Quito, Ecuador – This is the city I’ve had to go to go get anything done for the last two years. If I wanted peanut butter, I had to go to Quito. If I needed to get my mail, I had to go to Quito. If I wanted to have a cold beer, I had to go to Quito. Now this is my home…life is good.
I got the last load of my stuff to the office on January 17th, and then headed back to La Libertad for one final night. On the 18th at 4:00 the other three Co-Trainers and I met up at the PC office to get a ride to our home-stay houses. Usually they had the Co-Trainers stay close to the office, but this time they decided to try a different location, so we are now living a bit north of the office.
The four of us are living in two houses that are right next to each other, so it is convenient to get together to cook and hang out. Andrea and I are living with a Mother and her 21 year old son. Andres and Graciela are nice, but…well, we’ll get to that later. Susan and Mary live with an older woman who is sweet as well. When we showed up at their houses we had tea and cake and both the old ladies told us how grateful they were that we had come. Graciela kept saying that she had prayed for God to send her some angels, and that we were a blessing.
To start off, the houses are AWESOME. Ours is three stories, fully furnished, and we have a washer and a dryer. I about soiled myself when I saw that. The first night we took a cab to a sports bar to have watch the NFL game. I spent the next day organizing and doing laundry. I can’t explain how nice it is to live near restaurants and bars, and to have such decadent luxuries as consistent water and electricity.
We cooked two big meals for the two families, and everything was going great with them. Work was good too. We spent the first week getting things organized for the new Omnibus’ arrival in February. There is a whole team involved, but we are the only ones with recent experience as PCVs. Right now we are updating the training manuals, revising vocabulary lists, planning the Technical Trips, and soliciting advice/input from other PCVs.
A couple examples of how different my life is here…
In the two weeks since we got here, I’ve ran almost every day
In the two weeks since we got here, I’ve read only six pages of the book I’m reading
In the two weeks since we got here, I haven’t taken a nap
So after a fun and productive first week, I got off of work on Friday afternoon and had nothing to do until Monday morning. I took a weekend trip (like any normal American), and came back to a different world. During the weekend the girls had gone out dancing and didn’t come back until very late. Graciela was pissed! She talked with Andrea and we thought things were cool, but she called up one of the PC bosses and then came in on Monday to bitch about us. She said that we were using too much water, too much electricity, were coming home late, and worst of all, that I was using the washer and dryer too much.
We had to have a meeting about it with some of the PC staff and decided to talk to Graciela. I sat down with her to explain the situation (and hopefully come to an agreement about laundry). We came to an agreement, but unfortunately the agreement was that I am no longer allowed to use the washing equipment, and that we have to tell her where we are at night. I don’t mind telling her where we are at, but the laundry thing is horrible. I tried to convince her to let me pay per load, but she said she’d rather me do it somewhere else. There are laundromats near the PC office, but it was so nice to live the dream of in-home laundry, if only for a week.
I did talk to my old La Libertad neighbor’s kids twice since I moved here. They just wanted to say hi, but I think they miss me.
Note:
Ecuador just initiated a 35% tariff on over 600 imported goods. The hope is that Ecuadorian producers will get more business, but I’m sure that they will just raise their prices too. When we found out about the price increases, we all went to the supermarket to stock up on foreign products that we like. One of them is a Chilean boxed wine called "Clos" that is very popular with PCVs. We were scared that they would stop selling it if people stopped buying it because of the higher price. We rushed to the store right before the tariffs hit because we had, as I called it…Clostrophobia
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Freedom From La Libertad
"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatsoever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy – that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”
- John Steinbeck
East of Eden
After 21 months in La Libertad it is finally time for a change. This quote may be a pretty depressing way to start out my last blog about life in La Libertad, but when I look back on my time there, it does seems that only yesterday I got off the bus for the first time. The days flew by, but all the important events, births, deaths, pregnancies, anniversaries, etc. that affected my life over the last two years, all of them happened in the US. Was this because I never really “Integrated” into Ecuadorian society, or maybe I always knew that I’d soon be leaving, and didn’t want to make any connections. Or was it that everything is so different down here that the whole experience gets all rolled up in my head, and there are no specific “posts” to hang my time on because this will end up being the biggest life-changing time of my life. Either way, like I said after a year in site, I don’t know how to process the time I spent in La Libertad yet. I’m sure that six months after I return to the US, I’ll have a different perspective.
