Happy New Year!!!! (or old year, as they say here).
I´ve had an awesome last few days...a really fun filled weekend with my friend Andrea´s family that is visiting from the states. They were a ton of fun... Will try to write about our adventures soon. Just wanted to wish my fair blogstalkers a very happy New Year. We´re going to watch the town burn tonight (okay, just effigies of people) which is the tradition, they say....
Another rainy morning in Puyo. It can be quite maddening because the more it rains, the less water seems to come out of the faucet. The water has been totally out for a good 16 hours or more now. Dishes are piling up in the sink…and well, it was kind of a moot point for me to scrub the toilet yesterday (no, not with the bottle brush, mom). I spent most of yesterday cleaning and mopping our entire apartment. I also hand washed our sheets (but admit I took two big bags of dirty clothes to the laundry lady) and actually got them dry on the line before it rained again, which is no small feat. No, no run-ins with neighbors over the clothes line.
Last weekend we hosted a little gathering for some other volunteers that didn’t go home for Christmas. We were a motley crew of eight, four gals and four guys from as close as Puyo to as far as the Coast and Cuenca (meaning double digit hours on a bus to get here). Half the group got into town Friday night and we ate burritos and then went out to a bar for a few cervecitas. On Saturday morning, we waited until after the downpour subsided and then walked around town, stopped by the Waorani store, then walked along the Paseo Turistico, a scenic walk along the Puyo River where we saw lots of evidence of flooding from the previous week’s inundations.
In the afternoon, the sun came out, so we filled our water bottles with gin & tonics, and headed to the big “eco-parque” outside of town that I had scoped out previously. It has a big pool with a swim up bar and was surrounded by hammocks, tables and a bunch of domesticated monkeys and other animals. We swam, played Frisbee, hung out and got a little loopy (and chewed up by bugs) then came back to our pad and ate a big dinner featuring Jer’s latest culinary feats including lasagna, chili, cheesecake and butterscotch chocolate chip bars, most of which involved toaster oven baking.
cookie bars and Espanglish Espeed Escrabble
We then had a white elephant gift exchange, which was a hoot. Some of the great gifts exchanged included:
--Big bling in a big box. A super tacky silver 2Pac necklace which was wrapped inside a giant refrigerator box. I won this prize and wore it with pride all night (even though I got made fun of for saying (or slurring) 2”pack” at some point)
--What you can buy on a bus. This was a collection of random stuff one of our friends bought from vendors on their busride to Puyo. It included “Las mejores Baladas Americanas” CD which featured a rose, a flag, an American skyline and two teenagers in love on the cover. The CD included no less than 131 cheesy American love songs. Think Rod Stewart, Scorpians, Feetwood Mac and Bryan Adams. Aw yeah! Also part of this prize package was the NONI-MACA vitamin supplement pack. According to the package, this miracle supplement promises to reduce hypertension, increase your energy, strengthen your teeth and bones, combat anemia and osteoporosis, stimulate production of milk in mothers, combat menopause, purify the blood, combat arthritis, help your kidneys plus it is a “regulador hormonal y potenciador sexual.” It does it all!!! And, to understand all these augmented bodily functions, you can reference your new Visual Atlas of Human Anatomy…which was also part of the prize package AND fits conveniently in your pocket. It has full color and graphic diagrams of all the systems, your senses, muscles, you name it. It is a great way to test your knowledge of Spanish anatomy vocab. Here’s a test. Can you translate the following Spanish words to English? pene, esperma, testiculos, ovario, escroto, trompa de falopio.
-- Bad sweater. This has a special place in my heart as it is a reminder of the Gruver Groupies back home. Some friends of ours hosted a “Bad Sweater Party” the last couple of years. As the name suggests, attendees are required to wear the loudest, most obnoxious, most over-the-top Bill Cosby sweater you can find at Goodwill (or my personal favorite thrift store, Ohio Thrift). Our pals Matt & Heather transported one of their bad sweaters (picture acrylic hot pink, teal, black and bright yellow) to Ecuador as a way to cushion the bottles of wine they transported. It is the gift that keeps on giving.
Kraft Mac & Cheese. This is actually quite a catch. Talk to any Peace Corps Volunteer about what foods they miss most, you will inevitably hear cheddar cheese at or near the top of every list. You just don’t find cheddar cheese down here…but SuperMaxi or MegaMaxi (no, I’m not making those names up) stores in major cities do sometimes carry Kraft’s powdered version. So, when one of the gifts was a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese you can imagine the stampede to steal the gift.
