It's not a good time to be a pig in San Francisco del Congo. I blame the tropics but then again I'm not exactly a professional hog farmer.

Two weeks ago at our Mid-Service Peace Corps conference we received a phone call from Ismael, the farmer feeding our four test pigs. Wilbur wasn't eating, he couldn't walk and his face and neck were swollen. I forewent going out that night with my friends to research possible causes, but he died the next morning before we could pinpoint it.

Five days latter, after we had arrived back at site, Rufus developed the same symptoms. At this point I had come to the conclusion that Wilbur had been bitten by a snake or a huge green poisonous caterpillar (seriously). Unfortunately Rufus started showing the same symptoms on Sunday evening and there was no way to get into town to find what we needed at the Agro-vets office....and we didn't have anything for anaphylactic shock at site (my best guess)....so I raided the Peace Corps med-kit and found some generic brand anti-histamine capsules and sprinkled the powder on his water spout. I think he must have ingested it because he slept the next day, and woke up much better (whew). I doubt that the anti-histamine was the cure, but I still felt a lot better having done something.

The next day, Snow White, our breeding sow and mother of both Wilbur and Rufus, stopped eating and drinking. The neighbors told me it was because she was mourning the death of Wilbur and that she needed a few days to process his passing. At the end of those three days she ended up aborting her litter, que headache. In light of all this bad luck Peter had to pull me away from my neighbor's house, I guess I was making quite a scene lamenting over the pigs for three days straight...somebody has to do it.

Meanwhile, down the road, our other sow was nursing a newly born litter of week old piglets. We couldn't be there for the birth, but two families pulled through and were there to deliver the piglets (at mid-night, in the middle of the pouring rain, without electricity) what champs! Ismael had to resuscitate four still-births...three of which actually pulled through. Leaving us with 9 bonito piglets.

The day after Snow White aborted her litter, my other neighbor came over to tell me that one of the newborn piglets couldn't move. After a quick diagnosis, it was easy to see it had come down with tetanus (which is rare in 7 day old female piglets). I took it home and gave it a quick check-up (above photo) I found a huge gash in it's nose packed full of mud and a temperature of 107 (102 is normal). At this point it couldn't swallow, but I tried to give it some milk by squirting it down it's throat. I kept it alive 2 days doing this every 3 hours as well as giving it penicillin and a fever-reducer, but to no avail.

Through all of this, I wonder if small-scale pig raising actually is a profitable endeavor given all these wild-card mystery diseases. Maybe they just went unnoticed to me this past year because I haven't actually raised my own pigs. The loss of a piglet represents a loss of $50, the loss of a 2 month old pig like Wilbur represents a loss of about $70. I'm realizing that pigs are very volatile investments particularly if you're only making a 5-10% profit per pig. The losses far outweigh the benefits.

We're not going to let this get us down though, we still have three healthy sows, 8 precocious piglets, and Peanut, Rufus and Janet. But we're also going to be looking into other projects to do with the families in our 4-H club. On Saturday we spent two hours with a group of 20 parents and kids brainstorming ideas for the next year. It looks like they are interested in tilapia, chickens and edible forests, so it's already looking like interesting next year of service!

Photos of our trip to Quilotoa before mid-service:

A Photo Journal of memorable people, places and events. Peace Corps Ecuador 2011-2012.

San Francisco del Congo

El Empalme, Ecuador

Old Town, Quito, Ecuador

Basilica del Voto Nacional, Quito

"Graduation" April 20th 2011

So excited to be done with training! April 20th 2011

Peter and Habibi, May 2011

Painting San Francisco 8 feet up in the air on a bamboo ladder, May 2011

Recess! May 2011

Cleaning my puppy outside of my host mom's house, June 2011

Baptism and family photo, July 2011

School Mural, July 2011

My birthday! July 2011

Birthday Party, July 2011

Flip Cup, July 2011

Puerto Lopez, Ecuador

Isla de la Plata, Ecuador

Peter and Steven, August 2011

Cock Fighting, August 2011

Jeremy's favorite piglet! September 2011

Gluing the head back on the "Muñeca" October 2011

Beekeeping

The first harvest, October 2011

Futball, October 2011

Readying the pen for the new piglets, October 2011

Madonna

Piglet #5

Monkeybars

Tires

Jungle Gym

Racing

The Fireman's Pole

Add caption

Birthday Cake!

Fiesta! November 2011

Beer and Swings

The Inauguration

Reason #2 to close the front door

Preparing for confession; first communion, November 2011

Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción, December 2011

Año Viejo, Latacunga Ecuador

Heather Weeks presents the best boxed wine in Ecuador

Latacunga, Ecuador

My favorite family! New Years 2012

Beekeeping lesson, Latacunga, January 2012

The waterfalls of La Mana, February 2012

Community Bank, February 2012

Jerry, somebody dumped her in a puddle outside of my house. March 2012

Bingo! March 2012

Kindergarten classroom, April 2012

Termites!

Feast of corn! April 2011

Face Paint

Kendra's despedida, San Francisco del Congo

My Crayons!! (Cat #2)

Reason #1 to do dishes immediately after dinner.

Twilight, San Francisco del Congo, April 17th 2012

"I have 45 students, 20 desks and one classroom."..."I can't simultaneously teach 15 kindergartners and 15 sixth graders."..."If I just had somebody to teach the kindergartners, I think I could handle the others."..."It would only be until August."..."Please."

I sat looking at the schoolteacher, trying to hide my apprehension at being asked to teach a classroom of four year olds for the next 6 months. He looked back at me pointedly, knowing full well I couldn't get out of it this time. Hanging on to the one excuse I could find I asked;

"Where would I teach them? The second schoolhouse has no roof and the old school house will collapse on top of us because of the termite damage."

"Until we raise money to build a roof on the second schoolhouse, you're going to have to use the old one."

I tried to match his gaze, "...and how exactly do we plan on raising this money?"

"Well, I've heard rumors about last year's success at raising money to build the park. So I was thinking we could do another dance and bikini.."

"I'm not participating."

"...competition."

To be fair, I knew this was coming. Which is why I had been diligent about avoiding the new teacher these past few months. He arrived last November just after we had finished building the park. I had heard rumors he had wanted us to start teaching English....so I avoided him like the plague. I knew I was doomed about two weeks ago however when he showed up unannounced and caught Peter and I red-handed teaching summer school classes in the new schoolhouse. Then, last week when he came back to enroll the students for the coming school year (which starts April 16th) and over 40 parents came to enroll 45 students (double the students from last year) I knew it was only a matter of time until he tracked me down. So I decided to make a deal with him.

"Okay, I'll teach the kindergartners...but you have to find someone else to organize the dance and bikini competition, and I'm not participating."

He looked back at me, trying to decided whether or not this was worth it. I could just hear his thoughts...would I be worth more teaching kindergartners or organizing/participating in a bikini contest? Decisions, decisions.

A little bit of background; last year a former Peace Corps Volunteer participated in the bikini competition and single handedly raised at least $500 just by agreeing to participate...not to mention she was a 6 foot tall, blonde, marathon runner.

I however have no plans on organizing or participating in any such competition, so I held his gaze..."That's the deal, what do you say?"

"Bueno."

So I spent the past week trying to make the abandoned old schoolhouse functional again. Eight hours later, I can proudly say it now resembles a classroom. Among my favorite items encountered in my cleaning frenzy; 8 empty bottles of whisky, 5 of rum, enumerable carcasses, 2 bats, 1 tarantula, 8 toads, 1 toilet seat and much more.

Before

After

Results: Week 2 of our Pig Experiment!

Starting at top left and going clockwise we have Oscar, Wilbur, Peanut and Janet.

Janet: also known as Hembra 2, is off to a good start. However, her lead cannot be attributed to a difference in feeding patterns. Although she weighed in at 30 pounds at 7 weeks of age, she is still just under the 7 week goal weight of 32-33 pounds. Janet will be a part of the control group and will be eating commercial pig feed found in El Empalme.

Oscar: Also known as Macho 2, is in second place and weighted in at 28 pounds at 7 weeks of age. Oscar will also be apart of the control group.

Wilbur: It was only three weeks ago that Wilbur was in the lead, recently however he developed a scrotal hernia due to a deep cut during castration (ahem Peter). Sources say this will not do any permanent damage however and the tissue around the hernia will harden in order to accommodate the intestines. Wilbur will be eating our home made feed.

Peanut: also known as Hembra 1. Was the runt of the litter, she was born 3 hours after the rest and has maintained her smaller size, earning her the name of Peanut. If Peanut were to have had the unfortunate luck of being born on a U.S. hogfarm, she would probably not be around today. Here, she is welcomed whole-heatedly into our pig pen and also will be eating our home made feed.



As of today, April 1st 2012 we will separate the piglets into two groups and begin feeding one group our home mixture and the other group the commercial feed. After researching the available ingredients in the El Empalme area and running them through our pig feed calculator we have arrived at a near-perfect ratio for "Iniciador" pig feed which they will continue eating for the next 2.5 weeks. We are going to control for the initial weight measurement, and measure success by the percentage of weight gained each week over total weight. That way even Peanut has an equal chance for success despite her small size! Recipe and results to follow!

Last week marked a year since we first visited the lovely recinto of San Francisco del Congo. And now that we have spent a year living here it feels like we've come full circle. Last year we arrived just before the yearly harvest and now we're approaching that time again.

Last year I couldn't appreciate the ups and downs that went into that harvest. I didn't see the farmers lining up outside of the Banco de Fomento waiting for their loans to come through so they could buy seed. I didn't see the men out in the fields planting each individual kernel by hand. I didn't see the pure joy on the faces of the farmers after they received their fist shipment of subsidized chemical fertilizer. Nor did I see the stress on the faces of the families when the rain didn't come as expected and they lost half their crop, or when the rain DID come and washed everything away. I didn't realize how tightly people were budgeting their money as they waited for their harvest. So tightly that a dollar can't be spared to catch a bus into town more than once every two weeks. Recently it's been feeling to me like everyone is holding their breath in unison and waiting until the end of May when they can breath again.

That's where we are now, waiting to breath with our community. I named this blog "When the Bottom Falls Out" because I'm seeing, and now understanding a little more, what really happens to the local economy when there is not one cent to be spared.

To being, its integral to note an important mentality that's I've encountered among the majority of the people in San Francisco del Congo. That being, their pride in their ability to farm the land on small family farms and enjoy a community/family-oriented lifestyle that has existed for generations. They enjoy the rewards of money, hard earned, through farming the land and raising animals. Earning that money is very important. So much so that I've heard people express distaste when the municipal government comes in and offers free capacitation seminars/free seeds/free chickens/free fish ponds etc. "Regalando" or gifting is stigmatized because the underlying assumption is that these people somehow need of free "help" in order to somehow improve upon their living situations. To summarize, anything FREE is bad.

