Boliviaog

Warning: Weepy Reflection Ahead

2010-01-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

It’s my last night in my site as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I feel surprisingly calm. Surprising is probably the best word to describe my time in PC. It’s been over two years since I decided to join, and well, things definitely did not go as I expected. I didn’t expect to be evacuated, I didn’t expect to have to start over so many times, I didn’t expect to fail so badly and so often, I didn’t expect to fall in love, I didn’t expect to start craving large amounts of white rice, I didn’t expect to become a dog person, I didn’t expect to feel so many different emotions at the same time. Even something as simple as contentment becomes complicated because if you’re happy here it means you’re happy despite being away from your friends and family and this then confuses and depresses you. You think about your other life and how you were happy there too, how you miss making jokes that people understand or eating Thai takeout. But then you make a joke in Spanish and people actually laugh and you feel great or the guy with the best encebollado in town is at the bus stop and you eat a big steaming bowl for $1.25 and it’s delicious. Then you think, I could be here for a while, I could make this work.

When I think about what I accomplished during my PC service I can’t help but be a bit disappointed. I try to focus on the positive and forget the failures, of which there were many. I have found it almost impossible to make any of the work I've done in the community sustainable. When I leave no one is going to teach an extracurricular class for the children of the community. My neighbors will hopefully continue planting and harvesting in the community garden but for how long? Will more people join or start their own gardens? I would hope so but I can't say for certain. I know some people started composting and planting but I'll always feel like I didn't have the scope to reach enough people. Part of it has to do with the dynamics of the community but I feel like on a basic level I failed to engage enough people to form any kind of sustainable or productive group. The people who want to learn will show up and if that means teaching compost to two people, well, I’ll be there with a shovel ready to go. I’ll drop nutrition tips into regular conversations or denounce machismo comments any chance I get. Being a volunteer is about more than the numbers on your quarterly report. Failure is very real and very painful but at the same time I know that my community will remember me for all the positive things I did and not that time no one showed up for my charla. Just walking through my community makes me feel good about the time I spent there. In just a few minutes I’ll go from the school where I taught, danced and played indor, then pass by the church I helped paint and then the fields where I helped my neighbor harvest pineapple, further up is where I held my Friday afternoon class and painted the World Map, right next to that is the community garden where the lettuce that everyone told me wouldn’t grow here is big and ready to be harvested, along with some tomatoes and green peppers, past Magola’s house where I had so many good meals, down to the river where I bathed and washed my clothes when there was no water, over to where I planted some balsa trees, that in a few years will be thick and tall, I take this all in and I realize that if nothing else I participated. And that’s how you need to live your life; you need to participate if you want to get anything out of it.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of life I want to live exactly, what things really matter to me, what do I really need. The more I think about it the more I want a simple life, not focused on material possessions, but on experiences, relationships and hard work doing something you care about. It’s still hard though, at times, to shake off the mentality of more is more and I’ll admit that when I walk into the Supermaxi I want to immediately buy every American product I see, things I would never even buy in the states. It’s a combination of my ingrained consumer impulse and nostalgia for home. I was raised believing you have to live a certain way, own certain things and reach certain goals in order to be successful. But I’ve slowly come to realize that my definition of success is a lot different than what I was taught. I’ve lived without a lot of things that people in the states would claim “they can’t live without” (TV, internet access, hot water to name a few) and yet I’ve lived a very pleasant and comfortable life. Yes it can be a hassle to not have complete communication capabilities, to not understand my friends’ pop culture references or to pour a bucket of cold water on myself when it’s not hot out, but when I think about what I’ve missed, I mean really missed from the states, those things don’t seem to matter. What matters are all those milestones on the life spectrum that I wasn’t there for, weddings, births, funerals, moments that you should be present for the people that you care about and I couldn’t be. But what I really missed out on is the sometimes mundane, sometimes absurd comedy of life, the everyday, the stuff that binds us. By being here I gave all that up and it’s not something I can get back as easily as ordering from the Thai takeout menu. I wasn’t there to help move, to proofread a term paper, to visit in the hospital, or to celebrate birthdays, holidays, promotions, Saturday. I can’t help but feel guilty about this. And now I’m leaving again. When will you be back? I’ve been asked that practically since I got here. It’s almost as if being here doesn’t count unless I return. Maybe it’s because most of the people in this community know that they’re not going anywhere. If I do come back, they’ll most assuredly still be here. When will you be back? I haven’t even left yet.

I'm happy to be closing my Peace Corps service on a good note. At the very least, this time I get to say good-bye. In the coming days there will be despedidas and I'll make the rounds to all my friends and neighbors, assuring them once again with my best Terminator voice that I'll be back, I just don't know when. I'm excited to start a new adventure, without the watchful eye of the government, but also without it's safety net. Most of my wordly possessions have been given away or sold. All of my clothes have holes, are stained or smell like mold. I feel like a vagabond and will be living like one too. No set schedule, a rough outline in my mind of where and when, but not knowing is half the fun. Plus the minor detail of me having to learn to drive stick shift. And who knows what other useful skills I'll pick up along the way, surely by the end of this trip I'll be able to do an invisible bribe pass and talk my way out of tickets in Spanish. The possibilities are endless when you're up for anything. Coming and going are the hardest parts of Peace Corps, but if you're constantly moving then you're always coming and going and that will be our greatest challenge on this trip. That along with the constant strikes, breakdowns, explosive diahrrea, border crossings, lack of money, politicial turmoil and who knows what else. I can't wait!

Changing the World- Literally

2010-01-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

Christmas, New Years, the end of my Peace Corps service, my puppy’s unwanted pregnancy and doubts about the future all add up to a very stressful couple of months. Or as stressful as life can be when you have four day work weeks and can sip maracuya juice any time you please. But still. I was pretty stressed. First, the Christmas pageant which I had been rehearsing for over a week with my students was a partial disaster. Not because my students forgot their lines or cues but because the sound system was terrible. The narrator sounded like static interspersed with stray syllables. Turns out the mic needed new batteries, but no one thought of that until it was too late. I came out at the end dressed as Santa (completely dying from the heat of my fake beard and stomach) and gave all the kids candy, so all’s well that ends well.

Then the kids all played games and won “prizes” like towels and socks. Who picked those prizes? They also got tons of candy, cookies and some cheap-o toys. The new Christmas Princess was crowned and her court danced and generally sat around being adorable.

I’m telling you, the pageant thing starts early and they have them for EVERYTHING.

On Christmas day the older students from my Friday class came to draw the World Map. A few weeks before I had taken them around the neighborhood to ask for donations to buy the paints and other materials that we needed. This was the best thing I’ve done here. At first they were reluctant, shy, and nervous; they didn’t want to do it (except for Alison who I can always count on for enthusiasm, “yes, let’s go right now!”) I told them that this mural was going to benefit the whole community and so they should seek the support of the community members to pay for it. We went to the cancha first where a bunch of men who’d finished working were watching a game of voli. With the solicitud in hand we made our pitch and right away got almost 4 dollars. This invigorated my students and after about 2 hours of going from house to house (my community is really spread out) we had over $15. They wanted to keep going but it was getting late and I figured we had enough to buy what we needed and we did. I was really proud of them and happy that the majority of those we asked contributed something. Plus it made me feel really good that the girls were hanging all over me and talking about how much they were going to miss me, how they didn’t want me to go and how no one’s ever done anything like this with them. It made me happy that I dedicated so much time to working with children but also sad knowing I could have done more. I still had activities I wanted to do, lessons to teach, but time was running out and with no one to carry on the class after I left they would go back to sitting around being bored on Friday afternoons. Of course I want them to continue to learn, dream and try new things and I’d like to think that they will.

So after they painted a blue square that would be the ocean/backdrop of the map we had to decide on a time to draw and paint. Not everyone could do it that weekend, which was when I wanted to do it. They suggested Friday, Christmas day because they were off from school and because in Ecuador everyone celebrates on Christmas Eve and Christmas day is basically just a regular day. I figured it would be nice to make a special lunch for them and so I bought two chickens from my neighbor and even helped in their killing and plucking. Merry Christmas!

Christmas lunch, before and after

My friend Garrett, fellow PC Bolivia transfer, was visiting for Christmas so I put him to work helping me draw the grid. It came out just a little crooked. The world’s not perfect anyway. The kids started to draw but I had a LOT of correcting to do so we didn’t paint it. Instead we played Frisbee. Over the next week I corrected borders and gave back countries territory that had been mistakenly ceded to others. Finally, it was ready to paint. This was much easier than the drawing part and the kids did a good job. Once again I went over the borders and tried to make it as accurate as possible although it’s far from perfect. I know there’re probably some former Soviet Union countries that according to us, were not yet given sovereignty and a few islands here or there cease to exist. I changed the world, but not in a way I had hoped for. I’m sorry to those countries who have lost territory or are unrepresented, it was not my intention to exclude or offend. The main thing is for people here to have an idea of where Ecuador is in the world and to think about what lays beyond its borders. Also, when the neighborhood kids come over they constantly ask where this country is or that one, which is the largest, etc, etc, so I figured this would give them a permanent reference and also a small reminder of me.

Painting the ocean

Making the grid

Drawing the world

Painting the world

I was excited to spend New Year’s here since I was in Argentina last year. The tradition is to burn an “año viejo” which are like effigies made out of old clothes and stuffed with paper or whatever you’ve got around. At the last minute David and I decided to make one because there was going to be a party (at the community building right in front of my house) and they were having a competition for the best año Viejo. You have to write a last will and testament for your character of what they’re leaving behind. So I decided, given the major economic crisis, that we would make a US banker type who stole all this money from the states and brought it to Ecuador and we wrote a bunch of things about my neighbors that they would think was funny, like “To Alcidiz I leave $1 to get a haircut” (he rocks a pretty sweet mullet.) Amateur fireworks of the Chinatown variety are a very big part of New Year’s and we stuffed our guy with a bunch of them for when he would be burned at midnight.

Before that though, I had to read the testament. I was the only one who had written one, and it went over well. There were five or six others, but we were the crowd favorite and we won half a crate (6 liters) of beer. Happy new beer! At midnight all the viejos were thrown into the street and set on fire. David and I ran to the house and grabbed our backpacks and ran around the house, as this is what you’re supposed to do if you’re traveling or want to travel in the New Year. Then we ran over and hugged and kissed and happy new yeared everyone. Then we continued dancing and enjoyed our victory beer. It was a good party.

In Ecuador it's not a party until there's a conga line

About a week into the New Year my puppy had a puppy. I was really upset that she got pregnant because of course it was my own fault. I tried to keep her inside during her heat and planned on injecting her with doggie birth control. I was worried about getting her fixed because I don’t know how competent the vets where I get her vaccinated are. I should have just gotten her fixed or asked around for a good vet but anyway…I didn’t. She was seduced by a dog so old that I was pretty certain he didn’t have it in him to do anything. I was wrong. I called the vet and they said I could bring her in to get an injection (like the morning after pill, but for dogs.) Well I don’t know if it didn’t work or if it did because she had just one puppy. It’s a girl and she’s already big and fat because, well, she’s got all that milk to herself. So now I have two puppies. And where I go, they go.

Fresa and Soledad

And where am I going anyway? Back to Bolivia of course. The plan is for David, the puppies, my friend Lebo (the only other gringa I know crazy enough to be on board for this) and I to travel in a truck which will be fitted with David’s ice cream machine so that we can work and travel throughout South America. Yes people, this is the plan, if you didn’t understand it I’ll say again: traveling around South America in an ice cream truck. I’ll soon have a new blog all about it, and I won’t even need a disclaimer….except maybe: don’t try this at home.

Gracias! November Highlights

2009-12-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

It’s December and my official close of service Is January 20th. I’m not gonna lie, I’m totally freaking out. I have so much to do before I’m done. Besides all the PC BS paperwork I have to do (for the second time) I have to finish the World Map Project with my kids, plan a Christmas pageant for the school and rehearse it with my students, have a bunch of despedidas (going away parties) and find a decent truck to drive around South America in; plus I would like some time to reflect on my service as well as think about what I want for my future, all heavy emotional stuff.
But before we fast forward to January let’s rewind a bit. I want to share my best moments from the month of November, the things I’m most thankful for because Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday and it’s not the same spending it away from your family. Still, lots of good things happened and I’m always grateful to have the opportunity to be here doing what I’m doing. Wow, it must be Christmas time if I’m acting this sappy.

Andres comes to visit!

Andrew basically brought a candy store with him. Things I haven’t had in forever like airheads and starbursts, enough goodies to share with the whole town! I had a fish cookout with my friends in his honor, later we cleared the table to make a mini dance floor and campo boogied the night away. There was no running water in my site but we saw a lot of water. Laguna de Cube, Puerto Quito, and the beach! The absolute highlight was Andrew getting a shaman cleansing. I took him to n internationally famous healer, of course. He started by spitting a mystery liquid all over him. He looked completely terrified and I really had to struggle to keep from laughing. It’s one the greatest things I’ve ever seen, I hope it worked!

Boobies! I spent Thanksgiving at the beach in Puerto Lopez and went to Isla de la Plata (aka the poor man’s Galapagos.) I finally got to see blue footed boobies and they’re awesome! They are reproducing right now so most of them are coupling off or already have eggs to protect.

Both the males and females protect the eggs, one protects while the other gets food. They make a circle of their poop to mark their territory.

The females are bigger than the males.

Los frailes, a nearby beach that is part of the national park system was the most peaceful and pristine beach I’ve seen.

Sulfur baths, stinky but refreshing.

My house is a magnet for baby animals. Puppies and kittens think my house is their personal playground. I’m taking care of Pati’s puppy and Fresa is finally learning to share (a little, she is way too spoiled.)

Halloween’s in October but it’s practically November. David as Aladdin, Fresa as Apu, me as Jasmine.

Ecuador is full of waterfalls and they’re nice to look at, even when they completely drench you.

Dancing with the Stars, Campo Edition

2009-12-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

September was a month full of campo bailes. For the uninitiated the campo baile is a town dance takes place on Saturday, a lot of beer and bad liquor is consumed, the whole town shows up (unlike for anything educational, like say my organic gardening workshops), there is a lot of cumbia music which means you have to do the cumbia shuffle until about 5 or 6 in the morning when the disco movil (dj) packs up. A fight or two usually breaks out so they often hire military personale to keep things under control. They are usually drinking and dancing too. At these things I usually don’t last much past 2 or 3 in the morning, even if I’ve done nothing but sleep all day in preparation. That’s what going to bed at 9 every night wil do for your social life I guess. But in the wee hours it’s usually a sad scene of drunks sleeping in their chairs and couples unhappily shuffling from side to side in an attempt to not fall asleep. Better off leaving at a high point, when the dance is still fun.

The three dances were the church dance (for some virgin or other, del Cisne I think), the school dance (for the end of the indor tournament, which if you’re wondering my team came in 4^th…out of 4 women’s teams, we’re the best at being the worst!) and the highs school dance (to elect the Reina, or Beauty Queen, something that is very big here, there are Reinas for everything.) My rag tag group of friends and teammates were asked to perform a traditional folkloric dance for the church and school dances. This meant I had something to do at night between the hours of 7 and 9, the something being waiting around with my friends until everyone showed up and then rehearsing and arguing for about an hour. For the church dance I wasn’t allowed to be partnered with David because he’s a foot taller than me. I was kind of annoyed because obviously it would be more fun to dance with him than anyone else. But since it was a “competition” they wanted everything to be perfect to ensure our vicotry. We danced to national music, banda 24 de mayo to be exact, and wore traditional costumes. It was a lot of fun even though we messed up quite a bit. But we didn’t lose! We actually came in second place….out of the three groups that performed. But still, that meant $50 which we were going to put towards the rental of our costumes for the next dance, but more than half of it went to promptly buy celebratory beers.

The school dance was just for fun and the kids also performed dances which of course were super cute. We performed “La Venada Quinceñera.” Not only did I get to be partnered with David, I got the star role as the deer that is being hunted for the sweet 15 celebration and he was the hunter. It was so ridiculous. The deer costume made absolutely no sense, it was a short black skirt, arm and head bands with feathers and a mask. I just jumped around like a lunatic (my own choreography) and got to fake my death twice. All in all, it was a lot of fun and a big relief when they were both over with. It’s definitely not something I get to do in the states and I was really happy that they asked me to participate. Plus everyone loves to see the gringa make a fool of herself. Everyone wins! There are also videos which I´ll post eventually...i.e when it won´t take me 3 days to upload them.

Why do I have this bowl on my head?

About to be hunted

Hauling off their prey

At the high school dance my neighbor Gloria won Reina, in no small part because of our insane cheering section that kept screaming her name.

She´s 15, btw

This was the only baile that charged an entrance fee, proceeds going to the high school of course, but also there were performances, cumbia, reggaeton, a traditional coastal dance, all that good stuff. The dj played all the faves and the animador kept the crowd going. There were over 300 people there which just reaffirms what everyone keeps telling me about the workshops I do “You can get people to show up for a dance but they’re not going to show up to learn anything.” Still, I try…

Work in the past few months has been okay. The garden is going and we harvested 21 pounds of beans. My melon plants are not doing so well but I did harvest a tiny melon and made a juice that was delicious. 100% organic melon from your own garden, you can’t beat it! I finally got worms! Composting worms that is, not stomach worms although I wouldn’t be surprised… Anyway, after harassing the nearby University, calling them every day for nearly a month, they finally gave me a free bucket full of good garbage eating California red worms to make organic fertilizer for the organic garden. I know they had worms here before and they went uncared for, which is discouraging. After all worm humus is the best fertilizer for the cocoa bean plant that is the major crop cash here and it’s totally free to make. They take poop and turn it into brown gold for your plants! Why isn’t everyone as excited about this as I am?

It has been a super dry summer, way worse than last year’s which I got here for the tail end of. We have hardly had any running water these months which means lots of trips to the river and my neighbor’s well. If I didn’t have access to that well I would have no other means of getting halfway clean water to cook with, except to buy it which is what I started doing for my drinking water. Obviously the river water is only good for flushing the toilet since everyone washes their clothes and themselves in that water and it’s super contaminated. When it does rain I try to store as much as possible to water the plants with. We have a very high tech irrigation system consisting of me and whoever else is around to help and plastic bottles with holes in the cap. Whatever works.

Kids watering the beans

Ecuador is also in an electrical crisis because there’s no water to keep the turbines turning so every day they cut power for a couple of hours. It’s during the day, either in the morning or afternoon, so no big deal, just annoying when I start to make juice and don’t realize there’s no power until after I’ve got pieces of papaya floating in my blender.

I started my children’s club in October. “Caritas Felices” meets every Friday from 3-5 in the afternoon. It’s definitely the best thing I’ve done here. The kids are a handful but it’s so much better than my classes at school because I don’t have to teach English! I can teach them whatever I want! I mean, I try to be creative and teach useful information in my English classes as well, but the parents expect the pages of the English book that they bought to be filled and the students are used to just filling in pages as well with little creativity and room for deviation. But on Fridays I can customize the activities. It’s a little difficult because about half are older kids (10-13 range) that can read, write and handle more complex tasks. The rest of the kids are under 10 and can only handle simple tasks like drawing, coloring, and a few can read simple stories. But the older ones help the younger ones along and only get frustrated when they don’t understand the rules to a new game. They’ve learned some classics like Red Rover and Steal the Bacon, and when my friend Andrew came to visit he taught them ultimate Frisbee, which they loved. He was a PCV in Guatemala and said that he could never get them to understand the concept of the game. But my kids are as bright as the Ecuadorian sun, they caught on and made him play for well over an hour after our class had ended. He even left the Frisbee for me to continue using it with them (thanks Andrew!) Besides the games we learn and create as well. I gave them a charla about how long garbage takes to decompose and then we made race cars out of recycled toilet paper tubes, old boxes, straws and magazines. For Halloween we did a bunch of arts and crafts projects, they made masks and we trick-or-treated (i.e. I gave them bags of candy.)