Techno II CD. I looked all over town for this CD to give as my gag gift. Okay, not really. I just went into one of the two dozen pirated CD & DVD stores in town and looked for the most obnoxious cover. This one happened to feature a scantily clad (okay, naked) woman with double D breasts bent over… Nothing says spanish techno like t**t. Also included with my gift was a postcard that I found of an old Waorani hunter and a monkey. The back of the postcard included a caption that said something like, Un hombre Waorani acariciando un mono, which translates to: A Waorani man petting a monkey. Unfortunately, the person who translated the sentence to English on the postcard was obviously not a native speaker. The actual English translation on the postcard said: A Waorani man fondling a monkey. The verb acariciar means to pet (an animal) or to fondle. Yikes. Very unfortunate. But very funny. Makes me wonder how many times I have mis-used a Spanish verb that has a sexual meaning. Oops.
Anyway, those were a few of the funniest gifts. It was a riot. We also played espanglish espeed escrabble and Texas Holdum. This was a re-match for some of my friends. A few weekends ago, I had schooled them two games in a row. The buy in was doubled this time. The pressure was on. I had switched to water and hot tea by this point. But as one person after another went out, they kept pouring me something stiffer, hoping to lower my inhibitions even more. But, their tricks couldn’t stop me. I ended up winning again, much to the annoyance of the serious players who found my frequent dumb bids really annoying. At around 1:30a.m. we decided it would be a good idea to check out the local disco. I used my winnings to pay for a cab and the cover charge to get in. We danced it up there until about 4 a.m. (they are open all night).
We rallied the next morning (fueled by Williams & Sonoma pumpkin pancakes: Thank you Chris and Sarah, you rock!!!) and decided to tackle part of the 60 km downhill bikeride from Baňos to Puyo. We didn’t make it very far, as we were slowed by bike repairs, rain, and hangovers. But it was still a blast. It is one of the coolest things I’ve done in Ecuador. The views are spectacular. There are bunch of places to stop along the way to take cable cars over the river valley, hike to waterfalls, eat crazy food, etc. Good times. We got back to Puyo late in the early evening and went out for pizza, watched part of the 40 Year Old Virgin and then crashed. We were all pretty pooped after an action packed weekend.
The Women’s Association announced on Monday that it was going to be closed all week. I was pleasantly surprised by this announcement. Especially since I went into the office with a very bad attitude. Here’s how my morning started: I am rudely awakened from a deep sleep and a good dream by “Es la hora de levantarse. La hora es siete y diez” in that really annoying computerized cellphone alarm voice. I get dressed, then chat with my friends who were getting ready to leave to go back to their sites. I was bummed that they couldn’t stay longer, as our weekend had been a blast and I wasn’t ready for it to end. I say goodbye and then I get on my bike and ride into town. About two blocks from the office, my chain falls off. Like, totally off. The chain broke. What? It is only the third time I’ve ridden my new bike. I walk back and pick up the chain, getting my fingers black. I walk my bike to the office. The secretary is sitting on the sidewalk outside the office. No one else had showed up and the doors were locked. I was already mildly annoyed that they wanted everyone to “work” on Christmas Eve. I stood around for a few minutes, then decided to walk my bike to the place where we bought them and ask the guy to fix the chain. I walk back to the office and people were finally rolling in. Waorani continued to drift in and out to pick up their caramelos. The caramelo (cheap hard candy) pick up was a big deal. Evidently each year the oil companies buy literally hundreds of pounds of candy to hand out to the communities. It definitely has become an entitlement. There was a big production about having someone go pick up several huge bags of candy in one of the communities where the oil company operates (that happened to be a 12 hour bus ride one way) and bring it back to Puyo to distribute to the Waorani in town. This was one of those moments when it is very tough for me not to be cynical. While the kids proceed to eat their entire bags of candy at one sitting, we start a very painful planning meeting, going over the very same dates and events that we discussed at our last meeting and which we wrote on two calendars. We also argued about when we were having our Christmas party. Here’s an excerpt of the conversation:
“So, our gift exchange is January 4th.”
“No, we will have it today.”
“But you said we couldn’t have it today” (this is said by three people in unison)
“No I didn’t”
“Yes you did. You said you weren’t going to be here, so we needed to change the date.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Well, I didn’t bring my gift for my amigo secreto because I didn’t think we were having the gift exchange today.”
“Well let’s have it January 1st.”
“But that’s a holiday. We already wrote January 4th on the calendar.”
“I’m going to be travelling.”
This goes on and on for about another 15 minutes. By the end, no one really knows when our vacation starts or stops or when our gift exchange is.
The meeting eventually breaks up and I try to sneak out and go pick up my bike from the shop. I am on the last step when I hear my counterpart scream “Susan!!!!!!!!!!!!!” from the third floor. I then hear another one of the women yell down the stairwell that my counterpart wants me back upstairs. I curse under my breath, then slowly walk back up the stairs. She asks me what I’m doing. I expect to get guilt tripped into staying longer, even though I just wanted to get the heck out of there. I explain what happened to my bike. She says, “o.k. Merry Christmas. See you next year.”
