head went first, followed by the arms and ribs. The pieces were set on plantain leaves on the ground as seen here. Clearly it was a family affair and no one bothered to keep the children away.

Here are Ismail and I as we're removing the spine from the last hind leg.

I was surprised how quick the whole process was. In no time we were in front of the store selling what had ceased to be a pig and was now unarguably meat. My job was to watch the scale to make sure the measurements were correct. Stacie, who chose not to be present for the slaughtering, took charge of the money.

I don't eat pork much, I haven't for a while. Lately bacon has been back on the weekly shopping list, but I would prefer turkey bacon if it were available. Participating in the pig slaughter was a great experience and for me, and my decision to participate was part of an attitude I've assumed while here in my community. Namely, whatever my opinions of right and wrong, good and evil, sustainable and destructive, humane and inhumane, I only stand to have those opinions informed by experiencing everything I can here in these two years. By refusing to join my neighbors as they slaughter animals, use chemical fertilizers, burn their trash, I only hold on to baseless, ignorant opinions.

Furthermore, my qualms have never been with poor farmers and countrymen who do what they do because that's what's necessary to get by or that's the way it's always been done. I don't presume that everything that's done here is right either, which would be the opposite evaluation, but if I participate in everything I'll be able to look back later with concrete examples to draw on as I form new opinions of right and wrong.

That being said, some carnivores and vegetarians say that the true test of whether you should eat meat or not is in killing an animal: If you can't do it, you shouldn't eat meat. Carnivores that use this argument are usually the ones who are quick to follow up by saying, "I've done it and it didn't bother me, that's why I'm okay with eating meat." I'd like everyone to know that this is not the reason I participated in the slaughter and I don't consider this to be a valid argument. Anyone can reach down inside and turn off the empathy switch; for some people it's off already, the military trains soldiers to do it. But our ability (or inability) to toughen up and do something grotesque should have no bearing on the ethical evaluation of the act. Just because you can kill a fly or an animal or a human doesn't make it right or wrong.

Part II: Other Activities

Sorry about the blurry picture. Stacie and I made beef enchiladas with all the fixings for Valentine's day. They were delicious!

Stacie on our first day of summer school (the kids are off February and March here).

We're tutoring six students in English, Math, and Geography.

One evening, my neighbor's sow escaped her pen and wandered over to our house. I had to rope it up and take it back to him.

Stacie is helping the newly appointed directors of the young farmers association teach the kids how to fill in their pig raising journals.

The new addition to our zoo house, Jerry, a kitten that was abandoned in a puddle out front. This little guy was so named because she looked like a mouse all soaking wet in that puddle and the bigger cats prey on her similarly.

Here we are playing bingo with community members at the community bank meeting. The community bank, which we helped start last year, is in it's second cycle and has increased in size and popularity.

I didn't win any of the prizes which ranged from cans of tuna to bottles of soda.

With the rainy season comes intense sun and heat seemingly paradoxically. This is the best I could do to stay cool *pats self on back for energy conservation*.

I hope everyone is having an okay winter and looking forward to spring back home!

If Laura's job was to start this project, then our job is to finish it. Today we took a giant leap in that direction.

Allow me to explain.

A Development Project

The previous volunteer, Laura, received a PL-480 grant to start a young farmers association here in San Francisco del Congo. With the 3000 plus dollars she received, the group began raising piglets for sale. Each kid would raise two piglets and Laura would pay for the food with money from the fund. When the kids sold the pigs, they would pay back the cost of the food and the piglet to Laura and the fund.

This is a great project because it provides credit for income generation activities while teaching kids how to keep records, organize, and make money. We have enjoyed learning so much about pig raising working with this project and with the youth involved.

The question Stacie and I have been concerned about for the last few months has been, what happens when we leave? While Laura was here and for as long as we've been here, the project has been completely volunteer dependent. The volunteer buys the food, the volunteer hosts the kids meetings, the volunteer plans activities, the volunteer decides who gets pigs and what to do with the money left over.

A Sustainable Development Project

Today we made progress towards ensuring that this project continues even after we leave. That is to say, making this project sustainable. Stacie and I realized that if the community could do what we're doing now, they certainly won't be able to do it after we leave. Transitioning the responsibility of this project over to the community before we leave is necessary if they're going to have any chance of managing it on their own.

A Parents Directive

Today at the normal meeting time we invited the parents of the group to attend. After the kids had run their part of the meeting, I presented what Stacie and I have spent the past few weeks contemplating: the formation of a parents directive (or committee) to manage the responsibilities we (mostly Stacie) have been handling all along.

First, I mentioned the history of the project, the source of the money, and why the community is lucky to have it. Second, I explained the problem; what happens when we leave? What if we have to leave early for some unexpected reason? And finally, what will be the best case scenario after we've left. The answer of course is that the group continues, that the parents know how to handle all the responsibilities, and the kids keep making money and learning how to improve an income generating activity that they will most likely find themselves depending on as adults.

The four positions of the directive are the following:

The Youth Administrator, who plans and hosts the youth meetings as well as any field trips they might takeThe Animal Administrator, who oversees the breeding of sows and the distributing of pigletsThe Funds Administrator, who buys the pig food and keeps account of how much is in the bank and how much each kid as requested in foodThe Principle Administrator, who oversees the directive and plans its meetings and meetings for the parents general assemblyStacie explained the roles of each of these administrators and what qualities such a person or persons would have. After everyone was thoroughly convinced of the need for this directive, we held a vote and were happy to congratulate six new members. The group decided that the roles of the Youth and Animal Administrators deserved to have two parent members to share the responsibility. I was excited by this move because to me it meant they were taking things in to their own hands.

We thanked everyone for coming and spent a few minutes chatting with the new directive.

Instant Improvements

If the project isn't run the way the community likes, it won't last unless it can be changed. Almost immediately upon being elected, the Youth Administrators recommended that kids meetings only be held twice a month. This was met by the unanimous consent of the directive even though I had no idea this had been on their minds. Still I was happy because all of a sudden these parents felt that they could remake the project as they saw fit.

Next Steps

This kind of taking charge is exactly what Stacie and I were hoping for. Now we are excited to meet with this group again to ease them in to their new roles. I want to make sure they understand the responsibility, but also the flexibility that they will have. I want to make sure that no matter how conditions change, the group knows they are capable of handling it.

Año Nuevo and Año Viejo

Neighbors gather at Edita's house to celebrate New Years Eve.

This New Years was different from every one I've celebrated in my life, but I was excited to experience a new way to celebrate.

In my community here in San Francisco del Congo, Guayas, Ecuador, a distinction is made between the New year and the Old year.

Back in the states we have cartoons depicting a withered father time be beaten or otherwise usurped by an infant new year. Here father time gets stuffed with fire crackers and torched.

A Prosperous New Year

Back in the states and here as well, it is customary to go around and wish everyone a prosperous new year after the clock strikes twelve. I thought it was quite suiting that around New Years here we were receiving the first rains of winter. This means that everyone has been planting corn, yuca, watermelon, everything.

Here it seems that wishing someone a new year is to say, "I hope your crops grow, that the rains sustain them but don't wash them out and that the government delivers the Urea (42% Nitrogen Fertilizer)."

The white sacks are filled with Urea, a 42% Nitrogen fertilizer.fertilizer

Just last week the last of these things happened and it was a cause for celebration. The Government delivered the Urea. I found these guys in the back of a truck full with the stuff and a crate or two of the local beer. It would be an understatement to say that these guys were happy about it. I'd say they were elated.

Members of the association receive Urea from the

Government at a discount.

Dear friends and family,

We're doing fine and everything is going well. We just got back to our house from a week of traveling and I thought I'd let you know what we were up to.

We decided to spend thanksgiving in Tena this year, with friends from the Peace Corps. This hasn't been our first Thanksgiving away from home, but we were determined to make this one better than the last one we'd spent abroad in Egypt. Just to remind you, we spent that one in a hostel that told us they had an oven for guest use, but when we got their it wasn't working. We ended up with only deviled eggs to eat...

Wednesday the 23rd we headed up into the mountains to a town called Latacunga, to the house of a volunteer friend of Stacie's named Heather Weeks. It was nice to breathe the cool dry air of the sierra, even if I had to suck it down for its lack of oxygen. We spent the night in her house and then left with her and caught a bus to Tena. To get there, we had to travel through Ambato (the city of fruit and flowers), Baños (at the foot of Tungaragua, an active volcano), and Puyo (the first city you get to coming down out of the mountains into the Amazon basin). It was an exciting bus ride for the views and changes in climate. The road from Baños to Puyo is also known as the road of waterfalls, and we got to see plenty of those as well.

Elizabeth Glass met us in Tena and took us to her house. It is a small place, one bedroom one bathroom and a large porch with attached kitchen, but she has beautiful wood floors and is in a quiet neighborhood with the Tena river flowing wide right behind her house. For being in the jungle, there were no bugs and I slept in a hammock the three nights we were there.

If you're counting, we arrived on Thanksgiving day and dropped off our stuff at Elizabeth's house in the afternoon. I was able to stream the Miami-Dallas game on our computer and as more and more volunteers showed up it was nice to have the familiar sounds of NFL football playing in the background.

For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant owned by a German expat couple. The veggie enchiladas were good, if a little strange for a Thanksgiving meal. Afterwards the group split; some went home to sleep and the rest of us went to go sing karaoke. I sang a few songs, among them Take On Me by Aha, Rayando el Sol by Maná, and Yesterday by the Beatles.

On Friday I went to help out Lindsay and Helen mixing concrete for a worm bed, while Stacie went with Heather and Elizabeth to see the monkeys. We spent the whole day working except for lunch and the hour afterwards during a downpour. We still didn't finish, but we made some good progress.

For dinner we went to an upscale place where I had a mouth-watering filet mignon with penne alfredo. Strangely, I was the last one to finish and people were hurrying me up so we could leave. After working all day, I just went back and slept.

Saturday we split up again, Stacie, Elizabeth, and Heather rented innertubes bussed out of town and rode back in on the Tena river. After getting in the river they saw some kayaking tour groups push in in full gear. That's when they realized they were in for more then they signed up for and soon were negotiating rapids and cascades with nothing but bikinis and barefeet to protect them. Luckily they got out of it alright.

My group went north of Tena to tour some caves. We went in barefoot as well, with only swimsuits and headlamps (no running lights in the caves). I had a great time swimming in an underground river, taking a mineral mud bath, and exploring caves both above and underwater. On the way back we stopped to eat some Maitos (tilapia steamed in a large leaf on the grill). Some of the group ate grubs, a local specialty, but I passed.

