What Are We Doing in Ecuador?

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers

2009-09-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

We landed in Quito, Ecuador on June 20, 2007 along with 45 other trainees of Omnibus 98. Along with our ridiculously overloaded suitcases, we arrived filled with high expectations, hope, fear and dreams of making a difference. We were ready to leave the American lifestyle behind and embrace a new country and culture as Rural Public Health Volunteers.

This blog is merely a glimpse of our Peace Corps experience in an incredibly beautiful country and culture. The posts are filled with stories of Ecuadorians who unknowingly challenged us to open our hearts and minds and see the world from a different point of view.

We are forever changed by our Peace Corps service. The time was filled with incredible challenges and accomplishments as we learned to live and work in another country and cross the cultural divide to form friendships. We joined the Peace Corps to give of ourselves, but we received so much more than we ever dreamed.

Saying good-bye to our friends and leaving our home in El Chaco was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. The good-bye parties started nearly a month before we left and continued until we caught our final bus to Quito. Our friends in El Chaco are some of the most generous and humble people we’ve ever known and they will never be forgotten.

We flew out of Quito as Returned Peace Corps Volunteers on August 15, 2009, just as the sun was rising over the Andes Mountains. The raw beauty of this small South American country never ceased to amaze us. We choked back tears as we thought about how soon we would be able to return.

Life is calling. How far will you go?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0sTWqccxRU

COS Reflection

2009-08-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

A friend suggested this little activity to me to put COS, Close of Service, in perspective and you guys are just lucky enough to read it! Here’s my list of: What I’ll Miss About Life in Ecuador, What I won’t Miss, What I’m Looking Forward to About Life in the U.S., What I’m Not Looking Forward to About Life in the U.S. of A.

What I’ll Miss About My Life in Ecuador: (in no particular order)

- My soccer team/playing soccer
- Having an entire day with nothing to do
- Walking everywhere
- Español
- Grilled corn with cheese from street vendor lady
- Lunches/dinners for $2 or less
- The beautiful scenery
- The tranquility
- Our precious wooden house
- Life without stress
- All our friends, The Ashqui Family, Rosa, and Rebeca’s family
- Public transportation
- Really fresh milk and cheese
- Wearing sweats and t-shirts more than I should
- Not worrying about fashion
- Living very GREEN
- Nearly perfect temperatures year-round
- The “kiss” greeting
- Evening walks to get street food
- Really cheap fruits and veggies
- Fresh shrimp at $3.50 a pound
- Our PCV friends
- Not driving
- Sleeping in buses
- Drinking warm milk in the evenings
- Sunny, gorgeous days in El Chaco- few and far between, but wonderful
- Rafting with the Ashquis
- Green trees and plants year-round
- Juan 23, our church group and the music

What I Won’t Miss About My Life In Ecuador:

- Sweeping
- Hand washing clothes
- Always sticking out
- Turkeys’ squawking/roosters crowing waking me up
- Cold, rainy days where I can’t ever get warm
- Making meals from scratch when I’m hungry
- Missing all family events
- Missing American holidays
- Always looking for new projects
- Really slow internet
- Mold
- Mice, spiders and abnormally large insects in our house
- No personal bubble in public places
- People butting in lines
- Washing the milk bucket
- Having the milk boil over and kill the flame and then having to clean up the spilled milk and start over again
- Peeling potatoes with Ecuadorian women
- Cooking with Ecuadorians and having to cut up vegetables without a cutting board with giant, dull knives
- No public bathrooms
- Really nasty bathrooms with no toilet paper
- Hand washing dishes in cold water
- Always being worried about getting robbed outside of El Chaco
- Night buses and not being able to sleep
- Crazy, unsafe drivers and not having a seatbelt

What I’m Looking Forward to in the U.S.

- Washing machine and dryer
- Vacuuming instead of sweeping
- Dishwasher
- Microwave
- Having a separate life from Gregg’s
- Being with our family and friends- number one, but I already wrote in no particular order
- Holidays
- Season changes
- Always being able to talk without being embarrassed
- Weekend trips
- Getting my Masters
- Having regular work
- Getting a dog
- Meeting my niece Alexis
- Buying a house
- Being able to make quick, easy meals

What I’m Not Looking to About Life in the U.S.

- Stress, stress, stress
- Driving everywhere
- Ridiculously hot and cold weather
- Pointless spending
- Fashion- it’ll make me buy new clothes and then I run into pointless spending
- Traffic
- No free time
- All English
- Lots of Gringos
- Not living as greenly
- Canned and frozen fruits and veggies
- Expensive everything

Check out more photos on Facebook... 182 to be exact: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2013098&id=1463436368&l=a218f61dc0

Work

2009-08-05T19:35:00.001-07:00

Why all the blog posts all of a sudden? Reason Number 1, this blog will soon come to an end. Number 2, I often start writing blogs when I get an idea, but never finish them. Now I’m finishing partially started entries. Number 3, I have time now, so I’m making up for the months without blogs.

We did work these last few months even though we rarely wrote about it here. Gregg has been working for the last six months on a community bank. Peace Corps really pushes the community banks as income generation projects. Gregg started the bank in the neighboring town of Santa Rosa with our friend Jose, who lives there.

There are about 30 members and each member has to put $2 each week in the bank. Members can take out loans and pay them back with 10 percent interest. At the end of each year the bank is liquidated and the members split the money equally. Then the bank starts over again from scratch. Pretty cool concept.

Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize back in 1996 for his work in Bangladesh with community banks, microfinancing and “helping the poor help themselves.” Peace Corps pushes the same sort of bank model as Yunus’ Grameen Bank.

Members usually take out loans ranging from $20 to $100 and it is amazing what a relatively small amount of money allows people to do. They are now able to buy more seeds and have bigger harvests or buy an extra cow and produce more milk. The bank members are going to be diving into their extra money this weekend to throw us a good-bye party… or maybe they’ll have to take out a loan!

I’ve been done with my work at the high school now for a while. Although I really dislike the whole school system here, it seems the students enjoyed my English classes. Even though I didn’t have any official health classes this last semester, I still tried to incorporate a lot of health/self-esteem type topics in my classes and do lots of activities. More than anything, the students just seemed happy to pass an hour of their day not copying from the board!

Overall, it was a really good experience for me working in the high school. I’ve learned a lot about crossing the cultural divide and connecting with kids. I decided I truly hate grading. I also decided that I’m going to keep with this teaching thing for a while.

Living Green

2009-08-05T18:14:00.000-07:00

We’ve become quite environmentally conscious since we arrived here. Even before we joined PC we acted a lot “greener” than your average American. But now, we are glowing… or stinking green. I even did one of the surveys online to see your environmental impact and ours is nearly non-existent!

- The average temperature in El Chaco is around 65 degrees, which means no heating, no air-conditioning and no fans.

- The electricity regularly goes off during the day and it usually takes us awhile to realize it. Year-round the sun rises at 6 a.m. and sets at 6 p.m., so we only really need electricity at night.

- We reuse everything! We’ve had the same 15 Ziplock bags, since we arrived. Just wash and reuse. Butter containers, yogurt jars, etc. are our Tupperware.

- Everything is cooked from scratch. This means barely any trash- no boxes, cans or cartons. All of our organic scraps are buried in the ground to make fertilizer. Unfortunately, we can’t flush our toilet paper, so we still have to take out the trash every week.

- Only high efficient light bulbs in our house. If you don’t have them, get them!

- Our only electric appliances in the kitchen are our fridge and blender. Everything is cooked on our little gas stove. Wait… I guess those are the only appliances in our entire house! No washer or dryer… just the good old washboard and wringer.

- If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down. An easy water-saving tip… not gross, just environmentally friendly. When we enter a water crisis, nobody will be making fun of me!

- We shower every other day. Saves water, soap, shower gel, shampoo and conditioner! Only Americans are crazy enough to think you have to shower everyday.

- Our milk bucket has been washed, filled, boiled, emptied and reused every week for two years.

- No lawn mower here. Just pull out the machete and start chopping.

- No cars for us. We walk everywhere and take a public bus to Quito once a month to do our shopping and visit the Peace Corps office. When in Quito, we hardly ever get a taxi. We hop on the electric Trolley for .25 cents.

Now obviously, this green lifestyle is much more difficult in the U.S., especially Missouri. This is something I’m really going to miss though- especially never having to use the heat or air-conditioning and not driving has been a huge plus!

With no Target around, I’ve learned to live without many things that I used to think were “essentials.” Reduce is one of the 3Rs that I think Americans often overlook, because we are such a consumer-driven nation. Although I’ll have to give up many of my green Ecuadorian ways, my motto Stateside will continue to be Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. And don’t call me cheap… I’m just being Green… and frugal.

Health Survey

We are finding some pretty interesting stuff, as we’ve started the whole packing up process. There is tons of stuff from our work as health educators that I had completely forgotten about- stories we had written about washing your hands, games we made, scary pictures Gregg drew of bad children that don’t brush their teeth and only eat sweets and our health survey results.

As we headed out of training, Peace Corps assigned us homework. We had to do a survey on the health situation/needs of our communities and present our results to PC after 3 months. With our counterparts, we administered the survey to 45 families in and around El Chaco. Based on our findings, we designed a work plan with our counterparts.

Here’s some of the results that I found interesting back in the day and still do compared with the U.S.:

-Average family size: 5.9

-Biggest problem in the community according to residents: 1. Water quality 2. Sewage system 3. Roads

-Families that have gardens: 66%

-Mothers that breastfeed: 100%

-How long on average did moms breastfeed their babies: 49% between 13 months and 2 years, 42% 7-12 months, 6% more than 2 years, 3% less than 6 months

-Children that are vaccinated: 100%

-Average number of pregnancy per mother: 4.6

-Average age of first pregnancy: 19 years-old

-Women of childbearing age that use birth control: 71%

-Women that have had a pap smear: 47%

If only I could post Gregg’s beautiful storybooks and his cavity-filled characters.

Not in the U.S. of A.

2009-08-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

We received some really sad, scary news last week. Our comadre Rebecca (our goddaughter’s mom) went to the local hospital after having sharp pain in the stomach, diarrhea and vomiting. She was there for three days and the doctor diagnosed her sharp abdominal pain as a “stomach infection.” Her daughter Natalia finally decided something just wasn’t right and called a doctor in Quito. The doctor told Natalie to get a taxi and get her mom to Quito as quick as possible. Unfortunately, we didn’t find out about this all until she was already in a taxi on the way to Quito.

Apparently by the time they arrived in Quito, Rebecca was unconscious. It turns out that her appendix had ruptured and she went into an emergency surgery. The doctor said her “insides were rotting” after he took a liter of pus out and said she’s very lucky to be alive.

Rebecca has no health insurance and the surgery alone cost $6,000. She is going to have at least 5 months of “treatments” which are going to be very expensive. To put it all in perspective- Natalia, a school counselor with a college degree, makes $3,000 a year.

It is hard to believe that no one- doctor, nurses or her family- caught onto the “sharp abdominal pain.” The most frustrating part is that the doctor won’t receive any sort of reprimand! Almost all of the “doctors” here in the local hospital are very young, inexperienced and have almost no supervision. Medical school is a total of 5 years after graduating from high school and then they are sent to rural communities to do their residency- with no supervision!

Rebecca has some land in El Chaco and is selling it all to pay her medical expenses. There are some people that have medical insurance, but she’s not one of them. She also has a small grocery store in the front of her house, which she’s now going to have to rent out too. Really sad situation, but at least she’s alive. She’ll have to stay in Quito for sometime, while she receives her treatments. We’re going to visit her next week.

The good-byes
The good-bye get-togethers and “last times” are beginning. Thankfully, we’ve had very little work lately, so we’ve had lots of time to spend with friends and time to take everything in!

My soccer team threw us a good-bye party last weekend. The morning started by butchering a pig and the rest of the day was filled with cleaning, cutting, preparing and cooking ALL the parts of the pig! The pig was butchered at 9 a.m. and we ate 12 hours later. To say the least, I had a lot of hands-on-learning that day. After stuffing the intestines to make sausages, I never thought I get the smell of blood and guts off my hands!

My favorite part of the day was when all the women decided to take a break to go play soccer and volleyball. It was about 6:30 p.m. and I really thought we were just about done and ready to eat, but I know well never to assume anything here! Since there is no sense of time, nobody seemed concerned about serving the meal quickly, so that we could return to our houses.

We left everything where it was and left to play some very intense games. Some of the women played barefoot, because they were working heals or sandals. It got to the point were we couldn’t see the ball and we were falling all over the place and I kept on waiting for someone says its time to stop. It didn’t occur for a long time. It was one of those moments were I couldn’t help but think, this would NEVER happen in the U.S!

After the meal, we got to dive into the formal speeches. An extremely informal day, but Ecua-style is to turn every event into a formal speech contest. My soccer coach started off by saying how much they were going to miss us, what good friends we’ve become, that we have to come back to visit, etc., ect. Then came our turn to talk, and though I’m still not good at the “flowery speech” I did shed a few tears, which got all the women crying. A really long, but nice good-bye party.

Other happenings:

-Gregg’s team won El Chaco’s championship- super exciting. Mine team lost our last game and we ended up in third place- really big bummer.

- Telephone job interviews have started, for Gregg, at least. Seems like a Spanish-speaking RN is a big deal in KC.

- Jeff, the other PCV in El Chaco, finished up his service and left a couple of weeks ago. It was really sad, almost unreal to seem him go, but a good preview of what we will have to go through.

- Mice are officially taking over our house. I will not miss the daily battles of Gregg and Maggie vs. Mice and Maggie vs. spiders and abnormally large insects. Gregg thinks we should only kill the mice.

Food Poisoning and Fútbol

2009-07-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

40 days to go and counting. It is getting sadder and sadder to see the days slip away. I’m already starting to feel the stress of the U.S. and I don’t like it one bit! I’ve lived 2 years nearly stress-free, so this is going to be a real adjustment.

Once were back in Missouri….

I’ve been spending a great deal of my time making plans for life after the Corps. After LOTS of debating, I will start classes this fall at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. I’m going to be getting a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction with secondary certification to be a Spanish teacher. We’ll see how this works out- hopefully better than my major in Journalism! I’ll just have night classes and hopefully I’ll be able to find a job, so Gregg doesn’t have to be my sugar daddy.

Gregg is doing lots of job searching right now. He will go back to nursing, while he applies to nurse practitioner programs.
I think due to pure boredom, Gregorio returns to make a blog appearance. Here’s his rundown of June:

Food Poisoning Fun:

With only a month and a half left in PC, I ended up getting sicker than I ever had in the entire two years. Ironically, we were in Quito at the time for our end of service medical check-up. We went to eat with a group of volunteers for a good-bye dinner at one of the nicest restaurants I’ve been to in Ecuador. I always thought I would get food poising from some sort of street food, like grilled chicken gizzards, cow intestines or fried pig skin, but no, it came from a $10 plate of salmon at a fancy Thai restaurant. I spent the entire night in the hotel bathroom and even kept up one of friends in the next room.

Last night after getting back to Chaco, we headed over to the Ashqui’s house. They served us a traditional meal of ceso or boiled cow brains. Of course, it didn’t even faze me!

Host family Visit:

After Quito we went up to Pesillo to see our host family one last time. It was really good to see our Ecua-brothers. The oldest Ivan is going to be 16 and heis really trying to join a student exchange program to study in the
U.S. They were all very happy to see us and we spent the afternoon doing what we mainly did in our three months living there, we played cards.

Confirmation Weekend:

Two weeks ago, we celebrated the confirmation of our landlord’s son, Darwin. The day got started with a 4-hour Mass, which of course started one hour late. 92 Chaqueños were confirmed, so El Chaco was one giant fiesta that day. Our neighbor’s party was still going strong at 3 a.m.

Fútbol:

On Saturday, Maggie’s team had a game with a team from the neighboring town. Her team was fully uniformed and on the field right at game time. The opponents didn’t show up until 45 minutes after the scheduled time, so Maggie’s team automatically won. Even though it is in the rule that there is only a thirty-minute wait time, the other team could not believe that they had the game called on time. I really thought some women were going to start a fight. It is serious now that they’re in the semi-finals. If Maggie’s team wins next week they finish in first place, however if they lose or tie, they don’t qualify for the next round.

My team won a hard fought 3-2 battle to my old soccer team. We are currently in a three-way tie for first place with two games to go. This has been a much better soccer season than last year!

The Last Hoorah

2009-06-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been a blur of fiestas, sightseeing, buses and lots of diarrhea. Gregg’s siblings Cliff, Erica and Geoff came to visit us just in time for Chaco’s annual festival. After the fiestas, we traveled through half of Ecuador, riding approximately 40 different buses and eating at some really sketchy restaurants (if you can call them that). Diarrhea caught up with all of us at some point, but Cliff won hands down on toilet time, losing 12 pounds in his two-week visit.

Fiestas De El Chaco

It rained a lot during the fiestas, but we still had a great time. Just like last year, the four-day festival was filled with the running of the bulls, concerts, drinking, dancing and parades. Erica and I took advantage of .75-cent manicures the first day and then the siblings enjoyed a nice lunch of guinea pig. I ate roasted pork- still not a fan of guinea pig.

All the concerts were outside and since it was raining a ton, the dancing area was pure mud. Us Nurrenberns danced anyway (with a little pressuring from this Nurrenbern) until 3 a.m. in the rain and mud with about 500 other crazy Chaqueños.

Part One of Traveling

Part One of traveling includes from May 27 to May 31 when Geoff flew out of Quito with some really stinky shoes. Activities during these days included hot springs in Papallacta, bird watching, repelling down a waterfall and zip lining in Mindo, artisan market in Otavalo, leather market in Cotacachi, Indian restaurant in Quito and chao Geoff.

Part Two of Traveling

Part Two of traveling includes from May 31 to June 7 when Erica and Cliff flew out of Quito with stinky everything. Activities during these days included hiking around the Quilotoa Crater, night bus to Cuenca, a big colonial city in Southern Ecuador, Cliff vomiting on night bus, orchard garden, museum with real shrunken heads from the Shuar tribe, Incan ruins in Incapirca and then a night bus to Quito.

In Quito, Gregg and I had our two-day Close of Service conference, so Cliff and Erica were on their own for sightseeing.

Close of Service Conference

A very intense two days of “here’s what you need to do to finish up Peace Corps and start your life in the U.S.” and saying good-bye to many of our volunteer friends. This was the last time our whole group was together, because we pick our own dates to leave, between August 5 and August 31. PC staff did treat us to some fancy food, gave us a certificate and thanked us for our service in a closing ceremony.

Somehow I’ve become sentimental in these last two years. Now being the sentimental person that I am, I’ll include the Thank You from Peace Corps.

“As you close your service…
Thank you for staying and struggling when the road was almost too tough.
Thank you for all the work you put in to master a new language.
Thank you for leaving your family and friends, for what were, at sometimes, two very long years.
Thank you for giving up many of the comforts you were used to.
Thank you for learning to walk in another’s shoes and learning to walk by their side.
Thank you for being open to the beauty of Ecuador and the warmth of its people.
Thank you for empowering others to believe in themselves.
Thank you for your piece in the puzzle of interconnectedness, be it the child with the shining eyes who started (even if only for a minute) to believe in herself, the woman who learned to stand taller, or the farmer who found the foreigner valued his friendship.
You will never be quite the same, nor will Ecuador.”

Quito to St. Louis- August 15th

Our official Close of Service date has been set for August 15. It is really hard to believe we only have two months left! All though it may sound corny, I’ll say it anyway… my time in Peace Corps has truly been the best two years of my life. It is so hard to see everything come to an end. Right now I’m going through the “really sad to say good-bye and leave the laidback lifestyle stage,” but I know as our COS date grows closer I’ll be ready to head home to see all you family and friends.

Help Ecuadorian Girls Finish High School

2009-06-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

GAD/Anti-Trafficking Raffle 2009

On behalf of the Gender and Development (GAD) Committee of Peace Corps Ecuador, we would like your support in our annual raffle, proceeds for which help further educational opportunities for Ecuadorian high school girls and support other GAD activities.

ABOUT GAD
The Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development (GAD) Committee aims to enhance gender equality in all sectors of Ecuadorian society. In 2008, GAD provided over 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. The financial assistance that GAD provides for these young women is vitally needed, as a mere 56% of Ecuadorian women receive their high school degree. In addition to the scholarship program, GAD also sponsors popular youth camps and large national leadership conferences for Ecuadorian girls.

This year's raffle, scheduled for July 7, 2009, will help to provide scholarships for around 80 young women, as well as funding for our annual leadership conference of scholarship girls and ALMA (Activism and Leadership for Ambitious Women), a three-day leadership workshop giving young women the opportunity to test their potential and gain valuable self-esteem as they take part in rigorous outdoor adventures.

Prizes for the raffle include 2 plane tickets good for travel within Ecuador, as well as other prizes such as gift certificates to restaurants and hotels throughout Ecuador and RAFTING in El Chaco. Each ticket costs only $1.50. If you buy 100 tickets, you will automatically sponsor a woman's education for a full year and become a member of the GAD 100-Club, receiving a photograph and information regarding the young woman whom you are sponsoring.

Donations are tax deductible!! There are several ways to donate:
1. We encourage you to donate on-line through the Friends of Ecuador website. Log on to
friendsofecuador.org and look for Featured Projects and click on Donate to make a donation to the GAD raffle.

2. Checks can be made to: Club Kiwanis Chuquiragua Please write GAD Rifa in the Memo of the check and mail to: Attn: GAD.
Casilla 17-08-8624. Cuerpo de Paz/Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador. South America.

Life's Necessities

2009-05-22T15:15:00.001-07:00

For nearly a week, we didn’t have running water, because the water pipes in town are all being changed. Of course, there were no announcements made about this planned water outage. Thankfully our water reserve was nearly full, so we were able to more or less make do- until the stupid turkeys got up on the edge of the tank and pooped in it. There’s nothing like making coffee from turkey poop water.

During this week when I was taking sponge baths from a bucket, I couldn’t help but think how our daily living is quite paradoxical. We hand wash our clothes and then go play on our Macbook Pro. We often don’t have running water, but have high speed Internet in our house. We don’t have an oven or microwave, so we cook everything on a small gas stove, but we do have a Kitchen Aid blender and J.A. Henckels knife set (Gregg’s treasures from MO). We have to carry a milk pail to the dairy to get milk, but we can text message our families in Missouri from our cell phones. We buy all of our fruits and vegetables at the market on Sundays, haul them home and then watch cable TV.

I guess these are just some of the joys of being in the Peace Corps in the 21st Century.

Heading Home

2009-05-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

We will be finishing our Peace Corps service in August. After going back and forth for the last several months, Gregg and I have decided we will not be applying for an extension. It is going to be so hard to say good-bye, but it is time to move on.

When we went home for Christmas, we told EVERYONE that we definitely planned on staying at least another year. It’s hard to say exactly why we have changed our mind, but I guess there are really a lot of reasons.

Since I can’t speak for Gregg (even though I often do!) I’ll just write what I think. I’ve had an incredible two years here in Ecuador. Before leaving I remember being ridiculously nervous and I wasn’t just nervous about having to pack all my things into just two suitcases. There was a part of me that was so scared that I was going to hate my life in the Peace Corps in Ecuador- that I wouldn’t have work, wouldn’t make friends and would be miserable!