Now we’re working on geography, a subject that they know shockingly little about (one of my brightest students thought Ecuador shared a border with the US, I think she was momentarily confused.) This will culminate in a World Map Project which is just painting a map on a wall so that the kids and really anyone in the town can refer to it and hopefully understand their relation to the rest of the world a little better.

I also attempted to start a club for parents as well, but surprise, surprise no one showed up. I ended up going from house to house asking my neighbors when they had time to meet (never) and how we could go about starting this support group for parents (we can’t), because from what I’ve seen here it’s very necessary (they don’t seem to agree.) I know Doña Zoila was interested (the same lady who always shows up to help in the garden) but it’s not much of a class with one or two people, especially when it’s supposed to be a support group for parents. So basically I have to turn informal house visits to my neighbors into talks about nutrition and discipline whenever possible. At least this way I don’t have to worry about all the petty feuds and gossip that seem to be abundant here. If a woman doesn’t get along with another woman who I’ve invited to participate and she knows that she may be there she’s not going to show up. It’s hard to live in such a small town and have so many people who don’t get along for whatever reason. Children are so much easier and they show up. Plus, I believe they’re the future, I think there’s even a song to that effect…

The older I get, the more I want to dress like a pirate

2009-09-05T11:55:00.001-07:00

I recently got older by a whole year and since this was my second birthday spent in Latin America I had to celebrate in both latina and gringa style. I spent my actual birthday in my site with David´s family and my Ecua friends. I actually had a compost workshop scheduled that afternoon, since it was a Saturday, so when my parents called to wish me a happy birthday I was with some ladies shovelng cow poop. Once I was done there I cleaned myself up and put the finishing touches on the cakes I had baked. David´s sister wanted to buy a cake but I figured I could bake a tastier one. Magola made a special birthday dinner of arroz marinera, basically rice and seafood. We were planning on heading over to my place with David´s cousins to crack open a crate of beer but it turned out that his great grandmother was having a raging party right across the street from me. Some friends who live in Italy were back to visit so tons of people were there and they had a disco movil (dj & sound system) and everything! We basically took the party over and danced until the abuelita kicked us out so she could get some sleep. My fellow Bolivian Cindy, not one to miss a chance to grind to reggaeton and do the cumbia shuffle made quite an impression on my neighbors, leaving with several numbers and invitations. I brought over my cakes and after blowing out a match I took the traditional bite of cake (¡muerde!) and David did the traditional shoving of my face into the cake. It´s okay, he promptly licked most of it off. I cut the cake into lots of tiny pieces and it was all gobbled up before I actually got a piece. No worries, the recipe was so easy that I made another one a few days later, mostly because Magola didn´t get a piece either (can´t snub the suegra after she cooked me dinenr!) I went to bed around 3 am, which in my old age is impressive; although some of my neighbors continued drinking non-stop into the next afternoon, a bad Ecua habit some people have when there´s a big party, they just don´t know when to stop. They keep drinking until they fall asleep in their chair or wherever they pass out. Not cool, but at least it´s not something that happens all the time, although I would say it certainly happens more than it should.

A Family Affair, some of David´s many relatives:
Me and little brother Daniel

Great Grandmother Gratulina and Cousin Jairo

David and his sister Patricia (she´s single and wants me to introduce her to a gringo, preferably either Alok or Neil.)

The gringa portion of my birthday involved a reunion with most of my fellow Bolivia transfers whom I hadn´t seen since our second close of service (COS) conference in June. It was going to

be a sort of despedida but most everyone is staying past October now. So we made it into a sort of joint birthday celebration for me and Kasia, whose birthday is the day after mine. We headed to Guayaquil for a night time boat ride dressed as pirates. We took over the ship, and the open bar, dancing to Ecua hits along with classics by Michael Jackson, which we heavily requested. The next day David and I explored Guayaquil´s boardwalk by daylight. For me it´s the only draw the city offers, oh that plus the iguanas everywhere just hanging out. We got our fill of this expensive port city and headed home.

I´m glad I had an eye patch handy for yet another pirate encounter.

Speaking of birthdays, I was invited to my first Quinceñera. My neighbor´s daughter was turning 15 and this naturally called for chancho. They called in Jorge and Mario to kill, skin and gut a pig. Then it was time to cook fritada and chicaron in a giant pot on a wood fire outside. David decided to be the official pot stirrer and taste tester. The fritada involved frying up pig skin which they ate for lunch. The meat was cooked to make chicaron and served for dinner. I ate a lot of yucca, which was delicious and a lot less greasy. After dinner we danced, ate cake and I tried to avoid taking sots of a really gross sugar cane liquor mixed with pineapple juice that they kept passing around. Really nasty stuff. The next day while almost everyone was hungover I went to work in the garden feeling great.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also went to my first Ecua wake, which was a lot more gruesome than I expected. I wasn´t going to go because the deceased was not actually from my town and I didn´t know him, but he was the nephew of Don Jose, a prominent leader in the town whom I did know, so I went. I was quite surprised when I went up to view the body that it was covered in blood, had an obvious odor and the face was not even recognizable. Apparently this man had been shot three times a few days before and they hadn´t cleaned him up or even changed the clothes. This isn´t really the norm here, and it certainly took me by surprise. I left as soon as it was socially acceptable to do so.

I am certainly experiencing a lot of new things here and learning a lot about latin culture. Every day is a struggle but also an opportunity. Así es pues. Sometimes I wish I had more structure, better work opportunities, an established group to work with, a functioning project... But I´ve learned a lot about the way things work in development and it´s not easy. People have real lives, real problems and real obligations. They don´t always have time for even the best intentioned person trying to teach them something new. I feel lucky that I have an active social life, I´m integrated in my community to the point where people not only know my name, but they know my dog´s as well. A lot of times I think that if it wasn´t for David I would have given up a long time ago. He helps and supports me in everything I try to do. From working on the community garden to drawing the background for a puppet show, he´s always willing to lend me a hand and open to learning new things. He´s easily the best thing I´ve got going here and my best ¨student.¨ Not only does he no longer throw garbage out of bus windows or on the ground like most Ecuas, but he´s taken on my personal passion for recycling, coming up with a great idea to recycle the plastic bags from the ice cream cones for his uncle´s ice cream truck to plant more boya tree seeds. Plus he was all for dressing up like a pirate. What more could a girl ask for?

Worlds Colliding (again?)

2009-09-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

Living in the campo there is the illusion of free time. Most of my days are unstructured past 10 am, when I finish teaching at the school, and yet I feel like I´ve been incredibly busy these past few months. Every time I turn around another month´s gone by and I haven´t written a blog or posted new pictures. I have good reason, I suppose, since I was back in the states for two weeks this summer and kind of pre-occuppied with my brother´s wedding and seeing all those important people I haven´t seen in months, attempting to reconnect and all that. I have to admit that I felt slightly diconnected when I was home, which is to be expected I guess. It´s not like you can settle back into life in the states in two weeks. Running around trying to find shoes, a bag, getting fitted for my bridesmaid´s dress, all felt very surreal and distant from my daily life in Ecuador. I can imagine it was difficult for my parents as well, trying to balance all the emotions of marrying off their son while the daughter they haven´t seen in months comes home. But no worries, I got to indulge in some good old fashioned American fun, including celebrating America´s birthday, a baseball game at the new Yankee stadium, several BBQs, walks on the beach and the new High Line park in NYC, good beer in a normal sized bottle and hey my brother got MARRIED! Here are some photo highlights of my whirlwind Americana tour:

The new High Line park is such an innovative way to repupose old freight train tracks, I loved it!

Summer Ale! And rainbows!

NY Yankees, the World´s Team

Practicing eating at the Rehearsal Dinner

I MADE them pour these glasses of champagne for this picture

None of the other bridesmaid´s wanted to partake in this free bottle of champagne in our limo,
but I sure did!

My date Neil and I cutting a rug, as the kids say.
Cheryl´s Mom claimed our dancing was so good we could be professionals!

Bumping and grinding with my Mom

Aunt Diane looking red hot and my Dad as handsome as ever!

Once Dad´s jacket and vest came off, you knew he was drunker than everybody.

Cake!

Dan manning the porch-b-q

Alok and I being proud to be American

It was great to be home and spend some time with friends and family. I´m really grateful to everyone for making time to hang out and catch up. There´s never enough time, but I feel like I crammed a lot of America into two short weeks.

Back in Ecuador: very happy to see David and the puppy. Both greeted me with lots of affection but only one peed a little from the excitement (guess who!) Magola, David´s mom or as everyone here says, my suegra (mother-in-law) made her delicious crab soup as a welcome back dinner. The next few weeks were surprisingly busy, or as busy as things can be when you live in the campo. The first trimester of school was ending so I had to review with my students and prep their English exams. I also started an organic fertilizer workshop and we are finally cleaning up the land for the community garden. My sources for free seeds keep falling through so I´m trying to do some seed saving and plant what I have. The soil is really bad from the pineapple that was planted there before so I´m thinking I´ll start with beans to give the soil back some nutrients and of course we´ll use our compost to improve the soil. I also spent a lot of time working with David on his family´s land. We have balsa and passion fruit nurseries planted and hopefully we can transplant them soon.

Before I knew it, it was time to go back to the airport in Quito to pick up Michelle (F. Lang), Jessalynn and Maeve, who came to visit for a week. I was so nervous that they would get sick, or robbed, or attacked by giant frogs, or who knows what, but I worried for nothing, everything turned out great. We went to Otavalo first to get some Ecua chatchkies and attempted to hike a volcano with an amazing view of the Laguna Mojanda.

It wasn´t a very long hike but the altitude kicked our butts.
I think the view was worth it though.

Playing with some random kids in a random park in Otavalo.
I like this picture because it looks like Jessalynn is kicking a child.

I was super excited for them to see my site and after many buses and hopping a ride on the back of a truck we were finally there! Magola made shrimp ceviche and patacones, David grilled fish and prawns and for Michelle (still a real vegetarian, unlike me) I made peanut sauce to eat over farm fresh yucca. It was an Ecua feast! Some friends from the neighborhood came over and attempted to communicate with the three new gringas. When words weren´t available gestures and expressive faces worked just as well.

Sucking on cocoa seeds in my site.

I bet you didn´t know that the seeds they dry to make chocolate were in our mouths before they ended up in your candy bar.

The girls tucked in all cozy under my mosquito netting

The next day we went to the school to perform a puppet show on caring for the environment. The script was finalized the night before and we had a run through in the morning before leaving the house. It went over well but the best part came when in our spree of throwing garbage into the audience SOMEONE threw the second page of the script. It was recovered and the show went on, but it was by far a bigger laugh than any joke I´d written.

Discussing what we learned post puppet show

My students singing some Ecua kids´ songs

After that we went outside and danced the hokey pokey, which is a lot more exhausting than I remembered. Then we asked the kids what songs they knew and one adorable 2nd grader stood up and sang ¨Gasolina¨by Daddy Yankee. Our timing was good because the kids got out early and were on vacation for the rest of the week. I swear they´ve had like 2 months of class since they started in April, but anyway...

We went to the finca where I´d been working to harvest some hearts of palm and check on our seedlings. My friends referred to it as a jungle, which I found amusing.

Harvesting hearts of palm in the Ecuadorian ¨jungle¨

Later we went swimming in the river with a bunch of kids. As Michelle put it, ¨It was really cool how we went swimming and all of these children just popped out of no where and tagged along.¨For some reason we attempted to sit on this log, it was kind of painful. Then we headed to the soccer field to play football and fútbol. Michelle played her heart out, opening up great passes but I just kept eating the goals as they say. I blame the fact that I recently ran down the side of a volcano. After they had their taste of life as a Peace Corps Volunteer we headed to the beach for some fun in the Ecuatorial sun. Some of us got burnt. We headed to a less touristy, more out of the way beach called Mompiche so as we were waiting for the bus, which wouldn´t pass for at least an hour, a police officer came over and helped us hitch a ride on the back of a truck that was also carrying diesel. One of those only in Ecuador moments that I´m glad they got to experience.

Michelle can attest, it´s the only way to travel

It was like our own private beach!

From there we headed to Mindo and I got to see my friend Alicia before she headed back to the states and my friends got to try ziplining above the canopy forest. Their time in Ecuador was almost up but of course we had a huge delay going back to Quito. By the time we got into the city they had to head to the airport. As they sped off in a cab I was wishing they could stay at least another week. I was still nervous even after they left, wondering what impression they got from Ecuador. I´ll quote Jess if she doesn´t mind, who summed it up by saying: ¨I think that was the best vacation I have ever had. In large part because you showed us what it was really like in Ecuador. I loved that we got to see how people live there and didn't do the touristy thing. Really we are all grateful to your Ecuadorian friends and neighbors who were so gracious and friendly to us. I love that they were so excited to share and teach us about everything there.¨ This made me feel great. I felt like they had seen a lot of the real Ecuador and that they now understood my life here on a level that a blog and photos could never convey. I really appreciate that they took time out of their lives to come here and that they trusted me to plan how their time was spent. I feel the same way as the people in my town who continue to ask ¨When will they come back?¨ The thing is, it´s not that easy, I have to remind them, Ecuador and the US just aren´t that close. But at least now, it feels like they are.

GOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL 2!

2009-07-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

When Angelica excitedly called me over I never thought that what she had to say would fill me with such dread and unease. She wanted to know if I would join a women’s indor team that she was forming to enter the newly expanded women’s league. Indor is like small scale soccer, smaller ball, smaller field and smaller team with only six players on each side. I had played soccer as a kid but I was never very good and I quit. My brother was the athletic one in our family while I was what some may call intellectual, but what I’ll more honestly call dorky. So it was with great hesitation that I agreed to participate .

At our first practice I was relieved to discover that I was not the worst player on the team, we were all pretty bad. Except for the girls who are in high school, these women were never given the opportunity to play in a formal league. Until recently playing sports was seen as something “unwomanly” and there is a derogatory name (machona) for women who “act like men.” Best then to leave it to the men and boys. But that is an old fashioned way of thinking and today there are boys and girls teams for elementary and high school students. Still, since we practice from five to seven in the evenings one of my teammates who is married with children reminds us to have supper ready before we come to practice. And we’ve definitely lost some potential teammates because husbands or mothers didn’t want them to participate.

Realizing that most of my teammates had never played an organized sport, I knew we had our work cut out for us. But what they lacked in skill they made up for in spirit. Over the course of a few weeks I saw them grow in skills and confidence. We held our own in practice games against the guys and the high pitched screams and screeching that ensued whenever they had to kick the ball were much more infrequent now. Even I had improved to the point were I was scoring goals and stealing the ball from my opponents. I consider becoming known as the gringa that can play indor one of my greatest accomplishments in PC thus far.

But an even greater accomplishment related to joining this team was when we were discussing the possible team name and I successfully made a pun in Spanish (remember dork > athlete). I suggested that since we were the underdogs we should dress in purple and call ourselves “Las De Moradas,” since morada means purple and demora means to take a long time. Also, a third meaning may be added after a particularly rough game where we all got beat up pretty badly, because morada is also the word for bruised. While everyone enjoyed the pun (not as much as I did, but still) they went ahead and bought light blue shirts and we go by the name ¨Luz del Mar¨(light of the sea).

Left: Me, as red as a tomato. Below: My teammates attempt to score

But our light isn´t shining too brightly at the moment. We´ve lost every game so far. The two games I was there for were just pathetic. Our goalie basically scored for the other team at one point and we lost badly to two really bad teams, which shows how bad we are. I still revel in the fact that I´m actually one of our better palyers, which if you know how unathletically gifted I am, is rather funny. I´m kind of waiting for one of those 80´s movie montages where we start out as this horrible team and then through perseverance, training and maybe John Cusack is involved somehow, we get better and better until we win the championship and I´m being hoisted up on the shoulders of John Cusack.

But back to reality. I’m glad to have this opportunity to bond with a diverse group of Ecuadorian women who are improving their self esteem, getting exercise and having fun. The work of goal one (the more technical work, starting a project, etc.) can be slow and incredibly frustrating at times. Making goals while working on goal two (a better understanding of your host country´s culture) has helped me relieve stress and make connections with people I may never have gotten to know otherwise. Score.

Fresa is also a soccer fan, here she shows her support for Ecuador, she has given up cheering for ¨Luz del Mar¨because she´s embarrassed.

Leading a Double Life

2009-07-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

I´m at a point in my Peace Corps service where it´s hard to figure out which life is more real, the one I´m living here in Ecuador or the one I left behind in the States. I can´t seem to reconcile how life here can be harder but simpler while my life there was easier but more complicated. Regardless, life has become strangely familiar as I´ve settled into a routine and grown accustomed to the pace of my small community. As I walk down the dirt road on my way to work in the school my mind distantly recalls the pushing, shoving and waiting of a NYC subway commute. Maybe I´ve been watching too many telenovelas, but I feel at times I´m leading a double life. I´ve fled the crowds and concrete and traded them in for pollos and platanos but all the while I try to maintain an acrobatic like balance between who I was in the states with who I am here. This life feels just as real as the one I left behind, so what will I do when it´s gone? What would Maria Jesus do?

It´s like all this amazing fruit here that is so exotic I often need instructions on how to eat it. Daniel is up at the top f a Guaba tree throwing down ones that are ripe. Everyone wants one. I break open what looks like a giant pea pod and pop a seed covered in what has the texture and color of cotton but is certainly sweeter tasting. I spit the large seed onto the ground. David asks, ¨You´ve never had one of these before?¨ Like with many fruits here, not before living in Ecuador and probably not after. And even though you can go to a supermarket and find pineapples I would maybe buy one once a year. Here, I´m given one practically every week. What will I do without a free daily supply of fresh fruit once I´m back in the States?

It´s hard for friends and family stateside to understand these things. My Dad calls and as we´re talking asks ¨Is that a rooster crowing?¨ As if that´s something unusual. ¨I thought they only crowed in the mornings.¨ They do. But also in the afternoon, evenings and at 3 o´clock in the morning when you´re trying to sleep. It´s some cartoon version of life on the farm where roosters only crow for their 6am wake up call. But will I miss the constant crow of roosters when they´re replaced once again by honking horns?

When I fill up my basket with dirty laundry and lug it down to the river I distantly remember pushing a cart to the laundry mat in the dead of winter. In both my lives, I find doing laundry is a huge pain and I avoid it as much as possible. But at least when I´m beating my clothes against a rock I get a good upper body workout. I´ll come back to the States with laundry muscles, which may come in handy for pushing my way through the rush hour crowd as I try to catch the train home. But will I long for the days when I could hitch a ride home in the back of a neighbor´s truck?

And more importantly, which Ecuadorian habits will become permanently embedded in my personality and which will fade away? Will I say it´s going to rain when it´s already started raining? Will I eat every meal with a giant spoon? Will I borrow things and give them back months later, if at all. Somehow I know that the tightrope I walk between these dual lives will have to continue indefinitely.

My New Addition (Even better than Bobby Brown´s)

2009-04-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

Four months deep into 2009 and a lot of things have changed for me here in Ecuador. I´m on an upswing right now but haven´t written in a while because life here has taken on a certain constancy, a sense of routine, an overall feeling on familiarity in unfamiliar territory. A brief debriefing of what´s been happening in my life:

Carnival happened: Dancing, fighting with foam and this weird powder to color your face, I was wet for 4 days straight. No pictures, because, well, I was wet for 4 days straight.