Merry Christmas!
I haven’t felt inspired to write of late. I still don’t feel very inspired, but I don’t want to let down my faithful blog readers. Let’s see… I guess I’ll focus on recent highlights:
After the conclusion of a workshop on Community Banks a few weeks ago, we hung out with our fellow Buckeye volunteer, Roger. Incredibly, I am the second oldest person in our group, but Roger has got almost 20 years on me. He gets teased a lot for being the “senior” member of our group, but he is by far one of the coolest in the bunch. Roger lives in the northern part of the country in what is called the
We visited the Afro-Ecuadorian community of Carpuela and bought a couple ceramic masks made by one of the local artisans. We also took a road trip with a few other volunteers and went to check out a place that had caves and
Last week my stress and frustration level were at very dangerous levels (for reasons I won’t elaborate here) so I took a “mental health” day and checked out Monte Verde, an “eco-resort” that is outside of Puyo. It happened to be a beautiful day…probably high 70’s and sunny. Gorgeous. I had the place to myself for a good part of the day. I donned my new $0.94 (no lie!) camo and hot pink bikini I picked up on clearance at Old Navy, and parked myself in a hammock with a book and a beer. It was awesome. I took a swim in the hugonic pool and even tried the short zipline that dumps you in the pool. Good times. Am thinking it would be a good place to bring a bunch of friends to hang out…
Let’s see, other cool things… Jer and I met my friend, “the other Susan” and some of her pals to do part of the famous bikeride to Puyo last weekend. It is about 60 kilometers from Banos to Puyo, mostly downhill. The scenery is absolutely stunning. Waterfalls, a deep river gorge, beautiful ultra green mountains. We stopped along the way to take a cable car across the river valley and buy mandarin oranges from a local farmer. We had perfect weather until we hit the town of
As far as my work goes, I am staying busy. I taught some of the women how to make a cuff-like bracelet using beads and elastic string. There is a store in Puyo that now carries these supplies, so I won’t have to continue to ask my sis-in-law to send more beading material. Yesterday a random woman came into our office and asked specifically for the type of bracelet I made. She even paid in advance for us to make it. This provided incentive for more women to learn this particular beading technique. I was torn at first as to whether I should introduce “cowude” (outsider) beading techniques to the Waorani because I feared that it wouldn’t be sustainable or that it might undermine or displace their traditional weaving and crafts. Now, however, I am realizing that the sales from their traditional handicrafts alone aren’t going to be enough… and if the Puyo-based (and least traditional) women can supplement their income with some new designs using different materials then I can deal with that.
I have just started planning a project where we (the Women’s Association) will be constructing nurseries and starting some small family gardens in two Waorani villages. With the nurseries, we hope to be able to grow some of the plants used in the production of handicrafts (chambira palm) so as not to deplete the resources in the forest. With the gardens, we hope to improve the diets of the villagers by teaching them how to grow a greater variety of vegetables. In the long term, the Waorani Women’s Association wants to initiate a small scale community-based tourism project in one of the villages, so providing locally produced food will be a key component to that. I am working with a small group of students from Duke who will be coming in May to help with this project. I have asked them to conduct some research into alternative energy systems for the communities. One of the villages has a diesel generator that operates a couple hours each evening. The other village has no electricity at all. Although oil extraction occurs all around the area, getting refined fuel into and out of the communities for the generators is very expensive and logistically challenging. Finding and funding alternatives is part of the challenge. Stay tuned.
Some of my fair readers and random blog stalkers may be asking… so what exactly are you doing down there? What is your objective? Well, I’ve asked myself that more times than I would like to admit. There are definitely days when I don’t have a clue. But then there are days that things become more clear and I feel like maybe, just maybe, I am making a small difference. My Peace Corps bosses seem to think I´m doing something right because they profiled my project in their report to Washington. So…here is the summary (infused with some creative writing ) that I submitted for their report:
The Waorani are one of the most endangered indigenous nations in the Amazon River Basin. Fewer than 2,000 Waorani live among 34 small, scattered communities located between the Napo and Curaray Rivers, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet. Powerful oil companies, loggers and other extractive industries have placed increasing pressure on the Waorani to access and exploit their traditional hunting grounds. The Waorani continue to resist these efforts and sought assistance from Peace Corps to enhance alternative income generation activities that respect their culturally rich heritage and protect the biologically rich rainforest ecosystems in their territory.
Habitat Conservation Volunteer Susan S. King is working side by side with the Waorani Women’s Association (Association de Mujeres Waorani de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana, AMWAE) to help build internal organizational capacity and to improve handicraft production and commercialization. The Waorani Womens’ Association was established with support from USAID's CAIMAN project and now manages one of the only artesania (handicraft) and ethnic art stores owned and operated by indigenous women in Ecuador. Susan brings over nine years experience in the environmental nonprofit field as well as a background in jewelry design to her assignment.