Now that my service is nearly over, it is hard for me to believe just how much I have come to love Ecuador and especially El Chaco. I can’t say or write enough about how amazing the Peace Corps is and I believe more in its mission that I ever have. Even though I have a very strong love-hate relationship with the high school that I work at, the students I work with are incredible. I had no idea that I would be so successful crossing the cultural divide and connecting with the kids.

So why are we heading home? We have done some really great projects in El Chaco, but recently our work with our counterparts has really slowed down. Free time is great, but we have too much! More than anything we realize it is just time to move on. Peace Corps is designed to be 27 months for a reason. After three months of training, two years is a good amount of time to become integrated in a community, make friends, do good work, but then wrap everything up and head home.

I (even though I think it is safe to say WE) am really looking forward to being back with our family and friends. Right when we get back we have Geoff (Gregg’s bro) and Jenny’s wedding! Then shortly after we get to meet our first niece or nephew... My sister Emily and her husband Chris are expecting!

For now, we don’t know what date we’ll be back, where we’ll live or what we’ll do, but it’s good to know that we have 3 months and lots of free time to figure it out!

2009-05-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics from our camping trip with the high school kids a couple of months ago. The rest are random pictures I've been meaning to post for months!

2009-05-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

2009-04-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

These are all photos from PCV Jeanette Warner. She came to Chaco a while ago to shoot some photos for a tourism brochure. Check out her website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanettewarner/

Easter without the Bunny

2009-04-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

“Holidays here just don’t feel like holidays.” Jeff and I were sitting in church waiting for Mass to start on Holy Thursday when he said this to me. I couldn’t agree more. Since the priest was already running a half hour late for Mass, we had plenty of time to talk about why there isn’t that “holiday feel” here. No season changes, no commercialization of the holidays, no Easter bunny or Santa Clause, and people don’t get excited about them (maybe because there are no gifts?!) were all among our top reasons.

Why Jeff and I were having our holiday talk, Gregg was getting dressed up as one of the 12 disciples for the Last Supper Mass. Our priest wanted to do a reenactment of the Last Supper with people from El Chaco that really serve the community and have women among the disciples. Pretty cool.

Gregg was picked as one of the outstanding Chaqueños. During Mass, each one of the “disciples” was recognized for their service. An elderly mentally-handicapped man that picks up trash around town, an elementary school teacher who has taught for 40 years and a tall gringo who left his country and family to volunteer in El Chaco (direct quote) were among the 12.

The strangest thing about Easter is that Easter Sunday really isn’t celebrated. Good Friday is the day families gather and have a big meal. We spent the day with the Ashqui family and had a great meal of trout and potatoes. Saturday night we all went to Mass together, which was held in Chaco’s gymnasium due to the huge crowd. That night the priest was an hour late for Mass. No worries though. No one seemed to care.

When Mass finally started the lights were turned off and everyone was handed a candle. For the first hour and a half of Mass the gym was filled with candlelight from about 500 candles. Really beautiful, really long Mass. Gregg, Jeff and I were sitting with all the Ashquis and we were able to keep ourselves entertained blowing out each other’s candles.

Both Gregg and I had given up chocolate for Lent and had been saving the Cadbury eggs and York peppermint patties that my sister Kate had sent us for our Easter feast. They were incredible and greatly appreciated- a little taste of home!

Easter Sunday was like any other Sunday in El Chaco. Gregg and I went to the market in the morning to buy our fruits and vegetables and then we both played soccer games like normal. My team played in a neighboring town, so we had some time to talk as we were traveling. Nobody even mentioned that it was Easter Sunday!

In the afternoon, we got a call to come to the church to eat lamb. Seems the priest remembered it was Easter and had organized a little get together. We had a nice meal of lamb organ/intestines soup and lamb meat with rice and potatoes. We were asked if we wanted fried lamb’s blood in our soup. I asked for no blood and Gregg asked for a double helping.

Of course after eating we had to dance and drink some beer before being able to head home. A different, but pleasant end to Holy Week.

The Minga

2009-04-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

Participating in mingas have been some of our best experiences here. Minga is a Kichwa word and does not have a direct English translation. A minga is when a group of people in the community unite to complete a project. Sometimes it is building a classroom, a sidewalk, an irrigation ditch, or in our case this weekend a roof. Mingas are usually volantary and the only compensation is lunch (and probobaly alcohol).

Maggie already wrote about her job in the minga and now I'll share mine.

As soon as I showed up to the minga I realized that I had committed a minga faux pas. Everyone around me had the knee-high rubber boots on and there I was in tennis shoes. I still have not gotten around to buying a pair, so I had to pass an entire day shin deep in concrete.

Here's how concrete is usually laid in Chaco:

The day starts by blocking off the street to mix the concrete. There is a formula to make the concrete with so many wheel barrels of medium sized rocks, sand, and 100 lb bags of cement that are mixed and then formed into a crater shape. In the center the workers put a certain amount of water according to the formula. The workers' job is to then to shovel like madmen to mix the concrete. The rule of thumb is to completely mix the pile of concrete 3 times.

Once the concrete is ready it is transported to the roof by bucket and pulley, powered by 3 or 4 men, or by a wheel barrel and a large ramp. The people on top then distribute and level the concrete.

Fortunately a friend of the family who came to this minga is a heavy machine operator. When he got there and found out that we would be carrying the concrete up with the wheel barrel ramp method he decided to call the mayor to see if we could borrow a front-end loader from the city government. Since the elections are only a month away, the mayor was glad to help and within 30 minutes we had a front-end loader.

By two p.m. the roof was finished and we sat down to a huge lunch. All the hardwork was worth it as we stuffed ourselves on roasted pork.

Potato Peeling

2009-03-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

It is hard to say how many times my potato peeling skills have embarrassed me. I would venture to say 21 times in the last 21 months of my life. Peace Corps should have really told me to ditch my potato peeler and start practicing peeling potatoes with a knife before coming to Ecuador. Without a doubt potato peeling is a key skill for integrating among Ecuadorian women.

Whenever I am amongst a group of women cooking it is guaranteed that I will be asked two questions. Number one: “Maggie, why don’t you have a baby?” Number two: “Maggie, why can’t you peel potatoes?”

On Sunday, our friends the Ashquis, built the roof for their new rafting office and we pitched in along with 20 others. Whenever there is a big event like this the women spend all morning cooking a big lunch while the men do the physical labor.

We arrived at 7 a.m. Gregg was handed a shovel to start missing and shoveling cement and I was given a knife. Katie, the Ashquis 12-year-old mentally handicapped cousin, guided me to a giant tub filled with 150 pounds of potatoes. Katie watched me as I started to peel my first potato and politely asked me, “Maggie, why can’t you peel potatoes?” I quickly realized that Katie is quite a talented potato peeler. She tried to teach me too, but realized I was helpless.

Three other women arrived and gathered around the massive potato bin. The conversation quickly turned to potato peeling skills as I noted how Maria, the Ashquis’ mom, peeled 8 potatoes to every one I peeled. I tried to explain my poor peeling skills and blame them on using a potato peeler, but nobody seemed to understand, because they’ve never seen a peeler.

It really was incredible to see these other women peel potatoes. They have mastered the art of turn and peel in order to make the potato peel come off in one beautiful spiral. Undoubtedly, Maria was the best potato peeler and the other women even commented on her incredible skill and technique. She told us she participated in peeling competitions when she was young. True story.

After the women realized there was no hope for me and I was peeling off half the potato with the skin, I was given another task: cutting the bad spots out of the potatoes. After three hours, 150 pounds of potatoes had been washed, peeled and cooked.

All the roof-building workers were thanked with a big roasted pig and plates full of potatoes.

Cleaning Up

2009-03-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

It has been interesting to see how people view the oil spill in El Chaco. A lot of people are not angry about the spill, but rather pleased. Due to the spill many people have secured a job for the next 1-2 years. The oil company (OCP) is paying the clean-up workers about $650/month, which is a huge increase from the $10-15/day that most workers make. Many of the people who have farms along the river are also trying to make settlements with OCP.

Now basically all of the oil is gone from the river, however all the rocks and trees along the shorelines are stained with oil. All or most of the trout have died in the river and many ducks and river otters have also died. The farmers along the river have had to lead their cows to other pastures, since the water remains contaminated.

The spill happened below us, so our water was not affected, but many towns downstream have really been impacted by the spill. OCP has been working hard to clean up, however the damage has been done.

Other happenings:

April 26th is Election Day in Ecuador. With the new constitution, basically every position, from city council to president, is up for election. According to Ecuador’s law, campaigning cannot start until 45 days before the election- no political signs, commercials, nothing! It seems likes President Rafael Correa has a good chance of being re-elected.

Soccer season has started back up again. Here it is practically year round. I decided to play with a different team, Aucas, this year. I have more friends on this team and am hoping to get a little more playing time. In our first game we tied 2-2 after losing a 2-point lead. Maggie has stayed with New Star this year, and her team is actually practicing during the week.

A couple of weeks ago, we helped chaperon a camping trip with Jeff, another PCV in Chaco, for about 20 high school students. For many of the kids it was their first time camping and they loved it. For us, it was a camping experience without any of the camping “amenities,” but we had a really good time. For dinner, we grilled chicken, boiled potatoes, and shared a little bit of US culture by teaching them to make smores.

Carnaval in Ambato

2009-02-27T12:08:00.000-08:00

Carnaval in Ecuador is four days of complete craziness. Its equivalent in the States would be Mardi Gras, but Carnaval is celebrated by everyone and is one of the most popular holidays. We headed to Ambato, 2 hours South of Quito, with our friend Marta from Chaco and her two kids to spend the four-day weekend.

Ambato is famous for its festival of flowers and fruits and it is one of the country’s biggest attractions for Carnaval. Marta is from Ambato and most of her family still lives there, so we stayed with her brother’s family. There were about 10 others PCVs that spent Carnaval in Ambato, so we all got to experience the craziness together.

Highlights:

- The area around Ambato is the biggest farming region of the country. Along time ago the farmers from the countryside started to gather annually to thank God for their harvests and ask him to bless them in the coming year. This tradition has continued and now coincides with the wild festival of Carnaval.

- There are two major parades, one in the morning and one at night. Before the parade the cops cleared the roads by threatening to run people over with cars or motorcycles.

- The floats are all made out of local crops and flowers. They are nicely topped of with beauty queens! Some of the customs were really incredible- almost as good as Brazil.

- Playing Carnaval means dousing everyone around you with water and covering them in flower. Thankfully Ambato has outlawed this, because it didn’t seem to be too popular amongst the tourists! Now everyone “plays” with spray foam. If you are in the streets you are fair game to be sprayed. Some Polish tourists didn’t seem to understand this and decided to punch anyone that sprayed them!

- I now have a new #1 least favorite food in Ecuador: Caldo de 31 or 31 Soup. It didn’t take too long to figure out what the 31 stood for … 31 different cow organs and intestines. Gregg somehow managed to eat it all without vomiting.

- Marta has to be one of the most outgoing people I have ever met. She can’t get enough of gringos and decided to rent a small bus to take all of our friends sightseeing around Ambato. We definitely saw some sites that were not in our tourist book- meat markets, shoes markets and lots of relatives’ houses.

Nasty Oil Spill in Chaco

2009-02-27T08:36:00.001-08:00

Last Tuesday, another major oil spill filled El Chaco County’s streams and rivers with crude oil. Last year a landslide caused a big oil spill about an hour from us. The cause of this one is not yet known.

This oil spill is about 10-minutes from us in the town of Santa Rosa. Unfortunately, the main leak was right next to a stream that flows into the Quijos River, where rafting and kayak are practiced. Since this spill happened below us, our water is not affected, but others down river now have their water completely contaminated.

The most frustrating part of all this is that the oil companies always try to cover up that damage that these spills cause. After “extensive studies” were completed after the last spill, the oil company announced that there was no environmental impact. I guess they were blind to the dead fish, ducks and other wildlife in the river and along the shores.

One of our friends decided to kayak down the river to take pictures of the damage done. When he got out of the river, he ran into some of the cleanup workers. As he was collecting his gear to leave, they managed to rob his camera. So much for collecting incriminating evidence!

Although the river above the oil spill is safe for rafting, the rest of the river will take 6 months to a year to clean up.

Squat and Push

2009-01-29T14:15:00.000-08:00

The rainy season has officially begun here in El Chaco, which means everything in our house is permanently moist. On the rainiest of days, like today, our water gets shut off, because it becomes super dirty from all the erosion.

My family left last week after a very moist visit. My mom, my sister Emily, my brother-in-law Chris and my cousin Matt came to Ecualand for 10 days and seemed to really enjoy the rain. In addition to doing touristy stuff the main focus of the visit was a course for indigenous midwives, which went surprisingly well. For some reason Matt and Chris weren’t interested in attending and went hiking instead, but Gregg R.N. really loved it.

When my parents came back in April, we went to a lodge in the jungle and met a super cool Ecuadorian named Miguel. He led us on a medicinal plant tour through the rain forest. My mom expressed interested in doing something “medical” down here. She is a family physician and my sister is in her second year of residency. After working with several medical brigades from the States I strongly discouraged just seeing patients and giving out free medicines. After my mom explained about how she teaches Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics, Miguel came up with the idea of doing a course for the midwives and 9 months later it happened.

Gregg and I worked with Miguel, another PCV Yvonne and an association of indigenous midwives to plan the course in Archidona, about 4 hours from El Chaco. Without getting into any crazy medical mumble jumble, the course was about what to do when there are problems during a birth. I talked to the family doctors about only teaching practical stuff that midwives can do without any fancy U.S. hospital medicine or equipment and they did just that.

I’ve really learned during this whole Peace Corps experience that it is important to make every “project” an exchange of ideas. I get so frustrated when other NGOs, Europeans, U.S. doctors come in and act like their way is the only way and that the Ecuadorians don’t do anything right. This course was a success, because we made it a true exchange of ideas and practices.

For example, Dr. Mom would talk about shoulder dystocia and how you can repositioned the mom and/or baby to get the baby out and then the midwives would talk about how they get the shoulder unstuck and get the baby out. I think both parties seemed to really enjoying learning about other practices and sharing their own.

The midwives all speak Kichwa, which is the second biggest language here in Ecuador and speak Spanish as their second language. Some of the oldest women in the group understood very little Spanish, so everything had to be translated from English to Spanish to Kichwa. Luckily Miguel dominates all three languages and helped us with the translation.

The course was four hours a day for three days. 20 midwives attended daily between the ages of 30 and 75. Some of the older women had assisted in more than 2000 births! They taught us a lot about their birthing rituals and the medicinal plants they use. Women give birth standing up, holding onto a rope and then squat and push out the baby.

On the last day, we had a closing ceremony and the women danced and sang to us. We presented them with Peace Corps certificates for completing the course and gave them some little gifts. I’m not sure if they were more excited about the certificates or the free t-shirts that my sister had donated to them through the March of Dimes. We were thrilled with the necklaces they gave us- especially the one made with a toucan’s beak.

Trip highlights:

-My sister Emily hates the word “moist.” Since it rained A LOT during their trip we got to be moist and talk about moisture a great deal.

-After picking the fam up in Quito, we made our way back to El Chaco and arrived about 2 a.m. I was giving them the grand tour of our house and we stepped down from our living room into the second part of the house. As I was showing them the kitchen, laundry room and bathroom, Chris wisely noted, “Wow. We’re outside.”

White Christmas

2009-01-08T08:16:00.000-08:00

It wasn't easy or fun, but we did make it to the United States for Christmas and then back to Ecuador. By that, I am not refering to our time in the US, but the actual traveling there and back. Our visit to the States was very nice and refreshing, but also very cold. This week we have readjusted to our life back here in Ecuador and have been slightly bored after having such a hectic trip in Missouri.

The priest in El Chaco wanted a couple things from the US and said he would take us to the airport and bring us back to Chaco. We got to Quito on Dec. 14 and spent the night at a monastery. The next morning we woke up early and went to the airport. After saying our good-byes, Maggie and I immediately went to check-in. Unfortunately, the first thing we heard was that we would have a 8-9 hour flight delay. Fortunately, they sent us to a very nice hotel in Quito where we got an amazing breakfast and room. We missed our connection in Atlanta, so we finally ended up getting to KC the morning of Dec. 16- in the middle of a snow storm!

As we got off the plane, we instantly realized how cold Missouri is in winter time. We were greeted by Maggie's parents, her sister Abby and my brother Geoff. That afternoon, eager to see my parents, I drove for the first time in a year and a half in six inches of snow to Fulton.

Our time in the States was packed visiting lots of family and friends and eating. I really enjoyed the washers, dryers, dishwashers, comfortable beds, and hot water heaters. There were some Ecuadorian habits that were hard to break while on the trip, like having a spoon as the only utensil, talking in Spanish, and throwing toilet paper in the trash can instead of the toilet.

It was difficult to leave, but on January 2nd, it was time and we were ready to get back. The priest said he would pick us up in Quito and we told him to wait at the church and we would call him when we landed in Quito, so that he would not be waiting a long time in the airport if there was a delay. Our five hour flight from Atlanta to Quito ended up turning into 11 hours on the plane. There was a crazy luggage problem which delayed us 2 hours in Atlanta. Then there was really thick fog in Quito and after circling a lot, we had to land in Guayaquil to get more gas.

In Guayaquil at 1 a.m., I called the priest to tell him what was happening. I asked where he was at and he said he was in the airport waiting. After filling up the plane, we waited for an hour for authorization to take off from Delta's headquarters in Atlanta. We then took off towards Quito. We attempted to land, but the pilot pulled up at the last minute because of thick fog. After circling for another hour, we finally landed at 4 a.m.

After an hour of waiting in the migration line and getting our bags, we headed towards the exit. We were surprised to see one of our friends from Chaco. I asked him what he was doing and he said a big group had come with the priest for a trip to Quito and the rest were waiting in the van for us. We arrived at the van to find 6 adults and 7 kids waiting for us! They had been at the airport for 7 hours!

Back in Chaco we did our rounds, visiting all of our friends and getting caught up on what is happening. We then went to visit our landlords who were taking care of the baby turkeys. It appears that they just couldn't live without me and had gone from 10 baby turkeys to 3. After bringing them back to the house we went to a meal with a group of friends and didn't get back until 10. When I went behind the house I saw our neighbours' black dog leaving with something black in it's mouth. I quickly went to the back yard and saw the gate open and didn't see one turkey. After examining the yard for about 30 minutes I found many feathers and eventually found the hen. She had lost about a third of her feathers, had a cut on her back, and wouldn't hardly move. Knowing the backyard was not safe she got to sleep in our shower that night. Early the next morning I heard a baby turkey chirping and found two of them walking around outside of the pen. That has been our excitement of the week.

Next week Maggie's mom, sister, brother-in-law, and cousin will be coming down to visit and do a conference for indigenous midwives that live about 3 hours from here. We are now preparing for that and trying to get used to the sometimes eternal rainshowers that we have here.

Other big news is that we have a computer and Internet in our house. If anyone would like to talk computer to computer through the program Skype just send us and email and let us know when you want to talk.

Heading Home

2008-12-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

Monday morning we will be catching a flight from Quito to Kansas City, Missouri. We are incredibly excited! We left KC on June 18, 2007 and have not been back since.

So what exactly am I looking forward to most?

- Seeing our families, friends and pets of course
- Not being the only gringos! It will be nice being able to blend in with the crowd for 18 days!
- Speaking English
- Eating good home-cooked food
- Hopefully seeing snow
- Eating in Mexican, Chinese and pizza restaurants
- All the fun Christmas traditions and food
- Going to Christmas Mass
- Celebrating New Year’s with college friends
- Driving a car- at least riding around in them. I may be too nervous!
- All sorts of U.S. luxuries: washers and dryers, dishwashers, kitchen appliances, couches, carpet and hot water
- Not having to go outside to use the bathroom

I’ve been talking about all these things with Gregg that last few weeks and he is sick of hearing me say, “Things are so different in the States!” But honestly, I think we are going to be overwhelmed by all the “stuff”.

We have been out of the loop on everything for a year and a half and it will be great to catch up with everyone and meet new additions to the family- Gregg’s brother Geoff just recently got engaged and we will meet his fiancée Jenny for the first time!

It will be neat to get into the Christmas Spirit when we get home, because it doesn’t really exist here. We are going to have a packed schedule, but are ready for it! Three days to go! Sorry about all the exclamation points! I just can’t help myself!!!

World AIDS Day

2008-12-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

World AIDS Day was celebrated on December 1 around the world, but in El Chaco we celebrated it on December 3. Students were taking end of the semester exams, so we had to postpone the celebration. Maggie helped me with some ideas and logistics, but I basically did all the coordinating for the event. For several weeks, I gave lessons on HIV-AIDS to 60 high school freshmen. After these lessons the science teacher, the freshmen and I planned a school-wide assembly for World AIDS Day.

The main part of the assembly was a skit about a student that contacted HIV. I worked with the kids everyday after school to write and rehearse the skit. They were really excited about it and wrote it almost entirely by themselves. They wanted it to be funny, but realistic and educational. In the skit, after the student finds out she had contacted HIV, her classmates started discriminating against her. They thought they could be infected by shaking her hand or when she coughed. With the help of her teacher and friends, they invited a local doctor and nurse to come to the school and give a presentation about HIV-AIDS, how it is transmitted and how it can be prevented.

The day of the event the schedule went like this: In the morning, the freshmen students and I handed out red paper hearts to the whole student body. The hearts said “Protect yourself: World AIDS Day 2008.” On the back of each heart we had a number that we used for a t-shirt raffle.

. Many students in the freshmen class made shirts for World AIDS Day and wore the shirts the day of the assembly. In the routine morning assembly the teacher in charge of discipline started by saying that all of the students that came with t-shirts had to go home and change into their uniforms. I had to go in front of the entire school to talk with the disciplinary officer and convince him to change his mind. Thankfully, he did.

The Patronato agreed to donate 20 red t-shirts for the event with the “Protect yourself: World AIDS Day 2008”message. The t-shirts were for the presenters, school authorities and for the student raffle. Unfortunately, the doctors at the Patronato didn’t show up until 11:10 a.m., for the assembly that started at 11, which made it difficult to hand out the shirts. After the doctors arrived, the students put on the skit. Next the medical doctor gave a talk on HIV-AIDS and reinforced the points that the students made in their play. Then, the psychologist gave a talk on the emotional aspects of HIV-AIDS (acceptance, discrimination, etc.). Finally, the other freshmen students who did not participate in the skit made posters and handouts to exhibit to the students as they were leaving.

One of PC’s main health goals is HIV-AIDS prevention. It is estimated that there are over 50,000 cases of HIV in Ecuador- in a country of only 12 million. In El Chaco’s hospital the doctors have told us they have had confirmed cases of HIV. Hopefully this small effort has increased awareness and will prevent future cases.

A New Start

2008-12-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

Rosa, one of our best friends in El Chaco, has just received the exciting news that she got a job as a language facilitator for Peace Corps.

If you look in past blogs, you will find tons about Rosa, but just to sum everything up: Rosa turns 20 in January and has a son, Sebastian, who just turned 3 yesterday. Rosa got pregnant at 16 by a guy named Franklin, seven years older, from a neighboring town. They got married right away and had a very rocky marriage from the start.

