Ciao 79

Last Friday Jer and I get up at the crack of dawn to catch the bus out to the FRATES facility, a hostal and community center that his counterpart organization is involved in providing programming and outreach. Our goal: to weed the medicinal plant garden. It was actually nice in Puyo when the bus pulled out of town at 6:15 a.m. By the time we got to the community, however, it was pouring down rain. We were joined in our adventure by fellow Puyo volunteer, Katie, and this random dude Ari who is going to live out of the hostal for the next few months. We end up sitting and waiting for a couple hours for the rain to let up. We sipped some hot tea and chatted. Ari is an interesting chap. He is around 27, from Chicago, knows very little Spanish… and he’s a stadium vendor at the Cubs and White Sox games. In the offseason he travels. Not a bad set up, I suppose. His nervous knuckle cracking made me a little crazy, though. The rain finally let up and Jer, Katie and I head out to the medicinal plant garden to tackle some weeds. The garden was created a couple years ago with the help of a medicinal plant specialist. The idea was for the surrounding communities to learn from it, collect plants from it to treat minor ailments. It has great signs which include the common name, the scientific name and the problems it treats. Unfortunately, the garden hadn’t been maintained and it was overgrown with weeds. Katie went to work with her machete, my tool of choice was a large hoe-like thing they call an acedon; meanwhile Jer took off with the wheelbarrow to pick up a load of compost-mulch. Eventually Ari joined us and kind of looked confused and timid as to what to do, and kept asking us what he should be doing. He didn’t seem like he wanted to get dirty, so I put him to work trying to identify what plants were weeds (or plants out of place) and which ones were the actual medicinal plants. Thankfully we had a book that helped us ID most of them. That’s not to say that I got a little too aggressive and chopped down some of the wrong things. Oh well. It was still strangely fun. And it was a very aromatic experience. We pulled large quantities of basil, which was everywhere, trimmed back the citronella and mint plants, as well as some other plants that smelled amazing. We also saw some cool insects. No snakes, though, thank goodness. After we reached a stopping point, Katie and I ventured around the property looking for fruit and plants to pilfer. We picked a bunch of lemons, eyed some pineapple that weren’t quite ready, and contemplated picking some papaya and yucca (manioc). I dug up a plant to take back to Puyo as a houseplant. The hostal manager treated us to a great lunch and caperinas made with locally made aguardiente (cane alcohol) panela (brown sugar) and limes. The hostal manager wanted us to stay and hang out the rest of the day, but we ended up catching the afternoon bus back to town. That evening, we met up with another Peace Corps friend, Andrea, and her mom, brother and sister that were visiting from the states. They invited us to dinner at our favourite restaurant, El Jardin. I was excited to meet her family, as Andrea had told me a lot about them, mostly her mom. We had a great dinner and great conversation. Her family is a lot of fun, and had already had several adventures in their short time in country (check out www.crosbysinEcudor.blogspot.com ) including being stopped and interrogated by the Ecuadorian police. Andrea’s mom knew a lot about us. Why? Because she is a blogstalker. And proud of it. I think she had read every word printed on my blog (which is quite a feat) and made several references throughout the night to various stories we had posted. It was kind of cool…and kind of weird, too. She rattled off all the other Peace Corps volunteer blogs she regularly reads, too. Funny stuff. It was a really fantastic time. She had brought Andrea lots of presents, and several suitcases of supplies and toys for the kids in her coastal community. She even brought me one of the books on my book wish list that I have posted on my blog!!! I was so flattered! (p.s. Toni, you rock! Jeremy already read the book and really liked it…he finished it in one day!) After dinner, we took over the hostal’s lounge space and watched SuperBad (which they had also brought from the states) and drank some beers.

The next morning, we met the Crosby family early in order to do some birding with the local bird (and ecological sanitation) expert, Chris. He ended up taking is offroading to a part of the Omaere ethnobotanical park that is normally not part of the tour route. This became clear after the first 10 steps on the “trail.” It clearly hadn’t seen any use for quite a while, as it was totally grown over. We ended up bushwacking through the forest, which the Crosby’s loved. It really felt like we were deep in the “jungle” even though we were still within the Puyo city limits. Didn’t do a lot of birding because we were concentrated on watching where our next steps would be. Did a lot of crawling over and under fallen trees. Chris told us about some of the interesting palms and trees and other plants along the way. At one point it started to rain, so Jer cut down a huge broad leaf and used it as an umbrella. Very industrious and very cute. Somewhere en route, we disturbed a hive. Not sure if they were bees or wasps, but we didn’t stick around to find out. It was a serious swarm and they were ticked…so we got out of there as fast as possible. It was kind of hairy for a few moments. We all survived without any stings and eventually made our way back to the more “groomed” trails and continued our tour of the park. Later that afternoon, my friend Susan (or SBC as we call her) and I decide to relax and watch a movie. We chose Footloose, which I hadn’t seen in YEARS and had picked up in a pile of donated videos at the Peace Corps office. SBC had never seen it, which I just could not believe. I mean, it’s a classic. To me, at least. I mean, all the dance movies of the 80’s were an important part of my childhood. My first cassette tapes were the soundtracks to Footloose, Flashdance, Dirty Dancing and Breakin’. It was just another reminder of the small (but not totally insignificant) generation gap between me and the bulk of the other volunteers who are in their early to mid 20’s. They can have their FaceBook and MySpace. I love my cheesy 80’s dance movies and music.

