Inch by Inch, Row by Row

Classic.

First Days at Site

I have recently pondered days in my life that I can confidently mark as milestones, without which my life would be wholeheartedly different. They can easily be counted on one hand: high school and college graduation, the first time my mom allowed me to ride my bike alone to town, my first road trip. (Omissions: loss of virginity and first taste of alcohol.) However, my life as a Peace Corps trainee and my life as a volunteer will be so different that I must add this transition to the slowly growing list.

My trip to site lasted only 3 hours. My travel companions and I caught the bus up north and hopped off at our respective stops. Instead of riding the final bus to my site, I splurged for the five-dollar pick up truck. Surrounded by my possessions in the cool breeze, I rode in the back to my new home as the sun set over the mountains.


The following is a blend of my first two days at site:

8:00 Wake up. Eat breakfast of bread, rice, and juice.
9:00 Leave house for a walk.
9:15 Follow the sound of sheep to find a herd of over 500 in the local hacienda.
9:30 Walk past two dead dogs on the side of the road.
10:30 Borrow a hoe and begin work in my garden.
12:30 Lunch.
1:00 Siesta time.
2:00 On way back to garden, pass host brothers and sisters holding a pitchfork and laughing over a box. Receive explanation. Aid in slaughtering eagle inside box (yes, eagle).
2:10 Resume work in garden.
3:00 Receive help from 5-7 year old kids in turning land and pulling weeds.
3:30 Buy ice cream for 35 cents from passing pick up truck.
6:30 Dinner. (Eagle is tasty when fried. Not as tough as rabbit, but red like beef.)
7:00 Pass out and sleep like a rock.

This is my house. This is Francisco, Saywa, and Alberto. They call me Jacobito. This is the eagle we ate for dinner.

Never before have I been given such liberty and encouragement to explore. My job for the next few months consists of integrating into the community by finding my way around, building relationships, and basically just hanging out. When else will I have the time to wander down that river as far as I please? Or lie in the shade under the swaying eucalyptus trees? Or spend six hours in my vegetable garden pulling out weeds?

Now that I am at site with all this time, I would be curious to see who is reading. If you have the time and so desire, leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you.

Se Acaba de Entrenar

The last few weeks of training were very different than the first. Instead of language training and cultural immersion, I have traveled around the Central Sierra region visiting organic farms, turning land with a hoe and rake, and finally getting my hands dirty.

Due to the altitude of my site (2500 meters) and others in my region, we spent a few days learning about greenhouses. Up in the paramo (high altitude grass lands) it takes 10 months to produce a head of broccoli. Construct a simple greenhouse out of fresh-cut trees and cheap plastic, and your vegetables will grow in 3 -5 months.

We (those on my technical trip) spent one morning constructing one such greenhouse. With 10 people, a hammer, saw, machete, and some rope, we hoisted logs far above head height and layed cross beams 25 feet in the air. It is truly incredible to construct such a simple yet large and functional building with such few tools.

At one point I found myself in a thick mist at 4,000 meters watching traditionally-dressed indigenous Ecuadorians walk alpacas as I rode in the back of a pickup truck.

The attached picture shows me charlando with 6th graders about recycling. On the technical trip we had to give a practice charla (directly translated as "chat", but really meaning presentation or workshop). It has been over 4 months since I left my teaching job in Colorado, and I almost forgot how much I enjoy standing in front of a classroom. Or, in this case, outside picking up trash and having little Ecuadorian kids repeat the words "Reducir, Reutilizar, Reciclar".


This morning I became an official volunteer. No more of this trainee nonsense. The swear-in ceremony was held at the ambassador's house in Quito. About a month and a half ago a friend and I shook hands, saying we would grow mustaches for swear-in. Today we had no less than 15 guys wearing collared shirts, ties, ironed pants, and well-trimmed, presentable mustaches.

Now that training has finished and I leave Quito tomorrow for my site, it is high time to analyze the things I have learned and how I have changed since my arrival in-country.

I had no expectations of knowing everything agriculture after two months, but I did think we would receive more technical training on the subject. I now have a respectably limited bank of agricultural knowledge and a different perspective. My job is not to bring in outside ideas that may disrupt local custom or tradition. I am here to integrate in the community, find out what change is both feasible and desired, and facilitate that change.

A few small differences I have noticed in myself:

1) It feels more natural to eat fruits like babaco, tomate de arbol, grenadilla, and taxo than it does to bite into an apple or orange.

2) My Spanish ability is now at the point where I do not even think about it. I have had deep conversations about religion, managed complicated bureaucratic situations, and given impromptu speeches to native speakers. More than I recognize, the Spanish word or phrase pops into my head before its English equivalent.

3) I barely feel strange using my own hands to end the life of a small animal. So far I have killed and freshly prepared chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs, each time paying mental respects to the animal I plan to consume.