So when my friend down the road came to me in private asking for help, I knew their situation must be really bad. We started chatting about the projects in the youth 4H club, which quickly led to chatting about raising pigs. At the mention of her pigs her face fell and she quickly began to tell me what's been happening. Her family hasn't been able to sell the last two batches of piglets,16 piglets in total, and consequently have been trying to keep them fed while simultaneously trying to feed her family. Selling 16 piglets roughly amounts to earnings of $800. Her family had been counting on this money to make it to the harvest in two months. A week ago they were forced to let the piglets starve and use the money they had left to feed their family. Now all their food money is gone, and they still can't sell their piglets. If their piglets die, they will not only have lost that $800, but the approximately $400 needed to keep the two sows fed. A loss of $1200 or half a years earnings.

As she was telling me this, I was calculating their losses in my head while simultaneously trying to figure out how I could help. Finally she just broke down and said she had no idea what to do; her husband couldn't find work, her daughters would be starting school in two weeks and she had no money to pay for their books or uniforms, no money for food. Her own family couldn't even spare anything for them. So I knew we were their absolute last resort. Given the communally shared feelings against any kind of charity, I also understood the shame and courage it must have taken to come ask the ignorant 20 something gringos with bad accents who really don't get it, for help.

Its at times like these where my unspoken privileges leap out and start slapping me in the face and I hate it. Everyone here knows we are privileged, even if nobody exactly understands how or why, and everyone knows we pretend like we're not. We act like we're poor like them, but we're not. We're leaving in a year, we have someplace else to go and we have the Peace Corps to put on our resume. It's not fair.

Anyway, we worked out a deal. This Sunday we have a community bank meeting, and I told her I would co-sign if she decided to take out a loan to get them through until the harvest. Unfortunately I know that everyone is in the same boat right now and I'm afraid more people will be wanting loans. If that's the case, we'll have to go from there I guess.

In the mean time, and on a lighter note. I have been having similar problems (although not as severe). One of our sows in the 4H club, Snow White, gave birth 6 weeks ago and nobody bought her piglets either, ugh! So Peter and I decided to buy four for ourselves, keep them at our neighbor's house and split the earnings with them. So if anyone wants to sponsor a pig, it's for a good cause! Peter's mom already has sponsored one, it's name is Wilbur and it has beautiful brown eyes. We've decided to make an experiment out of it and monitor their growth by feeding them different mixes of pig feed, then we'll let the community in on our secret feed recipe, hopefully to help them reduce feed costs a little, woo!

I smell a project.

January in coastal Ecuador is like perpetually standing under a flushing toilet. Well...maybe not that bad. Maybe.

We still have 5 months of monsoon season left and I'm already starting to envision myself looking like Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, with barnacles growing out of my ears and tentacles sprouting out of my chin. For now I just have to indefinitely settle with fungus on my face and arm...but I see an upgrade in the near future.

The fungus on my face has been morphing into a fish shape, which is lucky for

Peter. When it first started growing last weekend, it looked like I had

been given a black-eye, worrying my community members.

Now it's undoubtedly a fungus, and Peter is out of hot water.

Surviving in the rainy season is like playing a new strategy game. I was finally getting good at living in an endless drought. Then on New Years Day it started to sprinkle, than it started to rain, then the nightly torrential downpours began, and they still haven't stopped.

The good news is, the frogs finally moved out of our toilet. However, our gravel road has turned into a muddy lake. Our asbestos roof holds water like a sponge. The bug population has been exponentially increasing for weeks. Our clothes are never completely dry, as well as my bed. Our new bamboo porch is already rotting/only pretends to be waterproof, and once again my garden has DIED. The first time because of the drought, now because of the flooding. Soo, I have resigned myself to being an "Animals Only" Ag volunteer.

Because of the rain, we’ve had to adopt new strategies to get in and out of site while staying as dry as possible. The last bus in to El Congo now comes in two hours earlier because school is out for the year and the students no longer get out of class at 6:00pm. Meaning that if we miss that 4:30 bus, we better be prepared to get wet. Two weeks ago we missed that bus and ended up walking the two miles home at 6:30 pm, in the dark and in a torrential downpour (Consequentially, Peter’s second pair of jeans are covered in mold, and that is HARD to get out).

Most people San Francisco del Congo don’t leave much, maybe once a week for market day every Sunday. Sundays there are more buses running, usually 5 or 6 in and out. But we try to stay away from town on Sundays. The buses are usually packed full of people, roosters, chickens, eggs, bananas, coa coa beans, and corn which people sell in town. At first it was hectic in a funny sort of way (when I would see a rice sack start to squawk and creep down the aisle for example). Now all I see are people, worried that they won’t get a fair price for their goods and it makes me nervous for them. Peter and I have come down to the wire a few times with our monthly living allowance…and now I know what it’s like to make a few dollars stretch for a week or two, and it is nooot particularly fun.Edita and I planning Summer School..right after Christmas break.

Because school is now out until April, Peter and I are starting summer school classes in the community. We’re particularly worried about the students who attended class in the little one room classroom in San Francisco del Congo because they are so behind in their curriculum. The former school-teacher from Guayaquil spent most of her time doing whatever she could think of to not teach the students. Usually that meant 3 hour recesses within 4 hour class days. Anyway, we’ve been approached by several parents to teach during student vacation because the students scored too low on their end of the year exams to be able to pass into the next grade. So we’re going to give it a shot.

In other news, last weekend we met up with 6 other volunteers and went on a day hike in the cloud-forest, about an hour and half a way from our site. In order to get into the forest we had to drive through a Dole banana plantation, we drove for 30 minutes and only saw bananas.

These past two months I have finally been able to witness the other season of the Ecuadorian coastal valley, that being the rainy season. Although rain is very interesting, especially if you haven't seen it in 7 months. One thing about the impending rainy season that is particularly interesting for agricultural volunteers is watching the farmers prepare the soil in their fields for planting. Here they do it BY BURNING EVERYTHING (very bad). Either way, we have been waiting for this moment for months.

During the off-season the farmers don't do anything nearly as interesting to watch (as far as Peter and I have seen.) This year they have been installing a vast-irrigation system to water their cocoa trees (their secondary crop) as well as tending to a few rice fields in the low-lands usually for personal consumption.

Normally corn is harvested around June and July and the stalks are left in the fields until November at which point the entire field is lit up. The average farmer in our community has 5 hectares or a little over 12 acres of land. Because of the relatively large size of their land many farmers hire workers to help them with their harvesting and planting. There is one tractor we’ve seen that's passed around, it can be hired for $36/hour, but that price is extremely steep. As far as we can tell (among the farmers who can't afford to hire a tractor) none of the land has ever been turned. Since tractors are too expensive, and the land is simply too big to pay enough workers to plow the soil, farmers burn their fields year after year after year. And of course they all wait to do it at exactly the same time.

I’m not going to get into how extremely bad this is for the soil. Instead I’ve put up a few photos. The second photo is a Teca or Teak forest charred after a fire got out of control and jumped the fence around the corn field, and the third is a recently burned field behind our house.

There are evidently local rules that the farmers make among themselves. 1. It is prohibited to burn two sides of the road at the same time. 2. It’s mandatory that you dig a meter trench around the fields before you burn. 3. Someone has to be there to watch the fire (even if it’s across the field).

While the farmers have been burning and burning, we have been keeping busy with other projects. We built a porch in front of our house, probably doubling its size (there’s Peter carrying a huge bundle of palm leaves which we used for our roof).

I had the lovely task of breeding our sow Madonna…not one but two times this month. That is her in the photo, running away from the boar. (That’s about as graphic I’ll make it for the blog).

We closed our first community bank, with each member earning approximately %15 interest due to the micro-loans. We canceled out the loans and divided the money a week before Christmas in the hopes the money would be helpful in the festivities. We are starting up again on January 8th (hopefully with more members). These two photos sum up our 7 month bank very nicely, the men sitting around drinking beer and talking, while the women work hard doing all the accounting, loove it.Peter took a photo of the youth association two Saturdays ago in the little one room schoolhouse. They’re getting ready to answer a few math questions relating to record keeping…we try to keep them sharp (even if we do have to be the boring adults :)

The first week of December, the community celebrated the first communion ceremony for about 20 kids in the little chapel. With limited cameras in the community, we made sure to come and offer our help as semi-professional PCV photographers. I especially enjoyed looking at the terrified expressions on the faces of the kids right before they gave their mandatory confession to the priest before taking communion.

Finally we come to Peter passed out on our floor next to our cat. It’s the best way to cool down on those scorching hot days..We spent a few days in the city of Cuenca for Christmas; enjoyed a mid-night mass on Christmas Eve at the Catedral Metropolitana de la Inmaculada Concepción, ate a lot of American food (evidently Cuenca’s the second largest retirement community among American retiree’s living outside the U.S.), and spent a day exploring the old colonial streets.

We were really lucky to be able to stay in an apartment lent to us for a few days by a returned Peace Corps Volunteer and her husband who own an apartment in Cuenca, but spend most of their time in the United States. It was lovely! Complete with amenities we hadn't seen since being home, like a couch, microwave, washing machine, and water pressure. What more could I have wanted for Christmas?

The last day of the trip, we were able to meet Peter’s former Tíos, Forrest and Dorita for a brief visit. Forrest is American and Dortia is Ecuadorian, they’ve been married almost thirty years and have spent a lot of time between Ecuador and the United States. I enjoyed meeting them for the first time, and hearing their stories, I hope we have similar stories in thirty years!!

We took the 7 hour bus-ride back to site with our friends Whitney and Ross…I was not that happy to leave.

We spent all afternoon yesterday playing at the park with kids and testing out my new Christmas present, a FRISBEE.

Peter and I started throwing it back and forth on the soccer field and immediately we had a crowd. 2 hours later we were playing 500 with a group of 10 little boys. I ended up having to be a grinch and take it away from them while they were still playing, but I reallly wanted that frisbee for Christmas and didn't want to hunt it down later.

Happy New Year! We're celebrating with an abundance of mangos. And you know what that means, mango salsa, woo.

Since building the park last month, Peter and I have been approached by community members who want us to build them more things. Here is a list of my favorite things:

1. A swimming pool2. A roof for the unfinished school (we're actually helping with this one)3. A gym complete with work-out equipment4. A second and third rotunda next to the one we already built5. A movie theater6. A basketball court7. Another park (as in the first one isn't good enough, so just re-do it)

There are also "little things" that people ask me like, Por qué no tenemos________________? (Why don't we have_____?)

1. Césped (grass) 2. More flower beds3. More palm trees4. More benches5. More..................

You would think these questions would easy to answer, logically. For example; grass. I have no plans on planting grass. First, it hasn't rained here since June. Second, the school doesn't even have a reliable source of running water for the kids to drink. So why would I make my next project planting and irrigating grass?

The first week after the park was finished I was really on edge. So on edge that I almost couldn't make it to the park's inauguration day because I woke up with a stomach ache, most likely caused by a stage one peptic ulcer. I know this because I got one once during finals my senior year of college. So after I realized how much my stress was affecting my physical health, I stopped listening to their suggestions. Instead I started asking them to follow through with their ideas and that I would be supportive of their improvements. Since then, nothing has happened. Not one person has done anything.

