A very Ecua Christmas

On Christmas Eve I went with my scholarship girl, Janeth, to her school's Christmas program. It was dominated by elementary school kids lip synching to poppy Christmas songs, but also featured some lively renditions of Silent Night played on their recorders.

The costumes were fantastic. There lots of pretty little angels, and cutie kids dressed as sheep and cows and chickens in the stable. The shepherds even had goatees.... although this poor kid below is going to have his on for at least a week, as it appears he applied it himself... with a sharpee marker. My favorite part, hands down, was the LIVE baby Jesus. (see here in lower right hand corner). No baby dolls for this crowd! Nothing but a real screaming pooping hungry live baby for this show! I had my hands full with my own baby (okay, not really, it is my friend Silvia's daughter). I somehow successfully held the baby while eating a plate of bbq chicken, rice and yuca with a flimsy plastic spoon. Quite a feat, I must say.

Here I am with my crew.

By the time I got back to the apartment after all the festivities, Jer got home and our friends Casey and Roger had come over for a little Nochebuena Christmas Eve dinner. I was pysyched to be able to hang out with two of my bestest Peace Corps pals for the holiday.

The next morning we had a Christmas Day breakfast extravaganza which featured bacon, a rare and expensive commodity here in Ecuador (which is weird, considering how much they love other pork products). After gorging on good food, we headed out to take a hike on a trail about a 10 minute busride from our house. It was a nice day and we encountered exactly 0 people on the trail. As we hiked along, we stumbled across the perfect little place to take a dip.

So we did.


It was our very own beautiful little swimming hole in a bend of an emerald green river...surrounded by steep hillsides swathed in in ferns. It was awesome.

So, all the sadness about being away from family for Christmas was washed away by the refreshingly cold current of the river. So as past Christmases seemed to blend and blur one into another in our memories, we all agreed that we would always remember Christmas 2008 where we played in the river in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Joy to the world!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas blogstalkers!



So, what am I doing this Christmas Eve? Actually, Jer and I have competing activities. He has a dinner with his co-workers and I have accepted an invitation to attend a high school Christmas program with my scholarship girl, Janeth. When I say scholarship girl, I am referring to the Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development (GAD) scholarship program that I was raising money for earlier this year.


A little about Janeth: Janeth is an orphan whose father, Amo, was an important Waorani leader who died under mysterious circumstances when Janeth was just an infant. (Amo was featured prominently--and photographed--- in the book Savages by Joe Kane). Janeth lives here in Puyo with her aunt. Her family is from Tepapare, my favorite Waorani community. Janeth is the first Waorani girl to receive one of the GAD scholarships. The funds cover her school matriculation, supplies, transportation costs, uniforms and misc. other school fees (there seem to be quite a few).

Here is me helping Janeth with her English homework.

I have really enjoyed mentoring Janeth and helping her with her English homework (and wow, is their curriculum horrible here!). A great ripple effect from this is that now that because Janeth has a GAD scholarship, her aunt is now able to able to sponsor another student (Janeth's cousin) in order to finish high school---whereas before she couldn't afford to pay for both.


My work with GAD has definitely been one of the most rewarding parts of my service. So, on this Christmas Eve I give thanks to all my friends and family who have supported me and Jer in our decision to serve in Peace Corps and thanks especially to those who so generously donated to the GAD scholarship program. Thanks!

I was recently working on a fact sheet on the scholarship program, so I will recycle some of it for additional blog content:

Peace Corps Ecuador’s Gender & Development (GAD) Committee aims to enhance gender equity in all sectors of Ecuadorian society. In collaboration with host-country counterparts, we promote the advancement of women in their homes, places of work, and communities. We assist our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in their efforts to implement sustainable, gender-inclusive development projects.

In 2008, GAD provided more than 60 scholarships to financially underprivileged, yet highly motivated Ecuadorian women so that they can finish their high school education. Working in partnership with Club Kiwanis Chuquiragua in Quito, GAD Ecuador's scholarship program is one of only a handful worldwide. Scholarships are awarded to girls entering their last three years of high school based on good grades, economic need, and leadership potential. The financial assistance that GAD provides for these young women is vitally needed, as high school is not free and a mere 56% of Ecuadorian women receive their high school degree. Poor Ecuadorian families sometimes choose to send their boy children to school before their girls, thus the scholarship program is an important tool in combating this inequality.

The Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development Committee also organizes an annual three-day Leadership Conference for all the girls currently receiving scholarships. The conference brings girls from all corners of Ecuador together for leadership training as well as sessions on small business development, self esteem, and sex-education among other important topics.

Camp ALMA (Spanish acronym for Activism and Leadership for Ambitious Girls) is organized bi-annually for non-scholarship girls nominated by the GAD committee as well. It consists of three-day retreats that enhance leadership skills and raise self-esteem through outdoor adventures and group activities.

I had the opportunity to help out at the last two camps and it was a really rewarding experience--as much for me as for the girls. Whereas summer camps are part of every American girl's childhood, they are not common here in Ecuador. The girls absolutely loved it.

So, that's my blogpost for the day. I didn't want anyone to think that after my last few posts that I traveled more than I worked. Not true. It is just the travel tends to be more fun to blog about... Anywho, if anyone is interested in making a donation to the GAD scholarship fund and camp, please let me know. Happy holidays!

I give up

So I have decided to just give up trying to blog about my Inca Trail trip. As much as I loved, loved, loved it, I just don’t have time to blog about it. I think I would need a solid week of doing nothing but writing to capture it all and do it any justice. I do not have said week, so I just give up. Plus I figure that the few people that read my blog (Mom, CTgoBucks) also read my hubby’s and mi sis-in-law’s blogs and they and are thus likely not interested in reading the third iteration of the same story (then again, who doesn’t want to hear the story about the iguana who power pooped on my brother’s head). But, really, read their blogs. And check out the full photo documentation of the travel extravaganza which includes Guayaquil, Salinas, Puyo, the Banos-Puyo Bikeride and Otavalo in addition to our Peru trip. The photos are awesome. An employee of the month prize plaque awaits anyone who looks at all 900+ photos.