4) I have gotten positive feedback on my dancing. Those of you who have witnessed me dance in the past may think dubiously of that comment. I assure you, my hips are no longer attached to the rest of my body and salsa/merengue steps are easy to learn.

Maybe its on a bus driving past a snow-capped volcano, maybe its dancing with Ecuatorianas until the early morning, maybe its climbing a 16,000 foot volcano, maybe its paying 1.50 for lunch on a street corner, or maybe its washing my laundry on a rock, but there are many moments when I stop to appreciate my situation and surroundings. I wake up most mornings not knowing where my day will take me. Only two months has passed, but I already feel comfortable here.

Notes on Cultural Integration

The Catholic world has spent the entire last week celebrating Semana Santa, or Holy Week. As most Ecuadorians practice Catholicism, Easter pervades the culture not with painted eggs and sugar bunnies, but with symbolic soups and reenactments of the crucifixion of Christ.

Ever since I was young, my Mom led my siblings and I to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. For a family of Jews, this broadened our understanding of culture and diversity through direct experience. Early conditioning has taught me to embrace whatever culture I find around.

Completely embracing a Christian tradition would not produce ambivalent feelings normally, but it happens that Passover falls in the exact same time frame as the Semana Santa. My family in the Unites States is currently together in my home town eating matza and reading from the Haggadah. Although it is important to maintain my own cultural identity, the childhood-midnight-mass in me wants to experience local tradition in the Ecuadorian manner.

The attached picture shows my alacritous face as I stir Fanesca, a soup that contains 12 different vegetables, each representing one of Jesus´ disciples. Figleaf gourd, pumpkin, fava beans, choclo, abas, lentils, peas, corn, zuchinni, green beans, cabbage, and onions. The entire family spends the better part of a day preparing all the ingredients. The final product is hearty, creamy, and tasty. Luckily it does not carry any leavened bread.

All of today was devoted to baking bread, a food we all know represents the body of Jesus in Catholic tradition. Again, the entire family participated, and again I felt strange. Baking leavened bread of Jesus during Passover? We started a fire in our large adobe oven at 7 AM to begin baking around noon.

Instead of simply joining the festivities, I mentioned the idea of matza and my desire to bake it. I recounted the story of Passover with my best Spanish accent. Sure enough, I had enthusiastic participants. We used wheat flour grown and ground less than 100 meters away by those who bake with it. The picture below shows me taking matza (they call it ¨Pan de Jacobo sin levadura¨) out of the oven with bread going in. Tastes just like a cracker but could use more salt, according to my family.

Sometimes integration brings us to a crossroads. At what point do we relinquish our own culture to fit into another? Where can we find middle ground, a place for cultural intercambio to learn from each other? When do we finish blog posts with idle philosophical sentiment?

Digestion

I ended my site visit this morning as I ran down the hill to catch the bus. I should have anticipated that the 8 AM does not come until 8:20. Four hours and four buses later, I find myself back in Olmedo. We spent the afternoon watching the usual Sunday soccer games at the town cancha. It is nice to have my friends around again.

Some people speak of unbearably hot Amazon towns surrounded by dense jungle. Others tell of high humidity, bug nets, and towns so poor they have mud streets and bathe in the river. Others yet have hot showers, cold beer, and offices. The number of totally different experiences compares to the number of malaria strains present in Ecuador. Luckily I live above the government standard altitude requiring malaria pills. 1500 meters, if you were curious.

Highlights from the rest of my site visit:

1) During my first walk around the area, I ran into a guy wrestling a pig on a leash. I couldn´t figure out exactly what he was doing, even after I asked.

2) More than just a few meals consisted of a plate full of whole potatoes and potato soup (whole peeled potatoes in a thin broth). Good thing I have multivitamins.

3) The entire elementary school spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday playing a soccer tournament. I served as referee for multiple games.

4) I met with some of the women whom I will be helping with a large community garden. Within the first ten seconds of meeting them, they began complaining the municipio will not allow them access to the irrigation canal that runs under the street next to the garden. Seeing as the rainy season has not arrived in full capacity in two years, a large scale garden would be a challenge without irrigation. This led to my first meeting with the town president.

5) He asked if I could give him guitar lessons.

All in all, I come back excited from my site visit. Preliminary project ideas include the family gardens, community banking, and an afterschool youth group for the supposedly dangerous jovenes in the next town over. I´ve already got a contact who might be able to help with dance classes. I would teach music and take care of organization.

It is still early to tell many things about how daily life will function, but I can already see I don´t mind doing laundry by hand with a ginormous volcano staring me in the face.

First Impressions

My last post contained many raw emotions, ones I had not been prepared to sustain. However, as they said to us in a speech just before they handed out sites, its a deck of cards and we all receive one. The cards have been dealt, and I'm here in my tiny indigenous town in the North Country (that is, the Northern Sierra of a country straddling the equator; hardly North Country in the Acadian Driftwood sense).