Dinner was pizza and afterwards a few of us hung out in the park by the river just talking into the wee hours.

We left early the next morning on a bus to Quito and got off in Tumbaco to go back to the training center where we spent the first three months in Ecuador. Pretty soon the Health volunteers joined us for the Food Security Conference.

Since they're cutting the Agriculture program after us, they wanted to focus our group more on the aspects of agriculture that benefit community health such as community and family gardens. Our job as Ag volunteers was to teach the health volunteers how to garden and how soil, plant, and animal health are important to human health.

Their job was to teach us about nutrition. We mostly stuck to the training center in the evenings since none of us have as much dough as we did during training and the restaurants in the area are super expensive.

The last night we had a big bonfire and cooked smores together. Stacie and I left early on Wednesday so we could make it back to El Empalme to catch the last bus.

Since Stacie has shared with everyone what we´ve been working on with the park, I thought I'd take the oportunity to talk about some of the cultural differences I've encountered here and how they've shed some light on my own culture and now I see it differently.

Travel

The first difference has to do with travel. I'm no anthropologist, so I won't apologize for making broad generalizations in order to explain what I'm getting at. Think about our American heritage: the niña, the pinta, and the santa maria, the pilgrims, the anabaptists, the irish, the methodists, refugees from vietnam, somalia, cuba, etc. We're a country of immigrants, yes, but that means we're a country of peoples deparate enough to uproot our families and travel across the world for not even the promise, but the hearsay of a better life.

No matter what people say the American dream is now, the American Dream used to be land, Manifest destiny, and the great migration of colonists westward out of the colonies and across the great plains.

Now think about Ecuador and the other Andean countries for that matter. Ecuador is a country the size of Colorado, divided into three distinct regions: coastal, mountains, and jungle. Unlike the colonizers of the US, the Spanish weren't so afraid of... mingling... with the natives. While I don´t mean to diminish the atrocities committed by the Spanish, the fact is, many of the indiginous communities that originally inhabitted Ecuador still do and they do so where they did so, not on reservations.These cultures have been preserved and are regional. They don´t move. If you were a monduvio family, living in the coast of Ecuador (size of colorado, remember), or a Tshuar family living in the jungle east of the mountains, you wouldn't move because all of your traditions, food, and culture in general are based on the area you live in. Even if you wanted to move, you couldn't because of the collosal impass of the Andes mountains. Without a motor vehicle, who would make that trip and why?

The answer is you wouldn't, and that has been the only answer until cars came to Ecuador relatively recently. Thus, while we plainfolk of the plains may not see anything strange about packing up and moving west, that idea is totally foreign here and only slowly is it becoming more common, if at all.

When you graduate highschool you go to college seeking new oportunities. While it's still true that something like 60 percent of children in the US enter a field related to that of their parents, the way we do it is to leave and then slowly come back around. And there is still that other 40 percent to think about.

That brings me to my next point which I'll write about in the next blog, Independence.

Here's a new Spanish word I'd like to teach you, Ocupadito. The word ocupado means busy and adding "ito" usually makes something smaller or cute. In this case it makes it cute, but that doesn't really make sense so think of it as pretty instead.

In other words I've been "pretty busy" lately; Ocupadito.

Since getting back from reconnect, Stacie and I have been doing something between 6 am and 10 pm pretty much every day. Recently I've been waking up at six to tend the garden (nothing planted yet but the soil is so bad and needs a lot of work). Around 8 I come back, maybe eat something before it's off to see the piglets or teach English and Computation in the school. In the afternoon it's either running to town to do something or helping Nexar and Naller move pool tables to their bar or checking on the bees.

To be honest, Stacie has been a lot busier than I so sometimes there's nothing left to do but dishes and clean the floors (NEVER PUT WHITE TILES ON THE FLOOR). The cleaning is alright with me though, since moving into our own place I feel like the work I do pays off in ways I can see. For those of you who have seen photos recently, we just got finished painting the main room of our house. Here's a picture:

On the left is the bathroom with a new shower curtain and wall shelf. Next is the spice rack with San Francisco beneath on a desk from the school we sanded down and repainted. Them the kitchen around the corner, our bedroom, the guest bedroom, our new fridge. The hammock you see tied up there I've since moved into the guest bedroom. Finally, the new curtains Mom made us and our new kitchen table with the accompanying four chairs. Throughout the main room you can see the new paint job. Here's what it used to look like:

Needless to say, much better.

Like I mentioned earlier, two of Stacie's projects have really taken off: pigs and bees. I learned how to castrate piglets a few days ago. Here's a picture of me with a little piglet:

And another picture of me stringing up lights for the piglets about to be berthed. You can only see the back end of the sow whose about to give birth. The pigs in front of me were bought by one of the Young Farmers in our group with the profits he made from raising pigs with the group.

The bee project, started by the women's group, has really taken off with many hives returning to the boxes and producing honey. Luckily, one of Wellington and Impera's siblings lives in Guayaquil and was able to pick up the dividers that keep the queen bee from spoiling the honey with more bee production. Now most people have their bee hives in order as we wait for the end of the month to harvest. Daniel, a local bee expert who has 20 of his own hives, says each slide can be filled with up to 1.5 liters of honey. Each box has 9 slides, 13.5 liters. Not to count our chickens before they hatch, but 13.5 liters of pure honey will fetch 135 dollars (10 dollars per liter). This could turn into a pretty good business, but for now we're just using it as a learning experience.

Besides the pigs and the bees I've been working in the garden. Last Saturday a few Farmers of the association helped me machete down all the weeds so I could start planting again (Things got out of control towards the end of September). Before we tore everything out I was able to save a few seeds. Among them Thai Basil, Titan Sunflower, Okra, Jalapeño Peppers, and Yellow Crookneck squash. When the Country Director, Parmer, dropped in for a surprise visit on Tuesday, we loaded hime up with a bag of these seeds for him to take back to the PCVLs in Quito. I enjoy seed saving a lot because even if I don't get to eat all the food I grow, at least I can still get some benefit out of it besides its value in the compost heap.

Speaking of compost, I've made a goal to really improve the soil in the garden with compost, manure, and biol, a liquid organic fertilizer. The soil here is really played out, crop residues are burned rather than turned under, and there is no crop rotation or fallow years to speak of. The upshot is really compact soil that starts blowing around as soon as it dries out in June. It hardly has any moisture retention capacity, meaning most of the manufactured Nitrogen fertilizer the farmers throw on their fields runs off into the waterways. I only hope it's not seeping into their not so deep wells as Nitrates, but if it hasn't happened yet, it's bound to happen soon.

Anyway, my hope is that if I can demonstrate how regular additions of organic material to the soil can improve the garden's health and fertility, some of the farmers may start to notice and ask questions about their fields. Here's a picture of the Farmers Association making a tank of Biol, or liquid organic fertilizer.

With all these things going on there still is some time for rest, relaxation, and entertainment. The other week Stacie and I were able to steal away to the Shopping mall in Quevedo to watch the new Planet of the Apes movie (one of only two playing in English). And though Stacie didn't tag along, I accompanied some of the guys to Saturday's cock fight:

It was an interesting experience. Half of me says that this is what cocks live for, showing off their feathers and showing other cocks whose boss. The other half knows that if it happens, unprovoked, around the farm it's one thing and if men are betting money on it it's quite another. The cocks don't necessarily fight to the death, as one might think, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't common. Also, I'm pretty sure the English word "Gallery" probably comes from the Latin word for cock fighting ring since the word in Spanish is "Gallera." Think about that next time you go to an Art Gallery, are you there to see art or to see artist strut their feathers?

Finally, we've decided that if this park is ever going to get built, it better get built this month. Stay tune for photos of our progress. My spell check is stuck in Spanish so forgive any spelling errors; I'm too ocupadito to proof read.

Peter

Wow. So for those of you who didn't know, Stacie and I returned to Minnesota for about a week and a half. We just got back to Ecuador two days ago and now we're back in our site.

It was so great to spend sometime speaking English with friends, family, and even total strangers! Now that I'm back in Ecuador it's hard to wrap my head around how much I enjoyed being back in the States, at least for a little while.

As most of you know we have Stephanie and Aaron (my sister in law and new brother in law) to thank for an excuse to come home. Their wedding was beautiful and I had so much fun dancing and singing along to some great country songs.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, Stephanie asked Stacie to compile a playlist that we could play during the reception after the wedding. There were a lot of country songs on the request list, so Stacie and I spent some quality time listening to and organizing around 500 country songs. While I had never been a country music fan before, this assignment was a godsend. While listening to Hank Williams and plenty of other famous country singers, I realized that almost none of the music I had brought with me described life in the US as well as country music. Even if the songs don't exactly describe my life, their straight forward way of telling stories about American farmers, workers, and everyday American people falling in and out of love gave me something to hold on to. By the time of the wedding reception I was ready to belt out a few of my favorites like International Harvester and I've got Friends in Low Places.

After the wedding Stacie and I drove out to Mom and Bart's place, Campo Bonito. I've gotta say that ¡aquel campo es mucho más bonito después de siete meses en la axila de Ecuador! Feel free to throw that into Google Translator if you don't understand. Anyway, we shared the wheel since we both had missed driving so much. Everything on the farm seemed bigger than when we had last seen it. For the first day or so, all I could say to Rocky the dog was, "Rocky, you're huge!" I don't know if he understood or not.

They're new house is beautiful. Stacie helped Mom move some of the books to the new shelves, but for the most part, everything seemed unpacked already.

Before we knew it it was time to leave, but not before we were able to take a drive to Seed Savers and later that evening celebrate our one year anniversary with Uncle Matt, Aunt Kay, Ashley, Grandma, Grandpa, and Grandma Pat. We had tasty steaks and three kinds of cakes for dessert!

While packing Mom and Stacie convinced me that a rolling suitcase would really make more sense than a duffle bag with no shoulder strap. Now I realize that the only reason I didn't want to show up to training with a rolling suitcase is because I wanted to fit in with the backpacker types. Now that I've been at site a few months I realize I probably would never feel comfortable camping in Ecuador if I were anywhere near civilization. It's just not secure! Furthermore, having a big backpack is great for trekking, but Peace Corps service is absolutely not trekking nor is it like traveling at all. So when the only point of luggage is to get lots of stuff from point A to point E when points B, C, and D are either paved or traversed by plane and bus, I guess a rolling suitcase does make sense.