Mangoes 6/$1 and I hear when mango season is in full swing they become 20-30/$1. Avocados also 6/$1 or as-many-as-fall-from-the-avocado-tree-by-the-river-when-a-rock-is-thrown-at-it/Free 99.

I finally got to visit Cuenca, largely renowned as the most beautiful city in Ecuador. I was more excited about seeing some of my fellow ex-Bolivian vols and about rocking our awesome Emo Morales t-shirts, a tribute to graffitti encountered in Sucre and indirectly to the man who repeatedly called us spies and caused our expulsion from the country.

Also finally got to go the beach. It was hot and crowded and made me nostalgic for Coney Island. Ate lots of good seafood and got a little less white. I got to see some Ecua volunteers that I hadn´t seen for a while. The puppy and boyfriend also came along.

Oh yeah, I got a boyfriend and a puppy, in that order. Both are Ecua and are greatly contributing to my newfound contenment with life here.

This contenment worries me of course as a big part of PC is waiting for the inevitable down swing whenever things are going well. We´ve got a C-130 on standby just in case.

My rountine has been pretty solid these last few months. In the mornings I taught an informal vacation school to whatever kids show up at my house after breakfast. This can be anywhere from 0-8 kids ranging in ages from 3-11. With the help of a bilingual children´s book I bought in Peru, The Little Prince, The first Harry Potter and the Giving Tree in Spanish, a few puzzles and coloring books I bought in the city and some Sunday comics that were sent from the states (thanks Andrew!) I had my curriculum. The kids were all on different levels and not just based on age. I was teaching the alphabet to a 6 year old who can´t read or write yet. I was reading with an 8 year old who wasn´t much further along. With the more advanced kids I had them read a story and answer questions about it. They also wrote and illustrated their own stories and cut up the comics, which are in English, and wrote their own story lines in Spanish. With my literature background I of course have a bias and think every child needs to develop a healthy love of the written word. Reading is just not big in Ecuador and most of the children say simply ¨I don´t like to read.¨ But I think it´s more that they don´t have access to fun books and they´re definitely not read to at home and I´m pretty sure that story time is not part of the school curriculum either. But with a little exposure most children can appreciate a good Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss. The other day when Daniel finished his math problems and I told him he could pick his next activity and he said enthusiastically ¨Quiero leer!¨(I want to read!) I have to admit that I felt I had accomplished something. True he was probably just happy he didn´t have to do more long division but he could have colored or drawn a picture, but he wanted to read and since my supplies are so limited it´s not like he hadn´t already read that story before.) Daniel, who I´ll admit is one of my favorite kids and not just because he´s my boyfriend´s little brother, also made me feel like this is so worth it when 3 pre-schoolers randomly showed up one day and he read them El Árbol Generoso and even tried asking them questions the same way I do after we read a story. Children reading to other children, what a sight!

Now that real school has started I will start working more formally with a larger group of kids. I´ll be teaching ¨English¨ (with an emphasis on reading, writing, creativity, grammar in English and Spanish and hopefully incorporating computers if I can convince the director that it´s worth getting the computer fixed.) The school has 1 teacher for every 2 grades so students obviously don´t get much personal attention or extra help when they need it. Kids often miss years or are left back so some of them are really behind. My plan is to have homework help in the afternoon for the kids from the 2 primary schools and the high school. I want it to be a space where kids can continue learning beyond the 4 hours (or less counting recess/lunch) they get during the school ¨day¨ (half-day is more accurate.) I hope to find more books and resources for them, maybe even set up a little library, just trying to figure out how to make it sustainable so that the kids will still have access to the books when I´m gone...

Now a shameless plea for free stuff: If you want to be a part of my experience here you can, I am desperate for materials and can´t always afford to go out a buy stuff. Plus, I haven´t seen too many good bilingual children´s books. I´m not sure if Dora the explorer (who is now a tween? I´m so behind the times) has made it to Ecuador yet. I had some books of hers that I left in Bolivia. But if you can´t find Dr. Seuss in Spanish I´ll take coloring books, puzzle books, anything to stimulate these kids would be very much appreciated by all of us. My address is posted on the top right of the page, please nothing over 8 lbs or else customs charges me a ridiculous amount of money. End of shameless plea portion of blog.

Back to my oh so exciting life in Ecuador. After lunch it usually gets unbearably hot and sunny so we head to the ¨river¨ to bathe. The river is really more of a creek but with the rainy season it´s grown enough to be pleasantly refreshing- Then I go home and change into dry clothes. I continue sweating because even when the sun starts going down it´s still humid. Then I visit my neighbors, watch the daily volleyball game at Viviana´s or just chill out at my house catching up on the newspapers and magazinges and eating the candy I´ve been sent (shout out to my Mom and Dad, Aunt Diane, Ellen, Andrew, and Pat you guys are awesome!) The puppy and the boy take up the rest of my time. First stats on the puppy. I was hesitant about taking on the responsibility at first. I´ve never had a dog of my own before and I wasn´t sure I was ready. But then my absolute favorite dogs in my community got it on and made some adorable babies so of course I had to have one. Gladys, the owner of the mother, willingly gifted me one of the females and when she was a little more than a month old I took her home. Her name is Fresa or Fresita since she´s so little. It´s Spanish for strawberry which David, who helped name her says is slang for something that´s really cool. I like it because I think her head looks like a strawberry and it confuses people because dog names here are woefully unoriginal, like everyone suggested I name her Negra because she´s black. Some people when they hear her name like to reiterate to me that strawberries are red and she is in fact black. Silly gringa. So far people have told me that she can die from all of the following: being held too much, being held by too many different people. the evil eye or jealosy (hence the red ribbon she wears which is supposed to protect against this), being vaccinated, not being vaccinated. drinking cow milk that´s not diluted with water and probably a whole bunch of other things like sleeping too much and being too well fed. Spanish is her first language but like my students she´ll be learning English soon. Like I said, I don´t know that much about dogs, I always considered myself a cat person and never had a dog but I´m pretty sure that Fresa is the most awesome puppy on the entire planet. I totally get the dog thing now. And the parent thing too because whenever I have to leave her home or with someone else there is a part of my mind that is thinking about her, wondering and worrying. But how wonderful it is to just instantly love something even though you have to clean up their poop. And like most new moms I have about a million pictures of her. Here she is at her cutest.

Okay, the Ecua boy, David. Well, we were just friends. We would talk and drink mate, which every other Ecua who tried it seemed to dislike. Then carnival happened and we danced together pretty much the whole time. He was just so fun and different from other Ecua guys. The chisme was going full blast since people had seen us dancing (oh my god, they danced together, they´re practically married now!) But yeah, we did start ¨dating¨shortly after that, so I guess people do have something to gossip about. He lives right across the street from me which is either terribly conveinent or terribly problematic depending on how this relationship goes. Right now it´s the former. He´s so great to have around, he kills spiders and gets frogs out of the house with a lot less squemish squeals. If I´m making a salad and I need lemon, he goes out back and bajars some from the tree. When he comes back from the finca he always brings me fruit to make juice. It´s like at what other time in my life am I going to have a boyfriend who brings me pineapples on a regular basis? He even sweeps and cooks which is so not typical. I do feel a bit like I´m dating his entire family, which is basically everyone. His 2 youngest brothers were my first students, his uncle is my counterpart, his great-grandmother is the matriarch of the town (whenshe immigrated from Colombia with here husband and children no one else lived here yet.) Everyone else is a cousin or aunt or uncle. And they´ve all got something to say about David and the gringa. I´m officially a puma, which I just found out is like being a cougar except in the age range of 25-35 because he´s only 21. When I told my parents they of course freaked out and assumed that this means I´m going to go all Green Acres latina style and live on a farm in Ecuador for the rest of my life. This, as far as I know is not the case. Although this is a pivotal moment in my PC time frame. April would have been my one year mark in Bolivia or halfway through my service there. Instead it marks 6 months in Ecuador (half a year!) and technically is also the halfway point for my service here. Bizarre. My tentative plan (which I haven´t actually discussed with PC yet) is to finish in January when school ends since I would like to be able to teach for the full school year. It´s hard to believe that my life at this moment is so full of stability and contenment when just a few months ago I was ready to call it quits. Of course there is an election coming up and while another Santa Cruz style vacation/consolidation would be lots of fun, I swear I will not be evacuated again! Keep your fingers crossed.

Country Mouse Goes to the City, or Karma, what have you done for me lately?

2009-01-29T06:01:00.000-08:00

It´s 5am and once again the rain is so loud that it woke me up and I can´t fall back asleep. Instead of lying in bed for hours listening to the rain as I normally do, it seems as good a time as any to write a new blog entry, after all I haven´t written anything since 2008.

Okay so what´s been going on? Well Christmas was kind of interesting. I participated in 7 nights of the novena that the community held, one of which we had at my house. I of course made oatmeal/raisin/chocolate cookies for compartiring. Novenas are kind of boring but I figured it would help with my integration. In a country that´s 99% Christian it´s easy to forget that other religions exist, although I did make potato pancakes in honor of Hanukkah. For Christmas I made a couple of lasagnas which fellow PCV-B Cindy and I ate for like 3 days straight. On Christmas Eve there was a fiesta at Cruz and Segundo´s house just up the road. We danced until early morning while taking shots of whisky and wine, with an occasional beer thrown in, overall not a good mix because on Christmas day I woke up with chuchaqui something fierce (hangover). On Christmas day Viviana, who runs the local tienda (store), made arroz colorado for all her customers. Cindy and I ate, watched a soccer game and talked to our families back home.

Then I was off to Argentina for 2 weeks of vacation. The trip was planned since way back when I was in Bolivia, with my parents taking the plunge into South America for the first time. We had a week in Buenos Aires and a week in Bariloche. Lebo, who´s now in PC Peru was able to make it down for the BA leg, which was awesome. We vented frustrations over our PC transfers and made grand plans for post-PC travels (The Great Worm Crusade is now in the works). Argentina of course did not disappoint, the country is filled with beautiful, friendly and talkative people. It is an amazing country, not least of all because it actually functions as a country. With my parents being there I realized just how much I´ve adapted to life in South America. Things like throwing toilet paper in the garbage instead of the bowl, buses being filled way over capacity and nothing starting when it´s supposed to, all seem completely normal to me. Here are a few highlights from the trip:

Hey look, it´s 2009!

Old trains and champagne

The only Kosher McDonald´s outside of Israel

Lot´s of cool grafitti

Good Chocolate and Real Ice Cream

Hiking (or attempting to) with my Dad

Kayaking on the lake with Dad (quite successfully)

Vacation over, back to ¨reality?¨ Well PC reality anyway... When I got back I had to deal with a small ¨security issue¨ that I won´t go into here. I don´t have to change sites or anything but I am out a computer and my morale suffered a tremendous blow for sure. But you know my stubborn ass won´t be happy unless I see this thing through to the end, so here I am, pressing on, pressing on...

Luckily nearby volunteer Clay had something going on in his community shortly after I got back. He invited some volunteers, our AG APCD Nelson and the new (old for Bolivia volunteers) Country Director to visit his site, which happens to be a Tsachila community. The Tsachilas are one of the few indigenous groups that live in the lowlands, in fact there are only about 2,000 of them and all of their communities are here in Santo Domingo. The largest Tsachila community of about 600 people is actually just an hour walk from my site. Clay´s community is just awesome. We were warmly welcomed, given a tour, shown how the Tsachila men paint their hair with the red seeds of achiote and how they paint their bodies for protection with black paint they make from a certain flower and we saw how the women weave the colorful skirts that they traditionally wear (it takes up to 2 weeks to make each one)! We also visited the local shaman and he performed a quick cleansing for each of us, which for me was much needed. They also served us lunch which included BBQ-ed tree grubs, a local delicacy full of protein. In my opinion, they´re actually pretty tasty, as long as you don´t think about what it is you´re actually eating. Clay and Ryan each ate one raw (aka alive) and from their reactions I´m guessing they´re a lot better cooked. I tried my hand at making this mashed plantain thing, which was quite good, no thanks to me; I had no idea what I was doing. Afterwards, they played some traditional music and we danced around a bit even though we were all sweating profusly from the heat. This visit seemed like just the thing to get me out of my post-vacation funk and I´m really looking forward to the big celebration in Ryan´s site for the Tsachila New Year in April. Incidentally, Clay has just gotten his community project up online and is seeking donations for a reforestation project. I know that with the economic crisis money is pretty tight but if you want to check it out and possibly make a donation here´s the link:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=518-329

It´s a really wonderful and vibrant community that will benefit greatly from this project.

Back in my own community I´ve thrown myself into finding more work and things are starting to pick up. With my help 3 women in the community decided to start making and selling marmalade. We started with pineapple of course and sold it all with requests coming in for more. The profit margin right now is high because we are using materials that they had from the paper project (pots, the stove, etc.) and we´re using the fruit that they don´t sell to the intermediaries who bring it to market in Quito, but eventually we´ll have to make some bigger investments like our own gas tank and nice labels if we want to sell our product in the city. They´ve asked me to help find markets so right now I´m looking at naturalist restaurants that are interested in all natural/organic marmalades. We´re also working with a local business that exports ají to the US (to make Tabasco sauce actually). They are looking for more producers and will give start up seed, technical assistance and provide a market for the product, at what seems to be a reasonably fair price. Cruz and I went to speak with them this week and it seems like a really good opportunity for people to generate some more income, which will be much needed in the year ahead. Also on the agenda are family gardens and a visit to the Politecnica to see what kind of free seeds they want to give me for reforestation in my community. I also hear they have silkworms, lombricultura (worms!) and all sorts of other cool AG projects that I want to check out. Plus it´s a military academy, so probably full of young Ecua men in uniforms and there ain´t nothing wrong with that!

Well, it´s now 6:30am, light outside and still raining so hard that I can´t even hear my neighbor blasting his stereo with fine Ecua music. Maybe the sun will come out this afternoon and we´ll go swimming in the river. Maybe it won´t and I´ll stay home playing cards with the Calderon boys all day. Either way, it´ll be a good day.

C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me

2008-12-12T07:50:00.001-08:00

Ecuador, when compared with Bolivia, is a very developed country. It’s a tourist destination, the local currency is the dollar, and everyone owns a cell phone that is more expensive than mine. Still, my neighbor, who has a lovely new refrigerator but no electricity hooked up yet, can’t afford for her two youngest kids to go to school, although I still don’t fully understand why. Maybe people are just living beyond their means, like they often do in the states, in order to have all the status symbols, TVs, stereos, trucks, some people even have washing machines. I can guarantee you that no one in the town where I lived in Bolivia could afford to buy a washing machine, not even close. Everyone in this area produces plantains, pineapple, and yucca for the local markets and cocoa and malanga (which I think is taro root?) for export to the US. What the farmers here need is to find a way to get their product to markets without having to sell first to a middle man who then sells their product for a higher profit. This is a bit of a challenge for me because it’s not like there is an organized group of farmers all united to look for markets for their products, it’s more like everyone has their own piece of land and they have a contact who brings their product to Quito or wherever to sell it. I don’t know, I’m certainly no expert in Ecuadorian agricultural markets so I’m still trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, I’m trying to organize a group of women to work on the recycled paper project, which right now is…well, jodido is the only word that seems to fit. The project is screwed, they have all this equipment (minus the $400 blender that is “missing”) and they were making a lot of paper (over a year ago,) they had a lot of orders and everything, but then the woman who was kind of organizing the project got a job and it kind of just stopped. So the workshop remains empty and I’m trying to see if there is any interest at all in starting things up again, which there supposedly is. So now it’s just a matter of all those tricky logistics like organizing people, getting the materials that we falta and actually working.

So what have I been doing with myself over the last month? Baking cookies mostly. The “associates” and I talked about having charlas about nutrition and various topics of my “expertise” every Wednesday before the community bank meeting. It was basically like we were doing a bait and switch on the community, “Oh, you’re here for the bank meeting? Well you have to listen to the gringa talk about nutrition first.” No one wants to be forced to attend a lecture about nutrition so I knew the first one would have to be good, something that would make people happy and keep them interested, and that of course means playing a game and having free food, the two keys to any good charla. So, I don’t know if many of you know about my friend Sergio Saludable. I used him for a nutrition charla in Bolivia, but I left him there with a bunch of other materials to give to the school so I had to create Sergio el Segundo. My first topic was the 3 food groups, as they are know in Latin America. (Formadores, foods that form us, protectores, foods that protect us and energeticos, foods that give us energy.) So, after explaining what each group consisted of I handed out all these pictures of different foods and they had to walk up to my good friend Sergio and place them in the correct category, and the prize for placing it correctly of course was an oatmeal raisin cookie. They really seemed to enjoy it and I was very relieved. I put up the recipe for the cookies and told them I would leave it up until next week since most of them didn’t have a pen and paper with them. The following week I decided to make a quinoa salad since I was talking about protein and it is a complete protein that is delicious (I think if you have heard the song I wrote about quinoa then you know how much I love it). I tried my best to convince them that they could eat at least one meal a day with quinoa instead of rice (which is eaten in heapfuls at every meal) but you know, that’s the custom so it’s hard to break out of that. The next week they learned about vitamins and minerals, played another game and ate some more cookies, peanut butter ones this time (full of protein)! I just love the irony of talking about nutrition and handing out cookies at the same time. But they’ve never eaten these types of things before and they really like that I give them the recipes so they can make them. Everyone wants to know what else I can make. They invite me over to their houses to make soy milk and pumpkin pie, so it’s been a great way of getting to know people and integrate into my community. This week pizza!

Besides my Betty Crocker activities I have been lucky enough to get to know a little more of Ecuador and the volunteer community here. Unlike in Bolivia, we don’t have regional offices, there’s just the one main office in Quito. I think the regional office thing was something that Bolivia actually had right, it was a way for volunteers to have resources close by, get free books and materials to use in site and it was a way to meet up with other volunteers since everyone had to go into the regional city at least once a month to get their paycheck. Here, we just have cluster cities, where our mail is sent and we are supposed to get our money and do our shopping if we don’t have things available in our sites, but there is no office, no library, all supplies are mailed from Quito. But the cool thing is that since volunteers don’t all meet up in the city at once they travel around and visit other volunteers in their sites more. Visiting volunteers in their sites was one of my favorite things about PC Bolivia, too. It’s always great to see where other volunteers live and work. You can talk about projects, share resources and also provide much needed emotional support, just being able to vent in English is always appreciated. So my Santo Domingo “cluster” had a little getting to know you weekend in Mindo, which is a beautiful little town known for its excellent bird watching. I have to say there are some very lucky volunteers in PC Ecuador. Of the sites I’ve seen so far they are all beautiful, with hiking, waterfalls and amazing views. Ecuador is one of the greenest places I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m just constantly in awe of how alive and vibrant it is here. I went swimming near a small waterfall on the way to Mindo at the site of another volunteer and I just thought “Will I ever get tired of doing things like this? Will there ever be a point where I say, okay, I’ve seen enough amazingly beautiful things, I don’t need to see anymore.” And I think the answer is a definitive no, it would be impossible for me to stop wanting to experience things like diving into the freezing cold water next to a waterfall. In Mindo we went hiking to a 70 meter waterfall, and Kasia and I struck our best senior yearbook poses. It was a great weekend that made me feel extremely lucky, for once, that I am in Ecuador. Given the circumstances (of having to leave Bolivia) I was feeling very apprehensive about my decision to start again somewhere new. It would have been so easy just to stay in the US, it was so hard to leave everyone again, and for what, I think as I stare at myself in the mirror. But in PC things get exponentially better the longer you are in the same place. You have to work on it, but you just come to appreciate the little things more. I feel so fortunate to be in Ecuador, and to be in a site where I actually have Ecuadorian friends (ranging in age from 6 to 86) and while the volunteer community here is definitely different than what I had in Bolivia, it is still a source of support and comfort knowing that people are just a phone call or a text away.