Rosa currently works in the pharmacy at the Patronato, our official counterpart organization. We met Rosa our first day in town and went to lunch with her. We spent a lot of our first week talking with her and she introduced us to many of people in town. I was impressed at how nice she was and how mature she seemed. The first weekend in town she invited us to go with her and her husband to play pool. It was then I asked her how old she was and she told me 18. I was shocked!

As Rosa and I became better friends, she told me lots about the problems her and Franklin were having. He was extremely controlling of her both emotionally and physically. They had been living in a small apartment behind her parents’ house and decided to buy their own house two blocks from ours. I went with Rosa to check out the new house and I could tell she didn’t want to live there. A couple days later she told me she was really scared to move into the house with just Franklin and the baby.

During this time, Rosa and the doctor at the health clinic were helping us get started giving health classes at the high school and elementary schools. They both found our Peace Corps manuals very interesting and asked to borrow them. One was about domestic violence. After reading it, Rosa came to me and broke down. She said, “I’m in the cycle of violence and don’t know what to do.” I couldn’t help but cry. I told her that she couldn’t move in with Franklin and that she should consider separating.

After some time convincing her parents, Rosa separated from Franklin and filled for a divorce. She has since been much happier. Her parents are now very supportive and help her take care of Sebastian. She currently earns $250 a month before taxes at the pharmacy and works really long hours and absolutely hates her job. She is also in her third year of college, studying at a distance to be an English teacher.

Back in September, we invited Rosa to come to a PC workshop with us about project planning. Rosa was a star at the conference! She got along great with other volunteers and had incredible ideas for projects. Rosa is constantly helping us with our Spanish and we help her with her English. Gregg and I started talking about what a great training facilitator she would make. We picked her up an application, gave her a great recommendation and after what she told as was a very rigorous interview, she got the job.

In February, she starts as a training facilitator with Peace Corps. She will be making over $900 a month! During the week she will live in Quito and in Cayambe when the PC trainees arrive, but will come back to Chaco on the weekends. Her parents and brothers are going to take care of Sebastian during the week, so she can get her life back together. Rosa is extremely excited and realizes what an incredible opportunity this is for her. Gregg and I are just sad that she won’t be around as much!

Thanksgiving 2008

Along with Gregg, Jeff and I, 7 other PCVs joined us for Thanksgiving at our house. Jeff went to Quito to buy a big, delicious, hormone-filled, 23-pound turkey. Our natural ones just don’t have that same Thanksgiving taste.

The American Ambassador and other embassy employees always invite PCVs to spend the holiday with their families. We turned the invitation down last year and did it again this year. Thanksgiving, ghetto-PC style seems like more fun than a fancy, have to dress-up for, dinner.

As the other volunteers arrived, they pitched in with the food and cooking. Before eating, we did a nice, corny, tell-what-your-thankful-for circle. I also get stuck thinking about how blessed we Peace Corps Volunteers are for all these amazing experiences we are daily living.

It was great talking with some of the volunteers from Jeff’s group, who have been in the country four-months longer than us. I finally got to meet Roger, who is one of Ecuador’s most popular volunteers.

Roger is a 53, divorced father of three. He owned and ran the first certified organic farm in Ohio. We talked a lot about his PC projects and it is amazing how much real life experience he brings with him. He says he ranks PC as one of the greatest times of his life. He just proves you are never too old to join Peace Corps!

Urbina

2008-11-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

Last weekend along with the Fiestas of the Virgin of Quinche came some very sad news. A friend of mine had a very serious traffic accident.

Jeff came to our house on Sunday morning and shared with us a very strange story. He said he was riding his bike home from the fiestas at 2 a.m. when he saw something in the middle of the road. As he got closer he started thinking, “I hope it isn’t a body.” As he got closer he saw several police officers and two people lying on the road unconscious.

The police officers were just standing off to the side. They weren’t even blocking the victims from oncoming traffic. Jeff asked them what was going on and why they weren’t doing anything. They told him that the firefighters were on their way and they know first aid.

At the time I thought it was just another crazy Ecuadorian happening that makes absolutely no sense. I didn’t think anything of the incident and assumed it was only two drunks on a motorcycle.

Shortly afterwards, I found out the person driving the motorcycle was Urbina, a friend of mine. About 2-3 times a week he came to play soccer on the field in front of our house. He comes from a very poor family and was a junior in high school. For some reason I seemed to talk to him more then the other players and I got to know him pretty well over the last year.

It is hard to know for sure how the accident happened. From what I have heard, he took his brother-in-law’s motorcycle after he fell asleep to return to the fiestas. I don’t think he had much experience driving a motorcycle. On his way home, he had to make a sharp turn to dodge a drunk that was walking in the road, and ran into a cement wall. He had a helmet on at the time of the accident, but it was cracked from the impact. He is currently in a hospital in Quito in a coma with his spinal cord broken in two spots.

One of Maggie’s students, Vicky, is Urbina’s older sister. Maggie recently wrote about her favorite Peace Corps moment. In that entry she wrote about one of her exceptional students, Vicky, a 22-year-old, mother of two who is studying in the 10th grade.

It was pretty hard to believe the news knowing that he was playing soccer at 6 p.m. and then in a serious and possibly fatal accident two blocks from there at 2 a.m. I hope that everyone reading this keeps Urbina in their thoughts and prayers.

Turkey Feast

2008-11-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

Maria, our landlord, and Jeff, the other PCV in Chaco, both celebrated their birthdays last week. The annual fiesta of The Virgin of Quinche was celebrated last weekend too. All of Maria’s sons (who are the rafting guides) came to town for the birthday party. Macho, our male turkey, that we had had for a year was getting to the weight for a good-sized meal. Seeing that all the stars were lined up perfectly for a birthday party, we decided to sacrifice our tom for the feast.

It was a little difficult preparing the tom since he has been the closest thing to a pet and the one survivor of the pair of turkeys I bought a year ago. However, he now has 10 kids to live on his legacy, so we decided it was time for him to go.

The sons, Maggie and I worked all day Saturday to prepare the traditional “party dinner.” We had empanadas of yuca, potatoes, turkey, chicken, a little bit of salad, and our famous banana chocolate nut cake. I felt very Ecuadorian because we even remembered to buy champagne and cookies to do a toast before the meal.

We tried to do everything on our own, however it was difficult, because Maria wanted to help and knows how to do everything much better than us. The dinner turned out very well, and everyone was stuffed.

After dinner we continued the birthday celebration by hitting Jeff with a belt 25 times. It is a great, painful Ecuadorian tradition for men’s birthdays. These were not little pats. Each hit was all out from Maggie’s to the youngest son’s.

After a full day of preparing the dinner, we decided not to go to fiesta and participate in the drunkenness in honor of the Virgin Mary. Seeing how everyone looked as they stumbled in the street the next morning, we were sure we made the right decision.

This Thursday the festivities will continue with a Thanksgiving Dinner at Jeff’s house. Other PCVs that live in the area (in a 4-hour radius) will be coming to celebrate turkey day. Jeff went to Quito and bought a 23 pound, which makes my 12-15 pounder look like a chicken.

Now that Thanksgiving is here, I am thinking more and more about Christmas and spending it in the States with family and friends. We are both very excited and counting down the days!

Now in sporting news: Maggie’s soccer team lost last weekend and will need a miracle this weekend to place second. On the other hand, my team has managed to lose our fourth straight game in the off-season, and we have no hope.

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey Babies

2008-11-17T09:49:00.000-08:00

After 28 days in their eggs, 11 baby turkeys hatched around midnight on November 13th. Only one died shortly afterwards. We think the one that died was the same one that fell out of the four-feet-high nest twice.

That first night we hardly slept. The male turkey was going nuts all night long! It is pretty incredible how loud he can gobble. Gregg got up and it turned out that a couple of the babies had fallen out of the nest. The next day we rebuilt the nest on the ground. Things have since settled down and we have been able to sleep peacefully.

This whole turkey thing has always been Gregg’s project and I’ve never really helped, but watching the whole reproduction process was extremely interesting. I’ve only seen mammals born- I’ve never really understand how birds reproduce.

After the male turkey “stepped on and danced on top of” the female turkey, she started to lay eggs. The female turkey laid 13 eggs, one each day. After she laid the 13th, she began to sit on the eggs and literally never left the nest. Everyone told us it would take 28 days for the eggs to hatch and just like magic 11 of the 13 hatched on the 28th day. It turned out the two that didn’t hatch weren’t fertilized, so I made scrambled eggs out of them.

If the neighborhood dogs don’t eat the babies, we plan on giving most of them away to our friends when they are a couple of months old and we will keep a couple.

Reventador

We have this volcano here close to us that doesn’t seem to want to calm down. There was a major explosion back in 2002 and about 3 months ago it started blowing steam, ash and lava again. Last weekend, I was walking back to my house and looked up in the sky and saw what I swear looked like a tornado. It turns out Reventador was blowing ash several kilometers into the sky.

The ash is blown up so high that it gets stuck in the jet stream, so we never have ash fall here. Ash has fallen in Quito and as far away as the coast. The airport in Quito had to be shutdown last week for four hours due to Reventador’s activity.

We are 55 km from Reventador, but we have an incredible view of it from our house. We live at one of the highest points in El Chaco. When there is lava flow, we can see it from our kitchen. It’s like seeing a distant firework show- with only red fireworks!

My Ecuatoriano

I’m not sure quite how it happened, but Gregg now speaks and knows more Spanish than me. I arrived in Ecuador with an intermediate high level, level 6 with 10 being fluent. Gregg arrived with a high beginner level or level 3. I finished training at level 8 and Gregg ended up at level 5.

When we arrived in Chaco, I did the talking for both of us. We would be having a conversation with someone and Gregg would talk slow and make lots of mistakes. I would get frustrated and finish all of his lines and thoughts! Gregg would get furious at me and tell me I had to give him the opportunity to talk- so I did.

Now that we have been in Ecuador for nearly a year and a half, I have met the harsh reality that Gregg now knows more than me. Gregg is constantly studying Spanish grammar, reading Spanish books and looking up new words in the dictionary. He has finished reading all 7 Harry Potters in Spanish- I’ve only read the first four. Now I’m the one that has to ask him the meaning of new words and pronunciation.

Awhile ago our friend Rosa called my cell phone and Gregg answered. She asked to talk to me and Gregg said yea, I’ll pass her the phone. When I answered Rosa asked me, “Maggie, where are you at and who are you with?!” I said with Gregg at the house. She didn’t believe me- she swore I was with an Ecuadorian!

Soccer Finals

- Gregg’s team and my team both made it to the final four in the county soccer league. In the Men’s League A there are 20 teams and in the Women’s League there are 11 teams. In the final four, we play each of the other three teams twice and then based on points (3 pts. for a win, 1 pts. for a tie, 0 pts. for a loss) the top two teams go on to play in a championship with a neighboring county.

- On my team, New Star, I have made some really great friends. There are a total of 16 players between 15 and 40-years-old. Most of the other women come to the games with the kids and some even with grandkids. We only play one game a week on the weekend. We tried to organize practices during the week, but with everyone working, hardly anybody showed up.

- At the beginning of the season, I realized I was pretty rusty with my soccer skills. I hadn’t played since my senior year of high school. During my second game, I scored an own goal. Oops. After a few games, I improved and earned a starting spot on the team.

- Just like in high school, I still don’t have good soccer skills. My teammates and my coach started to realize, though, that I make up for my lack of skills with my endurance. By the second half, I usually am the only one still sprinting to win the ball. In the final game of the regular season, my coach decided to put me up as a forward. Within the first 10 minutes of the game, I beat the defenders to a loose ball and scored a goal. I finally made up for my own goal at the beginning of the season!

Going State Side

- We are super duper excited about our trip to the U.S. in a month. Both of our parents have come to visit us here, but it has been nearly a year and a half since we have seen our siblings and the rest of our families, friends and dogs. I’m especially excited that we’ll be there at Christmas and be able to share in all the Christmas festivities. Without a doubt, we will be in for some real culture shock!

My Greatest Peace Corps Moment

2008-11-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

As we started planning for the competition, I told Jeff it would be great to get high school students involved, so they can actually start learning about tourism. Jeff is a habitat conservation volunteers in El Chaco and he worked with his counterparts to plan several workshops for the high school students. 10 of my Sophomore English students attended the workshops and then later worked at the rafting competition (helping with registrations, taking times, etc.)

My first classes after the competition I told my students that we weren’t going to be doing anything with English today. I asked the 10 students who helped out at the rafting competition to stand up and asked the rest of the students to give them a round of applause. These 10 students had just done community service for the first time in their lives.

I asked each of these 10 students to share their experiences one by one: what they think of rafting, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what they thought of all the gringos and if they think Chaco has a future in tourism.

I honestly had no idea of what their reactions were going to be. Seven of the ten said they had a wonderful time, rafting is great, the gringos are loud and talk really fast English and they would like to help out again next year. But there were three students that couldn’t stop talking.

One, Érika (one of our five scholarship winners) was on the team that truly won second place. She said she still couldn’t believe the volunteers returned the money to her team. She said no Ecuadorian team would have ever done that, but the gringos did the right thing.

Kelly, who always loves to talk, said she had an incredible experience. For the first time in her life she used the English I have taught them and she was able to communicate with an American.

Ann, a 22-year old sophomore mother of two, talked about how nice all the PCVs were. She said we picked up trash off the beach, we talked to the Ecuadorians, we drank beer, but nobody got drunk, we don’t care what we look like or what people think of us, we just like having fun.

She then asked me how it was possible that there were 80 gringos all older than her, but that we didn’t have any babies with us. I wanted to cry. She said you guys can all have these amazing experiences, have a great education, live in another country, and help the neediest, because you don’t have babies at 15. I chocked back the tears.

I tried to explain the best I could about my personal philosophy. I have a lot I want to accomplish in my life before I have children, so I can be a better mom and a better citizen. I told Ann in front of her 30 classmates that what she is doing, being a single mother of two and receiving her high school education, is greater than anything I have ever accomplished in my life.

The bell rang and I asked Érica, Kelly and Ann to come to my next class with me and share exactly what they had just told their classmates.

My next class was also a sophomore class, but no students had helped with the competition and only two went to watch.

Érika, Kelly and Ann shared their experiences once again, but their thoughts were better organized and better spoken. It was my greatest Peace Corps experience. My eyes filled with tears and I tried to act like I was yawning.

After these three amazing students went back to their own class, my students bombarded me with questions. “Maggie, how can we be part of this next year?” they asked me. “How can we learn more about tourism and environmental education? How can we start a tourism youth group?” that asked me.

I told them we can and we will. For these reasons, Gregg and I are staying another year. We can’t turn our backs on these amazing youth that have so much potential, but simply lack direction and leadership.

We will stay and we will start some amazing projects.

Yes we can.

Aventuras Sin Limites 2008

2008-11-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

By 10 a.m. on Saturday we were all down by the river registering our rafting teams. In total there were 9 teams of volunteers. Our team was a mix, with two of our best friends from El Chaco, Rosa and Gustavo. Our name, Los Tramposos (The Cheaters), was chosen because Gustavo is training to be a rafting guide and with the strength of Gregg and the other guy volunteers, we were certain we were going to win and everyone would call us cheaters. We lost.

In total there were 22 teams. The first day was two short sprints to classify the best 15 teams for the down river competition. At the end of the first day 8 of the 9 PC teams had qualified.

At the end of the day, El Chaco’s Education and Cultural department organized a serious of field-day like competitions. Volunteers participated in every activity, as 500 Chaqueños took pictures and laughed at the crazy gringos. I’m proud to say I killed the Ecuadorian women in the sack race by a good 10 meters and am now the proud owner of real glass glasses.

On Sunday, there were 3 heats of 5 boats for the down river competition. We were in the last heat and were in great position to get 2nd place in our heat, but going into the final stretch we got caught on a rock and ended up in 3rd.

Awards Ceremony:

In the ceremony, the mayor and organizers thanked all of us Peace Corps volunteers and said that with our enthusiasm we were the soul of the competition and we made it a huge success.

As they awarded the prizes ($300 for 1st, $200 for 2nd and $100 for 3rd), other PCVS explained to me that the judges had mixed up two teams names and the team the really came in 2nd (an El Chaco team) was listed as 5th (the place a volunteer team won) and vice versa. During the awards ceremony, the volunteers said they wouldn’t accept the money because they had actually come in 5th. The event coordinator was embarrassed about the mistake and didn’t want to draw more attention, so he told them take it. He said that this is the judge’s official time and it says you all won 2nd.

After the awards ceremony, this team went and found the rightful winners (a team from Chaco) and gave them the $200. The Chaco team told the volunteers to keep the t-shirts and medals as keepsakes and thanked them for their honesty. This story of “doing the right thing” ended up being broadcasted on the local radio station.

Halloween in El Chaco

2008-11-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

After having the best weekend of our PC experience, Gregg and I have decided we will be applying for a third year extension in El Chaco. The Galapagos may still be a possibility, but that would be in our fourth year extension. Our country director thinks we are crazy for turning down the opportunity to live in the Galapagos, but we just have too many friends and too much work still to do here in El Chaco!

Now all about Halloween/Rafting El Chaco 2008:

Every year Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) unofficially organize a Halloween party. I say unofficially, because the PC office does not support all us gringos getting together to drink and celebrate an American holiday. The party has traditionally been in Cuenca, a gorgeous colonial city in the south of Ecuador. Last year, Gregg and I didn’t even go to Cuenca. We didn’t want to take the time off work here to sit on a bus for 15 hours to arrive at what is a typical frat Halloween party. Together with Jeff (our site mate) we decided we were going to shake the PC tradition bring the event to El Chaco.

A novice rafting competition has been held annually here in El Chaco the first weekend in November for the last 4 years. We decided we were going to turn this one night of drunkenness in Cuenca into a healthy, fun Ecotourism weekend for all PCVs.

Jeff worked a ton with the rafting guides planning the rafting competition and I planned the Halloween party. Gregg kind of helped with the two.

There is a beautiful eco-friendly hotel, Guarida del Coyote, about a 20-minute walk from our house. It is actually one of the neatest hotels I have seen in Ecuador. The maximum capacity is 65 and after 80 PCVs and their guests replied to our invitation, I got a little worried. The rest ended up staying with us and Jeff.

Since El Chaco is not well developed in tourism, many of our friends were nervous about coming here. It isn’t even listed in Lonely Planet, the PC Bible when traveling to another Ecuacity. As everyone started arriving October 31, they couldn’t stop talking about how Chaco is so beautiful.

The party got underway about 8 p.m. Our closest Chaco friends were invited to their first Halloween party ever. They were very anxious about dressing up, but ended up loving it.

The customs were pretty incredible. Living in such a Catholic country about 8 of us ended up dressing as religious people. The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Jesus, the priest and the nun had a great night together.

The blue, green, black and pink crayons also got along great. The Spice Girls made a grand entrance to “I’ll tell you want I want, what I really, really want.” Where’s Waldo can be found in nearly all my pictures. The four WWF wrestlers thought everyone wanted to participate in “Smackdown.”
Gregg and one of our counterparts José spent last week in a costal city at a PC conference on community banking. It was strategically planned so volunteers would come to the conference instead of El Chaco. Gregg didn’t seem to care that 80 volunteers were coming to our site. He really wants to start a community bank and went to the conference.

It got over at noon on the 31st and he hoped on the bus with José for the 12-hour ride back to El Chaco (the last four hours from Quito they had to stand). They got to the party at midnight, just as everyone was changing out of their customs. Gregg unfortunately never had to put on a costume.

The hotel owners (Coyote and Isabel) were just as excited as we were for this Halloween party and built a giant bonfire. At midnight, we left the Ipod music and dance floor, lit the bonfire and moved the dance outside. Coyote and his friends have a band and they sang and played traditional music around the fire.

Gregg and I got home with our friends that were staying with us at 4 a.m. Everyone kept telling me it was the best Halloween party ever. I will be planning it again next year!

My Hero Elected President

2008-11-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

I’ve just had the happiest week of my life. My hero won the presidential election. After Halloween/Rafting in Chaco 2008, we have come to realize we’ve never had so many amazing friends in our lives. Gregg and I have projects brewing up and some underway with our Ecuadorians counterparts and fellow Peace Corps volunteers that are truly incredible. I have dreams, so big they hurt… I don’t have long-term expectations. But I do and always will have the audacity to hope!

What the heck am I talking about? I plan on spending the next several blog entries explaining all this.

Barack Obama. I was one of the first to jump on the hope band wagon. When I worked at Winnetonka High School during the 2006-2007 school year, a group of us started a teachers’ book club. We started by reading some sappy novel. It was a nice start, but I felt we needed to challenge ourselves a little more. Book number two: The Audacity of Hope.

I couldn’t put it down. I guess most of the other teachers didn’t find it too interesting, because they weren’t keeping up with the required readings- except Vicki Barmann. Vicki is the equivalent of my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Johnson, but she has been teaching French for 40-plus years. They are those amazing teachers that inspire their students to do great things, while they just do their jobs.

During our lunch breaks, Vicki and I talked all about the book, while most of the other teachers listen. We both new Barack Obama had something extraordinarily special and he would be our next president- because we had the audacity to hope and the audacity to believe.

My fellow PCVS have also been behind Barack since we arrived here in Ecuador. When we were all in Quito for a workshop, we watched one of the Barack-Hillary debates. While Hillary is great, we knew Barack is 100 times better and we cheered him on, like we do for all of our heroes.

My sisters Kate and Abby kept me informed through text messages as the election returns came in. I knew Obama was winning in the early returns. Not knowing which states were reporting, I hoped that they weren’t only the traditional blue states.

We rarely receive phone calls on our cell phones from our families, because we communicate through email and Skype. When I receive an unexpected call from the States, my heart beats faster and I think it could be a call with some awful news.

When my phone rang at 11:10 p.m., my heart started beating out of my chess and I feared they were going to tell me that John McCain won. Kate gave me the news I’ve been waiting two years to hear, “Obama won.”

At the same time, I received text messages from other PCVS with those two magical words. I didn’t cry that night. I was too tired. I still hadn’t seen any pictures or heard the world-changing acceptance speech.

After lots of PC work on Wed. (including spending my English classes discussing the election with my students) I headed to the Internet café Wed. night. I talked with Abby through Skype, as she read me the acceptance speech and I read and saw everything about the election on CNN.com. It was in that Internet café that I tears came to my eyes, seeing the proof that our country, our world is about to change.

Reactions here:

Just as the rest of the world, Ecuadorians are shocked and excited that Obama is our president-elect. In Ecuador, where there is lots of racism, my students are asking me how it is possible that we elected a black president. I proudly tell them for the majority of us Americans, race is no longer an issue. I tell them after 8 years of Ecuadorians, the rest of world, and me disagreeing with our president that we will once again be seen as a great country.

I wrote this quote on the board for my class and my students worked together to translate it into English.

“Esperanza. Esperanza frente a la dificultad. Esperanza frente a la incertidumbre. La audacia de la esperanza. En definitiva, ese es el mayor regalo que Dios puede darnos, el cimiento de está nación. Creer en aquello que no se ve. Creer que nos espera un futuro mejor.”

My favorite excerpt from “The Audacity of Hope.”