“In all times and places, the outsider [is] disproportionately disposed to comment on life.”
- Richard Brookhiser
As a stranger in a strange land, you develop a critical mind. Things that confused, humored, or plain pissed me off here probably wouldn’t have caused such an effect on me in Missouri, Illinois, or California. Because I was and always will be a Gringo to Ecuadorians, I was forced to be an outsider (being a foot taller than everyone in town also hurts assimilation). I became a lot more self-critical as well. Seeing the stupidity in others made me try to keep the dumbness in myself down to a minimum. It is going to be hard to come back to the US and just be a normal person and not get stared at everywhere I go, but hopefully this self-observation won’t end when I get on the flight home.
“There should be no unnecessary talk or chatter, but only talk of the matter in hand. Moreover, if someone begins to speak, another shall not interrupt, but shall allow him to finish, behaving like orderly people and not like market women.”
- Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725)
Instructions to the newly formed Russian Senate
How do you try to get a group to work together when it consists of nothing but “Market Women”? My biggest disappointment of my time in La Libertad was that I was unable to get the Women’s Group that I worked with to organize themselves better. If they continue to fight amongst and against each other, they will never be as strong as they could be.
“Early one morning Byron left me at the bus station…he was a good kid, but he was enveloped in the sadness that brooded over that dark country.”
- Moritz Thompsen
Living Poor - On leaving a Peace Corps Volunteer’s site in Sierran Ecuador
The “Dark Country” was especially dark for my last two weeks there. It rained everyday and because one of my neighbors cut down the trees that lined the road to town and didn’t clean up the branches and leaves that then blocked up the drainage ditches, the road was nothing more than a muddy swamp. To get out of my house we had to walk through a 100 yard morass. Since I didn’t have my boots on the last day, and didn’t want to arrive in Quito covered in mud, I put some plastic bags (double bagged for extra security) over my shoes. I looked a little ridiculous walking to the bus, but I arrived clean. As I was taking my last steps before hopping on the bus to Machachi, the bags came loose and my final gift to La Libertad was four plastic bags stuck in the mud. A fitting end.
- John Steinbeck
East of Eden
After 21 months in La Libertad it is finally time for a change. This quote may be a pretty depressing way to start out my last blog about life in La Libertad, but when I look back on my time there, it does seems that only yesterday I got off the bus for the first time. The days flew by, but all the important events, births, deaths, pregnancies, anniversaries, etc. that affected my life over the last two years, all of them happened in the US. Was this because I never really “Integrated” into Ecuadorian society, or maybe I always knew that I’d soon be leaving, and didn’t want to make any connections. Or was it that everything is so different down here that the whole experience gets all rolled up in my head, and there are no specific “posts” to hang my time on because this will end up being the biggest life-changing time of my life. Either way, like I said after a year in site, I don’t know how to process the time I spent in La Libertad yet. I’m sure that six months after I return to the US, I’ll have a different perspective.
“In all times and places, the outsider [is] disproportionately disposed to comment on life.”
- Richard Brookhiser
As a stranger in a strange land, you develop a critical mind. Things that confused, humored, or plain pissed me off here probably wouldn’t have caused such an effect on me in Missouri, Illinois, or California. Because I was and always will be a Gringo to Ecuadorians, I was forced to be an outsider (being a foot taller than everyone in town also hurts assimilation). I became a lot more self-critical as well. Seeing the stupidity in others made me try to keep the dumbness in myself down to a minimum. It is going to be hard to come back to the US and just be a normal person and not get stared at everywhere I go, but hopefully this self-observation won’t end when I get on the flight home.
