Tis the season for company Christmas parties and other holiday traditions, and here in Cebadas that is one thing that is the same…and yet so different. Dec 15 we went to a community about an hour and a half outside of Cebadas with all the staff of the Subcentro and the shaman to do a ritual called Kapak Raymi (raymi means fiesta but I still don’t know what Kapak means). I am still not positive, but I think it has something to do with the winter solstice maybe; I think it is supposed to bring harmony. Anyways, I didn’t really understand the meaning behind it obviously, but it was pretty cool. There were about 5 local people from the community as well – the others were watching the bulls that they had for Christmas I guess (meaning drunk people trying to fight bulls, not like professional matadors) and probably no one from the subcentro told them we were coming anyways. There was a blanket set in the middle of everyone standing in a circle with fruits and medicinal plants and musical instruments and other stuff on it, and each person put an object on there as well – I put my cell phone to get blessed. Each person was given a stick of incense, and there was also a little bowl of burning wood setting next to the blanket. The shaman went through the whole process of recognizing each of the four directions, so we had to do that too and repeat what he was saying – in Kichwa. Then each person took a handful of sawdust or something and walked around the blanket putting it on the fire when they returned. Then we all walked in a circle around the blanket together while one woman, a midwife, handed out the fruit to everyone to eat. It was cool to get to see that, and the doctor actually gave everyone a DVD copy of what we filmed on that day for a little Christmas present. I’m not sure what the patients thought who came to the Subcentro that day just to find that it was closed because everyone was at the ritual, but honestly the people are kind of lazy and just unorganized and also really busy with lots of activities the public health ministry makes them do, so the people are kind of used to the Subcentro being closed. It was also cool to get to see the community where we did it because it is the farthest one and is where the trail starts to climb one of the nearby volcanoes, Sangay, however its about a 7 day hike to get there. There are some cool little cabins where tourists can stay before or after climbing, or just to spend a weekend or whatever. The only problem is that there’s not really regular transportation for normal people to just go there, and the road isn’t in the best of condition so if you don’t have a truck or if it rains hard no one would be able to get there.
Dec 16 we had a little get together in Riobamba at one of the nurses houses to eat a Christmas dinner with the staff. They bought a turkey that we ate with a prune sauce and there was rice and potatoes and salad, and I made sugar cookies and gingerbread with cream cheese frosting to bring for dessert. Everyone had to do a little toast and then we ate and sat around talking. The food was different, but it was kind of like a Christmas dinner in the US. I ended up spending the night at the nurses house because they said they were going to do it at like 2 in the afternoon and didn’t end up meeting until about 6 and the last bus leaves at 8 – I didn’t have anything with me, but I’ve kind of gotten used to just sleeping wherever even when I’m not prepared for it.
Dec 17 was the Christmas program at the hospital for all the Ministry of Public Health employees – about 118 were invited but not everyone showed up. I went in the same clothes I wore the day before since I had spent the night, and they were all dressed up, but they think I’m weird usually anyways just because I’m a gringa so they probably don’t expect me to wear nice clothes. This party was very different than a normal company Christmas party in the US. It took place at the hospital on a Friday, they just put a sign up that said they would only attend emergencies and everyone came in to the little auditorium/meeting room. This year the farmacy and dentistry personel were in charge of planning everything. It started at 9 with a mass – a pastor came in from a church I guess. It was only like the 3rd mass I’ve ever been to in my life, and the first one in Spanish! After that there was a parade with a group of doctors and nurses dressed in traditional clothes dancing around in the streets followed by people dressed like Mary and Joseph carrying a little doll and then all the rest of the employees walking all around town. Then we came back into the auditorium to eat mote (hominy-ish corn stuff) with potatoes and pork at about 11:30. Then they did a toast few door prizes and then started dancing. The dancing lasted for about 20 minutes, then they took a break to do more door prizes and hand out more drinks (whiskey mixed with sparkling water). This cycle of dancing and drinking and gift continued all afternoon. Everyone got a little bag of candy and animal crackers, and then they just kept dancing. Around 2:30 we ate again – rice with potatoes, chicken, beef, salad, pop, and blackberry mousse for dessert. Then more drinking and dancing…we left at 4, but we were supposed to stay till 4:30 because that is the normal work hours and the party just replaced a normal work day. I’m guessing it went until after 4:30 though because everyone seemed to be having a good time, and at this point they were pretty tipsy with a few drunk people falling down while they were dancing crazily.
I’m glad everyone here has been sharing their Christmas traditions with me, because without winter weather and seeing friends and family and having a break or finals it doesn’t really seem like Christmas. Some people have put up lights and in Riobamba there’s sales and stuff in the stores and they are all decorated, but it still just doesn’t seem right. I still don’t know what my plans are for Christmas Eve and Christmas – maybe do a white elephant with some other volunteers or see if my host family is doing anything (but I asked and they said they don’t really do anything special). Christmas day I have to go to the airport to get Shannon and Sarah, and everyone has told me that tons of people travel on Christmas so I should leave early because all the busses will be full. I’m excited to see them though, and for them to see where I live, and everyone here is excited to meet them too!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Lack of coordination = FRUSTRATION
Today I was supposed to go to this community with the nutritionist from World Vision to help give a nutrition workshop, but then we just ended up talking about the fact that they aren't gonna work there because the government is already doing a nutrition program there. I feel like this is the story of my life in Ecuador for so many reasons.
First - we were planning on leaving at 9 to get there, but the nutritionist went and to go to talk to the doctor really quick, but he just wanted to talk for ever (instead of attending to his patients) so then we were late getting to the community. However, once we got there we just ended up waiting for like an hour and a half until we talked to the people. I know everything here runs on "Ecuadorian time", but a lot of times it feels like everyone is always so busy and in such a hurry just to sit around and wait. Another example of this is when you are getting on or off the bus, lots of times they don't even stop all the way for people to get on or off, but then the bus is always running late anyways.
Second - so many times people plan meetings or other activities, then just completely forget about it and make other plans. When we got there the parents were all in another meeting planning the activities for Christmas and almost left right when we got there to do the nutrition thing even though we told them a long time ago we were coming today. This has happened so many other times too, which was frustrating but now I've kind of gotten used to it. It just doesn't make sense how everyone says they want to work on this or that project, but then when we actually are gonna do it they don't show up.
Third - there were 3 organizations that were going to work in this same community all pretty much on the same topic, but they weren't coordinating at all and didn't realize until today that there are other communities where no one is working. Between the large number of programs run by the basically socialist government, and all the NGO's and other organizations here, you'd think there would be more progress than there has been, but with the lack of coordination it's just not gonna happen.
A while ago I remember someone asked me "why are the people there so poor?" I thought about it, and I couldn't really come up with an answer. However, now after situations like the one that happened today and after learning more about how things work here I think there are lots of different reasons why there is so much poverty here. First (and most basically), there are not many jobs that pay well (hence why so many people go to the cities or emigrate to other countries leaving their families behind) and also the land isn't as good as it used to be so they can't even depend on agriculture. Also though, I think all the bureaucracy in the different ministries of the government is a factor because they all have good objectives of helping the lower class, but there are just too many and they don't coordinate with each other like they should. Again with the NGO's and stuff too, the people have gotten used to having stuff given to them and a lot of times they don't even seem to care about improving their own quality of life because they think other people should do it for them. When they show up late to meetings or don't show up at all, that doesn't show me that they are actually interested in whatever type of assistance they were going to receive. I also think the poverty has a lot to do with the lack of education. You can set up as many meetings as you want to give out information on nutrition or whatever, but when the parents can't read and didn't go to school and can't really even understand new concepts like that, its hard to teach them new things. I think the people realize that, but they still don't put much importance on their own education. (For example - classes at the high school were cancelled today so the band could rehearse for the parade we are going to do for World AIDS Day later this week. It's important for them to practice, but I don't know why they can't do it after school so everyone doesn't have to miss out on classes. There have also been so many times where the teachers just don't show up so classes are cancelled, but usually no one seems to do anything about it.)
I've kind of just now gotten a hold of the reality here that as much as I want to change something, if the people don't want to change it they are not going to. I haven't lost motivation and I still hope to do something in these two years that means something to the people here, but it's not going to be as easy as I thought. Not that I was expecting it to be easy - otherwise it would have already happened and I wouldn't be here at all. I'm just starting to realize that there are so many people involved in development work, but the most important people are the ones "being developed" and how important it is that it all starts with them - but often they don't even know how to start which brings us back to where we started. Such a difficult cycle to break.
In happier news, it's been a rainy afternoon here today so I have just been sitting in my room in my new bean bag chair watching movies and drinking hot cocoa. It's been a good day overall.
First - we were planning on leaving at 9 to get there, but the nutritionist went and to go to talk to the doctor really quick, but he just wanted to talk for ever (instead of attending to his patients) so then we were late getting to the community. However, once we got there we just ended up waiting for like an hour and a half until we talked to the people. I know everything here runs on "Ecuadorian time", but a lot of times it feels like everyone is always so busy and in such a hurry just to sit around and wait. Another example of this is when you are getting on or off the bus, lots of times they don't even stop all the way for people to get on or off, but then the bus is always running late anyways.
Second - so many times people plan meetings or other activities, then just completely forget about it and make other plans. When we got there the parents were all in another meeting planning the activities for Christmas and almost left right when we got there to do the nutrition thing even though we told them a long time ago we were coming today. This has happened so many other times too, which was frustrating but now I've kind of gotten used to it. It just doesn't make sense how everyone says they want to work on this or that project, but then when we actually are gonna do it they don't show up.
Third - there were 3 organizations that were going to work in this same community all pretty much on the same topic, but they weren't coordinating at all and didn't realize until today that there are other communities where no one is working. Between the large number of programs run by the basically socialist government, and all the NGO's and other organizations here, you'd think there would be more progress than there has been, but with the lack of coordination it's just not gonna happen.
A while ago I remember someone asked me "why are the people there so poor?" I thought about it, and I couldn't really come up with an answer. However, now after situations like the one that happened today and after learning more about how things work here I think there are lots of different reasons why there is so much poverty here. First (and most basically), there are not many jobs that pay well (hence why so many people go to the cities or emigrate to other countries leaving their families behind) and also the land isn't as good as it used to be so they can't even depend on agriculture. Also though, I think all the bureaucracy in the different ministries of the government is a factor because they all have good objectives of helping the lower class, but there are just too many and they don't coordinate with each other like they should. Again with the NGO's and stuff too, the people have gotten used to having stuff given to them and a lot of times they don't even seem to care about improving their own quality of life because they think other people should do it for them. When they show up late to meetings or don't show up at all, that doesn't show me that they are actually interested in whatever type of assistance they were going to receive. I also think the poverty has a lot to do with the lack of education. You can set up as many meetings as you want to give out information on nutrition or whatever, but when the parents can't read and didn't go to school and can't really even understand new concepts like that, its hard to teach them new things. I think the people realize that, but they still don't put much importance on their own education. (For example - classes at the high school were cancelled today so the band could rehearse for the parade we are going to do for World AIDS Day later this week. It's important for them to practice, but I don't know why they can't do it after school so everyone doesn't have to miss out on classes. There have also been so many times where the teachers just don't show up so classes are cancelled, but usually no one seems to do anything about it.)
I've kind of just now gotten a hold of the reality here that as much as I want to change something, if the people don't want to change it they are not going to. I haven't lost motivation and I still hope to do something in these two years that means something to the people here, but it's not going to be as easy as I thought. Not that I was expecting it to be easy - otherwise it would have already happened and I wouldn't be here at all. I'm just starting to realize that there are so many people involved in development work, but the most important people are the ones "being developed" and how important it is that it all starts with them - but often they don't even know how to start which brings us back to where we started. Such a difficult cycle to break.
