Ciao 79

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 Chota Valley. It is an absolutely beautiful part of Ecuador. Warm, dry, mountainous, scenic. It was great. He’s got a pretty good set up: he lives in quaint small town where everyone knows his name and works with a pretty cool counterpart organization that does extension work in sustainable agriculture and markets locally grown produce. While we were there, he introduced us to ovo ice cream. It is a fruit that I’ve never had before and don’t really have much to compare it to. It is small, oblong, red, with a large pit, is very tart and grows on trees in the area.

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 hot springs. Supposedly the water that emanates from the cave has healing properties. One entire wall outside the cave was covered with plaques from Ecuadorian families thanking some virgin saint (can’t remember her name) for healing them. We were hoping that the saint could help heal our group’s ailments which included diarrhea, constipation, giardia, hemorrhoids, bad gas and bad attitudes. It was $0.75 to enter the hot spring-fed pool and it was well worth it. Despite looking a little murky (the minerals naturally make it greenish), the water felt awesome. We had a good time relaxing and goofing off…and we didn’t want to leave, even when it started to pour down rain. The water helped to alleviate some bad attitudes (mostly mine). Also helping with the attitude adjustment was the huge plate of empanadas that we bought. Actually, we bought 3 plates of 8. (they were only 8 for a buck…and boy were they de-lish!). We returned to Roger’s place for a slumber party that night. We drank and played games. I had a great winning streak going. I schooled the group in eSpanglish eSpeed eScrabble AND Texas Holdum. I just learned how to the latter game and admit I am now hooked and am constantly looking for people to play with…or at least until my beginners luck wears off.

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 Rio Negro which is about about 3/5 of the way, where it started to rain, so we stopped… Nonetheless, it was totally amazing. We are definitely planning on doing the trip again…and again.

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.