Today is officially our one year anniversary. Yay! What makes it extra special is that today is move in day as well. We're finally, finally! moving into our own place. Not to say that living with family and host families has been a bad experience, they were great experiences actually. Living with Dad, Carol, Asa, and Ani helped us to live in the DC area, without putting all of my income into rent payments and without feeling so alone on all the holidays and weekends. Living with our host mom in Tumbaco helped us to practice more Spanish hand help us grow accustomed to Ecuadorian food, and living with our host mom here in San Francisco helped us to... well... build character and resilience? Anyway, it's great to finally have a place of our own because that's usually why couples get married in America.

Furthermore, it gives us something to do. After we get back from reconnect conference (did I mention we're leaving our site for a week starting tomorrow?) we have some appliance and furniture shopping to do. Thanks to Laura, the house was very clean when we arrived. The lack of clutter makes it seem a whole lot emptier, but so does the lack of refrigerator, chairs, pots and pans, and dressers. To be fair, everything we actually bargained for is still in the house, but not much else.

Love to you all! It was great to see those of you we did and sad that we didn't get to see everyone.

Wednesday of last week we rented a bus and went with 20 of our neighbors to a Cacao fair where we tasted chocolte and saw the whole process frome cacao harvest to packaging of chocolate bars.

From there, Stacie and I got a ride to Nobol and caught a bus to Puerto Lopez. I was successfully pickpocketed (that is to say,my wallet was stolen and empties of its cash and then promptly returned to the authorities with my bank card and all of my identification included).

Thursday we went on a tour of Isla de La Plata. We saw Whales and Blue footed boobies (pictures soon to follow on Stacie's blog)!

Friday we returned to our site.

I have finished the following books since I last posted a list:

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Percy Jackson 4

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London

I am currently reading Second Foundation by Asimov and Percy Jackson 5.

Yesterday was Wednesday the 20th of July, which made it the end of my14th week at site and also the first day of my fourth month here in our community. It's hard to imagine I'm one eighth done with my two years of service already.

In the first three months of my service I stuck to the Peace Corps recommendation and stayed in my site for almost the whole time. The only exceptions were one night overnights in Santo Domingo for a Peace Corps going away party and twice in El Empalme for the county fair and for Stacie's PC birthday party. The only two day trip I made was to visit Servio, the farmer I worked with last year in January. I live in 'The Coast' and I haven't even been to the beach yet!

I'm glad I stuck it out though and it has paid off. When I first arrived it was hard not to think about how to get away, mostly because the idea of being accountable to a community and spending two years with total strangers is understandably daunting. Now after three months, I've had an opertunity to explain myself a bit and to get to know those strangers. It seems like work to thing about leaving. I know that as soon as I catch that interprovincial bus to the actual coast, I'll be as unknown as the next tourist with only my coastal Spanish accent and slang to separate me from the rest. Furthermore, leaving our community means spending money on transportation, food, and lodging, which all seem expensive compared to normal expenses at the grocery store and in the market.

I can't even imagine what it will be like leaving for three weeks at the end of August. I hope it doesn't set things back for us in the community. I am looking forward to seeing friends and family in Minnesota and at Reconnect conference when we return. When I think about Minnesota, I think it must still be cold there like it was when we left in February since the weather here hasn't changed at all.

I didn't really have any goal in mind for this post so there's no reason to draw it out. Hope everyone is doing well!

An excerpt from Jung Chang's book,"Wild Swans"

"I developed a serious skin rash as soon as I arrived. For over three years this rash recurred the moment I was in the country, and no medicine seemed able to cure it. I was tormented by itchiness day and night, and could not stop myself from scratching. Within three weeks of starting my new life I had several sores running with pus, and my legs were swollen from infections. I was also hit by diarrhea and vomiting. I was hatefully weak and sick all the time when I needed physical strength most, and the commune clinic was thirty-odd miles away.

I soon came to the conclusion that I had little chance of visiting my father from Ningnan. The nearest proper road was a day's hard walk away, and even when one got there, there was no public transport. Trucks were few and far between, and they were extremely unlikely to be going from where I was to Miyi. Fortunately, the propaganda team man, Dong-an, came to our village to check that we were settled in all right, and when he saw I was ill he kindly suggested I should go back to Chengdu for treatment. He was returning with the last of the trucks which had brought us to Ningnan. Twenty-six days after I arrived, I set back to Chengdu.

As I was leaving I realized that I had hardly got to know the peasants in our village. My only acquaintance was the village accountant who, being the most educated man around, came to see us often to claim some intellectual kinship. His home was the only one I had been in, and what I remember most were the suspicious stares on his young wife's weather-beaten face. She was cleaning the bloody intestines of a pig, and had a silent baby on her back. When I said hello,she shot me an indifferent look and did not return my greeting. I felt alien and awkward, and soon left.

In the few days I actually worked with the villagers, I had little spare energy and did not talk to them properly. They seemed remote, uninterested, separated from me by the impenetrable Ningnan mountains. I knew we were supposed to make the effort to visit them, as my friends and my sister, who were in better shape, were doing in the evenings, but I was exhausted, sick, and itchy all the time. Besides, visiting them would have meant that I was resigned to making the best of my life there. And I subconsciously refused to settle for a life as a peasant. Without spelling it ou to myself, I rejected the life Mao had assigned to me.

When the time came for me to leave, I suddenly missed the extraordinary beauty of Ningnan. I had not appreciated the mountains properly when I was struggling with life there..."

During training,our Omnius came to be known as the "Complainers" for how we protested everything but technical training without having any experience upon which to base critique. I'm glad to have come across this passage, which to me portrays well how much we might miss one we convince ourselves we've gotten the short end of the stick.

"...he stood on his soap box and told us a parable

of a man with eye glasses so small they're unwearable

and the moral of the story is it all looks terrible

depending on what you look through, what you look through." -Cloudcult

Without trying to make any innuendos, the longer we're here, the longer our end of the stick seems to be.

So this is the end of week Eleven.

Olga left on Saturday to got to the Doctor in Guayaquil. Ever since the woman a dentro died Olga has been worried about her own health. Her plan was to just stay down there until the follow up appointments are all done with. Ths we have had the place to our selves for the past few days. Very nice.

I hope everyone had an excellent Fourth of July. Our celebration was incredibly true to life, by which I mean to say that it didn't feel like we were skimping. Laura,Kendra,Stacie, and I went to Queedo in the morning ad got ingredients at Hipermart and the stopped at a bottle shop in El Empalme wher Ross told us we could buy a twelve pack of Budweiser. We also bought some bottle rockets, only three, which turned out o be much too few especially at only 60 cents a piece.

I should pause her to explain the goals of the Peace Corps. The First goal is to supply communities in developing countries with trained men and women to assist with projects that will improve he quality of life for the members therein. This is the goal most appeal to Peace Corps Trainees and applicants because they imagine hands on technical training and two years of serious wrk experience. As our PCVLs (Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders) were quick to point out however, this only constitutes one third of the Peace Corps experience and a volunteer can be completely successful even if they don't make any progress towards this first goal. The second goal of the Peace Corps is to share American culture and ideas with our communitees. The third goal to share [Ecuadorian] culture and ideas wih Americans both during (hosting friends and family) and after the two years of service.

As you can see now, celebrating the Fourth of July fits squarely into the second goal.

That being said, we fired up the grill at Edita's tienda when we got back and started bumping popular American tunes from the past four decades. We had some hot dogs and burgers in no time with guacamole and rice krispy bars on the side. For all the neighbors who were curious and for those not afraid to stick around we shared of everyhing and had many a conversation about American traditions like grilling out, watching the fireworks, and feeling the warm sensation of jingoistic zealousy bubbling up from our insides while singing the National Anthem. The converts who stayed on into the night with us had a great time learning how to play the new American past times of Flip Cup, King's Cup, and Beer Pong. More than anything it ws fulfilling to show the community that we Americans are not just serious business.

highlights:

a chance encounter leads to an excitin project opertunity

got a kindle and some worms

recent readings

A Chance Encounter

What do you do when a toothless guy with a big grin on his face starts talking yous ear off? Check your watch and wonder why the bus hasn't showed up yet? Ignore him? No, you engage in active dialogue even if you have to feign interest and suggest that you understand exactly what he's talking about anyway.

Last week I met a rather toothless Veterinarian from Guayaquil while waiting for the bus. We chatted for a while and then exchanged phone numbers after getting on the bus. I've grown comfortable handing out my phone number to Ecuadorians because no one ever calls me (usually because they're out of saldos-credit).

The following Wednesday Galo Yoong actually called me. I told himwe were at the store by the soccer court-a neutral location. He mt us on the road bearing gifts: a large bag of queso fresco from his friend's farm and a DVD with information about organic vegetable production. We welcomed him to sit down and chat with us an he turns out to be a really great guy.

The reason he came ovr was to tell me about a friend of his in our community, Everisto Tuarez (actually a rather wealthy hacienda owner), who has a hectare of land Galo had convinced him to let us use as a demonstration plot for an integrated farm with the purpose of alimentacion familiar (feeding a family). We walked down to check it out and I must say the idea was pretty appealing and one that had come up in training presentations.

After walking back Stacie and I got to rainstorming immediately. We had to figure out the nutritional needs of a hypothetical individual and how we could satisfy those needs every day of the year with local plants grown on one hectare of land. Te task of figuring out all of thatwas pretty daunting. I decided a call to Nelson, our Peace Corps advisor, would be a good idea.

After asking Nelson to help us with the vacation request form we filled out for Stephanie's weddding I explained the Integrated Farm proposal. Nelson told me he had some great resources and designs for just such a project. He's going to mae copies and send them to me.

Kindle and Worms

So this is officially my first blog posted on the Kindle I've just recieved. As far as it's connection to the internet, the black and white screen, slow refresh rate, and lack of tabbed browsing don't make for the most enjoyable experience,but for the low monthly price of free, it's pretty great. We have access to email and world news a lot more readily than we used to. Both good things.

The same day I finally received the Kindle, Laura brought us some Red California worms from the PCVLs secret stash. I put them inthe worm bed pre existing in the garden and coovered them with the compost that we had constructed over the past month an a half. Red California worms have been bred to be spoiled rotten. Without an incredibly rich environment like compost, they will die. That being said, they are excellent digesters and will soon increase their numbers and make our already rich compost into an even richer organic fertilizer.

