Turkey Day Courtesy of Uncle Sam

This week has gone by very fast with Thanksgiving right in the middle. It seems like yesterday that I was writing the last post. Sunday, I went down to Latacunga to play basketball with the guys I met at Mamá Negra. They play every Sunday at a local park and are very good. I didn´t think I´d go there and dominate, but I did think the Ecuadorians wouldn´t have been as good as they were. The courts were in pretty bad shape (bent rims without nets that were about 5 or 6 inches too tall), but it was fun to get out there and play. I`m not used to jumping around, so for the next couple of days, my calves were killing me. I´m planning on trying to get down there once a month to get some exercise.

Things were pretty standard in La Libertad this week. Class, a little work at the community bank, and trying to get the teachers at the high school to start working on our Guinea Pig project. One project that I did get finished this week was another book (well, actually three) that I´ve been with for a while. I finally ended Shelby Foote´s "The Civil War: A Narrative". I started this three volume history when I was in college and read the second volume after graduation. Each book is around 1000 pages, so it took some time. It is an interesting historical account, and I have to admit that I didn´t see the ending coming.

Also, I found out this week that 4 more PCVs from my group ended their service early (Two for health reasons, one for personal reasons, and one had issues with PC upper management). That takes us down to 32 of the original 46 after only 7 months in site.

I hope had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Mine was great. Thirteen other PCVs and myself had dinner at the Ambassador´s house with her family. We all got there at 1:00 for appetizers, wine, and Dr. Pepper (not a big deal to you guys, but you can´t get Dr. Pepper down here, so the Ambassador had it sent especially for us. I actually took the last one as we were leaving and am keeping it in my house for a special occasion.) After talking for a while, we piled on the food (Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, salads, vegetable casseroles, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy) buffet style and sat in the dinning room around the biggest table I´ve ever been at. I sat across from the Ambassador and her husband. The conversation was very interesting because they have been all over the world. I also got to see the Ambassador´s husband´s Stan Musial signed baseball that he got while working in Poland (The Man was dedicating a ball field). After dinner we had coffee and pie. I barely got the last bite down because this was about twice as much food as I´ve ever eaten in Ecuador.

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving, but I wish I could have been back home with friends and family (Including my Uncle Sam), but it was neat to have Thanksgiving dinner served plates with the National Coat of Arms on it (I forgot to take a napkin with the Coat of Arms on it) and know that it was all on my other Uncle Sam´s tab.

Some of my other friends had dinner at the USAID Director´s house, the Peace Corps Director´s house, and other PCV´s houses. One of my good friends had people over (I think I´ll be there next year). He bought a Turkey for $40 (that was a good deal for Ecuador, but almost a week´s pay for us). Now I know why Ecuadorians only have Turkey on Christmas. Maybe some Turkey farmers I know should start exporting down here.

While in Quito I picked up some packages (thanks for the candy and book Mom/Dad). I also got two envelopes from my Sister and Brother-In-Law with old Post Dispatches. I just finished reading the Pro and College Football previews. Quote, "How can the Rams NOT make the playoffs in 2007?". Um, let´s see...not winning any games for the first half of the season would be one way. Also, here is a quote from their game by game preview of the Mizzou schedule, "The Jayhawks will be average, so a win could make their season". Now I´ll admit that a win versus Mizzou would have made Kansas´season, but I wouldn´t call the Jayhawks "average".

Odyssey Completed !

After two months of nightly work and a lot of confusion, I can finally cross another item off my “To do before you die” list. Last week I finished reading James Joyce´s “Ulysses”. I´ve been working on and off since freshmen year at Rolla on a list of the top 100 novels of all time. I read one off the list every so often, and I think I´m about half done. “Ulysses” is number one on the list and many years ago I tried to start reading it. I literally couldn´t get through the first page. So I decided to leave that one off until I had a bit of time on my hands (I was thinking retirement, or rehabbing from major surgery), but I think Peace Corps service is an even better opportunity.

I had to do some research work first by re-reading Joyce´s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and reading Homer´s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. All together with “Ulysses” and the annotations that I had to read in order to understand the novel, I ended up reading 2,427 pages in order to semi-understand a 782 page book. I say semi-understand because that was about all I could do. Here are two examples from the book to show what I´m talking about and an explanation in my words. (Note: These excerpts are being disseminated without the expressed written consent of the Author or Major League Baseball)…

Excerpt #1 – This is from the second part of the first episode

INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro de color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you put five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut you eyes and see.