The other big event here was of course, Thanksgiving, also known as my favorite holiday. My mom had the great idea to have Thanksgiving in the states before I left in October, but even though Fakesgiving was a lot of delicious fun with family and friends, I still wanted to celebrate here. Most of my fellow transferees from Bolivia were going to be in Loja for Thanksgiving so on Wednesday night I got on a 12 hour overnight bus and headed to Loja to join them for the festivities. It was so great to see my Bolivians (as we are known here) and meet some more of the Ecua volunteers. The festivities were complete with a football game at the stadium in Loja and a huge pot luck dinner at a vols house, which incidentally looks like a spaceship and has a disco in the building, with this bizarre robot speaker system. Here we are doing a “Bolivian” (i.e. no smiling) picture with the robot. All the food was delicious and before leaving at the end of the night people scavenged for whatever was leftover until basically everything was gone. Here is the before and after:

The next day some of us headed to Lindsey’s site to learn about her paper project. She is working with a women’s group that has a recycled paper business that was started by another PCV in 1998. The project is pretty successful and they make a really beautiful product. It was helpful for me to see how they were organized, what kind of equipment they use and what kinds of products they were making, how much they charged, all the important stuff so that I could show the women in my community, “see, it can work, we can do this too!” I of course bought lots of stuff to show them and also because they make really nice cards and books and well, Christmas is right around the corner. We stayed close by in Vilcabamba, a town that is supposed to have the “ideal conditions for human life,” there are lots of people over 100 years old who live there, they say it’s either something about the water, or the Vilcabamba brand cigarettes that they make there. Who knows? It was a really beautiful town and we stayed at this gorgeous hostel, where I slept better than I have since getting here, for 9 bucks a night. They have a restaurant that serves what is probably the best food I’ve had in Ecuador so far. On Saturday we did a 3 hour hike around the mountains of Vilcabamba. I thought it was one of those leisurely let’s go hike to that waterfall kind of hikes but then Megan informed me that all the trails here had a rating and it was rated a 4 out of 5 in difficulty. Well, no big deal, I did just hike up Wannu Pichu and I love hiking, I can handle it! So, I pretty much felt like I was going to die for the first hour up. I choose to believe that I am not as out of shape as I appeared and that it was the altitude and heavy Thanksgiving dinner that was affecting me. After the hardest part was over I felt a lot better and then it was just about enjoying the gorgeous views and not falling off the extremely narrow trail. I felt a great sense of accomplishment when we finished and celebrated by eating Mexican food in town, still in our sweaty hiking attire. On Sunday it was back to Loja, where most everything was closed of course, and I got on another 12 hour overnight bus which made no stops for bathroom breaks and was way more crowded than the bus coming down. I got into Santo Domingo early in the morning and then headed back to site. It felt good to be “home” and have my Ecua friends ask me about my trip and tell me they missed me.

While I was away the church that I sometimes go to with my counterpart’s family had their anniversary celebration and apparently the larger church in Luz de America was having their celebration that coming weekend. A group of people from the community were going to perform a dance there, which they had just performed that past weekend, where they wear ropa de viejos (old people clothes), put pillows and balloons underneath to give themselves big butts, stomachs and hunched backs, and wear masks and wigs. Viviana asks me if I want to be a part of the dance. Of course I want to be a part of that, who wouldn’t? So we have a couple of rehearsals where we practice the “dance” which just consists of wearing this ridiculous clothing and dancing as absurdly as possible. For the finale we dance to this abuelo song and act like old people and we’re supposed to fall down at the end. So when Saturday comes we all have our costumes ready, mine is a long black skirt with a black top, Joker mask and shiny wig, and we pile in the back of Jorge’s truck to go to Luz de America. There must have been like 30 people in that truck, it was packed. We get there and wait for the mass to end and the performances to start. There are a few dances that go on before us so we go to the truck, aka our dressing room to get changed. Marlon, Daniel, Juan Daniel and Paula are all cross dressing, which seems to be pretty common here and the boys seem especially enthusiastic about wearing skirts and having balloon breasts. The highlight of the evening is definitely when this 15 year old kid from my town, who was going around feeling up people’s balloons, pinches my boob thinking that it is fake and then gets so embarrassed that he can’t even look at me for the rest of the night. I don’t think either of us are going to hear the end of that for a while, everyone was hysterical. We had practiced the dance to these 4 specific songs that were all cut together and burned to a CD by Karina, but when we get there they can’t find the CD, of course, so we end up performing to different music, except for that abuelo song at the end, which incidentally I’ve heard over 100 times since my neighbor has the same 10 songs on loop everyday. The dance goes over well, people laugh and we look like idiots, a good time is had by all. We go back to the truck to change and then watch the celebratory fireworks which culminate in the burning of a tower that then reveals a picture of Jesús de Gran Poder, the name of the church and congregation that the church in my town is part of. I have to say I was pretty impressed by the fireworks, and the Jesus thing was a really nice touch. Then we get back into the truck and head home flying down the windy highway and then slowly down the dirt road of my town, recounting things that just happened. Didn’t Marlon look good as la secretaria? Remember when Paul accidentally felt up Michelle? That was so funny!

I’m sure this doesn’t really come as a surprise to anyone but I love Ecuador.

Michelle vs. Nature

2008-12-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

At first I was worried about living alone in the campo, until I realized that I was far from alone. An abundance of nature’s creatures inhabit my living space and I’m learning to coexist with them, more or less. My house with its sizable gap between the tin roof and cement walls provides a nice resting place for birds. They perch there and fly through the beams and then out again. Once, a hummingbird got caught in between my window and the curtain. Those things flutter around so fast that I thought it was going to have a heart attack and drop dead on my windowsill and the last thing I wanted to have to deal with was a dead hummingbird so I opened the curtain and then hit the ground as if there was a drive by. The hummingbird found its way out and Marisol told me that it meant I would be getting a visitor. There’s a nest of birds in a hole in the front of the house outside which I see no reason to disturb, there’s enough room for all of us. The birds appear early in the morning, singing as birds often do, making me feel like an Ecuadorian Snow White, except I don’t think Snow White had to clean bird poo off the walls of her cabin in the woods. And speaking of poo, there were the strangest droppings in my bathroom (not mine). I couldn’t figure out what they were until one night when I was in there and I see a bat hanging upside down from a wooden beam above the shower, directly above where I usually encounter the droppings. There’s nothing like peeing in the middle of the night and worrying that a bat is going to come flying at you mid-stream. So far that’s only happened once and it just kind of fluttered around the ceiling and then I got the hell out of there.

Another creature I encountered in my bathroom is this tarantula that was kind of just hanging out on the wall for a couple of days. I named him Hank and I had no problem with him except for when he would move as I opened or shut the door. “Just chill there, Hank. No need to get excited,” I would say. Each day he moved down a little lower on the wall and I was getting tired of having to run in and out of my bathroom so when he finally reached the floor I took the broom and flung him into the backyard. When I told my neighbors about it they told me that those spiders are poisonous and I should have killed it. Sure enough the next day I’m walking through the back door of my house and I feel something fall on me, I look over and on my shoulder is a tarantula. I of course freak out, take my shirt off and throw it across the room. Then I get the broom and smush the tarantula until it’s dead. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Hank, but perhaps Hank’s scorned lover or mobster uncle, who knows, that thing came out of nowhere.

The worst of the worst are the ants because they are just everywhere and they are almost impossible to get rid of. My house is not messy because I have a cleaning ritual every morning and I sweep the house so much that I created a specific playlist for this activity. Still, the ants march on, in their bizarre lines from the counter and up the wall, crawling on the toaster and the stove, until I start cooking and they all scatter frantically. I’m going to make an aji (hot pepper) and onion insecticide and spray it around the house and see if that helps. I want to start composting in my backyard and I would like to start doing worm bins but I know the ants are going to be a problem. Plus the chickens eat all my kitchen waste anyway.

Ah, I suppose that brings me to the roosters. Ecuadorian roosters, compared to the time-of-day-challenged Bolivian roosters that I became accustomed too, are pretty accurate when it comes to their crowing. Ecuador, unlike Bolivia, kind of has it’s shit together, for lack of a more culturally sensitive term, and this applies to their roosters as well. I know exactly when it’s 6am without looking at the clock, not just because it starts getting light at that time, but because the roosters start going and then, right on schedule my neighbors start playing music or the radio loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. The strangest thing is, it almost sounds like the roosters are having a dance party. It’s like they’re singing along with whatever Ecua music is blasting and I can picture them doing a rooster soul train in my neighbor’s backyard. I turn over in bed and go back to sleep with visions of break-dancing chickens in my head.

At night, because the lights are on, all sorts of creepy crawlies enter the house. For the most part I let them be as long as they don’t get in the way. I killed a moth that was the size of a bird and felt horrible afterwards, so now I mostly just fling things out of the house with the broom. I have seen some adorable little frogs hopping around the bathroom but so far no snakes, although I know there must be snakes in this area and with the rainy season starting everyone keeps asking me if I’ve seen any which makes me feel like I’m going to have a snake encounter pretty soon. I went to the snake museum in Quito so that I would be able to identify the poisonous ones. The Med office offered us emergency snake bite kits to suck out the venom if we wanted to have them, “just in case” but I don’t think they really work. There are some really cool looking bugs here too, like giant rhinoceros beetles and these leaf bugs that don’t blend in very well inside the house. I’m definitely adapting and learning to coexist with the “natives,” they are just a normal part of everyday life for me now. I have to say, I’ll take birds and bats over the cockroaches and mice I had to deal with in New York any day. And speaking of creatures you wouldn’t want in your house, here’s a picture of Christian and Daniel (two of my besties in site) with their pet armadillo:

Yeah, I was pretty flabbergasted myself.

My house is a very, very, very fine house

2008-11-04T14:09:00.001-08:00

All this and more! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rent a house anywhere for $40 ever again in my life. The previous volunteer picked the color scheme: olive green outside and peach inside. Pineapple plants and my neighbors

My new backyard

The Barbie blanket is just a loaner, the 101 Dalmatians mattress is all mine

Dig the retro 70s curtains, hand sewn by yours truly

Oh…hello, there

Dining area…still needs some work

The kitchen gets a lot of use

And there’s a whole other room that I don’t know what to do with, although the possibilities are endless. I’m thinking it could be an exercise room, hammock room, storage room, guest room, or perhaps all of the above. I’m still taking suggestions…

Going Coastal

2008-11-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

My Peace Corps part 2 do-over adventure started in Quito with a blessedly brief week of orientation. Me and my 10 fellow Bolivia evacs got a run down of all the basics: safety and security, Ecuadorian culture, some language differences were cleared up, new slang and pick-up lines learned, we met all the staff, got a tour of the office, and in between all the meetings there were abundant coffee breaks with lots of yummy snacks. I have to give it to Ecuador, they definitely trump Bolivia when it comes to food considering that they actually use seasonings and the food has flavor. It’s also so much more developed in the cities, there are so many American chains and the supermarket, which is called “Supermaxi” has almost everything you could want. There’s even a “Megamaxi” but I wasn’t quite ready for that, the same way I wasn’t ready to go to BJs when I was in the States. While I was in Quito it felt kind of strange, since everything was so accessible and they use the dollar here so it was almost like I was still in the States. Ecuador is definitely more “Posh Corps” than Bolivia was and it made me realize that Bolivia really is a unique place nearly untouched by American commercialization. It made me sad to realize I wouldn’t have that again, but also appreciative and happy that I got to experience it while I could.

So after our orientation was over we got to take a field trip to the “Mitad del Mundo” or Middle of the World. Ecuador is of course so named because it is situated on the equator and they’ve made a whole tourist trap town out of it. We took lots of pics by the equator line, although supposedly it’s about 5-10 meters off of where the equator actually “is,” I mean, that is if an imaginary line can actually be anywhere. Then we headed back to the PC office for our own little swear-in ceremony. The ambassador was there and she made a brief speech, we got new certificates (I’ll add it to my collection) and then had snacks and chatted, basking in the glory of once again being official volunteers. We had the weekend free before heading off to our sites on Monday (exactly a week after arriving in country). Some other volunteers were in town to take the GRE so that Saturday we all went out Quito style to celebrate. I have to say, Quito night life is actually decent, when compared, as everything is for me, to Bolivia. They played really good dance music all night and not once repeated a song, amazing!
So on Monday I was off with my ridiculous amount of luggage and a general idea of how to get to my site. I knew a couple of volunteers in my “cluster city” as they call it, were going to meet me at the bus station. The only bus to my site leaves at 12:30pm and I wasn’t going to make it so we went and got lunch and then Clay and I were left to figure out how to get to my site. In typical PC do-it-yourself fashion we went to find this restaurant that was owned by a woman in my town. Turns out that she no longer has that restaurant so I called my counterpart’s wife and she sent her brother in a car to pick me up (I had made it as far as the entrance to my site, but the only transportation at that time was on moto and that is a big no-no for PCVs, plus I had all my luggage with me. My counterpart Eddi is related to most of the town and everyone is incredibly nice. Viviana, his wife helped me clean my house, buy all my furniture, and she bargained to get me the cheapest prices possible because things are definitely more expensive here than in Bolivia but we still get paid the same. I couldn’t move into my house for a few days so they had me stay in their bed while they slept in their son’s room on an extra bed. Viviana fed me everyday, preparing delicious vegetarian meals when she found out I didn’t eat meat. It’s very typical here to be served chicken when you go to visit someone or for a special occasion and I’ve had to explain that I don’t eat chicken, which is pretty shocking to them and pretty hard to do when they’ve got the bird plucked and prepared and ready to cook especially for you. But they’ve been very understanding in preparing other food and now that I have my own kitchen I plan on sharing some good vegetarian dishes with them as well.

So my site, first of all it’s in the tropical campo (countryside) about an hour from Santo Domingo, and is about the same size as my site(s) in Bolivia. Ecuador is divided into 3 parts, the Orient which is basically jungle, the Sierra which is mountainous, and the Coast. So I am considered to be part of the coast even though the beach is about 2 or 3 hours away. My site is filled with pineapples, bananas and yucca. I basically eat some type of banana in some form at every meal or in between meals. I think at the end of my time here I will write an ode to the banana and enumerate all the ways it can be eaten. As far as work goes I’m meeting with the town’s “socios” (leaders in the community) to discuss the work possibilities. There was a volunteer working here for about 2 or 3 months but she hurt her knee and had to be medically separated. People here like to talk about her a lot and even though she is Pakistani and based on what I’ve heard completely different from me in almost every way, people sometimes call me by her name. It’s okay, I’m still in the settling in phase where you don’t quite feel like yourself, partly because there is no one who knows who you are. But little by little I get more comfortable here and people are getting to know me. After the experience in Bolivia I’m finding it hard to make long term plans. It’s like I’m scared that if I start planning things again it’s going to be taken away again. I’m really just trying to build the kind of relationships that I couldn’t have in Bolivia because of circumstances beyond my control. I like having my own house where I can have visitors and cook and goof around with the constantly curious children who come by. Starting over was even harder than I anticipated but I feel really lucky to be here because the people I’ve met, both Ecuadorian and the near-by volunteers, are incredibly helpful and supportive and I would be completely lost without them.

So that’s where I’m at for the moment: in my little house in the campo, fighting off the constant invasion of insects, visiting with my neighbors, watching telenovelas, going for long walks in the campo and text messaging other volunteers. It’s a strange life…but it’s all mine.

the most touristy thing you can do in Peru

2008-10-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

So before coming home Natalie, Yoli and I decided we deserved a little vacation so we went to Machu Pichu for a few days. We got to climb Waynu Pichu, which only 400 people a day get to climb (two groups of 200). The top of the mountain has a great view of the ruins but even more impressive are the natural mountains scapes, especially that early in the morning with the clouds rising over them. I couldn't walk down stairs for two days afterwards but it was so worth it! Here are just a few of the hundreds of pics we took:

this is Evita, this is the end

2008-10-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

The first consolidation, aka Consuelo Uno, was basically a really good time. We had all the volunteers together at a swanky resort in the middle of nowhere Santa Cruz. We had meetings and "open spaces" to talk about how to be more effective volunteers and a lot of good advice was shared on projects and coping with volunteer life. In between these meetings we would jump in the pool and swim for 15 or 20 minutes and then run back to have another meeting. There was even a swim up bar at this place, and as some of you may know it has always been a dream of mine to swim to my alcohol. Other highlights included the All Vol Ball, which was a drag themed dance party. I have to say, PC volunteers know how to commit when it comes to theme parties. Overall, the mood of this consolidation was optimistic, as in we're not going anywhere and everything is calm. The vote happened and there was no reaction so we were sent home a few days later. Ironically, while at consolidation we heard about the Georgia volunteers being evacuated to Armenia because of the war with Russia. This was very difficult for our new Country Director who had just been the CD for Georgia. She was dealing with a lot, worrying about the safety of both her old and new volunteers. Bolivia even offered 5 spots to transferring Georgia volunteers and we were all so excited to get new volunteers, but since just a month later we were being consolidated and evacuated as well, those volunteers never came.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the month between the vote and all the crazy political stuff that led to our second consolidation and evacuation I actually did manage to get a little work done and even get settled in to my new site...just in time to leave. I started teaching environmental education to the 1st/2nd/3rd grade class, but really that class was whatever I wanted it to be and the kids were very receptive. In the 4th/5th/6th grade class we worked in the garden and I also started teaching English (naturally). My counter-part in the women's group was really enthusiastic about everything and we started having meetings with the women about what they wanted to learn. We started with a knitting class, which was kind of boring so we talked about doing something more physical like exercise/dance class. Oh I had such great plans to teach cholitas the latest moves from the US of A.

The Tarija volunteers had our Project Development Workshop with our counter-parts where we gave our presentations on our sites and learned how to write a project. Right after this is when things started getting bad in Bolivia. Most of the volunteers couldn't get back to their sites because of road blocks so PC told them to stay in the city. There was a major gas shortage happening and I paid double what it would normally cost in a taxi to my site but I had to get home for classes and this water meeting in my site. So while I was in site, the volunteers in the city were keeping me updated on what was happening in the city. Strikes and protests were increasing and so was violence. The hotel we stay at in the city is right across from a government building where students had protested before. We've seen them break windows, set fires in the doorway, burn tires in the street and throw firecrackers in through the broken windows. Apparently the students took over the building and were staying in there and some cell phone companies had their towers destroyed so we were on EAP alert phase. During this phase my friends were telling me that I should pack my stuff and get ready to leave but I didn't listen. Things were so calm out in the campo, work was continuing as normal and no one seemed worried about an impending civil war or anything like that. Next thing I know, Glenda is calling me telling me that we are in consolidation phase. I call PC to confirm this and my boss Pepe tells me that yes, I do need to get to Tarija by tomorrow morning even though there is NO transportation at all from my site into Tarija. So I talk to Estefania (host mom) and see if I can get a ride to Glenda's site in Don Pedro's truck. He agrees to take me and I hurriedly pack up all my belongings. Something told me that this time it could be for real so for the 3rd time in as many months I packed up everything and tried to prepare myself for the reality of leaving again. I got to Glenda's site and her host dad drove us to Tarija because we weren't sure if we would be able to get transportation with all the strikes and lack of gas. We got into the city that night and PC was still unsure about what they were doing with us. All the other volunteers had already been consolidated to Cochabamba but the Tarija airport was closed so we couldn't get there. Instead they had us leave at 5 the next morning to travel to Bermejo. We were going down in taxis of 4-5 volunteers and the people who hadn't been able to pack had a chance to pack some of their stuff. We finally got to Bermejo and were waiting around the hotel for further instructions. We talked with the Country Director over the phone several times and finally she told us that we would be flying from the Bermejo airport to Cochabamba to be consolidated with the other volunteers. I didn't even know Bermejo had an airport but sure enough...

