Friday, October 12, 2007

finally in the peace corps

howdy howdy howdy! I´m sitting in the internet cafe with my hair braided, a cheap purse, and a fluffy skirt. Finally, I am blending into Ecuador.

This weekend we went to the river with Efrén´s cousin Roxeanne and her family. We piled 15 people into quite a small little truck- plus one dog and lots of food- and headed to the campo. It is beautiful country here in Esmeraldas: rolling hills covered in beautiful tropical vegatation. We arrived at the finca, parked the car, and then hiked an hour to the house. I immediately searched out the river...which was but a trickling stream with some plain ducks in it. Damnit! Get back to the house and am told to be careful because there are deer ticks here. Right, why would I want to put on repellant BEFORE hiking an hour into the jungle?

The women wasted no time and started cooking. How they managed to make a fire so quickly, or fit so much into that pot, amazed me. Efrén got the ganas to be a jungle man and so we marched into the jungle following what I think was his uncle. He was quite authentic, decked out in rubber boots and wielding a machete. When we arrived we found him lounging in the hammock in the front room. About half way I realized that I did not want a coconut so badly (more I value my life), and so I turned back. The bathroom was a shack on stilts, with a little hole, hovering over...well, I can´t describe it, but it was moving. Then I went to marvel at the women who proceeded to make me eat everything that they felt I should try while in Ecuador. "Ladies, ladies, I´ve got two years", I thought, after finishing my second type of roasted banana and being handed a piece of carne asada. Here, try the food we´re cooking for lunch, eat this mango, drink this juice, taste this cheese, have you ever eaten cacao before?

Now, I must pause here because cacao is the most fantastic fruit that I have ever eaten in my life. Forget the chocolate that they make with the seeds, I want the fruit. It´s juicy, soft, and SOOOO sweet.

We ate lunch around a little table. The pot, it turns out, contained tapado with chancho, chicken, sausage, and verde. We also got plates of rice ("bring another one, this will never be enough!") and watered down coke. Thoroughly fattened with Ecuador goodness we went to lay in hammocks under the house. Everybody took turns jumping on the horse, we picked flowers, and played soccer. Mid-afternoon we took off for the real river, because everybody wanted to swim and get the ticks off of themselves. There were people bathing, washing clothes, swimming. There were cows running wild. It was fantastic. And somewhere in between the jungle trekking with a machete, palm leaf awning over the fire, hammocks under the house with the chickens, and sharing the river with cattle and laundry detergent, I realized...I´m in the PEACE CORPS...

...then I got sick the next day.

Work this week was a riot. Monday and Tuesday it wasn´t, Wednesday and Thursday I thought I was going to die. We walked all over the barrios talking to parents about taking the kids to the river in two weeks, having a Christmas party, starting a community bank, and letting the gringa (that´s me) teach their kids about sexuality and self-esteem. Then, we got the great idea to use the kids´drawings and make calendars to sell so we can have resources. How did this come about? I want the kids to be on time for tutoring from now on. Maybe if we give the kids stickers for being on time they´ll have incentive. When they earn so many stickers they can trade them in for school supplies (i.e. 10 stickers= a pen). INNFA doesn´t give money for that though. So now we´re making calendars to sell so that we can buy school supplies and stickers so that the kids will be on time. Honestly, I doubt it will work. I mean the kids being on time. I´m sure we can make calendars, sell them, and buy school supplies. The monsters have their own will.

The best part of the week was when we sat in the house for an hour gossiping with Gaby´s mom. I was holding a baby and swatting bugs from my face, the sweat dripping down my back, when again I realized...I´m in the PEACE CORPS.

It´s so ridiculously fantastic.

p.s. if you so desire to send me stickers in the mail, I will love receiving them. just think, my kids get stickers and I get mail- two birds with one stone. help a Peace Corps Volunteer out...

p.p.s. the internet is sucking, i´ll put up photos later

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Is that your fanny pack or are you happy to see me?

Muahaha, shout out to all the Ecuas still rockin´ their fanny packs like it´s 1985!

Ese is going strong and I´m starting to make a little space for myself here. It´s only taken me a month, pfft! After my little fritz last week, I´ve changed my mentality to that of a Peace Corps volunteer, and now I am doing most excellently. Of course work is going to get cancelled, but unofficial work is even more fun! My Spanish has hit a plateau, so get that book out and start studying! Efrén is not going to stop bugging you about English until he learns it, so buy a book and lessons are at 5p sharp! (or after lunch if it´s better, 6?, how about at breakfast, you just let me know).

My counterpart is excited about ideas I´ve got and we´re finally going for them. We had a big meeting for the parents yesterday at 3p. 7 out of 59 parents showed up at 4 o´clock on the dot. We gossipped and discussed all the different kids, then finally got down to business. For Christmas, INNFA distributes gifts and candies, but do they want to have a party? And Sat, Oct. 20 we´re going to take the kids to the river. If you give them permission, we´ll get all the details. Ha! OMG, we had a whole meeting with no details or anything. It was just an interest poll. The only thing certain was that the volunteer from the states wants to teach your kids about sexuality and self esteem, would a group on Saturdays be OK? Everyone nodded their heads warily. At least Maria Jose´s mom was excited.

