Local and Locality

At two separate times, doing two different things, with two different groups of people, two seemingly different, yet related realizations occured to me.

The first came while eating corn for dinner with my family last night. This corn, some of the sweetest I have ever tasted, had been harvested about 10 meters away not more than an hour before, and boiled just before it was piled high on my plate. Realization #1: Everything I interact with on a day to day basis is local. The vegetables and grains I eat come from the fields around my family´s house, the eggs recently laid by chickens that roam around those fields. At the greatest distance, those products come from the weekly market in the larger town 8 km away.

I rarely travel more than a few kilometers in a day, usually walking. Most days are spent within 500 meters of my house. The greenhouse I recently built (in which I am raising 11 seedbeds for my garden) is constructed of eucalyptus wood harvested from forests I can see and walk through. ¿Qué más? My family rarely leaves the property around their house. There is plently of work to keep them occupied day in and day out, the work of maintaining a productive piece of land. In getting to know the community, it seems not only most of this generation´s parents were born in the small town in which they maintain residence, but their parents and grandparents as well. (This, of course, is part of the reason they solicited me. Many would leave, they claim, if not for economic factors.)

Although never a vegetarian, about 15 years ago, my father restricted his intake of produce to that growing in season, in the general area of northern New Jersey. He grasped and stood by the idea of "food miles" before it was a household term. He has long since abandoned that diet for his love of Italian food and gelato. In my current life, that diet is not only easy to maintain, but required and a little bland. It results in slight variations on corn and potatoes, all day every day. On the other hand, this also allows me to eat all the avocados my stomach will accept. I hope the romanticism holds its roots until I begin cooking for myself.

I bought my own hoe yesterday, having grown tired of borrowing from neighbors when a daily task required such a tool. Upon returning home, my madre told me the local adage ¨Once a man has his own tools, he is ready to marry.¨ I of course did not purchase my first campo tool with marriage in mind, but I was glad she enjoyed it for that reason.

That evening, I received news from a fellow PCV living on the coast that he planned to splurge on a surfboard. My response was simply "Vidas diferentes, amigo". Realization #2: Locality is everything. While I pass my leisure time working on the correct ventilation for my greenhouse, climbing mountains, and wearing pants, many friends harvest strange fruits with a machete and no shirt in the scorching Amazon jungle, and others fall asleep to the crashing Pacific waves in a comfortable position on their hammock. We are all part of the same Omnibus, in the same program, in the same country. The number of different experiences available, however, is quite daunting. Expand that view to Peace Corps worldwide and that number becomes both staggering and unknown to me.

While these two realizations had occurred to me multiple times before, their connection is what brings me to the old drafting room today. The variety of experiences thrust upon my compañeros and I rests on the fabric of the local. Each region of Ecuador (Coast, Mountains, Amazon) has distinct culture, and with minor intermingling, they almost seem like different countries. By nature of the local lifestyle, each assignment site offers its own unique set of experiences, evolved to fit that specific place. If not for the local lifestyle, we would not have the luxury of distinct locality.