Peter and I were talking about this yesterday when we were walking around El Empalme. I was thinking about all the moral support we have gotten from home, and literally none from anyone in our community. (Except during an inaugural speech that I asked my friend Jenny to give last Saturday in front of the community. That was nice.) Anyway, the lack of support from community members isn't a problem for us...just an observation. Because (thank god) this park is and has always been for the kids, and they love it.

The problem that I'm seeing stems from the fact that this park has been the closest we've ever coming to "giving" our community anything. Although it was built by everyone, we were in charge of the hard part...that being organizing people and directing their work. Because we stepped into that leadership role, we can always be blamed for anything that goes wrong, or anything that someone doesn't like. Which is understandable since gossip is the only way people communicate, and nobody wants to be the center of attention.

As far as development is concerned, one of the integral ideas behind the Peace Corps, as opposed to other development organizations is that we come, live in a community for at least two years (without money...that's key) and work with community members to address their needs. After living here for 6 months we've seen the effects of development organizations that send money and materials from external sources, give them what they want, and then leave. The aftereffects of these projects are always disappointing; community gardens given to them by the Ministry of Agriculture go to ruin, free houses built by the Ministry of Housing (ours for example) fall apart after 2 or 3 years. Tractors given by the Taiwanese embassy are never used because no one knows how to maintain them etc. And I think the most negative aftereffect of all this international gift giving, has been severe, long-term behavioral change on the part of our community members.

Rather than finding internal resources to address their needs, they are content to ask and wait for the possibility that maybe one day someone will come and give them what they want for free. Nobody lifts a finger to build something that could be given to them or maintain anything that was already given. The problem that Peter and I are facing now with this new park, and something that I've been thinking about for awhile is that the Peace Corps doesn't send money or gifts, it sends people. Essentially we are the gifts. We are the things that I despise most about development organizations. ¡Que Cognitive Disconnect!

So to get back to all the grumblings that have been going on between my community members about this park. I don't think it's because they dislike what they have. They've just seen a successful project come to fruition, and they think it could happen again if they just ask the right people. Grumbling is their way of asking...so I guess in a way, it's a compliment.

On a final note, I hope I didn't come across as pessimistic in this blog, just thoughtful. I still think the community did a kick-ass job of coming together to build a fabulous park. Here are picture of our inauguration to prove it.

The Asociacion de Jovenes Agricutlures doing some last minute sanding on the jungle -gym

before the inaugeration. Notice Paul in the bottom left, he's 13 and reallllly enthusiastic.

It may not look like much but this pot contains no less than 20 pounds of Arroz con Pollo (comparable to chicken fried rice). It's a magical dish that every mom in my community knows how to make exactly the same way. I bought 70 pounds of rice and divided it between 20 moms. On the day of the inaugeration they all brought a huge pot full of prepared food and with the help of the kids serving everyone, we fed 200 people.

Before...

The Park Project:Exactly three weeks ago today (Octuber 6th 2011) Peter and I began making plans to organize our community to build a public park in the space next to the elementary school. Generally projects such as these are not the kind of thing Peace Corps Volunteers get to do…

much less two agriculture volunteers who’ve only been living in their community six months. Fortunately we are following a previous volunteer who spent two years at our site before we arrived and this is a project we’ve been able to see through for her.

Before starting a large project such as building a park there are several considerations that have to be made beforehand. And although I’ve never built a park before anywhere else in the world…I’m going to venture to say that in Ecuador and in every other developing country there are two major hindrances that need to be addressed first, those being a lack of funding and a lack of vision.

Hindrance Number 1:

PLATAThis was the first word I learned when we arrived at San Francisco del Congo for our site visit back in March. Literally plata means “silver” but here it means cash, money or dinero. And people speak about it differently than we speak about money in the United States. Plata isn’t a taboo topic because nobody has it (in great quantities anyway)…and it’s almost ephemeral in the way in comes and goes every year. For a short time in June during the time of the harvest everyone has plata after selling their crops. Therefore June coincides with the yearly festivals, and for three weeks every community is celebrating the harvest. There are dances, soccer tournaments, carnivals, bingos, artesian fairs etc. happening everywhere. And almost as quickly as the plata arrives…it slips through fingers and once again it’s gone until the next harvest one year later.

APROVECHARThis is the second word I learned. It’s a verb that most literally means “to take advantage of” in English. And that is exactly what we Peace Corps Volunteers did last June. We aprovechar-ed as I like to say, and held a huge day-long festival to try to get our hands on the plata when we could (working hand in hand with our community members of course), and ended up $1100 dollars richer with funding for a public park.

Hindrance Number 2:

DISEÑOS (Designs)Almost immediately after raising the money for the park we went straight to the Municipio (Municipality) of our county with three boys from the youth association and asked for the help of the local government to provide us with machinery to level an area for the park, as well as park designs taking into account our area and the amount of money we had. That was in June, and to give them an idea of what we wanted we even brought some designs of our own to get them thinking. Two months later, at the end of August the designs finally arrived as well as news that they wouldn’t provide us with machinery. The park designs that were returned to us obviously had been done by someone who had not taken into account our area nor our funding, so sadly after two months of waiting we were nowhere nearer to our park.

Now that I’m thinking back on it, I realize as development workers, relying on the municipality to provide us with plans and machinery was the wrong step to take because we were doing nothing to develop the skills and the knowledge of the people within our community. So after using September to think about the next step, we finally got the ball rolling again three weeks ago.

I began by talking with the school teacher. She’s not from our community, in fact she is from Guayaquil, one of the largest cities in Ecuador and like Peter and I she has an outsider’s perspective. Which I value because as an Ecuadorian she still knows better than we do how to go about inspiring and organizing Ecuadorians (because of course there is always a culturally appropriate way of handling any situation). So after talking with her and with a few other parents, we knew exactly what needed to be done and how we were going to do it. We thought we had two months to build the park before the farmers went back to work in their fields, as it turned out we only had three weeks. This three week time frame was the starting point.

The park space right after the area was bulldozed.So three weeks ago we held our first community meeting between every parent of every single child in the community (those that we could get our hands on anyway) and outlined our three week plan.

The first step: Finding a “maestro” or master builder within the community who we could hire for one week to build the playground. We were given three names and spent the next four days tracking them down, and talking with them until we found one who didn’t think we were crazy and actually wanted to help us.

The second step: Aprovechar-ing the skills of our community members. Two weeks ago we held two successful day-long “community volunteer” days in which all the families came to clean up the new park area, raking the garbage, macheting down the overgrowth, painting hopscotch and four-square courts, hanging up a tire swing and refurbishing the old swing-set. The third step: buying materials. This step was particularly difficult. First of all, between the 50 families involved in the park project, only three had trucks. So we hired one of the fathers and his truck for a day and drove into town with a detailed list of everything we needed to buy. This did not include any of the wood. We had to worry about that separately.

The wood. I get a headache just thinking about it. First of all it was hard enough convincing the community that jungle gyms can indeed be made of wood and will last. The trick of course is treating the wood for the elements, which nobody here does. If we had bought all the wood needed to build the park we would never have been able to afford it. So with the suggestion of the families and their donations, we hired a “moto-sierrista” or chainsaw-ist for a day to come cut down at least 8 trees donated by the families and cut the trees into posts and boards. We ended up only having to pay the chainsaw-ist and all the wood was free. ($10!)The week that followed, we hired the maestro to come and work alongside five fathers every day of the week, with five new fathers working every day, over 25 men built the playground in five days. With Peter there every day too. (I was also there every day, but I promised Peter that would give them some space, due to the fact that I ended up drawing all the designs for the park and my detail-oriented nature probably would have gotten in the way…). Anyway, that said. We finally have our park! Other than a few odds and ends that need to be tied up, it’s all there. The majority of the work was done in one week thanks primarily to the families and their willingness to oblige two crazy Peace Corps Volunteers. Woo.

I could type up a list of everything they built, but I think photos will do it more justice.

Okay, one more observation before moving on to the photographs. I grew up in the United States in a relatively small town, yet we had dozens well cared for public spaces, parks, beaches, picnic grounds etc. which I visited regularly with my mom and my sister. Before living here in San Francisco del Congo and interacting daily with children who’ve never encountered a park or any sort of well-maintained public space on which they felt free to play, I never realized how much this form of play really influences us.

After the park was finished I was standing in front of it with a group of 12 kids or so and they had no idea what to do. They just stared at the monkey bars and asked me what they “should be doing”. So instead of saying anything…so they didn’t believe that the playground came with instructions…I just started playing, and they immediately followed. Within seconds they were all over everything, exploring, creating and interacting with each other in completely different ways. All I can say is, that moment made my first six months at site well worth the wait.

On to the photos.

Sanding the wood. It was a little too easy to get the students to help me, then I just realized they wanted their picture taken. At least I got about 5 minutes out of them before they went to play on the see-saw.

The monkey bars!

We decided to build a bamboo hut in between the swings and the gymnasium for shade. Right away Don Dario and Choco showed up to help out, their only condition being that we allow them to sip on their sugar cane liquor. It worked though, we got it done in one morning.

Finishing up the slide. It was the last addition to the jungle-gym,

and Peter and I had to do it since nobody else knew what to do.

We just pretended like we knew what we were doing...like so much of our

Peace Corps experience.

In addition to the bamboo and wooden structures, we built and painted a fence around the back, added 7 benches, planted several palm trees, but in a volleyball court and put in three flower beds. We still have plans to plant at least a dozen more fruit trees behind the park, but we're waiting for the rainy season to be able to do it. My hope is that everyone continues participating in the park's maintenance. That will be our next challenge,...avoiding the tragedy of the commons, and I think the only feasible way to do it will be to teach volunteerism between the community members.

Yesterday I encountered a new game that it seems Ecuadorians like to play with each other. It goes like this; insult someone over and over and over again until every shred of confidence they have in themselves is completely gone, then laugh at them for 10 minutes minimum…and when that person looks like they’re about to cry, repeat (just in case they didn’t hear you the first time).

I guess I would personally prefer to fall off a building, scrape up my entire body and have someone run up to me and pour lemon juice on my injuries, just so I would have reason on to cry and scream and point out that they’re hurting me. Because insults evidently do no harm.

On Sunday Peter and I finally returned to our community after spending almost three weeks away (10 days in the United States to attend my sister’s wedding/see friends and family, followed by one week at “Reconnect Conference” at the Peace Corps training center in Quito). Immediately it was back to business (we had to run back to back meetings with the Youth Association and Community Bank). I would have much preferred to be turning our little house into an inhabitable space…right now it only has a bed, a stove and a sink, basically we’ve been trying to survive in a cement box with an asbestos roof and 3 cans of tuna. It was also unfortunate we didn’t have electricity Sunday or Monday, but it’s not like it really mattered since the only thing we own right now that actually needs electricity is my laptop.