Excerpt #2 – This is from the first page of the eleventh episode

BRONZE BY GOLD HEARD THE HOOFIRONS, STEELYRINING imperthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid!
And gold flushing more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the
Gold pinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores
Peep! Who´s in the . . . . peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose!

Explanation??

OK, so the whole book is written about one day and it is the stream of consciousness style. Excerpt #1 is one of the main characters (also the main character in “A Portrait..”) on the beach near Dublin. He is thinking about Aristotle´s views on the lack of interaction between what is seen and the seer (as opposed to hearing, taste, touch). He then contrasts that in his flow of thought to the views of Jakob Boehme and George Berkeley. He then performs a thought exercise on how Aristotle would refute the other´s views in a manor similar to Samuel Johnson. Then he quotes a line from Dante that refers to Aristotle and finishes with a comic saying similar to one of Dr. Johnson´s definitions to act as a counterbalance to the high thought.

Excerpt #2 is from a chapter that was written to parody the scene in “The Odyssey” where Ulysses/Odysseus and his crew encounter the Sirens. Since the Sirens lure the crew with singing, the whole chapter is written as a fugue, a type of music perfected by Bach and most popularly know in the repetition of the chorus of “Row Row Row Your Boat” by several people starting at separate times. Therefore, Joyce must write or “play” all the notes and themes of his chapter at the beginning and then gradually elaborate and combine them into the desired harmony. The excerpt is the “notes” that will be elaborated on. For example Bronze and Gold are the colors of the hair of the bartenders where this chapter takes place, the hoof irons are from a carriage that passes in the middle of the chapter, “imperthn thnthnthn” mocks the lisp of the bar back, and “Chips, picking…” is the sound of another main character cleaning his fingernails as he later enters the bar.

Joyce uses eighteen different writing styles for the episodes in “Ulysses” and references everything from the lives of the Saints to modern song. Obviously I couldn´t get all of this myself, which is why the annotations and pre-reading was necessary. I also have to thank Conor Magee for his help while he was visiting (and from discussions in college and while we were living together in Chicago) on Irish history and the independence movement of the nineteenth century.

As you can see from two paragraphs, getting through 782 pages was a chore. I´m glad I did it, and highly recommend it to someone with a bit of time. It was an enjoyable book to say the least and I learned a ton of useless facts (some of my favorite things). One example to end this subject with. Did You Know? That the term “Hocus Pocus” comes from a modification of the Latin Hoc es Corpus, which means “This is the body”. This modification of the language of the Catholic mass was done by some Protestants to invalidate the Catholic belief in the transubstantiation, or the changing of host and wine into the body and blood of Christ by referring to it as “Magic” or “Hocus Pocus”.

So for some actual work I´m supposed to be doing. I had an extremely busy week because it was time for the monthly “Cobro” or “Charge” at the community bank. I spent 9, 10, and 8 hours respectively on Wednesday through Friday. I´m learning a lot about the system, so on Thursday morning I pretty much ran things while my counterpart was at work. It feels good to help out, but the system they have could be improved. I´ve offered my suggestions, but they want to stick with what they have.

I also was asked to help in an interesting agricultural problem (that is what I´m supposed to be doing full-time, right?). One of the ladies I know asked me to look at her sheep the other day. I had a little training on animal care, but I really don’t want to spend much time with animals, so usually I tell people that I can´t help them with that. Since this lady is always nice to me, I said I´d take a look. Unfortunately our training didn´t cover this particular problem. She showed me the sheep she bought for breeding and pointed out it´s “huevos”. I said OK, and then she pulled up it´s tail and showed me the sheep´s vagina too. I don´t know how to say hermaphrodite in Spanish and it isn´t in my dictionary, but that is what she had. She wanted to know what to do with it: sell it or try to breed it. I thought a second and said that we should eat it. She didn´t like that answer and is currently trying to sell it. So buyer beware!