So we get to the airport around 6 am for our flight and we are waiting around for about an hour. The next thing we know we hear the almost deafening propellers of a C-130 military plane landing and we gather up our luggage and board with the propellers going and all...very dramatic. Half-way through our flight we find out from the crew guy that the plane was stopping in Cochabamba to pick up more passengers and then it was flying to Lima, Peru. So that was how we found out we were being evacuated. Since there were no commercial flights and PC had chartered this former anti-narcotics military plane to fly us out of Bolivia we couldn't actually fit all 113 volunteers on the plane. So some remained in Bolivia and were flying out the next day. It's okay, they got taken to a very swank dinner paid for by Kathleen, our CD. Meanwhile, we were taken to this weird vacation resort center that looked like a 70s rehab center and over the next few weeks came to feel more and more like a prison. Until all the volunteers arrived we couldn't let anyone know where we were. When they finally got there we greeted them with a Bolivian style bloqueo, we blocked the entrance to the "vacation resort center," blasted Bolivian music, passed some drinks around, sang, danced and Lebo, John and I sported the Bolivian flag to show love for the country we had left behind. Earlier in the day we had found out that the PC Bolivia program was being suspended and that we would not be allowed to return. This was a completely bizarre/surreal experience as the info was related via Kathleen over the phone to Bill who repeated what she was saying to all of us. Life just drained from people's faces and the shock and disbelief was tangible, even for those who had seen this as the inevitable outcome.

The entire evacuation was like a horrible dream that you couldn't wake up from. It's something that I've dealt with since making the decision to transfer to Ecuador, and not something that can be fully explained here. The staff of PC Peru, PC Bolivia and the team that came from Washington tried their best to make a bad situation as bearable as possible. There were lots of paperwork and medical tests and all the big life decisions to make so not a lot of time to dwell or to get closure. There were so many plans made and left unfinished. There were so many good-byes to say in such a short time, everyone going off on some new adventure. Some volunteers returned to Bolivia, for work, to say good-bye or to get their dogs. As a transferee I couldn't enter a country with a travel advisory but I truly hope that Bolivia can heal itself and that I can go back and travel through the country that I once considered my home.

Right now I'm looking ahead to Ecuador and the year of work I have committed to. Once again I'm starting over and once again the challenge will be great. This whole experience has taught me how adaptable I am as a person and really there's no reason to stop now, because hell, I'm just getting started.

Yes we can.

Welcome to the super SUPER campo

2008-08-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

My time in Cochabamba was spent eating at all my favorite restaurants, seeing the new Batman movie, twice, meeting new volunteers/catching up with those I hadn’t seen in a while, hanging around the office trying to be useful and impatiently waiting for news of my new site. After what seemed like forever but was actually only a little over 2 weeks of waiting in Coch I got a site change to a very small Northern Tarija town. The transition from my sub-tropical paradise to a valley desert was as difficult as I expected. I knew that no matter what my new site was like I would be disappointed because it wasn’t my old site. Plus I barely had a week to settle in before leaving for our project meeting and “All Volunteer Conference:” location undisclosed. Despite the strange timing I moved in and even unpacked a bit although it seemed a bit pointless with all the political stuff hanging over us right now and having to pack again for this week long conference. But I’m really trying to see all the positive aspects of being moved up to NoTa and I will list them now so you can share this view with me: okay first, NO MOSCOS, so I won’t constantly look like I have a terrible case of the chicken pox, also, this is the desert so it’s dry which means my clothes and everything I own won’t get moldy in the summer the way it does in SoTa because of the insanse heat and humidity, plus, there’s no malaria threat so I don’t have to take malaria meds anymore and my liver is surely going to thank me for that in the years to come, there are 2 volunteers who live super close to me and since they are also AG volunteers we can collaborate and share ideas and projects and I’m closer to the city so I can actually see more of my Tarija crew more regularly, and finally, this is my backyard, so yeah, I really can’t complain too much can I?

So I went from Papayaland to Grapelandia. I’m pretty much in the middle of Bolivian wine country, which is going to be amazing come March when it’s time to harvest. So my last site was pretty campo and pretty small but the NoTa site is even more so. I’m talking about 80 families dispersed over several miles of nothingness, the school has a total of 30 students with 2 teachers who each have 3 different grades in their classrooms. It’s so spread out that I’m lacking that real sense of community. The women’s group even wants to have separate groups, one up by where I live next to the school and the other further down by where my counter-part lives. I don’t mind having 2 groups but I’m definitely going to need to get a bike to cover the distance between them. They also want to learn marmalade, there are peaches here and tomatoes and I’d really like to start expanding on that, I’m thinking sun-dried tomatoes could go over really well in the Eco Sol supermarket in Tarija and in some of the snazzier restaurants. After the All Vol Call is over and I return to site (ojala!) I will start teaching in the school and working with them on their school garden, which is pitiful right now. I would love to start some worm bins at the school to improve the sandy soil and since the kids have pretty much nothing to do in the afternoons I was thinking of starting an Eco club or school newspaper, I mean, something, anything because having my host siblings just sitting around staring at me all afternoon until I teach them a new card game or something is just driving me crazy. There are 5 kids in the house, 4 boys and one girl (ages 14, 12, 10, 8 and 2) and yeah, they’re pretty much awesome except that they look at me like I’m a total freak or zoo exhibit or something. I taught them a whole slew of card games and how to do cat’s cradle and thus we were entertained for the week but they need a whole lot more stimulation out here, it’s so empty and besides their farm chores (they have cows, pigs, goats and a horse) they don’t have a whole lot to do. When the sun goes down, forget it, there is no light outside, I’ve never seen a town so dark at 8pm. The blanket of stars covering the sky kind of makes up for it though, and just darkness with the mountains in the distance, it’s actually quite surreal. The sunrises and sunsets over the mountains are probably some of the best I’ve seen in my life and they’re not going to get old anytime soon, I can guarantee that. The thing that amuses me the most is that even though I am in the middle of absolutely nowhere and I barely have any transportation that passes through my town or any stores or people I have really good cell phone service. So I am totally within communication range at all time if you feel like, you know, reaching out and touching me…via the phone of course, get your head out of the gutter, don’t you remember those ads…whatever, just call me, but keep in mind I’m usually asleep by 9:00. So even though it’s a change and a bit of a shock I’m going to make it work. Here’s to new beginnings, I hope that this do-over pays off for my new community and me.

Bad News Blog

2008-07-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

My Peace Corps service was going rather smoothly, too smoothly I guess and this feeling of it's too good to be true overtook me when almost overnight my service became a shit storm that I have absolutely no control over. Due to an unbloggable "security issue" I have been forced to change sites. I don't want people to get worried because my safety was never at risk. As you can probably guess from my previous blogs I really loved my site, I don’t know of another volunteer who loved their site more than I loved mine. There was real work and I felt connected to the people and the place. To be forced to leave when I believe the problem could have been rectified with a simple housing change is really upsetting to me. The incident involves the family I lived with and I don't think it's appropriate for the public domain, but I am more than willing to talk about it privately with anyone who wants to know the details. There is a certain air of paranoia and panic associated with PC Bolivia at the moment and I think they overreacted in this case by forcing me to leave my site. Ivan informed me of the decision on a Monday and Tuesday morning we went to my site and packed up all my stuff, settled things with my landlady, I tried to tie up all my loose ends and say a few good-byes but it was all so surreal and I just didn't want to break down into hysterics in public. I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye to the teachers or most of the kids because they are on winter vacation right now. Oscar, the 3- year-old grandson of my landlady was drawing pictures in my room as I packed and he doesn't understand that I won't be coming back. I had to tell the women from the centro de mujeres that I was leaving for a medical reason and explain that I wasn't allowed to come back. They tried talking to Ivan, telling him that they were already used to me and that I was doing good work with them but he just repeated the story about my “medical issue.” It was a difficult day, I felt hollow, sick and helpless. I don’t really know how you define happiness, it’s that vague, elusive and fleeting thing that no one really understands, but I think I can say that I was happy in my site or very close to it. I feel like I had made a commitment to those people, I had started and promised projects, I had so many plans for the next two years and all of it just had to be abandoned so suddenly.

The next day I had to fly to Cochabamba to meet with PC administration and I'll be here until they find me a new site. Pepe, my boss has a few in mind, two of which are in Tarija. I strongly requested to stay in the Tarija department because it is a great place, so tranquilo and the volunteers from my group who are down there have become my family. They are my support system and the people I depend on to stay sane and happy when times are tough and if I have to leave them on top of leaving my site I just don't know what I would do. You have no idea how much you come to depend on the volunteers in your region for support and understanding and I just don’t think my PC experience would be the same in another department. Plus I already bought a Tarija tracksuit and I'd just feel silly trying to rock it in another department. So while I’m stuck in Cochabamba I’ll be working in the office to gather information that my fellow Ag volunteers requested for our in service training (IST) which has been pushed back to August. It’s nice to be able to support my fellow volunteers but I’d much rather be working out in the campo than in the PC library. There are no Coch volunteers from my group but I was allowed to go visit a few of my fellow B-47ers in the Altiplano over the weekend. My friend Garrett (with the killer stash) invited me to Oruro to celebrate his birthday with an ugly sweater party and it was so much fun, definitely the pick me up that I needed. The used clothing selection of ugly sweaters in Oruro was amazing and prizes were awarded for the ugliest. I got to wear not only one but two ugly sweaters over the course of the night because another volunteer legitmatly liked my first sweater, yikes! VAC and PSN (two volunteer run groups) are also having meetings in Coch this week so I’ll be able to hang with them and even sit in on a PSN listening skills workshop (something I’m interested in because I hope to serve on PSN in the future.) Besides my site change there are much bigger problems for PC Bolivia in general. There is a vote on Evo’s Constitution coming up in August and the general stability of the country is in jeopardy. They have canceled B-48 twice and now we aren’t getting another training group until 2009. It’s certainly an exciting time to be in Bolivia but believe me when I say that we are not in danger. If you walk down the streets anywhere in the country or talk to any Bolivian you would know that there is no real possibility of a civil war or violent civil unrest. Will there be strikes, marches, protests, and blockades? Yes, of course, this is Bolivia they have strikes, marches, protests and blockades on a weekly basis, but life goes on and we continue working. The thing that scares me the most is having PC Bolivia closed and having to leave because I already know what it feels like to be forced to leave a place that feels like home. Bolivia has been my home for nearly six months now, which may not seem like that long but I like my lifestyle here, I’m settled and comfortable and I can’t imagine having to go somewhere else. Then again, if we are forced to leave the country I’m ahead of the game because all my stuff is already packed.

Some Bolivians I Know

2008-07-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Karla, one of my most excellent trainers wearing my favorite shirt

(Do fries come with that Shake?) You bet they do Karla!

This is my favorite picture of Rosamel, she looks like a 3 year old gangster running a mandarin smuggling operation through Bolivia.

Rosamel and Sylvia coloring in my room, a.k.a my social life in site

Leidy and Jimena, my landlady´s grand-daughters and my dance partners

Leidy and her brother Kevin in the kitchen

Jimena and Oscar, my other 3 year old shadow

I had to force these kids to smile for this picture.

Some of the women from the centro de mujeres taking a break in the garden

Crooked faced Rocky who lives in my friend Jaime´s site
My favorite graffiti artist in Tarija, only a chick could pull off graffiti in cursive

Okay, I know the Pope isn´t Bolivian but he will be there to greet you when you get off the plane in Tarija

Bolivian sentiments

They Called her “Choltia of the Sea”

2008-06-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

After I got back from Tarija things really started to pick up in my site. June was a tremendous month for Ag. First of all I decided to take a cue from the moscos and just started constantly hanging around the women from the centro de mujeres, showing up at their houses or at their garden, going around with the president trying to get them to have a meeting so we could talk about ideas. And well, like any good mosco I got some bites. First, I made orange-banana marmalade with Doña Eva and Doña Heidi (even though it was only 2 out of the 11 women it was 2 more than I had expected to actually show up and it was a delicious success in my book.) Then we went to the garden and planted a seedbed. My boss had sent me a whole ton of seeds and they are sprouting beautifully. That same day we were machete-aring the land to make way for yet more sugar cane and the women were “cleaning” the debris from the peanut plants by burning the left over leaves. I saw this as a great opportunity to implement behavior change. I told them that they were burning money and that my boss would die when he saw this and I took a picture. Then we talked a bit about composting and how since the land was right by the river and very sandy it could really use some organic material to improve it. Why don’t we make a compost pile here instead of burning our organic waste? So right then and there we started stacking an enormous pile of organic matter. The next week I went back (I now know how to get to the garden on my own and whenever I just show up by myself the women are impressed) and we restacked the pile into a neat rectangle, watering each layer as we went and then covering it. It’s the most beautiful compost pile I’ve ever seen, don’t you agree? Actually, we had so much organic material that I made a second pile and I have great hopes of getting worms from a volunteer in NoTa who works with a university that does worm composting.

Then, I show up at the school for English class one day and see that they are doing a garden. There are a ton of projects going on in my town, generally called “The Plan” and a bunch of people here are working on these projects. Apparently they were supposed to work on the plaza but the cement didn’t show up so they decided to do the school garden instead. At first I was like, why didn’t anyone tell me, but this is kind of how things go around here, we do things by the seat of our pants. Plus they start work at 6 in the morning and I was most definitely asleep. So the next day I woke up at the butt crack of dawn and brought my seeds and people were actually asking my advice on seedbeds and intercropping, since you know, I’m the “expert.” This made me feel better and somewhat useful. And on top of that Don Hector, Doña Clara and Doña Gloria asked me if I could teach them orange banana marmalade and peanut butter, so in the afternoon I went to Don Hector’s house and we made marmalade, they invitared me to fish for dinner and we chatted into the evening. The whole strategy of seeking people out and making my presence known totally worked because now I have people seeking me out and wanting me to teach them, what more could I ask for? Next up on the Ag agenda is peanut butter. Everyone says they want to learn how to make it and I would love to have a ready supply at my fingertips (there is no peanut butter in Tarija!)

In other news, one Tuesday I get a note from Aaron saying that it is his town’s anniversary on Wednesday and that I should stop by and check out the festivities. I asked the teachers at my school that live in his town what the plans were and they said a velada with all the traditional Bolivian dances was scheduled for that night. I debated if I should go or not, after all I was pretty “busy” with English classes to plan and compost to check on. But since anniversaries only come once a year I decided I should check it out. I got the 3pm trufi and found Aaron in his house, kind of surprised to see me a day early. Aaron had recently returned from the States so he didn’t know exactly what the plans were. We confirmed with the locals that the dances were indeed happening that night. Aaron explained that he had originally planned on doing a dance for the festivities but that his partner had only recently arrived from Tarija and that they hadn’t practiced or planned anything. And that’s when it started. I convinced him that there was still plenty of time to practice and that he had to dance. It was only around 5pm and the dances wouldn’t start until 8 or 9. That’s plenty of time; let’s face it you can probably learn any Bolivian dance in about 3 minutes, I said. We went to his friend Blanca’s house to see if she was interested, we convinced her and his original partner Judith that they should dance and then I got roped into it. “You have to dance too, you know.” Okay, but now we had 3 women and 1 man and Bolivian dances are all couples so we had to find 2 more guys. Poor Aaron ran around recruiting while Blanca went around finding us all costumes, because you can’t perform a dance without the right costume. The song we were doing was called “Cholita Marina” which I would translate as Cholita of the sea. I learned the steps easily enough but hadn’t realized that Aaron is a terrible dancer (it’s okay, he admits it) but he eventually got it. Blanca came back with her arms full of cholita wear. This is something I absolutely love about Bolivians, the fact that everyone will lend anyone anything at anytime. All you have to say is “Prestáme” and they do, I’ve tried it on several occasions and it totally works. I tried on a couple of polleras (the traditional cholita skirt) and the classic button up blouse that they wear. I felt and looked ridiculous. Blanca braided my hair with these tassel things that cholitas wear (I need to find out what those things are called) and I really looked the part. I borrowed sandals from Judith’s mom and the look was complete. Aaron wore a brightly colored vest and a white button up shirt. I danced with Blanca’s brother Primo, and Judith danced with the dance teacher Raúl. The 6 of us didn’t go on until 1 in the morning, we were among the last performances which I was grateful for because most everyone was drunk by that point and after we finished they were shouting “otro, otro!” and we got an impressive round of applause. I was absolutely frozen though and we ran back to change and then had some more Diana, which is a drink made from hot milk and Sengani, a grape based alcohol that doesn’t taste like grape at all. This may sound disgusting but it’s not and it was so cold that it felt great to drink something hot.

On Wednesday there was more parading around the plaza, a soccer game and that night there was a dance in the multipurpose room where the town meetings are held. It was a “modern” dance that reminded me of junior high but with drunken Bolivian men lining the walls instead of pre-pubescent boys. There was a smoke machine, laser lights and a band from Tarija playing all the faves: chacareras, cuecas, cumbia, etc. Not bad for the campo. Now, there were some decent looking, young guys hanging out and drinking, but who do you think asked me to dance? Drunk middle aged men who are such ridiculously bad dancers that I actually am laughing in their faces as we’re dancing, convinced that I am on a Bolivian hidden camera show and that any minute someone would pop out yelling “Surprise, you’re on campo camera!” And it only got worse from there. My next dance partner was a 19 year old who looked like he was 12 and was exactly the same height as me. Now, admittedly I hadn’t showered in a week and I was looking pretty campo but come on! I had had enough and after some drunken campesinos started fighting I decided I’d pack it in early, it was only around 1am.

The great thing about Aaron’s site is that he’s been there for almost a year and he’s got some great Bolivian friends who on principle treat me as a friend. They also really want me to cook with them since that really isn’t Aaron’s bag and whenever I’m there they ask me when I’ll be coming back. That feeling of being wanted is really nice when you’re living in a country far from friends and family and I think it’s great to have this network of volunteers and Bolivians that I can rely on. I’ve got work and a social life and I just can’t believe how fast time is going. Before I know it I’ll be back in Cochabamba for the 3-month reconnect where we present our diagnostics and I’ll get to see all my fellow B-47ers and hear all their crazy stories. Speaking of that diagnostic, I should probably be working on it instead of my blog. I’m out.

Good Eats

2008-06-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

I am in love. Not with a Bolivian or even an Argentinean as was expected, but with a Brazilian! When we first met I was a little hesitant, things were complicated and I was worried that I might get hurt but after a while I got used to having him around and things really started heating up between us. In fact, things are so serious that we are living together. His name is Dako and if you haven’t figured it out by now, he is my stove, and this entry is all about food.