I have never talked to our priest about the election or about Barack Obama. At the beginning of Mass last night, in front of 200 Ecuadorians and two Americans, he said, ¨We have come here to celebrate the Mass tonight. And we have reason to celebrate. Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States of America and the United States will soon be seen a country of peace; not as a country that divides the world, but as a country that unites the world.¨

The Lucky 13

2008-10-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

In less than a month, we will hopefully have 13 baby turkeys. Gregg’s is ridiculously excited. It has been his plan all along to try to raise turkeys, but we had a string of bad luck with the female turkeys. The first was stolen, and then the second one turned out to be too old. The third was indeed the lucky one.

There seem to be an immediate attraction between the female turkey and the male turkey. Less than a month after buying this female, we are now the proud owners of 13 turkey eggs. Turkeys are pretty much like chickens and put eggs every day or every other day. Since putting the 13th egg, the turkey has continually been in the nest, except to eat for about 5 minutes every day. We’ve been told that the eggs take 28 days to hatch.

The male turkey has become really aggressive with us and is protecting the nest. He even gets mad when we go out to put clothes out on the line and has been jumping up and pecking at the clothes to pull them off the line.

La Despedida (Good-bye Party)

- Our counterpart Dr. Cely has resigned from the health center. Last week we had about 20 people over for the good-bye party. Since I’m still not a pro at cooking Ecuadorian food, everyone brought a dish. We had a great meal of rice, potatoes, salad and chicken.

- It was our first time hosting an Ecua-party and I was a little nervous about how it would turn out. Our friends pretty much took over and acted as the hosts. We didn’t even have to the toast.

- I had table and chairs set up (like us American do) for the meal. At Ecua parties, there aren’t tables. You simply put all the chairs along the walls and make a big circle. The guests quickly put the tables to the side and spread out the chairs. When it was time to eat, we sat the plates on our laps- just like normal. I couldn’t help but laugh at the vacant tables. What was I thinking!

- So why aren’t there tables? To have a bigger dance floor of course. It doesn’t matter what the occasion is, if there is some sort of get together, there will be a dance. And everyone dances- it’s not an option!

- There is always a cake at the get-togethers, but it is never served on plates. Cake is served on napkins and is a finger food. Really tricky when there is icing.

- Also, the only silverware used at parties is spoons. Rice falls through the forks, so spoons are much easier. We’ve become pros at eating chicken with a spoon.

Other happenings:

- We’ve mailed in our absentee ballots. We’ve started getting more campaign coverage here on the local news. If I hear Obama or McCain’s names, I drop whatever I’m doing to hear the latest news. What I would do for more election coverage! I’ve yet to hear of a Peace Corps volunteer vote for McCain. I guess we’re just too peaceful.

- In my English classes, I’ve been talking some about the election and the students really find it interesting. They seem excited about the fact that a minority can get elected president in the U.S.

- After more than a year of living in our house, the owners have finished the living room. We even have glass in the windows and curtains!

- In non-official Peace Corps work… We’ve been busy organizing the unofficial annual PC Halloween party that will take place this year in El Chaco. We have more than 70 volunteers from all over the country coming. We decided to plan the party in El Chaco, because on Nov. 1 and 2 there is a big novice rafting competition here. My social life is busier than ever!

Giving Birth in a Third World Country

2008-10-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

One of our good friends Natalia had her first child last week, a baby girl named Anai. Natalia is the counselor at the high school and has become a great friend and counterpart. After her and the baby arrived to Chaco, Gregg and I headed over to her mom’s house to visit. Since I doubt I will ever have the giving birth experience here, I’ll share a little bit of Natalia’s.

- Natalia’s water broke Friday afternoon at the high school. She headed over to the public hospital 45-minues away, where there is practically free health care.

- After 24-hours of “ugly labor,” she gave birth to Anai. Anesthetics are NEVER used here during births.

- After giving birth, she and the baby were placed in a small room with two other patients: a woman with pregnancy complications and a young boy with a leg infection.

- Visitors are allowed in the room only for a couple of minutes. The hospital is full enough with all the patients, let alone visitors.

- The doctors and nurses in the rural hospitals are usually very young and doing their equivalent of residency. According to Natalia, they didn’t seem to know what they were doing and had very little patience.

- The day after giving birth, Natalia was informed that the entire placenta had not come out during the birth. The doctors opened her back up and did a “cleaning.”

- After the “cleaning” the nurse made her walk around and yelled at her if she didn’t clean up the blood fast enough that was running down her leg. Then after all this pain, the nurse took her blood pressure on the same arm as where she had an IV. As blood was running up the tube, she yelled at the nurse to stop.

- During the night as her newborn cried, the other patients in the room yelled at her to get the baby to shut up.

- Of course, she was very happy to get back to El Chaco, where her mom and husband can now be with her and the baby.

- I asked Natalia why she didn’t go to the Catholic hospital in El Chaco. She said because it is too expensive. A normal birth costs $80, plus $40 each day of hospitalization.

Maternity Leave

- It doesn’t really exist! Natalia now has 4-weeks of paid maternity leave-literally paid. During her four weeks off, Natalia has to pay for a substitute in the high school. She is just happy to have four weeks off. With many other jobs, women only get two weeks.

Salcedo with the Comprades

2008-09-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

Last weekend our comprades Doña Rebeca and Don Coque (parents of our godchild, Morelia) invited us to go to the fiestas of their hometown, Salcedo, with them. Salcedo is located in the mountainous region (Sierra) of Ecuador about 2 hours south of Quito.

We got a warm welcome as soon as we arrived to Salcedo from Rebeca’s mom and we stayed with her for the weekend. Her house was much nicer than most of the houses in the area, but lacked running water in the bathroom. Nobody seemed too concerned about bathing or brushing their teeth.

Saturday morning Morelia competed in 3-hour bike race through the country side. Rebeca borrowed a jeep from her brother and we drove along behind Morelia the whole time cheering her on.

The Sierra is the poorest region of Ecuador and from what we saw during the bike race it is hard to imagine how people manage to survive in such conditions. The whole region is very dry and windy. People cultivate crops in every lot of land possible, including the steep mountainsides. There is no gas or electric powered machinery- all the farming is done by manual labor.

Many of the houses are made of mud with thatch roofs and don’t have electricity. In this area, the only water people may have is the rain water they collect. Also, there are hardly any trees. Most have been cut down to build houses, cook food, or clear land to farm. It was interesting to see another side of Ecuador and realize just how different it is from the Oriente (where we live).

Part of every town’s fiestas are the running of the bulls. In Salcedo, this consisted of a large arena full of 100 people (torreros) and 1 bull. The people in the center would tempt the bull to chase them and the spectators waited for the people in the center to mess up and get trampled by the bull. When one of the torreros would fall, everybody would crack up. If a torrero got trampled hard enough and long enough by a bull, they won a prize. Each bull was in the ring about 5-10 minutes or until it got tired. It was interesting but I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as everyone else.

Other happenings:

- We visited Salcedo’s cementery, where many relatives of Dona Rebeca and Don Coque are buried. It was set up like a little town complete with street names.

- The Sunday market in Salcedo is much different from Chaco’s. There you can buy cuys, roasted pig heads and lots of produce. After killing and eating the last female turkey, I bought a new one at the market. My goal is to raise turkey babies. Dona Rebeca and Don Coque must be jealous of my turkeys, because they ended up buying one too.

- Close to Salcedo is the famous town of Baños, which is next to the very active Volcano Tunguragua. Amazingly, with the many eruptions of Tunguragua, Baños has never been affected. They legend there is that the Virgin Mary has always protected the town from the violent eruptions. A church and many monuments have been built there to thank her.

- Sunday is the election that will decide if the Ecuadorians approve the new constitution. On every corner, car and sign there are advertisements that say Sí or No. From what we have heard it seems like the Sí is winning. We’ll keep you updated.

- Starting two days before Ecuadorian elections, there is a national ban on the selling and consumption of alcohol. If you are seen drinking alcohol, you are taken straight to jail.

Hello Teacher

2008-09-19T14:28:00.001-07:00

I have now be an official English teacher in the high school for 3 weeks. I say official because all of my other classes haven’t been for grades. I have two different classes of 10th graders with 30 students each. I teach 5 hours to each class each week.

Being an official teacher has been harder than I thought. All of our health classes aren’t for grades, so we don’t assign homework or have tests and I don’t have to submit lesson plans. Now it is tough, because I have to do all these things and don’t really understand the system here.

For starters, education here is SUPER formal. Students are accustomed to spending all day copying from their texts books or from the board. When a teacher enters the classroom, all the students have to stand up and greet the teacher and cannot sit until they are told to.

As far as homework goes, teachers grade as much on the handwriting as the actual homework (I never would have graduated from high school here). Also, a perfect score here isn’t 100 it is 20.

Overall the students know very little English. They do have three phrases they love to say: Hello teacher, Oh my God and Bye bye. These three phrases have been outlawed in my class.

So it has been a challenging start, but I do really like it. More than anything my goal is to get students to start thinking out of the lines of their notebook paper!

In other news:

- We recently went to Quito for our Mid-Service Conference. On September 1, we completed one year of service in El Chaco. Time has been flying by and crawling by at the same! Now less than a year left… maybe!

- For the last couple of months, Gregg and I have been talking about extending our PC service for a third year. This decision is still WAY UP in the air. We absolutely love it here and don’t know if we are ready yet for life back in the States.

- A very possible site for our third year is the Galapagos. You might have heard of them. They are some islands with some finches and turtles. I’ve heard they’re not too shabby. Down side… lots of tourists, very expensive living and starting work again from scratch.

- The female turkey is dead. I came home from the high school and Gregg informed me that she was in the refrigerator. Very strange, but very good turkey fajitas.

Class Letters

2008-09-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

One of the goals of Peace Corps is to share our experiences and cultural observations here in our host country with the American people. This blog allows us to do just that and we also participate in the World Wise School Program. With this program we are paired up with an elementary school class and write letters back and forth.

We were able to pair up with my friend Stacy Ansel’s 4th grade class. Stacy (then Dolinger) and I became friends when we were in the 4th grade together and have been great friends ever since.

Here is a sample of one of the response letters to me. I crack up every time I read it.

Dear Maggie,

You accidentally messed up my name. It’s A-L-E-K not A-L-E-X. I know it is weird, but it’s my name. Thanks for telling about the cow hooves. I will never eat that. My mom’s birthday was June 11th. Don’t ask how old is she because the answer is I don’t know. My birthday is June 30th. Don’t ask that either because the answer is 10. By the time you get this letter, I will be out of school. I hope you have a fun summer vacation too.

Sincerely,
Alek Humphries

Whale Watching

2008-08-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a little vacation on the coast. It was actually our first vacation by ourselves since we got to Ecuador. Over the past few months we have heard so much about the humpback whales on the coast that we decided we had to go check them out.

We jumped on a bus on Sunday night for a pleasant 14-hour bus ride to Puerto Lopez. When we arrived, we scheduled a tour for whale watching and a trip to Isla de la Plata (Silver Island), which is often called the Poor Man’s Galapagos.

The humpback whales come up every year from Antarctica to South America to mate and have their babies. When the 1.5 ton babies are born, they don’t have enough fat to survive in the icy waters of Antarctica, so they are born in warmer waters.

From June to October there are an estimated 400 humpback whales off the coast of Puerto Lopez. The water along Ecuador is the perfect temperature for the whales- not too hot and not too cold. The males show off for the females, so there is lot of tail and fin slapping and breeching. After the whales mate and the babies get strong enough, they head back to Antarctica.

I was still skeptical that we were going to see whales when we headed out on our tour. After about 30 minutes in the boat, we started seeing the whales slapping their tails in the water and blowing mist from a distance. After passing these whales, 30 minutes later we arrived at Isla de la Plata.

The island didn’t receive its name for buried treasures, but from bird crap. Fishermen say that when the sun sets, the island looks silver. It actually shines silver from all the bird droppings.

We walked around the island for 3-4 hours watching all the different bird species that live there, like blue footed boobies and albatross. We even saw a sea lion. We then did a little snorkeling off a small reef and somehow Maggie and I are the only ones that didn’t see the passing sea turtles.

On our way back to the mainland, we got about 30 meters from a male, female and baby whale. The baby was jumping out of the water the whole time and the parents would come to the surface where we could see their whole body (about the size of a semi truck).

Finally, when we were about to leave the male whale jumped almost completely out of the water right beside our boat- twice! It was an incredible sight and a great finale. Unfortunately, he didn’t stop to pose for a picture.

Besides the whales, my favorite part about the coast was seafood, seafood and more seafood. I think we spent more money in one meal than we spend on food for a week in El Chaco.

Did you know?

-Blue-footy boobies always live in pairs. They change mates every year during mating season and then live the remainder of the year with their new companion. They live for 30 years.

-We’ll be flying into Kansas City on Dec. 15 and we’ll be there until Jan. 2. Can’t wait to see everyone!

EcuaBrothers Come for a Visit

2008-08-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ivan and Andrés, our two host brothers from Pesillo, came to visit us in El Chaco for four days. Ivan just turned 15 and Andrés is 11 and they are still the coolest kids that I have met in Ecuador. Ivan is the one of the only students I have met that likes reading and he has read all 7 of the Harry Potter books. Andrés has a great sense of humor and would spend all day playing cards with us, if he could. Speed is now his favorite game.

We invited them to come to Chaco over their vacation break when we last went to visit them in February. We were shocked when the called us up a couple of weeks ago to tell us they were actually going to come.

Gregg went to meet them in Quito and brought them to Chaco, their very first trip to the Oriente. They loved seeing the rivers and waterfalls. They were really excited about all the bugs here, since they hardly have any in freezing Pesillo. As we walked around Chaco, they would stop and point out the butterflies. We pretended to be excited.

I was working with the summer camp at the time and we had a field trip planned to go to the hot springs in Papallacta. I took them with me and they loved them!
When we lived with them, we found out they really like NASA. My uncle works for NASA and I had him send some NASA stuff for them. They were so excited when I gave them the flight patches and pictures.

Ivan is working hard to learn English and really want to study abroad in the States after he graduates next year. We are going to try to help him find a program.

Other happenings:

One of our landlords´ sons has two turtles and wanted to separate them because they were fighting a lot. I told him he could put one of them behind our house, because it is all fenced in and I wanted to try my hand at turtle raising.

After they dropped the turtle off at the house, I feed him a banana and then put him in the pen. The next day, I couldn´t find him to feed him, but wasn´t too worried because they told me it always hides really well.

The following day I continued my turtle search in the backyard and after I couldn´t find him, I decided to tell the owner. We concluded that the turtle had dug his way out. He was pretty upset, because he had had the turtle for 6 years.

On the fourth day of the turtle´s disappearance, Gregg was talking with some friends in front of our house on the soccer field. The neighbor asked Gregg, ¨Is that your turtle?¨ The turtle was eating a pile of dog poop, less than 2 meters from Gregg.
We returned the turtle back to his owner and decided I wasn´t fit for turtle raising.

An EcuaWedding

2008-08-16T09:47:00.001-07:00

We went to our first Ecuadorian wedding recently- that is as invited guests. Normally the weddings take place during the normal masses, just like how we do baptisms in the States. The priest gives the normal mass and then administers that sacrament of marriage- pretty anti-climatic.

Doris and Marcos, the bride and groom, are good friends of ours, and Doris´ family is super involved in the church. She is the youngest of 18 kids and 12 of them still live in El Chaco. The majority of the kids make up the band for the masses and Doris always cantors. Because they help out the church so much, the priest decided to give a private mass for their wedding.

Observations:

- Doris and Marcos hand-delivered the invitations to all the guests one week before the wedding. I´m not sure why we didn´t do the same for our wedding!

- Since the invitation said the wedding started at 4 p.m., Gregg and I arrived at the church exactly at 4 p.m. and were surprised to find the church empty. I guess we thought people would be more punctual for a wedding.

- Guests starting arriving about 4:45 and the bride arrived at 5 p.m.

- The bows on the pews were made out of toilet paper.

- There are godparents even for weddings. The rest of the wedding party was made up of several flower girls and ring bearers.

- Even though it was a private mass, it seemed like the wedding was treated just like any of the other sacraments we have seen. The reception afterwards was just as big as the reception for Doris´ nephew´s baptism that we went to a couple of months ago.

- Toasts here a very important and very formal- jokes are defiantly out. No one even smiled during the two fathers´ toasts nor the godfather´s.

- Since there are no wedding registries, guests just buy the couple whatever they want to, which means LOTS of duplicate gifts that can´t be returned. Since one of my goals in PC is to put an end to instant coffee, I bought them a coffee pot.

Saying Goodbye

2008-08-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

We recently received the bitter sweet news that one of our good friends, Rocío is going to work in Spain. It will be a great opportunity for her to live in another country and make a little money. However, it is sad to see her leaving, because she is a good friend and is the first in her family to leave the country- and the first to fly on an airplane!

The good news is that she is going legally, has a job and will live in Madrid with her cousin. A supermarket chain (like Wal-Mart) came to Ecuador looking for people to work as cashiers. It was a very selective process and Rocío was very lucky to win a spot. She has committed to work for one year and then may renew the contract or work for another company in Spain.

We celebrated last weekend by cooking a lot of seafood and eating a little ice cream (it’s real expensive here).

Nearly every family we know has some family member (uncles, cousins, etc.) living in the U.S., Spain or Italy. The majority have gone illegally and now can´t return to Ecuador to visit their families. We have even heard stories of family member dying trying to cross across Mexico and others that were simply never heard from again.

The population of Ecuador is 13 million and approximately 2 million Ecuadorians live in the States. The money sent from the immigrants to their families is the second largest source of income in the country.

New Constitution?

The Constitutional Assembly recently finished the new constitution in Ecuador. It was completed about 3 months after the deadline, which, in Ecuador, is pretty good. In September, the Ecuadorians will vote to approve or reject the new constitution.

The Catholic Church has launched a huge campaign, the NO campaign, against approving the constitution- it seems it is too progressive for them. Since 90% of the population is Catholic, it will be interesting to see if they listen to the Church or not.

Maggie- La Salva Vida

2008-08-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lack of blog writing. The busier we are, the more stuff we have to write about, but little time to write!

Lately we have been busy with summer camps, lots of English classes, first aid classes, putting first aid knowledge to use and watching the volcano erupting.

Volcano Reventador is 60 km from us and two weeks ago it became very active. It was shooting up a great deal of ash and for two nights we could really see the lava flowing.

We were in Quito the first day the volcano was really active and we got back to Chaco about 8 p.m. We were walking up to our house from the bus and a kid told us that we should go to the volcano to see the lava closer. I was really confused and he pointed in the direction of the volcano and sure enough we could see red explosions that seem to be floating up in the air.

There have been several big explosions in the last 30 years, but El Chaco is far enough that it has never been affected by the lava flow. And interesting enough, we haven´t even had ash fall. The volcano blows the ash up several kilometers in the air, so it doesn´t start falling until Quito.

The summer camp finally ended last Friday after four crazy weeks with lots of crazy kids.

Every Thursday we took the 40 kids to the pool in town (built by the biggest oil company in the area). Hardly anybody in El Chaco can swim, being that just recently pools were built here and the river´s strong current makes it impossible to swim in the river. All the kids, though, love splashing around in the shallow end and the few kids that can swim show off to the others.

The last pool day of the camp turned out to be pretty interesting. I was talking with two other teachers by the pool, when we heard a couple of the boys yelling in the deep end. All of us initially thought they were just playing, but as we got closer, I realized that one of the boys (Luís) was actually drowning. The other boy (Paulo) was trying to pull Luís to the side, but being that he could hardly swim, Luís was just pulling him under too.

Without thinking (already knowing the other teachers couldn´t swim), I kicked off my shoes and jumped into the pool. Luckily, Luís didn´t struggle with me as I pulled him to the side of the pool and the teachers pulled him out. He coughed up lots of water and was very startled, but was fine.

After the whole incident had passed, the kids loved retelling how Señorita Maggie jumped fully clothed into the pool and saved Luís life. The kept on calling me the life saver, which seems a little exaggerated, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn´t been there.

P.S. Sorry no pics of these two exciting events.

P.S.S. We have decided to come home from Christmas. After more than a year of saying we aren´t going to return to the States during our PC service, we have had a change of heart. Sorry if this screws up anybody´s plans! Can´t wait to see everyone in December! I just can´t stop singing, ¨I´ll be home for Christmas. You can count on me.¨ Also, I can´t wait to practice my English. As you can tell from my blog writing, it is going to crap.

P.S.S.S. We`ll see who is the most faithful blog-checker by who reads the big news first!

Not Just a Walk Through the Park

2008-07-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

We went on a REALLY long walk last week, but for a REALLY good cause. We walked from Chaco to San Carlos, a distance of 45 to 55 km, depending on which signs and maps you believe. The main purpose of the walk was to raise awareness of the destruction of the Amazon Basin, caused by the oil companies and deforestation.

The name of the walk is Caminamos con Alejandro e Ines or We Walk with Alejandro and Ines. 21 years ago, Bishop Alejandro and Sister Ines were murdered by an indigenous tribe, while they were working to fight against the big oil companies. When the oil companies first came into Ecuador, they ran right over the tribes and destroyed their land.

Alejandro and Ines were big environmentalist and they worked to protect the forests and the land of the tribes. They began spending lots of time with the tribes and dressing like them. One day a neighboring tribe invaded their camp and mistaking them for oil workers, murdered them both.

The first walk was organized in 2007 for the 20th Anniversary of their deaths and we walked a very small part of the second annual walk. The group of 30 walked from Quito to Coca, a distance of 365 km, in 12 days. The group that did the whole hike mainly consisted of religious men and women and then in each town a small group (like us) tagged along for a stretch.

Other blog-worthy happenings:

- I (Maggie) will be working as the 10th grade English teacher next year. The principal had asked me tons of times to teach and I got tired of saying no! I will have two different sections and have a total of 10 teaching hours each week.

In addition to English, Gregg and I are going to continue working with the school counsellor giving sex ed, self-esteem and leadership classes. We also hope to start some youth groups.

- Abut 3 months ago, the vice-principal of the high school helped organize a group of students to start a radio show about environmental awareness, habitat conservation, tourism, etc.

As part of the radio show, they also wanted to do a radio novel and asked Gregg and I to help. The title is Gotas del Futuro, Drops of the Future. In the novel, we pretty much play ourselves, except we are biologists. Each week, we go to record a chapter of the novel and then it runs on the local radio station. We are really getting famous.

BIG Winners

2008-07-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

Super duper exciting news- all five of our girls from El Chaco were approved for scholarships! These students will receive $125 each year for their Sophomore, Junior and Senior years of high school to pay for their school fees, books and uniforms. Several of the girls will be the first in their families to graduate from high school! Thanks so much for buying raffle tickets.

Also, in case you weren´t aware, exactly one week ago La Liga Universatario Deportivo won the prestigious Copa de Libertadores. La Liga is a professional soccer team that plays out of Quito, Ecuador. Copa de Libertadores is the South American (and Mexico) championship of all the professional soccer teams.

Since we live about 4 hours from Quito, all of El Chaco went crazy when they won. We have been watching La Liga for about 2 months now, as they have played through the tournament. It was the first time a team from Ecuador has won the championship.

Now La Liga will go to Japan to play the champions of the other continents. I know that they will be playing Manchester United who will represent Europe. We will keep you updated.