“There should be no unnecessary talk or chatter, but only talk of the matter in hand. Moreover, if someone begins to speak, another shall not interrupt, but shall allow him to finish, behaving like orderly people and not like market women.”
- Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725)
Instructions to the newly formed Russian Senate
How do you try to get a group to work together when it consists of nothing but “Market Women”? My biggest disappointment of my time in La Libertad was that I was unable to get the Women’s Group that I worked with to organize themselves better. If they continue to fight amongst and against each other, they will never be as strong as they could be.
“Early one morning Byron left me at the bus station…he was a good kid, but he was enveloped in the sadness that brooded over that dark country.”
- Moritz Thompsen
Living Poor - On leaving a Peace Corps Volunteer’s site in Sierran Ecuador
The “Dark Country” was especially dark for my last two weeks there. It rained everyday and because one of my neighbors cut down the trees that lined the road to town and didn’t clean up the branches and leaves that then blocked up the drainage ditches, the road was nothing more than a muddy swamp. To get out of my house we had to walk through a 100 yard morass. Since I didn’t have my boots on the last day, and didn’t want to arrive in Quito covered in mud, I put some plastic bags (double bagged for extra security) over my shoes. I looked a little ridiculous walking to the bus, but I arrived clean. As I was taking my last steps before hopping on the bus to Machachi, the bags came loose and my final gift to La Libertad was four plastic bags stuck in the mud. A fitting end.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
That´s A Wrap !
It is all finishin´ up here in La Libertad pretty rapidly. A couple of weeks ago I talked with my counterpart and neighbors about having my despidida or going away party. We decided that the best day for everyone was Sunday the 11th. Unfortunately, this was also the first day of my Omnibus´ C.O.S. (Close Of Service) conference in Quito. I told my neighbors that we could have the party, but that I´d need to leave by noon. They said that wouldn´t be a problem and that we´d start at 10:ooAM. Of course on the day of the party, I showed up at 10:00 at the community bank, and they hadn´t even started cooking. I played with the kids a bit (my 17 year old neighbor´s kid like me a lot) until we were ready to eat at 12:30. The food was good and they actually made me potato tortillas and roasted pork instead of the traditional boiled potatoes and cuy. That was very nice and thoughtful of them to make something special just for me. We ate, made some toasts, and the broke of a couple cases of beer. I kept insisting, "One more, then I have to go!", but of course that didn´t work. At 4:00 and half drunk, I had to catch the bus. As I walked out of the bank, all the old ladies were telling me not to go. I think some of them thought that I was leaving for good. It was sad, funny, frustrating, heart-touching, and a bit ridiculous all at the same time...just like the rest of my time there.
The COS conference was short and sweet. We went over transitioning back to the US, reverse culture shock, health stuff, receiving our "Readjustment Allowance", finding a job (Good luck, right!!), and also got to meet the new Country Director. If was very quick, and packed with info. After the meeting we went out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner and then back to the hotel to hang out together as a group for the last time. we tried to make our last night special by buying a keg from a Micro-Brewery near the hotel. I went up to the pub called Santa Espuma or Holy Foam with a couple friends. The beer was good, but the price for a keg was pretty high. We talked them down a bit, got the quantity and style of beer figured out with the people back in the hotel, and the figured out how we were going to pay of it all. After all this negotiating, one of the guys went up to place our order and then came back shaking his head...apparently they needed a days advance notice to fill the kegs. We ended up going to a corner store and bought a couple cases of cheap beer instead.
Since I´ll be in or around Quito for the next couple of months, I´ll get to see almost everyone again, but after the meetings, some people had to say their final goodbyes. That was sad.
When I went up to COS, I brought a couple bags of my crap to leave in the office. Since I´m moving all my stuff via bus/public transportation, it has been a bit frustrating. I figure it will take four trips to get it all moved, so I´m going to come up on Saturday and then finally bring one last bag on Sunday.