We hung out with the Crosby Clan that evening (where we introduced them to Speed Scrabble) and the next morning (where they finally got to see the Waorani store). It was a good time. Was sad to see them go. But they had an ambitious agenda ahead of them. They hoped to drive all the way to the coast that day…after stopping in Banos to get inked. A truly family bonding experience I am sure.

SBC and I hung out during the day. We tried to take a bike ride, but were once again thwarted by bad bike karma. She was on the blue streak (my bike) and I took Jer’s silver streak since I am taller. We get about 6 minutes into the ride and Jer’s pedal falls off (actually, the pedal AND the metal thing attaching it to the bike). This had happened once before, but I thought he had fixed it. Not. I walked the bike to a nearby house and asked if they had a tool that might be able to repair the pedal. Two kids, maybe around 12 years old came out and worked on it for a while. We thought they had it fixed, but about 10 minutes later it fell off again. We rode to a tire place that I thought would have the tool we needed. We waited patiently while the guy finished changing tires on a car. Then he puts pedal back on (no charge) and we ride off…only to feel it come loose AGAIN. I gave up. We turned around and went home. Jer will have to take it back to the place we bought it AGAIN. Each our bikes have been back once for various repairs. We knew these were not the greatest bikes in the world, but jeeeeeeez…..

That night we watched the movie Human Trafficking with Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland. It was pretty heavy. I didn’t really know much of anything about the travesty of human trafficking before coming to Ecuador. We were briefed on it during our Peace Corps training, and there is a committee of volunteers that are working on the issue…mostly on education and prevention efforts. It is a very sick, sick business. Ecuador is supposedly one of the worst countries in the hemisphere in terms of human trafficking. They say that it is particularly bad in the Oriente region, although I have no first-hand knowledge of families being affected by it. They say that the traffickers try to lure poor indigenous women out of their communities by offering them good-paying jobs in hotels or restaurants on the Coast and instead force them into prostitution or slave-type labor. The PC volunteer task force is trying to raise money to support a shelter for women (and girls) that have been rescued from the trafficking rings. They say that Ecuador really doesn’t have a way to deal with the women after they are freed (many cannot return to their families for varied complicated reasons) so Ecuador sends them to a women’s prison because there is no where else for them to go. Very sad. I am hoping that the Gender and Development Committee that I am on can collaborate and support the shelter and other initiatives to curb this nasty, nasty business.

Jer and I spent New Year’s Eve (or Ano Viejo…Old Year, as they say here) in Puyo. We walked downtown around 9 or so to take in the theatrics. We had heard a little about the Ecuadorian New Year traditions, but were anxious to see them for ourselves. Essentially, each neighbourhood puts on a party, with a stage and big speakers blaring dance music. Every quarter mile or so, kids had rigged big bamboo branches which they would lower to block cars from passing. Guys get dressed up in drag and dance provocatively in front of the cars until the drivers give them money. Then the bamboo gate is raised and the car can pass. It was pretty funny to watch, as some of the guys’ drag costumes were great. There were pickup trucks packed with people that were clearly just cruising the streets checking out the parties and throwing change at the “viudas” or widows, as the guys in drag were called. The other main feature and tradition of New Years here, is the creation of lifesized papier-mâché and scarecrow-like dolls. The dolls represent the old year all the bad things that happened to you during the year. And at the stroke of midnight, the dolls, aka the old year, are set on fire…and all the bad karma from the previous year is destroyed. Some of the displays were incredibly intricate. Saying that they are dolls just doesn’t do it justice. They were entire theatre sets with lifelike paper people and posters depicting the scripts and plots of local events and regional political conflicts. Most of them we didn’t understand, however. We met up with my friend Maria Belen and she was able to explain some of them to us, as well as the other New Years Customs and superstitions (like throwing money over your shoulder at midnight). The streets were packed with revelers of all ages. Little kids ran around with sparklers. Bigger kids ran around with illegal rocket-type fireworks. One of my favorite scenes was watching a kid fire off these rocket-type fireworks while a dog on the third story of a building bark and lunge toward the light.

At midnight, the town was literally ablaze with the burning of the old year (tires and all!). Happy New Year!!!