Recent Readings

I've made it a personal goal in my free time over the next two years to make up for all the reading I didn't do as a kid and hopefully boost my reading speed,vocabulary, comprehension, and concentration so I'll be better equiped to tackle the GRE or whatever I face when I get back to the US. I'vebeen trying to alternate easy fiction with more difficult nonfiction and biographical novels:

Percy Jackson 1

Percy Jackson 2

Percy Jackson 3

Slaughterhouse Five

Why We Fight

Let it Rot!

Eating Animals

Two Ears Of Corn

Make it Stick

Foundation

Wild Swans

Today marks five months in Ecuador, so that's more than two books per month.

We're going to stay in site for the fourth of July tomorrow, I think I'l pick up some bottle rockets and we might have a grill out. Happy Fourth everyone!

This week we got to live in Laura's house while she was playing tour guide for some friends of hers. The house is a MIDUVI house, which is to say a cookie cutter production of which there are upwards of 15 in our community alone. There are two bedrooms that make up the right half of the house, while the left half of the house is the living room-kitchen-dining room-bathroom. It's a pretty small space but it will be perfect for us...

...after we've made a few improvements that is. And that is what we spent some of our time this week doing. The fridge, for instance, one of those dorm room models, not the smallest, but about thigh high, had a lock on the bottom which was broken in the locked position. The only way to open it was to force down the bracket into which it locked and then pull the door open with the free hand. One of the first things I did upon moving in for the week was jack the fridge up on a cement block and simply remove the bracket with a screwdriver. Now the door opens freely with one hand like any normal fridge would.

Second, the main reason for us staying in her house while she was gone was to be dog/cat sitters for her dog, hijo, and her cat, catorce (short for catorce de diciembre, the day the cat took up residence here and refused to leave). Hijo had recently developed the bad habit of sleeping on the guest bed and we were asked to discourage this behavior. Why not just close the door to the guest bedroom? because the door handle had fallen out of line with the catch. So, I moved the catch so the door would shut again.

We returned from another wonderful trip to the shopping in Quevedo with some wall hanging organizers (no cupboards here). Caveat: the walls are cement, and not even thick cement, so a hammer and nail (suposedly) would just make the whole thing crack and fall down. Cement screws, then, right? And the little plastic sheaths to go with them, only problem with that is we don't have a drill, no one in the community has a drill, and drills are expensive here like most other electronics. So I was thinking self taping screws (normally used for metal, but I thought they might work). Anyway the guy at the hardware store had no idea what I was talking about (didn't know the word for self-tapping or even drill or drillbit at the time), so I just said I need screws for cement and then just said yes to everything he asked after I picked out the right size. I ended up coming home with a drill bit as well, which I used with hammer to make holes in the cement so we could put the screws in. Loco.

Anyway, the hanging racks look really great and definitely cleared up some counter space.

I'll publish some photos with the next blog.

Actually I'll just be continuing where I left off so be sure to read the last paragraph of the previous blog.

In my site, on the other hand, I feel this tremendous pressure that everything I do now will affect how successful I am in the next two years because of the way the community interprets/judges me. Like I was saying before, I think I realize now why the two places feel so different and it's this: In my site I'm powerlessly trying to affect things I can't change, namely people's judging me, while at Servio's I'm encouraged to change anything and everything within my power, namely my attitude, opinions, and Spanish speaking ability.

While at Servio's I picked up Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and just finished reading it this morning. I recommend the book to anyone, it was a quick and comical read. One thing I like about the book is it shares a philosophy of mine which I just finished explaining: the serenity prayer, I think it's called and goes like this,

God,

Grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to always know the difference.

Like I said it keeps coming up in Slaugherhouse-Five, and I've heard it before too, but long before I ever heard this prayer, I read Epictetus's pamphlet, the "Enchiridian," which is basically an elongated version of this prayer in the form of a Soldiers manual that was given to Roman soldiers during Epictetus' time. Interestingly, this Stoic philosophy as it is called, was at the time seen as a contrast and enemy to the contemporary Christian doctrine. It's funny how it ended up in a prayer.

So anyway, obvious realization I've come to is, Peace Corps is definitely not like traveling! Stacie and I have done quite a bit of travelling during college and it was always the excitement of planning what to do next, where to go next, and then going and doing it. In the Peace Corps you can plan where you want to go on vacation, but that's not really the point. You can also plan what you want to do next, but by yourself you can execute very little of what you plan. The things you plan as a Peace Corps volunteer are controlled by forces you cannot change, and it's hard to accept that! What the community thinks of me I cannot change. whether they invite me to help with this or that project I cannot change. Whether they totally ignore me and my advice and my presence at all their meetings I cannot change, and damn if that's not a hard thing to accept!

Nevertheless, I'm confident that now that I can see what was bugging me this whole time, I'll be able to work around it a little better and hopefully start to see the things I CAN change. Among these things includes the following off the cuff list:

The frequency and breadth of conversations I have with my host Grandmother

The amount of time I linger at community events in the presence of people I'd like to work with

The community events I choose to attend

The level of curiosity I express to any farmer willing to talk with me

The time I put in to working in our garden and other exposure activities

The Sundays I go to Mass at the Catholic church here in El Empalme

etc.

So that's all I'm going to talk about for now, I'm 23 years old today and I hope I'm a little wiser and not just a little more bald. Take away points would have to be read the Enchiridian and Slaughterhouse-Five, both are good reads.

Love you all, be sure to read Stacie's most recent blogs, they're much more interesting than mine!

Wow, time flies doesn't it. We only just arrived in site and now we've been here a whole month already. As far as other ways of measuring time are concerned, it's almost my birthday again, I'll be 23 tomorrow, we've been in Ecuador for almost four months, and a year ago tomorrow we graduated.

I've been thinking a lot this weekend since we took the opportunity to visit Servio Pachard on his farm near Calceta, the one I went to with Tony last January. I suppose I'll start by describing the trip. Everything went exceedingly smoothly, we walked out toward the highway Friday morning, expecting to arrive in Calceta about three in the afternnoon, but a series of fortunate events got us there by noon. First, the driver of an executive bus who lives further in from us was on his way out and gave us a ride to the highway. We waited about five minutes before we caught a bus that took us to Portoviejo (manabi's provincial capital) in only 3.5 hours as opposed to the 5 we were expecting, and since it wasn't yet lunch time, we immediately caught a bus to Calceta, which only took an hour. We ate lunch in Calceta before asking around to find the bus that would take us the rest of the way. When we found the right corner I bumped into Galvin with whom Tony and I had planted corn the year before and I asked him if we could go with him. Who knows how long we would have waited for the bus if I hadn't bumped into him, within the half hour we were at Servio's.

Fernando, Servio's nephew was there to greet us, we talked with him for a while about his studies and a hiking trip he's planning for October, which he invited us to participate in. All of Servio's kids were there for the weekend instead of just Joaquin, Sarah, and Erik. Servio showed up about ten minutes after we did and gave us the tour, we chose to stay in the cabaña next to the house instead of the tree house near the back of the property. Servio, it seems, hasn't heard from Evan either, so I asked him to give me his friend's contact information so maybe I can finally solve the mystery.

We didn't do much of anything besides chat with Servio and Fernando the whole weekend, which was great. I felt like I used more Spanish in the past 3 days than I have in the whole first month at site. Servio is easy to talk to because he understands the way Gringos struggle through Spanish even though he doesn't know English and he's willing to carry on telling stories while we think of things to add to the conversation. Also, a lot of the agricultural practices we've heard about throughout training he has been doing and promoting for the past 10 years with 10 communities in his area.

I'd like to encourage all the farmers of our community to adopt a similar style of farming, but that's a huge jump and I have no idea where to start. Also, I don't have a farm with which to demonstrate and even if I did, I'm rich and a gringo, so any success I had would be thus attributed and ignored. Servio is poor, Ecuadorian, a farmer, but extremely informed and extremely successful at being basically a zero-environmental-impact-farmer. I just don't know where to start.

Back to some other thoughts I've been having. We found out that they just built a new highway that goes directly from Calceta to Pichincha in an hour and 20 minutes (took us about 4.5 hours if you'll recall going the old way). This was great news for me and made me feel so relieved that I was actually a lot closer than I thought to the part of Coastal Ecuador I really love. The two regions are quite similar actually, except for being separated by a coastal mountain-ish range (think really steep hills, steeper but not taller than the appalachian mountains). Still somehow I feel so care free at Servio's and so oppressed in my site. I think I've realized why now, not only is Servio completely the opposite of judgemental, but no matter how much time I spend there, I'll always be travelling. Sure, we help out with feeding the goats and chickens, but nothing much more is expected of us. And we leave relatively soon, regardless of the lenghth of time. Servio has the ideas and calls the shots and if I had any inputs they would be gladly welcomed.

To be continued...

I had this great blog to share with all of you about the fun stuff we've been doing in the garden and the things we've been cooking. I had it all saved on my computer and then, while I was sweeping, I knocked it off the table and onto the cement floor. I think the computer is just fine but the screen is totally useless, so I can't retrieve the blog I wanted to post here. Rest assured, everything is going well. If the woman next to me would stop looking over my shoulder (at an internet cafe in El Empalme currently) I'd feel comfortable enough to tell you all about it. As it stands however, you'll just have to read Stacie's blog, she's writing from a more comfortably oriented computer.

Stacie's blog

Love ya!

Week two is off to a great start indeed. It's hard to think it's almost over already...week two that is. On Friday, Freddy visited us, in part due to my freaking out, but also to bring a couple of ACDI/VOCA volunteers into our site so they could catch up on the goings on. The larger of the two associations I'll be working with is in the process of finalizing a loan from the government Banco de Fomento, a special bank with low interest rates for development projects in poor communities. The loan works like this, 19 out of 40 members of the Association have decided to take out 3000 dollars each which they will have to pay back over 3 years with 5% interest. They will use this money together to purchase the equipment necessary to irrigate one hectare (2.45 acres) of cacao each as a pilot project. Cacao can be grown year round, but with irrigation farmers can continually harvest through the dry season making it a stable source of income. Especially since recently cacao prices have been fluctuating less drastically than any other product that could be grown in our area.