So yes, I was afraid of my Brazilian made stove. Once I finally acquired a gas tank and hooked it up I was convinced that I was going to blow myself up somehow. It took many attempts to light it the first time and when I didn’t blow up I felt reassured. The first meal I made was pasta with an oil, garlic and lemon sauce. I didn’t have olive oil at the time so I had to use vegetable oil, but still, I was so happy to have cooked something that it tasted just fine. Thankfully I have acquired olive oil and my Italian ancestors can stop rolling over in their graves. Speaking of travesties against Italian cooking you would not believe what my friend Elliot told me about Bolivians and pasta. I already knew that Bolivians don’t cook pasta correctly, it is usually way overcooked, soggy and sometimes burnt and for some reason they fry it first, just like they do when cooking rice. Well it turns out that just like rice they also cook the water off of it. My jaw dropped and exactly half of my blood curled when I heard that. Pasta does not absorb as much water as rice; you can’t cook the water off of it! Anyway, they mostly eat it in soup or with a little oil as a side along with rice and potatoes; it is never a main feature of the meal. For me, it makes up a large part of my diet and I think I’ve nearly perfected my tomato sauce recipe. I even channeled a 1950s housewife and made a casserole one day. I didn’t even think I knew what a casserole was, but I had this leftover cream of asparagus soup that wasn’t very good and I had to do something with it and hey, it turned out pretty good. A high point in my Italian cooking was when I made pizza in my landlady’s clay oven that she uses to make bread. Even with campo cheese instead of mozzarella and tomato extract instead of my own tomato sauce it tasted delicious and everyone liked it. None of them had tried pizza before and my dueña was convinced that I was making some kind of bread and I kept explaining that yes, there’s dough but it’s more than just bread. I’ve also made pizza in my Dako, which turned out really well and was equally enjoyed by Bolivians and me. I’m also learning to make all kinds of bread which is great, who ever has time to make bread in the states (except for you Jessalynn)? I made tortillas and pita bread so far and would like to give bagels a try…oh bagels…

I thought that my lack of a refrigerator would really limit my dairy options but they don’t refrigerate campo cheese and I think it’s unpasturized anyway and I haven’t gotten sick so while it’s cold enough to just keep it in my room, I do. I am also totally addicted to powdered milk. I was skeptical at first but it’s actually really good. A mug of warm milk with a spoonful of sugar and a piece of bread is a typical campo dinner and it’s totally delicious. Plus, I need milk for cooking and baking so it’s super convenient. It was around the time that I discovered the greatness of powdered milk that I became addicted to Oreos. I had a 2 pack a day habit (4 cookies/pack) for a few weeks but I’m glad to say I’m recovered. It was just the only snack that was delicious and relatively cheap. Luckily I discovered some quality Bolivian dark chocolate that I can get in Tarija and I got some packages from the states with some quality US of A candy (thanks Mom, Jessalynn, Michelle and Vishu for that!) Bolivians especially enjoyed the sour patch kids I got, they were like whoa, first it’s sour and then it’s sweet. Okay, this makes me sound like a junk food junkie but actually I am eating super healthy. Oatmeal almost every day for breakfast, rice and beans, tons of fresh organic veggies, quinoa, lentils and trigo (a wheat grain that is delicious and super healthy, I don’t know why we don’t have this in the states) and so on. The crazy thing is that all this incredibly healthy food is super cheap here. You can get a kilo of flax seed for $1. A kilo of oatmeal is also $1 and Bolivians don’t eat oatmeal the way we do, they blend it and drink it. One volunteer told me how her family cooked oatmeal, then drained it, threw away the oatmeal and drank the water. One time Peter and I were contemplating all the fresh veggies that they sell in the markets and the typical Bolivian diet. Bread and tea for breakfast, soup for lunch, meat, potatoes and rice for dinner and not a vegetable to be found. “Who’s buying all those peppers?” we wondered, could it just be us? Then I remembered that Picay Machu has peppers in it, but still. I’m hoping to have some nutrition and cooking classes at the women’s center, when they’re done constructing it.

As for Bolivian food, well there remains much of it that I can’t eat, although I am guiltily enjoying fish that comes from the river over here. I did find street food in Bermejo that I can actually eat, these papas rellenas, which are bits of fried goodness, potatoes with campo cheese almost like a knish in consistency. The only problem is that I seek them out at every empanada stand and I seem to have a quota and must eat 5 of them every time I’m in the city. But like I said, I’m eating healthy at home so I don’t feel too bad about it. There’s also one empanada lady that has cheese and onion empanadas instead of the ubiquitous chicken or meat ones but she is like the big foot of empanada stands, you think you know where to find her but then she’s never there and then one day when you least expect it you find her again.

One of my favorite Bolivian meals was cooked in the campo in between the river and the women’s garden. They had been watering the potatoes all morning and still had a lot of work to do and no one had brought food or was going to cook. I said I could go back and get food if they wanted so they sent me with this girl named Estella and we did this thing called “mercado” where we went to all their houses and had their kids or whoever was home give us rice, vegetables and plates. We put all the stuff into a huge pot and carried it back to the garden. We started a fire, heated some water from the river and Doña Aleja started peeling and cutting everything in that magical way that Bolivian women can peel and cut, super fast and completely in their hand, it’s really incredible. If there is a Bolivian skill I hope to learn it would have to be that. So we ended up making a pretty tasty soup out of what we had and everyone ate lunch and at the end of the day when we had finally finished watering all the potatoes, we finished off what was left of the soup.

I have to say I’m very proud of how pretty much none of my food goes to waste. With the incredible humidity down here (both hot and cold) I was really worried about things getting moldy and going bad super fast. I usually play 2 games when it comes to food. First, “Will Michelle eat it?” I have to stay my standards on what is acceptable to eat have changed now that I don’t have refrigeration and yet still have leftovers. But if it so happens that something is past due even by my campo standards I play a new game, “Will a chicken eat it?” Whatever food item is in question is thrown into the yard where my dueñas chickens are hanging out and then I watch to see if they will eat it or not. For those of you playing at home, the answer is always yes, a chicken will eat it, and it doesn’t matter at all what “it” is. But now that I’ve started an indoor compost bin I’m playing that game less (yes, I’m that into composting.)

Well, I know you were all dying to know what I’ve been eating so there you have it. Dako and I are very happy together. At times he can be temperamental and I know it can’t last, when I go back to the states he will have to stay here in Bolivia, but we’re enjoying the time that we do have together. My friend Elliot is a hardcore veg and an excellent cook with his very own Dako and he is going to teach me how to make tofu and soymilk and I can’t wait! Provecho!

Speaking of Chicken Related Fun…

2008-06-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

The other week I was helping the women harvest some peanuts when a couple of girls from my 7th/8th grade class invited me to go swimming in the river nearby. I didn’t have a change of clothes on me, but why not, I thought. It was a rare warm but pleasant day to break up the cold autumn days we had been having. Jimena, a tiny 11 year old lent me a pair of shorts with a big rip in the crotch, my pasty white legs covered in mosco bites were on full display, and Mirta lent me a shirt that was basically a soccer jersey. I knew I looked totally ridiculous, but I didn’t care. The water was amazing. It was cool and refreshing and is the closest thing I’m going to get to a beach in the next 2 years so I took full advantage. I felt like a kid, I felt alive and totally uninhibited. I wanted to remember the feeling, the scene, the first impression of being in that place for the first time and this is what I wrote after I returned from that first trip to the river: The view devastated me. The sun scorched earth, the trees lining the riverbank and the land eroded away by the fast flowing water, the endless blue of the sky above the trees, the light seeping through it all, like a river flowing through a desert. So beautiful it hurt to look at, so I turned away, looked down at the dirt path and at the sugarcane fields to the left. Raised my head again to be shocked by the tragic beauty of the landscape. Couldn’t look away again. Breathed in deeply and tried to breath in the view. Felt like I was home, longed for the ocean, the sound of the ocean only. We made our way over the rocks to the salt less water where I was appeased, refreshed, cleansed.

I realized something kind of ridiculous while we were swimming that day. Basically, living in Bolivia is the closest I’ll come to being a rock star. I mean whatever I do these kids want to imitate. If I do a belly flop they want to do a belly flop, if I do a cannonball they do a cannonball. They want to know everything I know: songs, dances, games, what have you. And then once they learn something they can’t get over it. They want to do it over and over again. And the great thing is that it doesn’t matter the age of the kids, they all have this innocent curiosity and excitement. I played duck, duck, goose with kids aged 5 through 13 and they were all really into it. It’s kind of bizarre and kind of awesome. It was swimming with the girls that I got the idea to teach the first graders the chicken dance for Mother’s day. We were dancing on the riverbank, just messing around, Jimena asked me to show the chicken dance to Mariela and Mirta so I did. Earlier that day the first grade teacher had asked me to teach an “American” dance to his class for the big Mother’s day celebration on May 27th. The girls thought it was a good idea and starting talking about how the kids could have their moms pluck chickens to make wings for them to wear. Luckily that didn’t happen. Instead we had wings made out of cut newspapers and red construction paper crests attached with bobby pins to the kids’ heads. They looked so fricken adorable. Since I didn’t have the music to the chicken dance we used this Spanish song called “La Gallinita Turuleca” and since this song is about a chicken that lays eggs all over the house the kids also had little balloon eggs to drop as they entered. I stood in front guiding them and the professor would blow a whistle for them to change to the next move (the dance was modified to be even easier for them.) The timing was all off but I think they did an awesome job and they were definitely the cutest of the day.

Mother’s Day is a pretty big deal here. It seems like the school had been preparing for weeks. Each class performed songs and dances, most of them traditional Bolivian dances with costumes and all. You pretty much can’t have a dance without some specific clothing to go along with it. The 7th/8th grade girls wanted me to teach them a dance as well. We had about a week to prepare and originally I started teaching them a simple salsa step. That got Bolivianized into a very slow, kind of rhythm-less and repetitive motion, it definitely wasn’t salsa. I don’t know how well the dance turned out, it wasn’t what I had originally envisioned, but it was definitely a lot of fun rehearsing with the girls at my house, it gave me something to do in the afternoons. After all the dances the moms played games, decent ones, with prizes. There were musical chairs, a potato sack race, spoon in mouth potato relay, find the coin in a plate of flour using only your mouth among others. My favorite was definitely the one where the women had to race around all four corners of the cancha and finish a glass of something at each corner. The stations had beer, wine, soda and Sengani, which is a grape liquor, and they had to go around twice. Seeing cholitas run in their polleras is priceless.

After the games there was a lunch, which had been cooked by the men of course, and then the real festivities began. There was drinking and dancing from the afternoon on into the wee hours of the night. The teachers, the moms, the grandmas all got wasted. Drinking in Bolivia is a tricky thing because you are invited to a drink (te invito) and then in turn you have to invite someone else, if you don’t you have to drink more. So there was a lot of invitaring going on and a lot of drunk mamas. I was constantly being invited to drink and to dance and as the night went on and people got drunker I kept making up excuses to escape, saying I would dance “en un ratito” or I would leave for a bit saying, “ahorita vengo.” I mostly danced with the women and children. One of the mothers every time she saw me would stumble towards me and say “LA PROFESORA MICHELLE!” At one point she also asked me to be the madrina of her daughter’s first communion but I’m not sure that she’ll remember that she asked me. I’m sure her 6 year old will though. Another woman, one from the group I work with, would constantly grab me just as I was about to make my exit, insisting that I dance one more song. They all seemed to be thrilled that I was there participating in the festivities and I felt like it was important for me to compartir, to share, in the happiness of the day. The advances of some stumbling drunks I could have done without, but I held my own, hell I’m from NY and I know how to take care of myself, plus I really felt like all the women had my back, sensing when I was in an uncomfortable situation and pulling me out of it. When I had had enough of box wine and soda, cumbia music and drunk campesinos I called it a night. It was still early so I left saying I would be back in just a minute. I heard people coming back from the festivities around 1:30am and in typical Bolivian style they scheduled a parents meeting at the school for 7:00am. Not sure how many mamas made it, I´m sure they were all with ch´aqui (hungover.) ¡Feliz día de la Madre!

I guess this is what passes for fun around here

2008-05-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’ll admit it, my social life is a little lacking at the moment. A fun filled Saturday night involves me dancing in my room, sometimes by myself, sometimes with a few Bolivian kids that live in my house or near it. Okay, let’s face it, that’s pretty much every night, I have brought the dance party to Bolivia and I feel good about it. You see Bolivians have a unique way of dancing. They do the old school, traditional paired dances with certain passes and movements assigned to the male and female dancers. They are not complicated dances because, well, despite my belief that all Latin American blooded people were born with an innate sense of rhythm, it turns out that Bolivians are missing this crucial gene. The idea of free form dance is really unheard of here, as is Justin Timberlake. It’s the Cueca and Chacarera and countless other two step numbers, which I enjoy because they’re easy to learn and anyone can do them. Thank god for my I-pod and Shakira (they know who Shakira is here, but I don’t think anyone in my town has seen an I-pod before so I tell them it’s a kind of radio.) I’ve done every dance move I can think of from the twist to the Macarena and they eat it all up. I’m thinking of starting up some kind of weekend dance/exercise/self esteem class for the girls, we could meet in the health post and dance like lunatics. I don’t mind looking ridiculous every chance I get, I love to make these kids laugh.

I had the chance to visit my fellow SoTa volunteer Natalie in her site the other week. (That’s Southern Tarija, yes we gave NYC style neighborhood names to the regions of Tarija, the other volunteers are in NoTa of course, Northern Tarija. B-jo is what we call the city of Bermejo.) The town was having a big anniversary celebration and May 1st was labor day here and they have a big to do about the Chicago union activists who fought for the 8 hour work day. I was real confused because here were Bolivians telling us the history of labor day and it’s US history that I was definitely hazy on. And our labor day is in September anyway and then we’re just selling TVs and back to school supplies so I don’t know. Anyway, the point is we went to this festival where there were a ton of musical groups and traditional dances and food. It “started” at 6pm but bands didn’t start playing until 8 or 9pm. It was absolutely freezing as it has been for the last few weeks, the cold front has definitely moved in from Argentina and it’s not going anywhere. So for hours the Bolivian audience is just sitting there. Clapping politely and what not but no one is dancing. I couldn’t believe it, it was freezing so you would think they would want to move around a bit, but no, they sat there like frozen icicles. I lied down in the grass for a bit with a couple of kids using me as a pillow, I seem to be a comfortable resting spot for many Bolivian children. Natalie, Elliot and I wandered around with nothing to do but eat all night. We had these crepe pancakes and soy milk ladled from a big bucket and some egg sandwiches at about 4 in the morning. Elliot and I also got a drink we thought was going to be wine and soda but turned out to be hot white wine. As if cheap box wine isn’t bad enough, they decided to heat it up. It was nasty but I was cold so I drank it anyway.

The festival lasted all night and into the wee hours of the morning. I just wanted to go to Natalie’s and go to bed but we kept thinking this must be the last band and then we’ll go, but there was always another band. We were huddled around one of the cooking fires when the last band came on around 4:30am. This is when the Bolivians decided they wanted to dance. I guess they had drank enough puro (rubbing alcohol mixed with hot water or soda or some other thing, no joke, rubbing alcohol isn’t poisoned here so people can drink it.) As I stared in amazement at their hypnotically simple movements Natalie’s family finally came over to tell us they were leaving after this song. It was around 5 when we headed back down the highway to Natalie’s house. Yeah, her town is right off the highway, and she is terrified that she will get hit by a bus or truck, especially when trying to ride a bike in the 3 inch shoulder. It makes me very grateful to be out in the sticks.

Incidentally, I found out about this festival from Elliot who had a message delivered to me by a passenger who was on the trufi heading to my town. I was having warm milk with sugar and bread over at Doña Santusa’s that day when we had planted the onions and this lady comes to the door asking for me, I’m not hard to find in this town, obviously. She did the Bolivian hand motion to come, which is the same motion we use to mean go away (I still can’t associate someone with their wrist down waving their hand at me to mean “come here” and not “go away.”) The note was addressed to Mitchelle, la gringa de cuerpo de paz. This is a totally valid way of sending messages to other volunteers. If I wanted to get a message to Elliot and his phone was down or something I can simply go to his taxi stop in B-jo and have one of the drivers give him a note when he goes by his site, they all know who he is and where he lives. It’s just how it is. When I went to visit Aaron I had no idea where he lived, I just asked the first person I saw and she told me. You know the Cheers theme song, “you want to go where everybody knows your name,” well if that’s the case don’t go to some dive bar, come to Bolivia. One interesting trait that Bolivians have is that they have to say your name when they see you because they are acknowledging your presence and it would be rude to not say your name. So everywhere I go it’s a chorus of “Michelle, Michelle, Michelle” or more like Misha, Misha, Misha.

The next day was the big Agricultural festival in Natalie’s site featuring products from her women’s group. It was slated to start at 9am, which was incredible considering the previous night’s activities had barely ended. The women had made some marmalades and even peanut butter which they had stopped making because peanut prices went insanely high. There were all sorts of delicious goodies and we snacked all day long and hung out with Peter and his family who had come down that day. Natalie had a lot of work in her first weeks, getting ready for the festival, which is a project that the previous volunteer started. I finally met with my women’s group and they have some festivals coming up in July and August as well so hopefully we can get started on some marmalades. There is a beautiful building that was being built for the women’s center, but it has no roof, windows or doors and the work has stopped. So we have to write up some kind of project proposal and meet with the mayor to get them to finish it. It would be a great product transformation center for them when it’s done. I have grand visions of ecological ovens and solar panels for electricity. My APCD (aka boss) Pepe came down to check things out and is going to send me a whole bunch of seeds for the women’s garden. There is also an NGO working with the women here and it seems like another great opportunity for collaboration since they share a lot of the goals of the PC AG project.

Back in my part of SoTa we had a little festival called Fiesta de La Cruz. This involved carrying a big cross made of flowers from one part of town to another. They lit candles around the cross and drank a whole bunch of chicha. It also involved a rather, um, interesting game that was like a cross between pin the tail on the donkey and whack-a-mole. So you have a guy and you blindfold him, spin him around and give him a stick. Then he has to go and find this chicken head and give it a whack dead on. At first when the 14 year old that lives in my house whose name is Leidy (pronounced just like lady) explained it to me and pointed out the chicken head I assumed that it was just a dead chicken’s severed head, and well that’s gross but whatever, TIB. Then when the contestant almost hit the chicken head and it moved I got closer to get a better look and discovered that it was indeed a live chicken that was buried in a hole in the ground with just it’s head sticking up through the hole (like when you bury someone in the sand at the beach…and then take a stick and try to hit him on the head.) So yeah, this is what passes for fun in my town. Live whack-a-chicken. Being a vegetarian and feeling naturally inclined against cruelty to animals I was pretty horrified but wasn’t sure how to react. I mean, you can’t really expect people who are treated like they are nothing to treat animals like they are something. It’s evident from the way dogs are treated that even animals that are valued for companionship and protection aren’t worth humane treatment. You get kicked around all day and when you come home you kick the dog to make yourself feel better. That’s how it is here and I’m not here to start an animal rights movement, I’m here to help people not get kicked around so much, to improve their economic and social situation so maybe eventually they won’t need to kick the dog. That’s a lot of wishful thinking on my part but what can I do? When someone finally did manage to bop the chicken on the head they poured some chicha on it’s head and that seemed to be the end of the game and the festival. I don’t know what the fate of the chicken was, maybe the guy who hit it won it as a prize or something, I mean, it’s going to get killed and eaten eventually, I know that, but still…hit the chicken on the head with a stick, this is the best you can come up with?

So now I have assigned myself to be an ambassador of fun here. I’m racking my brain and the internet for every children’s game and song I ever knew. Pato, pato, ganso, a.k.a. duck, duck, goose is already a big hit as is pretty much anything I introduce to kids here just because it’s something to do that’s new and different. So if you were a camp counselor or just remember a lot of fun childhood activities that are easy to translate into Spanish and teach to Bolivians please help me out. Oh, that reminds me, there was this game they played at the AG festival where you throw this half metal, half bone object into a pile of mud and if it lands a certain way you get a point but if it lands another way your opponent gets a point. Seriously, they have the worst games here. Is that too culturally insensitive to say? I mean, I’m not trying to say that horseshoes or pin the tail on the donkey are cultural gems or anything, they probably evolved out of throw the bone in the mud and whack-a-chicken so whatever. The point is that my idea of fun and the Bolivian idea of fun are very much at odds at the moment and I’m trying to do my best to rectify this. Thus the nightly dance parties and trying to reconnect with the simple fun from my childhood. I think I can get a town wide game of Manhunt organized. But how to translate Olly, olly ox in free…?

