THAT guy

Wow, what a wonderful and weird week I´ve had. Where do I even begin? I have been so busy I haven´t had a chance to catch my breath much less try to type up a summary of my adventures.

So, last week my counterpart was in Quito and she called to tell one of the women here to tell me to translate their grant proposal from Spanish to English. No problem. I´d be happy to. Except…she wants it tomorrow… AND it is 34 pages long. ¿Mande? (that´s the Ecuadorian word for ´what´? --Very important to learn for those of you planning to visit). I basically told them that I would try my best, but it would likely take at least four or five days to get through it all. I started worked all of Thursday afternoon and most of Friday on it. On Friday I was also asked to help with some interviews. The accountant in our office admitted that she had never done them before and wondered what we should ask during the interviews, how much time we need for each one, etc. I struggled to verbally communicate my ideas, so I sat down and typed up a little form with suggested questions to ask (you know, the typical stuff) which seemed to be helpful. Earlier in the week, mestiza (non-Waorani) women kept coming in the office with their portfolios and they would walk right past the Waorani women and go straight to the white girl to ask the questions. Interesting, eh? I, however, was clueless. AMWAE had evidently aired radio ads promoting the opening of this secretary/program assistant job…but I didn´t know that. So these women ask all these questions about this supposed job. “Uh…I´m just a volunteer…my Spanish sucks…uh…ask the accountant…oh, she´s not here…uh, well, I´ll give your portfolio to her and you can come back in the afternoon to talk with her.” I was finally clued into what was happening--but only after I looked pretty silly. Oh well.

So, Saturday morning I put on some business casual clothes for the interviews and go into the office. I think I overdressed. One of the interviewees wore jeans…as did my counterpart paired with a I (heart) NY shirt. About seven other women sat in for the interviews ---making the room quite crowded and quite hot. A fascinating process actually… the woman who was absolutely perfect for the job commanded a salary three times that which the organization could pay. I suggested that they try to contract with her or hire her part time for the program assistant part of the position (she was so highly qualified and excellent I think she could get the job done working on a part time basis). Some of the women really liked my suggestion…but my counterpart was luke warm. She ended up leaving the next day for New York for the UN meeting…so who knows what will happen now.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Pastaza Fair (Puyo is the seat of the Province of Pastaza --a political jurisdiction which is sort of like a state, but more like a county I guess…) which was great fun. The main feature was big car displays. There are no car dealerships in Puyo, so the dealerships in the bigger cities of Ambato and Quito bring the cars to Puyo…along with really big speakers which blast competing cheese rock… and women dressed in skin tight black leggings and stiletto heels---all to help boost sales I guess. The fair also featured livestock displays of mostly cows, a few horses, goats, rabbits and guinea pigs. There were booths promoting eco-tourism destinations, booths handing out samples of local fare—from yogurt drinks to pork rinds to these fruit that taste sort of like a cross between a tomato and cherry---booths selling all sorts of random stuff…booths actually performing what looked like cosmetic surgery…or maybe just skin peels and botox….and a booth offering free massages. These guys asked if I wanted a free massage…and well, I fell for it. Actually, I had just told Jer how much I missed Stacey´s massages, and the cheap mattress that we bought is, well, cheap. Well, it was a mediocre massage…I guess I can´t complain since it was free. And then…the guys asked me to go out with them to the disco that night. I was a little creeped out by it…that and the fact that I swear they were trying to cop a peek when I put my shirt back on. The one dude even chased me down the aisle and asked for my phone number. yikes.

Jer was staffing his organization´s booth, so I was roaming the place by myself…which was fun because I could take my time to look at some of the cooler offerings (like super cute leather shoes made in Ecuador…but I didn´t buy any because I´ve already been reprimanded for bringing too many shoes with me!) I wondered off towards the stadium area and stood on my tip toes to peer over the heads of the Ecuadorians gathered around. Everyone was fixated on this ´competition´ of sorts which pitted a bull against a bunch of guys who ran around taunting the bull trying to get it to chase them…and then when it did, they would run and climb the walls way before the bull could get to them. Of course there was one guy…you know, that guy, who wasn´t too bright and not real fast who kept falling or tripping and having all sorts of close calls (much to the fans delight)…well, straight out of one of those shows of stupid people doing stupid things, shocking, the guy got gored. Bad. In the face. It was on the other side of the ring, so I didn´t get a close look at it, thank goodness. They rushed him off to the hospital…no, I take that back. They didn´t rush him. They first had to find the ambulance driver who was MIA for a while and then they rushed him to the hospital. I guess he´s ok now. Needed quite a few stitches. From the bullring area, I wandered to the municipal government building display area which had really nice glossy promotional brochures on Puyo and Pastaza...and they also had an artist doing body painting. I´d seen photos of some of the finished work on posters around town and on the bus, etc., but never seen it done before. It was pretty elaborate stuff…and the model is wearing nothing but a thong. The artist often creatively incorporates women´s breasts into his designs. Behind him was a slick video showing some of his other work. All these Ecuadorian guys were gawking and taking photos with their cell phones. No, I didn´t take any photos…I didn´t want to be that girl.