Expectations

I will admit that I was very anxious about hiking the Inca Trail. As we loaded up into the minivan that would take us to the trailhead, my stomach churned and my palms started to sweat. I had flashbacks of my failed attempt at climbing Mount Quandry, one of Colorado’s famed 14’ers where I was sucking wind so hard I had to turn around. Plus, I was moderately intimidated by my super-sporty sis-in-law who regularly engages in adventure sports including a 24 hour bike race, a 12 hour desert hike and various other hard core outdoor activities. I was just worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I didn’t want to be “that” girl who was holding everyone up. Also rattling around in my head was the voice of someone who described the Inca Trail as “a death march.” So, as you can imagine, I was nervous. I love hiking…but I don’t do death marches. So, in preparation for what I thought would be a most unpleasant four-day debacle, I decided that I was going to shift into the auto drive mental mode that I have found that keeps me alive (and mostly sane) on my many marathon fustercluck trips to the jungle. I would push through it. It may not be fun, but I would get through it.

Then, as were queuing up in the intense Andean sun to go through the first checkpoint, something changed. I got this burst of adrenaline. The first few hours of hiking were cake. Then I cruised up the first big hill on pace with the rest of our group (Jer, my bro, sis-in-law and guide). At the top, I recovered quickly while hikers from other groups were gasping for air. We kept moving on and cruised right past them. We didn’t bother to take a break, because we honestly didn’t need one. The pace was great and we kept cruising. We were hiking so fast, in fact, that we were the first group to arrive at the designated lunch spot where the porters put up mess tents and cooked up a steamy hot meal. We actually had to wait quite a while because we got there so fast. On the following days our guide later had to amend the meal plans in order to accommodate our fast pace. It turned out we were one of the fastest and fittest groups he had hiked with (or so we say in the retelling of this story).
So, as per usual, I totally overfretted the hike. What I thought was going to be a death march ended up being one of the coolest experiences of my life. It may have been helped by the fact that I thought I would be miserable and instead was euphoric. The psychology of expectations.

So, we later decided to apply this lowered expectations theory to our bus ride from the Ecuadorian coast (over the Andes) and down to the jungle. I told Tom & Hannah that they were going to HATE the night bus…that it was going to be really hot, then really cold, really loud, uncomfortable, scary, incredibly long and overall miserable. I tried to make them have such dismally low expectations that they would think that the bus ride was actually good because it wasn’t actually that bad. (How’s that for some psychology?). Well, this little mind trick almost worked….were it not for the fact that Hannah had stomach issues, we had to get off the bus twice for security checks—including an intimidating full body pat down, and the bus route was not direct (we thought it was…and instead stopped in Guayaquil and Ambato) so instead of taking approximately 9.5 hours, the total trip took 12 and included all of the other qualities I previously described. So…the bus ride was pretty miserable, as expected. Which, I argue, is better than expecting a luxury ride and instead get a typical Ecua bus experience. Right? Cuz THAT would have been even MORE miserable. Like I said, it is all about expectations.

Am stuck in an office now. Wish I was back on the Inca Trail...

vacation from vacation

O-H-I-O representing!

I need a vacation from my vacation. I know, rough life. Two once-in-a-lifetime trips done back-to-back. Machu Picchu and the Galápagos. (Thus the gap in blog entries.) Until I get caught up on my blog writing, I will punt you over to La Chaser's blog for her take on the first part of the Machu Picchu trip.

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

One word: absolutely freaking amazing. Okay, that is three words, but whatever. 4 days, 45 km, 13,000+ foot mountains. Incredible. One of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. No time to write now, just wanted to let my blog stalkers know that we all made it. Many stories to tell some day. Gotta run. Ciao for now.

So...I had planned to enchant you all with stories of my recent adventures....my stellar halloween costume, our not-so-stellar performance in the white-water rafting competition, the gathering with hundreds of other gringos in Quito to watch the election results (and my solo OH-IO cheering when the buckeye state went blue), my traveles to Cofán territory with my women's group to learn more about the impacts of the oil industry, helping out with camp ALMA---a leadership camp for Ecuadorian teen girls, my latest adventures on a bus... and much more....but somehow there just are not enough hours in the day. And now I am headed to Peru with my little bro and sis-in-law....wooohoooo!!! To top it all off, we think we will be able to catch THE game tomorrow....and no, NOT via Skype webcam pointed at someones bigscreen t.v.... It COULD be the first game we see in two seasons...this could be the best vacation yet. Go Buckeyes!!!!

beauty school

Yesterday my friend Noemi and I decided to stop by the local beauty school that advertised free manicures, pedicures, haircuts, etc. I like free. On a a Peace Corps budget, free is very good. The students can practice on me for free, no problem.