…Obviously I’ve been a little on edge…

So on Sunday evening Peter and I decided to go for a long walk “adentro” to get out of the cement box and let off some stress after the two meetings. On our way back a family saw us and sent out two of their kids to greet us and invite us in. So of course we acquiesced and followed them inside. I’ve learned that when an Ecuadorian invites you in, you cannot refuse…likewise when they offer you food, you cannot refuse (it’s extremely insulting if you do). So we went on it and sat down on the only two plastic chairs in the house that were situated between the chicken coop (yes inside the house) and the doorway. Since it was Sunday night the extended family was visiting and we were in the company of about 10 other people. We were immediately served first. Of course we were very gracious (which I was, since I was tired of eating tuna in my cement box)…unfortunately the only thing on the menu for the evening was pig intestine soup stuffed with rice and curdled blood.

Now, I’ve heard this is a common dish (so I wasn’t entirely unprepared), but I’ve been dreading the day that this would happen to me. I’ve also heard that families normally forgo stuffing the colon…not this time. I was served a heaping bowl full of stuffed pig colon (fairly fresh…killed only the day before). Meanwhile it was obvious to me that everybody else in the family (who at the time were sitting on the cement floor) were being served significantly less. So…I ate it, I sucked out the curdled blood and rice that was inside the colon, without actually chewing on the colon itself, and drank most of the broth. After a painful 5 minutes of eating and trying to seem thankful and happy, we had a little conversation with the family.

I knew most of the kids in the family because they were in my youth club, and as a result the parents and extended family knew us. And obviously since we knew each other so well, they had absolutely no problem sharing their opinions of us. First, they told me that their kids couldn’t understand me most of the time during my meeting earlier that day and that I should just let Peter talk more because his Spanish is better than mine anyway, and secondly he should be the one speaking more because he’s the man. I know I should be used to this by now because I hear it at least weekly from various host-mothers/community members, but it’s starting to wear on me and my patience is growing a liiiiittle thin. But I managed to show the culturally appropriate response and act grateful to them for pointing that out to me. Luckily we managed to duck out within 10 minutes of that conversation so we could finish our “relaxing” walk home and I could let off some steam(/vomit).

On Monday I scheduled a meeting with two women who have children in the youth club, so we could go over financing issues. When I arrived the women were sitting in the house with a huge coffee tin full of change and three roles of $20 bills with hot pink sticky-note hearts attached to them that stated the amount that should be in each role. After carefully counting all the money and accounting for the missing funds which they had used to pay for pig feed while I was gone, we came up with a $5 surplus, and spent the next hour trying to figure it out. During this hour I counted and recounted and added and subtracted and then recounted again etc. etc. Meanwhile the two women I was with decided this would be the best time to tell me that obviously it was all my fault that the books aren’t adding up because I don’t know how to do math, also that my Spanish is terrible (once again not as good as Peter’s/the Volunteer’s before me), I’m not learning the language fast enough/not as fast as them and that it’s my fault because I’m just not as smart as they are blah blah blah…..then they started laughing and laughing because ooh they were just so clever to know all of this. Meanwhile I was trying to concentrate on the matter at hand i.e. counting the money (which I didn’t even know existed up until this point). After I had it all settled I told them I was leaving to go look at one of our sows which had just given birth down the road…and they decided to come with me.

So down we went to the neighbor’s house to see the piglets. Luckily the sow had birthed 13 pigs (which is quite a few around here) unfortunately 3 were stillbirths. I noticed that the three stillbirths must have been carried nearly to term because they were the same size as the piglets that survived. So I observed that maybe they had died because of the stress of moving the sow into her pen only two days before she gave birth. One of the women I had come with stated that couldn’t be the reason, so I asked her why, and she said because I obviously didn’t know as much as I thought I did because of my poor language abilities. Then she asked the other women to translate what she said into English so I could understand (and obviously nobody here speaks English, so that’s impossible)…she was just saying it to be “funny”.

Anyway, I just wish my Spanish was as poor as she seemed to think, so I couldn’t understand what she was saying, unfortunately I can. So I think I might take the advice of one of the cultural Anthropologists we heard speak during training and learn how to cry on command…otherwise the insults will just keep rolling in.

Peter holding a day old piglet after I cut the tips of it's incisors this morning. Happy Peter, sad pig.

Some friends and I (from left:Luis, Elizabeth and me Stacie) at Reconnect Conference in the Peace Corps training center Tumbaco.

I took this photo a few weeks ago (the white rectangle behind the girls is the background of the mural I´m paiting). I was really impressed when the girls started cleaning up all the trash around the school and put it in that pile in front of them. What you can´t see in this photo is that after they rounded up all the trash, the teacher gave them a match and they burned it all. We don´t have anyone to collect the community´s trash, so burning is their preferred method of disposing of it. Evidently the Municipio does collect trash, which is then burned in a central location.

Here I am mixing paint to begin the mural. The teacher took advantage of my presence and left the students with Peter and I for two hours while she went next door to eat Cheetos drink Cola, and gossip about local events with the tienda owner. I was not amused.

Some of the boys standing in front of the mural about a week later. I was surprised that the boys were much more interested in learning how to paint then the girls were.

Peter helped by cutting a stencil for me (of course). I enlisted the help of a few volunteers to help me paint, and tried to paint the western hemisphere so I could see whether or not the kids knew where Ecuador was (unfortunately I´m covering it in this picture). Not surprisingly none of them could pick out Ecuador. Most students just pointed to Antarctica when I asked them where Ecuador was. A few days later we convinced the teacher to start a geography unit in class. Unfortunately the very first thing we had them memorize were the countries in Africa (53). Three days later we found out about the existance of South Sudan and had to explain to the students that Africa actually now has 54 countries. Now I don´t think they trust me anymore.

Here is a photo of some of the girls swinging on our only piece of play equipment. A broken swingset with a bamboo shoot stuck betweeen the swings to make it work. I think I mentioned briefly that the other volunteer at our site Laura Howland, organized a dance which raised $1000 for a new playground. Which we´'ll be trying to install probably for the next several months. We just have to convince the kids not to vandalize everything once its in!

On July 9th I was lucky enough to be asked to photograph my neighbor´s baptism. This is one of my favorite pictures, in it is Maria (the mom...she´s my age) and her three daughters Azule, Celeste and Genesis (the baby). After I took the photo, she told me this was the first time she had ever been photographed with her daughters (so its too bad the baby looks so angry). Just kidding... I was actually really touched so I'm planning on putting an album together for her family.

Every single guest at the party took a picture with the baby...I think this was taken at 2:00 am (the party went unil 5:00 am). Which explains the baby looking forlornly for its crib.Peter made me a cake for my birthday, then covered it with matches since we didn´t have any candles. Luckily when it came time to lite the cake the box didn´t have 24 matches in it, Peter had been playing with them all day..

My birthday party! It was quite a surprise. All the women came from the community and as you can see in this photo, the party came with a bike, woohooo!

Peter learned how to play a new game. You put a stick under your nose, run with it across the room and give it to your partner. We lost because I was too busy laughing.

Because they taught us how to play the new stick game, we decided to teach them how to play flip cup! For those of you not recently in college...its a game in which you drink beer and flip a cup. It was definetly a hit with the women...although the children didn´t understand why their mothers were drinking beer (only their fathers do that).

On several occasions Peter and I have missed the last bus out to our site. The buses run four times a day and due to Ecuador’s impeccable timeliness the last bus could leave El Empalme anytime between 5:45 and 6:30. If you miss that bus you can take a different bus to the “entrance” as they call it. The entrance is where the gravel road out to our site meets the highway. From the entrance it’s about a 10 minute car ride or 45 minute walk down the road to our community. Little miduvi houses (like ours) or bamboo huts are sparsely dispersed along the road, occasionally a dirt walkway leads to a house that it built further back into the fields. For the most part however, the road is quiet and unpopulated. The fields that border the road are planted densely with cacao and plantain trees, so during the day it’s a nice shady walk. At night however, no one dares to neither walk nor ride their motos alone down the road…

Since Peter and I don’t have bicycles or a moto like every other member in our community obviously going by foot is our only option. Our host mom always protests when she finds out we walked in after dark (since we’re on the equator it gets dark around 6 every day) but we really don’t have any other choice. Up until yesterday I always assumed she was worried about ladrones or criminals that could jump us in the dark. As it turns out however, fear of criminals has almost nothing to do with anyone’s fear of leaving their houses after dark. The real reason is their fear of the Pelona.

We heard about the Pelona a few days ago when our host brother, Steven, who’s ten, saw us walking in at about 6:30 and could not believe that we hadn’t encountered the Pelona. The conversation went something like this;

Steven: Why are you walking so late?!? Aren’t you afraid of the Pelona??Stacie: We missed the bus, and why would we be afraid of a pelota (ball)?Steven: No no no. Not a pelota…THE PELONA!Stacie: I don’t know what you’re talking about, whats a pelona?Steven: Her name is Mai Lui, she lives in the cacao fields at night, she’s a witch!! How do you say pelona in English?Stacie: Uuum I don’t know, ghost maybe?

(From there Peter proceeds to look up the word Pelona in his dictionary, and we’re both surprised to find out pelona literally translates to “extremely hairy woman” in English).

Stacie: No, Steven, why should we be afraid of an extremely hairy woman named Mai Lui?Steven: She lives in the cacao fields and comes out at night to jump on the back of motos that ride by and chase people who are walking down the road.

(Our host mom Olga, who’s 72, walks in to join the conversation.)

Olga: That’s why I’ve been afraid whenever you and Peter walk in so late at night.Stacie: Oooooooo…………….well, you both know that she’s probably a myth right? Who’s seen her?Steven: The men who go out at night have seen her staring at them from the fields!! She even jumped on the back of someone’s moto.Stacie: Were they drunk? (It’s a given that any man out at night alone is probably coming home after drinking beer and liquor with the other men in the community).Olga: Probably, but she’s been seen by several men!Stacie: Yeah, ok. I’ll look out for her next time.

At this point, I concede, not wanting to offend Olga. I really wanted to find out who named her Mai Lui, but I figured I would save that conversation for another night.

So yesterday evening, Peter and I along with two other volunteers ended up making the walk again, this time to leave the community so we could get into El Empalme for the festivals. As we were leaving Olga’s house at around 6:30 I could hear Steven yelling after us “Beware of the PELOOOOONNNNAAAAAA”. So when we got to the portion of the road where the pelona evidently resides, and we start to conjure up a reallllly good story to tell Steven for when we return. Here's how it went;

Stacie: Steven, we saw the pelona last night!! She’s real!Steven: WHERE DID YOU SEE HER?!?Stacie: Right where you said we would, in the cacao fields! Her hair was so long it went down to her knees, and her face was so pale it was almost white, her eyes were the color of blood!Steven: I told you she was real! What did she do?Stacie: She chased us down the road. Luckily we were carrying two bags of vegetables, so we were able to throw carrots at her. She was so afraid of the vegetables she turned around and ran away!(At this point Steven starts to look verrry skeptical.)Steven: Why would she be afraid of vegetables?Stacie: Obviously Steven, ALLL Ecuadorians hate vegetables (it’s true, nobody eats vegetables). She just really couldn’t stand the site of them. You know what that means, right?Steven (looking like he’s caught on finally) No…..what does that mean?Stacie: It means you have to eat as many vegetables as possible so the pelona doesn’t get you.

