Green Thumb?

This gardening stuff has really taken off. Since the beginning of the school year John and I have been to 11 schools and still need to visit four or five more. One school actually already had plans to work with a group of University students from Latacunga, but asked us to “manage” the project. Its amazing to think that last year I grew my first crops and now I´ve been bumped up to a management position. Another 10 months and I´ll probably own my own farm.


Some of the schools had even organized formal work days, or Mingas for all the Parents to come and help. The mingas are pretty common down here, but when they set one up for you, it means they´re serious. Two of the schools we visited for the first time were kind of funny. They were both near some tourist destinations, so I think they were used to gringos being around, but not communicating with them. The whole time we were working, they parent´s kept assuming that we didn´t speak Spanish. They even would talk about us in front of us, thinking that we couldn´t understand. In another town they asked where I lived. When I told them that I lived in La Libertad, they were amazed. “Really? In the pueblo?”, one guy asked. I think that made me seem a little more credible in their eyes because I didn´t live in the city.


Other than the gardening, I was busy the last week finishing up our grant proposal. I turned it in to my boss, but honestly I hope we don´t get it. The thing is that no matter how hard I try to explain to the ladies, I don´t think they understand the risks and work involved in the project. The proposal is for constructing 13 chicken houses. The women would then be responsible for buying the chicks, feed, and other supplies. I figure that should run to about $500 in the first two months. Then we´ll start selling the birds and recouping the money. There was another small chicken project in my town recently, and about 40% of the birds died due to poor care. I told the ladies who had the birds a few things they needed to change, but the didn´t listen. My worry is that once the ladies have the cash, they´ll just do there own thing, a lot of the birds will die, and then they´ll stop the project because they lost all their money. I had to turn the proposal in though, because they ladies kept hounding me. I´ll have a meeting soon with my boss where I can explain my doubts. Maybe we can try to get the project´s scope decreased.


Notes:
The election we had down here over the weekend went off without a hitch. The new constitution was approved overwhelmingly and they are going to start changing the laws in the next couple weeks. We’ll see how things go, but either way it is kind of crazy to live in a country while they are changing the rules you have to live by.


Also, I just liked this picture of some of the kids in my town

Dannon Ain´t Got Nothin´On Me

There are some things in life that scare me: airplane travel and rodents mainly (funny that I took three flights to come to a country where we eat rodent for dinner regularly). I had an experience recently though that was scarier than all those other minor tribulations. As I stared into a pot full of light purple creamy goo, stuck a spoon into it, raised that spoon to my mouth, and ate what it was holding, I thought to myself, “This could be the last thing I do”. That´s right, I ate blackberry yogurt that I made with my own hands.

A couple months ago I went to visit a friend and saw a small scale yogurt project that some women from her town were doing. It wasn´t that complicated and would work well in my town since a lot of people have milk cows. They way things work here is that families will have 2-10 cows that they keep by their houses and everyday someone takes the cattle to their grazing lands. Every night they bring the cows home, milk them, and then the next morning a guy drives around in a truck and picks up the milk to take to one of the plants that packages the milk or makes cheese, ice cream, etc. Right now they are getting about $0.32 per Liter of milk. Then of course, they take that money and buy food with it. One of the things that is very popular in town is yogurt. So, my idea is to cut out the middle man and have people make their own yogurt.

The process basically consists of pasteurizing the raw milk, adding a bit of plain yogurt, and then letting it sit at 122-130° F for about five hours for the culture to work. It’s the five hours at high temp that are a bit of a problem up here. To do this I made a wooden box with three light bulbs inside. With an attached dimmer switch, I can keep the temperature pretty constant (would you expect less from a chemical engineer?). The first couple batches turned out OK, but not perfect. I´m going to keep working out the kinks, and hopefully we are going to start selling our 100% natural yogurt at the grade school to replace the artificially colored and flavored stuff that they sell now. And the best news is that after that first bite, I´m still around to write this post.

¿Should I Be Teaching Spanish?

Things have been semi-busy in the last couple of weeks. Since school started we have been visiting 3-4 schools a week setting up times to start planting our gardens. There has been a lot of interest, and it looks like we´ll surpass our goal of 12 gardens. A big opportunity came this week in Latacunga. There was a meeting of all the school Directors in the area. John and I were able to give a 7 minute presentation on our gardens and afterwards we talked to a bunch of Directors we hadn´t met yet about planting at their sites.

In La Libertad things are OK. I´ve been busy with the English classes and on the 1st day of each class at each grade, I´ve been giving tests…on the Spanish alphabet and writing numbers in Spanish. Most of the kids were able to do it without any major problems, but it´s sad to see older kids who after 5-6 years are still unable to write out the alphabet. My goal is to get these kids some extra help while I´m teaching English. Let´s face it, if they don´t know their own language, they´re not going to succeed in another.

A good/bad thing is that the grade school is expanding. Next year, they plan on having an 8th grade (right now, the school only goes to 7th grade). Each year after that, they plan on adding another grade until 10th. The thing is, the High School will probably close since all the students they would have will still be in the grade school. Because of this, there is a small feud starting between the two. Mostly it is the High School teachers bad mouthing the school. I told them about the results of the ABC tests, and they said, “Well, what do you expect with the teachers there. We don´t know what they do all day!”. It was funny since they told me this while we were sitting in the office during the middle of the day watching TV.