So, as the young lady is painting my nails a perky pink, we strike up a conversation. Unlike the typical topics you might hear in a salon (about ---fill in the blank---movie star's sex lives, drug problems, etc) we had quite an interesting little chat about politics and global warming. Yes, these are topics that obviously interest me. But I did not bring them up. She did. But besides her interesting insights on our new president-elect, the most interesting part of the conversation was about our common link to Ohio:

SHE: "So what part of the U.S. are you from?"
ME: "The state of Ohio"
SHE: "Oh, that's where my brother lives."
ME: "No way! Do you know where?"
SHE: "UM, I can't remember the name of the town. something -ville"
ME: "That is really interesting. Most Ecuadorians I have met who have family in the states mainly live in New Jersey or New York. What does your brother do in Ohio?"
SHE: "He works construction. He is also a poet. He is very well educated. He just wrote a book of poetry that he is trying to get published."
ME: "That is really neat. Does he like it there?"
SHE: "No, he says that because he is undocumented, his bosses will often not pay him for work that he has done."
ME: "May I ask how he arrived into the States?"
SHE: "He paid a coyote $15,000"
ME: "Wow. That is a lot of money. How long has he been there?"
SHE: "Since 2005. He wants to come back home to Puyo. He is saving up money to buy a house here. He is ready to come home. He also says that the people there are very racist and they discriminate against Latinos."
ME: "Oh..... Yeah, unfortunately, that is a problem in my state...and other areas too."
SHE: "I don't understand. We Ecuadorians treat foreigners very well. We are welcoming. Yet, when we go to other countries we are treated bad."
ME: "That is very true. It pains me to hear that. It isn't fair, is it?"
SHE: "No."

After that, I didn't know quite what to say. Do I offer some sort of apology for my racist Buckeye brethren? I couldn't quite find the words in English, much less Spanish. So I didn't say anything. She continued painting my nails in silence.

jugo con Hugo

Okay, so continuing on with the theme of random stories from the last few weeks…a big news story was that Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa was hosting a regional development summit with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez…in Puyo of all places!!! The day before they were to arrive, Puyo was hopping with Venezuelans, press, and paparazzi. The day of the summit, it felt like the town was under siege, as there were helicopters buzzing the city all day. The two leaders spent the morning sequestered in El Pigual, the high-end finca resort owned by our friend Doña Maura (who I shared a tent with on one of my trips adentro). They were supposedly signing agreements for some sort of education initiative to support a network of agricultural high schools among other things. In the afternoon, there was to be a public rally so to speak. The Waorani were invited to dance for the distinguished guests. Given that my entire workplace was going, I was not about to be left behind solita. Plus I admit I was moderately intrigued in getting a chance to sneak a peek at Correa and Chavez…I mean it’s not every day that they come to town…and I doubt either will be making appearances in Ohio anytime soon. The program was supposed to start at 1:00 p.m.. At 1:05 I was still waiting for my compañeras to get their poop in a group so we could walk to the Pavelón de deportes, the new multi-sports complex. I was worried we wouldn’t get a place to sit, as people had been lining up since 7 a.m to get in….or so the rumor mill went. Well, it was one of those great "hurry-up-and-wait moments." We get to the Pavelón and enter with a large throng of other Puyenses. I was expecting there to be subjected to a lot of security…bag checks, metal detectors, dogs…but there was nothing…not even  mean looks from the automatic rifle-toting military police. I figured that being from the same country as “the devil” himself would at least subject me to additional security checks. But no. We just sashayed right on in and grabbed a pretty good seat. Maybe that should have been my clue. It was just too easy to get a seat. Half the crowd was wearing t-shirts that had photos of Chavez, Correa and the mayor of Puyo Oscar Ledesma. They were pretty funny, actually. I was hoping to get my hot little hands on them just for the novelty of it all…but no dice. I also saw some people wearing bright red shirts with Chavez’s face with beret…a la Che Guevara…but mucho más feo. Well after waiting for more than 3 ½ hours in a hot, stuffy, airless complex with thousands of my newest best friends who were invading my increasingly smaller personal space …I was ready to leave. The “magic” was gone. But, just as I was about to call it quits, the music is cranked up and in walks Correa and Chavez in the flesh. The crowd went wild. I can’t really tell you much about what either of them said, because I admit by that point I didn’t care, was starving (skipped lunch because I thought we were running late) plus their accents garbled by the microphone and bad speakers made their Spanish virtually impossible to understand. Something about viva Simón Bolivar y la revolución ciudadana, down with capitalism, blah, blah, blah. I confess it was hard to pay attention. Also distracting me was a group of protesters who were sitting uncomfortably close to us. They were environmentalists protesting additional oil drilling on indigenous lands. Interestingly, they were not indigenous. Quiteños perhaps. European possibly. Anyway, they were blocking my view half the time…and then I got really paranoid that one of the many t.v. crews would capture my face, I’d be on the evening news, my Peace Corps bosses would see me, assume I was protesting, then kick me out of Peace Corps and out of Ecuador. Yes, I have an overactive imagination sometimes… So, after the short speeches, the Waorani did their dance, then the Kichwa came to do a cultural presentation, then President Correa interrupted and said something about having to leave to go to Quito because they had to take off in the plane before it got dark. Umm…ok. So they left. And then we all filed out. And that was that. End of story.

In random other news.
Am getting ready for our big trip to Lima...as in Peru, not Ohio. Actually, Lima is just a stop over on our way to Machu Picchu with Jer, my bro and sis-in-law. Am soooooo excited. Just joined the the South American Explorers Club, which seems to be a pretty cool organization that provides travel advice, discounts on trips and hotels, and a bunch of other cool services. 9 days and counting till the fam starts to arrive. Look out Lima, here we come!

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On a 3-day Ecuadorian holiday weekend in October, the Puyo crew went to check out the Oriente town of Macas, the home of two of our compañeros, about 3 hours south of us. The town was not unlike Puyo, just smaller, cleaner, more tranquilo and a lot hotter. It is also more scenic, as it had beautiful vistas of the Pastaza River and mountains. Okay, now that I write that, maybe it isn’t THAT like Puyo. Our friends had a “frat” party complete with drinking games and a dance-off. Was having serious flashbacks to college. In the middle of the party, the Macas duo strolled out sporting shirts that they had specially made that had a thumbs up for Macas on the front and on the back they had a thumbs down for Puyo. Okay, fine, your town is cooler than ours. But we got …we got… okay, we got nothing on you.