Olga, who’s been standing in the room with us the entire time, bursts out in laughter. (I think I had her going for a little while too). At this point too, Steven realizes my trick and gets more than a liiitle embarrassed for believing me.

Here´s Peter with our new puppy. I thought I was choosing the friendly one, but it turned out to be the crazy one. As you can tell, Peter realllllllly likes it.

So cute!

Here I am painting Saint Francis, it turns out they let me! I guess they want to frame it in glass so the sun won´t bleach the colors. I told them it was really okay. I think I spent more than 8 hours on that little bamboo platform. At one point Peter left to go help castrate the newborn pigs and I was alone with no way to get down. So of course this was the perfect moment for the neighbor´s Brahma bull to come out of nowhere and start charging me. Luckily his owner caught him in time and I only had a minor heart attack.

The final product, along with all four of my little helpers.

These little animals represent the majority of my work for the next two years with the children´s group. We´re raising and selling them every four months to teach the kids how to turn a profit. The piggies in this photo will go to the kids once they´re old enough. In this photo I think they´re only about a week old, aww.

Here is the house we will live in for two years! The little stamp on my left says Miduvi # 3. These are the houses that the government provides for Ecuadorians who qualify for them. Unfortunately it´s only a year old and already falling apart (the walls are hollow and the roof is aspestos), but I think we can make it work for two years, maybe.

And finally this is my new friend Jeremy and I, we´re sitting at the elementary school. Jeremy was super excited for me to start painting my second mermaid, so he sat there with me alll afternoon until it was finished 5 hours later. In the meantime I taught him all the names of the primary and secondary colors in English. It helped me justify painting a very voluptuous mermaid in front of a four year old.

After seven weeks in the making, our big fundraising event for the youth association actually pulled through! It was an all-day event beginning at 11 am with a soccer tournament. In order to raise money we charged a meager 5 dollar entrance fee per team, but of course that fee was nothing compared to the betting that happened at all the soccer games. The teams usually bet at least 75 dollars one game was played for 500 dollars in bets (roughly what one might make in two months) and another game was played for a 200 pound pig...this game ended in a tie and since overtime evidently doesn’t exist here they literally cut the pig in half right then and there and divided it between the two teams.

Among the three Peace Corps volunteers at my site (approximately one volunteer for every 6 community members) we were able to convince ten more PCVs to come for the day…including three, six foot, blonde gringas. So of course we had to form a gringa soccer team and play in the women’s tournament. Somehow we actually ended up winning and so we decided to donate all of the winnings to the youth group, I’m pretty sure it would be against Peace Corps policy to do anything else with that money anyway..,The big highlight of the day did not happen until around 10 pm. the Seniorita Miss Tanga (Bikini) competition. It is to this event that I owe my newfound ability draw lifesize Barbie mermaids that are now famous around the El Empalme area. And although we had been advertising for this competition more than a month in advance, we didn’t actually find any candidates until the week before the event (one of myfirst assignmentsas a Peace Corps Volunteer was to find candidates, hoooray). If that doesn’t sound awkward enough most candidates were no older than 16 and no younger than 14. Except for one of the tall, blonde Peace Corps volunteers who agreed to participate. She of course had to lie about her age, if she had told the judges the truth (that she is actually the ripe old age of 25) it would have been all over right then and there. Needless to say she ended up winning by majority applause, even though she lacked the sparkly body paint all the other candidates were wearing.

After the competition was finally over, the dance lasted until 5 am when it was abruptly ended after a patron was found shooting his gun into the air, and 10 minutes later his mother had a heart attack in her sleep. (Reallly bad timing on her son’s part). Although I left the dance early (3 am) I heard the news the next morning when a neighbor came to tell us.

Now is a good point for some background, Peter and I have mentioned before that El Empalme has gang problems, evidently the man who was shooting his gun in the air at the dance was (1) realllly drunk and (2) a gang member who happens to live in our community. Although he’s 27, men here frequently live at home with their families until they get married and that might not be until they’re in their late 30’s. So in the eyes of our community members his history of criminal behavior and the stress he caused his mom while living at home caused her heart attack.

So the next day, rather than celebrating the success of our dance (the good news is that we raised over $1,000 on a public park for the kids) we went to a funeral. (Already the second we’ve attended.) Funerals in the coast take place promptly after the death since there is no way of preserving the body. Usually there is a wake that lasts for a few hours, and then the procession. During the procession the casket is carried by hand and community members take turns, while the crowd follows behind. We started walking out of San Francisco del Congo around 1 pm (usually Ecuadorians stay in at this time due to the sweltering mid-day heat on the equator) and arrived at the cemetery 2 hours later.

We’ve probably seen over a dozen funeral processions in El Empalme, the crowd usually walks through the main streets of town following the casket, which is following a truck with speakers blasting songs like “TeExtrañare”, “I Will Miss You”. On several occasions I’ve seen community members cross themselves multiple times when a procession goes by, and when I ask why they tell me more likely than not the funeral is gang related. I´ve learned this is usually just gossip, it´s the gang warfare is the go-to cause of everything bad that happens in El Empalme, ha, imagine that.

I’m guessing that almost every Peace Corps volunteer experiences at least one day during their service in which they want to run away screaming (or crying) from their site not because they’re homesick but because they’ve reached a point in their integration experience when they realize that they’ve been internally resisting integration while simultaneously striving for it . Today it finally clicked for me that I absolutely will not integrate. Because if I were to do so, I would have to cook all of our meals, do all of our dishes, serve Peter first, do all of our laundry (the whites three times), attend church every night for two hours with the other childless married women in my community (wait nevermind that’s an internal contradiction…every married woman is pregnant within a month…I should say “empty nesters”) or even better I could just be continuously pregnant until I turned 40, THEN get my tubes tied because a good wife should never expect her husband to sacrifice his fertility and get a vasectomy as long as he can keep kicking out babies with someone new until he’s too old to move.

Anyway here’s some context. While I haven’t been shoveling manure, macheting the garden, delivering baby pigs and vaccinating my neighbor’s dog, I’ve been planning a huge fiesta for June 11th with all the proceeds going to the community. We’re planning a soccer tournament, followed by a swimsuit competition, and ending with a dance until the wee hours of the morning. Yesterday I was asked to paint a banner to advertise the dance with a life-sized mermaid to attract attention. So I googled a mermaid and painted it on the banner in front of the only local kiosk while all the men in the community watched me and proceeded to tell me the correct proportions for a women. (SO MUCH FUN)

More context. San Francisco del Congo only has one kiosk because it’s not really a town, it’s a country road with a school and a church across from each other. The kiosk is next door and is run out of the room of Edita’s house. There has been huge DRAAAMAA this week because certain members of my host family have started building another kiosk right across the street from the other one….and they’re planning on opening it the night of our dance. The kicker is that the woman who is opening the new store is best friends with the women who owns the other kiosk, and they’re both on the board in charge of the dance. Everyone knows the older kiosk is closing that night so all the funds will go to the dance. Now with the new kiosk opening that night, we have the potential to lose a huge chunk of our funds…which we’re planning to use for the kids on a public park.

Now, tonight at dinner my host mom Olga asked me to paint (more like touch up) the statue of San Francisco in the church (evidently she heard I could paint because of the stupid mermaid). So I said sure and thought nothing of it. Later on this evening her daughter in law came over (the one who’s opening the new kiosk) and I stupidly decided to ask about the statue….except I couldn’t remember the word for statue and said muñeca or “doll” instead. BAAAAAAD decision, never say doll when referring to a patron saint, EVER. They just stared at me like I was the most unholy thing on the planet, how dare I call Saint Francis a doll. I overheard them talking about me later (I was in the next room…sometimes they forget we can speak Spanish). Evidently they don’t want me to paint dear Francis anymore because I am just not religious enough. Not only did I call him a doll, but Olga saw me allow Peter to wash his own dishes tonight without taking them out of his hands and doing them for him. On top of that, I don’t have any children! Hmm, wonder when she noticed. Then blah blah blah blah blah and the conversation ended in them pronouncing me a bad wife and bad Catholic. I’m not sure about the last part, but I think they equivocated me with Mary Magdalene…luckily I’m married so I’m not quite that bad.

I briefly mentioned last time that I’m getting a puppy soon, I just have to wait three more weeks for the puppy to be weaned from its mother. The thing is, there are already a few barriers hindering me from achieving this goal:

1. 1. My host mom mentioned about a month ago that I can’t have one. So I just pretended like I didn’t understand her.

2. 2. Half of the litter of puppies has already died from something or other and the rest aren’t looking to promising.

3. 3. The neighborhood children are taking a little too much interest and I think one or two might swoop in before I do.

I’ve already started taking subtle steps to make sure there is a healthy puppy for the taking three weeks from now. This includes feeding the mama dog when her owners aren’t looking. Because of this year’s drought all the farmers in our community have lost most of their rice harvest, and as a result they can hardly afford to feed themselves much less their dogs. So there are several skeletal looking rat dogs running around, including the mama dog I’ve been secretly feeding.

My routine has been to duck into the butcher shop when we go into town (usually when Peter is occupied at his favorite milk-shake stand) and buy a pound of leftover chicken guts. I mix those with some dog food and can feed the dog once daily for at least four days before we go back into town. Unfortunately other dogs have started to take notice, including another mama dog that’s literally a walking skeleton…so I started feeding her too. On top of these two dogs, Olga’s dog already follows me around, as well as Don Dario’s dog because I fed him my leftovers when I was here two months ago on my site visit. So I’ve already amassed quite a following of dogs, none of which are actually mine.

Yesterday when I went to check on my puppy I noticed that it had a huge white boil on its stomach, the same one its sister had a week ago before it burst open and worms ate it alive from the inside out. So rather wait around for something bad to happen I went home to get the de-worm vaccination that I purchased from the vet last week. Originally I was planning on vaccinating the puppy at 6 weeks, instead I lured the mama dog into one of the corn fields with my dog food and had Kendra (another Peace Corps Volunteer) hold her down while I injected her with the vaccination. I thought I killed it because she immediately started to cry and laid down in the dirt for twenty minutes and didn’t move. But then she got up and was fine, whew! The good news is, I checked the puppy this morning and it looked like the worms had completely gone away, so she had obviously gotten the vaccine through her mother’s milk like I had planned.

In addition to puppies, I’ve also been spending a lot of time with piglets. One of the Reproductoras that the children’s group purchased had 8 piglets last Monday and Laura and I (mostly Laura) have been monitoring her and her pigs regularly for the past seven days. Laura spent the first three nights with them in the pig pen, I guess it’s common for the momma pig to crush the piglets the first few days after birth because they aren’t strong enough to move out of her way.. Every time they need to be fed we move them in and watch them closely for about an hour and a half, then move them back into a separate pen for them to sleep for two hours before getting fed again. Yesterday there was an outbreak of worms and we had to spray them all, including the mother with de-wormer. In this case the worms had come from eggs planted by flies embedded in their skin, which had broke open and become more open sores…leading to more worms being planted. I think Laura got in under control though because they were looking a lot better today!