Inflation Problems

One big problem that we have been experiencing down here (as well as the whole world) is inflation. I no longer notice inflation with gas prices (since we don´t have a car), but rather in the food prices.

Everything has risen and continues to rise. Eggs have gone from .$.10 to $.12, rice $.25 to $.35 a lb., milk $.30 to.$.40 a liter, chicken from $1.00 to $1.25 a pound, and worst of all shrimp has gone from $3.00 to $3.50 a lb. The construction boom in Chaco may be coming to an end as rebar to lay concrete has gone up from $40 for 100lbs to $80.

We are always talking about the rising food prices in our daily conversations. It seems like small numbers, but when your grocery bill is 25% higher it starts to add up. Unfortunately, here it seems like the poorest people here have the most kids. As the prices continue to rise, the poorest people simply stop buying milk, meat, fruits and vegetables and just eat rice.

There are several reasons for the rising prices here. Of course, gas prices are a big part. There is also the constitutional assembly that is currently writing a new constitution in Ecuador and it has caused a lot of uncertainty in the market, because nobody knows how the new constitution will turn out. The last reason is there has been a lot of flooding in the coast and a volcano eruption in the mountain region. Only time will tell if the inflation will get under control.

A funny story from last weekend:

Maggie and I went to a nearby city (Tena) for a church retreat. It turned out that the president of Ecuador was in Tena the same day to inaugurate a new highway. We were excited to see the president or even his caravan of cars. Unfortunately, the highway was not finished. The president showed up said he refused to inaugurate the highway and left within 30 minutes.

Package Guidelines

2008-06-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

For all you package senders, please take note of the new customs´ guidelines, so we don´t have to pay $5,000,000 or wait 500 hours to get the package out of customs.

- The package must be less than 2 kilograms

- Write `Regalos´ (gifts) on the label. Do not list what is actually in the package

- Write $0.00 for the value of the package. If the post office complains that you have to write a value, explain that you can´t, because it will have to pass through customs in Ecuador and we will have to pay a fine.

Thanks so much to all of you who have been generous in sending packages. Some people have been asking what we would like in packages and really more than anything we love seeing pictures of you guys! Also, chocolate never hurts (Hershey´s and Dove). Thanks to some generous donators, we now have a year´s supply of contact lens solution and hand wipes.

Another reminder: BUY YOUR GAD (Gender and Development) RAFFLE TICKETS!!! Check the May 27th entry for all the information about the raffle. The raffle takes place July 8, and ALL proceeds go straight to scholarships for poor, but really bright, motivated Ecuadorian women who want complete their high school education. The easist way to buy your tickets is online: http://www.friendsofecuador.org/

One Year in Ecualand

2008-06-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

On June 20, 2007 we arrived here in Ecuador as nervous, excited Peace Corps trainees. After a great first year, we have come to absolutely love this country, our new friends and our work.

Wednesday night we excitedly greeted the new PC trainees at the airport. It was really hard to believe that an entire year has passed since we crossed through that same airport with our 250 lbs. of mostly unnecessary luggage.

So just exactly does one year in Ecuador mean? Let me break it down for you.

One year (366 days with Leap Day) means:

- We have not driven a car in a year

- We have not seen any siblings, relatives or any friends from the States for one year

- We speak pretty darn good Español

- We still don´t understand lots of jokes

- It means I (Maggie) have gained 14 pounds and Gregg has gained 4 pounds. I´ve been telling you all we eat lots of rice and potatoes here!

- Gregg and I only speak Spanish together. If I say something in English, he pretends to not understand. Books, music, movies, etc. only in Spanish.

- We have not used a washing machine or dryer for one year

- We have worn out every pair of jeans we brought here on our washing board.

- We have been godparents … twice!

- We have not had any season changes (except between lots of rain and quite a bit of rain)

- We have given tons of health charlas (talks, presentations)

- I have had a fun case of amoebas, but somehow Gregg has stayed amoeba-free.

- Our only big fights have been over the toilet

- We have not had an 8-5 job for a year!

- We have had LOTS of free time

- Anything that seems different to us we now describe it as Ecua. For example, Ecuatime is being an hour or two hours late for a meeting and being right on time.

- We have come to live in harmony with all bugs

- We have been living in a fish bowl for a year. We are absolute stars in our community and we cannot walk down the streets without someone screaming our names.

- Gregg has been viewed as a giant and I have been average height for a year.

- We become even more frugal, if that is possible to imagine

- We have missed Stacy and Brock´s, Beth and Chris´ and Marley and Bryce´s weddings.

- We go to the bank and post office once a month

- We have made tons of friends in Chaco that we will deeply miss when we return

- We often go several weeks without riding in a car

- We have not eaten lots of our favorite foods from the States. Examples: Good Chinese, bacon, E.L. Fudge Cookies, Schmeka´s sausage, Mom´s Spaghetti sauce, Mary´s holiday meals, Grandma Ahern´s tacos and green beans, Grandma Wolcott´s Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and Vickie´s fudge.

- We have boiled hundreds of pots of water for drinking water

- We have not used an oven for a year

- I now eat seafood

- We are two of the few Peace Corps volunteers that have been able to save money on our living allowance of $250 a month.

- We have not had to buy $3+ gallon gasoline

- We have not seen a movie in a movie theatre

- We think joining Peace Corps is one of the best decisions we´ve ever made (right behind marrying each other)!

The BIG 24

2008-06-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

I was really overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of our friends here in Chaco on my birthday.

I had a soccer game in the morning and afterwards our good friend Marta invited us over for lunch. We came straight from the game and I was covered in mud. She had literally cooked a leg of a pig and we ate a very traditional meal called fritada. After lunch, she opened a bottle of wine and with her kids made a beautiful toast.

We left there and went up to the house. As I was showering, our landlords called to invite us over for dinner. The Ashqui family has really become like a second family to us. They had planned a little birthday celebration for me and the five sons (the rafting guides) went all out.

After another beautiful toast (really big deal here) and we had a great meal of fresh trout. After dinner one of the sons gave me a hat from the oil company he works for and another gave me a rafting t-shirt.

Also during the day some neighbors and our godchild stopped by to bring me gifts. I really couldn’t believe how so many people went out of their ways to make the day special for me.

Toasts: At every celebration there is a toast. The host first passes out wine or champaign and a cookie to all the guests and then everyone stands up. The host then makes a very long, eloquent toast and everyone says ¨Salud,¨ which means ¨to your health.¨

On Sunday, I went to a birthday party for a 10-year-old and 25 of his classmates were invited. The mom passed out a little cup of wine to all the 10-year-olds and made the toast!

Fiestas del Chaco

2008-06-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

The fiestas of El Chaco were actually about 2 weeks ago, but I have not had the chance to write the blog, because we have had some computer problems here.

The fiestas started on Friday with a parade through downtown, complete with floats and dancing groups. We were one of those dancing groups. At the end of the parade each group had their performance. Maggie was told that she now dances like an Ecuadorian. One of our friends came up to me and told me, ¨Gregorio, I´m not going to lie. You dance kind of ugly.¨ On Friday night there was the election of the Queen of El Chaco. The queen candidates competed in a swimsuit competition, traditional outfit and there was a segment of Q and A. Between every segment a band played or there would be a traditional dance. All in all the competition lasted about 5 hours.

On Saturday, there was fair with all kinds of food and products from the area. In the afternoon, there were the bull fights. The bull fights were very interesting. It was sad how they killed each bull over a period of 30-45 minutes. However, it is an art how the matadors are able the dodge the bull without looking worried and then kill the bull quickly (is the idea) at the end. After the bull fight, there were two other great bands that came, so we ended up dancing another night away.

Sunday afternoon there was more bull fights and torro gol. The matadors on Sunday were the novices, so it was a lot more boring and sad to watch (it took a long time to kill them). Torro gol was very cool though- it means bull goal. There are two teams in the ring and each team has their goal, like in soccer. A bull runs into the ring and each team tries to lure the bull to their goal to score a point.

Monday was the last day of the fiestas and we started the day with the civic parade. Here in Ecuador the civic parades are all very boring. Every institution in the town marched in the parade (schools, police, government employees, etc.). Everyone is straight faced and march in unison. If the students are caught goofing around during the parade, the teacher will actually lower their grades.

The last night of fiestas, everyone was ready to dance, but then it started to rain. Lots of people left, but the hardcore people, like us, stayed and danced in our saturated clothes. Maggie has become quite the salsa dancer.

We are still recuperating from our week of fried food and late nights.

Lunch with Senator Dodd

2008-05-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

We had a pleasant lunch today with Senator Chris Dodd from Connecticut. Sen. Dodd was actually one of the early Democratic Presidential Candidates, but dropped out after the Iowa Caucasus. More importantly… Sen. Dodd was one of the earliest Peace Corps Volunteers and served in the Dominican Republic from 1966-1968.

The lowdown:

- The 12 best and brightest volunteers were chosen to come to Quito for the luncheon. Somehow Gregg and I slipped in!

- I actually sat at the table with Ambassador Linda Jewell. Very cool woman. She asked lots of questions about our work in our sites and is a huge fan of Peace Corps. We talked a lot about Ecuadorian politics and the educational system here.

- The food was incredible. Good ol’ American BBQ.

- After the lunch we had some time to just chat with the Senator. When asked why he joined the Peace Corps he said because someone asked him to. That someone was John F. Kennedy. He was at the speech were JFK called all Americans to be a part of something greater than themselves.

- The Senator was very open and laidback with us. He talked about his short Presidential bid, the current situation with Hillary and Barack, his PC service and his thoughts on Chavez. By the way, he has endorsed Barack.

- Oh yea…Congressman Javier Becerra from L.A. was also there. His parents are from Mexico. Nice guy too.

- Sen. Dodd is the longest standing member on the Foreign Relations Committee. He is more or less the Senate’s expert on Latin America. He is doing a tour through South American. He said when traveling he always tries to meet with Peace Corps Volunteers if they are in the country.

Super Duper Raffle

2008-05-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

So this is long, but please read. This letter is from the Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development Committee. Gregg and I are in the process of working to get scholarships for girls in Chaco, so please help!

Dear friends and family,

I am writing to ask for your support for two very important Peace Corps Volunteer priorities: providing scholarships to young Ecuadorian women AND combating sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

The Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development Committee teamed up with the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Task Force for a big raffle fundraiser to support these important causes.

With your purchase of raffle tickets, you will:

1) Help Ecuadorian girls finish high school (it’s not free here). Our Gender & Development Committee’s scholarship program is one of only a handful worldwide. The financial assistance that we provide for these young women is vitally needed: a mere 56% of Ecuadorian women receive their high school degree.

2) Help prevent human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children. Thousands of Ecuadorian women and children have fallen victim to human trafficking, which is considered a type of modern-day slavery. The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Task Force is working to prevent the spread of trafficking and to provide support and to provide shelter and services to former victims.

3) Have a chance to win fabulous prizes including roundtrip airfare within the U.S., Ecuadorian art, exciting outdoor adventure packages including surfing and whitewater rafting trips, as well as weekend getaway packages to exciting destinations across Ecuador.

Don’t delay! Buy your tickets today! Each ticket is only $1.50. The raffle will take place on July 8, 2008

Two easy options to support TWO great causes and have a chance to win LOTS of great prizes:

1) Credit Card: BUY ONLINE NOW through the secure Friends of Ecuador website: http://www.friendsofecuador.org/

2) Check: Please make checks payable to: Club Kiwanis Chuquiragua Please write GAD Rifa in the Memo of the check and mail to: Attn: GAD. Casilla 17-08-8624. Cuerpo de Paz/Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador.

2008 Raffle Prizes Include:

• Roundtrip airfare for one person between Ecuador and the continental U.S. *
• Roundtrip airfare for one person between any two major cities in the continental U.S.**
• Whitewater rafting package in beautiful El Chaco, including all equipment, guides and lodging
• A Tour of Cotopaxi National Park aboard the Chiva Express, a colorful one-coach train, where you can “ride the roof” along the panoramic “Avenue of the Volcanoes.”
• Ruta del Sol prize package including private surf lessons, accommodations at the Hostal Tsunami in Montanita plus a private panga ride tour of a mangrove reserve
• Exciting weekend getaway packages to Mompiche, Canoa, Sua and Quito
• A night for two at the Maquipucuna Lodge where you may get a glimpse of the elusive, endangered Spectacled Bears
• Puyo Prize Package which includes personal guided tour of Omaere Ethnobotanical Park and a weekend stay at the luxurious Hosteria Finca El Pigual
• Dozens of other exciting prizes including art, books, indigenous handicrafts, gift certificates for fine dining and much more!!!

Don’t delay! Buy your tickets today! Each ticket is only $1.50

The GAD-Anti TIPS raffle is made possible thanks to many generous businesses and individuals including: Adam’s Rib, Metropolitan Touring, WaterDog Tours, Hotel Chagra Ramos, Hosteria Gabeal, Hostal Pais Libre, Hotel Almare, Hostal Tsunami, Balsa House, Hosteria Finca El Pigual, Hosteria El Jardin, Reserva Maquipucuna, Dave Goucher, Sonia Aguirre, Parque Omaere, Mango’s Mongolian Barbeque, The Magic Bean, Best Western Plaza, Bom Café, Shooters Sports Pub, Hotel Sandmelis, Chandani Tandoori, The Mango Tree, Mister Bagel, Henry Morgan Pleasure Cruise, Libri Mundi. THANK YOU SPONSORS!!!
* can be used either from Ecuador or from the U.S.
**connection through Milwaukee

ABOUT GAD
The Peace Corps Ecuador Gender and Development (GAD) Committee aims to enhance gender equality in all sectors of Ecuadorian society. In 2007, GAD provided over 70 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. The financial assistance that GAD provides for these young women is vitally needed, as a mere 56% of Ecuadorian women receive their high school degree. In addition to the scholarship program, GAD also sponsors popular youth camps and large national leadership conferences for Ecuadorian girls.

ABOUT THE ANTI-TIPS TASK FORCE
The Peace Corps Ecuador Anti-Trafficking in Persons (Anti-TIPs) Task Force aims to combat the increasing problem of trafficking and sexual exploitation of persons—particularly women and children. Through local outreach, education and national conferences, Anti-TIPs focuses on the prevention of the spread of commercial sexual exploitation. As a relatively new Peace Corps committee, Anti-TIPS seeks resources to support an important initiative to provide housing and services to Ecuadorian victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

ABOUT THE GAD-ANTI-TIPS COLLABORATION
In an effort to avoid duplication of effort, maximize volunteer effort and conserve resources, GAD and Anti-TIPs are collaborating on a joint fundraising effort. Funds raised through the raffle will support the committees’ philanthropic goals of 1) providing scholarships to low income Ecuadorian girls so that they may finish high school; and 2) supporting Fundacion Quimera, one of the countries leading anti-trafficking organizations that is creating Ecuador’s first shelter for victims of human trafficking.

Soccer Stars

2008-05-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

The Fiestas de El Chaco are this weekend and EVERYONE has been talking about them for months. It is pretty much like a summer festival in the States, but spread out into 4 days and the whole community participates. Actually, it’s not like a summer festival at all, because the events are completely different. For the first time in my life, I am taking part in a dance competition. Gregg and I are in the same group, but thankfully we aren’t partners.

The full fiesta low-down in the next blog.

Other happenings:

- Gregg and I are both playing for a soccer club called “New Star.” Nearly all the teams’ names are in English- I’m not sure why. Gregg’s team (the men’s team) is in the top three and my team (the women’s team) is in the bottom three. It seems my soccer skills are a little rusty. The last full soccer game I played was my senior year in high school, six years ago. Last week, I was playing defense and scored an own goal. Wooooops. Tough explaining that one Spanish. My coach told me I am going to play forward in the next game.

- Last weekend in El Chaco, we celebrated the Confirmation of 100 youth. The Mass was celebrated in the basketball arena and I think everyone I have met in and around Chaco was there. The Mass was really beautiful, even though it was three hours long. We were confirmation sponsors (here you have two) for a really great girl named Morelia.

- All the chickens are dead. The neighbor’s dog is very full.

- Congrats Beth and Chris and Marley and Bryce! Sorry about the whole not making it to your wedding thing. Being here 11 months has meant missing lots of weddings in the States. Just wait on the babies until we get back!

Nurrenbern Family Zoo

2008-05-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

Last week we had our first “Hike for Health,” which was a success. We also had our first presentation in the high school about sexually transmitted infections. The number of baby chickens is dropping quickly, but the good news is we’ll be getting two turtles.

We have been preparing for the “Hikes for Health” for about 2 months now. We are working with Jeff, who is a habitat conservation volunteer. There are 7 hikes planned for the rest of the year, in which we will take citizens to various tourist sites in the area.

The first hike was planned for a nearby cave. It rained a ton the night before and it was impossible to cross the river to enter the cave. Also, at the last minute, both of the guides we had scheduled canceled, so we were left without a site and without guides!

With group we had, we decided to head to San Rafael, the largest waterfall in Ecuador. The bus driver happened to know the trail to get to the very bottom of the waterfall. It normally takes about 1 hour to get to the bottom, but since Dr. Cely and I got separated from the group it was about a 3-4 hour hike for us. Fortunately, we did get lost in a very beautiful place and were able to see lots of virgin forest. While walking back Maggie and a friend saw a Watusa (biggest rodent on earth- forgot the name in English) and I saw a wild monkey for the first time. All and all it was a really good time for everyone.

On Tuesday, we had an assembly at the high school. We coordinated with Dr. Cely to do a PowerPoint presentation on STI’s. The talk went very well- all of the students were very interested in the presentation and asked many questions. We were scheduled to give the same presentation the following day; however there was no power in all of Chaco, so we had to reschedule (classes went on as normal though!).

Lately we have had a policy to turn down all offers to be Godparents. Last week Maggie was a little weak and accepted twice in a one hour period to be Godparents. Fortunately, we agreed to be Godparents for Confirmation and not for Baptism (which is more serious). Here there are godparents for every sacrament, even marriage.

Zoo Update: The turkeys are doing great. 1 chicken drowned in an inch of water, 4 were eaten by a neighbor’s dog, 1 died of unknown causes, but the 10 remaining are doing terrific. We plan on receiving two turtles this week, because a friend said he had no where to put them and if he could not find a home for them, he was going to eat them.

Mona the Monkey

2008-04-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

My parents left on Sunday, after a nine day visit. We had a good time rafting, hiking and shopping, but with a doubt the best part of the trip was going to the Arajuno Jungle Lodge.

The lodge is owned by Tom Larson, a former Peace Corps Volunteer and PC staff member, and is located about 5 hours from El Chaco. It is located on the banks of the Arajuno River and is surrounded by primary forest.

As we arrived by canoe, Mona the monkey was there to greet us. She immediately attached on to Gregg and became his little girlfriend for the next two days. I was ok with it.

Monkeys are heavily hunted in the Amazon for their meat and to sell the babies as pets. Mona’s mom was shot and some people rescued baby Mona. Tom found Mona, not well cared for, attached to a leash under somebody’s house. He brought her to the grounds of the lodge and there she has adapted well.

Since she is the only monkey around, she doesn’t really know she is a monkey, so she just does everything the humans do. If we ate popcorn, she ate popcorn. If I drank from my Nalgene, she wanted to drink from my Nalgene. Most of all, she loved playing in the hammock, as Gregg tried to read.

Other happenings:

- I was robbed for the first time (luckily not at gun or knife point). We were walking through the bus terminal and I was trying to find a bus back to Chaco. A guy stopped and offered me his EcoTourism business card and was really tricky in pick pocketing me. Luckily, he only took my phone and I didn’t realize it until I got on the bus.

- The next day my parents were going to check out Old Town in Quito when they got their bag slashed on the trolley. My mom saw the guy messing around with the bag, slapped his hands and loudly said, “NO!” Thankfully, he didn’t get much and just ran to the back.

- The Nurrenbern family is growing rapidly (or food source). Today, we added 16 baby chickens to the back yard. I think the turkeys are jealous.

Cattle thieves caught... and punished

2008-04-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

Over the past several months, farmers in El Chaco and the surrounding communities have had many cattle robbed. We heard of cases were literally every head of cattle was robbed from a farm. Our friend Jose, along with many other farmers, was staying up during the night to watch his cattle and try to catch the robbers. About 3 a.m. yesterday morning, 4 robbers were caught by a group of farmers about 2 hours from El Chaco.

Apparently a couple months ago, the local police caught the robbers. The robbers bribed the police with $500 and they let them go. This time, the farmers decided to take justice into their own hands.

First, they burned the truck that the robbers were using to steal the cattle. People then say that one of the robbers tried to escape. Apparently they caught him and burned him alive during the early morning hours while there were few witnesses.

Farmers and community members then dragged the other 3 robbers through the streets, until they reached the city hall. At the city hall, the community gathered and took turns beating the robbers. There were cries to burn them, mainly from those who had had their cattle stolen and feared the robbers would just be set free again. Needless to say, there is little faith in the justice system.

About noon, the head of the justice system for the province of Napo arrived in El Chaco and finally took over. The thieves were taken to Tena, the capital of Napo. There a trial awaits.

Thankfully, Gregg and I didn’t witness any of this, but did see videos of the beatings on the news. Totally surreal… and incredibly sad.

Nueva Hembra

2008-04-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

Quick update for all you blog stockers:

- You don’t have to worry anymore- our macho (male turkey) now has his new lady friend. After the first hembra (female turkey) mysteriously disappeared two months ago, Gregg has been searching desperately for a new one. He finally found one and brought the new hembra home today. Next in line: Chickens.

- My parents are coming to visit! They fly in on Saturday and will be here for a week. Rafting, hiking and a jungle lodge are in store for us. Looking forward to a week off from teaching!

- Cool moment: I was teaching a class at the high school and talking about the importance of having role models in your life. I had the students write down their role models and name three things they admire about the person. As they started working, a teenage girl came up to me and asked if she could put me down for her role model.

- We actually have been pretty busy that last couple weeks- teaching, working on projects, etc. Time is flying here. We are already 1/3 of the way through our Peace Corps service.

Semana Santa

2008-03-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

We just finished Holy Week and it was a little different being in a country that is 90% Catholic and I think 100% Christian.

During Holy Week, everyone in this area makes a soup called Fenesca. It is a very thick soup that consists of 12 different grains (which signify the 12 disciples), a fish called bacalau, and two other beans that look like small watermelons. It takes a lot of time to cook, because you have to cook each grain separately.

Since Maggie and I are the interesting gringos, everyone wanted us to try their Fenesca. During Holy Week, we had 7 meals of Fenesca with various friends and families. I really enjoyed the Fenesca and it is a heavy meal by itself, but it is also tradition to give a full plate of mashed potatoes with other garnishes after the Fenesca. To top it all off, everyone also serves a super sweet drink and a small desert. Each meal was more than enough food to last us for the day.

On Thursday, Maggie and I participated in the Mass celebrating the Last Supper and the washing of the feet. I dressed up with 11 other men and women to be one of the apostles and Maggie was chosen to be the Virgin Mary. We reenacted the Last Supper and Fr. Hector washed our feet.

