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...

Huayrapungo

Huayrapungo is a Kichwa word that means, Door in the wind.  Door in the wind, I love this word.  I have been rolling it around in my head over the past week.  How awesome that there exists a culture with the imagination to create such a word.  Maybe imagination is the wrong way to look at it.  Whether it stems from the dwellings of imagination or from another place that escapes me, who knows…

I do know that this word could not be more perfect to describe the entrance to Lloa.  There is an invisible door along the mountains separating Lloa from Quito.  It is impossible to know exactly where it is, but I am sure it is up there.  Here is my evidence…  To get to Lloa you drive up the mountainside out of the sprawling city of Quito.  Quito, a scramble of rebar and cinder block, is completely hectic and dirty, and well a city.  As you drive higher and higher up the mountainside Quito begins to look more like a gigantic grey lake creeping up the side of the mountains.  At the top of the mountainside, in a blink of an eye you are in another world.  In place of a city, the mountainside is a quilt of different shades of yellows, greens, browns, and reds.  In every direction you are surrounded by rolling mountaintops, the one exception being the jagged mouth of the volcano Pichincha which looms above everything.  As you descend into the patchwork of colors, the road spins you around a few times until you stumble upon the town of Lloa.  From here you would have no idea that the giant city of Quito is only a hop over the mountains.  The contrast is completely shocking and thus my evidence that there is a door somewhere up there that must transport you to this world.  How else can you explain it?

Besides hours I´ve spent scanning the mountaintops for some glimpse of that door, I have actively tried to work on my first mission as a PCV: integrate.

So far integrating has meant:

Milking cows (which is my host families business along with making cheese), my four year old host sister is an expert…

Attending my host sister Maya´s first communion along with the entire community of Lloa (it is pretty small). 

Helping prepare meals which has occasionally involved cutting the toenails off of lots of chicken feet to be added to our soup for the evening. 

Commenting to everyone I meet how beautiful their home is.  Lots of people have been concerned that coming from the US I would find the climate too cold.  I find it quite wonderful.  It is like a day in the end of fall all the time, warm in the sunshine but chilly in the shade and requiring lots of layers at night.

Showing off my amazing guitar skills and singing voice (sarcasm here) to my host family on the roof.  Then passing the guitar around for others to give it a shot.

Roaming the hillsides with my host siblings, climbing from field to field over and under barbed wire barriers and electric fences.  

So… Huayrapungo, Door in the Wind.  I think I am going to put an end to my pondering and put this phrase at the top of this blog.  The next two years I hope to continue updating this blog with stories from the world that you enter through that door.  Tomorrow I am attending a bull fight followed by a raffle to win a sheep or a cow.  Stay tuned for the results!!!

Lloa

I have been on quite a physical and mental journey since my last post.  The big news is that because of various health issues a fellow volunteer and I had to exchange sites so that in a few days I will be beginning my service in the rural Andean community of Lloa, not in El Cambio.  With little time left in training I am starting to feel a mental shift get ready to transition from my schedule packed, busy life in Tumbaco filled with 24 amazing new friends, to my life in Lloa where I will be the only volunteer in a small agricultural town.  I am excited to paint this blog with words from Lloa in the coming months.  Also, I now know my address for the next two years, if you send me something do not claim a value on the package and make sure the package is no more then 4 lbs, padded envelopes are best:   

PCV Rebecca Brown
Casilla 17-08-8624
Quito, Ecuador
South America

But what of El Cambio, the land of bananas?

Next time you go to the grocery store and you go to the fruit section, take a moment to stare at the bananas.  Within a week bananas have become a portal for me that will forever bring me back to the community of El Cambio in the south of Ecuador.  A town of 7,000 people 25 minutes from Machala, you arrive to El Cambio after a 12-hour bus ride south from Quito.  For at least six of those hours you are surrounded by gently rolling hills lined with row after row of banana trees.  Gradually, the rolling hills stretch out into flat plains rooted together with more rows of bananas.  I had the feeling as if I was on a treadmill after awhile.  It seemed as if we were going forward, but the view out my window stayed the same.  Eventually our bus came across a few little towns and then El Cambio popped into the grid of the land.
    Stepping off the bus in the center of El Cambio you will find a little plaza (characteristic of every Ecuadorian town) and in the middle a fountain shoots water into the air that seems a little too blue.  Little shops and stands selling huge wedges of fresh watermelon and sections of pineapple on sticks occupy corners of the streets.  Walking past the park, both sides of the streets are lined with small homes made from cement with rebar sticking out the top or sugar cane and bamboo.  After walking for about 10 minutes gravel roads turn to dirt and then the roads seem to disappear into the flat land of bananas.
      Throughout the day the streets exist for the trucks; huge trucks appearing and disappearing into the wall of bananas.  I spent a long time wondering where they were going, was there actually someone inside driving?  Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was growing feelings of claustrophobia, maybe it was a reaction to the malaria medication I was taking but I started to view the trucks like characters in the movie cars.  They all seemed to have personalities and all of them were evil.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but that is really how I felt.  Even know thinking about the prospect of going back to El Cambio I start to feel hot and anxious and terrified that I could be trapped in El Cambio by walls of banana trees with those trucks and heat that seamed to melt all control I had over my emotions.  Needless to say, this was a difficult week.  I am still trying to understand my reaction to the environment.