More exciting news from Ecuador. It seems that a large percentage of Indigenous are going to protest the government´s new Mining Law. They feel that the law will effect them negatively, so in order to rectify the situation, they are going to protest on January 20th. Their protest will consist of them shutting down the major roads in the entire country. This used to be a more common practice, but my group has been luck and they haven´t had any since we´ve been here. For more information, look at http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=1797 Because of the strike and possible violence, the Peace Corps has ordered us all to stay in our sites starting on the 19th. For me this is no big deal since I´ll be in Quito. You don´t have to tell me twice to stay there!
Finally, you may have noticed in my last pictures that I had grown out a beard again. Here are the pictures of me shaving it off. Enjoy!!
The COS conference was short and sweet. We went over transitioning back to the US, reverse culture shock, health stuff, receiving our "Readjustment Allowance", finding a job (Good luck, right!!), and also got to meet the new Country Director. If was very quick, and packed with info. After the meeting we went out to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner and then back to the hotel to hang out together as a group for the last time. we tried to make our last night special by buying a keg from a Micro-Brewery near the hotel. I went up to the pub called Santa Espuma or Holy Foam with a couple friends. The beer was good, but the price for a keg was pretty high. We talked them down a bit, got the quantity and style of beer figured out with the people back in the hotel, and the figured out how we were going to pay of it all. After all this negotiating, one of the guys went up to place our order and then came back shaking his head...apparently they needed a days advance notice to fill the kegs. We ended up going to a corner store and bought a couple cases of cheap beer instead.
Since I´ll be in or around Quito for the next couple of months, I´ll get to see almost everyone again, but after the meetings, some people had to say their final goodbyes. That was sad.
When I went up to COS, I brought a couple bags of my crap to leave in the office. Since I´m moving all my stuff via bus/public transportation, it has been a bit frustrating. I figure it will take four trips to get it all moved, so I´m going to come up on Saturday and then finally bring one last bag on Sunday.
More exciting news from Ecuador. It seems that a large percentage of Indigenous are going to protest the government´s new Mining Law. They feel that the law will effect them negatively, so in order to rectify the situation, they are going to protest on January 20th. Their protest will consist of them shutting down the major roads in the entire country. This used to be a more common practice, but my group has been luck and they haven´t had any since we´ve been here. For more information, look at http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=1797 Because of the strike and possible violence, the Peace Corps has ordered us all to stay in our sites starting on the 19th. For me this is no big deal since I´ll be in Quito. You don´t have to tell me twice to stay there!
Finally, you may have noticed in my last pictures that I had grown out a beard again. Here are the pictures of me shaving it off. Enjoy!!
Friday, January 9, 2009
Christmas in The Jungle, New Years on the Beach
I have been successfully keeping my goal of staying out of La Libertad since Christmas So successful that my neighbor asked me, "Do you still live here anymore?"
One exciting thing that happened in La Libertad recently was that my soccer team, Reina de La Paz (Queen of Peace) won our club league championship. Although I didn't play in the Finals (I didn't play at all in the second half of the season), it was nice to see the guys win it all. After the Finals, we had a big party and we all got medals. I won't mention my lack of playing time, just that I was a member of a South American Championship fútbol team.
The big news in Ecuador is that the President decided in December to default on Ecuador's bonded debt. For more info, check out http://www.rgemonitor.com/latam-monitor/255019/the_curious_case_of_ecuadors_default__and_why_it_matters . With the rapid fall in crude oil prices, the leftist Correa government is up the proverbial creek. They've been promising a lot (and delivering) to the poor and indigenous populations. Now the money may start to run out. If things don't get better, I could see Ecuador practicing its national pastime...kicking out the current President.