In happier news, it's been a rainy afternoon here today so I have just been sitting in my room in my new bean bag chair watching movies and drinking hot cocoa. It's been a good day overall.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Reconnect, etc
Quick note about the toothbrush stuff - we are going to have to go through customs with official forms and stuff, so I have set the date of Dec 31 to be the last day of collection because then we have to fill out a form with exactly how much stuff is being donated. If you would like to participate, again let me know by email at kknthomp@gmail.com and you can send anything in the mail to my parents: Scott and Karen Thompson, PO Box 4294, Estes Park, CO 80517. Make sure it´s not UPS because they won´t deliver to PO Boxes. You can send UPS to Scott Thompson at Coldwell Banker, 320 E Elkhorn Avenue, Estes Park, CO 80517
Last week we had a Peace Corps conference called Reconnect in the town of Cumbaya – how typical to meet with a bunch of hippies in Cumbaya right? Everyone had to do a presentation of the results of the surveys we all did. It was supposed to be practice for when we present it to our organizations, which I did on Tuesday when I came back. Anyways, we had the conference in a convent so we were kind of all trapped in there, but I thought it was actually pretty fun because we played some games in the evenings and it was raining all week so I didn’t really want to leave anyways – I would just have spent money unnecessarily. On Friday afternoon after the conference finished a bunch of volunteers went to see the new Harry Potter movie in Quito. We spent the night there and with 6 other volunteers I went on a little weekend trip to Mindo. The trip didn’t start off well because I got robbed on the bus on the way there. Someone cut my bag open and took all the money out of my wallet. It was the first incident that I ever had, and at least they didn’t take my phone or camera or any important documents. The rest of the trip was really fun though. Mindo is pretty much halfway to the coast, so it was hotter there and more green and humid. There are lots of touristy things, like zip lines, hiking to waterfalls, rafting, stuff like that. We just spent about one full day there before going back to our sites. I got back to Cebadas on Monday afternoon, then Tuesday got back to work. I helped with a demonstration on first aid for the 5th and 6th graders in a school in one of the communities – we did triage with the example that there was a bus accident. If there were injuries we treated them with stuff like pieces of cardboard and scarves because honestly a lot of emergency medicine is just learning how to use the equipment but if you can improvise you can do a lot. Tuesday afternoon I presented my Diagnostico Comunitario to the Subcentro staff – I made a pesto chicken casserole too. After eating I started the slide show but I said I wanted it to be more like a conversation and there was a lot of good dialogue that came out of it. We decided to prioritize nutrition as my main project – but I don’t really know where to start. They want to focus on teenagers because then they get pregnant and without good nutrition they will have malnourished kids with congenital problems. First I think we need to find the baseline data because in reality no one has correct data on the prevalence of malnutrition. I guess I will first start working on that and then hopefully we will think of some way to start the classes or whatever. I still feel like I haven’t really found my niche in the Subcentro or in the community in general but I think presenting my survey results helped me get started. I still want to coordinate with other organizations as well, including Rotary, World Vision, and the local government so that will fill up my time when I don’t have nutrition stuff to do. Also on Tuesday afternoon a woman gave birth in the traditional birthing room in the Subcentro! I got there just right after it happened, which sucked cuz I have never seen a live birth before. The couple and the grandma were there, and they decided just to spend the night in the Subcentro. Since everyone else lives in Riobamba they asked if I could help out, so I stayed there hanging out with them till like 8:30 then came back early in the morning just to make sure everything was ok. Wednesday I finally got to move into my new room! Right now I just have a bed and a table and everything else is on the floor, so this weekend and next week I’ll have to do some shopping for other furniture and stuff. It is weird to think that I will live in this room for more time than I ever lived in the same place during college – stuff like that makes it seem like time is going slowly, but other days it seems to pass by so fast. Today is Thanksgiving so I’m going to spend the night in Riobamba and have a potluck dinner with the other volunteers. That’s all for now!
Last week we had a Peace Corps conference called Reconnect in the town of Cumbaya – how typical to meet with a bunch of hippies in Cumbaya right? Everyone had to do a presentation of the results of the surveys we all did. It was supposed to be practice for when we present it to our organizations, which I did on Tuesday when I came back. Anyways, we had the conference in a convent so we were kind of all trapped in there, but I thought it was actually pretty fun because we played some games in the evenings and it was raining all week so I didn’t really want to leave anyways – I would just have spent money unnecessarily. On Friday afternoon after the conference finished a bunch of volunteers went to see the new Harry Potter movie in Quito. We spent the night there and with 6 other volunteers I went on a little weekend trip to Mindo. The trip didn’t start off well because I got robbed on the bus on the way there. Someone cut my bag open and took all the money out of my wallet. It was the first incident that I ever had, and at least they didn’t take my phone or camera or any important documents. The rest of the trip was really fun though. Mindo is pretty much halfway to the coast, so it was hotter there and more green and humid. There are lots of touristy things, like zip lines, hiking to waterfalls, rafting, stuff like that. We just spent about one full day there before going back to our sites. I got back to Cebadas on Monday afternoon, then Tuesday got back to work. I helped with a demonstration on first aid for the 5th and 6th graders in a school in one of the communities – we did triage with the example that there was a bus accident. If there were injuries we treated them with stuff like pieces of cardboard and scarves because honestly a lot of emergency medicine is just learning how to use the equipment but if you can improvise you can do a lot. Tuesday afternoon I presented my Diagnostico Comunitario to the Subcentro staff – I made a pesto chicken casserole too. After eating I started the slide show but I said I wanted it to be more like a conversation and there was a lot of good dialogue that came out of it. We decided to prioritize nutrition as my main project – but I don’t really know where to start. They want to focus on teenagers because then they get pregnant and without good nutrition they will have malnourished kids with congenital problems. First I think we need to find the baseline data because in reality no one has correct data on the prevalence of malnutrition. I guess I will first start working on that and then hopefully we will think of some way to start the classes or whatever. I still feel like I haven’t really found my niche in the Subcentro or in the community in general but I think presenting my survey results helped me get started. I still want to coordinate with other organizations as well, including Rotary, World Vision, and the local government so that will fill up my time when I don’t have nutrition stuff to do. Also on Tuesday afternoon a woman gave birth in the traditional birthing room in the Subcentro! I got there just right after it happened, which sucked cuz I have never seen a live birth before. The couple and the grandma were there, and they decided just to spend the night in the Subcentro. Since everyone else lives in Riobamba they asked if I could help out, so I stayed there hanging out with them till like 8:30 then came back early in the morning just to make sure everything was ok. Wednesday I finally got to move into my new room! Right now I just have a bed and a table and everything else is on the floor, so this weekend and next week I’ll have to do some shopping for other furniture and stuff. It is weird to think that I will live in this room for more time than I ever lived in the same place during college – stuff like that makes it seem like time is going slowly, but other days it seems to pass by so fast. Today is Thanksgiving so I’m going to spend the night in Riobamba and have a potluck dinner with the other volunteers. That’s all for now!
Monday, November 8, 2010
Toothbrush request...
Recently I had an idea that would greatly benefit the Subcentro where I work, but it requires the help of all of my friends at home as well. We have one dentist who works in the Subcentro, because of the poor dental hygiene most of her work consists of pulling teeth with a few fillings in between more pulling teeth – pretty much no preventative cleanings or checkups. She always tells people to brush their teeth 3 times a day in the hopes that they will at least do it once a day, but there’s also the fact that some of the people really are so poor that they can’t afford toothpaste. I went to a dentist at home right before coming here and was talking to her about my upcoming plans, and she said if I came back for a visit to come in and she could donate some toothbrushes and toothpaste. Thinking of that gave me the idea to donate toothbrushes and toothpaste to the dentist in the Subcentro to give to all the patients who come in just like in the US, and possibly in the schools too if I can find enough. My request of all of you is to talk to your personal dentist and ask for any donation that they can possibly give for the people of my community. My sister Shannon is coming to visit at the end of December and has agreed to bring down any donations, but my hope is that there are too many that you have to send them to me in the mail! I know it’s kind of short notice with less than 2 months to look for donations, but if each person goes to just one dentist it won’t be too time consuming.
If you are interested in helping me with this little project, email me at kknthomp@gmail.com and I can answer any questions and help arrange to get the donations down here. Please pass this simple idea on to any friends who might also be willing to participate. Hopefully soon I will be able to post pictures of smiling kids with their new toothbrushes, and share statistics of decreased dental problems!
If you are interested in helping me with this little project, email me at kknthomp@gmail.com and I can answer any questions and help arrange to get the donations down here. Please pass this simple idea on to any friends who might also be willing to participate. Hopefully soon I will be able to post pictures of smiling kids with their new toothbrushes, and share statistics of decreased dental problems!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
This weekend I went to Cuenca for a Halloween volunteer reunion. Cuenca is the 3rd biggest city in Ecuador, and the city with the most Americans/foreigners in general living there – it’s a big retirement spot. It was really surreal that I was still in Ecuador because it could have been Europe or something, its just so different from my site and even from Riobamba. There are 2 malls with movie theatres, cafés that serve real coffee, hookah bars, and pretty much everything you would find in the US except maybe Starbucks or Taco Bell. It was fun to see all the other volunteers again and do something American.
Monday I went to my host-aunt’s house to make bread to celebrate Dia de los Difuntos – I’m not actually even sure what the translation is for Difuntos, but it is the day when they go visit the graves of dead family members and stuff, like Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. That is actually on Tuesday, but on Monday all the family got together to make bread in the shape of babies, and we also made empanadas filled with cheese, rolls, croissants, and I made some cinnamon rolls. We made a ton of dough in a big trough kind of thing, and then just made bread in lots of shapes until there was no more. We also ate guinea pig, grilled chicken, and potatoes, and drank colada morada which is a drink made of blackberries and pineapple and other fruits with cinnamon and cloves. It is kind of like Ecuadorian Thanksgiving because the whole family got together, the kids were playing outside while the adults were cooking, I sat for a while talking to my grandpa, and then we all ate together. Kind of makes me a little homesick, but I’m excited for Shannon and Sarah to come visit me on Christmas so I can look forward to that.
I thought I would now tell a story of my bus ride back from Cuenca, which to me is not that abnormal, but it is probably a good way to describe my everyday life here. I got on the bus and sat down in a seat by the window just waiting for it to leave, and then a man sat in front of me and leaned his seat all the way back so it was touching my knees and shut the little curtain on the window. I kind of pushed it forward but he didn’t do anything, so I moved seats. I’m guessing the person who ended up sitting behind him said something to him but I didn’t want to have to deal with it. (This is a cultural thing I have noticed that people are just kind of rude sometimes, but here its just considered normal) So we started on our trip up the Panamerican Highway which is currently under construction so we had to stop quite a few times to wait for traffic to be let through from the other direction on the one-lane road. The times we were moving were quite bumpy and I was sitting in the second to last row because people had made me move from my other seats, so it was not the smoothest ride. Then this guy who was also a passenger got up in the front of the bus to talk to us all. This is not uncommon for people to sell things like fruit, drinks, ice cream, potato chips, and stuff like that, and there’s also people who come on to beg, and others who are pretty much begging but they are selling cookies or candy. First they make a little speech, thanking the bus driver for letting them on and thanking the passengers for their attention, then they will give every person a candy or whatever, and talk some more saying for just “50 centavitos” you can keep the cookies then go around and collect the money or the product that the people don’t want. So anyways on this particular bus ride I thought this guy was gonna do that, but he actually started explaining how he was an art student in a university and then he started asking questions about what he had said and gave out prizes to people who participated. Turns out he was selling these gemstone necklaces that he and his art classmates had made, which was the most interesting thing I had ever seen sold on a bus. Of course I had to buy one, and it was only $1 anyways. So then I was just sitting listening to my music and being really bored, when the bus stopped and turned off. I thought it was because of the construction again, but then the driver came running back to the back of the bus, and opened up a little thing in the floor that allowed access to the engine or whatever. He did some stuff with some wrenches and we were sitting for a while with the fumes of gasoline coming up into the bus, but eventually he closed it up and we were on our bumpy way again. We went over speed bumps so fast that we all bounced out of our seats. There was a woman sitting next to me with her baby, not really crying but just making loud baby noises. There were also people leaning on the side of my seat because they had to stand in the aisle since there were no more seats left – some of them were going to be travelling about 10 hours total and just had to wait until other people got off and there were seats available. About 4 hours into the ride, they started playing some movie with Sylvester Stallone – the menu and stuff were written in Russian but then they put on the Spanish translation, but I couldn’t really understand it because the bus speakers kept going out, but also because they just record the translation and its not always matched up to the picture or of very good quality. I just tried to sleep some more, then finally arrived in Riobamba where I went to a store to buy a drink and break a $20, but they had to run over to the gas station next door to get me change (another typical thing in Ecuador is that no one ever has change, so sometimes even $5 bills are pretty much worthless). I took a taxi for about 15 minutes to get to where the bus for my site leaves, and then got on another bus for an hour to get home. That 6 hour ride was the longest I have done by myself. Some other volunteers have to travel 15 hours in bus to get to their sites, which is hard to believe because it’s the size of Colorado and there’s no way it would take that long to drive across half the state. So there’s a story of my everyday life in Ecuador…might be boring but maybe it will be interesting.