I also saw that my neighbor had planted the radish seeds that I gave her. She had just thrown them in a row in an empty space in her field. They were all coming up on top of each other. I explained that they needed space, so we had to transplant them (even though you shouldn´t do this with root vegetables). She didn´t agree, so I did most of it myself. She did a little, but still didn´t give them enough space. I left some planted the original way, so we can see the difference with the three groups in a couple of weeks. The people in my site have been growing crops their entire lives, but only onions and potatoes. I have about as much gardening experience as Eva Gabor in “Green Acres”, but a little common sense goes a long way.
Got some bad news from the garden at the High School this week. We had a bad hail storm the other day (The worst I´ve ever seen), and it killed pretty much everything in the garden. We ripped it all out and put it in the worm bed, but it was disheartening. Luckily, my cabbage wasn´t hurt too bad.

Finally, happy Turkey Day to everyone! I´ll be spending mine at the residence of the United States Ambassador to Ecuador. I guess she was impressed by the visit to my site, or I just replied to the invitation first. Either way, I´ll be enjoying and fancy dinner with a couple other PCVs in Quito. Afterword we are planning on watching some football together, so It´ll be just like home (minus family and both my Grandma´s pecan pies).
One Note: The stores down here all have had Christmas decorations on sale for a week now. Christmas in November, that´s one American custom I could do without.

Mama Negra

I guess I can´t have a title like "Mama Negra" (Black Mama) without explaining it right off the bat. Last Saturday I went down to Latacunga for the Festival de la Madonna de la Merced or Mama Negra as it is more commonly called. Latacunga is a town one hour south of me and directly below the volcano Cotopaxi. Apparently in the 18th century Latacunga was destroyed by eruptions of Cotopaxi several times (Why the kept rebuilding there? I don´t know, but you have to admire their spunk.) Eventually in the late 17 hundreds, all the citizens went up on a hill overlooking the town and prayed to the Virgin for protection. Since then the volcano has been dormant. To celebrate this miracle, the town throws a huge party every year. The culmination being a massive parade that leads a fat man in blackface dressed up like a woman through town. How this is relevant, I don´t know, but it was still a great time.

I met up with another PCV who lives in Latacunga and we walked from his apartment through town and met a bunch of his friends. The guys were all 20 something Ecuadorians and very nice. It was a fun change to hang-out with people my age. We had a couple beers and joked around while waiting for the parade to start. I don´t get to do this in my town because most of the people my age are either too busy with their kids to hang-out or have gotten the hell out of town ASAP. Most of my "friends" are 10 years old.

Anyway, finally the parade started and we moved to the street to watch. One big difference between this parade and others I´ve been to was that instead of throwing out candy, they were giving out shots of booze. Since John and I were the only "gringos" around, we got more than our share of scotch, cane liquor, wine, and chicha, a homemade corn drink that tastes like a cross between hard apple cider and pumpkin pie filling. They had the chicha in buckets and were serving it from ladles that you had to drink out of. Not very sanitary, but when at Mama Negra... There were a lot of bands, kids doing traditional dances, and groups doing "purifications". The "purifications" were a lot like the one I had when the family thought I was sick. A group of 4 dressed up in white would pull you out of the crowd, rub leaves and deer antlers on you while chanting, "Cotopaxi, Chimborazo" (Mtn. names), and then spit liquor on you. Again, the "gringos" stuck out, so John and I got dragged into the parade a couple of times. Not a big deal, but you had to pay a buck each time for the privilege of getting spit on. They used the money for buying the booze, so I figured I drank my couple of bucks worth.

Finally, Mama Negra came buy. I know that customs are different down here, and this was all in good fun, but there was something a little disturbing in seeing a man in black face as the center of the party. Ironically, I saw this article http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/education/story/AE94276F66A2D5E8862573880016C17C?OpenDocument on some students at UofI who are getting in trouble for going to a Halloween party dressed as characters from "Cool Runnings". Right there pretty much sums up a lot of differences between our countries.

While I was in Latacunga I met some tourists (another thing I didn´t get in La Libertad). Two were from the Czech Republic and were in the middle of a two year round-the-world trip. That made me think of my own two year adventure. I guess they´ll get to see more of the world, but I´ll get to...um, you´ll have to give me a moment on that one. Also, I met a couple from Scotland who were on week four of six weeks in Ecuador. They were having a great time, but when I asked the girl what she thought of guinea pig, she made a disgusted face and said that she couldn´t eat anything that you could give a name to. Understandable.