The next day we took a pretty cool hike up to one of the scenic overlooks of the city. It was a fairly steep incline uphill in the blazing sun. At the top, we climbed up on top of a partially built base for a religious statue that would eventually overlook the city. The spiral concrete stairs led to a platform with a nice view of the river valley. As we were there, a lone worker methodically chipped away at a concrete footer with a sledge hammer. Our friend struck up a conversation with the guy and it turns out that they had to tear the whole thing down, because it wasn’t built right. At the current rate of deconstruction using one handheld sledgehammer, the tower just might be torn down and rebuilt by 2136. I have often wondered just how bad something has to be built here before some inspector of some kind says “nope, sorry dude, this won’t work. Do it over.” Cuz we have seen some seriously screwed up construction sites in our adopted country. I know next to nothing about construction, but you don’t have to be an engineer to see some of the buildings that are not structurally sound. I’m talking construction (or lack thereof) sites that would be a multi-million dollar lawsuit waiting to happen in the U.S., but generally seem par for the course here. On one hand, it is refreshing to live in a society not obsessed with litigious inclinations …on the other hand it can be a little disconcerting to see such disregard for public safety. I’m sure there is a happy medium somewhere…not sure where, but somewhere. We bade farewell to our construction worker friend, wishing him luck, and then made our way back down the hill, hugging the shady side of the dirt road as much as possible.

After a traditional Ecuadorian almuerzo, Jer and I took off in the late afternoon back to Puyo. Our bus trip was one of the less pleasant ones we’ve had. The bus left 20 minutes late and we were forced to sit in the hot sweaty steamy bus sitting idly in the hot equatorial sun next to another bus that belched black diesel smoke directly into our windows…so our feeble attempts at getting fresh air were negated by the plume of pollution. When we finally pulled out of the station, the bus crept through the streets of Macas at a snails pace. I could have very easily walked faster than the bus. Sometimes buses do this in hopes of picking up other passengers before leaving town, but we had never seen one this extreme. It took another 20 minutes just to leave town. Then when we finally were going at normal speed, the bus stopped mysteriously at the bridge crossing the Pastaza River. Instead of having the ayudante helper guy collect the tickets and busfare en route, the driver stopped the bus to do it. We had never seen this before. And of course he didn’t have change. It was a painful process to watch. When he finally finished collecting the fares and we were ready to go, some douchebag kid decided that THEN would be a good time to go buy something at the little tienda store on the side of the road. So he hops off the bus and we wait. We watch him buy a six pack of beer and not-so-stealthily “hide” it in his shirt then pass it through the window to his friend before re-boarding the bus. Classy. What never ceases to amaze me is that the Ecuadorians don’t complain about it. They don’t yell. They just deal. Meanwhile, Jer and I are incredibly impatient and annoyed with this ridiculousness. Even with the new levels of patience we have acquired through living here, this latest stunt did get on our nerve. We should have just left him. Buses leave passengers for lesser reasons…why not now. Over the course of the next 3 hours, they started and stopped THREE—count em 3-- different movies…one of them just so happened to be Cliffhanger with Sly Stallone. They of course stopped it JUST as the woman’s safety harness broke and she was about to fall into the abyss… Ahhhhh…. Rather than re-start the movie, they put in another pirated DVD…an old one with Arnold Schwartzenegger and a very young Alyssa Milano. Very bad acting and very violent. The Ecuas love that genre for some reason. But, of course, it too was cut off before the exciting ending. About this time, we pass through a Shuar community that was having a big party. Young girls holding babies, old warriers and everyone in between crowded the aisle of the bus. Our long distance bus was suddenly transported into a local bus, stopping every 100 meters or so to drop someone off and pick someone up. Ahhhhhhh….Ecuador. How we love you so.

Happy Hour. Jer and I decided to invite our co-workers for a little happy hour party at our house one Friday night. I of course was caught in a late afternoon nightmare pointless meeting that ran late…very late. I couldn’t escape. When I finally did, I got home about 2 minutes before the slated start time of the party. Luckily everyone was running on Ecuadorian time, so I was able to get a few last minute things done (although, as per usual, Jer did all the heavy lifting on the food prep). Oh, and we had no power. The whole city was out of power. Yay! We lit every candle we had, and decided that our happy hour would have a decidedly romantic theme. One of my friends called to see if we would still be having the party. She wanted to come, but would have to wait till the power came back on because she couldn’t find her jeans. Hummmm…. Well, miraculously, the power was only out temporarily. Soon after, swarms of people came swooping in our door. The directors of my women’s group had evidently invited every other Waorani in Puyo to our house. It was packed. Waorani in one corner, Jer’s coworkers in another corner. Unlike our last attempt of a party for our Ecuadorian friends, we made the point of explaining that you had to come up to the counter to get food—gringo style---…that we would not be serving food to them. I tried to explain the concept of grazing…like cows…to the Waorani. I’m not sure the translation worked well, because they still didn’t move from their chairs. I ended up bringing them food anyway. Jer introduced our Ecuadorian friends to Sloppy Joes (try translating that!) and deviled eggs (easier translation, but evidently unsettling concept to some). The former was much more popular than the latter. Jer also offered a taste of Guiness to some of the attendees. Our friend Frank had brought a few bottles and Jer was gracious enough to share the wealth (I, on the other hand am more apt to hoard such luxury gifts for myself, especially since they, predictably, would not necessarily appreciate the extravagant treat) with his peeps…. While the few gringos in the room all got excited to have the smallest sip of Guiness, the Ecuadorians generally scrunched their noses at the taste. I mean, it is already somewhat of an acquired taste for Americans, but for Ecuadorians who have only drank one flavor of beer their entire life (Pilsener is roughly equivalent in color and taste to Miller High Life), the full bodied black richness of Guiness was a little too much to handle. All in all a good par-tay and “cultural interchange.” After most everyone cleared out, our friend Casey whipped out a piñata for an early birthday celebration for Jer. She had bedazzled it and adorned it with a picture of a certain person whose identity will be withheld for security purposes. Jer had fun taking his frustration out on the piñata. We had fun eating the candy that spilled out. We also played a creative alternative rendition of pin the tail on the donkey also involving said person…the specific details of which will also be withheld from public consumption at the present time. Oh how we laughed and laughed…

Well, that’s all I got in me right now. Promise to have more updates this week. Lots of other stories to tell. Stay tuned. Same bat time, same bat channel.