In addition to participating in artesania workshops and assisting with an asset-based cultural and natural resource inventory of a remote Waorani village as part of an ecotourism feasibility study, Susan’s work in her first five months has focused primarily on improving the sales and marketing potential of the artesania store. One of the first tasks she completed was authoring a SWOT Analysis which identified the store’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Susan worked with the women to implement many of the recommendations including in the report, including moving store locations, creation of a new pricing structure, construction of new customer-friendly displays in the store, and initiation of some small-scale promotion activities. These changes have led to dramatic sales increases. As of this writing, artesania sales were more than double the previous month’s sales.
Okay, so one more story about “La hora Ecuatoriana” time warp and I swear I’ll stop. For a while, at least. This latest edition is great. So, last Saturday Jeremy and I were invited to a wedding in a cute town not far from here. The setting was really nice. It was a small ceremony set outside with lots of flowers and a big waterfall nearby. We were told to be there at 3. So we show up at 3, and yes—you guessed it—we waited. And waited. It turns out that the bride couldn’t find the officiant or witness (and she was rightfully stressed). The officiant and witness finally show up at 4:30. About 4:34 it started raining. Of course it was beautiful at 3:00 when the wedding was supposed to start…. So, they rushed through the rest of the ceremony because by that point everyone was getting wet. The reception was adjacent to the ceremony site in a stylish open air pavilion with a thatched roof held up by live trees. We had great appetizers of elaborately carved fruit sculptures and chocolate fondue served out of cute little containers shaped like carriages. They broke out the dance tunes before dinner was even served. We danced a little…and then danced a LOT after we realized that the plastic pitchers placed on each of the tables was whiskey and not ice tea. Yeehaw!
The post-dinner entertainment was provided by some semi-professional teenage tango dancers who were awesome. Definitely Bailando Por Un Sueno material (the Ecua version of Dancing with the Stars). So despite the slow start, the wedding was good fun. If the Buckeyes would have won, it would have been even better. But thank god for whiskey in plastic pitchers.
Okay, so as I was typing this little tale we had an earthquake. I have no idea how big or little it was on the Richter scale, but it was big for me. It succeeded in giving me quite a scare. Our concrete building was shaking for sure and the windows rattled around a bit. I threw the computer down (on the couch) and rushed for the door and then all my blood rushed to weird parts of my body, like the inside of my elbows. Explain that.
Okay, now that my blood pressure has almost gone back to normal, I can type again…but I seem to have lost my energy and interest in story telling tonight. Too bad, as I have a couple funny stories to share. Well, I guess you’ll just have to tune in later. Same bat channel, same bat time. Oh, wait. This is
If you are folowing my blog and have picked up on my frequent frustrations and references to "ya mismo" and wonder if I am being overly dramatic about how habitually late people are in this country, well here is proof that the problem is truly a national issue (thanks to our pal Eric--RPCV Ecuador for sharing this!)
Ecuador's punctuality campaign
From The Economist Nov 20th 2003
PUNCTUALITY is not a Latin American comparative advantage. Now, Ecuador is trying to make up for lost time. Last month, Jefferson Pérez, the country's Olympic walking champion, fired the gun on a national punctuality campaign. Even the president, Lucio Gutiérrez, turned up for the launch, though at the last minute. His government is backing the campaign, in which posters have been handed out to offices and schools berating Ecuadoreans for wasting other people's time. Hundreds of institutions ranging from local councils to airlines have signed up to a promise to keep to time. Stragglers are barred from entering meetings. Hotel-style door signs have appeared in offices and schools. On one side, they say Come in: You're on time'' and on the other Do not enter: the meeting began on time.'' A local newspaper is publishing a daily list of public officials who turn up late to events.Participacion Ciudadana, the civic group behind the campaign, reckons that lateness costs Ecuador $724m (or 4.3% of GDP) each year. Cinemas, football matches and the church ceremonies generally begin on time. But more than half of all public events start late. Government is the worst offender. Two out of three appointments at the Ministry of Education are said to start late. The more (self-) important the official, the more unpunctual he tends to be. Social events are no better.The campaign is having an effect. Mr. Gutiérrez, who habitually turned up several hours late to meetings, has cut that to a few minutes. Businessmen also say that meetings are running closer to schedule. Many Ecuadoreans agree that it’s time for a change. Earlier this month, the 22 contestants at a beauty contest in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, were left to wait for two hours, propping up their hair while their make-up melted, until a local official showed up to open the event. “If it had been a date, I wouldn’t have waited more than an hour,” fumes Tahiz Panus, the runner-up. Ecuadorean men have been warned.
Editor´s note: My office has stickers from the punctuality campaign all over the office. But, uhhhh...they don´t seem to have much impact.