On Friday, Maggie and I participated in the Stations of the Cross. Maggie was again the Virgin Mary and I was Pontius Pilate. They wanted Maggie to be Mary because Mary has very pale skin in all of the images here. They wanted me for Pilate, since I’m bigger than most of the people here. We started at 3:00- right after it started raining. We walked through the rain with sheets for clothes for 3 hours, reenacting the Stations through the main streets of El Chaco. About 200 hundred Ecuadorians and three Americans then climbed a huge hill to crucify Jesus and the thieves. Since it had been raining, the whole path was pure mud (and cow manure).

By 7:00 p.m. we had finished, but we still had to walk down the hill. It was now dark, even muddier and we only had sandals. We ended up walking barefoot, or more like skiing barefoot for 40 minutes until we finally reached the bottom. When we arrived, covered completely in mud, a family invited us to have another bowl of Fenesca.

There were some things we thought were interesting about Holy Week here in Ecuador. On Good Friday, many families gathered and had huge meals of Fenesca. No fasting here! On Ash Wednesday, Masses were standing room only, but on Easter Sunday it was like a normal Sunday attendance. The most striking and disappointing difference was no Easter Bunny and therefore no Cadbury Eggs.

Our Champion

2008-03-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

I’m sure you all are aware of this, but in case you live in a van down by the river (and happen to have Internet), I wanted to inform you that the three-time featherweight world champion of kickboxing lives here in El Chaco, Ecuador.

Edison Jimenez was the two-time world champion until he defended the title again here in Chaco two weeks ago. He is Chaco’s pride and joy and this is all anyone talked about the week leading up to the big match. Now I’m not sure how legit this whole “world champion” thing is or what countries compete in the league, but everyone in Chaco acted like the Olympic Games were being held here.

Gregg and I bought our $5 dollar tickets to see the match and headed to the Plaza of the Bulls, which holds about 3,000 people. The stadium was packed and I was excited to join in on the “Wave” and the “EcuuuaaaaDOR” chants. We waved our Ecuadorian flags and cheered on Edison as he defeated the Brazilian in two rounds.

In other happenings:

Medical students and professors from Nova Medical School in Ft. Lauderdale, FL came to El Chaco last week to practice doing exams and learn about the common diseases here. After living here and understanding the health situation fairly well, it seemed to me that these people arrived from outer space.

Gregg worked in triage and I worked translating. One lady came with a sprained ankle and the medical student told me to tell her to elevate it and ice it. Ice- something I haven’t seen since I have been here.

It was great the medical students got to practice exams and see all sorts of stuff that they’d never seen in the States, but as fair as really helping the patients they did little good. In the States, people go to the doctor with a serious problem and the doctor orders all sorts of lab work and other tests. During the medical brigade, if the students suspected a real problem, we would recommend they go get tests done, but the problem is few have the money to get them done. So basically, we gave out a lot of Tylenol and told a lot of people to go to the hospital or to specialists in Quito, which few will do.

Perks of the brigade: I wore scrubs for the first time and realized I now speak pretty good Spanish!

Tourism Outing:

Gregg and I went with our friend Jose to check out a really cool cave about an hour from Chaco. Surrounding the cave there is a lot of virgin forest, but each year more is cut down for dairy farming.

To enter the cave, we had to walk waist deep in freezing cold water, but the views were incredible. In the cave live tayos, which are endangered birds. Unfortunately, when we were there, we saw other people capturing the babies to take and eventually eat. I guess they are supposed to be delicious. I prefer to eat chicken… and turkey.

Columbia Concerns

2008-03-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

So I realize this is old news, but we never wrote about it on the blog. The whole Columbia/Ecuador/FARC thing was and is a pretty big deal here. For those of you who live in a box and didn’t hear about it, here is the run down of what happened:

The Columbian military crossed the Ecuadorian border (I think it was Feb. 29) and bombed a FARC camp, killing 20 some guerrillas. Obviously, Columbia broke all sorts of treaties with this bombing, so Ecuador was pretty ticked off. Being that the United States heavily supports Columbia through all of this and the “War on Drugs,” this put us in an interesting position.

So just how close are we to the Columbian border? From my precise measurements of my index finger on our map, we are about 115 km. The province Sucumbios, where the bombing took place, is just north of us and has been/is off limits to Peace Corps Volunteers. Where we are, really is completely safe- drug, crime activity are nonexistent.

Here is what we saw, observed and heard living here Ecuador:

- We were at the house of some of our friends when they told us that 20 FARC guerrillas were killed on the border by Columbia. Being the naive American that I am, I automatically said, “That’s good, right?” I didn’t realize at the time just how differently the Ecuadorians felt about the bombing.

- The Ecuadorian media covered this whole affair for a week with the title, “Crisis on the Border”

- I will confess that I really know very little about the FARC, but here is what I gathered from all of this. Many people in Columbia belong to the FARC because it allows them to survive. The majority aren’t “bad” people; they get trapped/sucked into the FARC as means to earn a living.

- Three women in the FARC camp survived and were treated in Quito hospitals. We watched a reporter interviewing one of them in the hospital and the media treated her like she was a poor, innocent victim in a terrible massacre.

- Many Ecuadorians were furious about the Columbian military invasion of Ecuador. The president, Rafael Correa, cut diplomatic ties with Columbia and traveled around Latin American for a week to gather support. In news, we heard many times that the U.S. was the only country supporting Columbia.

- It was interesting being American and seeing all of this through the lens of the Ecuadorian media. I would love to have compared the news broadcasts in the States with the ones here.

- We had several discussions with friend about this whole affair. In general, they could not understand how the U.S. could possibly support a bombing like this. I tried to explain the whole “War on Drugs” thing, but didn’t try to push it too far.

- Thankfully, Ecuador and Columbia have more or less made amends and things have calmed down. I am glad for many reasons- I really am a pacifist- and glad to get the spotlight off us and U.S. policy.

Stay tuned for the latest on Semana Santa (Holy Week) and other exciting happenings here in Ecualand.

2008-03-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

Happy Women’s Day

2008-03-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

To those of you who may not know, March 8 was International Women’s Day. I personally had never heard of International Women’s Day, but here it is a pretty big deal. Everybody says “Felíz Día de la Mujer” to all of their friends and co-workers and all the students talk about it in their classes. It is very similar to how we celebrate Mother’s Day in the U.S.

The Patronato hosted a conference with a medical doctor and lawyer for Women’s Day. The medical doctor mainly discussed topics about women’s health. The lawyer gave a speech to empower women. He talked about the accomplishments of women and the potential that women have.

The program was scheduled to start at 3:00. People had arrived at 3:00, but very few. Since there were not many people and the presenters did not show up until 3:30, the people running the program decided not to start until later. At 4:00, they decided that there was sufficient number of people there to start the conference. The most interesting part of this is that nobody gets mad. They start a conference one hour late and it is still considered normal.

After the conference, the Patronato hosted a dance. It was free for women and $2 for men. They had a live band, and local dance groups came to perform traditional dances. There was a pretty good turnout.

There were several discrepancies that Maggie and I noticed on Women’s Day. First, all of the presenters at the conference were men. Second, the band at the dance consisted of 8 men in suits playing instruments and 4 women wearing bikinis that danced and sang.

March 2 was my birthday and we had a little celebration here. Our friend Rosa told us that she could cook a traditional plate for us. Rosa cooked mushroom ceviche (which is a soup with lots of citrus and cilantro), molito (a big corn), and cow hoof. With the cow hooves, you basically boil them in a pressure cooker for 2 hours until they are reasonably soft. The part that you eat is the fat that is there to protect the tendons. It was a very interesting birthday platter. Maggie cooked a cheese cake for desert

Volunteer shares her Peace Corps experience

2008-03-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here is an article that was run in the Smithville Hearld:

Next week is the 47th anniversary of the Peace Corps, and it’s also Peace Corps week. This holiday and celebration may seem to be one for far-distant lands, but for one former Smithville student, it hits close to home.

According to the Peace Corps’ Web site, the week was created “to support returned Peace Corps volunteers in furthering the Peace Corps’ third goal of promoting a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”

Maggie Nurrenbern, a Smithville High School graduate, is one of those volunteers.

It all started her senior year at Truman State University, back when she was Maggie Wolcott. She went on a study-abroad trip to Costa Rica for a summer, and when she came back, she said her passion for other cultures really took off.

That year she met her soon-to-be husband, Gregg Nurrenbern, and they started talking about joining the Peace Corps.

Maggie remembers the moment she knew she was going to join. She was staring at a Peace Corps advertisement that read, “Life is calling. How far will you go?”

“I said, ‘Whoa, that’s something to think about,’” she said. “I thought that getting married and getting a job and settling down would be boring.”

Well maybe not getting married. Maggie and Gregg applied to the Peace Corps in May of 2006, and they got married five months later on Oct. 7, 2006.

Maggie said she was running home every day, waiting for a letter to come from the Peace Corps to let them know where they were headed. Then it finally came.

“We ripped it open, and I remember staring at the letter, and it said we’re going to Ecuador,” she said. “I said, ‘Where the heck is Ecuador?’ I had to pull out a map and, duh, it’s on the equator. It’s where I was going to spend the next two years of my life, and I couldn’t even find it on a map.”

In June 2007, Gregg and Maggie headed overseas for three months of training to be community health volunteers in Ecuador. During their training, they brushed up on their Spanish and learned about the hospitals there and the diseases they would have to deal with, like malaria.

On Sept. 1, they arrived in El Choco, their new home until Aug. 31, 2009. The couple’s monthly pay is $250 each, and they get $90 for rent, which goes a long way in Ecuador.

Although Gregg is a nurse, Maggie had never had any medical training before, and she said she was a little hesitant at first.

“I wasn’t too excited about the health part, but now that I’m here, it’s really simple stuff,” she said. “Wash your hands and the foods you should eat.”

Maggie teaches 10, 45-minute health classes every week at the local elementary school and high school. She has about 500 kids to deal with, and she said she was just trying to make their schools more exciting.

“Classes are overcrowded there,” she said. “They literally just copy things, and there’s no thinking for yourself, no thinking outside the box. I’m coming in with different ideas, that school is supposed to be fun, but here it’s boring, and I’m trying to help teachers get a little more interactive. Learning isn’t supposed to be boring.”

Maggie also helps out at an after-school program with some of the poorer children in the community. They’re the kind of kids you see in pictures in National Geographic, she said.

“We do homework, and we play,” she says. “I remember one day they were playing with a deflated soccer ball. In America, kids would say you can’t play with that, but they loved it. One of the big ideas of Peace Corps is just hanging out with the community. Playing with kids on the street, that’s my job.”

Outside of the schools, Maggie also helps out at the health clinic, doing simple things like weighing kids and taking their height.

Although she loves what she does, Maggie said this wasn’t the life for everyone.

“You have to be someone who’s all about volunteering and giving of yourself,” she said. “A lot of the time, it’s give, give, give, and you may not see the results. It’s a big risk, too. You have to leave your family, and you can’t be worried about money.”

But, all things considered, Maggie said, to her, it’s worth it.

“It’s a really awesome experience,” she said. “You really learn about the culture and become part of the community.”

Missing Hembra

2008-03-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

Last week we had our Reconnect conference in Quito. It was the first time we had seen many of our friends from our group in 6 months. We were able to invite a counterpart to the conference and we invited our friend Rosa. The conference was focused on designing sustainable programs. Overall, a swell time had by all.

We were lucky to have CNN in our hotel rooms and were super excited to watch our first Barack-Hillary debate the evening of Feb. 21. Us and nearly 20 volunteers crowded into a hotel room and cheered on Obama. I have been rooting for him ever since reading “Audacity of Hope” a year ago. I guess everyone in the States is getting burnt out on the election coverage, but here we search channels and newspapers looking for it.

The conference ended on Friday and Saturday we headed to Cayambe, where we did our training. Our host brothers were extremely excited to see us and we spent the afternoon playing cards, just like old times.

Many cows from the Volcano Tunguragua area had recently been evacuated to Cayambe. Lots of the cows are dying because there is no grass left and they had been eating only volcanic ash. Our host parents were busy most of the day giving medicine to the cows and trying to get them to eat. When we enter the gate to the family’s house, there was one of the cows right there at the door on the verge of dying. It is hard to imagine the impact of these losses on the poor indigenous farmers.

After living in El Chaco, in the Amazonia, for 6 months, it was interesting going back and seeing just how vastly different the High Lands are. The landscape is very mountainous, the people mainly dress in indigenous clothing and everything seems slower paced.

Now, first the happy news and I’ll end with the sad news (I already put it in the title). Happy Birthday Gregg! Gregg hits the big 25 tomorrow. Rosa offered to cook cow feet soup for his birthday and I will be cooking a cake in our Dutch oven.

Now the sad- It is with a heavy heart that we report the disappearance, possible death of Hembra (our female turkey). We arrived home one Sunday evening and Macho (our male turkey) was going crazy looking for her. We searched everywhere and she was no where to be found. It turns out that turkeys are frequently stolen in the area, because they are so valuable ($10 for babies, $40 for full grown). Many of our neighbors have told us she was most likely robbed, because there was no proof of a dog eating her. Gregg is now searching for a new Hembra.

Sorry about all the comments in parenthesis (I just can’t help myself).

2008-02-22T10:45:00.000-08:00

Carnaval

2008-02-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Carnaval

Last week was the famous Carnaval in El Chaco and throughout Latin America. Carnaval is a holiday mainly for kids. It really started last Saturday (2/3) and went until Tuesday night. Kids were on top of buildings and coming out from all corners to throw water balloons and buckets of water at people. Later in the week, they began to throw foam, flour, talcum powder, eggs, and oil.

It really is a lot of fun, until it starts to get cold. The taxis here are small pickup trucks with tarp roofs for the rain. The kids love to wait for these trucks to pass and then they begin to throw water balloons at the people trapped in the back.

We did go to one small program that they had for Carnaval close to Chaco. A friend of ours was the emcee and he said that they were going to have a wet t-shirt contest. He began to chant Maggie, Maggie and the whole crowd joined in. That’s when we decided it was about time to go.

The turkeys are doing well. We are now able to leave them in the yard and they just roam around. We decided not to name them, because that would be even weirder at Thanksgiving.

I went on my first fishing trip last weekend. I left at 4 a.m. with some of the people that we work with at the Patronato. We were crossing a small stream to get to the river and a guy that lives nearby said to go ahead because it was shallow. Halfway through the stream we got stuck. We all piled out of the truck; afraid it could be swept off by the rising stream. We eventually were joined by another group that attempted to cross. After waiting in the rain with a t- shirt and jeans for 4 hours, the milk truck passed and towed us out.

Fortunately, they decided that we weren’t going to go fishing anymore; unfortunately we had a flat tire, so it took another half hour to fix the tire. After all this, instead of returning to El Chaco, they decided to have coffee and empanadas at a house of someone they knew. After the coffee ran out, they started with the other cure for the cold here, alcohol, which wasn’t so hard to refuse that morning. Finally, at 11:00 o’clock I got back to the house.

Interesting Conversations

I am now helping out with a small wresting program that they have here in El Chaco. Here I have had various interesting conversations with the head coach.

The head coach asked me if Peace Corps is an information agency. I did not understand, so I continued to ask him what he meant. He asked me if it was like the Jehovah Witnesses who are here to collect information for the U.S. Government. He described it as if you are going to put a bomb in a country- you do not write bomb on it, but you would write chair.

Later, he asked me to look up calisthenics. He said that he could not find anything on the Internet, but I could find information, if I use my passwords on the Internet.

Welcomed Gifts?

2008-02-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

Since we have moved into our house, we have been saving our organic scraps to give to one of our friend’s pig. The pig was finally butchered on Saturday and we were thanked by given some peaces of pig´s skin. Gregg and I were walking by their house and the mom yelled at us to come in. She gave us a good size chunk of skin (luckily the hair had been shaved) and some salt. Gregg and I went back and forth on who should take the first bite. I could only take a nibble without vomiting (very chewy with a slight bacon flavor). I guess the mom took that we didn’t like it raw and put it in a bag for us to take home and cook.

Another interesting food gift we received lately was from our landlord’s cow. After the cow gives birth, the milk is very dense and full of vitamins and minerals. We got some of these chunky milk three days after the birth and I would say it definitely had an interesting, motherly flavor to it. The colostrum goes for $3.00 a liter were the regular milk goes for .35 cents. The landlords were very generous in giving us three liters and thankfully Gregg drank the majority.

Carnaval is officially Tuesday here, but kids have already been playing it here for a week. Carnaval is Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, etc. and everyone here is on vacation Monday and Tuesday. People return to school and work on Ash Wednesday (slightly ironic). Here and throughout Ecuador, Carnaval is celebrated by throwing water, eggs, flour and anything else you want to throw at people. We have managed to dodge the water balloons thrown at us thus far, but Monday and Tuesday we will also be playing.

The biggest news at the Casa de los Nurrenberns is that the baby turkeys are here. Gregg is ridiculously excited and I will let him write about them in another entry. I am excited we won’t have to worry about where to get turkey when it comes to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

On the work front, things have been going pretty slow. It seems here classes get out a lot more for assemblies, programs, teachers’ meetings, etc. Out of the ten health classes I was scheduled to teach last week, I only actually taught five. Of course, we are hardly ever told ahead of time and show up and find no classes!

The Little Rascals

I have started to work again with the after school program for poor kids. Gregg and I did do tutoring/play with these kids almost everyday for the first two months we were here. We really got frustrated, because the teachers were taking advantage of us and would leave us with sixty little rascals fighting and throwing rocks at our heads. Now that we finished our English classes, I have the afternoons free and enjoy having something to do.

The kids in the program are the poorest kids in town and many are way behind in school. I try to help the teachers with games and alternative learning activities for the kids. I was helping the first and second grade class teacher on Friday and taught the kids the memory game (where all the cards are flipped over and they have to make matches). They absolutely loved it and we got to practice numbers at the same time!

These kids are some of the dirtiest, smelliest kids I have ever seen or smelt. They love running up and giving me hugs and hanging all over me! The other day I had put on some Victoria’s Secret lotion on my hands and arms before I went to the school. When the kids ran up to give me a hug, the smelt the lotions and acted like they had never smelt anything so good in their lives. They took their fingers and were wiping of the scent from my skin and smelling it. One of those “Wow” moments.

Cable in the Casa

2008-01-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, we now have cable in our house. Gregg didn’t get his dream house without electricity or running water and now he has to watch cable. The doctor we work with offered to let us borrow an extra TV of his months ago. We said no gracias at first, but after thinking about it (for 4 months), we realized how great it would be for our Spanish. We are now are paying $8 a month for our 20 channels and get to fall asleep watching The National Geographic Channel.

Working in the schools has been going well. It is keeping us busy and the kids seem to really enjoy the classes. It now seems that every kid in Chaco knows our name. We work with about 500 kids in total and it has been slightly more difficult learning all of their names.

After living in Ecuador for seven months, we have really gotten use to the routine here. Here are some changes we have become accustomed to:

1. Not putting toilet paper in the toilet- only in the trash can

2. Only washing hands, dishes, etc. in cold water

3. Boiling a big pot of water every morning for our drinking water

4. Only using our gas stove top to cook

5. Hauling the milk pail to the dairy once a week to get milk. Good WHOLE milk for .35 cents a liter. After boiling the milk (no pasteurization here), I love eating the cream off the top.

6. Not driving. We maybe ride in a car every two weeks.

7. Cooking everything from scratch. No cans of Ragu- we only need 4 pounds of tomatoes, green peppers and onion to make a super sauce

8. Never drinking water from the faucet. Try brushing your teeth without using water from the faucet.

9. Never walking barefoot in the house. Rough wooden floors will not be missed when I return to carpeted floors.

10. Always sticking out.

Volcano Concerns

2008-01-15T11:13:00.000-08:00

Luckily, we are fairly far away from the Volcano Tungurahua that is on the verge of exploding. If there is a major explosion, we will probably have ash fall here, but we are ready with our masks. Unfortunately, we had a big workshop scheduled for our group next week that had to be canceled. I guess the town Riobamba, where the workshop was supposed to be held, was a little too close to the volcano for Peace Corps´ comfort.

Week one in the schools

2008-01-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday I had my first class in the grade schools. Since then Maggie and I have had about 8 classes each and have learned many lessons ourselves. For the weekend we went with 3 people from El Chaco and Jeff, the other volunteer, to a rafting competition in Misahaulli, about 3 hours from El Chaco.

When Maggie and I were planning for our classes we tried to emphasize more than anything that the regular teachers need to be in the room with us. We wanted the teachers in the classroom to help us if the students are not paying attention, to help if the students don’t understand something, and to show the teachers here different ways to teach students. Out of my 8 classes, there was a teacher with me the full 45 minutes one time. Immediately when we started class they would say something like, “Well I’ve got to go make plans. Class ends at 8:15. See you later.”

Before teaching in one school one teacher decided to present us to the students. We have known this lady since we arrived and she has been a very interesting friend. First, she said about everything there was to say about us, but afterwards she asked Maggie to say something. Maggie said a brief statement and then she asked me to say something, I said thanks and that I didn’t have anything else to say. The teacher went on to tell the entire school and faculty that I still don’t speak Spanish very well so bear with me. Next she said that we were going to help improve this school to make it as good as a school in the U.S.A.

Fortunately, the classes all went well. I think a big part is that fact that we speak Spanish funny and look different, so the kids are interested in what we have to say. I don’t know how long that will keep their attention.

In my first week I made some observations of things that you wouldn’t normally see in a classroom in the USA.

• Students bringing machetes to class
• The standard pencil sharpener is a carpenter knife
• Calendars of scantily dressed women are on classroom walls

For the weekend we went to a river festival in Misahualli, which is just outside of Tena, the capital of Napo. We got there at 9:00 a.m. because the rafting competition was scheduled to start at 9:30. We came down with one of the guides from El Chaco, who was going to help out in the competition with one of his boats. Since the people running the competition and the participants didn’t arrive until about 10:30, the competition started at 12:30. We decided to try and put our own team together to see how we could do in the competition.

The competition was on the River Napo, one of the major rivers that later dumps into the Amazon in Peru. This river was much wider and flatter then we are used to in El Chaco. We had about 20 minutes of rowing hard and no fun rapids in between. Our team ended up finishing fourth, just a little short of the $50 prize for the third place finisher.

In our free time we went to the park of Misahualli which is famous for its monkeys. There were about 10 monkeys that live in the park. They are notorious for stealing everything from earrings to candy to cell phones. We would be sitting in a restaurant and a monkey would walk in and people would give them the chicken bones or other snacks.

The next day the indigenous people from the area made big rafts using tree trunks and vines (how they traditionally made rafts). They also had a race with other traditional boats that are basically carved out of one big log. Jeff and I went down the river in kayaks to practice in the calm waters. It was really interesting to see everyone on the river. There were about 400 people going down the river all at the same time in two types of traditional boats, tubes, kayaks, white water rafting boats, and motorized canoes.

Of course, we forgot our camera, so no pictures of this scenic weekend.

2008-01-04T11:29:00.001-08:00

Burning the Old Year

2008-01-04T11:02:00.001-08:00

New Year´s is huge here, but even bigger is the Old Year celebration. Literally everyone we have met in Chaco was at the festival from about 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning (Gregg and I gave it up at 2:30). The main street was shut down through town and it was turned into a huge dance and fire pit.