GO VOTE!

No, I'm not lost, hurt or dead...just busy, thus the delay in blog posts. Sorry bout that. Got lots of good stories (read my friend Jason's account for a partial explanation of recent adventures: http://jason-desaparecido.blogspot.com/ ) but just no time to write. It is weird being in Ecuador on U.S. election day. I'm at my final Gender and Development meeting in Quito and we are all very distracted and finding it hard to concentrated on the tasks at hand. I cannot even concentrate enough to post a paragraph... so I guess I'll just give it up and go tune into election coverage. I'm outta here.

Seeing the light

One of the coolest and most rewarding experiences I have had lately was helping my friend Roger distribute prescription glasses in the small mountain village of Garcia Moreno. A volunteer medical brigade of eye doctors from the U.S. had visited the community previously to provide eye exams. They returned to the states to process the prescriptions then sent the glasses to Roger, who was responsible for getting them to their new owners. When we pulled into town around 10:30 a.m. we were mobbed with people. It felt like being surrounded by paparazzi! An old woman said she had been waiting since dawn for us to come. Feeling a little overwhelmed and pressed for time since we were delayed by our eating extravaganza in Las Lajas (see previous post ), we tried to get organized as quickly as we could. Unable to get into the community building, we set up shop on the steps overlooking the concrete fútbol field. Working off a handwritten list, we divided the men and women into two groups and then laid out the glasses in clear plastic bags on the steps. Frank and I coordinated with the women while Jer and Roger worked with the men. One by one we called the women’s name from the list and matched her with her new glasses. It was like each one won the lottery. The women hugged and kissed me and said “God bless you” over and over. I felt totally undeserving of their genuine heartfelt appreciation. I was just helping to pass the glasses out and I could not take credit for any of the other goodness…a fact I tried to explain but this didn’t seem to matter to them. They were just sooo happy. Some of the oldest women had tears in their eyes as they looked out through the lenses to see the world more clearly for their first time decades. One of them remarked that they never knew what that sign they pointed to off in the distance said. Others joked that they may not like their husbands so much now that they can actually see them clearly.
Roger and one of the men from Garcia Moreno with his new glasses.

As I said, it was one of the most rewarding things I have done here, even if I did very little to deserve the appreciation of the people. It definitely reminded all of us how much we take for granted our good optical , dental AND medical care. Yeah, yeah, the U.S. healthcare system is really screwed up, but it is hard to complain about the quality of care and the ease of access to doctors (meaning no half-day trips on a bumpy bus just to get to a city). And you don't need new glasses to see that.

web

One of my recent activities has been helping the Waorani Women's Association create a webpage. We have funds to hire a professional designer (porque no sé nada de esto) and so I am just sort of shepherding the process (getting text and photos ready, etc.) I just googled "artesanía Waorani" to see what, if anything, was already out there and came across this site. Last year I had submitted a brief written report and some of my photos to Save America's Forests, who helped finance one of our workshops...but never realized they posted it on their website!

Las Lajas--now with photos

Wow…I have been really recalcitrant on my blog entries. Once I get so far behind, it makes it even that much harder to motivate myself to get caught up. Here are a few highlights of the cool things and/or interesting things I have done the last few weeks:

Visit from Frank. Our friend Frank came from Northwest Ohio to Ecuador for a visit. He came bringing gifts of joy including Guiness and two GPS units for Jer’s project, and granola bars and Take 5 bars for me. Yay! Together we did some exploring around Puyo. We hiked to the Hola Vida waterfall (see previously posted photos) and took another hike down to the Pastaza River. I translated for him on a visit to the local orchid garden/park. Over a 3-day weekend we went up to Otavalo and checked out the market. There we helped him bargain for some cool gifts including alpaca blankets, cotton hammocks, tablecloths and sweaters.

Visit to Las Lajas. From Otovalo, we traveled on a crowded slow-moving bus to Las Lajas, a small community of about 400 people located high in the mountains where our friend and fellow Ohioan, Roger was doing some work. Our host, Norman, opened his house to us and invited us to dinner with some friends in a small brick house that was built with support from the Ecuadorian government. We had a fascinating conversation about farming practices, global warming and geography over a hearty and tasty Sierran meal of chicken, potatoes and rice. Most of the families in the community have small plots of land where they graze cows or grow potatoes and other vegetables. Everything we ate was likely grown or raised within a few hundred meter radius of the house. In addition to sharing our knowledge about live fences, windbreaks and nitrogen fixing cover crops, we also learned a lot from them. For example, we learned that about six years ago a Russian tycoon purchased an entire valley for $10 a HECTARE. There, with financing from the Russian government, he installed irrigation and constructed a 70 hectare greenhouse for growing roses. Approximately 1000 Ecuadorians work in the greenhouse earning $6 per day to spray, prune, cut, and package roses. The roses are then shipped to Quito where they are flown in jumbo jets to Russia where they sell for up to $5 a stem. We of course had lots of questions about their working conditions, the use of pesticides, recent strikes, etc. We also asked if we could buy land for $10 a hectare. Evidently the price has gone up a bit.