So, at long last, I am getting around to writing about my latest trip "adentro." Settle back with a refreshing beverage, as this is going to be a long one... So, I go to the office early. 7:45 or so. I am rushing around getting supplies and emailing off a report to Peace Corps. Anyway, at 10:00, the bus shows up and we load up without any incident. We then had to load a bunch of jugs of gasoline into the bus. Traveling so far with 150 gallons of gas made me quite nervous. It is dangerous, not to mention illegal… We had the usual chaos of loading the food into the bus and didn’t get on the road until 11:30. Not 20 minutes out of town, we have to stop for construction. The bus driver turns the bus off. Some people get off to take a leak. An ice cream salesman gets on the bus and tries to sell Ecua- icees at twice the price as those in Puyo. About 25 minutes later, we get rolling. The road was absolutely horrible. It was pure potholes. The kind of bone-jarring, teeth-rattling, butt-chafing bumpy ride that is just pure misery. The kind of ride where it is hot and sticky and you just want some fresh air, but if you open the windows, you choke on the dust clouds the billow up behind the vehicle traveling in front of you (and which the buses always choose to tailgate, so you get an extra dose of exhaust and dust). So, you suffer in silence and marvel at the fact that even though the windows are shut the dust still finds a way into the bus. It creates a fine layer of grit that settles on top of the greasy layer of sweat that clings to your face and all other exposed skin. Meanwhile, I had taken an extra-long and extra hot bucket bath/shower that morning, figuring it would be a while before I could bathe in clean water again. That ultra-clean feeling was long gone. It just doesn’t last on a bus ride like that.
We get to the village of Meñepare around 4:30. Everyone got off to stretch their legs, go to the bathroom and relax a bit. We were instructed by the Association President (who, incidentally, couldn’t go with us on this leg of the trip because of some supposed conflict, so she was planning on meeting up with us later) to wait a while to make sure that all the women who wanted to go had actually arrived. In the meantime, we were to leave exactly 50 gallons of gasoline in the village for the women who would return to their villages via canoe. This presented an interesting math challenge, however, as the big plastic jugs that we used to transport the gas were either unmarked or only had liter measurements. It was further complicated by the fact that the jugs were various sizes and filled to differing levels…so we were not sure how many gallons were in each jug. I entered stage left about 20 minutes into the measurement discussion. There was no clear consensus how much gas we had. We were fearful of miscalculating how much we had, because that could spell disaster if we shorted this group of women and they ran out of gas on their way home. I remembered that I had a measurement converter feature on my cell phone and, by estimating the number of liters we had based on one of the jugs that had liter hash marks, I then converted this estimate from liters to gallons. Yay! Problem solved.
I had wanted to check in with the President and with Jer, but Ifigured there was no chance in hell there was a cell phone signal. But I happened to be wrong. I was informed by one of the guys that lived in the village that in fact there WAS a signal… but only IF you stood in a very specific spot. He invited me into his house, and told me that if I stood right inside the doorway and then rested the phone on a wooden shelf, stood on my left leg, raised my right arm, and winked three times with my left eye that I could get one signal bar. Okay, the body motions are a lie, but the whole standing in one particular spot and putting the cellphone on the shelf was true. Sure enough, it worked. So, there I am crouching down in a weirdly awkward position yelling into my phone that is perched on the shelf, wishing I knew how to turn on the speaker phone function (although I am not entirely sure that the super basic phone even has that feature). I didn’t get ahold of the prez, but I did get to talk to Jer and share a bit about my adventure thus far. It felt like I had been gone a week already. Little did I know what further adventures lay ahead.
I hung out with two of the Warani Women’s Association members who were at another local Waorani’s house. It was a very basic wooden framed house, that unlike some of the others in the village, was built at ground level. It had basically two rooms. One had a hammocks and what looked like makeshift beds of blankets on the floor. They offered me an overturned bucket to sit on and a big chunk of sugar cane to suck on. The woman, then went around offering a big aluminum bowl of their traditional platano drink to everyone. The drink has an almost stew-like consistency. It is mushed up sweet-ish plantains essentially, and who knows what else. It is sort of chunky and filling, and really hard for me to drink fast…or drink at all when I start to think about the fact that it was likely made with water from suspect sources….and then I started thinking about the 10 hour bus ride ahead of me and the drink felt like it kept getting thicker and thicker.. I drank as much as I could, as it is considered impolite not to take what is offered to you. I asked where the bathroom was, and they sort of chortled and said, “el monte” (the forest) which I actually did, of course, know…I just didn’t know if there was a particular spot where I should cop a squat. I mean, I didn’t know if there was some garden or other area where it might be considered rude, sacrilegious, disrespectful or otherwise unwise (not to mention potentially dangerous) to take a leak. The woman told her little girl, who was maybe around 5 years old to show me where to go. The girl slowly and silently walked behind the house and casually pointed to a place under what looked like a banana plant, not 15 feet from the house. She then walked slowly back toward the house. I was relieved that she didn’t stick around to stare at my ultra white self scout for snakes and other undesirables before ungracefully yanking down my wick dry hiking pants to take a leak. There was really nothing very private about it, as I could easily see the bus, the drivers and the two dozen other women milling around the bus…so that meant they could likely see me, too, if they wanted to.