Monday I went to my host-aunt’s house to make bread to celebrate Dia de los Difuntos – I’m not actually even sure what the translation is for Difuntos, but it is the day when they go visit the graves of dead family members and stuff, like Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. That is actually on Tuesday, but on Monday all the family got together to make bread in the shape of babies, and we also made empanadas filled with cheese, rolls, croissants, and I made some cinnamon rolls. We made a ton of dough in a big trough kind of thing, and then just made bread in lots of shapes until there was no more. We also ate guinea pig, grilled chicken, and potatoes, and drank colada morada which is a drink made of blackberries and pineapple and other fruits with cinnamon and cloves. It is kind of like Ecuadorian Thanksgiving because the whole family got together, the kids were playing outside while the adults were cooking, I sat for a while talking to my grandpa, and then we all ate together. Kind of makes me a little homesick, but I’m excited for Shannon and Sarah to come visit me on Christmas so I can look forward to that.
I thought I would now tell a story of my bus ride back from Cuenca, which to me is not that abnormal, but it is probably a good way to describe my everyday life here. I got on the bus and sat down in a seat by the window just waiting for it to leave, and then a man sat in front of me and leaned his seat all the way back so it was touching my knees and shut the little curtain on the window. I kind of pushed it forward but he didn’t do anything, so I moved seats. I’m guessing the person who ended up sitting behind him said something to him but I didn’t want to have to deal with it. (This is a cultural thing I have noticed that people are just kind of rude sometimes, but here its just considered normal) So we started on our trip up the Panamerican Highway which is currently under construction so we had to stop quite a few times to wait for traffic to be let through from the other direction on the one-lane road. The times we were moving were quite bumpy and I was sitting in the second to last row because people had made me move from my other seats, so it was not the smoothest ride. Then this guy who was also a passenger got up in the front of the bus to talk to us all. This is not uncommon for people to sell things like fruit, drinks, ice cream, potato chips, and stuff like that, and there’s also people who come on to beg, and others who are pretty much begging but they are selling cookies or candy. First they make a little speech, thanking the bus driver for letting them on and thanking the passengers for their attention, then they will give every person a candy or whatever, and talk some more saying for just “50 centavitos” you can keep the cookies then go around and collect the money or the product that the people don’t want. So anyways on this particular bus ride I thought this guy was gonna do that, but he actually started explaining how he was an art student in a university and then he started asking questions about what he had said and gave out prizes to people who participated. Turns out he was selling these gemstone necklaces that he and his art classmates had made, which was the most interesting thing I had ever seen sold on a bus. Of course I had to buy one, and it was only $1 anyways. So then I was just sitting listening to my music and being really bored, when the bus stopped and turned off. I thought it was because of the construction again, but then the driver came running back to the back of the bus, and opened up a little thing in the floor that allowed access to the engine or whatever. He did some stuff with some wrenches and we were sitting for a while with the fumes of gasoline coming up into the bus, but eventually he closed it up and we were on our bumpy way again. We went over speed bumps so fast that we all bounced out of our seats. There was a woman sitting next to me with her baby, not really crying but just making loud baby noises. There were also people leaning on the side of my seat because they had to stand in the aisle since there were no more seats left – some of them were going to be travelling about 10 hours total and just had to wait until other people got off and there were seats available. About 4 hours into the ride, they started playing some movie with Sylvester Stallone – the menu and stuff were written in Russian but then they put on the Spanish translation, but I couldn’t really understand it because the bus speakers kept going out, but also because they just record the translation and its not always matched up to the picture or of very good quality. I just tried to sleep some more, then finally arrived in Riobamba where I went to a store to buy a drink and break a $20, but they had to run over to the gas station next door to get me change (another typical thing in Ecuador is that no one ever has change, so sometimes even $5 bills are pretty much worthless). I took a taxi for about 15 minutes to get to where the bus for my site leaves, and then got on another bus for an hour to get home. That 6 hour ride was the longest I have done by myself. Some other volunteers have to travel 15 hours in bus to get to their sites, which is hard to believe because it’s the size of Colorado and there’s no way it would take that long to drive across half the state. So there’s a story of my everyday life in Ecuador…might be boring but maybe it will be interesting.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Protest
Last Thursday there was a big protest/attempted assasination/nobody knows exactly what happened in Quito. Here´s what I can gather from my understanding of technical words in Spanish that they´ve been talking about on the news.
The police are angry because I think the President cut their pay but not the pay of the Army. They attacked him, and were attacking people on the streets and just causing lots of problems. A bullet flew like 50 cm from the President´s head. They gassed him and he almost passed out, so they took him to the hospital, but he was taken to the hospital of the police – he was kind of held hostage there, but they claim that he wasn´t, but he was in custody of the police doctors. About 9 at night the Army went in and escorted him out while under fire and one soldier died during the process (4 other people died earlier in the day). They took the President back to the Palace where there were a gajillion people waiting and cheering, and he gave a speech about that he has helped the police more than any other government in the past, and that they are being hypocrites but attacking people when they are supposed to be providing security. Now they´re saying in the news that the previous president was behind this. In Cebadas, school was cancelled the day after on Friday, but other than that nothing was really different, seeing as we don´t have police here anyways. I went to Riobamba for an afternoon to do some shopping and everything seemed normal there too, however I think that the day it all happened there were some small protests in Riobamba too.
My schedule continues to fill up – next week we have the inauguration of the kitchen/nutritional education room, and we´re celebrating global handwashing day and global nutrition day on October 15. Later in October there is another meeting with the midwives, and I´m trying to get all 28 of them to come because I´ve only met about 12. The day after that meeting we´re doing a workshop on organic compost for some women who are interested in it, and then November 6 I´m doing a nutrition workshop for 12 women who work in daycare centers in the communities, and November 8 or 9 I´m doing a little 2-hour sex-ed talk to some high schoolers in another community! Then pretty soon after that I have to go to Quito on Nov 14 for Reconnect, a conference with Peace Corps and all the other volunteers and their counterparts to talk about how the first 3 months have gone and our plans for the rest of the time. Hopefully this will help my counterpart understand better what is the Peace Corps and what I´m capable of doing because sometimes he still mentions things like making this juice called chicha and selling it in the US, or writing a letter to Colorado and asking them for and ambulance. I´m glad he has all these ideas, I just want him to be more focused, and hopefully Peace Corps can help me explain it to him during the conference.
The police are angry because I think the President cut their pay but not the pay of the Army. They attacked him, and were attacking people on the streets and just causing lots of problems. A bullet flew like 50 cm from the President´s head. They gassed him and he almost passed out, so they took him to the hospital, but he was taken to the hospital of the police – he was kind of held hostage there, but they claim that he wasn´t, but he was in custody of the police doctors. About 9 at night the Army went in and escorted him out while under fire and one soldier died during the process (4 other people died earlier in the day). They took the President back to the Palace where there were a gajillion people waiting and cheering, and he gave a speech about that he has helped the police more than any other government in the past, and that they are being hypocrites but attacking people when they are supposed to be providing security. Now they´re saying in the news that the previous president was behind this. In Cebadas, school was cancelled the day after on Friday, but other than that nothing was really different, seeing as we don´t have police here anyways. I went to Riobamba for an afternoon to do some shopping and everything seemed normal there too, however I think that the day it all happened there were some small protests in Riobamba too.
My schedule continues to fill up – next week we have the inauguration of the kitchen/nutritional education room, and we´re celebrating global handwashing day and global nutrition day on October 15. Later in October there is another meeting with the midwives, and I´m trying to get all 28 of them to come because I´ve only met about 12. The day after that meeting we´re doing a workshop on organic compost for some women who are interested in it, and then November 6 I´m doing a nutrition workshop for 12 women who work in daycare centers in the communities, and November 8 or 9 I´m doing a little 2-hour sex-ed talk to some high schoolers in another community! Then pretty soon after that I have to go to Quito on Nov 14 for Reconnect, a conference with Peace Corps and all the other volunteers and their counterparts to talk about how the first 3 months have gone and our plans for the rest of the time. Hopefully this will help my counterpart understand better what is the Peace Corps and what I´m capable of doing because sometimes he still mentions things like making this juice called chicha and selling it in the US, or writing a letter to Colorado and asking them for and ambulance. I´m glad he has all these ideas, I just want him to be more focused, and hopefully Peace Corps can help me explain it to him during the conference.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
On TV lately there have been two beauty pageants, The Worldwide Queen of Bananas (with participants from North, South and Central America, and Germany) and the Queen of Guayaquil. People are actually interested in watching them, but I don’t know why. I watched part of one for a little bit and it consisted of the women walking on stage in their bathing suits, the announcer announcing their measurements and hair/eye color, and then they announced the winner. Not very profound, but its entertaining to the locals. Another reason why I’m excited to move into my own little apartment so I can get a TV and watch the news.
Sunday for the adolescent pregnancy prevention thing, not many adolescents actually showed up but lots of adults were actually interested in the birth control methods too. We had some keychains that everyone wanted, so I made them demonstrate how to use a condom in order to win one. They are interested in the pills and injections and stuff as well, but HIV is an increasing issue nationwide, and although there have not been any cases in my town, it’s still important to educate them about it. The majority of new cases of HIV being detected are in housewives who have most likely never even heard of HIV before. The government provides anti-retroviral treatment for free, and there is a group of 16 volunteers that are working just with HIV to promote testing and treatment and break stereotypes of people living with HIV (people think you can get it by mosquitoes or if someone coughs on you). In my community I just want them to know first what it is and how to prevent it. I’ll teach more in depth about it in the high school, but every chance I get I try to briefly explain it to people, especially the women who have husbands working in other cities which is pretty common here.
I hung out with some teenagers on the street this afternoon and ate some chicken organs that they were cooking. They always have weird questions about the US that I wouldn’t even think of, but because of things they’ve seen in movies or on TV they think that’s what it is like. For example, they asked what is a tornado and why does it occur, or why do I only have one sister. A few people have asked me about the Twin Towers too or if everyone is really tall in the US.
Sunday for the adolescent pregnancy prevention thing, not many adolescents actually showed up but lots of adults were actually interested in the birth control methods too. We had some keychains that everyone wanted, so I made them demonstrate how to use a condom in order to win one. They are interested in the pills and injections and stuff as well, but HIV is an increasing issue nationwide, and although there have not been any cases in my town, it’s still important to educate them about it. The majority of new cases of HIV being detected are in housewives who have most likely never even heard of HIV before. The government provides anti-retroviral treatment for free, and there is a group of 16 volunteers that are working just with HIV to promote testing and treatment and break stereotypes of people living with HIV (people think you can get it by mosquitoes or if someone coughs on you). In my community I just want them to know first what it is and how to prevent it. I’ll teach more in depth about it in the high school, but every chance I get I try to briefly explain it to people, especially the women who have husbands working in other cities which is pretty common here.