Transitioning to cacao production from corn production would have added benefits for the community if they take advantage of the connections ACDI/VOCA is providing them. Namely, directly selling their cacao (en baba, or wet) to an exporter called Ristok Cacao would allow them to minimize the work required before sale (no need to ferment or dry their cacao before selling) and would allow Ristok Cacao to guarantee quality to their buyers in Germany (by fermenting and drying all the cacao they buy in a central location), and the middle man would be cut completely out of the loop. The only problem I can see with this situation is that in the long run, if Ristok Cacao should ever stop being a benevolent exporter, they could cut the farmers profits down to what they were when they were selling to the intermediaries and the farmers would have not benefitted from learning how to process their cacao into a quality input ready for chocolate production. For the time being, however, Ristok is promising to buy Cacao Nacional en baba at $145 per quintal (100 lbs) with the possibility of higher profits for the farmer if they receive UTZ certification (some German certification of small farmerhood). So it's a good deal for now.

Ristok Cacao is planning a visit to this, the larger of the two Associations in my community this coming Friday to give them the pitch.

Meanwhile, the younger and smaller of the Associations in my community have already met with Ristok Cacao as of yesterday morning. We had the opportunity to sit in on this meeting and also talk with the Ristok representative afterwards, Eithel Estrada, who coincidentally was until recently working for ACDI/VOCA. He seems like a good guy and I believe he has the best interests of the farmers in mind, promising to hold training sessions with farmers in their community to teach them more about Cacao maintenance.

Immediately afterwards, the young Association had a more difficult meeting. In order to sell to Ristok Cacao, they've joined a Cooperative of ten farmers associations from the area surrounding El Empalme. They want to rent a central location in El Empalme from where they can coordinate transportation of Cacao to Ristok. They decided to rent space from the Association 30 de Junio, which worked with a Peace Corps couple in the 90s to develop a highly successful pig operation and Pig feed processing center. Initially 30 de Junio wanted them to pay $1500 per month and this new Coop couldn't afford more than $300 dollars per month. Finally they decided to meet at $400 per month with some conditions about selling corn to 30 de Junio's Feed processing facility. While it seems like this new Coop won the negotiation, $400 per month is quite a leap of faith since the Ristok deal isn't 100% in place yet. Nevertheless it's an exciting time and I wish them all the best.

I felt at a loss for words during the meeting. Technically I'm an Agribusiness Engineer and I ought to be able to crunch the numbers and help with negotiation theorizing a little bit, but coming in so abruptly to the deal I felt like I didn't have enough information nor speaking ability to help at all.

This afternoon we have a meeting with the larger Association where we'll introduce ourselves and outline the meeting we had on Friday with Julio Quiroz of ACDI/VOCA and explain the Ristok deal to the best of our ability. Exciting times!

We’ve had a rocky start to our two years in Ecuador. On Wednesday last week we brought our entire packed luggage to the training center at 8 a.m. Everyone was dressed up for the swearing in ceremony, which had to take place there since Ambassador Hodges had recently departed the country and her house was unavailable. The swearing in ceremony was brief but good, with speeches from Jeanette, Parmer, the acting Ambassador, and two of our own: Sean McDonald from Natural Resources and Heather Weeks from Sustainable Agriculture. Afterwards, some folks changed, others just grabbed their bags and boarded the shuttles bound for which ever bus terminal they needed. I boarded the shuttle for Quitumbe, Quito’s southern bus terminal. Stacie, Helen, and Tommy were on board as well and when we got there the four of us got tickets for Quevedo. Tommy had never been to his site before, but it was supposedly close to our own.

The bus was an hour late, and our bags barely fit underneath, let alone on our backs. As we descended the mountain for Santo Domingo the air began to get hotter and pretty soon everyone had their windows open, even the Ecuadorians! We stopped for lunch around three and had trouble being served. By the time we got our food almost everyone was back on the bus and the driver was honking at us pretty soon. We passed through Santo Domingo and arrived in Quevedo at about 6:30pm. We hustled our packs across the terminal and were directed towards the El Empalme bus we sought. Long story short we made it to our site by about 8pm.

The first few days were quite relaxing. Since we came in just in time for holy week, we participated in a procession from one end of our community to the community church. On the way we stopped at the entrances to nine or so houses where tables had been set up to mark the Stations of the Cross. By the time the service was over, we had almost picked up the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary’s in Spanish. I decided to fast again from Friday after breakfast to Sunday morning. I had heard that it was not uncommon many years ago here for Catholics to fast during this time as well, but they did allow themselves to eat bread. As such I decided to go with the local tradition and only eat bread and water on Friday and Saturday.

On Sunday we went into town with our host mother, Olga, and Laura the current PCV in our site. The church service was long but enjoyable. We sang a few energetic songs including a Spanish version of Battle Hymn of the Republic. I did miss singing the traditional Easter hymns like, “Up from the Grave He Arose” and, “Because He Lives” and so I sang them while walking around in the afternoon. After we got back to our site after church, Stacie, Laura, and Kendra (another volunteer near us) suited up to play with the women’s soccer team against a rival team from El Empalme. Stacie was not allowed to play the first match on account of there being too many gringas on one team. The intermission was a pickup game amongst the men. I wasn’t dressed for sports so I didn’t participate, and I haven’t worked up the courage to do so yet either, “Indoor” as they call it, is a totally different game than the soccer I’m used to: the court is much smaller and concrete, the goals and ball are a lot smaller too, plus the ball is weighted so it doesn’t bounce and can’t be booted as far. The resulting game is super fast paced and more about ball handling and passing than about carrying or booting the ball.

While the guys were playing I got a call from our friend Helen whose site is about 20 minutes from ours and south of El Empalme. She sounded really shaken up and had called to tell me that her counterpart had been shot in the head! We were completely shocked to hear the news after hearing about how great of a man he was from her on the way back from our site visits. She was so excited to work with him and the projects he had started. When we ended the conversation I ran to tell Stacie and Kendra who were sitting on the bench, it seemed like everything was up in the air.

The next day Stacie, Laura, Don Dario (my counterpart) and I went to the funeral where we were able to talk with Helen. When Freddy showed up to whisk her away it was at the disagreement of us all, especially since he wanted her to take all of her bags out during the funeral. She did participate in the procession before Freddy took us all back to San Francisco del Congo for the night. We cooked a pasta dinner and stayed up late talking long after the power was knocked out by a powerful thunderstorm. The next morning Helen took the bus to Quito where she talked with our program manager, security coordinator, and country director about the possibility of returning to her site and other possibilities.

All of this had us quite shaken up as well and worried about our own safety. Especially since according to Ecuadorians and Americans alike, Helen and Stacie are identical twins, I was quite on edge after Stacie woke up from a nightmare about being shot at in El Empalme (nothing to do with the malaria meds of course). Anyway, I called Dana in the Peace Corps office and made a big stink, but I've calmed down a bit since. We've decided to stay in our site as long as nothing dangerous happens in our neck of the corn fields.

Here are two albums:

This album has pictures from the Site placement ceremony, the Soccer tournament, and the motocross rally.

This album has pictures from my tech trip to southern Guayas to learn about Cacao from the ACDI/VOCA engineers.

Both albums have comments on the majority of picture so you'll be able to follow along.

This is Stacie's blog.

Love y'all!

So it’s official. Stacie and I are headed to San Francisco del Congo, a town of 400 people in the middle of the coastal valley. The farmers of San Fco. del Congo primarily grow corn, but in recent years due to over exploitation of the soil, poorer harvests and plagues, and their inability to cultivate anything else during the dry season, they’ve become interested in Cacao production. ACDI/VOCA is assisting the community and several others in the region in this endeavor.

It sounds like a lot of work and I’m excited to get started. We leave today (17 March 2011) at 8 am from parque central de Tumbaco. From there we’ll ride one or two busses to the Quitumbe bus terminal south of Quito. From their we’ll catch a bus to Quevedo, 5 hours – the regional hub and about 45 minutes from our site. Quevedo is also probably the closest town you’ll be able to see on Google Maps. Laura Howland, the PCV currently at our site will pick us up along with Helen Skiba at the Quevedo bus terminal and accompany each one of us to our sites nearby.-- --When we got into Quevedo, we were met in the terminal by Laura and Ross. Ross is a natural resources volunteer who works in the Municipio office in El Empalme. He seemed pretty excited about a reforestation project they have going. We rode with them to El Empalme where we had some food at a Chinese restaurant (El Empalme is known for its better than average Chinese food, although the restaurant we went to was not). Before leaving with Laura for San Francisco del Congo we had a milkshake from the best Batido stand in El Empalme according to Ross, but to us our shake tasted a bit like queso fresco.

San Francisco del Congo is on a dirt road about 20 minutes from town on the way towards Portoviejo. Because the road to Portoviejo is so bad, what might normally take 3 hours takes about 5; thus Ross recommended going all the way back up to Santo Domingo if Portoviejo is our destination. The Solicitud said there were 400 inhabitants of San Francisco del Congo, but it’s hard to draw the line between El Congo (the community on the main road) and San Francisco and another Congo further in on the same road. I’d say there are about 70 families stretched out along 7 km of road.

At the community center, where my official counterpart lives, they have a concrete soccer field, a one room school house, a small tienda that sells pre-packaged basic foodstuffs, a shelter for community meetings, and two gardens in disrepair. For the week, we stayed with my counterpart, Dario Bravo, and his wife Esperanza. After hearing about some of the other volunteers’ experiences, it seems like we were able to meet with a lot more community members. This was mostly because we were shadowing Laura a lot of the time, but also because Dario and Esperanza didn’t mind bringing us along when they went to visit their friends.

After taking some time to unwind and reflect on the visit, I’ve realized that the culture shock was pretty severe. Imagine going in to a community you’ve never seen before and don’t know anything about except that you’re supposed to spend the next two years there and help them solve some of their problems. Then imagine that you were expecting to hear Spanish, or a language you’re relatively comfortable with, and when you got there you couldn’t understand anyone. Then imagine that it’s swelteringly hot and none of the problems seem to have easy solutions if any solutions at all. Then imagine that you realize these corn farmers are in many ways like farmers of the state you grew up in who still haven’t found answers to the problems faced by the community you’ve come to. If you can imagine all that, you might have an idea of the type of anxiety I was feeling during my site visit week in San Francisco del Congo.