Las Lajas happened to be celebrating their annual festival in honor of their patron saint. Not unlike many other small towns in Ecuador, Las Lajas honors said saint by having a mass followed by lots of drinking, dancing and fireworks. But mostly drinking. In the community house the church ladies were serving up and selling “hervida” which was basically moonshine mixed with hot water, lemon, sugar and spices. Norman bought a bottle for the 5 of us to share. It was $1. Whether it was the temperature of the drink or the booze itself, the hervida did help to warm us up as we watched the most bizarre “firework” display I have ever witnessed. The town had spent weeks and untold amounts of money building a massive tower of sequentially lighting pyrotechnics. The words escape me on how to describe this contraption. Think of the game Mousetrap…now envision it made of strictly bamboo, masking tape and superpowered sparklers. And imagine it three stories tall. Now picture lighting one part of it, and as it spins, it sets off several other huge sparkler in the shape of an animal, which when fully lit then sets off a line of fireworks on the second level. It was surreal. The fact that no one lost an eye, finger or entire hand or limb is no small miracle. This was probably helped by the fact that about 22 seconds after lighting the contraption, it started to rain. Everyone crammed into the doorway to the community house seeking shelter from the rain to watch. Because we are tall, we could stand near the back of the crowd and see over most people’s heads. But as Frank moved forward for a photo moment his 6’4” frame topped by a cowboy had blocked a few people’s lines of sight. It was quite a sight. After the pyrotechnics, everyone’s attention was directed to center stage where a series of musical acts performed. One of the leading acts was a pleasantly plump woman with big 80’s bangs and super-tight clothes topped with an oversized sombrero who seductively sang Mexican rancheras. The men in the room were mesmerized and cat called to her in between songs and costume changes, which was basically taking off one layer after another, as the costume got skimpier and skimpier. I sat with some of our new friends on a chair with a thick wool blanket spread across our laps. Norman came around periodically to offer more hervida and say how happy he was to have new friends. As the night wore on and the acts got increasingly worse (or better, depending on your perspective) people started getting really sloppy drunk. They had to stop the show at one point as some superdrunk guy kept wandering onstage to pry the microphone away from the performer to do karaoke. The guys were getting tired of being peer pressured to keep up with the locals’ drinking, so we eventually decided to call it a night and head back to crash on Norman’s cold concrete floor. They guys had sleeping bags and I curled into fetal position on the very short pleather loveseat. Thank god for the alpaca blankets we just bought or I would have been a popsicle. I got up to go to the bathroom (er, yard, as there was no bathroom) around 4 a.m. and the bass was still thumping from the party up the hill. Here, here to the patron saint!

Norman had already finished milking his cows by the time we got up. Around 8:30 we walked together to his neighbor’s house for breakfast. As we walked up the hill, we passed a number of villagers who continued to party…or had passed out en route home. After we ate our hardboiled eggs, bread with homemade cheese and instant coffee, our hosts expressed deep disappointment that we were planning to leave so soon. They said they had already started making lunch for us. Feeling guilty for the effort they went to cook for us, yet time pressed to get to the neighboring town for another event, we asked if we could maybe eat lunch early or take it with us. Then, in some mis-communication or poor translation, we found ourselves being served plates mounded with fritada (fried pork) and mote (hominy)…just 15 minutes after finishing our breakfast. We all quietly moaned as we eyed the enormous amount of food we were being essentially forcefed. Okay, not really, but it would be rude to refuse. So we ate as much as we could physically be forced down. Yes, we ate breakfast and lunch within the period of 45 minutes. We waddled out of the house then bade a grateful farewell to our new friends and headed down the road to the next town.

compost

So, our attempts at a mini container garden have been officially dashed. Smashed, to be exact. Lacking a piece of dirt to grow our own food, we started a humble compost pile on the flat concrete roof of our apartment building. We had started some seeds with mixed success. We simply get too much rain (on the order of 5 meters per year). And after our landlord asked us about our “trash pile” on the roof, we read between the lines and decided that it was time to officially abort our veggie mission…and dismantle our compost box. Today was the day to dismantle our failed gardening project. Jer marched upstairs and started scooping the compost into a rice bag. He had half of the bag filled when an ant attacked him and stung him on the hand. Ticked off, he came back down to the apartment, grabbed the rubber gloves and asked for my help. I grabbed my garden gloves and followed him upstairs. “I’ve decided I’m just going to launch it off the roof,” he said. “Are you serious?” I asked incredulously. “Yep. Grab the other end of the box.” So, after securing that the coast was clear and then on the count of three, we launched the heavy (jer says 50 pounds, but it felt like more) wooden box filled with compost, partially decomposed papaya peels, pineapple tops and assorted other produce remains (as well as a small army of stinging ants) into the air. The box went flying off the roof of our building and crashed into the adjacent abandoned lot. The box broke apart and the compost scattered over the boards and weeds. Mission accomplished. We looked down and admired our handiwork. We agreed that you actually had to know what you were looking for to even notice it, because it blended into the weeds. Normally I wouldn’t condone such acts, but given how fast things decompose here, it is unlikely anyone would even notice. Who knew launching compost could be so satisfying!

Quehueri'ono part IV...the finale

So most of my blog stalkers have undoubtedly given up on me by now…I don’t blame you…I mean, the cruelty of it all. Making you wait weeks for one lousy story…the nerve! While I cannot promise it will be worth the drive to Richmond (sorry for oblique slogan known to few outside a 150 mile radius of Fort Wayne Indiana) I do promise to conclude my recollections of this trip so that I can eventually move on to tell the tale of other interesting misadventures.