I hung out with some teenagers on the street this afternoon and ate some chicken organs that they were cooking. They always have weird questions about the US that I wouldn’t even think of, but because of things they’ve seen in movies or on TV they think that’s what it is like. For example, they asked what is a tornado and why does it occur, or why do I only have one sister. A few people have asked me about the Twin Towers too or if everyone is really tall in the US.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Surveys
So I did about 8 surveys last Sunday, and maybe 4 or so on Monday, then probably over 50 on Tuesday! There were a ton of people in town to receive food donations from a government program so I took advantage of that and set up next to the table where they had to register and people were begging me to fill out the survey. I got a lot of people from other communities which is good because my goal is to get at least 5 or so from each community if I can. I don’t think I’ll be able to work in all 28 communities, but I’m trying to find out where people don’t have any sort of toilet or latrine so I can help them with some ecological dry toilets (which are really cool and I want to build one in my house when I go back to the US) and where there are women’s groups working so I can give them training on birth control methods. There are some that are already really well established and doing community bank projects, so hopefully I can work with them a little and then just talk about that to women from other communities to encourage them to do the same thing. I think the birth control “charlas” will be really important too because its not uncommon for families to have 8 kids and make $100 per month, and the women don’t use birth control just because they don’t even know what it is. It’s all free in the subcentro, so hopefully if I just talk to them about it they’ll take advantage of it. I’m finding from my surveys too that everyone is interested in home gardens, so I’m planning on doing something with the agriculture volunteer who is already in my site. Now I just have to go through my surveys an make a spreadsheet or something to analyze them, so that should be lots of fun hours sitting at the computer.
Sunday is the Worlwide Day of Prevention of Undesired Adolescent Pregnancies – I bet you didn’t even know that existed did you? I made some little posters and hand outs to give out and next week I am starting to teach at the high school. I will be doing sex-ed stuff, but I want to start out with self esteem stuff and then later talk about STDs and general anatomy and stuff, but I invited all the high school kids on Sunday and am making some of them do a homework assignment of 2 things they learned and 2 questions they have. Hopefully the teaching stuff will go well; I’ll have 2 classes of 14-15 year olds, about 30 minutes with each class every week.
That’s all for now, I’ll write more after classes start!
Sunday is the Worlwide Day of Prevention of Undesired Adolescent Pregnancies – I bet you didn’t even know that existed did you? I made some little posters and hand outs to give out and next week I am starting to teach at the high school. I will be doing sex-ed stuff, but I want to start out with self esteem stuff and then later talk about STDs and general anatomy and stuff, but I invited all the high school kids on Sunday and am making some of them do a homework assignment of 2 things they learned and 2 questions they have. Hopefully the teaching stuff will go well; I’ll have 2 classes of 14-15 year olds, about 30 minutes with each class every week.
That’s all for now, I’ll write more after classes start!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Beginning of CAT tools...
I never know what to write on here, so here’s just some random stuff:
• I have fleas in my bed that I can’t get rid of. I haven’t tried very hard I guess – I put some powder in my covers, and I should put them out in the sun and the mattress too, I just don’t want to in case it rains. The bites are really itchy.
• I met my great grandma who is 95 and takes care of her daughter who has rheumatoid arthritis. I also met my great uncle who is a guide on Chimborazo – now I have a goal to climb it before I leave.
• I haven’t really done any projects yet, obviously since I pretty much just got here, but I feel like just being here stuff has kind of happened. For example I met a youth group and then I told the doctors about it, and they set up a meeting with them so now they’re gonna do something together and I didn’t really have to do anything. We have had 2 meetings now with the midwives since I’ve been here, and I don’t think they really met that often before. I did say I wanted to meet the midwives, but I didn’t have to do much work for either of the meetings. It kind of seems like in some ways my presence here makes everyone more motivated. Also I mentioned I wanted to have cooking classes and I needed to clean out the kitchen, and one day when I wasn’t there they cleaned it out for me! Today when I got to the subcentro they were writing a letter to the president of Ecuador asking for an ambulance. They don’t think small!
• I have made pizza 4 times in the last 3 weeks; everyone wants to learn how to make it. Next week I have planned two other cooking dates with some other people. But it never turns out just right, of course they don’t know the difference though. I don’t how I’m going to do these cooking classes because I want to teach nutrition along with it and make things with ingredients they can actually find here. SOOO many people are interested in these classes and I don’t know how I’ll buy the ingredients or if I’ll charge a small fee for people to come to cover my costs.
• “No sea malito” is a phrase they use a lot here. Literally it means don’t be a little bad person. For example if you ask someone to do a favor for you you always say that after you ask them.
• Another interesting cultural aspect is that if you are eating food and someone else comes over, you pretty much have to share with them. The other day I was walking by my neighbor who was eating an orange, I just asked how she was doing today and she gave me some segments of her orange.
• I went to the market today and spent $2.65. I got some fresh oregano, some nabo (a local cabbage), 2 heads of broccoli, a bunch of beets, a bag of melloco (a small root veggie), and a bag of habas (kind of like really big beans). What a deal! Also you can get like 30 oranges for a dollar.
I finally started my surveys today, and I got lots of mixed responses. Some people said they couldn’t help me because they were busy even though they were just standing there. A few were very interested, one woman in particular talked with me for like an hour while I sat with her in her booth at the market helping her husk peas (is that what you do to peas?). She is part of a group of women who just started meeting 3 weeks ago and are working on a gardening project. She is going to talk to the president and see if we can maybe do some projects together – they already have the gardening stuff down but maybe I can teach them about birth control options or talk about pap smears and stuff because lots of people just don’t know. There was one woman who I asked if she had a few minutes to help me with this survey, and I kind of briefly explained why I was doing it which is just kind of awkward, but she said no she wouldn’t help because she went to the doctor once for a checkup for her son and they told her he was malnourished but didn’t give her any vitamins for him. There is a program here where they give out this baby food mix that has lots of vitamins and stuff, but because she didn’t get pills she didn’t like the services in the subcentro. I asked if she had received some tips on nutrition so she didn’t need to give them vitamins they could just get it from the food they eat, but she said no. Everyone has a little nutritional guide on the immunization record so I know she has heard something about it if she has taken her kids to get them vaccinated, she just has this idea that without pills you can’t fix anything. Some other people I met asked if there was a plant or something that could work to “not have more kids” because they don’t want to take any pills or get injections, so it’s just interesting different people’s perspectives on health.
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• I have fleas in my bed that I can’t get rid of. I haven’t tried very hard I guess – I put some powder in my covers, and I should put them out in the sun and the mattress too, I just don’t want to in case it rains. The bites are really itchy.
• I met my great grandma who is 95 and takes care of her daughter who has rheumatoid arthritis. I also met my great uncle who is a guide on Chimborazo – now I have a goal to climb it before I leave.
• I haven’t really done any projects yet, obviously since I pretty much just got here, but I feel like just being here stuff has kind of happened. For example I met a youth group and then I told the doctors about it, and they set up a meeting with them so now they’re gonna do something together and I didn’t really have to do anything. We have had 2 meetings now with the midwives since I’ve been here, and I don’t think they really met that often before. I did say I wanted to meet the midwives, but I didn’t have to do much work for either of the meetings. It kind of seems like in some ways my presence here makes everyone more motivated. Also I mentioned I wanted to have cooking classes and I needed to clean out the kitchen, and one day when I wasn’t there they cleaned it out for me! Today when I got to the subcentro they were writing a letter to the president of Ecuador asking for an ambulance. They don’t think small!
• I have made pizza 4 times in the last 3 weeks; everyone wants to learn how to make it. Next week I have planned two other cooking dates with some other people. But it never turns out just right, of course they don’t know the difference though. I don’t how I’m going to do these cooking classes because I want to teach nutrition along with it and make things with ingredients they can actually find here. SOOO many people are interested in these classes and I don’t know how I’ll buy the ingredients or if I’ll charge a small fee for people to come to cover my costs.
• “No sea malito” is a phrase they use a lot here. Literally it means don’t be a little bad person. For example if you ask someone to do a favor for you you always say that after you ask them.
• Another interesting cultural aspect is that if you are eating food and someone else comes over, you pretty much have to share with them. The other day I was walking by my neighbor who was eating an orange, I just asked how she was doing today and she gave me some segments of her orange.
• I went to the market today and spent $2.65. I got some fresh oregano, some nabo (a local cabbage), 2 heads of broccoli, a bunch of beets, a bag of melloco (a small root veggie), and a bag of habas (kind of like really big beans). What a deal! Also you can get like 30 oranges for a dollar.
I finally started my surveys today, and I got lots of mixed responses. Some people said they couldn’t help me because they were busy even though they were just standing there. A few were very interested, one woman in particular talked with me for like an hour while I sat with her in her booth at the market helping her husk peas (is that what you do to peas?). She is part of a group of women who just started meeting 3 weeks ago and are working on a gardening project. She is going to talk to the president and see if we can maybe do some projects together – they already have the gardening stuff down but maybe I can teach them about birth control options or talk about pap smears and stuff because lots of people just don’t know. There was one woman who I asked if she had a few minutes to help me with this survey, and I kind of briefly explained why I was doing it which is just kind of awkward, but she said no she wouldn’t help because she went to the doctor once for a checkup for her son and they told her he was malnourished but didn’t give her any vitamins for him. There is a program here where they give out this baby food mix that has lots of vitamins and stuff, but because she didn’t get pills she didn’t like the services in the subcentro. I asked if she had received some tips on nutrition so she didn’t need to give them vitamins they could just get it from the food they eat, but she said no. Everyone has a little nutritional guide on the immunization record so I know she has heard something about it if she has taken her kids to get them vaccinated, she just has this idea that without pills you can’t fix anything. Some other people I met asked if there was a plant or something that could work to “not have more kids” because they don’t want to take any pills or get injections, so it’s just interesting different people’s perspectives on health.
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Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Yachag
This weekend I finally got to see the shaman practice – for some reason he wasn’t working the last 2 weeks. His first name is Espiritu. First, I observed a cleaning with eggs. These are just normal eggs that the patient actually has to buy, and I’m not sure yet why they use eggs, but the shaman takes them in his hands and just rubs them all over the patient and sometimes he blows on them. After a few minutes he drinks some special water with medicinal plants and spits it on the eggs and stores them to burn later – however on one adult patient he spit the water actually on the lady, but the other cleanings were on kids. Someone had requested a cuy cleaning and actually brought their own guinea pig, but that never happened because while the yachag was examining it he found some fleas so if it’s not healthy he can’t do it. He gave everyone prescriptions too of plants they should put in water to take a bath or to drink, with very specific instructions like “bathe in this on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons for 2 weeks.” Apparently some of the plants are really hard to find too – and I thought it would be cool to plant a garden somewhere near the clinic, but some of the plants only grow at really high elevations or in a certain ecosystem called the páramo which is kind of a high elevation wetland I think. I also watched a midwife perform a manteo, which is done when the baby is in a weird position and they try to move it back to normal. In this case, the baby was upside down with its arm ready to head out first. The pregnant woman was laying on the ground and first the midwife rubbed oil and bengay stuff on her stomach. Then she put a cloth under the pregnant woman and lifted her up shaking her all around to try to reposition the baby. At one point the mother of the pregnant woman was holding her legs up while the midwife was shaking her around – the whole thing just looked really painful, even if you weren’t pregnant. That’s another shocking thing about pregnancies here is that almost all of them give birth at home with no anesthetics or anything! Maybe some of the medicinal plants they use have anesthetic properties…I think it would be really cool to analyze the plants to find the active compound, and compare it to the drugs we use – I bet they’re pretty similar, and a lot cheaper just to grow yourself!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
meetings, meetings, meetings
Things have picked up lately, well I guess they never were slow to start with really. However these next few days are gonna be pretty busy. Friday I went to a meeting in the local government office about the baby that was abandoned under the tree. Saturday I went to a youth group meeting with some high school students who work in the area of rights of youth to prevent child labor and child abuse. They have some little skits they do and are in the process of recording some radio programs. Saturday evening I’m going to a goodbye party for my dad’s brother who lives and works in Spain and came back to visit for about a month. (I would say the majority of the people here have a family member living in Spain or the US and working because they couldn’t make enough money here) Sunday there will be a lot of people in the subcentro, and I think I’m gonna give a presentation about Colorado a ne what is the Peace Corps. Monday I don’t think I’m doing anything important so far, but Tuesday will be the big meeting with the midwives. I’m going to do my presentation again and give them a survey for my community assessment that I have to do. It will more likely be an interview because apparently a lot of them can’t read or write. Wednesday I’m going to the high school with the obstetrician to see when we can give health classes; we want to do it once a week. Then the next Saturday is a get together with everyone from our “cluster” which is all the other peace corps volunteers who live near Riobamba.