The Año Viejo is celebrated all day on Dec. 31. People make life-size mannequins of themselves, family, friends, famous people and politicians. Next to the mannequin they write the will. The wills are full of jokes and usually make fun of family and friends. People stuff the viejos with things that represent the bad experiences they had in the past year. At midnight, everyone burns the viejos and along with them the old year and their bad experiences.

A group of friends made a Viejo of Dan. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer here from 2005-2007 and returned for a few months to do rafting. In the will that some of his friends wrote they gave away his real stuff and stuff he doesn’t have. About us it said, “To my kids Gregorio y Magy, I am building a school for you to teach English, so you don´t get in the way of the Patronato.”

While the viejos were all burning in the streets, everyone walked around hugging and kissing anything not burning and wishing happy New Year.

Gringo Godparents

2008-01-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

Gregg and I are now padrinos (godparents). A single mom named Teresa asked us to be the godparents to her 4 year-old-son Bryan. The interesting thing is that we hardly knew Teresa, except she came to our English class a few times. So why did she want us to be the godparents? We still are asking ourselves that question, but here are some possible answers.

Here there are a very few couples that are married by the Catholic Church. In Ecuador, you first have to have the civil marriage and then the ceremony in the church. Few people have money for a big wedding in the church, so almost nobody has the church wedding. To be godparents you are supposed to be married by the church and we seem to be one of the few Catholic couples around.

A couple weeks ago, Gregg and I were in Mass and the priest asked us to come to the front. He introduced us and talked about our work in the Peace Corps (except he said the equivalent of Peace Force). He also talked about what great Catholics were- I suppose because we actually go to Mass. I guess we seemed like the perfect Godparents.

One day, we went over to her house and explained that we were unsure about being godparents for the fact that we are going to be returning to the States in two years. Of course, we were also thinking that Teresa asked us because we are the “rich Americans.” It seemed like she was reading our minds, because she said that she doesn’t want any gifts, she just wants her child to be baptized. Also, she more or less explained she didn’t have anyone else to be the godparents. Hard to say no. Thankfully, we didn’t have to promise to take the kid back the States with us or anything.

Bryan along with 9 other kids were baptized last Saturday. The kids ranged in ages from one-year to eight-years-old. I’m really not sure why they wait so long to baptize their kids, but it might again have to do with money. After the Baptism, the family always throws a big party with all the family, friends and neighbors, which has to be pretty expensive.

The fiesta afterwards was fun. We ate a ridiculous amount and danced for hours with the family and friends. In the past week we have spent a lot of time with Teresa, her two sons (she also has an eight-year-old) and her parents. Being godparents is a great way to get to know the people!

Christmas with Cuy

2008-01-02T08:48:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve we were invited to the Ashqui’s house for dinner. We had a huge dinner of cuy (guinea pig), chicken, trout, rice and avocado. The Ashquis are one of our favorite families here in El Chaco. These are our landlords and the sons are the rafting guides. The family is pretty atypical for Ecuador. The parents, Maria and Segundo, have six kids: Luis, 27, Eddison, 25, Eduardo 21, Rocio, 20, Gustavo 18 and Darwin 12. All the kids still live at home, but what is different is that none of them have kids or are married. Almost everyone here has kids by the age of 20. The family is always together, and the parents actually appear really in love and don’t cheat on each other.

After dinner Gregg and I went to Mass. The church is decorated in such a way that it would win any tacky Christmas decoration contest in the States. The Naivety Scene is complete with Christmas lights wrapped all the way around Mary and Joseph. During the whole Mass we listened to the lights play Jingle Bells and Silent Night.

Christmas day was full of a USA vs. Ecuador all-sports competition. The USA team consisted of Dan, a return PCV who know spends a few months a year doing rafting in Chaco, Jeff, Gregg and I. The Ecuador team consisted of the four youngest Ashqui brothers. Ecuador killed USA in soccer tennis and EcuaVolleyball. They barely won in indoor soccer, but we killed them in basketball. It helps being a foot taller.

Observations:

- As we walked through Chaco on Christmas Day it really seemed like any other day. The streets aren’t decorated and very few houses have lights. People walked around in their work clothes and rubber boats and with their buckets (everyone seems to have a bucket in their hand in the morning- food for the pig, milk, water, etc.).

- It was interesting seeing Christmas without money. People don’t exchange gifts. Extended families don’t meet together. I guess it is because nobody has big enough houses for the whole family to come over and food is expensive.

Also, check out www.mikemazzo.com. On the homepage, click on his name and then Ecuador 2007. Mike was the photographer with the medical brigade that came to Chaco back in October. There are tons of awesome photos from around El Chaco and some of us (even awesomer).

Our Christmas Card

2007-12-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

Our first Christmas in Ecuador will be spent here in El Chaco. We are looking forward to learning more about the traditions here over the holidays and spending them with our new friends (hopefully someone will invite us over).

We want to give a shout out to you family and friends for sending us and gifts and cards and to Mary and Jim for hauling them all here for us. Bigger thanks to all of you that keep us in your prayers as we live out this dream in the Peace Corps.

Feliz Navidad, feliz Navidad, feliz Navidad, prospero año y felicidad. We want to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of our hearts- straight from our favorite and only Christmas song here.

Love, Gregg and Maggie

2007-12-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

2007-12-18T06:43:00.001-08:00

Two Week Vacation

2007-12-18T06:38:00.000-08:00

Our vacation with Jim and Mary (Gregg’s parents) was great. The best part (besides enjoying their company) was not having to live on the Peace Corps budget for two weeks.
Here is the run down of what we did:

-They arrived Nov. 30 in Quito and the next day we headed to Otavalo, a city famous for its artisan market. Gregg and I have become quite the bargainers and helped Jim and Mary with their purchases (including a hammock for us- an essential in Peace Corps).

-On Sunday, we did a tour of Old Town Quito lead by us. We went to Mass at the Basilica and checked out lots of other big fancy churches. More pictures to come later.

-On Monday, we arrived in Chaco and Gregg and I had our last English class for the youth. The kids were a little nervous to practice their English with the old Gringos, but loved getting pictures with them.

-Our week in and around El Chaco was spent mainly being tourists. We went to some beautiful hot springs two hours from here. We left the hot springs just as a pleasant storm of heavy rain and hail hit. We cooled down real quick as we hiked to the bus stop. We also visited two waterfalls, including the tallest one in Ecuador. We got a good taste of Chaco rafting and miraculously nobody fell out of the boat.

- We accompanied our landlord Maria to her family farm one morning to “help” with milking the cows. Their farm is located on the opposite side of the river from the road, so she crosses every morning on a zip line type thing. She fortunately crossed back over the river with a basket to carry us. Mary and Jim got a good idea of how farm life here is about a century behind the US.

- We hosted two dinner parties at our house. The first was an “all-English” dinner with three of our intermediate students. Our most dedicated student, Richard, the vet, brought a roster. We butchered it and made some delicious chicken enchiladas out of it.

- The next dinner party was with our counterparts at the medical center. They brought trout and we wrapped them in banana-type leaves and cooked them on a fire. We had to do a little more translating with this dinner. It was a very typical meal of trout, yucca, plantains and salad.

- We then took a night bus that passes through El Chaco to Esmeraldas. It was a pleasant 10-hour drive to the coast and we arrived at 9 a.m. the next morning. We then headed to Súa, were Kat and Damon (another couple from our group) live. Súa is a beach town of 3,000 people that has lots of seafood restaurants. We spent the next few days being lazy and eating lots of seafood. By the way, I now eat fish and shrimp and Gregg now drinks coffee. How we have changed in such a short time.

2007-11-27T08:54:00.001-08:00

La Virgen de Quinche

2007-11-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

This weekend we celebrated the Virgen of Quinche here in El Chaco. It was a very interesting festival and definitely kept us busy the whole weekend. On Thursday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with 6 other volunteers that live in our provincia.

The big news for the weekend was the Virgen of Quinche. It was a lot more popular than Thanksgiving here in Ecuador. The tradition stems from a sighting of Mary in a town not far from here named Quinche. At the time of the appearance of Mary, the town was having many problems with a large bear population. Mary told the townspeople if they evangelicized in the area they would not have the bear problem. Legend has it that the townspeople began to preach and the bears left.

Here is a play by play of what happened. For 9 days before the fiesta there was a novena where they prayed the Rosary and had a Mass every night. After the mass they gave away free bread and tea. There was also a statue of Mary with Jesus. The statue was in a different person’s house every night during the novena.

On Saturday at 7 a.m. trucks took people about 8 km outside of El Chaco. From this point the people (including myself) carried the statue of Mary and Jesus on this stand (that is really heavy) to El Chaco. The walk was about 5 hours and there were about 500 people. Everyone did stop for lunch provided by the church, and two other short breaks. The whole time we were led by a band of brass instruments. The walk consisted of a little of everything: praying, dancing, drinking, fireworks, music and socializing.

Saturday night there was a big Mass and after the Mass everyone went to the central park which is across the street from the church. Here they had dancing and fireworks. The fireworks were a little crazy, especially the vaca loca or crazy cow. This vaca loca is a person who runs around with a big box on his head. The box has flares going all the time and about every 10 seconds a big bottle rocket goes off. The vaca loca runs around in and out of crowds and the game for the kids is to run around him. They also had these two big structures that they called castles. The castles were about three stories and covered with fire works. The most interesting fireworks were these hot air balloons that had a little flame to help them keep them rising.

Sunday we went to that longest mass of our life. I believe in total it was about 3.5 hours. However, it did include seeing a dove let loose in the church, a ham sandwich, a tea and a mariachi band named Tequila Show.

Finally, on Sunday night was the last event, the torros. In this event there are a bunch of guys who all have capes and try to dodge the bulls until the bull is tired and then they get another bull. It was pretty entertaining. I think it is Ecuador’s equivalent of NASCAR. All the people watch just see the people get hit by the bulls.

Thanksgiving was also a lot of fun. Six other volunteers from our province, Napo, came to visit. Everyone brought a dish, including cheesecake, carrot cake, mashed yuca (like mashed potatoes, but with yuca), and a 25 pound turkey. The whole weekend was a lot of fun, and we’re ready to do it all again, minus the 3.5 hour long mass.

Images of Poverty

2007-11-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

This weekend I traveled with a doctor to a nearby town to do more community surveys. The world that these people live in is so vastly different, even from the world Gregg and I even live in now. These people live in houses that I would have called wooden shacks five months ago.

A couple of images will be with me for awhile. One is of a two year-old-boy walking around barefoot with nothing on but a sweater, while playing with a butcher knife. His mother was 25 with four kids and she seemed exhausted.

In another interview, we talked to a young mother outside of her house. She told us she lived in the house of her mother-in-law with 9 other family members. During the interview a young women, who was breastfeeding, kept on peeking though the doorway. I could tell she had some sort of disability. I learned that she is mentally retarded and was raped 10 months ago. She now has a one-month-old son.

Other happenings:

We have had two tremors here in the past month and I have been sleeping during both of them. One was during the middle of the day on Sunday and I was talking a nap. I woke up and thought Gregg was shaking the bed to wake me up. The other one happened at 11 p.m. Of course Gregg and I were both already in a deep sleep. We slept through this minute long tremor like babies.

Gregg´s basketball team is on a winning streak: 2-0. The first game I missed because we had a party with our counterpart agency. This time I was able to make it. I got there during the second period after I finished teaching an English class. As I walked in to the stands, I couldn’t help but crack up. It was the first time in my life to see Gregg play basketball. He didn’t make a basket during the game (despite numerous attempts), but I think he had just about every rebound. I am pretty sure he spent as much time on the floor fighting for the ball as he did on his feet.

It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is tomorrow. For some reason the neighbors haven’t put out their hay stacks and pilgrims yet. Everybody has seemed to have forgotten all about Thanksgiving this year and are gearing up for the big festivals of the Virgin of Quicha, which will take place next weekend.

After teaching English classes tomorrow, Gregg and I are going to meet up with several other PCVs that are coming to Chaco to celebrate the holiday. Our friend Jeff, the other PCV that lives here in Chaco, is going to Quito today with hopes of buying a turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! After our short time here, I know I feel more thankful and blessed than ever before.

Life in the fastlane

2007-11-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

It was another very tranquil, but productive week here in Ecuador. We made our first appearance in the schools. We have started the community surveys. Last Thursday was our last English class with adults. My basketball team is now 2-0
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Maggie and I met the directors of three grade schools in Chaco. All three were very excited to meet with us and discuss teaching health in their schools. Maggie and I decided that we are going to wait until January to start with classes, because my parents are coming in 3 weeks and then we only have 2 weeks left in December, which I’m sure will be crazy. This will give us time to plan out our lessons and to observe some of the classes here in Ecuador.
At first Maggie and I thought the community survey would be kind of a joke, but now we feel it is a real asset. We are going house to house doing a general 4 page survey on the health situation of the families here in Chaco. It has been a great opportunity for us to go inside some of the houses and to really see how the majority of the people live. We have also heard some answers that we did not expect which I believe will help our work in the future.
There was a wide variety of interesting things we learned. Families saying they have no money (and not lying) but being drunk during the interview or having cable TV in the house. The majority of families´ diets contain no vegetables or fruits. We met people that only had a hole in the ground to go to the bathroom, or get all their water from the rain collected from their rusty roof.
On a lighter note, Thursday was our last day of English classes with the adults. It was a good last day. We made brownies for the class and the class pitched in to buy a whole chicken for everyone to share. By the end, the class had narrowed down to about 8 people, but all 8 were very serious about learning and all very nice. Monday we start classes with teenagers 12-18.
This Sunday the First Aid class with the firefighters was postponed. I was walking to the class as the firefighters were leaving. There was a heavy rain here a week ago that caused a landslide and swept a truck with 5 passengers into the river. There was only one survivor. Two of the bodies were found right away, but the body of a 17-year-old girl was found a week later by the rafting guides doing a search. The other body is still missing. The firefighters went to help pull the body out. .
I thought I would write a paragraph on interesting things we have come across over the last couple weeks. Here you can not replace dollar bills at the banks, so if a bill is overly worn, stores no longer accept them and it is no longer worth anything. During the 10:00 am Mass they sing the Our Father to the exact same tune of Simon and Garfunkle’s, Sounds of Silence. I drank a medicinal juice for the first time today. It consisted of boiled aloe vera plant and honey, and it was actually pretty good.

Hanging Out, Loving Chaco

2007-11-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

It is hard to explain how much I love this new home of ours- El Chaco. Our downer days we were having in El Chaco are well past and although corny to say, I am really having the time of my life.

We are so fortunate to have such a cool ecotourism site that also has some huge needs. We are getting more into work each week. The first 3-6 months PC really stresses “hanging out” with the community to learn their needs and what they want from us before we start any major projects. We have this hanging out part mastered. We start our community surveys this week and are eager to really get a clearer picture of the lives of the poor in Chaco.

We spend the majority of our days at the health agency working on project plans, sorting through PC resources and teaching English. We start are program in the schools in January and then will probably be spending the majority time there teaching health. We have lots of ideas now for projects, but have to move at the pace here. I really want to get a women’s running group together and start working on domestic violence workshops. Gregg has hundreds of ideas- too many for me to keep up with.

- Our friend Kristen stayed with us last weekend. She felt she was staying at a luxurious resort. She is in a community in the same province, but is having a completely different experience. She lives in a river community that you can only access by an hour canoe ride. No running water in the town and electricity only when the generators are working. She bathes in the river, catches rain water to boil and drink and lives in sweltering heat.

- Gregg is on a basketball team here and had his first game last week. You don’t have to be a great player when you are 3 times the size of your opponents.

- The Day of the Dead is heavily celebrated in Latin American (no Halloween here). We were in the rafting competition and didn’t attend Mass, but it was held in the cemetery and had a huge attendance.

- Every family prepares the Colada Morada. It is a drink made up of black berries, pineapple, strawberries and purple flour. Families also make little bread people. Gregg made one of me at our landlord’s house and gave it a nice big nose. I loved eating it. We were invited to share the Colada Morada with two different houses.

- I was told in the past the Colada was made and carried to the cemetery and placed at the graves of the dead. I can’t figure out if the little bread people are supposed to represent the dead or the living.

- We, meaning mainly Gregg, are cooking like crazy. We have an awesome cookbook for PCVs in Ecuador. Our new oven is working like a charm- two tuna cans placed in a large pan on top of the stove. We put the casserole dish on top of the tuna cans (so it isn’t on the direct flame) and put the lid on tight and the food cooks surprisingly well.

Extreme Rafting Competition

2007-11-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

Last weekend the third annual novice rafting competition was held on the Quijos River in El Chaco (the same site as the 2005 World Rafting Championships). We had an unbelievable time! 15 Peace Corps volunteers came from across the country to compete. Gregg and I were able to get a team formed with our counterpart agency and took 9th place out of 36 teams. Not bad considering Gregg and I were the only ones who had ever done rafting!

- Name of our team: Tres Países Curando el Río (Three Countries Curing the River). All of us were from the health center and represented by Ecuadorians, a Columbian doctor and us.

- Teams were made up of 2 women, 4 men and an assigned guide.

- The first part of the competition was a sprint. Three boats went at a time. We started on the beach and the whole team had to sprint down the beach and hop into the boats. Intense to say the least. We then rowed like crazy for about a half mile. Our first sprint time was 1 minute 59 seconds. We came in 3rd out of the 36 teams.

- The top 18 teams had a second round of the sprint competition to narrow it down to 12 teams. We thought we had a great start until we realized we took off rowing before the doctor had time to get into the boat. Woops. He was able to swim to the boat as we turned around. Our time was 2:03, but we thankfully qualified coming in 12th at the end of the first day.

- The next day we competed in a 4.8 kilometer race. 6 boats started at a time in a canyon of flat water and we rowed like crazy bumping into each other until we reached the rapids. We had a good rain the night before and nearly the whole down river was through Class 4 rapids. The boats were neck and neck nearly the whole time.

- Gregg decided to go swimming twice during these nice gentle waves. The first time we hit a hole and he was left without a seat in the boat. The next time 4 of us went swimming when the boat high sided. Thankfully we were all back in and rowing within seconds.

- We never stopped paddling (only when the paddle couldn’t hit the water or when we were swimming). Our final time was 27 minutes. The winning team finished in 23 minutes. They managed to somehow all stay in their boat. A team of PC Volunteers finished 2nd and received $200.

- The tournament was organized by the municipal government’s tourism department. About a third of the teams were gringos and the rest were Ecuadorians.

Week 9

2007-10-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

It has now been 9 weeks here in El Chaco. We have had the English classes for 2 weeks and two weeks of first-aide classes with the firefighters. Right now we are trying to start a community survey to understand what some of the primary problems in the community are.

The English class has been interesting. I have very little experience with teaching. I am learning every class what I can and can’t do. We never know how many people will show up for class. Some days there are 8, other days there are 25. Everyone in El Chaco is always saying that they want to learn English, but there is not a lot of commitment when it comes to attending the classes. We do have one diehard student. He is a veterinarian and yesterday he told us that he told two people to come back to have surgery on their dogs tomorrow, because he had English class in one hour. In all the classes are fun and it is an opportunity for us to meet a lot of people in the community.

Another first is that Maggie and I went to the disco (dance club) for the first time. We felt a little like kids there. Everyone was on the dance floor dancing salsa, meringue and other Latin dances that they have danced since they were babies. Maggie and I were on the dance floor most of the night, but I don’t think we were doing the Latin American dances.

The community survey is one of our Peace Corps projects we are required to do and it is a great integration tool. We will go to 50 different households to ask them 5 pages of questions about their family’s health situation. The plan is for someone in our organization to go with us to make it a little bit more comfortable with the families and it make it more like a team project.

One nice change is there has been a lot less rain. The problem is that there is a lot more sun and it is real strong here.

The Best Spanish Goof Yet

2007-10-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

Gregg and I are currently working with the bomberos (fire fighters) teaching first aid and English.

Gregg had just finished teaching and demonstrating CPR to a class of 15 people and was taking questions. The fire chief asked Gregg if it is necessary to cut off clothing and especially the brassiere (bra) before doing CPR. As I was listening to the question, I was thinking, “I wonder if Gregg knows what a brassiere is.” Before I could say anything, Gregg said in a very matter-of-fact manner, “I don’t know. The women in the United States don’t wear them.”

The whole classed started cracking up and while I was doubled over in laughter I clarified, “Yes, we do!” I then explained to Gregg that he just told the class that the women in the United States don’t wear bras. Gregg thought the fire chief had asked him about corsets.

2007-10-20T11:41:00.000-07:00

Beauty Pageant in the Peace Corps

2007-10-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

For the first and hopefully the last time in my life, I was in a beauty pageant last week. I really had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to be a madrina for a soccer team. A madrina literally means godmother or patroness, but in this sense it means beauty pageant contestant.

Everything here in El Chaco (and in many parts of Latin America) is done at a grandiose level. At the start of every sport’s season and tournament, there in an inauguration event. Every team asks a woman to be their madrina. The role of the madrina is to march before the team at the inauguration and then after the presentation of the teams, the madrinas step forward and are judged. I know you will all be disappointed in me, but I lost. The other nine contestants were showing much more skin than I, so I don’t think I ever stood a chance!

Observations:

- One of our counterparts asked Gregg if I could be their madrina, without really ever asking me. I was standing right there during this conversation.

- Beauty contest like this are hugely popular here. They are constantly taken place for every semi-important event. Madrina contests are usually only for sports and the rest of the time contestants are called reinas (queens).

- Everybody kept stressing to me before this event that I really had to dress up nice and wear makeup. I spend almost everyday here in Chaco wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, tennis shoes and no makeup. I think they were afraid I was going to show up this way.

- Here in Chaco, we frequently have our water turned off, especially during or after heavy rains (I still haven’t quite figured out why. I have been told the water tanks get filled with debris and they have to be cleaned out). The first time when I actually had to “get ready” and shave my legs, I ran home to find no water. Luckily, the water tank we use to wash our clothes was full and I was able to take a bucket bath.

- Very awkward feeling when you have to mouth the words of Ecuador’s National Anthem in front of a stadium full of people, when you only know three words of the anthem (“Goria a ti.”)

- Being in this contest, I realized I only helped perpetuate machismo. The one advantage is that I was able to meet lots of community leaders.

- To many of you this whole idea of a beauty pageant probably seems pretty ridiculous, especially for the fact that they are taking place in third world countries. No matter how ridiculous they maybe, this is huge entertainment for these people, practically for free.

Turkey or NO Turkey

2007-10-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

Life seems to be getting a whole lot more comfortable. We love the new house (and love eating vegetables) and are making more and more friends. This weekend the owners installed a nice hot electric shower (we don’t have an attached roof over the bathroom so all the steam quickly escapes). Also, El Chaco is moving into more of the sunny season. There is always rain in the afternoons, being that we are in the rainforest, but the mornings have been filled with a very strong sun.

New Pet? Now that the pace of life has slowed down considerably, Gregg has become set on buying a turkey. Why a turkey? I really don’t have the answer- it definitely is not my idea. Many volunteers by dogs here and then have to pay $200-300 to take them back to the States. Gregg says with a turkey we can just eat it before we leave. Unfortunately, we found out today that one turkey won’t do it. We would have to buy a male and a female to keep them calm. Gregg already has the name picked out: Navidad 2008. We will see who wins this one.