After returning from the “bathroom” I noticed that the women were getting a little restless. Some had walked long distances to get to the village and catch our bus and some had been waiting in the town for us for almost an entire day. I could tell many were hungry. I passed around a couple packs of crackers, while one of the other women passed around cups of the syrupy sweet orange soda that had been baking in the storage compartment beneath the bus. Several of the plastic containers had exploded or had slow leaks. We were told that there were some women that were still on their way, so we ended up waiting around hoping that they would magically appear from the forest. They did not. We waited around the village a good hour and a half or more, and then one of the women made the executive decision to press on and get to the town of Tena to have dinner.
Two hours later, we arrive in Tena and begin the process of deciding where 30 tired, hungry Waorani women can get dinner. We found a restaurant called el galpon, which means chicken coop in Spanish, that said they could handle our big group. All things considered, it went really smoothly. We ordered the set dinner and they got us all in and out really fast (too fast: less than an hour!). As I ate my tomato-ishy soup that I piled popcorn into (an Ecuadorian tradition that I am quite fond of) I looked around at some of the women and marveled at our motley crew. There were the young, hip Waorani women with tight jeans, makeup and cellphones. There were the reserved ageless women who toted their infants on their hips in slings fashioned out of sheets. They could look either 20 or 40, depending on what they were doing. Mostly they breastfed in silence. Then there were a handful of women elders… They were all petite, with wrinkled hands, calloused and wide barefeet, long perforated earlobes and shy, hesitant demeanors. Some of the older women tentatively sat down at the tables and I couldn’t help but wonder if it might just be the first time they have eaten in a restaurant.
I was given the responsibility to pay for everyone. Some might say that I should feel flattered that they trusted me with their money. However, I think the reality is that they didn’t trust each other with the money. But that’s another story. I honestly did not want the added worry and risk of carrying around a fairly large amount of cash. I mean, if someone wanted to rob us, I would be the FIRST person they target. All gringos seem to walk around with neon signs above their heads that say “I have cash and cool gadgets, so please rob me!” For added security, I had the money divided into three different wads. The cash wad for food was tucked away in the right cup of my bra (the money to pay for the canoes was in the left cup). The third wad was hidden somewhere else…
I was instructed to call my boss when we got to Tena so that she might be able to catch up with us and hop on our bus there, instead of the next big town, Coca (another 6 hours away). Well, come to find out, she had not even left Puyo yet. She said to wait for her in Coca. Hummm… well, I guess we keep going? We bought some big jugs of water and a little bottle for one of the women who was pregnant and very nauseous and then got back on the road. The road between Tena and Coca was more of the ultra-bumpy variety. I dozed on and off during this portion of the trip. The bus driver tried play a DVD on the small TV at the front of the bus, but the road was just too bumpy. Around 2:00 a.m. we pull into the city of Coca, about an hour before we had calculated. The bus driver and helper look back at us and ask, “what do we do now?”
“We wait. The president won’t be here until later. She said we must wait for her,” we reply.
“When will she get here?” they ask.
“She left on the 9:00 bus from Puyo.” Their fingers twitch, as they do the math on their hands.
“But that means she won’t be here until almost 6:00 a.m!” the driver exclaims, not shielding his annoyance. “We can’t just sit in downtown Coca in the middle of the night. It is not safe! And I am really tired. We will wait at my house. I want to get some sleep.”
So the bus driver takes us to the outskirts of Coca and parks alongside what we assume to be his house. He directs a group of waorani women to the outhouse behind the building, then turns to me to show me how to turn on the interior light of the bus and how to shut the door once everyone is back on. Then he leaves.
At this point, I have one of those what the f*&# am I doing here??? moments. As I have tried to describe to people back home, our Peace Corps experience has featured equal parts this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done!!! moments, and what the f*&# am I doing here??? moments. This was definitely the latter. In fact, I would say it was a top 3 what the f*&# am I doing here??? moments. I mean, there I was just sitting and sweating in a hot, uncomfortable bus with 30+ other women in some dude’s driveway in the middle of the night, in flipping COCA!!! This is not a good situation. I had to get permission from Peace Corps to go on this trip, in part because I would have to travel through Coca, one of the country’s seedier cities, where the FARC is rumored to go on “vacation.” There was no way in hell I was going to be able to sleep, even after taking over the more comfy co-pilot seat on the bus. Everyone was restless and uncomfortable and hot. I was wired and anxious and, as I would later realize, P.M.S.-ing. It didn’t help that I had had a series of weird bad dreams in anticipation of this trip. I had fought back tears as I said bye to Jer that morning. I had some weird anxiety and hormone fueled emotional moment where I irrationally feared that I wasn’t going to make it back from this trip alive. My over-active imagination started getting the best of me again.