Now instead of feeling overwhelmed with so much projects to do in so little time, I feel kind of useless now. I have been learning more about the projects the nurses and doctors at the clinic are already doing, or planning on doing, and besides these I don’t know what else I can do and I don’t know why I’m here if they already have all these plans. I know they are really understaffed, so maybe I can go out to the communities and do the projects that we plan together while they stay in the clinic, but this won’t be sustainable after I leave. They told us in training that right away when you start thinking of a new project you should start thinking about your exit strategy. Also I’ve been finding out about these other groups, for example the youth group and other NGO’s and government organizations too that work with children and stuff, but yet there is still so much poverty and health issues in the communities. For now I’ll just keep going to the clinic every day to get to know more about what they do on a regular basis and what kind of people come in to see the doctors. School starts next week and I think then everyone will have a more set schedule and I’m hoping I will too – I want to start a youth group and teach in the schools maybe a few times a week. I also need to work on my community assessment, however they have already done that too. There was a comprehensive one done last year by a doctor who used to work there; it’s a Word document that’s 79 pages. I also got a copy of the thesis that the obstetrician did this year for her master’s on undesired pregnancies, and one of the nurses is currently working on her thesis on prevention of maternal death. These projects all make my diagnostic seem silly, but I’m still going to do it so I can get out in the communities and personally talk to people, but it’s a good thing I’ll have all these other resources to fill in gaps in my research.
NOTICE – MAY BE A LITTLE GRAPHIC On Wednesday I went to my other grandparents house whom I hadn’t met yet – the parents of my host mom. They live in a community about a 10 minute bus ride and a 20 minute walk away. They only have running water from a faucet outside and they only cook with firewood like the other grandparents too. They were still out working when my sister and I arrived so we went to check on the animals first, then went to the house and harvested some potatoes for dinner. We peeled them, then caught some guinea pigs (cuyes) from their pen – she thought 3 should be enough for the 6 people who were going to eat dinner. I held a bag open while she threw them in, then we took them into the kitchen to kill them. She just snapped their necks and later cut their eyes out with a knife then I held them upside down over a bowl to collect the blood because her grandma likes to eat it. Then she would take them and dunk them in boiling water so we could peel the fur off. I helped with this too, but I wasn’t as fast as her. Pretty soon our parents arrived and the mom helped us butcher them to remove the organs, but she kept them too to put in the soup. We also put noodles, onions and salt in the soup with the potatoes and the cuy. It was an interesting experience!
Now instead of feeling overwhelmed with so much projects to do in so little time, I feel kind of useless now. I have been learning more about the projects the nurses and doctors at the clinic are already doing, or planning on doing, and besides these I don’t know what else I can do and I don’t know why I’m here if they already have all these plans. I know they are really understaffed, so maybe I can go out to the communities and do the projects that we plan together while they stay in the clinic, but this won’t be sustainable after I leave. They told us in training that right away when you start thinking of a new project you should start thinking about your exit strategy. Also I’ve been finding out about these other groups, for example the youth group and other NGO’s and government organizations too that work with children and stuff, but yet there is still so much poverty and health issues in the communities. For now I’ll just keep going to the clinic every day to get to know more about what they do on a regular basis and what kind of people come in to see the doctors. School starts next week and I think then everyone will have a more set schedule and I’m hoping I will too – I want to start a youth group and teach in the schools maybe a few times a week. I also need to work on my community assessment, however they have already done that too. There was a comprehensive one done last year by a doctor who used to work there; it’s a Word document that’s 79 pages. I also got a copy of the thesis that the obstetrician did this year for her master’s on undesired pregnancies, and one of the nurses is currently working on her thesis on prevention of maternal death. These projects all make my diagnostic seem silly, but I’m still going to do it so I can get out in the communities and personally talk to people, but it’s a good thing I’ll have all these other resources to fill in gaps in my research.
NOTICE – MAY BE A LITTLE GRAPHIC On Wednesday I went to my other grandparents house whom I hadn’t met yet – the parents of my host mom. They live in a community about a 10 minute bus ride and a 20 minute walk away. They only have running water from a faucet outside and they only cook with firewood like the other grandparents too. They were still out working when my sister and I arrived so we went to check on the animals first, then went to the house and harvested some potatoes for dinner. We peeled them, then caught some guinea pigs (cuyes) from their pen – she thought 3 should be enough for the 6 people who were going to eat dinner. I held a bag open while she threw them in, then we took them into the kitchen to kill them. She just snapped their necks and later cut their eyes out with a knife then I held them upside down over a bowl to collect the blood because her grandma likes to eat it. Then she would take them and dunk them in boiling water so we could peel the fur off. I helped with this too, but I wasn’t as fast as her. Pretty soon our parents arrived and the mom helped us butcher them to remove the organs, but she kept them too to put in the soup. We also put noodles, onions and salt in the soup with the potatoes and the cuy. It was an interesting experience!
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Some interesting observations of Ecuadorian life:
Some interesting observations of Ecuadorian life:
• They play indoor here, not fútbol. This is like indoor soccer except on cement covered with sand and dust. Some people only wear converse-like shoes and no one wears shin guards. The game may be delayed for a number of reasons, including a truck driving through the middle of the field, or a dog or an elderly couple walking right through the middle of the game.
• I made pizza for my family with home-made sauce and they loved it! (So did I!) The next day we ate spaghetti with the extra sauce, but my sister put ketchup on it also, and my brother ate it with lime juice. We all ate with spoons because we don’t even have any forks in the house. The oven had never been used for anything but storage before I used it, so I guess there is no need for forks if you just eat soup for every meal.
• Monday we drove for about an hour and a half one way to go to a community to do some pap smears, but when we got there there were no women there. They hadn’t called and said they were coming, but apparently that was because there is no cell phone signal there. They told me to play with the kids for a while and give them a charla while they looked for some women, so I talked to them a little bit, but then we just ended up running in circles and they loved it. Overall, it was a pretty big waste of time, but this community was in a different province so it was in the transitional zone between the sierra and the oriente – almost rainforest area – so it was cool to see a new ecosystem I guess, and be warmer for a little bit, and I saw lots of pretty waterfalls.
• My brother thinks that if you take a shower every day you will get cancer and your hair will fall out. (they have lots of weird explanations for why people get sick here so I wasn’t really surprised when he said this.) I told him that my parents shower every day, and he asked how old they were. He said that they don´t have cancer because showering every day is only good for old people.
I should carry my laptop all the time to write about the weird things that I see every day because now I can’t really even think of other interesting observations even though I know I see them all the time. Maybe these things are just becoming normal to me. I am really starting to enjoy myself lately; when I walk around I always see people that I know, or at least recognize, and I am never bored, which was one of my biggest concerns moving out to the campo. I have really bonded with my siblings too, we always have fun together and joke around, and my dad has started making fun of me sometimes when I try to speak Kichwa or something so that makes me feel at home like it was my uncles making fun of me!
My work stuff is picking up too – the other day I wrote a formal business letter to the president of the midwives asking for her to set a date for a meeting where I can introduce myself and meet all of them. I also met some teenagers who have a group mainly working with children’s rights to fight against child abuse and neglect and prevent things such as teenage pregnancy and child labor and I am going to their meeting on Saturday. I’m bringing banana bread which I have already made like 3 times for various people. Everyone wants me to teach them how to cook American food, and I actually just found out today there is a oven/stove in the clinic so I might start doing cooking classes on Sunday afternoons when everyone comes down from the communities.
On a sadder note, this morning someone informed us at the clinic that last night someone gave birth to a baby and left it under a tree with the placenta still attached. The baby was still alive and was taken to the hospital, but we went with the doctor to see and the placenta was just sitting there and we don´t know who the mother was so tomorrow we´ll probably try to do some investigation.
That’s all for now! Love you all!
• They play indoor here, not fútbol. This is like indoor soccer except on cement covered with sand and dust. Some people only wear converse-like shoes and no one wears shin guards. The game may be delayed for a number of reasons, including a truck driving through the middle of the field, or a dog or an elderly couple walking right through the middle of the game.
• I made pizza for my family with home-made sauce and they loved it! (So did I!) The next day we ate spaghetti with the extra sauce, but my sister put ketchup on it also, and my brother ate it with lime juice. We all ate with spoons because we don’t even have any forks in the house. The oven had never been used for anything but storage before I used it, so I guess there is no need for forks if you just eat soup for every meal.
• Monday we drove for about an hour and a half one way to go to a community to do some pap smears, but when we got there there were no women there. They hadn’t called and said they were coming, but apparently that was because there is no cell phone signal there. They told me to play with the kids for a while and give them a charla while they looked for some women, so I talked to them a little bit, but then we just ended up running in circles and they loved it. Overall, it was a pretty big waste of time, but this community was in a different province so it was in the transitional zone between the sierra and the oriente – almost rainforest area – so it was cool to see a new ecosystem I guess, and be warmer for a little bit, and I saw lots of pretty waterfalls.
• My brother thinks that if you take a shower every day you will get cancer and your hair will fall out. (they have lots of weird explanations for why people get sick here so I wasn’t really surprised when he said this.) I told him that my parents shower every day, and he asked how old they were. He said that they don´t have cancer because showering every day is only good for old people.
I should carry my laptop all the time to write about the weird things that I see every day because now I can’t really even think of other interesting observations even though I know I see them all the time. Maybe these things are just becoming normal to me. I am really starting to enjoy myself lately; when I walk around I always see people that I know, or at least recognize, and I am never bored, which was one of my biggest concerns moving out to the campo. I have really bonded with my siblings too, we always have fun together and joke around, and my dad has started making fun of me sometimes when I try to speak Kichwa or something so that makes me feel at home like it was my uncles making fun of me!
My work stuff is picking up too – the other day I wrote a formal business letter to the president of the midwives asking for her to set a date for a meeting where I can introduce myself and meet all of them. I also met some teenagers who have a group mainly working with children’s rights to fight against child abuse and neglect and prevent things such as teenage pregnancy and child labor and I am going to their meeting on Saturday. I’m bringing banana bread which I have already made like 3 times for various people. Everyone wants me to teach them how to cook American food, and I actually just found out today there is a oven/stove in the clinic so I might start doing cooking classes on Sunday afternoons when everyone comes down from the communities.
On a sadder note, this morning someone informed us at the clinic that last night someone gave birth to a baby and left it under a tree with the placenta still attached. The baby was still alive and was taken to the hospital, but we went with the doctor to see and the placenta was just sitting there and we don´t know who the mother was so tomorrow we´ll probably try to do some investigation.
That’s all for now! Love you all!