So that was Mama Negra, the best parade I´ve ever been to. Which leads me to the worst parade I´ve ever been to. Why so bad? Because I was in it! The teachers at the high school I work at told me about it last week and asked if I wanted to march with them. It was a pretty big deal at the High School. So big in fact that they spent two days practicing marching with the kids. At one point they asked me if the marching style they were practicing (high knee kicks, swinging arms) was the same as I marched in High School. I explained that marching wasn´t important back home, we usually just had classes in High School. They were amazed and evidently unaware of my sarcasm.

The parade was Friday at 11:00 in Latacunga, so we met early in town and took a charter bus with the kids. It took a while to get organized, so I was able to look around at all the other schools. There had to be 30-40 other schools there. Al the kids were in nice uniforms and most of the schools had drum corps with them. Right as we were starting, it started to rain. This along with me being the only white guy in the whole parade made it a little uncomfortable. The streets were lined with thousands of people, and I could see in all their faces the question, "What is he doing here?". At the end of the parade we stopped in front of the review stand and they announced the High School, the teachers, and the "Foreign English Teacher". I don´t teach English at the High School, but I think they put that in to make them look better. After the parade we went back to the bus and loaded up he kids. The teachers weren´t paying attention to the kids, so it took about an hour for all of them to stop goofing around in town and make it back. Finally the bus left and the teachers and I grabbed lunch and then went to a bar for beer and karaoke. I was able to bow out after two hours and get home right before the last bus.

NOTES:

- Since Daylight Savings Time is over, I am now on Eastern Time.

- Can someone please explain to me what is going on in College Football. Notre Dame looses to Navy for the first time in my life (43 years to be exact) and Mizzou and KU are in the top 10. I leave the country and everything goes mental!

- Those who haven´t figured out what was missing in the picture I sent out...it was my shadow. At noon on the Equinox, the sun is directly overhead here.

- I got this from Tim Hogan, a college friend, the other day. I figured that if anyone is thinking about heading down, they could use it to brush up on the Spanish. Unfortunately, I haven´t had much opportunity to use these phrases.

1. Excuse me; may I buy you a drink? - Con permiso, puedo comprarle una bebida?
2. You look amazing - Se ve maravillosa
3. Would you like to dance - Le gustaria bailar?
4. You have nice eyes - Tu tienes ojos lindos
5. Would you like a massage? - Te gustaria un masaje?
6. Would you like to come inside? - Te gustaria entrar?
7. Let me help you out of that - Dejame ayudarte a quitarte eso
8. Are you on birth control? - Estas usando anticonceptivos?
9. Would you like to stay here? - Te gustaria quedarte aqui?
10. I'm sorry, I have to go now. - Losiento. Me tengo que ir ahora.
11. I think this was a mistake. - Creo que esto fue un error.

El Día De Los Defuntos

Sunday:

Woke up and went to the community bank for a meeting to go over the by-laws that I had typed up. Afterwords I went to the soccer fields to watch 2 games. The season is almost over, and the guys from my town´s team asked me to play with the next year. I´ll see if they follow up.

Monday:

Got up at 6:00AM to head to Quito to catch the bus to Cuenca. I met up with 3 friends and we started the 10 hour trip (about 180 miles as the crow flies). The tip went well and it was nice to hang-out with friends. WE got to Cuenca around 8:30, checked into the hotel, grabbed a delicious Colombian dinner, went to a cool bar, and then to bed.

Tuesday:

Had a great breakfast at a Swiss restaurant and walked around town until a bunch of our other friends showed up. We switched hotels to the one where the Halloween party was, hung-out taking turns complaining about our sites, and then went to a Mexican place for dinner.

Wednesday:

Spent the morning and afternoon relaxing and visiting with friends I hadn´t seen in a while. Then we got ready for the party. The foul of us in my training group went as characters from the Mexican TV show "Chavo del 8". The show is from the 70´s, but is on TV here every night. You can see pictures and a description of the show here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chavo_del_Ocho

As you can see, our costumes were good.

Thursday:

After breakfast I caught a bus with some fiends back to Quito. The ride up was a little rougher after a night of partying. Unfortunately I got dropped off at the entrance to my site after the last bus in had passed. I had to walk a hour in the rain. This was the first time that I was really nervous in Ecuador. There are a lot of mean dogs on the road, and people have been robbed there too. I guess since it was raining the crooks and the dogs didn´t want to go out, so I didn´t have any problems.

