Moments of September

Do you ever find yourself in moments when you feel a ball of energy in the center of your chest which triggers the idea that there is more to this world than you will ever be able to understand?  I have had a few of those moments this month.

The first was when I was sitting in the park the other day.  The electricity was out on account of the wind, so I took up a seat in the sunshine with my journal and sketch pad.  As I was getting ready to fumble around with a portrait of the church sitting humbly in the shadow of the volcano Pichincha, an old man wearing a poncho stumbled forward interrupting the line my pen had made a moment before.  His feet never left the ground as he shuffled forward.  Beside him, black posts made a good guide leading to the steps of the church.  The way his hand searched desperately for the posts made me wonder if he was blind and I started to get anxious the closer he moved toward the steps.  Once there, he proved capable.  Slowly, he made it to the top and directed his shuffling toward the church.  Both hands pressed against the church's wooden doors and for a moment he stood there perfectly frozen into the scene.  Then he turned and continued to shuffle, this time to descend the stairs.  Descending the stairs, was this a feat he was capable of?  The wind asked the same question.  In a sudden gust it lifted his poncho up over his head.  Not knowing why this had happened, not ready for this surprise, he let out a loud cry.  The park was empty besides me.  I am sure he did not know I was there to hear his bewildered cry out to the world.  Still caught in a moment of confusion he stepped forward too quickly, down the stairs.  His feet betrayed him and he fall backward his head hitting against the corner of the threshold of the church.  He cried again. 

It was in this moment that I should have gotten up to help him.  I felt a burning inside of me in the center of my ribcage.  But I could not get up, the weight of his cry made me explicitly aware that there existed a magnitude of pains and joys he had lived through of which I would never be able to understand.  So, I did not feel that it was right in that moment to enter his story.  I sat there welling up a strange emotion and I thought, where is this feeling coming from?  And I thought there is a part of me that I really do not yet understand.

Another moment I had this morning.  I woke up feeling excited that I was exactly where I was.  Though I am generally happy, this kind of contentment has not visited me frequently, so I sat down with my journal to try to understand where it had come from.  As my pen tends to run ahead of my thoughts, I found myself writing about children.       

This is where I have found my happiness in past experience and I have found it here again in Lloa.  I love working with children.  I love what they teach me, I love that they hold no reservation in accepting and returning a hug and a smile, I love their imaginations that run wildly from thought to thought, I love their wonder and fascination for the simplest of things, and I love the opportunity to hand back to them all of the lessons they give to me.

Yesterday I started teaching English classes in the schools.  This must have been what sparked feelings of happiness which greeted me this morning.  This combined with a weekly kids group I facilitate, reading Harry Potter aloud to my host sister Mayra and drawing flowers with 4 year old Adamarís, hanging drawings my kids group made in an artisan fair last Sunday and having them bring their families to show off their work, a hug on the street, a smile passing by, all of these I will add to the list.  I guess I am just starting to realize all the potential there is for me to fit into the world of Lloa.  And more than anything else the children are making me see Lloa as home.

So that ball of energy that swells in the center of my chest.  It is inspiring and mysterious.  It is not a part of me you can see with your eyes, but it is the core to who I am.  Sometimes I lose it, forget why I am here, who I am.  But watching the old man in the park and learning more about the children of this place have made it throb within me.  They have reminded me why I am here and of the person that I am and want to be.  No different than everyone else, therefore completely unique.  I wish I could harness this part of me every day.    

My Bedroom Window

At 6:00am every morning my watch beeps.  I roll over, throw on a warm sweater and stand on by bed to tuck the curtains up behind the corners of the curtain rod.  My window faces west, so morning sunshine is not blaring.  I then sniff my socks from yesterday; if they are clean-ish (washing wool socks by hand is a real pain) I toss them on my feet and turn the corner outside of my door to go into the kitchen.  Here I boil water and set up my slow drip coffee contraption.  As I wait for my morning cup of joe to filter into my mug I go back in my room, sit on the corner of my bed and stare out my window.  Watching the slow hustle bustle of mornings in Lloa, I sort through lots of questions in my mind.

What am I going to do at work today? This is a big one; I push it aside for later.