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
first week in site
Sorry I haven’t written on here in a while; actually as I sit at my laptop in my room I can’t remember the last post I wrote. Training ended up well – I was glad it was over so I didn’t have to listen to Power Point presentations every day, but also nervous to move all alone to my site and not have anyone to speak English to, and all the other responsibilities of course. During training I was sooo excited to just get to my site and start working and stuff, but now I’m here (and granted it’s only been 3 and a half days as I write this) and I feel overwhelmed. Malnutrition is a huge problem, but me just giving “charlas” to the mothers in the communities probably won’t help this. They grow all this nutritious food like quinoa, corn, lots of other veggies native to this area, but then they sell them to get money to buy rice, potatoes, and noodles. The clinic actually does cooking classes as well, I’m hoping to attend one on Monday, so I don’t know how I can make an impact in this area. Maternal health is also a huge issue, mostly related to the nutrition aspect as well, but also due to the fact that many of the mothers are very young and now no longer attending school. There’s a ton of other problems that I feel like I should try to address with my projects, but I just feel really overwhelmed and I don’t even know where to start. Peace Corps has given us an “assignment” to do a community diagnostic analysis using surveys to get a better grasp on the current situation in the community, so this should help me decide what I actually want to do for the rest of the time that I’m here. However, this is also challenging for me because I don’t know how I want to define my community exactly. I live in the main little town of this area and there are 28 smaller villages surrounding it. If I can I would love to give the surveys in all of the communities because that is where the poverty is stronger than here in the central town, but I don’t know if that is too ambitious. Peace Corps recommends having local coworkers or other community members to help with this, but everyone who works in the clinic is already very busy and they won’t have time to go to all the communities with me.
Enough with my preoccupations, now I’ll just write some about my first few days in my site. I arrived in the afternoon with my 2 huge suitcases which was actually easier than I had anticipated, but after a long bus ride which included me sitting in the front seat puking, I just wanted to sleep. I ate dinner with my family later, and went to bed. Friday, I went to the clinic in the morning just to observe to daily functions. The doctor who is in charge, and who is my counterpart, doesn’t work on Fridays, but there was one nurse and one doctor. Usually there is also a dentist, but she wasn’t there that day. Earlier in the morning, before 12 or so, was when most of the patients came in. Many people came to have rotten teeth pulled, but we had to turn them away and tell them to come back in a week, the next day the dentist will be in the office. A lot of the other patients were little babies brought in by their mothers, some with colds or diarrhea. There were some women who came to get birth control pills, a few people with sore throats, a man with an infected burn from a motorcycle exhaust, and a man who had stitches on his foot from some injury last week and I got to help take them out! After a while, things slowed down and I had more time to just sit and talk to the nurse and doctor since there were no patients. I went home for lunch that my sister had cooked for us. I watched a movie with my brother in the afternoon, and in the evening sat in the cabinas with my sister – this is our families business, they sell cell phones and minutes, and have some phone booths. I actually cooked dinner for the family because I was hungry and everyone was gone except for my sister who had to stay in the cabinas, but this was a kind of difficult because there was no running water all day, and actually now it’s still not working. Cooking could have gone better, my family here doesn’t eat as many veggies as my family in Paquiestancia, so there wasn’t much in the kitchen for me to work with. Also, I’ve gotten kind of used to having the garden outside if we need some herbs or any veggies really, but I made do with what I had and they said they liked it. This morning I unpacked my bags finally – I’m living in a bedroom of the house because my little apartment isn’t done yet and might not be for about a month, so I just rearranged the stuff in my bags and put them under my bed. Because of the construction on my room there has been no running water to our house since Friday afternoon.
Sunday I went to the subcentro again; Sunday is the market day here and there are tons of people from all around the communities, so they open the clinic to let the people come in while they’re already in town. There is supposed to be a shaman on Sundays too, but he wasn’t there this week. There were a ton of patients that came in, and the only people working were the doctor, the obstetrician, a nurse who spent all day giving vaccines to kids, and another nurse who is also the pharmacist. That left me to check in patients, meaning I had to search for their clinical history in the semi-unorganized office, then weigh and measure them and take blood pressures. I didn’t expect to be given so many responsibilities on the first day I was helping out, but it was interesting to get to see who all came in. I didn’t really introduce myself to anyone – no one really asked where I was from or anything and I didn’t want to just start talking about myself while they were telling me their problems, but hopefully next week I’ll personally meet some more people here.
One more thing quickly, Sunday also there were a ton of men playing volleyball out in the plaza. Here pretty much only men play, but girls will play just with their friends or siblings or whatever, but on Sunday everyone is watching the men playing. They play 3 vs 3, and the net is probably 2 feet higher than it is in the US. They were really serious about it, I’m not exactly sure how it works but I saw money being exchanged after the matches. Its been pretty cold here the last few days, but they were still out there, some without shirts on even!
I put up new pictures on Facebook too:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2384509&id=19227721&l=a303982b64
Enough with my preoccupations, now I’ll just write some about my first few days in my site. I arrived in the afternoon with my 2 huge suitcases which was actually easier than I had anticipated, but after a long bus ride which included me sitting in the front seat puking, I just wanted to sleep. I ate dinner with my family later, and went to bed. Friday, I went to the clinic in the morning just to observe to daily functions. The doctor who is in charge, and who is my counterpart, doesn’t work on Fridays, but there was one nurse and one doctor. Usually there is also a dentist, but she wasn’t there that day. Earlier in the morning, before 12 or so, was when most of the patients came in. Many people came to have rotten teeth pulled, but we had to turn them away and tell them to come back in a week, the next day the dentist will be in the office. A lot of the other patients were little babies brought in by their mothers, some with colds or diarrhea. There were some women who came to get birth control pills, a few people with sore throats, a man with an infected burn from a motorcycle exhaust, and a man who had stitches on his foot from some injury last week and I got to help take them out! After a while, things slowed down and I had more time to just sit and talk to the nurse and doctor since there were no patients. I went home for lunch that my sister had cooked for us. I watched a movie with my brother in the afternoon, and in the evening sat in the cabinas with my sister – this is our families business, they sell cell phones and minutes, and have some phone booths. I actually cooked dinner for the family because I was hungry and everyone was gone except for my sister who had to stay in the cabinas, but this was a kind of difficult because there was no running water all day, and actually now it’s still not working. Cooking could have gone better, my family here doesn’t eat as many veggies as my family in Paquiestancia, so there wasn’t much in the kitchen for me to work with. Also, I’ve gotten kind of used to having the garden outside if we need some herbs or any veggies really, but I made do with what I had and they said they liked it. This morning I unpacked my bags finally – I’m living in a bedroom of the house because my little apartment isn’t done yet and might not be for about a month, so I just rearranged the stuff in my bags and put them under my bed. Because of the construction on my room there has been no running water to our house since Friday afternoon.
Sunday I went to the subcentro again; Sunday is the market day here and there are tons of people from all around the communities, so they open the clinic to let the people come in while they’re already in town. There is supposed to be a shaman on Sundays too, but he wasn’t there this week. There were a ton of patients that came in, and the only people working were the doctor, the obstetrician, a nurse who spent all day giving vaccines to kids, and another nurse who is also the pharmacist. That left me to check in patients, meaning I had to search for their clinical history in the semi-unorganized office, then weigh and measure them and take blood pressures. I didn’t expect to be given so many responsibilities on the first day I was helping out, but it was interesting to get to see who all came in. I didn’t really introduce myself to anyone – no one really asked where I was from or anything and I didn’t want to just start talking about myself while they were telling me their problems, but hopefully next week I’ll personally meet some more people here.
One more thing quickly, Sunday also there were a ton of men playing volleyball out in the plaza. Here pretty much only men play, but girls will play just with their friends or siblings or whatever, but on Sunday everyone is watching the men playing. They play 3 vs 3, and the net is probably 2 feet higher than it is in the US. They were really serious about it, I’m not exactly sure how it works but I saw money being exchanged after the matches. Its been pretty cold here the last few days, but they were still out there, some without shirts on even!
I put up new pictures on Facebook too:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2384509&id=19227721&l=a303982b64
Monday, August 9, 2010
Tech trip
We just got back Saturday from a week long tech trip. I was in a group with 11 other volunteers and 3 Peace Corps volunteers. were gone for a week, staying in hotels in the cities of Latacunga, Ambato, and Riobamba. During the day we would go out to visit sites of other volunteers to see what projects they’re working on.
I feel like this is a really boring summary, so I’m just gonna tell a funny story instead.
We were in a bus station looking for the bathrooms and went up to a man and asked where the bathrooms. He told us to take a taxi up to a different bus stop so we were really confused. Then we realized there is a touristy town with some hot springs called Baños and he thought we were looking for the bus that goes there. Its annoying that everyone just thinks we’re tourists here, when really we’ve already been here a few months and we know when they’re ripping us off.
For my last week here I am going to make mexican food one night and also lasagna another night. I can’t believe this is already the last week of training, and I’m excited to move to my site, but also obviously kind of scared to be there working all by myself pretty much.
My life here feels normal to me now, and I will be leaving in about 2 weeks to go to my site, but if you have ideas of something I should write about just let me know! I am willing to answer any questions, and we can make it an interactive blog!
I feel like this is a really boring summary, so I’m just gonna tell a funny story instead.
We were in a bus station looking for the bathrooms and went up to a man and asked where the bathrooms. He told us to take a taxi up to a different bus stop so we were really confused. Then we realized there is a touristy town with some hot springs called Baños and he thought we were looking for the bus that goes there. Its annoying that everyone just thinks we’re tourists here, when really we’ve already been here a few months and we know when they’re ripping us off.
For my last week here I am going to make mexican food one night and also lasagna another night. I can’t believe this is already the last week of training, and I’m excited to move to my site, but also obviously kind of scared to be there working all by myself pretty much.
My life here feels normal to me now, and I will be leaving in about 2 weeks to go to my site, but if you have ideas of something I should write about just let me know! I am willing to answer any questions, and we can make it an interactive blog!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Cebadas
Here´s a little summary of my site after my visit for 4 days!
The people speak Kichwa and Spanish, I know the older generation prefers to speak Kichwa and I probably speak better Spanish then they do. The kids don’t learn it in schools, just in their homes. I learned a few words last week – Imanalla = Hola, como estas – and had plenty of offers from people to teach me Kichwa if I teach them English. The people here I can tell are more conservative, the personalities match the general indigenous “stereotype.” For example, when I ask my parents a question, my dad always answers even if it was directed to my mom. That’s ok with me though because my mom is really hard for me to understand most of the time when she is speaking. My grandma is interesting I guess – I don’t think my family really told anyone that I was going to be coming before I just showed up so everytime my grandma sees me she says “What a miracle” (this is the same one who doesn’t speak Spanish very well). Then she and my mother will talk about me for a while in Kichwa, I only realize because every once in a while there will be a spanish word thrown in like “Estados unidos” or “dos años”. I do know she cares about me already though because the other day I cut my finger while husking corn so she chewed up some clover leaves, ripped a piece off of her sweater, and made me a little bandage, telling me that it will heal really fast now. My sister is 17 and is about to start attending the university in Riobamba to study nutrition and public health, so when she comes home from school on the weekends hopefully she can help me with some projects. I have a little brother that is 12 and then my dad. Even just during the last week I had lots of conversations with my dad about the importance of sustainable projects, and I know he’s going to be a great resource.
I will be working in/with the Subcentro de Salud in Cebadas most of the time. The doctor has been working there for about 15 years and has tons of ideas on how to improve the community. He is also in a music group with my padre and is very interested in the local indigenous culture. Some of his ideas are pretty “out there” like having a cultural fair and inviting all my friends from Colorado to generate income for the community. I don’t think this is really sustainable, but when I return I’m gonna talk to him more about things that I would like to do.
Our subcentro is really cool because it’s the only one in the country with a practicing shaman as well. Sundays are the market days so the town is packed and apparently there’s also a health fair or else there’s just lots of people coming to the doctor too. This is also the day the shaman is there, and after seeing the nurse to tell her the main problem, get weighed, get blood pressure taken etc, the patients can choose if they want to see the shaman or the doctor. I didn’t get to see the shaman at all, but the doctor told me I should plan on being there every Sunday because they will always need more help since its so busy. We also have a dentist who pretty much pulls teeth from every patient who comes in – the bad quality of the water causes dental problems, along with the lack of general oral hygiene. There is one doctor and one nurse who travel to the communities Monday through Thursday to do home visits or just set up somewhere in the community. I know the other doctor travels some too to the communities, we went one day while I was there to a nursery to give out vitamin A and weigh all the kids.