But what of the people?

Coming back to Tumbaco after my site visit I realized just how much I have taken for granted grass, hills, and a simple variety in what I look at.  Also, it was in leaving that environment that I was able to better look back and appreciate how kind and open the people of El Cambio had been.  While the trucks demand the streets during the day, the youth of the community rule the streets at night.  Games of soccer, dance parties to a salsa beat, couples out for a stroll, individuals taking a casual loop on their bicycle… the streets were busy at night.  My prospective host family was unbelievably kind.  They helped me tuck my bug net around my bed and were patient when I asked them to repeat what they were saying 3 times as all their words seemed to run together, coastal Spanish is much harder to understand.  I could go on and on with kindnesses.

So, what do you think of Bananas now?  I wish there was a way to transmit feelings.  If I could you would never have the same experience eating a banana again.  But enough with bananas!  Lloa is where I am aiming my thoughts. 

Lloa, less then two hours from Tumbaco and 45 minutes from the Peace Corps office in Quito.  A rural community separated from Quito by the mountains of Pichincha.  When I arrive to Lloa on Wednesday it will be will all of my luggage for the next two years.  Having gone through some pretty tough moments and seeking support from family and friends in the past weeks I have been able to look deep within myself and really analyze various thoughts and goals.  As a result, I am heading to Lloa with a strengthened determination and what I believe now is a realistic gauge on my expectations. 

As we prepare to swear in as Peace Corps volunteers on Tuesday afternoon I am realizing that it has been a month since I last posted.  This is largely because I have been busy processing thoughts of a new site in Lloa and have been spending a lot of time with other Peace Corps Trainees who I will be saying goodbye to until a reconnect event in November.  I have included some photos to update you on some highlights of the last month.

Bizcochos!!!

About 40 minutes from Tumbaco, an hour and a half from Quito, is the town of Cayambe known for making this delicious buttery, crispy treat, bizcochos.  With my host family I have passed through Cayambe a few times and every time we stop to buy some bizcochos, which I have pronounced to Rocio and Pedro is my favorite snack in Ecuador.  As you drive into Cayambe the streets are lined with little stores selling bizcochos along with hot chocolate, dulce de leche (caramel sauce), and a cheese similar to mozzarella.  I don’t know how any of the stores are able to stay in business as all of them sell exactly the same thing.  Here is a picture of some scrumptious bizcochos along with the biggest pot of hot chocolate I have ever seen.

Last weekend I joined a group of friends for a trip to Otovalo and neighboring towns for some shopping and site seeing.  Otovalo is an amazing indigenous craft market (the biggest in all of Latin America I think…) that I have visited in past travels to Ecuador and was excited to return to.  We had an amazing day getting lost in the maze of colorful crafts, hiking to a nearby waterfall, and then enjoying a lunch of baked fish by a lake in Ibarra.

In wrapping up training our Omnibus put together a design for a mural that we projected onto the wall and painted this week.  A dove whose wings are the Ecuadorian and USA flags.  Another wrapping up event, yesterday we had a “Manana Deportiva” a day of sports, which is an activity that many of us will participate in in our sites.  To make the event authentic we divided up into teams by pulling names out of a hat, then went to stores to have official jerseys printed.  My team decided on the name, Don Juan y Dona Juanita.  Each team also had to pick a reina (queen), you can see who that was.  Sadly, my team lost… sustaining two injuries.

Swear in is Tuesday, Wednesday I am in Lloa, and my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer will officially begin.

Ceviche

Ceviche is a soup with a citricy, tomato base that is served all over Ecuador.  In different regions it is made a little differently.  On the coast I ate it with shrimp, here in Tumbaco I have been served it with fish.  Other places serve it with chicken or beans.  Here is a recipe from my host mom…

•    The juice of 8 oranges
•    2 onions thinly sliced
•    2 lemons
•    a handful of cilantro
•    4 tomatoes finely chopped
•    ½ cup ketchup
•    2 Tablespoons olive oil
•    1 Teaspoon chicken broth packet
•    Fish/Shrimp/Chicken/Beans (whatever you like)

Juice the oranges and set aside.  Boil fish (or shrimp/chicken/beans).  Combine onions, salt, cilantro, and lemons.  Let stand for 20 minutes so the lemon can take the bitterness out of the onions.  Add tomatoes, ketchup, olive oil, chicken broth packet, and orange juice.  Add fish and a little of the water it cooked in.