Friday:

The big celebration for the day of the dead is on November 2nd. What is called the Día de los Defunctos is very important down here. It is a national holiday. I was beat from not getting any sleep on the bus, so I slept in. When I got up, we BBQ´d pork steaks and chicken and then had that with rice and potatoes (grilled and not boiled for a change). WE also had a tasty blueberry drink called "Colada Morada" or "Purple Punch" (my translation). We drank that with "Pan de Guaguas" which are small loaves of bread with a human form. Both of these are very traditional in Ecuador, and I´d guess that they have pre-christian roots. Then we went to the cemetery to visit the graves. I did go to my neighbor´s grandparent´s graves with her for a minute to say a prayer. There were a lot of people cleaning the grave sites, but more were outside the cemetery selling foo, beer, and junk to put on the graves. After hanging-out for a bit, everybody went to the center of town to drink and dance. I left right away because I wanted to write this blog post and get some rest. Tomorrow I´m leaving early to go to Latacunga for the festival of "Mamá Negra" or "Black Mama". With a name like that how can I not go.

Put another what on the barbie!?

It has been a fun and interesting week to say the least. Tuesday I had gym class with the "brats" again and we went for a run. We only ran about 3/4 of a mile, but the kids acted like it was a double marathon. Most stopped and walked about 2 minutes after starting. It took almost 20 minutes to finish and they complained the rest of the week about sore legs, feet, hearts, etc.

Thursday I went into Quito to run some errands and watch the World Series. It was nice to see a live game and I watched most of it at a friend´s house who got the feed in English.

On Friday I met up with two friends who live in the jungle.. It was interesting to hear what they have to deal with (poor water supply, bugs, poisonous snakes, a different language). It made me appreciate how easy I have it compared to them.

While in Quito I picked up some stuff for hamburgers. I cooked out on Saturday night, and everyone loved it. Of course, before I grilled, they BBQ´d 2 rabbits and 11 or 13 (depending on your political views) guinea pigs that they had killed. I knew that they wouldn´t be satisfied with just burgers, so I wasn´t surprised to see them cleaning the animals. I was surprised when I saw them put on the second batch of guinea pigs. (The picture is of the first batch, because it was too dark to take a picture of the second batch) There was five big guinea pigs on the grill and two little thing by them. I looked closer and saw that they were tiny guinea pigs that looked just like mice. I asked if one of the guinea pigs was pregnant, and they said yes. Grilled rodent fetus...delicious! I don´t know where all my readers stand on the argument about whether guinea pig life beings at conception o birth, so I´ll say that they killed 11 or 13. I didn´t get to eat any of the fetus, but I didn´t have guinea pig intestine soup for the first time.

I had class at the grade school all week, but nothing really exciting happened there. At the bank I had two more computer classes, but no one showed up, so I watched to DVDs of Cardinals games instead. On Saturday I spent a couple of hours putting the community bank´s hard copy by-laws in the computer. It was boring work, but good Spanish practice (I even had to correct their spelling mistakes). While I was there, one of my counter-parts sisters came in and asked for a favor. She needed a reference letter for another sister who is looking for work in the South of Ecuador. She wrote it out on paper and asked me to type it up. It started, "I __________ have had Maria Rosa Iza Sánchez in my employment for 4 years and she has been...". The first name was blank, so I asked her whose name I needed to put in. She said, "Su nombre" which means his/her name. I asked again, and she repeated. After four times, I realized that she meant my name (Su also means your in the formal tense). I was confused because to the best of my recollection I haven´t had anyone in my employment, ever. I explained that I couldn´t put all my information down her because it would be a lie. She said it wouldn´t be a problem because they wouldn´t call me. I then asked why she wanted my information instead of another persons. She then said that she didn´t know anyone else with a phone and the people may call. This was turning rapidly into a Abbott and Costello act. Finally I convinced her that I wouldn´t be a good person to explain on the phone her sister´s work habits, so she blurted out another name to put down.

Then she asked me if I could get someone from the USA to write her a work contract so she could show it to the Embassy and move to the US. I explained that I didn´t think my family had any work, but she said that it didn´t matter. She just needed the contract and then when she got to the US she´d find something else. I told her I´d think about it. So if any of you would like to add to the illegal alien problem, let me know.