We visited schools last week and there is tons of opportunity everywhere. It´s too much really, and there´s no time! Well, there is time, it´s just not utilized properly and I´ve yet to grasp how to do it here. At Maria Jose´s school they sell the grossest snack foods to the kids. Empanadas, chifles w/ cheese, ice cream, chips, even corviche!!! (Corviche is this amazingly delicious fried concoction. It´s masa made with verde (unripened plantain) and filled with tuna and peanut sauce. But I´m talking DEEP FRIED, and only for very special occasions. NOT something you give to kids every day!) Just think, parents give their kids $.25 a day to eat junk food. In a week that would be $1.25! A month, $5.00! 5% of their monthly income goes to crap that does nothing for their already malnourished kids. Ah! At the same time, if you could convince schools to not let the vendors in, to have healthy snack bars, or for the parents to send their kids with snacks from home, you´d put so many people out of work! One of our moms sells ice cream at a school, another sells obos on the street. Vicious, vicious cycle you are poverty.

At another school, the kids throw their trash everywhere...except for the garbage cans that are abundant on the campus? When we went at recess there was not a teacher in sight. The kids were all ganged up, some playing little made up games, others trying to start fights, others already recovering from fights. It´s a school that takes kids from one of the rougher areas of town. The bell rang and all the teachers came in from outside, like they had gone to take their own recess! Shit, even the teachers do not want to be with these kids!

It´s all so overwhelming, which sent me into the opposite direction of depression. At first there was no work, now I realize there is just so much work and I´m only one little very underqualified person. Head up! We are not here to change the world. We are here so that Maria Jose´s little sister will come to after school tutoring just because she thinks it´s fun. We´re here so that Gilson, out of nowhere, will actually sit down and read a whole paragraph on a day when we were supposed to cancel class! We are here to answer the million, billion questions that people have about the U.S. We are here with the priviledge of sharing languages. We´re here to ride dirty public buses, eat great food, meet wonderful peoples, and go dancing! It´s all so exciting.

(I say "we" because I´m really depending on you my family and friends. So consider yourselves here with me.)

Social life has been picking up and so I feel connected here too, finally. Things with Efrén and Fernanda are pretty wonderful. We´ve had some really rough spots, but things have been worked out. We all understand each other´s limits and needs. Fernanda has been letting me in the kitchen lately, and that just makes me feel so normal. I made tuna Grandma Ann style the other day and shocked them. Tuna with mayo, apples, and hardboiled egg? Then yesterday I made like 2 lbs of hummus! (I just got so excited!) Nobody understood what I was doing, or how it was going to turn out edible. We made veggie chicken hummus wraps and they gobbled it all up. I´ve never seen Efrén eat so many raw veggies before, maybe he hasn´t. We had some tortillas still left over, so I made ghetto buñuelos. They gobbled those too. I sent tupperwares of hummus to some other volunteers. The kitchen makes me happy.

The gym makes me happy too. Rachel, another PCV, goes too and is teaching me some bikhram yoga techniques. It really is like a sauna in that gym, it´s so hot and humid here. The instructor and his big friend are pretty cute, they make it fun. We went out last night for the first time. Jessi, Rachel, me, and Reggaeton boy with his cousin and friends. Turns out the gym instructors are also bouncers at club Climax! ...so we got in for free. We danced the night away- salsa, reggaeton, trance, hip-hop. My boss, Nelson, was actually there celebrating his 15yrs with INNFA. He was still in his suit and tie from the ceremony we went to that morning! A really cute guy asked me to dance. I said yes because after the first time I said no he looked at me with this pleading face and held out his hand so nicely. Most guys wouldn´t have even asked, they would have just grabbed. Turns out he´s an Ecuadorian marine from Guayaquil, stationed in Ese until next week and they had their first free night out in months. We tried to dance bachata, but neither of us knew how! That´s when I knew he was a nice guy. Who asks someone to dance and doesn´t really know how? Pfft! He said he thought I was from Quito, and so he assumed that I would know how to dance. I´ve been getting that a lot lately: people think I´m from the sierra on vacation, then the states on vacation..."oh, you´re living here and you´re mexican?" That´s how we usually end up.

But yesterday, Peter, FANNY PACK GUY! actually said, " you´re mexican? you are chicana! raza man!" And even though he was babbling nonsense and drunk off his a*, I got so excited that someone recognized chicanismo here. I held up my fist and said "raza!" in the middle of the street.

The people next to me in the internet cafe are making out. So I´m going to end here folks.

Happy happy happy, no worries, God is good. Love!

p.s. to my best friend lauren in senegal (because I recognize that Africa is NOT one country), I explained to Jessi how it´s more fun to make up names for people secretly, and she has agreed! Hence, reggaeton boy (Jair), fanny pack guy (Peter)...I miss you!