The Body of Who??

I had just finished teaching at the grade school last Tuesday when the Director asked me if I was going to "Corpus". I told him that I didn´t know what that was, so I didn´t know if I was going or not. He explained that it was a big party this weekend outside of Latacunga. Since I didn´t have anything to do on Saturday, I went to check it out. The name turned out to be short for Corpus Christi, Latin for Body of Christ. And the festival was allegedly to celebrated the feast of the Eucharist, but in reality it celebrated beer, booze, and dancing to bad music. The parade started right on time (2 hours late) and was pretty much the same as the Mama Negra parade in Latacunga, but with a little less booze. There were a couple of other PCVs there, and it was a good time. The funny thing was that they didn´t try to hard to make it look like they were celebrating a religious feast. The only guys wearing anything religious were the guys (sorry, I don´t know what their official name is) wearing these huge hats with pictures of the Virgin and Jesus on them. They are traditional to the Pujili area (where the parade was).

While we were walking around we met an Israeli guy who had just started traveling around South America. Since he didn´t speak much Spanish, he tagged along. It was amusing to see how shocked he was at the way people were acting. He refused all the drinks people piled on us, kept asking if people always sold food uncovered on the street, wondered why the police just stood around while fights were breaking out, and generally questioned what he got himself into. None of this stuff bothered or surprised us PCVs. I guess that shows that we have integrated.

The traveler left before us and later as I was changing buses in Latacunga I ran into him again. I asked if he got back without any problems and he just shook his head. He said that on the bus ride back to town he fell asleep and someone stole his hat. He couldn´t believe how that could happen...lesson learned for him.

We planted another garden last week and all went well. I also got some good news from my boss. Since I´m having to travel a lot more to go to all these gardens, I´m paying a lot more on bus fares. I asked for a raise to cover these extra expenses and it was approved. I will now be receiving $10 more a month...huzzah!!!

Schoolyard Taunts Ecuadorian Style..."Ok, who brought the wet shit?"

I went to another small school outside of Latacunga this week. The school was in a town called Tanicuchi and was very poor. THey already had a small garden, unlike the other schools we are going to work at. Their garden was planted January by a group of university students from Latacunga. In it´s 15´x 30´foot area there were only about 12 small plants growing. It was pretty sad looking, so we dug it up and started from scratch. I asked if the university students had ever come back, and they said no. Now, I don´t know the whole story behind the students working there, but this is similar to the story of most development work. People come in, spend a day working(or some other short period of time), leave feeling that they´ve accomplished something, and then never come back. In actuality, they accomplished nothing sustainable and do more harm than good. The school is a good example. The garden sucked and was taking up space. Also, the kids and the teachers didn´t work as hard or seem as interested as the other schools we´ve been to and I don´t think the trust us to come back. We told them they need to water the plants every day, but after their first experience they may not. If they don´t, nothing will grow and the cycle will continue.

Anyway, we got the garden planted and fertilized with manure the kids brought. AS we were dumping the plastic bags of crap out, one bag was full of fresh cow manure. The rest of the bags were full of dry (and therefore less smelly) manure. As the wet turds plopped out, some of the kids looked around at the others and said, "OK, who brought the wet shit?" I had to laugh as the other kids furiously denied it.

I spent last weekend working at the community bank´s charge days. Everything went well, and at the end of the last day I closed up shop and took the keys home with me. Normally, at the end of the day, one of the ladies will come and take the money we´ve collected and take it home to deposit the next day. We had over $6,000 that day, but nobody came to collect it. We put the money in a box in the bank and when I got home, I gave the keys to my neighbor in case anything happened (I didn´t want to get the blame).

The next day at 6:30 AM one of the ladies from the bank started tapping on my window. She asked me to come out and talk. I went outside and she asked me for the keys to the bank. I explained that my neighbor had them and went back to bed. About 10 minutes later, she was back knocking on my window. Again I went outside, and she asked me where the money was because she had to make the deposit. I told her where we put the money and was starting to go back inside. She then asked me to come with her. I asked her why and she told me that she didn´t know where the money was. I explained again (I know I said it right because it wasn´t hard to say in Spanish), but she kept whining that she needed me to get it. I was starting to get pissed at this point, but I told her, "Let´s go!". She said that she had to go to her house first and would be back at 7:00. I changed clothes and was ready to go at 7:00, but she didn´t show up till 7:40. Now I was steaming. I started walking to the bank at my normal pace (about 3 times faster than Ecuadorians walk) and she asked me if I was mad and I said yes. She couldn´t understand why I was pissed even after I opened the bank and got the money from where I said it was. She got me up at 6:30 AM for five seconds of work at 8:00, so I think I had the right to be pissed.

