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.
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