Next weekend we’re going to visit Calceta where Peter and Tony worked on a farm a year and half ago, and hopefully acquire some more seeds for our garden which is almost ready to be planted. Tomorrow Laura and I are going to see the mayor of El Empalme and use our amazing powers (as gringas) to acquire additional funding for a public park we have planned for San Francisco del Congo.

Wednesday May 11, 2011

Today marks the third week we’ve spent at our site, and each week has certainly brought on different emotions. I guess I would say that this week’s emotion generally has been more hopefull. Last week I think I mentioned that Peter and I were basically gifted this amazing gardening space located right next to the town “center” if you will. This is how amazing it is:

· Six beds about 10 meters long and 1 meter wide (remember our garden last summer anyone?)· 1 worm bed· 1 picnic table made out of bamboo (under an orange tree for shade)· Biol Tank (with biol ready to use)· 1 large area for a cacao greenhouse· *And as a bonus a 6 foot tall bamboo fence bordering the entire space

The down side:· The entire garden was over grown with 6 foot tall weeds· Nobody in the community has interest in gardening· Nor do they have a financial stake in its upkeep (the garden was gifted by the local municipality).

Before weeding...right after macheting

· Ademas, although it’s only a year old, the entire garden is in a huge state of disrepairSo we definitely have our work cut out for us, and we’ve already started! A week ago I began a seedbed with the help of my host family’s grandson, Esteven who’s 10. We planted at least a dozen different varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs.

Sunday, Peter and I cleaned up all the weeds in the garden and made two huge weed stacks (about 10 feet tall and 20 feet wide). But we’re still up in the air about what exactly to do with them, so until we do decide they’re going to sit and probably go into a painfully slow anaerobic state of decomposition, luckily we have other things on our plate. On Monday we enlisted the help of the neighbors (Peter’s counterpart Don Dario and his kids) and turned the first bed. We spent that afternoon in El Empalme buying materials: 10 meters of plastic, a 2 foot long machete, yeast and molasses. Tuesday we prepared the first bed for planting, to do this Peter brought in six buckets of pig manure (nitrogen), I macheted 2 banana trees up into tiny pieces (potassium) and we sprinkled some rock phosphate (phosphorus) on the bed. Then we mixed them all together in the bed and poured on the activator (a mixture of yeast, molasses and water) which will hopefully (fingers crossed) break down the three macronutrients by feeding the microorganisms in the soil, and make the soil ready for use in 2 weeks! Bam, science. Funny story though, I accidently mixed waaaay too much yeast in the activator and when I opened the 2 liter coke bottle I put it in, I ended up spraying molasses allll over myself. Unfortunately we’ve now reached “summer” i.e. the 9 month drought, so we had to cover the entire bed with plastic to make sure the activator wouldn’t evaporate in 10 minutes, ugh. We also started a huuuge compost, which we’re making by sandwiching in layers of manure, dry material (dead leaves) and food waste. We’ll use this for our other 5 beds. The idea is that we will have a year round continuous harvest if we plant the beds at 3 week intervals…one of the perks of being on the equator. Once we move into our house in August, which is right next door to the garden, I’m going to get some chickens (layers) and pen them up so I can gather their droppings for the compost. THEN if I can manage those without killing them I want to get a goat or two as well. I have many many plans, I just really need to learn more Spanish first. Luckily Don Dario’s wife, Esperanza has already offered to help me build my chicken coop.On the subject of language barriers, I’ve finally realized why I can’t understand anyone. It’s because I have no idea why they are saying half the things they tell me.

For example, yesterday I walked outside after dinner to see why all of the baby chicks were running around this huge cacao tree and squawking so much. Then my host mom (Olga) came running around the house and started climbing the tree, in the meantime shouting something at me in Spanish…which I didn’t understand at first. After translating it in my head I realized she was saying that ALL of her chickens had climbed this tree and the mother hen had rudely left her pollitos on the ground. So I looked up and saw that all 30 of the stupid chickens had climbed the tree somehow and couldn’t get down because they can’t actually fly like real birds. So that’s how we spent our evening.

For breakfast once Olga also made us a pineapple-passionfruit juice and explained matter of factly that her daughter-in-law (who is from Spain) loves this kind of juice, and obviously since Peter and I are from the United States, which is next to Spain, we also would love it.

This afternoon Peter’s counterpart explained to me that Ecuador has a larger corn growing capacity than the United States because it’s on the equator. So I told him that Ecuador is about the size of Colorado, only one of fifty states in the United States, and it could never compete in an international market because it’s simply too small. He just told me I was a liar and that was that.

Last week I was teaching in the school with the other volunteer, Laura and the teacher interrupted us to shout at us from across the room “Ella esta mas delgada de tu Laura” or “Stacie’s skinnier than you are Laura”. Just to make sure we were in agreement with her observation…in front of the entire classroom of middle-schoolers. This morning I was washing our clothes on “the rock” outside. Basically this involves scrubbing our clothes until they’re threadbare on a very rough rock with a scrubbing brush. I evidently do it completely wrong, because after three weeks of watching me scrub our clothes Olga informed me this morning that my whites are not white enough and I should be scrubbing them at least three separate times before even considering them finished. I just said I would prefer my clothes a little “cafecito” than holey, and I guess that was the wrong answer because she just picked up my socks and started scrubbing them for me.

Peter and I have also been very impressed with the variety of names we’ve heard in the community. In addition to our host mom being named Olga, we’ve also met a Wellington, Orlando, Lindbergh, Robespierre, Rambo, Jefferson, Nixon, Kennedy and Mariuxi. In light of all these amazing names I’ve been trying to find a fitting name for the puppy I’m adopting in 5 weeks (the neighbor’s dog just had puppies and I have first dibs). I just really doubt I’ll be able to compete with Robespierre, pronounced Robe-Es-pee-er. The irony of it all is that everyone seems to think that my name is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

Buenas Tardes!

Okay I have to keep this quick since Peter and I are at an internet cafe in Quevedo and still need to go grocery shopping for the week before catching the final bus into our site for the day!

I just opened a mailbox here in Quevedo...so if you have been dying to send me anything from the United States here is your chance! Hint hint (mother) if you´re sending me supplies make sure you indicate their value as worthless, used and dirty, so the customs officials don´t get any ideas while searching my mail.

My address is:

Stacie Constantian, PCV

Correos de Quevedo del Ecuador

Casilla J2-01-38

Quevedo, Los Rios

Ecuador

Alright, so I just got off the phone with my dear mother last night. Of course I was not surprised that she was just a tad worried about the latest news update via Peter´s blog. The good news is we´re alive and safe, but also that we have some fantastic projects to look forward to for the next two years. Peter and I have probably attended at least 7 meetings the past week and half of the different associations in our area. So we´re jumping right in! Normally Peace Corps volunteers need to take a few months and familiarize themselves with the community before attending anything, luckily we have an in with the other PCV who´s been at our site the past two years and have been able to weasel our way right into the middle of the action!

I´ve also been going to the elementary school to teach English, reading and writing to the first graders occassionally in the mornings. We´ve also already received several requests from adults in the area to give them English lessons, and an elementary school teacher from El Empalme came to our site to ask us to teach her English. This past year all elementary school teachers have been mandated to teach English in Ecuador, which is a problem since many of them don´t know English, much less how to teach it. Actually this is the Peace Corps latest project, the next group of volunteers coming in this June will be trained to teach teachers to teach English in the public schools.

Luckily I have other things to do. I don´t really want to teach English, even though I know it´s a good way to meet people. Already I´ve spoken to other volunteers who have all found out very quickly that their communities only expect this of them, rather than other projects the volunteers thought they were going in to do, such as teaching nutrition or building irrigation systems.

Speaking of irrigation systems, my community is finally getting one! As I said in an earlier post, our area only receives 3 to 4 months of rain every year and the rest of the time there is a severe drought. However one of the farmers associasions that Peter will be working with just got a loan approved to irrigate 19 hectares of land for 19 farmers (one hectare each, or about 2.5 acres). Peter is going to help each farmer get started irrigating cacao (coacao beans), teach them proper fertilization methods, companion cropping and basic caocao maintenance (fingers crossed) so that after three years they can pay back the loan and continue producing. Also we´re bringing in a cacao exporter to talk with the farmers, hopefully to convince them to form a cooperative and sell their seeds directly to the exporter, thereby skipping the intermediaries which give them a far lower price for their cacao.

Tomorrow we´re also helping to machete (we would say "weed") the community garden area. So that we can use it to begin test plots. We´re going to whip up a batch of biol to test out on the companion crop of choice (peanuts). We´re also hoping to use the space for a vivero, or greenhouse, to start planting cacao trees, and then somewhere in their I also want to start our own personal garden and seedbank...we also are thinking about starting a rain water collection project while we still have a month left of the rainy season....but we´ll see.

We´re also helping to plan a huge fiesta in June, so that we can raise money for the youth associacion that I will be working with. We´re hoping to use the profits for a public park for the kids. Right now they have a pretty crappy cement soccer field and one swing set with two broken swings. We´re planning a dance with the parents of the kids, about 30 parents total...we´ll be selling food and drinks and have games as well. The parents are all very excited so I´m glad I can work with them!!

Anyway as you can see, we actually have quite a bit to keep us busy and out of trouble! We probably walked into one of the best sites (in disguise) for new volunteers. The only thing is, Peter and I are a little anxious to learn spanish faster...some people here are still very hard to understand because of the accent and how fast they speak, but I´m sure one day...hopefully soon...it will click for us!

Happy spring and happy plantings!

CIAO

Buenos Tardes!

Big news this week! The U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador was removed on Tuesday, and the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United States was removed on Thursday. I'm sure everyone has already heard everything about it. As volunteers are not allowed to express opinions about the matter, as the Peace Corps is always trying to remain disassociated with any of the political actions of the United States or our host nations. None of us here are worried, the expulsion of the ambassador seems only to be in response to statements she made, and does not reflect Ecuadorian sentiment whatsoever concerning the rest of the United States or the Peace Corps. So we're continuing the last few weeks of training like normal.

This past week we broke up in technical groups for the second time. I left with a group of 6 other volunteers to visit the projects of prior Peace Corps Volunteers in the coastal region. We visited my future site as well so the other volunteers could learn about pigs and bees. I ended up getting swarmed and stung in the face and had to take a Benedryl to control the swelling a few others got stung but nothing THAT serious really happened.