The county of Cebadas is the 3rd poorest in the country, but there are already lots of other organizations there working, including World Vision, some other organization for development, PLAN Internacional, and there’s a group of indigenous organizations, but I’m not sure what they do. When I go back I just want to learn more about what they’re all already doing, if they work together at all, etc.
The people speak Kichwa and Spanish, I know the older generation prefers to speak Kichwa and I probably speak better Spanish then they do. The kids don’t learn it in schools, just in their homes. I learned a few words last week – Imanalla = Hola, como estas – and had plenty of offers from people to teach me Kichwa if I teach them English. The people here I can tell are more conservative, the personalities match the general indigenous “stereotype.” For example, when I ask my parents a question, my dad always answers even if it was directed to my mom. That’s ok with me though because my mom is really hard for me to understand most of the time when she is speaking. My grandma is interesting I guess – I don’t think my family really told anyone that I was going to be coming before I just showed up so everytime my grandma sees me she says “What a miracle” (this is the same one who doesn’t speak Spanish very well). Then she and my mother will talk about me for a while in Kichwa, I only realize because every once in a while there will be a spanish word thrown in like “Estados unidos” or “dos años”. I do know she cares about me already though because the other day I cut my finger while husking corn so she chewed up some clover leaves, ripped a piece off of her sweater, and made me a little bandage, telling me that it will heal really fast now. My sister is 17 and is about to start attending the university in Riobamba to study nutrition and public health, so when she comes home from school on the weekends hopefully she can help me with some projects. I have a little brother that is 12 and then my dad. Even just during the last week I had lots of conversations with my dad about the importance of sustainable projects, and I know he’s going to be a great resource.
I will be working in/with the Subcentro de Salud in Cebadas most of the time. The doctor has been working there for about 15 years and has tons of ideas on how to improve the community. He is also in a music group with my padre and is very interested in the local indigenous culture. Some of his ideas are pretty “out there” like having a cultural fair and inviting all my friends from Colorado to generate income for the community. I don’t think this is really sustainable, but when I return I’m gonna talk to him more about things that I would like to do.
Our subcentro is really cool because it’s the only one in the country with a practicing shaman as well. Sundays are the market days so the town is packed and apparently there’s also a health fair or else there’s just lots of people coming to the doctor too. This is also the day the shaman is there, and after seeing the nurse to tell her the main problem, get weighed, get blood pressure taken etc, the patients can choose if they want to see the shaman or the doctor. I didn’t get to see the shaman at all, but the doctor told me I should plan on being there every Sunday because they will always need more help since its so busy. We also have a dentist who pretty much pulls teeth from every patient who comes in – the bad quality of the water causes dental problems, along with the lack of general oral hygiene. There is one doctor and one nurse who travel to the communities Monday through Thursday to do home visits or just set up somewhere in the community. I know the other doctor travels some too to the communities, we went one day while I was there to a nursery to give out vitamin A and weigh all the kids.
The county of Cebadas is the 3rd poorest in the country, but there are already lots of other organizations there working, including World Vision, some other organization for development, PLAN Internacional, and there’s a group of indigenous organizations, but I’m not sure what they do. When I go back I just want to learn more about what they’re all already doing, if they work together at all, etc.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Site Assignment!!!
Finally on Friday we found out where we will spend the next 2 years. I will be living in Cebadas, in the province of Chimborazo. It is in the sierra, in fact Chimborazo is the tallest mountain in Ecuador at over 20,000 feet. The elevation of my town is about 9200 and the average temperature is between 45 and 60 degrees F. (I converted this for you all but I’m gonna have to start thinking in meters and celcius!) My counterpart is the doctor who works in the clinic in Cebadas, Dr. Geovanny Silvas. I will staying with a family, but I don’t know much about them except that they have at least 1 daughter because I talked to her on the phone when I called to remind them I’m coming. On Tuesday we will leave to visit our sites for about a week before coming back to the Cayambe area to finish training.
When the doctor wrote a proposal to the Peace Corps, he had to list some possible projects ideas, here is what he asked for:
1. Health promotion
2. Prevention of maternal death
3. Strengthening traditional medicine
4. Projects with medicinal plants in indigenous communities
5. Medicinal gardens
6. Create brochures about signs of danger for pregnancy, tuberculosis, hygiene practices and family planning
7. Promote cultural events (festivals of folkloric dancing, artisan fairs)
8. Work with a group of traditional midwives to strengthen maternal and infant health
9. Work with students to build a trail, promote ecological protection in Sangay National Park
The last one doesn’t really have to do with health obviously, but I think it will be pretty cool! I have about a 6-7 hour bus ride total to get to Riobamba, the nearest city, and the doctor will pick me up there and take me to my house. It says that I have my own little apartment with a bedroom and bathroom. I’ll write more and post pictures when I come back on Saturday!
Also this weekend, I went on a little hike to some waterfalls nearby and it was probably the coolest thing I have done so far in Ecuador. The trail was so steep and slippery and muddy that we were using roots and trees to pull ourselves up basically. We only saw 2 waterfalls, but we heard from various people that there were 7 or 10 or 12, no one really knows I guess, so we just kept going and eventually got to the top of this ridge where we walked a little ways down the path. One friend was waiting for us down at the bottom so we couldn’t take the trail on the ridge home since we had to go back and get her, so we had to go down the steep muddy trail too. We thought it would pretty much be impossible, but it was so much fun! I was facing backwards most of the time, just swinging from vine to vine like George of the Jungle style. I was really sweaty and muddy when we finally finished, but it was so fun!
When the doctor wrote a proposal to the Peace Corps, he had to list some possible projects ideas, here is what he asked for:
1. Health promotion
2. Prevention of maternal death
3. Strengthening traditional medicine
4. Projects with medicinal plants in indigenous communities
5. Medicinal gardens
6. Create brochures about signs of danger for pregnancy, tuberculosis, hygiene practices and family planning
7. Promote cultural events (festivals of folkloric dancing, artisan fairs)
8. Work with a group of traditional midwives to strengthen maternal and infant health
9. Work with students to build a trail, promote ecological protection in Sangay National Park
The last one doesn’t really have to do with health obviously, but I think it will be pretty cool! I have about a 6-7 hour bus ride total to get to Riobamba, the nearest city, and the doctor will pick me up there and take me to my house. It says that I have my own little apartment with a bedroom and bathroom. I’ll write more and post pictures when I come back on Saturday!
Also this weekend, I went on a little hike to some waterfalls nearby and it was probably the coolest thing I have done so far in Ecuador. The trail was so steep and slippery and muddy that we were using roots and trees to pull ourselves up basically. We only saw 2 waterfalls, but we heard from various people that there were 7 or 10 or 12, no one really knows I guess, so we just kept going and eventually got to the top of this ridge where we walked a little ways down the path. One friend was waiting for us down at the bottom so we couldn’t take the trail on the ridge home since we had to go back and get her, so we had to go down the steep muddy trail too. We thought it would pretty much be impossible, but it was so much fun! I was facing backwards most of the time, just swinging from vine to vine like George of the Jungle style. I was really sweaty and muddy when we finally finished, but it was so fun!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
training...
I wrote a blog post a while ago, but my flash drive broke so I couldn’t post it. Now I have a new one, I’ll just highlight a few events since last time I posted on my blog. I have more pictures to post as well, but I haven´t found an internet cafe that is fast enough and has Flash, so I´ll get to it soon enough!
- I have now washed my clothes twice on a rock. I haven’t washed any jeans and I only wash half of my other clothes at a time because if it rains I never know how many days it will take for them to dry. They are a little stretched out since there’s no dryer, but they actually feel really clean.
- I made pizza from scratch for my family, with one of their favorite toppings – hot dogs. These are even nastier than regular hot dogs because they are bright pink and don’t look like meat at all, but they liked it. I also made peanut butter cookies and PB and J sandwiches. I am planning on making hamburgers with sweet potato fries sometime this week or next week.
- We are still in fiesta season – I went to a “bull fight” in Tabacundo (really just whoever is brave enough and has a red jacket or something jumps in the ring and yells at the bull to chase them). Then afterwards there was a parade of dancing and singing down the street – there’s a few people with big water bottles of unidentified liquor walking around sharing shots with everyone, and somehow I became that lady which was better because I was giving it out and not drinking as much myself and I got to meet a lot of local people.
- Last Friday we went on a cultural trip with about 20 other volunteers, my group went to Salinas de Ibarra. It is a community of 90% afroecuatorianos who are descendents from slaves brought by the Spanish. In the past their main source of income was salt mining from the salty dirt, but now they grow sugar cane and are trying to promote tourism. We rode back to a city to catch a bus in the back of a truck and got stopped by the police once, but we saw some condors flying and it was way better than a crowded bus ride!
- This Friday we had a soccer tournament between all the different language groups. There was also a beauty contest so each group had to have a queen. Luckily, another girl in my group wanted to do it so I didn’t have to, but the whole day was pretty fun because everyone went all out. We had uniforms made – our group had the design of Argentina with a condor printed on the front and Paquiestancia. It only cost $11 for the whole uniform including printing on the shirt, and shorts and socks!
- Tonight my family was making fun of me for being tall and calling me an Amazon woman. Its weird being tall here, I am just about the same height as my dad.
- We find out our sites this Friday and next week we have a site visit! Time feels like its moving so fast!
I feel like my English is getting worse as my Spanish is improving, so I apologize for grammar errors but its hard to switch my brain back and forth so often!
- I have now washed my clothes twice on a rock. I haven’t washed any jeans and I only wash half of my other clothes at a time because if it rains I never know how many days it will take for them to dry. They are a little stretched out since there’s no dryer, but they actually feel really clean.
- I made pizza from scratch for my family, with one of their favorite toppings – hot dogs. These are even nastier than regular hot dogs because they are bright pink and don’t look like meat at all, but they liked it. I also made peanut butter cookies and PB and J sandwiches. I am planning on making hamburgers with sweet potato fries sometime this week or next week.
- We are still in fiesta season – I went to a “bull fight” in Tabacundo (really just whoever is brave enough and has a red jacket or something jumps in the ring and yells at the bull to chase them). Then afterwards there was a parade of dancing and singing down the street – there’s a few people with big water bottles of unidentified liquor walking around sharing shots with everyone, and somehow I became that lady which was better because I was giving it out and not drinking as much myself and I got to meet a lot of local people.
- Last Friday we went on a cultural trip with about 20 other volunteers, my group went to Salinas de Ibarra. It is a community of 90% afroecuatorianos who are descendents from slaves brought by the Spanish. In the past their main source of income was salt mining from the salty dirt, but now they grow sugar cane and are trying to promote tourism. We rode back to a city to catch a bus in the back of a truck and got stopped by the police once, but we saw some condors flying and it was way better than a crowded bus ride!
- This Friday we had a soccer tournament between all the different language groups. There was also a beauty contest so each group had to have a queen. Luckily, another girl in my group wanted to do it so I didn’t have to, but the whole day was pretty fun because everyone went all out. We had uniforms made – our group had the design of Argentina with a condor printed on the front and Paquiestancia. It only cost $11 for the whole uniform including printing on the shirt, and shorts and socks!
- Tonight my family was making fun of me for being tall and calling me an Amazon woman. Its weird being tall here, I am just about the same height as my dad.
- We find out our sites this Friday and next week we have a site visit! Time feels like its moving so fast!
I feel like my English is getting worse as my Spanish is improving, so I apologize for grammar errors but its hard to switch my brain back and forth so often!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
We are now done with the first official week of CBT (community based training). We’ve had sessions on Safety and Security and Health which were surprising – they make it seem like you WILL get robbed and you WILL get amoebas, both of which are very likely, but hopefully with our training we will know what to look out for and how to avoid certain dangerous situations. We also had a little more language and technical training, but the first week I think moves a little slower than the others; they finally gave us a schedule for training and told us about the tests and interviews that we had to pass in order to officially become a volunteer. It was a little overwhelming, but I’m sure that if we just take it one day at a time we will get everything done. We have some homework to do a community analysis and then present it to the other groups next week in a creative way so tomorrow we have to talk to the president of the community and interview people on the streets to find out more information about the town and get their opinion on certain topics.