Roosters: They’re not just for mornings anymore!

2008-04-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

I live in a sub-tropical paradise where you could eat your weight in citrus fruits if you wanted to. Every time I turn around someone is giving me an orange to eat. The dueña of my house gives me 2 or 3 pieces of her fresh baked bread every day, probably the best bread I’ve had in Bolivia, along with avocados and papayas from her trees. This being said it is incredibly hot and humid and the bugs are eating me alive. They have these little tiny bugs that they call moscos and they are the sneakiest little bastards. You don’t even know that they are biting you and the next thing you know your arm is covered with these little red dots. It kind of looks like I have the chicken pox and I know you’re not supposed to scratch them but I have so many on my feet and sometimes you just have to scratch and when you do it feels so good, so wrong, but so good. I started using some repellent and that helps a bit. Plus I retreat to my mosquito net cage at night, aka my bed and I am safe from the moscos. It is amazing how everyone you talk to comments on the heat and the moscos. I’ve had this conversation a million times in less than a week, we could be talking about anything and then inevitably this happens, usually a couple of times in the same conversation:

“There are so many moscos here.”
“Yes, there are.”
“The moscos are biting you.”
“Yes, all over.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Yes, I’ll get used to it.”
“It’s very hot here.”
“Yes, it’s hot.”
“It’s hot today.”
“Yes.”
“It gets much hotter in the summer.”
“So I’ve heard.”

Let’s not forget that it’s fall here. I heard that in the winter it’s very cold, but that it’s a humid cold, how is that even possible? In the summer it is just insanely hot and nobody does anything, you just drip sweat and talk about how hot it is. The good thing about the summer is that it’s even too hot for the bugs to bite you, so at least I won’t have to expend energy trying to swat them away. That’s another thing I do now all the time, swat at bugs whether they are there or not, it’s just something to do. I’ve also discovered that bucket showers are amazingly refreshing. During those extra hot and humid mid-day hours you just need to pour water on your head and it feels great. We have water on a fairly regular basis, it usually cuts out in the afternoon but it’s going strong in the morning and evening. There is a really nice bathroom up here where my room is but no indoor plumbing. The bucket of water flusher works great though.

The one thing that is almost as annoying as the moscos are the roosters. I thought the dogs back in Cuatro Esquinas were bad but that was nothing compared to the chorus of roosters we have here every day. Now I was under the impression that roosters were an announcing the sunrise morning type of fowl, but not these roosters. They crow at all hours of the day and night. The other night I woke up to the usual rooster chorus (much like the dog chorus this is when one rooster starts crowing on one end of town, setting off a domino of all the roosters across the town crowing for a good ten minutes) so I assumed, the roosters are crowing it must be about 5 or 6 in the morning. I look at the clock and it’s only 2am! What kind of ass backwards roosters start crowing at 2 in the morning?! It’s like they’re talking to each other across town and this is what I imagine them saying:
“Hey, is the sun up yet?”
“No, it’s not but I think it will be up soon.”
“Fred, what about over there, is the sun up over on your side of town?”
“No, not yet. Is it up over there?”
“No, not yet, but I think it will be up soon.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be up soon. Let’s keep talking about it because I think people are trying to sleep and we hate it when people sleep, especially that gringa Michelle.”
Plus, my family owns some of these roosters so it basically sounds like they are crowing right next to my window, hell they might as well be in bed with me. I just want to sleep in for once, is that so much to ask? They’re crowing right now and it’s nighttime! Do they think the sun is coming up it just went down! What is the deal?

Coming from the rigorous structure of training to no structure at all is quite a challenge. I have a good foothold in the school and I’m going to start teaching English there next week and I’ve talked with the new director about the school garden. They have 6 types of seeds but I think we should get some more, or maybe some seedlings. It’s pretty much just past the planting season so I’m not sure if I should put stuff in the ground or wait until next March. I’m going to consult Pepe when he visits next week. Other than the school I’ve just been asking around, talking to people trying to get a feel for what people want and what they have. I went to Aaron in the next town, which turns out to be over a 2 hour walk so I’m thinking about investing in a bike or sticking with the public transportation, trufis, trucks that sort of thing when I want to go for a visit. His town is really nice, a booming metropolis compared to mine, like they actually have a finished plaza and most people run some kind of tienda, selling something out of their house. He introduced me to the president of his woman’s group and she is definitely interested in collaborating with my women’s group and I think it will be really great. All the women I’ve talked to are really interested in making marmalade and that’s definitely something I can set up for the near future. This great family that Aaron is close with invited us for lunch and afterwards we went to their orchard to pick grapefruit, mandarins, oranges and tangerines. Then we went back and ate some of everything! So much citrus, so delicious. I had to wait until after 6 to get a truck back to my site because there was a motorcycle race (why?) But it was definitely worth the trip; I met a lot of people, talked about possible collaborations with Aaron and just got a feel for volunteer life from someone who’s already been here for almost a year.

So, what can I say really? Things are slow but you set your own pace. It’s difficult but very promising. I feel lazy and productive. I feel lonely and welcomed. I kind of awkwardly hang around with Doña Santusa´s family and invite myself to do things with them, like planting a whole bunch of onions in their field. This strategy seems to be working for me. I am going with the flow and enjoying the things I can’t do anywhere else, like riding with 30 Bolivians on the back of a truck or eating freshing cut sugar cane. Afterall, TIB (This is Bolivia.)

So Official

2008-04-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

Training finally came to an end with much celebrating and a few tears, as our group of 31 disperses throughout Bolivia. We can now officially call ourselves Peace Corps Volunteers. After 3 months of a fixed routine where almost every moment of our day was dictated by our PC trainers we are now free to make our own schedules, work however we like, live in our communities and just be. We had a wonderful despedida for the host families where they all got certificates and the volunteers also got prizes for training related activities. From the AG group 3 of the 5 gardens won prizes, my group obviously was amongst the winners and here is a picture of our prize-winning garden and our garden winning cake. My group (Rachel, fellow veg and Brandon, the joker) grew some mighty fine vegetables in Doña Carmen’s casa and we shared our prize with the family for all their help. Other highlights include: Pat cross-dressing as a cholita, Pepe, Carla, Andres and Ben performing Viva Mi Patria Bolivia with a special verse relating to our barrios, dancing the Cueca, a traditional Bolivian paired line dance which we had learned in Spanish class that week and Andy and Natalie swing dancing.

The few days we had in the city before swear-in were fabulous, they put us up in a swanker version of the hotel we stayed in when we first got to Bolivia and we all got to hang out and enjoy our last few nights together as a group. When it came time for swear in we were ready, people were decked out and I have to say this group can look pretty good when it wants to. About a million pictures were taken and then it was time for the real celebrating to begin. We had a theme of glitter and glam/fabulousness/all the guys wore ridiculously tight jerseys, so really no theme at all. But the way people committed to their outfits was incredible and it made me love this group of people even more. There were some amazing finds in the cancha (it’s like a Wal-Mart threw up,) including my all sequined 80s style shirt that I found for just 5bs! There was spandex and a blue wig, retro dresses from every decade and the most amazing shoes that Sarah found in the free stuff pile in the volunteer lounge, kind of like Dorothy’s shoes if Dorothy was turning tricks on the corner. Her husband John wore the tightest belly shirt that said “Little Miss Naughty” and they both proceeded to talk in these terrible Staten Island/Long Island accents all night. We had dinner on the PC dime at this buffet place that had a great salad bar and TONS of meat. Literally all night long they walked around with swords of meat of every kind slicing off pieces for those who wanted it. It’s the kind of place a meat lover like my Dad would die for. Cow udder and llama meat, he is so there. We announced superlatives during dinner (this was inspired by the Dundies of “The Office”) and I got most likely to marry an Argentinean, seeing as how I can swim to Argentina if I wanted to, I think it was fitting. Afterwards we actually got to go out dancing and it was so much fun! There is this one really small bar that plays the most random 70s/80s/90s stuff and we just took over the place. After that we went to the “fireman bar,” given this nickname because there is a fire pole you can slide down and we danced to some really good Spanish music. It was a great way to become official as PCVs.

The rest of the weekend was spent saying good-byes. Bill, the training director, invited us to his house for a BBQ and I got to go swimming in his absolutely freezing pool as we listened to records on his sweet sound system (he has an amazing record collection.) The jet setters of Tarija flew down on Sunday and after buying some of the “finest” furniture Bolivia had to offer I loaded up a taxi and headed to my site on Wednesday. Shopping was such a hassle, you have to argue over every price and it just gets to be exhausting after a while. My main purchases were a mini stove so I can cook for myself sometimes, my bed, which was the cheapest one there was, crossing my fingers that it lasts 2 years, and a dinky metal/vinyl ropero for my clothes. More about site to come…immediately above this post.

The Ag kids being silly B-47 Looking Good

Welcome to the Super Campo

2008-04-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

I came, I saw, I drank wine.

Apparently trainees are not allowed to get off a plane here without a group of people cheering them through the gate. As we landed in Tarija most of the current Tarija PCVs were there to greet us. It was a really nice welcome. Tarija is an awesome city, it´s small, it´s clean, it´s safe and it´s the heart of Bolivia´s wine industry (which isn´t all that extensive, but still, it´s Grapelandia!) After a long day of orientation where I got to meet my counterparts for the first time (I have 2, lucky me) we traveled by bus to Bermejo. As it got dark and started to rain the bus seemed to stop every 20 minutes, the 4 hour trip took about 6 hours, but it was pretty cool because it was pitch black but there was a ton of lightning and it gave the trip a really surreal feeling, as if it wasn´t surreal enough to begin with. Also, they started to show the ¨Terminator¨but it cut out half way through, just when I was getting really invested. Anyway, we got to Bermejo around 10pm crashed at a hostel because apparently the only transportation to my site is the one trufi that leaves at 5 in the morning, still haven´t confirmed if there is a later trufi, but everyone I asked said that was the only one, go figure. So almost all the teachers who work at the school, including one of my counterparts in my site have to wake up at 4am everyday to get the 5am trufi.

So we get to the school around 6, I am introduced around to the teachers and then introduced to some community leaders and then I crossed a small river (no bridge, perhaps that can be a secondary project) to the health post where I stayed in the 3 bed room where patients stay when they have patients (nice digs!) It´s a small town and it´s super campo (the country) with only 500 people but I don´t know where they all were. We also saw the room where I will live, it´s probably one of the nicest houses in town, the only one I saw with 2 stories. There is basically one main road where you have everything you could want, the school, the health post, the 2 stores, the one restaurant that sometimes serves food. I was really happy when I convinced Doña Santusa to let me eat lunch at her fine establishment each day of my site visit. She´s a damn good cook and even accomodated the vegetarian thing. Plus we got to watch ridiculous telenovelas during lunch and her family is super friendly.

So I really didn´t know what to do with myself during the day, I didn´t really know anyone so the following day I decided to go to the school and observe a class. The kids are great but they are crazy about learning English. I wasn´t trained for that! However, I did teach 2 English classes during my site visit and they went over pretty well. When I told Aaron (the volunteer in the next town over) he joked that I already had more work than most PC volunteers. I have to say the one thing I love about my site is how much potential it has. Because it´s so small and there is basically nothing there my mind was just racing with possibilities. The health post has a great room where I could have self-esteem, yoga and nutrition classes for the kids in the afternoon. Oh yeah, about the education system here, it is a lot to get used to. The kids are in school from 7:30am-12:00pm, in that time they have breakfast, lunch and 2 recesses. The style of teaching focuses on copying from the board, dictation and memorization. It is so hard to get kids to participate and answer questions, even ones like ¨What is your name?¨ But the kids really want to learn and I have a lot of material on non-formal education and plan on making my classes as interactive as possible. There is also a great spot for a school garden which is my major focus, I will have to start with composting because the rainy season just ended and it doesn´t make sense to plant now.

There is also a women´s group and they were supposed to have their meeting on Thursday but instead my counterpart said we were going to Bermejo to meet with the Mayor (alcalde.) So me and about half the town all piled into this truck and went to Bermejo. Besides the one micro that passes through my town 3 times a day, trucks are the major form of transport. Apparently during the sugar cane harvest there are tons of trucks going to Bermejo so transportation won´t be as big of an issue then. But just thinking about having to buy a bed and then somehow get it to my site along with all my other stuff is really overwhelming. Luckily the current Tarija volunteers are incredibly nice and have already offered their help. I really have some of the best people in my region, which is important because it´s going to get lonely out in the super campo. I mean, I´m not going to lie, that first day was hard, no one knew me and I didn´t know anyone. But by the end of my visit I was feeling really good about everything. Francisca, one of the teachers who works in my site but lives in Aaron´s has already invited me to her house. On the way back from the city (it turned out the town was getting money from the prefecto, that´s like regional governor I believe, to invest in their town´s agriculture, which is sugar cane, but I´m wondering if I can put any of that money towards some of the ag projects I´ll be working on, this is a run on thought, sorry) we were riding in the micro with all the women and kids and this little girl came over and sat on my lap. When I got to my stop at the health post she had fallen asleep and I was like, uh, who´s is this? The next day I saw her at school and she kept calling me tía, which means aunt, it was just so fricken cute. Kids are definitely the key to integrating here.

Oh, I´m already collaborating with Peter, the Natural Resources volunteer from my group to coordinate some kind of watershed management for my town because apparently when it rains a lot the water cuts out, go figure. Yeah, I didn´t shower the entire time I was there and it was awesome. No worries, the hostel in Tarija has an awesome hot shower and I will probably hit that up like once a month (with bucket showers to supplement of course.)

Other Tarija highlights include: a trip to Max Ronald´s, a late night hamburger stand featuring Ronald McDonald´s evil Bolivian cousin; an amazing lunch buffet at a hotel overlooking the city; playing poker in the hotel with matchsticks, clove cigarettes, pieces of dove chocolate and a glass of wine as the ¨chips¨ and just hanging out with my Tarija crew, exchanging stories about our sites.

In other news I passed all my exams and wrote a commitment statement so I think I be allowed to swear in as an official PCV in just a few short days. There´s a postal workers strike here so I haven´t been able to recieve or send any mail. Another day, another strike, this is Bolivia afterall. Speaking of mail, my new address is posted on the side of this blog. Please send me things so that I may eventually recieve them. And speaking of social unrest, keep an eye out for news about the upcoming autonomy vote, happening just a week and a half after we go to our sites...these are some exciting times to be in Bolivia!

You get a site! You get a site! You’re all getting sites in Bolivia!

2008-03-29T07:33:00.001-07:00

So you’ve probably heard the rumors by now that to make our site announcement day special Peace Corps Bolivia decided to get OPRAH to fly in from the States to give us our sites. That’s right, they helicopter-ed her in just to announce our sites. She also gave us all cars.

Okay actually, we had to play a game where you blow a plastic cup along a string and when you reached the end you run over to a basket of chocolate eggs, unwrap it and inside is a little slip of paper with a person’s name and their site, whoever’s site is announced then has to blow the plastic cup and announce someone else’s site. Yeah, I think the Oprah thing sounds cooler too, let’s go with that.

Site announcements: There was so much speculation and discussion in the 4 days between our interviews during tech week and the actual site announcements that everyone thought they had an idea of where people were going. But when it came time for the announcements they definitely shook things up and we had quite a few surprises. I think most people were happy with their sites although a few definitely weren’t. Some got their first choice, while others were sent to a site that for them was a “if you send me there I will go home” site. As for me, I can’t complain because I got my first choice! I was so sure that another volunteer was getting that site (mainly because our program director had told her she was getting it) and I had pretty much come to terms with going to my second or even third choice. I was so excited that I could barely blow the cup!

So about my site, all I know right now was written on a piece of paper and I’ll know a whole lot more after I return from the site visit we have next week. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to disclose the actual name of the pueblo itself for security reasons, so for now I will refer to it as Papaya Land. Why did I want this site? Well mainly because it is a region that produces so many papayas that they don’t know what to do with them! Besides that, I’ll be working with a women’s group, the school, a group of beekeepers and the community in general. It is a very small town, like 500 people small and very campo, so I feel like I’m getting the real deal Bolivia. It is in the region of Tarija (consult your map of Bolivia to see how close I am to Argentina and keep that in mind when you come to visit me!) It is subtropical which means hot, humid and full of bugs, but it was my region of preference so I’m obviously okay with that. Hooray, I get to take anti-malaria medication for the next 2 years! Aside from that this site is going to be awesome, they have never had a volunteer before, which means it’s going to be an even bigger challenge but there are an infinite number of possibilities. I get to lay the foundation and start projects that will hopefully be sustained by the community. I will have primary projects including product transformation (imagine all the things you can do with papaya!), starting a school garden and expanding the technical training of the beekeepers. There are secondary projects that are possible, such as teaching nutrition, English and computer classes at the school.

There are 7 volunteers form my group, B-47, in the region and a few others for previous groups who are nearby. Tarija is 24 hours by bus from Cochabamba so we get to fly for our site visit. One of the volunteers who got a neighboring site in Tarija really didn’t want this region but I’m hoping that after the site visit he will change his mind. We haven’t had anyone ET (early termination) yet and that’s saying a lot for a group of 31 volunteers, but when ET’s do happen it’s usually after site announcement/visit. Our group is really tight and everyone has been working so hard that to see someone go now would be really tough. Plus, since the Tarija volunteers are so far away from other regions they tend to form a support group among themselves so we would really feel the loss of that volunteer. In other semi-sad news my hyper twin, my media naranja, my partner in dance parties and mayhem, Lebo also got her first choice, which is awesome except for the fact that it’s in Sucre and we are really far away from each other. It’s okay though we are going to have tech exchanges and simultaneous dance parties across regions. Plus, her site is comprised of all male Swiss NGO workers, one of whom she will fall in love with and marry. There are also a bunch of Canadian oregano farmers. But don’t cry for me Argentina, because I’m your neighbor and I’m sure to encounter my half-Bolivian, half-Argentinean soul mate as we shop for jeans in Bermejo. If none of that last part made any sense don’t worry about it, I’ve had a lot of sugar today and I’m giddy because I get to visit my site!

Best Tech Week Ever

2008-03-22T12:11:00.004-07:00

The AG volunteers had a whirlwind tour of the Santa Cruz department visiting several of our potential sites and sites of current volunteers. The road was bumpy, the road was long; many hours were spent in the bus with the master Don Roque behind the wheel navigating the twists, turns, dips, bumps, debris and the occasional fording of rivers. Over the nine days of travel our group of 15 trainees, 1 current volunteer, 2 trainers and Don Roque (el jefe) expanded as we picked up other volunteers in each of the 4 cities we visited. Bus time was fun but intense. We were loud, messy, tired, antsy, dance-y. Many bathroom breaks were taken on the side of the road and it’s not very often that you get to pee in a ditch in the dark with your teacher as your look out, but in PC it’s just another bonding experience. The views along the way were amazing, traveling through the valleys you are naturally surrounded by mountains and gorgeous views. Everyone was constantly snapping pictures trying to capture the scenery but it just doesn’t do it any justice, but as my friend Pat said, “A picture’s worth a thousand words right, so a thousand pictures, that’s like a billion words.”