After getting stung I had my first lesson in pig castration. Normally baby pigs need to be castrated within the first few days after they are born, but for some reason we had to castrate ours at 2 months (at this age they're about 40 pounds). UGH. Anyway the next day we moved on to cows, after learning about common diseases here in Ecuador we vaccinated about 30 cows and one bull. Then we visited a local Agricultural University (where I saw my very first library in Ecuador!), we were walked through the soil testing process in a agricultural lab. This was something I was actually very excited about doing, because I've been trying to find a lab close to our site who can test local soil samples and give us a fertilizer recommendation. I'm almost positive our soil is lacking the macro-nutrient concentration it needs to sustain most of the crops that are grown every year. Peter and I are hoping to start a biol project and introduce something other than chemical fertilizers.....fingers crossed

The last day of our trip was by far the best. We visited a Peace Corps volunteer who's site is in the transition zone between the Sierra and the Coast. It's probably one of the most fertile places in Ecuador, as it's not too hot because of it's altitude and it gets rain year round. We spent the morning teaching a group of 40 students how to make Bokashi a organic fertilizer made from ash, manure and food scraps. Then helped them start their gardens for the year.

In the coast, the school year goes from April until December because the rainy season is January through March and the students have off (like we do in the United States) while their parents are farming. So we helped kick off their school gardens for the year! That afternoon we broke up into focus groups and were given the chance to interview community members and ask them questions about their local agricultural practices and what they would like to see happen in their village as far as future projects go.

Now we are all back in Tumbaco for the next two weeks finishing up training before heading to our sites for the next two years! The next two weeks are going to filled with our final interviews as well as presentations we have to give to our trainers. It feels a bit like we're in finals again..

Nearly two months in, and we finally have seen where we will be living for the next two years..... So here we go! Our site is called San Franciso del Congo. I´m hesitant to call it a town, I think community would be more appropriate, it´s located about 10 miles south of El Empalme, a town you can actually find on a map. It even has a wiki page! (if you can read Spanish).

Our community has about 300 inhabitants who live along a 7 km stretch of road in the countryside. Once I get my photos uploaded, you´ll be able to see the uncanny resemblance to southern Minnesota. There really isn´t a central location to the community although there is a small church which is used the first Tuesday of every month, and a one room school with a soccer field next to our counterpart´s house. There´s also a store that one woman runs out of a small room in our house. So yeah, it´s SMALL. Which IS what we wanted. I think we´re still reeling from the experience and trying to process what exactly we are going to be doing for two years in a community that size. Luckily, the site already has one volunter, Laura, who´s been working her magic for two years already. If she hadn´t been there during the 6 days Peter and I were visiting the site, I would have been SO LOST and this is why:

1. Coastal Spanish. If you take all the Ss, periodically the Ds and occasionally the Ns and remove them from the spoken language you get coastal Spanish. It basically sounds like they´re playing chubby bunny ALL THE TIME.(Chubby bunny is the game in which you stuff as many marshmallows in your mouth as possible and try to say chubby bunny without choking). One night I was in such a daze from trying to understand Peter´s counterpart that I started laughing while he was talking to me. We found ALOT of humor in our situation.

2. Their farming practices. They´re a corn farming community in the tropics, meaning there are countless other more profitable endeavours. Basically anything else they would try would be a more profitable endeavour. So that´s our big project. Also getting them to stop poisoning their soil every chance they get with urea.

3. Their general health practices. All the food I was served was fried and then refried to heat it up again the next day. We were also served the best cuts of meat-which to them is the fat-and only the fat. ALSO I guess the traditional way to welcome a guest into your home is with a shot of re-fermented moonshine. So gardening is at the tip top of my list of projects and brewing beer at the top of Peter´s.

Our six day adventure reminded me of a ethnography I read my senior year of college. The ethnography centered around the first encounters that American settlers had in Minnesota with the native Dakota population. Basically they clashed because of several cultural differences, the main difference being etiquette. I felt like I was consisently offending my host family on this level because I refused to eat their best cuts of meat (pig fat), I never finished the mountain of rice on my plate and I gagged everytime I swallowed the fried and refried foods they served me. Whenever I asked them to speak slowly they were offended that I couldn´t understand them (and I was offended they didn´t enunciate!). At one point I explained to my host mom that I wasn´t accustomed to eating three cups of rice every meal (not at exaggeration) and my host dad told me that I was a racist because once he heard a story that white people think only poor morenos (brown-skinned)like rice.

At the same time, I felt so pretentions during the entire visit because I don´t understand how to interact positively yet. But we´re not giving up. There´s a ton of projects we can do and we know we can help. There are just a few obvious barriers we have to overcome first!

I´ve been researching soil conservation practices all week as well as urea and nitrogen fixation.

I´ll also be working with a group of youth, a community bank and bees! So I´m glad there´s projects lined up for me to do!

Buenas noches

Not to much news this week, here anyway...

Thanks to the earthquake in Japan yesterday morning all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Ecuador (and probably every other coutry with a coast on the Pacific ocean)have been required to ¨standfast¨which basically means we, Omnibus 105, cannot leave Tumbaco for the next few days just so the Peace Corps can keep track of us.

Yesterday morning President Correa called for Un Estado de Excepción (something like a state of emergency) evidently because of tsunami risks along the coast. The waves reached the Galapagos around 5:30 and the mainland at about 7:00. Peter and I were at home eating dinner with our host parents while watching the news.

Basically, the waves were so embarassingly small that as soon as the first one lapped against the coast of Guayaquil, the news station immediately cut footage. Nevertheless, we´re still stuck in standfast for the next two days...6 hours inland atop the Andes mountains.

Next week we find out our sites on Wednesday, and Thursday we head out for a week! Every single volunteer has been on edge the past few weeks because of ongoing interviews, presentations, and tech and language evaluations. Everyone has a preference for their site and we all want to make sure that we´ll be headed where we want to go. Most of the sites are in the Coastal Region, only 2 are in the mountains and 4 are in the Amazon. Peter and I are both happy because we already know we´re probably going to be headed to the coast (not necessarily the beach)and he has already contacted Servio, the campesino he worked for last year in Ecuador.

Tuesday the Ambassador will be coming to meet us at our training center, and we´ve prepared a lovely cancion to sing in her honor (not our idea) but we´ve all embraced the kitsch. We can´t expect to be treated like adults all the time, when during our entire training experience our facilitators have been calling us "ninos" and are making us sing and dance whenever someone important comes to visit.

Luckily Peter and I both survived Carnival (the 2 day celebration before Lent) without any serious damage, just a few waterballoons, eggs and foam. And Wednesday we went to the Ash Wednesday evening service at the local church with our host mom.

Until next week (or so) ciao!

Buenos Tardes!

I´m not going to write much this time because I accidently left my blog entry at home on my other flash drive, ugh. Ill get it uploaded eventually! Until then I´m uploading 200 photos of the trip on facebook. Which you can see here. I hope they work! My facebook setting supposedly allows everyone to see them...

Peter and I went on seperate tech trips, me to the coast, him to the Amazon. Evidently I went on the "poshest" trip, hog-washing, cow-milking and bunny slaughtering aside it was great a great location! Tropical, warm and of course buggy. We had two pools and a river and great food. Not at all representational of our overall experiences, I´m definetly going to miss it!

Here are my most recent Photos:

How to Kill a Chicken and Climbing Ilalo (Vegetarians Beware)

Installing Drip Irrigation in our Gardens

Febrero 25 2011

Three weeks in!

Today in training was our second weekly meeting of our “Community Bank” project. This is a project every volunteer will be starting once we all get to site. Which of course brings me to another good book (that Peter and I fortunately bought before we left the U.S.) The book is called “Banker to the Poor” by Muhammed Yunnis. He's the mastermind behind micro-lending to people unable to afford the initial start-up costs of a small-scale business. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his idea, now the Peace Corps and other international aid organizations have developed similar projects based on his original micro-lending initiative.

Without going into too much detail (hopefully!) we're going to use the community banks as a way to organize a group of people, probably no more than 20 or 30 and with everyone's support (and everyone's weekly $1 contribution) we will have enough saved up after a few months to be able to start lending out to community members to use however the general assembly of bank members deems appropriate. Each bank will run differently with different internal regulations decided upon by its members. But here are the basics:

The bank will initially last one year.

Each person will contribute $52.00 ($1/week).

After enough money is in the bank, it will start lending for month long intervals with 10% interest.

After each loan is repaid with interest, each person will have made around $30 in addition to the $52 they invested over the course of the year.

After a year, the bank can choose to disband and the individuals can collect their money, or the bank can continue and allow new members to join.

The method of weekly payment is very transparent so each person knows who is attending meetings, as well as who is paying. Everyone will hold everyone else accountable.

Evidently these projects have become very successful already in Ecuador thanks to PCV initiatives! So we're excited to try it out.

In addition to community bank projects, we've been working very hard at developing other skill sets we can use at site! In three weeks we will have the chance to visit our sites and briefly “assess” the community (so to my horror as a Sociology/Anthropology major) the Peace Corps is having us try to assess the community's needs during this 5 day period and get an idea for our 2 year projects based on this 5 day trip!

I can't even begin to list all the potential cultural boundaries that come to mind including how very narrow and shallow our understanding of the community and the people will be after 5 days!! AGGH! So keeping this in mind, I'll obviously make an effort to satisfy Peace Corps headquarters by quantifying whatever human data we can (ex. “There are 30 families at our site who make roughly $300/month yet need $520/month for food costs.”-evidently this is a common statistic in the campo.) but I don't feel comfortable going beyond straightforward facts and trying to make sense of them. Also, their data collection methodology isn't the greatest...I might give a talk on conducting focus groups to gain better feedback. Peter's giving a talk next week about the paper he wrote on Ecuador's economy.

Yesterday we toured an experimental Agro-Forestry Farm in Tumbaco, which are basically large permiculture test plots of the University of San Franciso in Quito. They are growing fruit producing trees amongst large-scale gardens (hence agro-forestry). We learned how to do grafting with Avocado trees. We also learned (even more!) about proper soil composition, seedbeds and transplanting trees as well as other plants.

I finished building my greenhouse two days ago for my garden plot, and Peter finished installing his drip irrigation for his garden plot last weekend! We were broken up in groups of 5 and we are all competing to see who can grow the best garden in 11 weeks. So Peter and I are competing against each other...I've totally got this in the bag. Although next week we'll all be leaving our gardens for five days on our tech trips!

Today we learned more about “value-added” products. Basically this means altering a product somehow to increase it's value..for example turning cucumbers into pickles or tomatoes into salsa. Today we learned how to make dried fruit, jams, and wine. We'll be learning a lot more about value added products next week on our tech trips.

...Speaking of these tech trips! Peter and I are going to completely separate locations. He's going to the Amazon for five days, and I will be going to the Coast. We'll be working more on specializing in our respective fields. I'm not exactly sure what he's doing, but I know it involves liquid fertilizers and value-added products such as drying fruits. I'll be working with animals and learning how to make yogurt and cheese, as well as learning a lot about processing cacao and dealing with intermediaries. If you want to know exactly where we'll be and google it, I'll be in Puerto Quito, and Peter will be in Macas.