The other day my little sister Rubi got kicked in the face by a horse. She was riding her bike and it scared the horse. She apparently lost consciousness and her brother who got kicked in the shoulder brought her back to the house. She had a popsicle thing on it to keep down swelling, but then the mom put some herb on it that is supposed to help with swelling, so we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow. I am really interested in the traditional medicine and apparently the current minister of health is trying to promote collaboration of traditional and western medicine so it is possible that my placement could be in this area.
Yesterday I helped my mom and sisters make “humitas” which are basically tamales. We took the corn off the cob and ground it ourselves so everything was from scratch. We cooked them over a fire because my mom thinks its faster, and she also wanted to warm up the cuyes (guinea pigs) so we put a fire in the little room where they live. I gave them some chocolate chips as a gift because they are really expensive here ($10/bag) so we made some sweet ones and put the chocolate chips in them. The salty ones had cheese ad onion.
Today we went to Cayame like we do every Sunday, but this weekend there are fiestas in Cayambe so I got to see part of a parade. They are for Dia de San Pedro and to celebrate the end of the harvest so its kind of a combination of catholic and indigenous beliefs. People dress up in traditional clothing, do traditional dances, and I’m not really sure what else. It all lasts for a while; I think it started on Thursday and then on Tuesday people from the communities surrounding Cayambe will dance/walk down into town, then on either Thursday or Friday the party is here in Paquiestancia and apparently there will be a castle built out of fireworks that will be lit. I’m excited to take pictures of that!
I put some pictures up on my Facebook page, you can go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2369300&id=19227721&l=556e35d7f4 to see them!
The other day my little sister Rubi got kicked in the face by a horse. She was riding her bike and it scared the horse. She apparently lost consciousness and her brother who got kicked in the shoulder brought her back to the house. She had a popsicle thing on it to keep down swelling, but then the mom put some herb on it that is supposed to help with swelling, so we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow. I am really interested in the traditional medicine and apparently the current minister of health is trying to promote collaboration of traditional and western medicine so it is possible that my placement could be in this area.
Yesterday I helped my mom and sisters make “humitas” which are basically tamales. We took the corn off the cob and ground it ourselves so everything was from scratch. We cooked them over a fire because my mom thinks its faster, and she also wanted to warm up the cuyes (guinea pigs) so we put a fire in the little room where they live. I gave them some chocolate chips as a gift because they are really expensive here ($10/bag) so we made some sweet ones and put the chocolate chips in them. The salty ones had cheese ad onion.
Today we went to Cayame like we do every Sunday, but this weekend there are fiestas in Cayambe so I got to see part of a parade. They are for Dia de San Pedro and to celebrate the end of the harvest so its kind of a combination of catholic and indigenous beliefs. People dress up in traditional clothing, do traditional dances, and I’m not really sure what else. It all lasts for a while; I think it started on Thursday and then on Tuesday people from the communities surrounding Cayambe will dance/walk down into town, then on either Thursday or Friday the party is here in Paquiestancia and apparently there will be a castle built out of fireworks that will be lit. I’m excited to take pictures of that!
I put some pictures up on my Facebook page, you can go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2369300&id=19227721&l=556e35d7f4 to see them!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Nueva familia
I just spent my first weekend with my host family. Here is a long summary of their lives and mine for the last few days. The mother stays at home while the father is working in construction building houses, mostly in Cayambe. He also built their house. They have 4 kids – Marta 16, Angel 14, Flor 12, and Ruby 7. I have a separate entrance to my room – it has a cement floor and they put a chair, dresser, table and bed in here for me. They put 5 blankets on my bed which is good because its actually pretty cold, especially at night. I didn’t have a pillow though, maybe they just don’t use them here really, so I’m using my sleeping bag for a pillow. I am about the 14th volunteer that has stayed in their house; there is one each February to April, then June to August of each year and they had the first one 7 years ago. The community has about 1000 people, and they are mostly all farmers. My family has some land up on the hill about a 15 minute walk away where they keep their 7 cows. At 4:30 every morning they go milk them, and then again in the afternoon they walk up with their 2 dogs to move them to a different field for the night. They get 40 liters of milk each day that they sell. Besides these animals they have a cat and 2 kittens, chickens, 2 pigs, a horse (that is kept in the forest near the cows not in the yard) and I think that’s it. In the yard they grow sooo many fruits and vegetables that I can’t even list them all – I know they have “tomato of tree,” uvillas, 2 types of quinoa, blackberries, corn, cabbage, green onion, and lots of herbs including anise, chamomile, oregano… They also have a little store in the upper level of their house. They sell candy, pop, other snacks and stuff as well as rice, flour and other grains in bulk. There is a doorbell on the door to the store and when it rings – at any hour – one of the kids usually runs up the stairs outside to go sell something. Last night apparently someone rang at about 1 AM wanting to buy some alcohol so my dad didn’t get to sleep very well. The parents sleep in a room with the youngest daughter, which is also the room they all sit in to watch TV. The two girls share a room and a double size bed, and the boy has his own room, but only the parent’s room has a door. The bathroom also has a door, but no shower curtain for the shower. They do have hot water, but there are wires on the ceiling connected to the shower head that somehow heats the water. They only have one bath towel. Today was Father’s Day, so the mom made an orange cake, and we melted some of the chocolate chips I gave them and used it as frosting. We also had “consume de pollo” which is a soup they make for special occasions that has chicken feet and heads, as well as potatoes, carrots, peas, onions and another local vegetable in chicken broth. They also made it so I could try all these new foods while I’m here instead of getting out to my site and not knowing anything about the local food, so I’m interested to see what else they will make for me. The first day we had quinoa soup for lunch and a type of chicken noodle soup for dinner. We ate leftover soup for breakfast and had an egg sandwich too and oatmeal with guayaba in it. They feed the leftover soup to the cats, the bones and any meat scraps (basically nothing though because they pick the chicken up from the soup and suck the meat off the bones) to the dogs, and potato peels and banana peels etc to the pigs. I guess they buy corn or something for the chickens, but it’s cool how they have pretty much no trash. It’s also good because they only have a small refrigerator in the parent’s bedroom that they keep raw chicken in, and maybe some other things, but there usually are no leftovers. We spent this weekend playing lots of card games with the kids, watched some movies and soccer games on TV, went to Cayambe this morning to buy some stuff to sell in the store (they go to the market every Sunday) and played some games outside after walking up to the cows and taking the scenic route home. Tomorrow morning I start my Spanish classes in the house of another volunteer, and then we are all coming here for lunch. We are supposed to buy our own lunch, but there are no restaurants in the area so we might be doing that every day and give my mom some extra money. By the way, we pay our families from the money that the Peace Corps gives us, and I paid $96 for 2 weeks which covers breakfast, dinner, and my room and everything else they help me with. They are very nice, although at times Ruby is a little too nice and always wants to hang out with me. I really like living here and I think my Spanish will improve a lot just spending time with them because we seem to be talking all the time. I have a picture of them, but right now the internet connection isn´t working or something...
Friday, June 18, 2010
Training assignment
For the last two days we've just been sitting in the Peace Corps office in Quito having sessions on safety and security, the goal of our general assignment (community health), the overall Peace Corps philosophy, and some other stuff. I felt pretty overwhelmed before I got here, but I feel like although these first days have been kind of boring at times just watching Power Point presentations, I already feel a lot more prepared. Now I know the 3 main goals of the community health program (child/maternal health, reproductive health/rights, and environmental health), and know a lot more about the principles behind the Peace Corps. I thought it was interesting that as soon as we start a project in our communities we are supposed to be thinking of an "exit strategy," meaning that the project is sustainable and the development in the community can continue without the help of a volunteer. We are supposed to be focusing on developing people, not things, so that they realize the capacity they have to develop their own things.
Today we finally found out where we will be living for training (which is actually only 9 weeks, I thought it was 3 months). I will be in Paquiestancia, a "suburb" of Cayambe with 4 other volunteers. We will each be with our own host family which we will meet tomorrow and spend the whole weekend with. I'm excited to meet them, so I don't really have anything else to write until after that!
Today we finally found out where we will be living for training (which is actually only 9 weeks, I thought it was 3 months). I will be in Paquiestancia, a "suburb" of Cayambe with 4 other volunteers. We will each be with our own host family which we will meet tomorrow and spend the whole weekend with. I'm excited to meet them, so I don't really have anything else to write until after that!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Preparation...
Well, here's my first post of my blog for Ecuador. I leave in 4 days and I will be so relieved because everything I've been preparing for will be done. I have had so many doctor's appointments, filled out so much paperwork, bought lots of stuff to take with me, and packed it all to fit in my bags. I've put my packing list below, just in case you're interested!
Sleeping bag
2 sheets, 2 pillowcases
2 towels
5 books
Ecuador travel book
photo album
Colorado postcards, peanut butter, chocolate chips (gifts for host family)
Journal
paper and envelopes
7 pairs of shoes
cardigan
2 hoodies
raincoat
fleece jacket
2 other lightweight jackets
2 dresses
3 pairs of jeans
3 other pairs of pants
3 skirts
2 shorts
2 capris
9 T-shirts
4 long sleeve shirts
6 tank tops
20 pairs of underwear
20 pairs of socks
6 bras
winter hat
mittens
surge protector
solar charger
laptop
camera
iPod
flash drive
headlamp
deck of cards, Uno, Apples to Apples
toiletries - including 8 toothbrushes and 5 deodorants!
markers
scissors
duct tape
Nalgene
sewing kit
ziploc bags
pocket knife
sunscreen
Think that's about it...
So I leave Denver on Monday evening, have a orientation session in Washington DC for an afternoon, the leave for Ecuador on Wednesday morning. The first few days we will spend in Quito, the capital, going through more orientation and training. Then we will all travel to Cayambe, a town a little north of Quito, where will we stay for the rest of training. We will all live with host families in communities surrounding Cayambe for the first 3 months. Every day will consist of language training, as well as training in health and safety, culture, and technical training for our jobs.
I don't really know too many details about what happens next, or really even during the training. I'm not really even able to have expectations which could be a good thing because no matter what happens I won't be dissapointed!
Sleeping bag
2 sheets, 2 pillowcases
2 towels
5 books
Ecuador travel book
photo album
Colorado postcards, peanut butter, chocolate chips (gifts for host family)
Journal
paper and envelopes
7 pairs of shoes
cardigan
2 hoodies
raincoat
fleece jacket
2 other lightweight jackets
2 dresses
3 pairs of jeans
3 other pairs of pants
3 skirts
2 shorts
2 capris
9 T-shirts
4 long sleeve shirts
6 tank tops
20 pairs of underwear
20 pairs of socks
6 bras
winter hat
mittens
surge protector
solar charger
laptop
camera
iPod
flash drive
headlamp
deck of cards, Uno, Apples to Apples
toiletries - including 8 toothbrushes and 5 deodorants!
markers
scissors
duct tape
Nalgene
sewing kit
ziploc bags
pocket knife
sunscreen
Think that's about it...
So I leave Denver on Monday evening, have a orientation session in Washington DC for an afternoon, the leave for Ecuador on Wednesday morning. The first few days we will spend in Quito, the capital, going through more orientation and training. Then we will all travel to Cayambe, a town a little north of Quito, where will we stay for the rest of training. We will all live with host families in communities surrounding Cayambe for the first 3 months. Every day will consist of language training, as well as training in health and safety, culture, and technical training for our jobs.
I don't really know too many details about what happens next, or really even during the training. I'm not really even able to have expectations which could be a good thing because no matter what happens I won't be dissapointed!
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