Jer and I are making a habit of visiting the big open air market on Sunday mornings. We discovered it by chance the weekend before last and came back again this Sunday. It is sensory overload…and I love it. It is packed with people; the venders call out to you to buy their potatoes or their fish; there are huge blocks of brown sugar, monster bags of flour and pasta, piles of fresh avocados (5 for a $1), juicy ripe tomatoes that actually have flavor, bags of big leafy spinach (25 cents), bundles of fresh cilantro (10 cents) and mounds of exotic fruit—most of which I have never seen before and haven´t learned the names of yet. We have decided that each week we would buy something we had never had before. Thankfully, PC gave us a great cookbook with instructions on how to prepare and cook the mystery fruits and veggies. Well, we darted between cars on the crowded street in front of the market and as we walked up the steps to the market, this dude sort of steps in front of me rudely and then leans bends over to the side or something…it was all weird, and I remember being really annoyed because I had to stop abruptly, making me almost fall over him. I look back at Jer, who is behind me, and he says, “my phone is gone.” I look back at the guy who was in front of me and he´s buying something from a vender. I spin around looking for..I don´t know what...and then the guy starts walking fast down the aisle. I tell Jer, I think it is the guy in the gray shirt. I have absolutely NO evidence, as this all happened behind my back, but I just had this weird sixth sense about it all. Jer starts after him; my heart is pounding; I pull out my phone and speed dial Jer´s phone to try to hear it ringing or spot someone who might instinctively pick it up if it is ringing…and then I see Jer across the market confronting this guy and I get this sick feeling like…oh crap, I just made him accuse a totally innocent kid of stealing. This is going to be ugly. I start walking towards him, and then Jer waves his phone in the air and flashes me a smirk/look of relief/annoyance. Evidentally he just went up to the kid and said, “hey, where´s my phone?” and the kid says, as he motions to a black plastic bag with unknown contents, “I just bought this. I just bought this,” even though Jer had no way of knowing what was in the bag. The kid basically sets the phone down on a pile of veggies and then takes off. Weird luck. Actually, he´s super lucky to get his phone back. Pickpocketers are notoriously slick in Quito...and there are some lame wanna-be´s in Puyo, too, I guess. We went back to the fair to sit at the CODEAMA booth for a few hours and pass out brochures on water quality and watersheds. As we were sitting there, this tall gringo guy comes loping along asking us if we speak English..and if we know where the French doctor was. I gave him a puzzled look, but Jer immediately said, “I haven´t seen him,” as if everyone knows who the French doctor is! Duh. It turns out he was looking for this guy who specializes in medicinal plants and is associated with Pura Sana (I think that´s what it is called) which sells organic plant-based medicines and products. Incidentally, I had visited the booth the day before and bought an organic remedy to try to treat my many mosquito bites. I told him I would show him where it was. But first, I must relay a brief description of him. Without sounding cheesy (okay that probably is impossible) he was sort of striking on first glance. As I mentioned before, most gringos stick out anyway. So the fact that he was a gringo, super tall, and had long wavy hair made him stick out even more. I guess you could say he was handsome, but in a young Fabio/ cheesy romance novel cover sort of way-- especially since he had on a white oxford shirt only half buttoned---which was a little too much for the fashion police in me. As we walked toward the exposition area, he asked what we were doing and I explained that we were Peace Corps volunteers, briefly described our counterpart organizations, etc. He seemed very uninterested and/or distracted and/or stoned. I obligingly reciprocated and asked him what he was doing in Puyo. He offered a very hesitant, kinda cagey answer about doing his ´thesis´ on medicinal plants and shamanism…but he was also here for nondescript personal reasons that he´d ranther not discuss. He was calculatingly cryptic in his explanation. By this point we got near the exposition building and I could see the men in the massage booth, and rather than risk another uncomfortable run-in with them, I simply pointed to the building—told him approximately where their booth was, wished him luck and did a quick 180 to head back to the CODEAMA booth. Jer of course wanted to know “Fabio´s” story (I never got his name, so I kept calling him Fabio). “Let me guess, he´s French.” “No, actually, he from Santa Barbara,” I replied. –“Humph, ´medicinal plants´ eh? Sure…” Jer replied with a smirk. “He looks lost.” “Yeah, you could say that,” I said and then went to buy the big cup of fresh tropic fruit with a scoop of ice cream that I had been eying earlier.

So, the rest of Sunday was pretty uneventful. We went for our first jog together in Puyo. The sun was out—which it isn´t out often here, but when it is it is SUPER intense—and we crossed over a bridge where a bunch of kids were swimming. It looked sooo refreshing. We only ran 20 minutes but my face was beet red and I worked up a good sweat, which made our cold water shower finally feel refreshing rather than punishing like it usually does.

So Monday morning I diligently continued working on my grant proposal translation (despite a 2 hour delay because I was locked out and no one had a key to the main office where I had my document saved). Over the weekend I had talked to the accountant and a woman who works for Save America´s Forests (who has been working with the Waorani) where I expressed my concerns with submitting such a long proposal to U.S. foundations. I told them that I had submitted numerous proposals at my past job and I know that they have to be super concise-- many have strict page limits and most are no more than six pages. I expressed concern that the 34 page proposal which basically says the same thing but in 5 different ways (tables, charts, narrative, blah, blah, blah) would not be very effective. They thought that it would be fine for me to cut it down and re-work it to put it in a more standard U.S. grant proposal format. Whew! While I was relieved I wouldn´t have to translate word-for-word the last 18 pages of the grant, it still was a fair amount of work to reformat it and add some critical details that were missing from the Spanish version (like additional background on Waorani culture, the biodiversity of their traditional lands and the Yasuní National Park). I was plugging along, until the Vice Prez of the organization called me into her office to help her. I walk in, and sitting there in his half-buttoned white shirt, is "Fabio" sitting at the desk. The VP was having trouble understanding him and asked if I could help translate. They both looked confused. Indeed, lost.
Well, faithful romance novel...er blog subscribers, I am out of time. You will have to log back in latah!
To be continued...