It’s so good to be back in Tumbaco, only for the reason that I seriously need some time to contemplate the dire straits faced by my new community and to do some research on corn, cacao, soil health, and monopsonies. To be a bit more specific about the dire straits mentioned above. The farmers of SF del Congo own on average 5 hectares (about 12.5 acres). On this land they grow mostly corn for sale, but also rice and platano for consumption. A few farmers have planted Cacao trees on any free space they had, but they are far from established in this regard. Every year in December the farmers take out a 2000 dollar loan to buy hybrid corn seed, herbicides, pesticides, and government subsidized Urea pellets (46%N). These loans are issued by the government, so interest rates are modest, 5%, but they only take the loans out for six months, meaning they have very little time after the harvest in order to pay back their loan and interest. If anything goes wrong during the four month growing season, such as droughts, plagues, or plummeting soil fertility (all of which are happening more frequently year after year), they have to find some way to pay back the loan on time anyway. Usually this involves selling any pigs they may have been raising regardless of weight, and chickens for that matter as well. On top of all this, the other 8 months of the year are extremely dry making it nearly impossible to grow or harvest anything without an irrigation system. SF del Congo is not located near any river, but they have dug a 100 meter well to be used for irrigation. The problem with this is that in order to buy all the remaining materials needed for constructing irrigation systems on the lands of participating farmers, each farmer would have to take out an additional 3000 dollar loan that would have to be paid back within a year.

Equally detrimental, though not from an economics point of view is the lack of cooperation among community members and the prevalence of feuds, gossip, and accusations of corruption within the community. Divisions within the community have undermined the community garden and are threatening the Community bank, Beekeeping, and Irrigation projects; they also pose a significant challenge to any projects Stacie and I might consider introducing.

We have a month left of training and so much to consider before we return to SF del Congo. I’m still excited to get started, and now with knowing what I’m up against, I’m doing everything I can to get a head start. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

As always, consider reading Stacie’s blog at http://stacieconstantian.blogspot.com

Our next excursion is our Site Visits and that means going to see the place where we will stay FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS. As you can imagine, there are a lot of questions flying around at the moment, especially since they’re not going to tell us our sites officially until Wednesday, THE DAY BEFORE WE GO THERE. Thus we started grilling the Technical trainers during the Tech trips last week.

Stacie and I utilized a divide and conquer strategy to great success (on different tech trips we asked different questions to Freddy and Eduardo respectively and then traded information daily so as to ask more pointed questions). As of now I am more knowledgeable of the details and exact location of my site and more confident in the validity of this information than many of the other volunteers. We also managed to get a fair bit of information about the site locations of the other volunteers using this strategy, but of course that information wasn’t our first priority; many people were asking questions to other volunteers while only a few were getting new information from the tech trainers.

Everyone is frustrated with the site placement process but for different reasons. Some people wish everyone would just stop talking about it and wait. Others wish they would tell us about all the sites so we could have a better understanding with which to make opinions. Even others wish they were allowed to give some input into the process or given a choice of sites. Often I’ll start talking about site with someone and we’ll happily share all that we’ve heard about who’s going where, but eventually we get tired of talking about it and frustrated that there isn’t any concrete information.

I heard of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan Friday morning at breakfast. We watched the footage on CNN while we ate and turned on the TV as soon as we got to the training center. We were all preoccupied about the predicted tsunamis that were projected to hit the west coast of North and South America later in the day. The Peace Corps office initiated the first phase of the Emergency Action Plan, “Standfast,” and we were not allowed to leave Tumbaco until yesterday afternoon. The point of the Standfast phase is to determine the whereabouts of all the Peace Corps workers in the country and move the ones who are in danger. We of course were not in danger, but the Standfast order keeps us from considering a beach vacation (which we weren’t).

I sincerely hope they are able to control the potential nuclear meltdown on their hands; that would be a far worse tragedy I think. I wonder what another meltdown would do politically for nuclear power supporters. Nothing good I imagine. I just hope they don’t conflate Uranium reactors with Thorium reactors, because it’s impossible for a Thorium reactor to melt down. Either way, though, Japan can’t sustain itself with coal and probably not with wind or solar either… so Thorium might have a chance.

Tomorrow is the second of 3 LPIs, Language Proficiency Interviews, we will have during training. I came in at Intermedio Medio. I’m hoping to be at Intermedio Alto by this point, but my language class has just been review. That, however, is irrelevant because the LPI tests speaking ability and confidence rather than how much you know.

Today we’re going to cook lunch for the family. On the menu: Pizza, steamed spinach, and some dessert item TBD.

Don’t forget to check out Stacie’s blog at http://stacieconstantian.blogspot.com

Last week Sunday at 7:30 in the morning, Stacie walked with me down to the Parque Central of Tumbaco where I met with my group of 11 for our first tech trip. I was on my way to El Tesoro, a small village in the southern Oriente or Jungle. Stacie waved goodbye and returned home since her group didn’t leave until the next morning.

The bus ride was ten hours long and involved three buses. On the plus side, We almost all the way to Riobamba in the Sierra, so we saw many beautiful mountains and volcanos.

Here is a picture from the bus of Tungaragua, the extremely active volcano we’re not allowed to linger around. We had to drive through Baños to get to El Tesoro, though, so we had to drive right past it.Obviously the rivers are a lot bigger here in the Jungle.

Here’s a picture of one we crossed on our way to Sucua (the town we stayed in while working in El Tesoro). If you squint hard you can see a tiny suspension bridge stretching from the buildings on the left all the way across the river.

Once we got into Sucua, we found a place for dinner. Morgan and I had Chinese and it was surprisingly not that bad; it even came with fries! That was it for the first day. The five guys on the trip shared a hotel room that doubled as a sauna.

Bright and early the next morning we met with the Mayor of Sucua to hear about what happens at the Municipio and how he supports the businesses of the people of the community. We also gave him a written request for 10 sacks of humus from the Municipal worm composting facility for a project we would work on later in the week. Then we went shopping at the open market for some fruit to dry. I bought Claudias, which are kind of like plums but yellow and sourer. When we got to El Tesoro, we were introduced to a representative from MAGAP, an organization that supports agriculture, stock breeding, and aquaculture. He gave us a lengthy talk on different types of pasture grasses and their pros and cons as far as grazing cattle are concerned (stock breeding and cattle raising is the region’s most profitable enterprise).

The farmer across the street was happy to show us the different types of grasses as well as the crops he is growing on his integrated farm.

Here we have a decorative variety of plantain.

We headed back to the community center to dry our fruit in the very large dryer.

Afterwards, Eddy, a current Agricultural volunteer in the nearby area, gave a charla (a talk) on forming community organizations and the role of the volunteer therein.

That night, back at the hotel in Sucua, we decided to climb up on the roof for a stellar view of the surrounding mountains.

Bright and early the next morning we were back at the community center where Dan Ward found this wonderful moth to nom on.

The first order of business on day three was to learn how to podar, or prune Cacao trees.

Here’s a picture of a well groomed and healthy Cacao tree. We also learned specific tricks for grafting cacao. Here in the jungle they plant the national/amazonic/fine aroma Cacao as a root system and then craft on a hybrid named CCN-51 because it produces more quantity (albeit at the expense of quality). Stacie tells me that this hybrid was actually invented at the fruit tree nursery we visited a week and a half ago.

Then I climbed a tree and took this picture of Rip Winkle AKA Don Ripio

From the tree I also took this picture of the Eastern Mountains. That ridge is all that separates El Tesoro and Sucua from the Amazon basin, even though they’re technically in the Amazon watershed.

At this farm they’ve developed a method of fermentation different from the one Tony and I saw in use at the Cacao cooperative in Calceta, Manabi. Here they have three fermenting chambers stacked like stairs. This enables them to turn the cacao easily from upper to lower boxes by simply raking the contents down a level. After the fermented Cacao reaches the bottom box, it is shoveled out onto the drying floor you can see in the background. The drying floor is an elevated wood floor sheltered by a raised roof of wood and plastic that keeps the rain off but both increases the temperature below and increases the airflow.

In the afternoon we went to a resort down the road for lunch. The owner worked with a Peace Corps Volunteer around 15 years ago to divert a small stream and start a tilapia farm. He now has 15 ponds, a pool, restaurant, two bars, a pet taper, and is likely set for the rest of his life. We will all be held to this standard…

Here’s the owner teaching us how to sex tilapia. You have to separate them at a certain age so you can engorden the males a lot faster. The females are also good to eat, but they fatten up slower because they reproduce every 6 months.

These pools flow out of the larger lagoon where they raise tilapia and small mouth bass (bocachica) fingerlings.

Here’s about half of that lagoon with a suspension bridge and balsas for fun and games.

To harvest Tilapia, they simply drag a net across the pond. They don’t allow the fish to grow large than one pound each because people try to pay the same for larger fish as they do for one pound fish.

I jumped in to help when it was the trainees’ turn to try.

We all got really muddy, but it was worth it for the experience.

Here are two of the owner’s exotic pets, an ostrich and a taper.

Justin, another current volunteer gave a quick charla about soil health at the end of the day before we cleaned up and relaxed in the pool.

Wednesday morning our first stop was the Sucua dump. They have quite an extensive worm composting operation for the main reason of not wanting to fill up the land fill as fast as they would otherwise. They let the organics sit in a big pile away from the operation and allow it to decompose a bit before they put it into the worm beds. This pile attracts all kinds of vultures, rats and ants, but after a bit of decomposition, it becomes unappealing to this group and its safe to put in the worm beds. If they were to put it directly into the worm beds, ants, rats, and vultures would come in and eat the worms in addition to the garbage.

Much of the best organic material comes from the open market. Rotten fruit and vegetables are collected and stirred into the worm beds.Here Helen and Bethany are stirring some market waste into one of the worm beds.

By far the hardest part of the worm composting operation is convincing the population to separate their organics. The Municipio has tried everything and nothing seems to work. Thus, at the end of the whole process, when they lay the fertilizer generated by these worms out to dry, they have to walk through and pick out the little bits of plastic bags, pill containers, bottle caps, etc.

The worm beds also need to be kept moist, so they are irrigated regularly. Excess water percolates through the organic material and nutrients are leached from the soil. Instead of letting these leached nutrients go to waste, the run-off (escurrimiento) is collected in basins like this and bottled for use as a liquid organic fertilizer extremely high in nutrients (a foliage spray).

None of this smells by the way because the decomposition process is regulated by frequent stirring and the addition of lime to avoid anerobic decomposition which causes most trash heaps to smell.

We took the ten bags of humus we requested of the Mayor on Monday and left for the El Tesoro elementary school.

We divided the garden into rows (huachos/surcos) and we divided our group into smaller groups. My group was paired with the seventh grade. Together we built three pretty great beds and planted lots of vegetables.

Here’s an after shot of most of the garden. We did this work between eleven and 12:30 and the sun was incredibly strong. Almost everyone got burned and the trainers promised we’d be in the shade the rest of the afternoon.

