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!!!!
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.
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. href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CTECNIC%7E1%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx">
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.
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.
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