We worked with bees…a lot. Hives were inspected, Queen cells and nucleos were made and transplanted, people were stung, honey was harvested and just about every beehive product you can imagine was consumed: honey, nectar, pollen, wax, propolis, royal jelly and bee larva (full of protein but the texture is awful!) We learned some more about product transformation, we made lip balm, wax for candles and beehive panels, a miracle mix of honey, pollen and royal jelly, which is actually really tasty and of course straight up honey. Bee keeping can actually be a profitable venture and it has been one of the most successful projects of Bolivia’s AG program so that’s why we do so much of it. Besides bees we also worked with a women’s group making peach marmalade and I was in a group that gave a charla to them on basic beekeeping. So many charlas were given during tech week that I coined the phrase “charla high” which is the feeling you get after you’ve given a charla because you were able to communicate in Spanish and now it’s over and you don’t have to worry about it any more. You can also get a “charla high” when listening to a charla where the speakers are obviously pouring their heart and souls into the charla and you are so moved by the experience that you just feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Other highlights include the passion fruit ice cream that we had in Villa Esperanza. The second night we were there we were invited (treated) by the site’s volunteer Armando (who hasn’t shaved or cut his hair since he got here almost a year ago and looks like Jesus, Moses or Papa Noel depending on which Bolivian your talking to.) But anyway there’s just something about sitting outside in a light rain under a passion fruit tree eating homemade passion fruit ice cream that made me stop and realize how lucky I am to be here.

Let me wrap this up before I get too sappy. I wanted to be brief but it was a really full 9 days. Our group was extremely lucky not to have anyone get seriously sick aside from the cold that went around from person to person. EE had some car trouble, NR had some altitude sickness and stomach issues and actually came home 2 days early, but AG stayed strong. Maybe it was all those bee products we consumed or maybe it’s because we’re just that awesome. Although I must say that after 13 hours in the bus on the ride home I was ready to be back with the host fam. So that was tech week: travel mosquito tents were assembled, disassembled and assembled again, many carbs, fried eggs and empanadas were eaten, karaoke was finally sung, showers were rarely taken, and I definitely learned a lot about AG and my fellow volunteers. On Monday we find out where our sites will be, we know most of them were decided during tech week based on our interviews and the opinions of our project director and trainers, but we still have to wait for the big reveal. Some people will be happy, others will undoubtedly be disappointed but this experience is what you make of it, your site is what you make of it and every site has the potential to be amazing. I just want to know and go! I was really hoping to upload some pics today but the internet gods were not smiling upon me and it just didn´t work. As a consolation prize check out the blogs of some of my fellow PCVs, 2 out of 3 of them have pics up on their blogs and you might even spot me in a few of them. The links are on the right hand side of the page. Enjoy!

Cochabamba Training Pics

2008-03-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

The Cuatro Esquinas Gang / Drinking in a field on our last night in Cuatro Esquinas/ Joint Spanish class fun Cuatro Esquinas, my home during training / How many Bolivians can you fit in a van?

Lebo and I seek Christ

Our Christ is bigger than yours Brazil!

High-Fiving Jesus
Jumping for Jesus

We learned to make yogurt one day.
This is Tito with a hose of yogurt, or a
hosegurt if you will.

Another training center lunch full of carbs

Bolivians: MacGyvers of the South

2008-03-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

One thing that PCVs and Bolivians have in common is there MacGyver like resourcefulness. What I´ve learned as a PCV(T) is that everything has a purpose, nothing goes to waste and don´t throw anything out ever...you might need that gum wrapper for something and anyway there are no garbage cans and little in the way of organized garbage pick up (a truck does come by on Monday mornings but most everything gets burned or used for something else.) All the scraps/leftovers from cooking or from the process of making something like quesillo are used to feed various animals, the dogs, cats, pigs, cows, sheep what have you. I was doing laundry the other day and Doña Juana was showing me what to do (it´s all by hand) and it turns out that the plastic from an empty detergent package is just the thing you need to put in the drain with the stopper over it so that the sinks hold the water but it´s still easy to unplug them, ingenious! Washing clothes by hand is actually not that bad, it´s a good upper body workout and in a way relaxing. We have this scrubber brush that works like a champ, it got all the mud out from the bottom of my pants and they were pretty filthy. I dried most of my clothes in the sun but if need be the lines from my mosquito netting also make great clotheslines/storage. The bag for my sleeping bag makes a great laundry bag and my sleeping bag makes a great mattress pad. It all works. My metal pill case worked great as a waterproof wallet during carnival. My friends who didn´t have towels at first discovered that their t-shirts worked just as well. It´s all about using what you´ve got and being adaptable to the situation. It´s actually really fun- think of all the things you could do with an empty plastic bottle! We learned to make these things called tippy-tops which is basically a ¨faucet¨made from an upside down soda bottle, they work really well. They also make really cool bags from the plastic of soda bottle wrappers. I´m hoping to learn how to crochet the plastic, one of the host moms said she would teach us.

By far the coolest thing that Bolivia has recycled are the 1950s school buses which are called Micros and vans which are called trufis and are used for public transportation. They only cost 1.50-2bs/ride and they are the best way to travel. They are pimped out so ridiculously, I will have to post a pic eventually to give you the full effect. They are painted red, white and blue on the outside, and inside they are filled with the most absurd pictures, stickers and posters. Each Micro or Trufi has a distinct personality. Some are plastered with teddy bear stickers, pics of Avril or other random celebrities, ones with WWF wrestling posters, spiderman stickers, barbie stickers, disney characters, lots of Jesus pics, goth posters with a skull gear shifter, fuzzy dice, the works. Also, they are bumpy and crowded, as crowded or more so than the NYC subway. You can not imagine how many Bolivians you can fit in a van, at times more than 20. Everytime I take one I feel like I´m in a clown car, just when you think there can´t possibly be space for another human being here comes 5 school kids and they all get in. It´s so much fun and I´m just glad that I´m short because most of my fellow gringos are seriously cramped when riding in the trufis or micros. One of my favorite micro experiences to date is a quote from my friend Lebo right after we board micro E: ¨Watch out, there´s a chicken behind you.¨

CORRECTION: Last post I said the blockade was because of gas but that issue was resolved, the blockade was actually because the drivers want the road to be fixed (it´s really bad, like they are often driving on the wrong side of the road to avoid giant potholes) and they were promised that it would be fixed but they´re still awful. There have been a few more blockades around the city but no more in my hood.

In other news we have tech week coming up. We will be traveling around to some sites of current volunteers, giving charlas (talks, presentations) working a lot with bees and deciding on our sites. We got the descriptions of all 15 and they all sound pretty amazing. It´s definitely going to be a tough decision but ultimately they are going to match the person with a site where they can use their skills most effectively. We are all going to be doing great work and hopefully everyone is happy with their placement. The next time you hear from me I might actually know where I will be spending the next 2 years! So exciting...til then.

paz

Baby´s First Blockade

2008-02-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

As some of you may or may not know Bolivia is a very politically active country. I just found out that voting is obligatory here, if you don´t vote, you lose your civil rights for up to 3 months. You can not be apathetic about politics here, although as a PCV I personally have no opinion about politics whatsoever. With that said, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before there would be a protest or the famous Bolivian street blockades that I had read so much about. So on Thursday, when I was walking to Andrew´s house for Spanish class I noticed a ton of cars all blocking the main intersection of our town. My first blockade! The taxi drivers were protesting a gas shortage which had been going on in Coch for about a week. It just so happens that this very same day we were going to be taking a road trip to Totora for our technical class. But no worries, our awesome bus driver Don Rocky was able to pick up the Cuatro Esquinas crew at my house and then double back around to where there weren´t any road blocks. By the time we got back from our trip (Friday night) the drivers were in talks with the government to resolve things.

More about the Totora road trip. Each group had their own field trip (environmental ed, natural resources and agriculture.) AG being the biggest group with 15 volunteers we got to travel in the bus with Don Rocky, which of course meant getting the dance party started. We were able to hook up I-pods and as we were getting a little antsy we busted out my I-pod and pumped one of my sweet dance mixes. I hope dancing on the bus is not against PC policy, because it´s really fun and a good workout. The views from the bus were also amazing, we just kept snapping pics of the view but it doesn´t quite capture how beautiful this country is. Driving through the narrow, twisting roads between the mountains I finally realized, wow, I´m here and I´m doing this and it feels great. The trip to Totora was to visit the site of 2 other volunteers, a retired married couple. The wife works in a business that was set up by a previous volunteer making tomato sauce, and let me tell you it is some tasty sauce. It´s spicy and delicious and I bought a big jar of the mushroom flavored sauce to share with my host family, yum. Her husband is still working on starting up his project and is working on gardens and with bees. We stayed at a cheap hostel and explored the town that night (after we had a tech meeting.) There was a traveling theater group of Germans and Bolivians who are also volunteers. We got invited to dance by the stage for the finale and it was so much fun, dancing with all these Bolivian kids and Germans in crazy costumes. AND we started a conga line! So all in all, the dance party was successfully brought to Bolivia.

The next day it was time to work on the respective projects of Millie and Ben. We split up into 2 groups so in the morning I was cooking the pasta sauce and in the afternoon I was working with bees. We chopped lots of fresh veggies for the picante variety which we ate for lunch, (the place where the kitchen is also serves as a cafe during festivals and special occassions) and we learned more about her project, which has a lot of potential since they already have a pretty strong client base. Now it´s all about making it sustainable and capable of being run without a volunteer in the community. After cooking we went over to where Ben works with some bee colonies. I have to admit that I´ve always had an irrational fear of bees so I was a bit worried about this aspect of my service. We suited up inwith masks, jackets and gloves and the smokers that were already lit from the previous group. I got into my calm zone and took a lot of deep breaths as I approached the bees. Oh, by the way, all the bees for honey here are the Africanized kind, aka ¨killer bees.¨ Nabor, master of all thing bee keeping and our teacher showed us how to smoke the bees to calm them down and then how to open the boxes and how to lift out the individual cells. I have to admit, bees are really interesting. I was so fascinated by the process that I didn´t freak out at all! I was lifting out the cells, identifying the cells, and there were bees everywhere! I was so proud of myself! I seriously feel like after doing that I can doing anything!

Well that´s all I have time for right now. It was really nice to go to another part of Bolivia and see what an actual site can be. I definitely would like to go back to Totora and explore a bit more of that area. In just a few weeks I´ll find out where I´m going! Until then, tengo mucho trabaja y mucho para aprender.

paz

La gringita (do there waterballoons?)

2008-02-16T06:19:00.000-08:00

So I realize that it would be more effecient to write these entries ahead of time instead of when sitting in an internet cafe because the clock is running and my thoughts get all discombobulated and I forget things. I just have so much I want to tell you all and it´s so hard to be forced to use this very impersonal outlet. But rest assured if you send me an email or leave me a comment I will respond (eventually.) I want to know what´s going on in your lives too!

With that said let me talk about some of the stuff I didn´t get to the last time around the old blogosphere. Carnival continued in full force. We had a water war at Lebo´s house up the road which was actually fun because we could defend ourselves a bit with waterballoons (globos) and water guns. It´s fine when it´s just water, but there was a roving ¨gang¨of kids who had water with red tint- not cool! Anyway, I was walking home afterwards and was almost even dry when one of the boys from the corner started spraying me with his water gun. This really pissed me off because we had been going back and forth with these kids all day, they had buckets and water guns while we mostly had globos, and walking home I had nothing. I was completely unarmed and I feel like the rules of war dictate that you can´t attack me when I´ve conceded the victory and have stopped fighting. Then there were these other kids close to my house and the mom says to her kids ¨la gringita¨so they all start shooting their water guns at me, like only 2 feet from my own house. So what could I do except use this 3 year old boy as a human shield. That was hilarious and maybe bad form on my part, but obviously during Carnival in Bolivia no rules really apply and they were laughing too so I think it was all right. Being an outsider for this holiday just made it so much less enjoyable for us, because as a gringa no matter how wet you are EVERYONE wantes to get you wet or spray you with foam so it´s a never ending onslaught and when you just want to walk somewhere or watch a parade, you can´t.

We went to Cochabamba on Saturday to see the corso de corsos which is like this giant parade with all these dancers from all over Bolivia in awesome costumes. The military guys all dress as women (the closest thing to a drag show that I´ll get in Bolivia.) When we got to El Prado we were just bombarded with globos, waterguns, foam (it´s kind of like shaving cream that they spray on you.) It didn´t matter if we were near restaurants or vendors, they launched everything they could at us. They nailed this mom who was eating ice cream at a restaurant right in the head, but they were aiming for us. A few of us bought bags of globos, it´s always more fun when you can get in on the action and defend yourself a little. Amy was a baseball player and her aim was dead on. But it was way too much for us, we finally took shelter at a restaurant called señor plato and had some beers, talked loudly, used the nastiest bathrooms ever and paid the 12 year old looking waiter/host/pro-beer opener. We headed to the PC office where a bus was picking us up. We went down a side street where we finally got to see the parade. There were still globos but it was a bit calmer. The dancers all wear these amazing outfits, more suited for NY´s best drag queens. I´m talkig knee high platform boots with bling, sparkle and flash. I´m talking purple, lime green, hot pink, gold and silver poofed out mini skirts and corsets, crowns and septers. The guys wear these really heavy outfits that are ridiculously boxy. The guys from Coch. wore tight black pants with gold trim and they all carried whips. I must find out where in Coch. these guys hang out. So yeah, that was Carnival. A crazy water war and a parade. It was fun at times but I´m glad it´s over and I´m glad they don´t celebrate all their holidays with waterballoons.

Going way back now, I forgot to talk about the big American Superbowl party we had at Pat´s house. His mom hosted nearly all the volunteers and her daughter cooked. It was great, not so much for the football but because it had been a whole day since we had all been together and everyone wanteed to know all about the families, what we were eating, what huge cultural mis-steps we had made. We´re all living with Bolivian families and it´s very different so getting together with other volunteers to talk is so important because you realize that our experiences are actually normal. Every little misunderstanding, horrible stomach problem, or culture shock moment suddenly becomes hilarious when you share it with your fellow gringos. I´ll admit I was worried about connecting with my fellow volunteers at first, I feel like in DC there was this uptight feel to staging and nobody could just be themselves. Now we´re down here in these communities and having each other is really improtant, laughing at ourselves is really important. With Carnival finished we are getting down to business. Four hours of Spanish class in the morning, four hours of technical class in the afternoon. We´re starting our projects, preparing to give a presentation and write a paper by the end of this training session (11 weeks.) We´re getting more books, manuals and papers to read everyday. It´s all really exciting and overwhelming at the same time. The great thing about not having TV and internet all the time is that you discover there are so many more hours in the day. I´m working hard to talk with my family, spend time with the kids who are awesome, and integrate a bit into the community, but when all is said and done I don´t mind being la gringita, at times it´s a term of endearment. Oh, and in case you are wondering I am not an international spy.

paz

Showers don´t just grow on trees, you know

2008-02-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

It´s really hard to believe that it´s been little more than a week since I left, it feels like everything I´ve ever known is so far away and I´ve been gone for a long, long time. We came to Bolivia at a very interesting time, because it´s Carnival and what Bolivians love to do more than anything is throw water balloons and shoot their super soakers, especially at us gringos. It´s quite the bienvenido a Bolivia. The first time we walked outside the hotel in Cochabamba we realized that we were prime targets for the festivities. It´s awesome when like 5 little kids all run after you with water balloons or super soakers, it´s like all right man, free shower!

Cochabamba is a really nice city actually with pretty decent restaurants. We got a great welcome from some of the PCVs in Bolivia and they took us out the first couple of nights for dinner. Even though Coch is at a lower altitude (like around 8,000 ft or something) and we are all in our 20s the volunteers would get winded going up 2 flights of stairs, it was pretty amusing actually. Everyone is pretty paranoid about getting sick, but it´s going to happen so there´s really no use getting worked up about it. One of our PCMedicalOfficer, aka Dr. Death loves to talk about all the exotic diseases we could acquire, ¨brain worm¨is definitely one of his favorites, not to mention chagas (beware the vinchuca!) Stay away from the chicha (homebrew alcohol made from corn,) but the chicarón (slow cooked pork dish) is fine. We have a huge medical manual (along with a ton of other handbooks that they´ve given us, I personally plan on making furniture with mine) and that is great bed time reading. I have a cough and a cold and I was pretty sure it was malaria or something horrible, but no it´s just a cough and a cold. Our med kit is stocked with everything we could ever want. I can´t wait to injure myself so I could use some of it. Although there is no vicks vap-o-rub and the other night I was lying in my mosquito net encased bed and acting like such a baby with this cough, like I just want my mom to rub so vicks on my chest and tuck me in. But I´m over it. My host mother Doña Juana is awesome and she is keeping me well fed at all hours of the day, if I leave she wants to know where I´m going and when I´ll be back, she´s like my very own Bolivian grandma. There are tons of people coming and going in the house, I´m still not sure who exactly lives there and who doesn´t because she has 7 kids and 9 grandkids. The 8 year old Adriana is adorable but man does she wear me out. We went to the market where her mom sells flowers and I picked up some pink (why is it pink?) toilet paper and soap. Toilet paper is definitely one of those luxury items here, much like flush toilets and showers. At my house we have a flush toilet (remember it´s Latin America so the TP goes in the trash not the toilet!) and an electric shower but in my site it will probably be a little different. I finally took a shower today and it actually got hot and it made me feel so much better. A little trick with the electric shower, if you turn off the light in the bathroom the water gets even hotter, nice. The thing is we have to give our family 2bs for every shower we take and when you make what we make that´s actually pretty steep. ($1=7.5bs)

The houses where we live now are all really different. Some are huge with modern bathrooms, some just have latrines and 3 rooms for the whole family. All the houses I´ve seen (mine and other PCVs) have this element of being inside and outside at the same time, it´s really interesting. There are animals everywhere. Dogs are a huge problem in Bolivia, I won´t get into it right now but I´m sure it will come up again. It´s the rainy season here and so the streets are really muddy and hard to walk on, but we manage. The other night it was raining all night long and the sound of that on the roof was really comforting and I also woke up to this symphony of cats, dogs, cows and birds. It was so amusing, like they were all trying to talk to each other in concert.

Okay, so food. First of all the potato is huge here. They have potatoes with every meal pretty much. One of the funniest things so far was lunch the other day at the training center (there is always soup with lunch) so we open up the lid to the pot and there are french fries floating in the soup! It was like mushroom soup with french fries, one of the tastier soups I´ve had here, definitely bringing that recipe back home. They also love their carbs. It´s typical to have rice, potatoes and pasta all in the same meal. For the AG volunteers a big part of our project is incorporating vegetables into the Bolivian diet. Our host families know to give us vegetables and so far I haven´t had to actually masticate any meat and I think that´s what being vegetarian in Bolivian will entail. Okay, I have a lot more to say about the training center and our projects and all that but my fellow volunteers are heading back and we travel in packs so I must go. I hope this was 3bs well spent. Talk to you soon!

Let the blogging begin!

2008-01-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

So I've finally "left" after what seemed like weeks of saying good-byes to friends and family. I'm actually just in Arlington, VA and won't leave for Bolivia until the 29th. Being so close to the nation's capital makes everything overtly patriotic, like at the Holiday Inn here we ate lunch at the "National Diner" and the CVS up the block sells magnets with Bush's smiling face...really amusing. Also the inside cover of my new passport has this giant eagle (apparently all the new passports have this feature and if you haven't seen it yet just think of the soaring eagle at the opening of the Colbert Report.) We have become official and registered and even got a Peace Corps debit card with the American flag logo of course. I have to say that the people here are all really interesting and have some amazing life experiences. We did some ice breakers but they weren't awful and we talked a lot about anxieties (I forgot to bring up my anxiety about "do there sharks") and we talked about our aspirations and all that good stuff. I'm feeling really good about this group and the work that we'll be doing in Bolivia. They haven't given us too many details yet but we're an excited group full of optimism and candy and Thai food. I hope you all know that in Bolivia I'm just an email or phone card away and I'm just going to end this now before I get too sappy or start tearing up like I did at the airport.

hasta luego
michelle