Around mid-morning on the second day of the handicraft workshop, my compañero, Antonio and a small group of women from the stranded group walked into the classroom, totally drenched in sweat. It turns out that because of the perpetual shortage of canoes, they had ended up walking to the community. At some time around noon, the last of the group and the food supply showed up. The group looked hot, haggard, and hostile. And rightly so. Most of them had left Puyo on Tuesday morning…and were just now getting to the community on Friday afternoon. Quite a commute. Those that came by canoe loaded down with the food and supplies actually arrived after the walkers because the river was so low and the canoe advanced at a snails pace as it maneuvered around the many logs and tree limbs. Their trip was really quite ridiculous. It turns out they had spent the entire day Wednesday by the bridge waiting for canoes. When none came, they camped on the side of the road for a second consecutive night. On Thursday two canoes came and transported them only ¾ of the way to Quehueri’ono…(as far as the river level and the daylight hours would allow) and then they spent the night on a sand bar on the side of the river. Another half day of travel later, they finally arrived at their final destination. Only one of the two canoes made the final trip to the community; this displaced a subgroup of people who were then forced to walk. Incredibly, some of them had walked the entire way from the bridge to the community.

Meanwhile, back at camp, I had recruited a couple ladies to help me with lunch duty. We were at least an hour into the process when the food supply arrived. We incorporated lentils and the produce that hadn’t gone bad en route into the menu…but somehow this was unsatisfactory to my counterpart. After 2.5 hours around a wood fire in the hot, mid-day equatorial sun I was not in the mood to hear critiques about what we prepared. Everyone was edgy. I was annoyed. She was frustrated. But I guess I would be cranky, too, after such a ludicrously long trip. Nonetheless, the chemistry of the group changed from a happy-go-lucky small baby boat contingent …to a mass of hungry, tired, moody mujeres.

The final day of the workshop actually went fairly smoothly. I gave a presentation which included a report on the store’s sales, an explanation of my mini-census of the artisans (i.e. tracking who knows how to make each type of handicrafts sold), the importance of quality and the need to produce handicrafts pictured in our new catalog, and finally, a brief explanation of the webpage the Waorani Women’s Association will be launching. The latter topic required me to be extremely creative considering my audience was women who live in jungle communities largely without electricity.

In between sessions, talk turned to just how exactly we were going to get out of the community. There was only going to be one canoe available on the day we planned to leave. It would fit 12 people. There were over 40 of us. Uh…yeah…. THAT will be interesting…But we had received word that a group of tour operators from Great Britain would be coming in to check out the new Eco-Lodge. Smelling a potential sales opportunity, I helped the women prepare their handicrafts for sale to the tourists. It was somewhat improvised but in the end adequate effort. I had large sheets of butcher paper that we use to wrap up the handicrafts to transport back to Puyo. On each sheet I wrote the artisans name and then organized their wares on top of it. The papers stretched around the entire room. The women changed into their traditional dress, painted their faces, donned their feather crowns and continued weaving while we waited for the distinguished guests. Meanwhile, some of us had packed up our stuff in hopes that we could catch a ride on the plane that would be transporting the tourists in and otherwise flying back empty. But the sky was gray and a rain shower had passed through (and sent my stomach sinking with despair I wouldn’t make it out on the plane).

Somehow all our luck wasn’t bad. We soon heard “Evo, evo, evo” the Waorani word for airplane. The plane touched down on the grass landing strip. It happened to be a spacious 5 passenger plane AND it turned out that the plane would be returning with another load of passengers immediately after dropping of the first load. Score! Five women jumped into the plane and took off down the grass runway. This landing strip happened to have the skeleton of a plane that had crashed there years ago. Incidentally, it was the plane that my counterpart had been a passenger in. She and the others onboard miraculously escaped with minor injuries. Even with this knowledge, the sight of the wreckage was a little unsettling.

While the plane was shuttling the first load of passengers back to the Shell airport, I was helping to translate for the British women tour operators who were checking out the wares. I was able to explain to them the entire process of making the handicrafts, which added value to their experience and in the end I think it helped to encourage them to buy more items. They seemed like very hip, interesting people. I would have liked to have talked with them more…but our conversation was cut short by the sound of the plane returning.

As the second batch of tourists unloaded their backpacks we pushed past to quickly load ours onto the bright yellow plane. Because I was the tallest passenger by a good 8 inches, I got to sit in the co-pilot seat. In no time at all we were taxiing back down the runway and then were up, up and away. The view below was stunning. I was totally mesmerized by the sea of green below…until we flew into a very dark rain cloud. Water started bubbling around the area where the windshield meets the dashboard of the plane… hummm… that didn´t seem normal. Then all the sudden we hit a patch of turbulence and the plane suddenly and violently bumped downward. One of my compañeras screamed. I grabbed my seat out of sheer terror. We made it through the cloud and touched down in the rain at the airport in Shell without further problems. We chatted with the pilot afterwards and he admitted that he, too, was scared by the bump. Then he confesses, “but that´s mostly because I ´m still jittery from when I wrecked a plane two weeks ago. But I only got scratched.” Hum…that´s comforting. So, all of the sudden I was back in Puyo, just 35 minutes after being deep in the jungle. I think that stark transition is in some ways a more difficult dose of culture shock than going from Ecuador to the States.

Anyway, there you have it my friends, my final chapter of our trip to Quehueri’ono. My apologies again for dragging it out so long. I promise to try to post shorter, more timely posts in the future. The operative word being “try.” Chao for now.

diversions

So I hate to drag this long convoluted story out even more...but I am going to anyway. Over the weekend, instead of typing up the dramatic conclusion of my latest tale, Jer and I went with some friends on a short hike to the Hola Vida waterfall.