The windows steamed up. I muscled open the window by the driver’s seat in hopes of getting some fresh air into the increasingly stuffy bus. The two inch opening only seem to let in au de outhouse, however. I dug out Jer’s fading headlamp and started to write in my beat-up journal. Sometimes venting through writing helps me to relax and focus. Sometimes, it just gets me fired up even more. That happened to be the case this time. I started listing the many colossal planning failures that had occurred thus far (many of which I will refrain from detailing because they really aren’t that interesting and they will reflect poorly on certain people) and then enumerating all the reasons why this trip was a bad idea. Then, something caught the corner of my eye and my heart skipped a beat. I looked up and saw a man standing beside the bus, seemingly looking directly at me. I quickly clicked off my headlamp and moved away from the window. I sat in the middle seat where I could scan the rearview mirrors on either side of the bus. He meandered back towards the street, and then just stood there for a long time. My eyes flitted back and forth between the big mirrors, following his every move. It felt like everyone on the bus was holding their breath. Absolute silence. Finally, the guy wandered away. He looked like he was staggering, so he might been just some random drunk, lost dude.
The minutes and hours dragged on. We watched the national police pull over a big truck on the street behind us. We watched in silence, hoping that a busload of Waorani women and some random gringa wouldn’t catch their attention and cause any more unnecessary stress. Around 3:30, one of the women asked me to open the door so as to allow her to go to the bathroom. I crawled into the drivers seat, clicked on my headlamp so as to see the release switch and then pulled up on the handle. The swoooosh of air and grinding noise made it sound like the door would open. But nothing happened. I pulled up on the knob again. The sound of air swooshing out, but the door didn’t budge. Instead of panicking, I let out an incredulous chortle. How can this be happening? One of the women pried open a window, precariously leaned half her body out the window while trying to push the accordion door open from the outside. No dice. I tried calling the cell phone of the bus driver asleep next door to see if he could help us open the door. No surprise, he had turned his cell phone off. So, there we were…literally trapped on a hot, sticky bus at 3:30 a.m. in a sketchy Ecuadorian city… Lovely. We just all sat in silence.
By 4:30 a.m. more of the women had to go to the bathroom and were getting extremely restless. Perhaps pressured by her bladder, or perhaps her peers, Laura, one of the Women’s Association officers made the sudden executive decision that we were just going to leave. Now. She started screaming out the window to the bus driver, “Chofer, ya vamos! Apurese!” Hey driver, let’s go! Hurry!!! Suddenly, out of the blue, we were in a hurry to go. I did not agree with this rash decision, as there was nowhere for us to go. If we left Coca without the Association President and the three other women that were traveling with her, we would be going against her explicit instructions. I suppose we could have continued down the Via Auca to the bridge over the Shiripuno River where we were supposed to load into canoes to take us to the Waorani village where the workshop would be held. If we did that, we would just end up waiting for hours there, as the canoes were likely not even there yet (although no one could tell me exactly when the canoes were supposed to be there---a maddenly frustrating factor). As we waited for the bus driver to get dressed and ready, I receive a call from my friend Noemi, who was with the delegation en route from Puyo.
She asks, “Did you get my text message?”
“No,” I reply. “What text message?”
“I sent you a text message to tell you to just continue on to the Shiripuno Bridge without us. We need to make sure someone is there, so they don’t think we’re not coming”
“What??!?!?” I started to freak out. “I didn’t get any message.”
“Really? I sent it to you. Oh, hold on. Let me call you back in 5 minutes.”
I frantically scrolled through my messages in my inbox. Nothing. I sat there staring in disbelief at my phone. I shared the information with Laura. Then my phone rings again.
“Wait for us in Coca. We’ll be there in 40 minutes. Maybe an hour.” Click.
The driver climbs into the driver’s seat and then leans back and asks us (while looking directly at me) “where are we going?”