Last weekend Peter and I climbed Ilalo with 4 other volunteers. Ilalo is the mountain closest to Tumbaco, except instead of climbing up and back down again, we climbed up and over than had to find a bus back to Tumbaco! It took us 6 hours to climb over it and about 45 minutes to get back via bus. Monday was a Federal Holiday-Presidents Day woohoo! (And my dad's 60th Birthday!) But that didn't mean we got out of work. Sooo we had to go to Mitad del Mundo, or the Middle of the World, which would have been pretty cool if Peter and I hadn't been there already and it wasn't the equivalent of South Dakota's Wall Drug Store, ie a horrible tourist destination. It supposed to be located on the equator...but it's not because they realized their error too late. Anyway we went to a really interesting ethnographic museum and got to look at different indigenous dwellings and take notes. (I won the “Ethnographic Jeopardy” the next day!)

There's a lot more we covered this week such as skin diseases, fungi, parasites, intestinal problems, rabbies...but I won't delve in for everyone's sake including my own!

Peter is leaving tomorrow (Sunday) for his trip, and I'm leaving Monday for my trip. After we get back, I'm sure we'll both have learned way to much to blog about! Hoooray!

Sorry again for the lateness of this post! Hopefully after training we'll have more time to blog.

*Note: Read the post just before this one first!

02/12/2011 *Blog 3

Hello Everyone!

We've officially been in Ecuador for nine days, and have already learned so much. Frequently I get frustrated with my Spanish speaking abilities because it feels like we've been here longer and I should be able to speak better by now! Poco a poco as they say in Ecuador (little by little) and you will get better!

So here is a little bit more about our accommodations in Tumbaco. We don't have wireless or any other internet source (although many other Volunteers do). Neither do we live in the downtown area where all the internet cafes are located. In order to save money we'll be making one trip to the internet cafe each weekend to blog and send emails (ie don't freak out if we're not updating you daily)!

We're really rationing our monthly allowances, as volunteers we're not technically getting “paid”. This month we were given just enough money to pay our host families and take care of our food expenses (around $150 to our families, $2/day for food, and $50 to buy our mandatory cell phones). Therefore we have absolutely no money saved up at the end of the month. As many of you probably know, I would rather go phone-less, and hoard that money but it's now the Peace Corps policy that we have phones. The good news is, these phones are international! Therefore we can call you and you can call us! There are ways around the gargantuan international fees, so I'll be sending out an email with my phone number and detailed instructions (just please don't freak out if this involves getting a gmail account or downloading Skype...I promise it will be worth the minimal efforts involved).

Moving on to the fun stuff! Our weeks are very jam packed with activities. Our training lasts from 8 am to 5 pm and is composed of a mix of Spanish/Culture classes, Safety/Health classes, Agricultural training, hands on projects and usually a vaccination or two. We're making an effort to speak as much Spanish as possible amongst other trainees, hopefully this will get easier over time as we develop more Spanish and can better express ourselves.

We have also been blessed to receive two Peace Volunteers who have decided to leave their sites for the last three months of their service to better prepare us during training. So far they've been offering invaluable in-site into what our experience will be like. They were both stationed in El Oriente (the Amazon) as agro-business volunteers, so Peter and I may be replacing them since Peter is also agro-business, more likely however we'll be in the Coastal region (this does not necessarily mean beach) where the majority of Agricultural volunteers will be stationed. The returned volunteers have started three book clubs which will take place twice a week before class. Peter and I signed up for two different clubs, and we'll cycle through all three books over the course of our training. So if you are interested in reading what we're reading, I would suggest picking up these books, they offer great in-site into what we'll be doing. Peter and I have already started reading them and we're very impressed!

- “Two Ears of Corn a Guide to People-Centered Agricultural Improvement” by Roland Bunch- “Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath

On Thursday all the Agricultural volunteers spent the day on a local “finca” or farm and were able to tour/participate in the farming activities. We were blown away! The farm was approximately 4 hectares or 10 acres and all of it was devoted to self-sustainability through organic farming methods. The master-mind of the project, an Ecuadorian who received his PhD in the U.S. (in Anthropology, I'm proud to say) started the project around 30 years ago, and now employs dozens of local campesinos (farmers) in organic methodologies. He also hosts anyone who is interested through giving talks and tours. I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but one of the main problems on many Ecuadorian farms is mono-cropping. Rather than growing a variety of produce like their indigenous ancestors, many Ecuadorian farmers have started growing only one or two crops (potato and rice mainly) and started selling them at market, where everyone else is doing the same thing. This has a very negative effect on their diet, as they don't eat vegetables (period) , just starchy foods. This farm is used to re-introduce campesinos to the methodologies of their ancestors. Why did they start mono-cropping in the first place you ask? A lot if it is due in part to prior development volunteers like us, who had economic profit in mind, rather than nutrition and the preservation of custom. So in a way we'll be trying to fix (very carefully) what we began.

We have become increasingly aware of the importance of sticking it out at our sites. Travel is associated with wealth, and in order to integrate to the best of our abilities (even though complete integration is impossible) we've been advised to spend as much time at our sites as possible. Peter and I are taking this very seriously, as we can lose the trust of our communities very quickly. So we may be taking less trips than originally planned. Additionally we were misinformed about repatriation allowances. It turns out the Peace Corps will only pay for us to return home if we decide to stick it out a third year, soooo obviously this also influences our travel plans :( Don't worry though, we'll still be making efforts to save as much as possible so we can visit home.

On a closing note, Thursday evening I became afflicted with what is commonly known as “Montezuma's Revenge” (if anyone wants to know the details, I'm sure there is a delicious wikipedia article). Friday morning I was running a temp of 103 so the Peace Corps medic sent me home from training. Luckily I'm well aware how to self-medicate, and Peter as well as my Tumbaco family have been taking good care of me (as well as my re-hydration salts). Evidently it's something every volunteer can look forward to in the next couple of weeks, so I'm just getting it over with first!

February 6th, 2010

Today is our fourth day in Ecuador and we have already moved in with a family from Tumbaco and met many of their relatives. We are staying with an older couple who spend half of their time here in Tumbaco and half of their time at their finca in El Oriente. Their finca (or farm) is about three hours away, outside of the valley that Tumbaco shares with Quito. During the week they take turns staying three days in town to run their tienda (small shop) located in the front of their house and driving to their finca where they work as well. Hopefully we will get to visit it next weekend. They raise dairy-cows, chickens, ducks, geese and many other animals as well as plants. We're very excited to see it!

Yesterday all of the volunteers met with their families around noon and separated for the first time since Thursday. Although we had only been together for three days, it was difficult to say good-bye (partly because we knew it was our last chance to speak English for 2 days)! It was a very exciting/nerve-wracking time, as there were over 40 families in the courtyard of our training center trying to find their volunteers and 40 volunteers trying to find their families!

After finding our family we dropped our stuff off at the house and sat at the dinner table while members of their extended family dropped by to talk to us. We spoke with Mercedes and Ephraim (the couple) then their daughter and their grandson for about 3 or 4 hours. Their grandson, Sebastian is 9 and is learning English, so we had a Spanish/English conversation, with him speaking to us in English and us replying in Spanish. It was interesting hearing how much he progressed over the course of an hour as he gained confidence in his English speaking abilities, I hope all of the volunteers can show such notable progress in their language skills as well!

In the evening we took a long walk around Tumbaco with their daughter who showed us several notable sights, including a sweeeeeeet bike trail which runs 20 kilometers through the valley. Peter and I took a two hour hike on it this morning and were passed by probably 60 or more mountain bikers, we're hoping after we're acclimated to the altitude that we can rent bikes somewhere and join in! How perfect.

We also saw our first movie at el cine last night. Los Traversos de Gullivar- sin subtitulos, I think I got about 25% of the dialogue. We went with the daughter and her husband-who it turns out were married a week after we were. So we are going to have a combined party to celebrate los dos aniversarios. After what we've heard about the rowdy Ecuatoriano fiestas, Peter and I are little worried! Ojala que we can invite some of our volunteer friends!

Today, we had some breakfast and lunch with some more extended family. Unfortunately by the end of lunch we were both clearly running low our our Spanish word banks. Hahaha, so I hope we get some more lessons soon! Tomorrow we have more orientation, and our real classes do not start until Thursday. Can't wait!

Ciao.

Hello everyone, I thought I would finally start my blog…after much anticipation. So, we are here in Tumbaco Ecuador! One year after applying, 8 months after nomination, two months after our assignment and 3 flights and one blizzard later we arrived last night!!

Peter and I are two in a group of 42. Most of us are under the age of 30, although there are two “real” adults in the group. (One is a woman who retired two years ago and has decided to start a new chapter in her life as a Peace Corps Volunteer!) All of us are extremely motivated, goal oriented and eager to start our service. I hope we can maintain our energy throughout our 27 months!

Today we began orientation at a training center in Tumbaco. Already we are jumping into it! We took a 90 question Spanish assessment test (AhhH subjunctive!), got vaccinated, set up our bank accounts, verified our 2 year visas, spoke with a security representative from the embassy, and broke off into our project groups.Our group is comprised of two sub-groups: Sustainable Agriculture, and Natural Resources Management. Although are assignments may coincide to some extent, we are going to be working separately for the next 11 weeks learning about our specific service projects in the afternoons and learning Spanish and culture in the mornings.

I already know I will love the program I am doing. Right away we are asked to be “generalists”..meaning although our main projects will revolve around food security, we will also be involved in other projects such as implementing community banks, teaching English or in my case organizing women’s groups. We most likely will be placed in the Sierra region (the mountains) or the coastal region. If we are placed in the mountains, we will also be learning Quichua (the language spoken by the indigenous Quechua people). We were given a 2 hour introduction to our program this afternoon, outlining what exactly food security means for the Ecuadorian people.

Ecuador is the most bio-diverse country on the planet, basically you can throw a seed anywhere and it’s going to grow. Twenty-three percent of Ecuador’s population live on subsistence farming (they are relying on their food production to feed themselves as well as to sell at market for their livelihood). Therefore they are professional farmers, they will all know more that I probably ever will about farming and I’m excited to learn what they can teach me! However despite Ecuador’s amazing ability to grow a diverse range of vegetation, most farmers only grow a very limited crop (mostly potatoes) as well as other foods, and then they all go to a regional market and compete against each other selling the same product. One of our jobs is to re-introduce a more traditional farming methodology and bring back native Ecuadorian fruits and vegetables into their diet. Most families rely on a diet heavy in starch: potatoes, rice and pasta at every meal. And although they grow vegetables, the veggies are frequently fed to their animals. Resulting in a 60% malnutrition rate, which is very centralized in certain areas. So we will be working in these areas. Hopefully this very brief summary will give you a better idea of our work! I’ll fill in more details as they come.

Peter and I are moving in with a host family tomorrow night, and we’ve already made a pact to only speak Spanish to each other and other Peace Corps volunteers…we’ll see how long that lasts, but we’re both extremely dedicated to learning Spanish. We also probably won’t have a great internet connection there. Good evening, I’ll update as able!