I spent Christmas Eve in La Libertad with my neighbors. It is Ecuadorian tradition to have turkey for Christmas, but turkey is so expensive that usually only city folk can afford it. My neighbor Carlos decided to splurge, and got a turkey this year, so it was a big deal. When he brought it home, I asked how he was going to cook it. He said, "I don't know. I was hoping that you'd cook it." After that, I put myself in charge of dinner. I baked the turkey and a chicken, made gravy and mashed potatoes, bought some cranberry sauce, and baked some cookies. That along with some veggies and a couple of bottles of good wine that Carlos got from his work made it a special occasion. There were 15 of us piled into their kitchen stuffing ourselves and laughing. It was one of the best nights I've had in La Libertad.
On Christmas day I went to the jungle to visit some friends. We made dinner of chicken, stuffing, tatters, and my now famous corn, butter, cream cheese, and garlic side dish, "This is delicious...and so low in calories!!" The next day, a lot of people from my Omnibus showed up and we all went out of the city to a cabin near a nature reserve where we all had Christmas again. More good food and good times.
I hung out at the jungle enjoying the weather/weekend until New Year's Eve when we went down to the beach. It was hot and beautiful and at midnight we were all standing on the beach underneath several fireworks displays...what a way to ring in 2009.
Now that I'm back in La Libertad I'm going to get stuff organized for my move to Quito. We finished work at out last garden, so now all I have to do is figure out who is going to get all my stuff (some of it I already promised to certain neighbors...as much as a year ago)
I hope you all had a fun and relaxing Christmas and New Year. I'm looking forward to seeing you all before 2009 gets too old.
One exciting thing that happened in La Libertad recently was that my soccer team, Reina de La Paz (Queen of Peace) won our club league championship. Although I didn't play in the Finals (I didn't play at all in the second half of the season), it was nice to see the guys win it all. After the Finals, we had a big party and we all got medals. I won't mention my lack of playing time, just that I was a member of a South American Championship fútbol team.
The big news in Ecuador is that the President decided in December to default on Ecuador's bonded debt. For more info, check out http://www.rgemonitor.com/latam-monitor/255019/the_curious_case_of_ecuadors_default__and_why_it_matters . With the rapid fall in crude oil prices, the leftist Correa government is up the proverbial creek. They've been promising a lot (and delivering) to the poor and indigenous populations. Now the money may start to run out. If things don't get better, I could see Ecuador practicing its national pastime...kicking out the current President.
I spent Christmas Eve in La Libertad with my neighbors. It is Ecuadorian tradition to have turkey for Christmas, but turkey is so expensive that usually only city folk can afford it. My neighbor Carlos decided to splurge, and got a turkey this year, so it was a big deal. When he brought it home, I asked how he was going to cook it. He said, "I don't know. I was hoping that you'd cook it." After that, I put myself in charge of dinner. I baked the turkey and a chicken, made gravy and mashed potatoes, bought some cranberry sauce, and baked some cookies. That along with some veggies and a couple of bottles of good wine that Carlos got from his work made it a special occasion. There were 15 of us piled into their kitchen stuffing ourselves and laughing. It was one of the best nights I've had in La Libertad.
On Christmas day I went to the jungle to visit some friends. We made dinner of chicken, stuffing, tatters, and my now famous corn, butter, cream cheese, and garlic side dish, "This is delicious...and so low in calories!!" The next day, a lot of people from my Omnibus showed up and we all went out of the city to a cabin near a nature reserve where we all had Christmas again. More good food and good times.
I hung out at the jungle enjoying the weather/weekend until New Year's Eve when we went down to the beach. It was hot and beautiful and at midnight we were all standing on the beach underneath several fireworks displays...what a way to ring in 2009.
Now that I'm back in La Libertad I'm going to get stuff organized for my move to Quito. We finished work at out last garden, so now all I have to do is figure out who is going to get all my stuff (some of it I already promised to certain neighbors...as much as a year ago)
I hope you all had a fun and relaxing Christmas and New Year. I'm looking forward to seeing you all before 2009 gets too old.
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