I was talking to a PC friend later that day and told her the story. She said that she has heard similar stories recently from other PCVs in our group. I think we are all getting to the point where we are comfortable enough with our Spanish, our sites, and we have seen enough ignorance that we now are getting mad and telling people about it. I don´t know if that is the right thing to do, but such is life in the Third World

Red Country - Dead Meat

The new Government of Ecuador has been making a lot of changes lately. (Note: The Constitutional Assembly that is writing the new Constitution is still hard at work. You can tell that it is hard at work because that´s what the commercials say. Yeah, they have to have advertise! The country overwhelmingly voted for the new Constitution, but after the Assembly dissolved the Congress, took it´s power for themselves, and several members have been involved in scandals, I guess they feel that they need a little good publicity.) From tougher rules for the mining industry to possibly kicking out one of the country´s biggest cell phone companies (my cell phone company) the new guys are turning everything upside down. They even declared a new National Holiday on May 1st. May Day is now the “Day of the Worker” in Ecuador…Communism City here we come.

Another smaller change that they have made deals with the customs department. They have made it a lot harder and much more expensive to get something out of customs. Therefore I want to repeat the rules for sending packages down here. DO NOT SEND ANYTHING OVER 2 KILOGRAMS (4.4 POUNDS) OR DECLARE A VALUE ON ANY PACKAGE. Please don´t take this as a plea for gifts. I don´t need anything and since I´ll be in the Status in July, I´ll be able to get everything I need for the rest of my time down here then. I just don´t want anyone to send a $10 gift that would cost me $50 to get out of hock (I probably would just leave it there).

If you will remember from my post a couple of weeks ago, we had to say good-bye to one of my good friends. She had been traveling too much and the PC bosses kicked her out. The day before she left we had a going away party in Quito for her. One of my other good friends came up from down South to see her off. Unfortunately he didn´t have permission. He traveled a lot too and when he called his boss to tell him that he was coming, his boss said that he couldn´t. He came anyway, and sure enough, the PC found out and he got the boot as well. That takes my original training group of five down to two and the whole Omnibus from 46 to 28.

Speaking of my Omnibus, we had our Mid-Service meetings last week in Quito. It was nice to see everyone and share stories/experiences, but from a “work” standpoint, it was a waste of time. At this point everyone´s situation is unique and what everyone is trying to do is so different that it is better just to call someone up on the phone if you have questions about a project that may be applicable in your site. Also, there are a couple people in my group that love to hear themselves talk. Any session that should have taken one hour inevitable took two or more. By the end of the second day everyone was exhausted and a lot of people were getting frustrated.

Thankfully, yours truly suggested an post-meeting activity for everyone, and it turned out well. We all met up at a bar after dinner and had a Pub Quiz. If you don´t know what that is, it is basically a trivia contest with some beer thrown in. All but two of the PCVs in our group came, and even though my group came in third, I had a good time.

The interesting culinary store of the last two weeks happened the other day when I walked in to my neighbor´s house and she was frying up some meat. She asked me to eat a bowl of rice and meat. It was surprisingly good and I asked what it was and where she got it. She said that it was sheep and our neighbor gave it to her. I was surprised that someone gave away that much meat, so I asked why the neighbor did that. Rosa then explained that a dog got into the neighbor´s flock and killed a bunch of sheep. There was too much meat for her to eat, and you can´t sell dead animals in the market, so she gave it all away. I´m not 100% sure, but I think that was the first time I´ve ever eaten and animal killed by another animal.

The Great Gringo Goalkeeper experiment may be over. I got benched last week. I probably shouldn´t be upset seeing that the other guy has been playing all his life and I have a grand total of ten games at goal under my belt, but I don´t like being told that I´m no good at anything (especially since I´ve given up less goals so far than he has). Anyway, I probably will just play when the other guy can´t make it.