Should I go for a run?  Surprisingly the answer to this has frequently been, yes.  I have never been a runner, in fact I have often argued that some people just aren´t built for running, and I am one of those people.  There have been moments in my life where I tried to be a runner.  For instance, there was a period of time in seventh grade when my Dad would wake me up a 5:00am to drive to Weston Public Schools to run around the track, training for a 5k.  While this remains one of those father daughter moments that I cherish, in terms of the act of running, I have only disgruntled thoughts.  In training for various wilderness expeditions with GRAB I also tried to pick up running and as much as I have tried to motivate myself, my lungs never seem to cooperate.  Severe pains in my side and irritating moments in which I am left gasping for air is what running has been for me.  But, here in Lloa running is starting to become more than an outlet of movement and exercise.  If I can get out of bed in the morning and push past mental aversions I have toward running, then maybe I can better embrace the part of me that will look at language, culture, and ambiguity as exciting challenges in Lloa instead of paralyzing barriers.  The mental challenge of running has thus become a parallel for me to the self-motivation that is required to let go of thoughts of home and embrace a day in Lloa.       

So, I´ve decided to go for a run.  As I tie my shoes I grunt considering my next question.  How am I going to avoid the dogs?  I have yet to succeed in this task.  There have been moments where I am legitimately terrified that I am going to be attacked.  The dogs here exist more as guardians of territory then they do cuddly, cute friends.  On a particularly bad morning one of the dogs from my house followed me.  She must have been in heat or something because at least five other dogs where attacking her the whole time.  It was terrible.  She kept running around my feet while the other dogs snarled and growled.  All I could do was concentrate on not tripping and making sure I was not in the line of those teeth.  My host family is working on constructing a lightweight pole that I can run with for such occasions.    

Window staring resumes after a morning run and I bounce around more questions.  How am I going to work carrots into my meal for the day?  In my first weekend in Lloa I went to the local market that takes place behind my house.  As I have decided to cook for myself, I set out to buy some veggies.  I returned to my house with a very heavy bag of carrots.  Between a combination of shaky Spanish and not realizing the prices for things I bought a women´s entire table of carrots for a dollar.  So many carrots!!!  I am still trying to use them up.  Carrot bread, carrots with quinoa, carrot patties, carrot sticks, carrots in granola..?

Other questions and thoughts that bounce around my head as I’m staring out my wonderful window… I wonder when my host sisters Mayra (12) and Adamaris (4) are going to knock on my door.  Are they going to want to read a book or cook some granola?  Do you think that being connected to the Internet, running into constant reminders of home makes this experience easier or harder?  I wonder when I will stop feeling guilty about reading a book in English.  When am I going to find a day to hike up the volcano Pichincha?  I wonder what juice my host sister Carmen (34) is preparing downstairs.  I wonder how my sister Molly is doing in Monaco and how Julie is doing riding on the excitement of being recently engaged to Kevin.  I hope I have a good turn out to my kids club this week… where did I put my room keys?  When is this wind going to wind down?  Why does my cell phone keep shutting off? – Guess I have to get a new one.  Where is that door up there on the mountain?     

My watch beeps, 9:30.  Now I go back to my first question, what am I going to do at work today?  My counterpart organization is called Faro del saber.  Faro means ´light house,´ Saber means ´to know.´  Put them together and you get the idea behind the organization.  The organization houses rows of computers, which are to be used by the community for educational purposes.  My counterpart is a very driven and kind woman who had a baby my second weeks here, sooo……. I spent a lot of my first few weeks in a sea of computers and Internet wondering what exactly I should be doing.  In the first three months of service in the PC we are supposed to do an analysis of the community’s needs, which will be the foundation for getting started on different projects.  In the past few weeks I have been walking around my community introducing myself and conducting surveys.  If I have one good conversation with someone from my community in a day, I go to bed feeling successful.

 Well, that was a brief glimpse of a bit of a typical morning and what is rolling around in my head.  It is impossible to convey everything that I have experienced and thought.  For a few of the experiences that would take too many words to describe, here are some pics.

A few weekends ago my feet carried me across the threshold of seasons.  I walked from the cool of fall into the warmth and lushness of spring.  You can do this in Ecuador.  I did this walking on a trail from Lloa to Mindo with a group of youth from Lloa and surrounding communities along with my host sister, Carmen.  

I turned 25!

Making some granola in the morning...

Hiking the volcano Pasochoa with nearby volunteers...