Cool Event: The local government held a tourism festival at the waterfall that is 45 minutes from El Chaco. They had big buses to shuttle people out there. This waterfall is absolutely gorgeous, (photo on last week’s blog) but hardly anybody from El Chaco has visited it. It was pretty awesome watching people see it for the first time. Also, there was free whitewater rafting for people to try. Hardly any locals have done whitewater rafting. Many think it is absolutely crazy- only the wild gringos do it. We hung out there for the day and came back soaked by the afternoon rains.

Big Stubborn Gregg: Not wanting to rent a taxi, Gregg carried our first full tank of gas straight up the hill to our house- a good 10-15 minute walk from downtown. I honestly can hardly pick up the tank empty.

Lots of handshakes: In Ecuador, greetings are very important. If there is a group of 10 people talking, you walk around and shake everyone’s hand upon entering and leaving. If you enter a meeting late, you kindly interrupt the meeting to shake everyone’s hand. Even when you run into somebody on the street and talk with them for 10 seconds, you will exchange two handshakes. If your hands are dirty, you give your wrist to shake. Kissing the cheek (or really it is more like the air) is only done among closer friends, family and co-workers.

Future Visitors: Jim and Mary are coming the first 2 weeks of December. We are looking forward to doing some traveling around Ecuador and spending some time on the beach. My parents are visiting the middle of April. Hopefully we will have some furniture by then! All other visitors are welcomed anytime.

Working, Moving and Rafting

2007-10-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

This was probably our busiest week yet. We started the week helping a medical brigade that came through El Chaco for 4 days. On Friday, we finally got to move into our new house. On Saturday, we had to find time to go white water rafting for half a day. Also, we had to start organizing the new house and buying all the little things to go in it.

The medical brigade arrived to El Chaco last Sunday. They were all from Arkansas and Oklahoma and were with the Baptist Church. First, we helped them set up the hall all day and talked with them a little about what to expect for the week. They warned us it would be busy and they were dead on. In the 4 days, we saw over 1600 patients. There were 6 physicians, 2 dentists, and a station where the people could get reading glasses.

During the brigade, Maggie worked as a translator with a pediatrician. It is very challenging to translate English to Spanish normally, more challenging to translate medical terminology, but it is the most challenging to translate jokes of a pediatrician like, “So who is the ugliest in the family.” I worked as a nurse, taking blood pressure, asking principal complaints, doing other tests if necessary. The entire week was a great opportunity to meet a lot of the people in the community that we have said hi to many times, but have never started a conversation.

On Friday, a representative from PC came to El Chaco for the day. He came and approved the new house. We then had a meeting with our counterpart agency to clarify our roles here in El Chaco.

The new house is great. The only problem we’ve had so far is a dog that wandered into our front yard and died. We found it a couple hours before the PC rep came, so we got some gloves and threw it into the woods, so that no one would see it. The next day when the house was approved, we did give it a proper burial.

Our house has a lot of space and we don’t have many things. We really don’t have any cabinets, shelves, or places to store our stuff. There are furniture stores, but is difficult to find anything cheap and temporary. So right now we are basically using are suitcases as cabinets. It takes a lot to furnish a house and right now we don’t have a lot of money, so we are going to be slowly adding more things every month. The greatest thing about the house is the landlords. The family is incredibly friendly and always trying to help us out. Also, they own a rafting company, “Waterdog Tours.”

The first white water rafting trip in Ecuador was great. The river was mainly class 3-4. Maggie and I both fell out of the boat (on different rapids), but survived and loved it!

An Ecuadorian Funeral

2007-09-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday a bridge collapsed just outside of El Chaco killing 2 men. The men were engineers working on the bridge. The bridge was open for traffic to pass and a semi, whose load was too heavy and was driving to fast, crossed the bridge and the bridge collapsed crushing the engineers below. Miraculous, the driver of the semi survived.

Gregg and I were in Quito that day doing errands and found out about the accident on our way back, as our bus had to take a different route around El Chaco. One of the men that died was from El Chaco and was a cousin of one of the city council members. Since the Patronato, the health clinic, is run by the city government, the medical team was asked to do the autopsy. The day after the accident, Dr. Sely showed Gregg and I the photos from the autopsy. We had never seen anything so graphic in our life.

The visitation was held on Thursday and the funeral on Friday. It was explained to us at the Patronato that it was more or less an obligation for us to attend the funeral, since the man who died was related to a city council member. At the funeral there were well over 1000 people. After the funeral, everyone (all 1000 +) proceeded to the cemetery and watched as the family buried Jose.

Observations:

- Cell phones rang through the funeral service. We were standing next to the psychologist of the Patronato and he answered his cell phone 3 times during the Mass (including during the “Our Father.”)

- All organized entities of the community write an official “Act of Condolence” to the family. A list of those who wrote condolences were read at the funeral.

- Venders lined the street next to the church selling snacks.

- Visitations, funerals and burials are quite obviously not a private, personal affair. The whole community is expected to attend.

- The family mourns in a very public manner. Everyone is dressed in all black. They wept loudly through the procession and when the coffin was placed into the wall the whole family screamed and wept even louder. (I have heard this is common throughout Latin America). It was so difficult watching the pain of this family.

- Coffins are stacked into a giant brick wall and the opening is covered in cement as everyone watches.

- It is normal to have an ambulance on hand for the family members. Two family members were taken to the hospital as one collapsed and the other went into convulsions.

Downer But Getting Better Times

2007-09-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

I realized on the blog, we really have not written about all the frustrating stuff we have been going through. Being the optimistic person I am, I hate to write about all the “downer” stuff, but it is all part of sharing our experience.

It has been really hard getting started in our work here. Our counterpart agency has a tight leash on us and it has been difficult getting them to understand our role here. They want us to be in the office everyday and write giant reports for every project we want to do. We want to be spending time in the schools and working with the “poorest of the poor,” so right now we feel kind of trapped. We have a meeting with our counterparts and one of the Peace Corps directors next Friday, so hopefully things will get better there.

We have been living with a family for over a month and we honestly have never had a conversation with them. The first couple of weeks we tried to start conversations, but they really never seemed interested. They hardly are ever home, so at least we have a lot of privacy. Thankfully, Maria (the maid) has been more than kind to us and we are learning lots from her (about the harsh realities of poverty).

People from the community may read this blog, and Peace Corps told us not to write anything we don’t want everyone to know, so I won’t go into anymore details.

On the “upper” side, we really are staying fairly positive about everything. It usually is hard adjustment into the community and many of are friends are having similar experiences, or worse experiences. For example, our friend Alisha doesn`t have a bathroom and has to pee in a ziplock bag in the middle of the night. On the rough days, I always think, “We are at least together and learning lots of Spanish.”

Each week we are meeting lots people, and now it seems we stop more and more as we walk down the street talking with people. The kids we work with in the after school program love to talk to us in town. These conversations make the whole experience worthwhile.

The latest on what you may or may not want know:

- There certainly are no public exposure laws here. Men freely urinate in public. Most of the time the grown men at least face a wall, but the kids do the act fully exposed.

- Many men and especially boys are not at all concerned about zipping their flys.

- Gregg and I will hopefully being moving next weekend!

- One of our friend’s from our training community, Stacy, headed home on Thursday. She just wasn’t happy here and her mom recently had a heart attack. We got to say bye to her in Quito on Wednesday.

- 4 hours away in Quito is the nearest post office and bank. We will head there once month to do our errands and grab a bite to eat in a nice restaurant (meals costing between $3-5).

- On Wednesday, needing a break from work, we took the 3:45 a.m. bus to Quito and arrived at 8 a.m. Before we caught the bus back home at 5:45 p.m. we managed to go to the bank, post office, have 2 meetings at the PC office, eat at an Indian restaurant, go to the grocery store, go to the pharmacy and buy the cheapest contact lens solution for $13 and use the Internet for FREE at the PC office. Much to Gregg’s dismay we had to take 4 taxis to get all this done in Quito, costing more than the .25 cent trolley rides.

- People constantly ask Gregg and I about money. We try to dodge these conversations, but it is almost impossible. Everyone thinks we are so rich, and according to their standards we are extremely wealthy. Yesterday I talked with a teacher who makes $130 a month. We find ourselves lying even about our Peace Corps stipend, because it is so much higher than anything anybody makes here. I leave these conversations not knowing if I feel guilty, blessed or both.

2007-09-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Third Week

2007-09-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Third week of being in El Chaco and we’re still not doing much. We’ve been working in an after school program for the poorer kids in town. We wrote an “oficio” to teach English classes in the month of October. The rest of our time we watched season one of “24.”

Things are slow, but that is expected. For the first couple weeks, or months, we are forming what we will be doing here, and we are also trying to get to know the people in the community. Life moves at a little bit of a slower pace here in El Chaco. At times it is frustrating and at times it is refreshing.

The after school program where we work in the afternoons is sponsored by the NGO INNFA. In this program the kids are given a free lunch, have time to work on their homework, and then get lessons on their rights (life, liberty, …). The children are from very poor families and many have not had much structure in their life. Needless to say they are very rambonxious at times. Helping them with their homework is also very difficult because they are the children that often slip through the system. For example, it is a challenge to explain to a fourth grader how to divide 728 by 4, who still needs help with subtracting 0 from 2 (this was not an exception either).

Before the children leave they also get a coloda. Here a coloda is when they cook oatmeal and then drain the oatmeal. They then throw away (feed to the pigs) the oatmeal and add sugar, cinnamon, fruit and vitamins to the oatmeal flavored water. It actually is pretty good. Everyone thought it was pretty funny when we said that we actually eat the oatmeal.

I thought there was a lot of paperwork in the USA, but we couldn’t believe what we have to go through here. We were asked to teach English lessons, we would only need to write an “oficio” (official memo). This oficio to teach English for 1 month took us about 9 man hours to write. It was a very interesting (tedious, frustrating, unnecessary) cultural experience.

Scary moment this week: While working in the Patronato, Dr. Cely (the medical doctor) and I were talking to a man in the pharmacy for about 5 minutes. When he left, the doctor told me to be careful with that guy, because he has Tuberculosis.

Interesting Fact: A spoon is the only utensil you really need

Suggestion: Don’t watch “24” on pirated DVDs (because I think it takes longer then 24 hours)

If it wasn’t already evident by the superior use of the English language and larger words it was Gregg who wrote this blog.

Rain, Rain Go Away

2007-09-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

This blog is written by Me/Maggie. I think it is important for you readers to know, so you can decide who writes the best entries. You can place your vote on comments.

It is almost hard to believe how much rain can come out of the sky here. We arrived in El Chaco two weeks ago and it has rained almost all day everyday since then (much more than the ¼ of the time Gregg said last week). On the positive side, everything is bright green. We are at about the same the same elevation as Denver and are surrounded by mountains, so the temperatures are usually 60-75. The rainy season is supposed to becoming to an end in the next month (Gracias a Dios!).

Lists are much more interesting, so here is the latest:

Most Exciting Find: Our Peace Corps Dream House. It is still being built, but we are hoping to move-in in a couple weeks. All wood with a nice shiny metal roof. Complete with a tiled kitchen and bathroom, very fancy by PC standards. Unfortunately, Gregg is not going to have the dirt floor house of his dreams.

Kind Act of the Week: Completely selfish, but helping the family build the house, so we can move in sooner. I’m one heck of a sander and there is lots of sanding to do with an all wood house.

Best Spanish Goof of the Week: Definitely goes to Gregg for asking our future landlords, “Van a poner condones en las puertas- Are you going to put condoms on the doors? Instead of candandos, which are padlocks.

Cell phones: Everyone has them and nobody puts them on silence during meetings. It is completely acceptable while giving a presentation to answer the phone and talk on it conversationally to a friend for five minutes. Text messaging is also acceptable at all times.

Most political nation in the world: Of the mere 5 countries I have visited, without a doubt Ecuador wins. 8 presidents in ten years is a pretty good record (being that the President is supposed to hold a 4-year term). There are tons and tons of political parties and everybody seems to run for office. Voting here is mandatory or you get slapped with a big fine.

Names of politicians: Can be found painted/ written everywhere, on the side of houses, in school gymnasiums and on textbooks. I think it is the goal of public office holders to get their names in as many places as possible.

Biggest Ballot: September 30 is the election for the Constitutional Assembly to re-write the constitution. The ballot is 5 square feet with thousands of names.

Biggest Event in Chaco: Visit from the Vice-President. He was very generous with a donation of thousands of textbooks to the schools here. His generosity had nothing to do with the upcoming election. Security is much looser here. Gregg and I walked right into the auditorium without one question from security.

Worst Coffee: NesCafe. Only instant coffee seems to be drunk in Ecuador. Over the three months, I have adjusted to it. Side note: Gregg has turned over to the dark side and became a coffee drinker himself.

Best lunch breaks: We get an hour and a half for lunch everyday. This should be mandatory in all countries.

Work: We also work. Right now we are planning health charlas (chats/presentations) and are going to start teaching English classes Oct. 1 to people who work with tourists, English teachers and all other interested people.

Pictures: None this week, because all you would see is rain.

Job Confusion

2007-09-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

We’ve been at our site for one week and it was an interesting one. The pace has slowed down dramatically since training, but we still are finding things to do. When we arrived our counterpart had a different idea then we did of what we were going to do here, but I think we’ve got things clarified now.

The plan of our counterpart was that we were going to work at her organization (El Patronato) as full time employees. With Peace Corps, El Patronato is our link to the community and it is likely that we will work mainly with this organization, but we are planning to work with many organizations in the community. It was difficult to explain this, especially since it was in Spanish, but we think we have come to an understanding.

We also met our first local friends! The wife works at the Patronato and her husband works on a farm. We got to hang out with them some last weekend. The husband says he goes trout fishing a lot, so I think I made a good connection there.

El Chaco is very pretty and is surrounded by bright green landscape. The reason for this is that it rains about one quarter of the time. There is almost always a heavy cloud cover, but when the sun does shine it is incredibly strong.

So in our abundant free time we will practice Spanish and talk to the maid Maria in our house. She is at the house 7 days a week, about 12 hours a day and makes $185 a month. After work she goes to classes to learn how to read and then home to her 12 children. A tough and sad situation.

What we have learned:

1)Ecuador has only one Olympic medalist, Jefferson Perez, 2000 Olympic champion in speed walking (they are very proud of this)

2)It is more common to have a Mass with a dog present then without a dog

3)If you are late to a meeting, you should not sneak in quietly (you are not consider late until you arrive about an hour and a half after the meeting was supposed to start). You loudly say good morning or good afternoon to announce your presence and then shake everyone’s hand at the meeting.

4)The news is much more graphic here. The bodies of the dead are almost always shown with accident stories.

The Ambassador Liked the Bowtie

2007-09-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy couple of weeks- we had the big swearing-in ceremony and the big move to our permanent site, El Chaco. Lots of work was done in Quito, but also lots of fun was had. After a great week in Quito it has been hard getting into the work routine.
Last Friday, we swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers at the Ambassador’s house. It was a really nice ceremony on the lawn overlooking Quito. Another volunteer lent Gregg a bowtie and he was way too excited to wear it. Unfortunately, the Ambassador told Gregg she liked it, so I will probably be seeing more bowties at future formal events.
At the PC Office we had meetings with people from the Embassy and USAID. It was interesting hearing about the other US Government projects going on here in Ecuador and the Embassy’s position on Ecuadorian politics and the economy.
For the first time in Ecuador we got to be tourists. We ate at some great restaurants, went to a history museum, walked by the President’s house and saw some of the big cathedrals.
We ran the coolest race in Quito the night before we left. There were about 6,000 people that ran “La Ruta de las Iglesias” (The Route of the Churches). The 10K started at 7 p.m. in the heart of Quito and all the churches were lit up. The high elevation, the gigantic hills and the fact that Gregg and I hadn’t run for 2 mouth made the race tough, but it was beautiful. There were about 30 volunteers that ran the race, making it a very cool experience.
We arrived here in El Chaco Sunday afternoon. I am going to start working with an after school program for poor kids next week teaching health, English and leading activities. Gregg has been working with the health clinic this week and wants to get more into teaching too.

Humbling Experience

2007-09-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

Right now we are living with a host family in El Chaco until we find a house for ourselves. The family has a maid named Maria. Maria is a very friendly, polite, middle-aged, illiterate woman with 12 kids.
Two days after we arrived we had tons of dirty clothes, so I set off to start washing. Our first host mom was in New Zealand when we first started washing clothes by hand, so we taught ourselves and apparently I had been doing it all wrong. As I was washing, I noticed Maria kept watching me. I told her I had just started washing clothes by hands, so I really wasn’t very good at it.
I explained to Maria that I had always had a washer and dryer to do my laundry. She could not believe you could do a whole load of laundry-washed and dried- in an hour. I was washing a sock at the time and she asked me, “You even put socks in the washer?” “Sí,” I said. “And they get clean?” She honestly could not fathom this idea of a washing machine.
After Maria watched my poor job of clothes washing, she took over explaining to me what I need to do. She used such power and force on the washboard that Gregg’s jeans are now cleaner than they have ever been before. After watching her example, I resumed washing, she kept on saying, “Maggie, Que Rapidito” (how fast). Really I think she was trying to tell me I wasn’t washing carefully enough.
After awhile Maria asked me, “Why don’t you pay someone to wash your clothes for you?” I don’t think she was trying to get more business for herself, but simply couldn’t understand why an American would be washing their clothes for themselves. I told her I want to learn myself how to wash clothes by hand. It is all part of being in El Cuerpo de Paz.
Maria told me she had to leave to go prepare lunch. She went and grabbed a live chicken and took it to the kitchen. A half-hour later she came back with the dead chicken and plucked the feathers on the washboard next to me. I was watching her closely to see how it is done (never having plucked feathers) and told her it was my first time to see it. “But where do you get your meat from?” she asked me. We just go to the supermarket and pick it up with no feathers, ready to cook, I told her. I’m not sure if she believed me.
After awhile I hear Maria, very excited, repeating our conservations verbatim to our host mom. She really couldn’t wrap her mind around everything I had told her. I am starting to realize just how much we have to learn from people like Maria.

Almost Volunteers!

2007-08-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning we swear in as Peace Corps volunteers! Training has been great, but we are glad it is over. This week in Quito has been filled with meetings, but the majority have been pretty interesting. We have had some free time in the evening to explore and eat some great ethnic food. Saturday there is a big group of volunteers running a 10K here in Quito. It is called "La Ruta de las Iglesias." It is a 7 p.m. and it winds through the old part of Quito and all the Cathedrals. Should be pretty awesome. Sunday we head to El Chaco and will finally get to settle down for our two years. Pics and stories to come next week once we get settled in our site.

Tarantulas in Bed

2007-08-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

We have returned from our last training trip. This time we headed deeper into the Amazon Basin and discovered the extreme heat and huge insects that go along with it. This trip we earned our titles as Peace Corps trainees. We learned a lot about malaria, dengue, traditional medicine and the best method to kill tarantulas. Here is the latest list covering the last two weeks.

Scariest moment: Finding a huge tarantula on the bed. Sleep was hard to come by that night.

Moment we remembered we are in Ecuador: When our bus driver stoped to wash the bus with a full bus load of people.

Most Interesting Presentation: Kichwan Indian Midwives explaining the process of a traditional vertical birth (all through a translator).

Situation that makes you go “huh”: Watching the medicine man take hallucinogens before he cleansed all of the volunteers.

Coolest Moment: Watching the pig give birth to 10 piglets.

Saddest Moment: Watching our ten-year-old brother lay beside the runt as it slowly died.

Best Medicinal Plant Gregg Has Tried: Anesthetic plant that you chew and is used for toothaches (works really well)

Stupidest Moment: Opening the pressure cooker before it had cooled off and steam was removed. It literally exploded like a bomb. Thankfully nobody was burned.

Best Lesson Learned: Never listen to a 10-year-old for advice on pressure cookers.

Best Food: Indian restaurant in Quito.

Worst Food: Pig skin in peanut sauce over rice.

Coolest day trip: 4 hour bus ride down a dirt road followed by an hour canoe ride to visit 2 volunteers’ sites.

Most Embarrassing Moment: Bus breaks down coming back from the coolest day trip. Me (Maggie) and another volunteer hop of to use the facilities/the woods. Cars are behind the bus, so we have to walk up 50 meters in front of the bus. Just as we are going to the bathroom the bus starts up and throws its brights on us.

Most frustrating moments: Waiting and waiting and waiting for people, buses and food. Ecuadorians have no since of time and showing up an hour late for a meeting is typical.

Moment I realized I was turning into a crazy Peace Corp volunteer: Belting out Disney songs with another trainee in the middle of a river village.

What ARE we doing here in Ecuador?

2007-08-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

I am starting to realize that we may never really realize our purpose here in Peace Corps. During training we have just brushed the surface of some of the huge problems facing this country and soon we will be set free to serve our community.
A couple of weeks ago we received a huge pep talk (usually people start thinking about quitting now). “Life is calling- how far will you go?” is Peace Corps’ slogan. There was a huge banner when we walked in that said: Your community is calling- how far will you go? We watched old Peace Corps recruitment commercials, which got me excited about joining Peace Corps all over again. Our main job over the two years will be figuring out how to help people help themselves. Pretty cool job, if I do say so myself.
One thing that training has done is washed away any notions of making huge monumental changes. It is important to work on the things that community wants for themselves, not what we think the community needs. Now matter how great community banks or community gardens are they will never work unless our community wants them to work. Having kids remember to wash their hands before they eat and having moms boil water before they give it to their family may be as big as changes as we can make. But even if we can do this, it will make the people of our community much healthier.
We have spent a lot of time listening to the volunteers that are finishing up their service say that the relationships you form with the people is the most important part of service. Through these relationships you can hope that some of the projects and things you taught will be sustainable after you leave.

Our List of Interesting Things

2007-08-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

1- Horse is still a common form of transportation here

2-Lunch and dinner cost $1.50 and consists of a soup, rice, potatoes, choice of fish, beef or chicken, sometimes a vegetable and juice

3-Every part of a cow or chicken can be found in the soup- chicken feet are very common

4-Avocadoes cost .25 cents. An even better deal: Roses cost $1.50 for 20.

5-Healthcare is free for pregnant women and children under 5

6-Nobody knows who Oprah is (I am adding it to my mission to inform people here in Ecuador). Hugely popular are Walker Texas Ranger (we met a little kid named Walker) and Jackie Chan.

7-Our host family just bought a microwave and our little brothers were very excited to explain how is works and taught us how to us it (We didn’t have the heart to tell them we had used one before).

8-Pirated movies cost $1 here. All the movies that are in the theaters in America now are already here in DVDs.

9-We can go for days without seeing a color other than white, brown or yellow on our plates.

10-We rode 2.5 hours in a bus (one way) with our family to go to a small pool and the kids acted like the were going to Disneyland

11-Ecuador is dissolving their Congress this fall while rewriting their Constitution (should be interesting)

12- The majority of our town is up at 4 a.m. milking cows

13- Milking cows is harder than it looks. Planting potatoes is not fun. Planting green onions is less fun.

14- Gregg likes hot, fresh milk and Maggie will be ready to return to the plastic gallons of cold milk

Rough time with posting pictures

2007-08-07T15:37:00.001-07:00

Our host family´s dog Margarita y yo!

Our future host family has seven puppies. They loved being held like this!