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.