adentro part I

I spent a good part of the day yesterday looking for a new apartment...one that has oh, say, more than 14 drops of water coming out of the faucet per day. After several hours of riding my bike up and down every freaking street in town rubbernecking for handwritten se arrienda un departamento signs, stopping and asking random old ladies and store owners if they knew of any apartments in the neighborhood available, getting lots of vague directions to where a sister-in-law was renting a place, and staring down mean dogs.... I had seen a grand total of 4 (four) apartments. None of which I would ever willingly choose to live in, even if it did have water. There are slim pickings in Puyo these days. Not only are there few apartments currently vacant, the ones that are vacant all seem to have the same funky moldy smell.

Feeling defeated, I returned to our pink waterless apartment building in the midafternoon only to find the landlady fixing the waterline to the building. A new meter had been installed and an hour later we had water gushing from our faucet. She had seen me out looking for other apartments and while I would like to humor myself by thinking that my apartment search expedited the long overdue waterline repair I am not sure that is really what catalyzed the action. In any case, I am happy to have water in our pink palace. We´ll see how long it lasts...

This morning we woke up to the sound of dripping water. Evidently, someone had left the water on in one of the apartments on the third floor (all of which are vacant, as those tenants had the sense to get out of dodge months ago) and water was flowing out from underneath the door, across the landing and down the steps towards our floor. Lovely. I just love this place sometimes.

Okay, enough griping about our pink prison (this is a gross exaggeration, as our apartment is actually fine. Just having no water makes life, well, difficult). I still haven’t talked about my big trip adentro…and it will be hard to ever distill everything we did and experienced during that week in Menepare, but I will try. First, the preparation for the trip was an adventure—lots of supplies and food to find and buy. The students divided up into teams and got a lot done. They were well organized and efficient. We had a plan for loading the bus and picking up all the supplies we needed. On the morning that we were supposed to leave, however, I get a call saying those three words we have learned to loathe: no hay paso. The recent rains had damaged a bridge and we couldn’t get past it to the community. The Duke guys didn’t know this of course show up to the office early with all their gear, ready to roll, only to find out the trip would be postponed. As the hours dragged on and the rain continued to pour it became more and more clear that we wouldn’t get out of town that day. This delay definitely put a damper on the group’s spirits. The next day we finally got the green light to go. But somehow even though we had an extra day to get everything organized, it was almost like we were less prepared for some reason. Mentally, maybe. But the morning we left was a little wacked… first, the bus and the Waorani showed up EARLY, while the gringos showed up LATE. I think some of the students were chuchaqui, as they were very slow moving and slow reacting. They were supposed to help load the bus with all the construction supplies, but by the time they finally showed up, we were done. Manuela suddenly decided that we needed to leave that second, never mind the fact that all the kids weren’t there yet and she had previously said we didn’t have to rush. This then forced me to (as my mom would say) get snippy with both her and the students… I hated being put in that position, but someone needed to crack the whip and tell them (to borrow another one of my mothers phrases) to get their poop in a group. This of course catalyzed the proverbial “hurry up and wait” phase whereby we rushed around to load up the bus, only for it to stop for someone else to get off to buy something random while we sit around and wait. Probably the most interesting step, however, was telling the bus driver to go down my street (which is currently under construction and littered with large piles of stone, rock and sand interspersed with potholes) to pick up a 250 pound piece of ferrocement which was the floor Jer and I poured for the composting toilet. You should have seen the drivers face when I asked him if we could put it on the roof of the bus… yeah, I had failed to mention that we would need to load that particular piece of cargo on the bus. Small detail. After separate stops for food, gas, phone cards, more mesh screen, rope, the floor, and then the students and their gear, we finally hit the road. En route, we watched the movie the 11^th hour which was a little surreal. Once in Menepare we unloaded the bus and began to set up camp. The sun was beating down on us as we unloaded all our gear, materials and food. That night a small group of us met with Fausto, the President of the community (who is, ironically, Kichwa) drank some chicha and learned that he would not be available for most of the next day, as he was preparing for a big belated Mother’s Day celebration in the community. This put a bit of a kink in our plans, as he was to lead the casa tipica (traditional house) construction team.

Well kids, I am out of time and out of steam. Will have to finish this titillating tale next week. Tomorrow we head to Tepapare to trabajar (sorry, just needed a little more alliteration to end this post). Wish us luck.