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