When we got back to the community center, the fruit dryer was done doing its thing. Here are three screens full of dried pineapple, yum! Megan, a current volunteer, is clearly excited.

To complete the value added process, we bagged and sealed all of the dried fruit to sell at the value added fair.

Next up it was time to make some biol, or liquid organic fertilizer. This was on if Miguel’s projects here in El Tesoro and he is very proud of it. Here’s why. With the set up they’ve built, twenty 10,000, liter tanks, they can brew about 100,000 liters of biol a year and sell it for two dollars a liter if they can expand their market. That’s a possible gross income of $200,000 annually, and the inputs are cheap, interchangeable, and readily available.

Here’s the set up. Initial fermentation takes place in the top row. The product is filtered through cheese cloth after 50 days (70 days in cooler climates), and fills the second row of receptacles. From there they bottle and sell the biol to be used in farms in the area as a foliage spray. They can also use this set up to brew a papaya, garlic, and chili pepper concoction that is an organic pest deterrent. Pretty cool.

Biol, in case you were wondering, is made from a mixture of pig manure, leguminous weeds, molasses, ash, rock phosphate, lime, and yeast (or another source of micro organisms). The above ingredients are mixed and then shoveled into 8 or so 100 lbs. sacks. A large rock is placed in each to keep them from floating, and then they are tied off and dumped into the blue jugs where they steep like giant poop tea bags in a mixture of 8 liters of milk and water (up to the top).

The jugs are sealed and the fermentation process begins. As with beer, they use a bubbler to make sure air can go out but not in.

On our last day in El Tesoro we saw the chicken, pig, and guinea pig operations.

In the afternoon we made a compost heap. On the right is an old compost heap that has been converted into humus. On the left we’re layering freshly cut leafy greens with pig manure, dried leaves, ashes, sawdust, and handfuls of lime (using lime here is common because constant rainfall makes for very acidic soils).

The bamboo columns are to help with aeration. To finish the pile, we covered the whole thing with saw dust to keep it from drying out. Black plastic would have worked as well. This pile will be humus in 15 to 20 days because we intentionally structured the pile to decompose quickly and because of the heat and humidity here in the jungle.

We returned to Macas, the provincial capital, the next day and had some great chicken and bowtie pasta with a tomato alfredo sauce. The vegetarians got eggplant parmesan. A few of us stayed up late with a handful of current volunteers just chatting. Yesterday we returned to Tumbaco.

So much time has passed since my last post, oh my gosh!

First order of business: pictures say 1000 words so check out the pictures Stacie just posted on her blog

Also, here are my pictures:

Vivero de Arboles Frutales

Climbing Ilalo

Sorry for being a bad blogger, Second, Third, and Fourth orders of business will have to come later.

Here´s Rolls 119 and 120

Roll 119

Roll 119 is pictures of our trip to Ecuador and some of the things we´ve seen since being here. The last few are of the training center

Roll 120

Roll120 is pictures of the training center and some of the things we saw on our visit to the organic farm which I wrote about in the previous blog.

12 Febrero 2011

Dear Friends and Family,

Today is our tenth day in Ecuador and it already feels like its been so long! The coolest experience so far was our field trip to a Finca Integral, or integrated (read: permaculture) organic farm nearby. We've moved in with our host family, gotten vaccinated for Typhoid and Rabbies, been interviewed for Spanish speaking ability and Agricultural knowhow, and started our intensive Spanish immersion classes.

At the farm we did a lot of cool stuff. First, a long lecture from Pacho, a highly educated Anthropoligist who was ultimately frustrated with the pacification of the United State's higher education system. He and his wife sold their house and car to buy 10 acres of farmland outside Tumbaco (where we are living) and turn it into a highly productive and sustainable organic farm. It's taken 25 years, but they now have the best soil I've ever seen and incredible yields; all without purchasing any soil additives or -cides of various stripes.

We divided into groups and did 30 minute rotations around the farm. First, I went to harvest algae from a reservoir they have constructed that doubles as a gravity irrigation system. The algae is ridiculously rich in Nitrogen and can be mixed with compost or side dressed in the fields. The algae was 2 inches thick and covered the whole surface of the reservior. Our guides dropped a small telephone pole in one side and through connected ropes across the reservoir to us. We pull it over and thus skimmed some algae off the top.

Next we weeded an onion patch and learned about how the use some weeds to encourage pest control and Nitrogen fixing. After planting broccoli, the plants are weeded carefully until they are large enough to out compete weeds for nutrients and water. Then, the farmers actually plant two types of weeds in between the rows of Broccoli. One weed is leguminous and fixes Nitrogen into the soil. The other encouraged the proliferation of microorganisms that unlock phosphorous from the soil. After harvesting the broccoli. these two weed types are allowed to continue growing in order to maintain good soil structure and prevent erosion.

Then it was time for lunch, so I missed stirring the compost pile, which was more like a compost barrier ( 4 feet tall and about 40 feet long). Everything we ate for lunch was produced on the farm: We had a peanut and quinoa soup with potatoes and carrots mixed in; then we had a large greens salad with home maid oil and vinegar dressing and our choice of meat or vegetable lasagna; Caprese salad on the side (made with queso blanco in lieu of mozzarella); for dessert we had a lovely coconut flan.

After lunch we saw the cow stables where the cows piss on saw dust, which is later sturred into the compost to preserve the uria. The cow pies are also stirred into the compost because of their high potassium content. One cow poops enough in a year to keep one hectare fertilized (it would take the poop from 100 guinea pigs to do the same). These stats are not a topic of interest to agricultural engineers in the Universities, according to Pacho, but are of immense importance to local farmers.

We saw a large green house where organic tomatoes were being grown en masse. They plant basil amongst the tomato plants to effectively ward off cut worms. Tomatoes and bell peppers are difficult to grow organically, so they fetch double the price of those conventionally grown at the market.

Second order of Business: Host family.

We moved in to the house of Ephrahim and Mercedes who are in their 60s and run a convenience store out of their house. They live on the main road out of Tumbaco and are right across the street from the bus stop where we catch the bus to the Peace Corps training center every morning M-Sat. This makes getting to training pretty convenient, but the downtown area with the internet cafes is a little far away.

Most of the week Ephrahim is at their farm in the east and returns on Saturday mornings. Thus, its just us and Mercedes most of the time. Their children do live near by though, and come over from time to time. Milton is about to open a fruit store down the street for which there will be a DJ and possibly wine (some things they just do better here I guess!). Lucia lives a little further away, but still walkable. She is a geographer and cartographer who does contract work for provincial governments. Her specialty is GIS mapping of watersheds, very cool. She and her husband got marred February 29th of last year so I think we're going to have a party for that too.

During the week, we catch the bus around 7:30 in the morning and hang around the training center grounds until 8:30 when classes start. Usually the Natural Resource Conservation (NRC) people and us Ag people are lumped together at the beginning of the day and then separated out later on. Classes so far have been based on the following subjects: Safety and Security, Health and Wellbeing, Language and Culture, and for Agriculuture volunteers, Food Security.

We found out from a group of three Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) who are at the end of their service that our group will be the last of Agricultural volunteers in Ecuador. Instead there will be "Food Security" volunteers who will be lumped in with Health volunteers. The reason being is the difficulty in finding qualified Ag Business volunteers (they asked for 15 and got 5) and the divergence between what the community expects of Ag volunteers (highly trained experts who will help them enter the export market) and what they actually get (Liberal Arts graduates).

Other information from these PCVs has been tremendously helpful. They're starting a book club for all of the interns with books they tell us they should have read before they started. It's great to be learning from their experience as well as from the facilitator staff.

I'm really enjoying everything here. The food is as great as it is predictable; it's surprisingly satisfying to be on a regular diet. I got to play soccer yesterday, which was a hoot. I scored a goal! Unfortunately the locals and the altituded kicked all of our trainee butts even though the field was a quarter the size of a normal field.

There's a nice bike path that runs from the training center back into town and on nice days, many of the volunteers choose to walk home. Some of my pictures are from these walks.

Hopefully this blog has links for photos posted periodically or all at once. If not, its because Internet access is not a birthright here as it is quickly becoming back in the EE.UU. Please keep in mind that this is our job now, and though we are studying, we're not studying abroad. We're well protected and we're enjoying ourselves. I hope you all are doing the same!

Much Love.

P.S. Check out Stacie's blog at http://stacieconstantian.blogspot.com

Dear everyone,

Time to stop worrying in case you were! I'm here in Ecuador and the Peace Corps has been there from the very beginning. The moment we landed they were there to hand out name tags and usher us through the priority customs lines and to our bus. I forgot to pull out my razor and toothpaste before being separated from my checked bags again, but at least I remembered my towel.

After being welcomed at the San Patricio retreat center (Peace Corps is renting it for two days) we sat down for a nice meal. The room was simple with two beds, a desk, small bathroom and a porch. Pictures to come later.

I think breakfast was better than dinner: fresh rolls and scrambled eggs with tomatoes. They had tasty juice, still not sure what kind of fruit it was though.

We rode the bus to Tumbaco where the training center is located. That's where we'll be learning practical skills, Spanish and Culture for the next three months. Tomorrow we meet our host families and move in with them! Many people are nervous, I am too because I'm not sure my Spanish will kick in right away and I haven't shaved...

Today's schedule had a lot of sitting and listening to presentations which were all informative and all in English. I can't wait to start getting everything in Spanish, I guess that starts tomorrow. I got immunized today for Typhoid and Rabies, which is good. I felt much more comfortable around the stray dogs after that.

Lunch was catered and really great. Marinated chicken breast with rice and steamed vegetables. Someone even found a bottle of Aji! The pineapple flan for dessert was delish. The after lunch presentations I remember more distinctly. A diplomatic security officer came to tell us how dangerous Ecuador is for the unassuming American and the stories he told us were enough to make many of us sweat.

Then they broke up the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Conservation groups after that and we had our individual orientations where they talked about problems with nutrition and integration with regional markets. They told us more than half of us will be assigned to the southern coastal region where as in the past the majority of AG volunteers were assigned in the mountains. Still nothing definite about where exactly each of us is assigned.

We also took an 80 question Spanish pre-test today that was pretty tough with a lot of subjunctive, conditional, and por y para questions. I hope I did well, the oral test is next week after we've had some time with our host families. Thank goodness!

I feel incredibly blessed to be serving here in Ecuador, things keep on getting better and better.