Last weekend I went to Quito to watch the Notre Dame vs. Michigan game. It was a great game, and I finally got to see the Irish win. It was especially nice since I watched the game at a bar owned by a Michigan graduate and was surrounded by Wolverine fans.

You may not have heard, but it is a crazy time in Latin America. First, some Russian bombers flew to Venezuela last week http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article4753363.ece The US Government said that there was no nuclear weapons onboard, but with the US-Russian relations as they are and Hugo Chavez being no friend of America (or democracy), you could see how he wouldn´t be against another Cuban Missile Crisis. It would definitely drive up oil prices (which would give his and Russia´s governments a lot more cash to spend on keeping their huddled masses under control).

In Bolivia there have been protests for and against the US and the Bolivian President, Evo Morales. Here are some links that explain better what is going on http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2008/09/17/bolivian_governor_arrested_peace_corps_volunteers_evacuated/ . and http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/16/bolivia.peace.corps/ The Peace Corps just evacuated all the Volunteers out of the country, and with the way things are down there, I don´t see them coming back anytime soon.

Here in Ecuador, the debate over the new Constitution is heating up. The referendum is on the 28th of September. I don´t see us having any problems, but you never know. During the weekend of the Election, the Peace Corps is making us stay in our sites to keep us out of trouble. Also, I´m going to stock up on rice and canned goods…just in case.

Make Cotton Soff - In Word

Besides the low rent and inexpensive food, a great thing about Ecuador is the cheap (prices and quality) Chinese made clothes that can be found all over. Pretty much all the T-Shirts down here are American knock-offs of name brands, sports teams, or they just have English writing on them. I was walking through the market the other day and saw a $5 shirt with the title of this post written on it (misspelling included). I have no idea what it means, but how could I pass up a shirt like that…it is now my favorite.

Had another fun/life threatening experience with my neighbor Carlos the other day. His outdoor hot water heater was on the fritz, so we decided to take a look at it. We figured out what the problem was and were taking apart one of the gas valves when a friend of mine sent me a text message. I was standing next to Carlos responding to my friend while he was fiddling with another valve. He apparently turned to water on while the gas valve was disconnected. When the water came on, another gas valve opened to light the pilot and then WOOOOOSHHHH!!!!! I turned and saw a jet of flame shooting out the side of the heater and climb up to the second story of Carlos´ house. We both ran and Carlos turned off the gas at the tank. I was unscathed, but Carlos singed most of the hair in the front of his head. Someday that guy is going to kill me.

What does it take to win “Mother of the Year” at the high school that I work at? I´m not 100% sure, but just remembering your kid´s name and Birthday will get you in the Finals. I was working up there registering students for the new year, and a bunch of the parents when we asked them what their kid´s Birthday was, they had to look up the date on the Birth Certificate. Some parents even had to look at the paperwork when we asked them their kid´s name, unbelievable. Another crazy thing is that to register the older students, they needed copies of their ID. Unfortunately, they are unable to get IDs now because there is a shortage of materials to make IDs in the WHOLE COUNTRY. Nobody can get a license or ID for at least a month.

The good news is that school started this week, so I´ll be busy again until I leave. I´m still going to be teaching English at the grade school and along with nutrition/heath classes every once in a while in the high school, I´ll also be teaching “Logical Reasoning”. If you remember, a couple of months ago, I helped the high school teachers prepare for a logic test they had to take. They liked it so much, I´m stuck doing it. Actually, it should be fun. On Tuesday I went there to see when they wanted me to start. The Director looked at me and said, “Now!”. They were busy getting paperwork ready for the parents, so I had to teach a one hour class without materials or preparing. I was pretty happy that I pulled it off.

I´m planning mostly on doing word and math problems with the kids and Brain-Teezer type puzzles, so if you have any, please send them to me jayverhoff@msn.com .

Another highlight of the week was that on Thursday, my friend John and I got to eat lunch with the new US Ambassador to Ecuador. Here is her profile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_M._Hodges. We met her at the 300 year old Hacienda Cienega “Swamp House” between La Libertad and Latacunga. The owner gave us a tour and explained some of it´s history. It was interesting. You can see pics of the Hacienda at http://www.hosterialacienega.com/html/en/hotel_cotopaxi_ecuador.html. We then had a really nice lunch with the Ambassador, two members of her staff, and the owner. The lunch cost about $25, but the owner was trying to impress the Ambassador, so he picked up the bill. Unfortunately, the owner talked most of the time, and since he was there, we talked mostly in Spanish. We only really talked about what John and I are doing for about two minutes, but for free filet migñon I´m not complaining.

Finally, here is a quote from the comedian Lewis Black that I just heard. It is a couple years old, but it reminded me that no matter how bad it gets down here, I still went to college in a worse place…just kidding.

“If you´re thinking of killing yourself, Rolla is the place to go. Because when you get there, you´ll take one look around and say, ´I want to end it all´. You can´t even get there directly. You fly into St. Louis and then drive two hours south on Route 66. They wrote a song about it…but not that part of the highway.”

- Lewis Black on Late Night with Conan O´Brian