I make Laura answer him, since she is the one that woke him up prematurely. She tells him that our companeras are on their way, they’ll be here “ya mismo” (please refer to previous blog posts about what this phrase means, and other reflections on Ecuadorian concepts of time) so let’s go to the bus terminal. I had hoped that the long line to the bathroom would help kill time to allow the other group to get to town. Well, it did kill some time, but only about 15 minutes. We loaded up in the bus and drove back into downtown Coca. The driver parked the bus on the street, turned the engine off, then proceeded to try to sleep again. By this point, it is around 5:00 a.m. or so. The sun is just starting to rise on the city, and it was not a welcoming sight. All the shops were shuttered with steel garage doors, iron bars or guards. A few cars rambled through town. A lone guy rode a ramshackle bike outfitted into a concession cart. A few drunks ambled about aimlessly. We just sat there, watching out the windows still unable to sleep. Finally, around 5:45 a.m., the bus from Puyo rolls in. The president gets on the bus and announces to the driver, “let’s go to breakfast.” So, after all the drama and hurry to get back to town so we can rush off to meet the canoes at the bridge, we instead go 1.67 blocks (in the bus, of course) to a broaster chicken restaurant to try to scrounge up breakfast for 35 people. Yeah. I helped direct traffic to the tables in shifts. Noemi helped set the tables, as the place wasn’t even officially open until 6 a.m. and was clearly not accustomed to handling entire busloads of people. Breakfast consisted of roasted chicken, rice and some mystery vegetable. I had zero appetite even before watching this poor teenager trying to pierce plucked chickens with the iron rods of the broaster oven.
As the last shift of breakfasters was finishing up, I tried to flag down the haggard, sweaty server in order pay for everyone. I asked for a receipt, which was required for the funders who were underwriting this adventure. In a scene played out too many times before, I painfully watched them try to first add up the bill and then search in vain for a receipt. They sent one of the kids off to god only knows where to get one…or so they told me. In the meantime, Noemi is trying to track down some live chickens to take with us to the village. She had made several calls earlier in the week to try to find a business that would sell live chickens to us and had largely struck out. She had found a place that would send us criollo chickens…if we were willing to pay $13 each, a ridiculously outrageous price. This latest part of the process involved lots of people standing around waiting…and waiting…and waiting. Finally, the same chicken broaster place that provided breakfast for the masses offered us a few live chickens. They sent their people to get them…wherever that might be. Probably best not to ask.
FYI--The Peace Corps just unveiled the "What Will You Do?" public service announcements. After a rough couple of weeks of my service, I have to say that seeing these videos gave me goosebumps (and not just because one of them is narrated by Matthew McConaughey) and reminded me why, despite some of the hardships, I am proud to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. Please DO check them out!!!
CLICK HERE to check out the PSA's. One is narrated by Ricardo Chavira, who currently stars as Carlos Solis on the ABC show "Desperate Housewives." Ricardo's parents served together as Peace Corps Volunteers in Peru from 1966-1968. And, as I said, the other one is narrated by my good friend Matt. Enjoy!
ALSO, this is a public shout out to Andrea's mom, who is one of my regular blog readers. Hi Toni!!! P.S. you're daughter is awesome. I am really enjoying serving on the Gender and Development Committee with her. She's a ton of fun. Anywho, I really hope to meet you in December.
Today´s Jer´s birthday (be sure to send him a b-day greeting if you haven´t already!!!) We´re laying low, as we were out kind of late last night. Jer´s co-workers had a "suprise" party for him...but it wasn´t much of a surprise since we were the first ones at the pizza place... (incidentally, the same exact place we had eaten at TWICE this week... because we were trying to catch the tribe game via their wireless internet.) Well, ALL of his co-workers showed up late, including Jer´s co-worker who organized it. She showed up over an hour late. Surprise!!! Happy Birthday! Despite this, it was a good time. I told them all about my stories from my recent trip adentro. My spanish was rolling (I have long found that several beers often helps).
I went to play basketball this morning, and we scrambled to get 5 people with uniforms (my counterpart said she lost hers). The other team didn´t show up. Actually, they really DID show up, but 40 minutes late, so had to forfeit. Yeah, we win again!!! They were ticked, because it turns out they were coming from some event adentro and their plane was late. They kept talking trash trying to challenge us to a game anyway. No one on my team wanted to play however. They knew we´d get our tails kicked. I would have liked to play some pickup ball, but there was three huge puddles on the court. Uh...yeah, no thanks.
So, my team was supposed to play "indoor" right after our basketball game. "Indoor" is basically soccer, but with a tiny ball, played with only 5 players on a small, dirt field...outside, not indoors, of course. Logical, right?) One of my teammates who "lost" her uniform wanted to borrow my jersey (which I don´t even think is legal) to play indoor. So I sprinted home (almost peeing my pants en route), changed my clothes, threw my uniform in a bag, then bussed it back to the sports complex. Well, after waiting around a while, it turns out that THAT team didn´t show up either. Perfect.
The whole timeliness/showing up at all issue is one that can really wear on your last nerve. Habitual late-ness is a definite cultural difference here. It is sooo cliché. Actually, I think it is a serious national disease. I am generally pretty patient and have found that I can wait for long periods of time with little to do and I am ok. But, the events of the last few weeks have really driven me crazy. Some of them aren´t worth re-telling. Some of them are almost too crazy to believe. Some day I will tell you all about them...
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