So remember that soul crushing storm that my fellow PCTs are likely trying to fly through right now?

Well, we were blessed to have made it through unscathed with only one change of flights.

Here's how things happened: I woke up at 5 AM yesterday, made some coffee, checked the road conditions and then our flight statuses. Second flight cancelled so I followed Peace Corps protocol and called the SATO off hours number. The informed me that American Airlines had already rescheduled my flight from Chicago to DC for about an hour later.

According to the Weather channel, which we had been watching non stop the previous day, Chicago was about to get slammed with up to two feet of snow. Bummer, BUT it wasn't supposed to start until 3 pm yesterday, and my new flight departure time of 1:40pm, I figure we had a chance. Nevertheless, all the freaking out that was happening on all the news and the weather channels made it seem like the storm would be arriving much sooner than it did.

Gary and I shoveled the driveway (we must have gotten about 10 inches of light and fluffy snow total) and we started out about 6:10am.

Road conditions were horrible and the sky was pitch black, as was the ice on the road. From Fairmont all the way to Albert Lea there were two parallel stripes of black ice where one's tires usually tread such that you could see the reflection of the tail light of the car in front of you clearly in the ice.

By straddling the left of the two ice tracks, Gary was able to maintain a bit of traction. That meant, however, that our left tires were on the dotted line and whenever one of the five (5) double length UPS semi trucks wanted to pass us, things got a bit dicey.

Past Albert Lea the sun came up (albeit through the clouds), and the black ice had mysteriously disappeared.

We were only a few minutes late to meet my mom, Grandma, Grandpa, and Bart at the Caribou coffee south or Rochester. We had some breakfast and said our goodbyes to Grandma and Grandpa. In two cars we left for the Rochester Airport.

At the check in desk, we found out some surprising news! Only Stacie's itinerary had been changed! My itinerary had me sitting in the Rochester airport until 1:15pm when I would fly to Chicago for a connecting flight that had already been cancelled. Um, excuse me? Luckily they were able to change my itinerary right there and print us off new boarding passes. Stacie even got priority boarding for our second flight!

We said our goodbyes to my mom and Bart and Stacie's parents and then we easily passed through Rochester's minimum security checkpoint and on to our puddle jumper.

Less than half of the seats were taken and we had a little trouble taking off since the winds (normally from the west) were coming from the NNE at 18mph. Take off was a little shaky.

Landing was shaky to say the least. We began our approach to Chicago after a 20 minute holding pattern. Only after our landing gear was down did we finally emerge from the clouds. The wind gusts were so bad everyone on the plane was whooping as the back of the plane swung dramatically back and forth as we approached the runway. Somehow the pilot was able to get us onto the tarmac and I made sure to congratulate him on my way off the plane.

The Chicago airport was busy and the arrival/departure boards were a joke. Almost every single flight on every single screen had a big red CANCELLED next to it. Some how, ours wasn't. We had some lunch in the food court and then sat down to wait for our 1:35pm flight.

I was going through the Spanish/English Bible Mom and Bart gave us and writing down words I didn't know. A young boy from a family of five sitting near by came over after seeing our Spanish dictionaries and asked us if we were going to Costa Rica. We explained to him our destination, and then got into a conversation with his mother and father. The have been living in Costa Rica for the past 8 years and were on their way back from visiting friends and family in the Chicago area. They work with youth ministries. I forgot to ask what denomination.

That Priority Boarding that Stacie got for this flight back at the Rochester airport came in handy. She was able to get on before everyone and make sure we got our bags in the overhead compartments before they filled up, which they did just as I was boarding.

We sat next to a Indian man from Chicago who had some business meetings to attend in the DC area. We had an interesting conversation with him about his journey back to India where he married a woman after only knowing her 40 days. It was interesting to hear how he was coming to grips with the whole thing and trying to get his wife citizenship in the US.

I did not expect our bags to weigh as much as they did. Oh my gosh. After Stacie and I switched duffel bags, I believe I nearly doubled my weight. Using my mom's term, we schlepped all of our stuff and ourselves onto the metro and rode to the L'Enfant Metro stop where Carol picked us up.

We said goodbye to everyone before they went to work/school this morning. Now we're just waiting for our taxi to the Georgetown Holiday Inn where the staging is supposed to happen. No doubt with a few less participants than expected.

Our Peace Corps Staging representative promised us that they would get everyone to Ecuador eventually. We're looking forward to meeting everyone eventually as well. It will be interesting to see how many people make it to the hotel on time today.

Good luck to the rest of you!

When we arrived our poor car was covered in salt.

As were our poor bikes.

We saw many collapsed roofs on our way through Indiana.

We drove through Chicago on Sunday morning.

Before crossing into Wisconsin, we found Stacie's childhood home near Byron, Indiana. We had to snap a few photos quickly before the new owners got upset if they were watching us.

We listened to the Bears/Packers football game as we drove through Wisconsin. After crossing into Minnesota, Stacie snapped some photos of the ice pouring out of the rocks along the road.

For anyone who has driven more than 9 hours in one day, you know it's not fun. Luckily we're done for the day.

We left Silver Spring this morning at 7:30AM after some heavy duty packing. Somehow it all fit in the car, but the back wheels were noticeably lower to the ground.

Throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, instead of just getting off at the exit to a town (since the interstate highways are toll roads) the state has constructed plazas and contracted to space out to private companies for food and gas. These places are like mini malls inside, some have a souvenir shop, but usually just public bathrooms and a food court with a McDonald's, a Sbarro, Starbucks and an Au Bon Pain. We stopped first for gas, second for food, third for gas. At the third stop I checked the tire pressure.

I thought gas prices would drop as we got further away from the urban sprawl, but this was not the case. We bought gas for 3.20 and 3.15 a gallon in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but in between we saw 3.24 and 3.39 for regular unleaded. Only once we made it into Indiana around 4:30 did the price drop to 3.05 a gallon.

We've just checked into Bates Motel... I mean an American Inn just off I-80 and across the border in Michigan. We seem to be the only guests, and the parking lot was not plowed. Another disappointment was how cold the room was, I think they turned the heat on when we pulled in, so the room is not quite warm yet. Oh well, I've definitely seen worse hotels rooms, in Montanita, Ecuador, for instance.

Until next time, happy trails.

I feel totally legit now that my blog has been accepted by www.peacecorpsjournals.com

From what I've seen of this website, its a great tool. You can look at all the journals by Peace Corps Volunteers of a specific country. For Ecuador, use this link. Within the Ecuador page you can now look just at my posts using this link. You can comment directly from this website and get RSS feeds from there as well (unless I've included you in the few people receiving my posts via email, in which case syndication would be redundant).

Of course you can always get the RSS feed from my blog itself (pconstantian.blogspot.com), your choice.

I've found my RSS feed for Ecuador PCVs in general to be extremely insightful and also a good way to discover the blogs of other members of Omnibus 105 (the other Ecuador PCVs leaving on February 3rd).

Furthermore, if you are on my email list and you'd like to use the RSS feed instead (or just check my blog whenever you feel like it instead of getting each post sent to you), just let me know and I'll take you off. I promise you won't hurt my feelings.

Powered by * Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified. According to Paul Collier, author of, "The Bottom Billion," of the two fundamental principles of democracy (elections and checks & balances), only checks & balances have a positive effect on governance in developing countries. Referendums usually affect checks & balances in some way. Those just introduced by President Correa relate to checks & balances in place for the Judicial system.

Click the following to access the sent link: Ecuador president pushes for referendum - CNN.com* Get your EMAIL THIS Browser Button and use it to email content from any Web site. Click here for more information. *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/01/18/ecuador.referendum

People keep asking me, "Are you excited? Are you nervous? Are you ready?"

Here are my answers:

Are you excited?

I am super excited!! I can't wait to meet all my fellow Peace Corps Trainees and begin classes in Ecuador! Not so excited about the waking up a who knows how early and the flight down there.

Are you nervous?

Actually I'm not very nervous at all. I'm a little nervous about whether they'll let us choose the kind of malaria medicine we want to take or just give us all the same thing (please please not Lariam!). I'm also nervous about being discriminated against due to my marital status, but I'm not nervous about going.

The reason for this is that I spent last January in Ecuador and absolutely loved it. I had a fantastic time and got some great experience as well. Most of my time was spent on Finca Sarita in Manabi province. The internship was probably one of the best items on my Peace Corps resumé. Thanks so much to Professor David Schodt at St. Olaf for being my advisor! Here is the paper I wrote at the end of my trip.

Are you ready?

Almost.

I've compiled a bookmark folder that comes as close as FREE can to the books on the Peace Corps reading list. Some are full text, some are smaller articles by the same author, some are book reviews and synopsis, there's even one video! Besides, we weren't going to read the whole books list anyway, right?

TL;DR Peace Corps Reading ListBerger - The Social Construction of RealityHow to change the world: social ... - Google BooksPaul Collier on the "bottom billion" | Video on TED.com'The White Man's Burden,' by William Easterly - The New York Times Book Review - New York Timesgladwell dot com - blinkgladwell dot com - outliersgladwell dot com - the tipping pointCulture matters: How values shape human progressHawken - Blessed UnrestKidder - Mountains beyond MountainsKuhn - The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsThe true and only heaven: progress ... - Google BooksOlson - The Logic of Collective ActionSachs - Common Wealth reviewSachs - The End of PovertySen - Democracy as a Universal ValueGuzman - Review: Development as Freedom - SenBanker to the poor: micro-lending ... - Google BooksFadiman - The Spirit Catches you and You fall down: ReviewAn environmental history of Latin ... - Google Books


Peter

TBQH, I'm finding it hard to stay relevant at work. Much of my workload I've already transferred to those who will remain. I continue to assist my coworkers and volunteer when I see a short term opportunity. At home the aura of anticipation hangs around me in much the same way.

As a late graduation present, a Christmas present, and a going away present, Dad, Carol, Asa, and Ani got Stacie and I a Sony a330 DSLR camera. Here are some of the photos we've taken to practice various settings:

PHOTOS

Here is how our last week in the US is shaping up:

Read more »

A new adventure is soon to begin.

The subject of my new blog will be the sights, sounds, tastes, hikes, journeys, conversations, and experiences of 27 months as a Small Business Advisor in Rural Ecuador. On February 3rd, 2011, Stacie and I will depart with some 50+ Peace Corps Volunteers to learn about, plan, and assist on projects ranging from sustainable agriculture and animal production to health and high tech education. Vamonos Juntos!