We also took a hike down to the Pastaza River where we saw some cool wildlife including monkeys, walking sticks, crazy cool spiders and beetles and this cute little guy.

Quehueri'ono Part III

We pick up today’s post where we left off yesterday…recounting my recent trip adentro with the Waorani Women’s Association. Our protagonist was stuck on the side of the Via Auca oil road with 30+ women waiting around for our ride (canoes) to the community of Quehueri’ono…. At some point in the morning a canoe finally pulled up to the bridge and the Waorani leader Moi gets out. Notice I said ONE canoe. After some negotiating with Moi (he claimed he didn’t know anything about our trip and only came to the bridge to make a phone call from the guard station…) he agreed to take a boatload of women to Quehueri’ono. Of course everyone was jockeying to get on the first canoe. They decided they would send all the women with babies first. “Hey, anyone want to lend me a kid for the day?” I joked. It turns out, there was one seat left on the baby boat. Manuela motioned for me to get in. I turned to my friend Noemi who I know really wanted to get moving and offered her the spot. Manuela then overrode her and said, “No, I send Susan.” Ok. She’s the boss. I quickly grabbed my backpack and slid down the slippery bank and into the front of the canoe loaded down with Waorani women, each with a baby in a sling around their shoulder or small child by their side. Although it didn’t feel like it at the time, I was really lucky to have got that last seat…

We ended up taking off around 10 a.m., leaving the other group behind to find their own way. The first half hour of the trip we motored past colono (colonists, mostly Shuar) settlements along the river. Although the houses weren’t visible from the river, I could tell that we were not in Waorani territory because of what was planted in their chacras (gardens). Finally we entered Wao territory, which was actually marked with a sign, part of a project to delineate the borders of their territory. Over the course of the next 5 hours or so, we motored up the Shiripuno River, making stops at a few Waorani houses along the way to say hello and to eat their food and drink their chicha. I goofed around with these two kids who were sitting behind me. The girl was at first scared of me, but eventually warmed up. When I wasn’t playing with them, I was scanning the banks for critters. I was excited to be able to see some cool wildlife, including a caiman, an agouti and a sunbittern. Always happy to see wildlife actually alive…rather than on a plate in front of me… It was slow going. The river level steadily dropped throughout the day and by the end of it we were having to go really slow to avoid hitting logs. One of our stops was at the new Huaorani eco-lodge outside of Quehueri’ono operated by TROPIC in cooperation with the Waorani community. I got to peek around a bit. It looked very nice, but it didn’t look very new. The wood had a time-worn look to it… a testament to how quickly things erode in the rainforest, I guess. We finally pulled up to the community in the late afternoon, unpacked our stuff and hung out in the school building waiting for the canoe to come back with some food that TROPIC had donated for our workshop. After we unloaded our stuff, one of the women said that there was a boa by one of the houses and asked if I wanted to see it. YES, of course! As long as I can keep a distance… She led me through a wooded area to where some of the houses were located…and there in a grassy by the house was a huge boa constrictor. And it was not happy. Evidently one of the men came across it while he was working in the chacra and brought it up near the house so others could gawk at it too. A group of kids kept throwing sticks at it, and one of the boys had a red t-shirt on the end of the stick and was taunting it. I got to witness the speed and the force of its jaws (and just how wide it can open its mouth) when it went after the t-shirt. I took another step backward. The comical part was watching the Waorani try to call a chicken that was wandering dangerously close to the boa. Meanwhile, one of the same boys came over to the house where I was loitering outside of, and showed me his gigantic pet rhino beetle. I know it was a pet and not just some straggler because he actually had a string around its leg. A beetle leash, so to speak.

That night I helped make dinner for our group, which consisted of rice, pasta and tuna. For breakfast the next morning we made rice with sardines and oatmeal drink. That’s all we had to work with. Cooking took forever because it required wood fire cooking…which required walking really far to get firewood. The women gave me a huge basket of wood to carry. I think they did it just to watch me struggle with it. The basket had a strap to put across your forehead, with the basket balanced on the small of your back. I walked like that for a couple hundred meters until it felt like a vertebrae was going to be compacted and crushed in my neck. I then grabbed the straps to take the pressure off my neck and continued walking until I saw some teenage boys who were willing to carry the wood for me. Whew! Quite a workout, really. The next challenge to the cooking spree was the fact that we did not have any spoons OR cups. Like any good Peace Corps Volunteer I improvised. I made a makeshift spoon out of a drink box, while the women just used their hands. For cups, I washed out the sardine cans and then filled them with the oatmeal drink to offer to the women, yelling “sardine juice, sardine juice, get your sardine juice for only 25 cents,” which they thought was hilarious. (They are an easy audience.) We made an extra large batch of rice and sardines in anticipation for the other group to come. They never came. So for lunch, we ate MORE rice and sardines and drank more oatmeal drink out of sardine cans. For dinner we ate more rice and canned seafood, again making extra in hopes that the other group would show up. They still did not show up. I was starting to get very worried about them.

During the day, I had tried to organize the “baby boat” group to have at least a mini-workshop (the trainers were among the group that were left behind waiting for the other canoes). I led what I thought was a good session with them where we talked about the importance of good quality handicrafts and we rated some of the things they had made. I also worked with them to collect information for a project I’m doing to document the natural materials (bark, leaves, roots and nuts) they use to dye the fiber. Interestingly, I have often found that my Spanish flows when I am talking among other non-native Spanish speakers for some reason. I am embarrassed to say that my wao-terero is still non-existent, however.

So, despite the transportation challenges in getting to the community, and the fact that we didn’t have much food or utensils… and the fact that I did not having any of the materials I needed, nor were the trainers there… despite all this…I was actually having a good time.

But things changed the following day (to be continued).