I met the volunteer whom I will replace in the larger city near our site, and she took me to our town. We spent the afternoon getting to know my home for the next two years. I live with a host family for the initial three months. Yes, they recently put walls on my bedroom. The family consists of a mother, father, and five children (that I've counted so far). The town is tiny. It has many spread out houses, all with their own land and crops. Picture white or earth-colored walls with loosely-placed red shingles slowly growing moss under the rain and sun. The town sits between two inactive volcanos, and overlooks rolling hills covered with family farms. There are three small tiendas and a school in the center of town. I haven't explored much yet, but it seems like that is the majority of the infrastructure. No Internet, so this is my first post via Blackberry.

The current volunteer will be leaving before I arrive for the longevity, so she is tying up many loose ends. I accompanied her to her last community bank meeting, during which she insisted upon collecting the money she had contributed. A reasonable request since she will be leaving. The meeting was held outside of a bank member's house in the intense sun, with chickens running around and women breast feeding whenever the need arose. The only thing accomplished in the two hours we sat on the ground was her money collection. Literally, this took two hours. That, my friends, is the Ecuadorian sense of time.

The entire bank meeting was held in Quichua, a language that is dawning on me in two major ways. 1) It does not sound, nor is it constructed, anything like Spanish, and 2) I will spend a lot of time trying to comprehend it. Yes, everyone speaks Spanish, but Quichua between each other. I really had hoped to become fluent in Spanish, but it may not be the case. Oh well, at least I won't be speaking English.

Besides the language issue, I get a great first impression of this community. The indigenous experience will be very different than anything I know. The surroundings are breath-taking. Having had a previous volunteer to break the ice, the people understand why I am here and are ready to work with me. The climate is perfect: warm and sunny during the day and pleasantly cool at night.

I just had dinner with my new host family. Although they are not as adept at correcting my Spanish as native speakers, they still make a point to speak it with me. We spent a few minutes writing down basic Quichua phrases. If I'm really going to do this, I've gotta start making a concerted effort with my Quichua. To all my readers: buenas noches. To all the Quichua speakers among you: Ali tuta.

Site Assignment

Today was a rollercoaster of emotions. I woke up excited to learn about my home for the next two years. My entire Omnibus collected at our usual meeting spot for the news. We entered the room to see a large map of Ecuador outlined in roses on the floor. One of the trainers pulled our names out of a hat and read off our site assignments. Once read, the person ran through a line of people throwing roses and slapping our hands.

The suspense was more intense than my skydiving experience last Spring. Sitting in the plane before the jump, at least I knew I would land safely on the ground within a few minutes. I had no idea where I would be placed, and the suspense was almost unbearable.

Towards the end of the names, I was finally called. I´m not sure why I gave myself expectations, but my site was exactly the opposite of what I had hoped. I had asked for the Coast or Amazon region, and I was led to the top of the map. The Northern Sierra mountainous region. The more I learned about it, the more upset I got. Beyond regional preference, I had asked for a small community, Spanish speaking, rural, very low level of services (no running water, electricity, etc), and to be the first volunteer in the site. My site is in the mountains, has way over a few hundred people, is indigenous (the majority of the inhabitants speak Quichua), is very close to a larger city, has running water and electricity, and is only about an hour by bus from my training site. I was devastated.

In going through my paperwork, I noticed a few strange things on my housing form. Most of boxes explaining required aspects of my host family house were checked. However, when I got to 1) personal room, 2) locked room, and 3) ability to change locks, only the word PENDING. Upon further scrutiny, the section entitled ¨Required Improvements to Living Quarters¨ read ¨WALLS ON BEDROOM¨. I couldn´t exactly figure out what that meant, but for my $40-per-month rent, I should hope I have walls on my bedroom.

Meanwhile, I had friends in my same program assigned to a site on the beach in a town of fisherman and cacao farmers. Others were given sites deep in the jungle surrounded by Amazon rainforest. I couldn´t believe how insensitive the placement staff was of my preferences. I still can´t believe it.

However, as the day wore on, my attitude began to change. I reminded myself that I joined Peace Corps because I was willing to go anywhere and do anything. Even though I had hoped for a more exotic experience, I have to admit that I love mountains. Maybe I would have gone crazy on the coast dreaming of huge volcanos towering overhead. I called the volunteer whom I will replace, and she made me feel a lot better. She had the same doubts about the site for her first few months, but now loves it. I don´t need to learn Quichua (everyone speaks Spanish as well), she claims my house is amazing, and there is plenty of meaningful work to be done.

I had hoped for a site as far outside of my comfort zone as possible. At first glance, this site did not seem to fit that mold. Por otro mano, when else will I get to live at 2,500 meters and still have summer weather all year round? When else will I have two volcanos in my backyard? When else will I have the opportunity to learn an indigenous language?

Rest assured that the end of my day was a lot better than the beginning and middle. I can´t judge this place before I even set foot there. I can´t set myself up for failure like that. I´m still trying to process that I landed such a place, but I am keeping an open mind. No one ever said Peace Corps would be easy.