Serve with popcorn and fried plantains.  To fry plantains – cut plantains into inch thick chunks and fry in vegetable oil.  Once softened (but still pretty firm) take out and smash.  Placed smashed plaintains in a bowl of cold, salty water.  Add to oil and fry for a second time until crispy.

Enjoy! 

Banana, Banana, Banana, Shrimp, Banana, Banana

Eat, training center, eat, eat some more, sleep – repeat.  This pretty much sums up my past few weeks here in Tumbaco.  Long days filled with Spanish, Ecuadorian Culture, and impressive views of the Andean mountains.  Inserted somewhere in the middle of this routine is the time I’ve spent with my host family

Last weekend Pedro and Rocio took me three hours north to a little rural agricultural community outside of the town of Ibarra where Pedro grew up and still has family.  The community seemed to be as ancient as the mountains it belonged to.  Dusty streets lined with thickly walled homes built years before from straw and mud.  All doors opened up to the cool air of the Andean mountains.  I spent the weekend picking peas from Pedro{s family farm on the hillside and struggling to find the right words of gratitude to give to Pedro’s mother.  She was reserved and (Pedro told me) embarrassed by how small she perceived her home to be.  I felt quite the opposite.  I have stepped into few homes in which I have so instantly felt the presence of stories from years past. 

This kind of rural mountain community is what I have romanticized my Ecuadorian Peace Corps experience would be.  I have grown to love the Andean mountains of South America laced with Indigenous Cultures who speak of the pachamama, cosmos, and their appreciation for fitting into the order of the land instead of owning it.  My introverted personality and tendency to always keep an eye open for a quite place to sit and think has fit well into the quite cultures of the Andes.  But, I did not apply to the Peace Corps for the sole intent of finding inspiring places to sit and consider things.  I applied to work with people, and based on the skills I have and the needs of communities throughout Ecuador, the mountains will not be my permanent home in Ecuador for my Peace Corps service. 

And so, now, as I walk the streets of Ecuador over the next few weeks my brain is on overload.  Not only am I trying to process my site, but my mind is often occupied with thoughts of home with the weddings of cousins Megan and Rob, as well as my grandmother, Gramsie’s, 80^th birthday.  When I close my eyes I feel I am there with everyone sitting on the porch in Maine, sipping tea, and trying to hear those singing flowers.  The best gift I can offer everyone is to share a little of the excitement I have for where I am going to be spending my next two years. 

The excitement I had leading up to hearing about my placement is the same I used to feel as a little girl waiting for Christmas morning.  Not filled with worry for the outcome, rather, wonder and suspense.  And so I resumed the role of a little girl waiting for Christmas morning and did not sleep at all the night before I heard of my placement.  Thursday, the big day, we were locked out of the training center for an hour over lunch as the PC staff prepared for our site placement ceremony.  At 1:30 the guard opened the door and we were ushered into the backyard of the training center where staff, dressed in Ecuador soccer jerseys were waiting for us with music playing.  On the grass they created a huge map of Ecuador out of rose peddles.  One by one our names were drawn out of a hat and our site was announced to us as one of the staff grabbed our hand and ran us to our place on the giant rose peddle map.  My name was announced somewhere in the middle and I was guided to the district of El Oro, a southern coastal province hours from the border of Peru.  I tried to slap some kind of a smile on my face as seemed appropriate for the moment, but my mind was completely occupied by one thought, coast… HOT!!!!!

After the ceremony we received presentations of ever trainee’s placement.  In hearing about all the placements I have to give the Peace Corps staff a lot of credit.  Given the opportunity, I would have placed myself in El Oro as well, despite the heat, I could not be more thrilled with the organizations I am going to be working with.  My counterparts are three librarians.  The head librarian of the district of El Orro who is based in the main municipal of Machala, a librarian from the town, El Cambio, where the Peace Corps has had three past volunteers, and a librarian from the town of La Aurora, where I will be the first volunteer.

As to specifics of what I will be doing, that will follow in the posts to come in the next two years.  I will be spending the next week in El Oro getting acquainted with my site and am excited to share pictures in my next post.  At the moment the picture I can share is this:  banana, banana, banana, banana… when you look up information about El Oro online, or in lonely planet, that is all you will find.  El Orro is the land of bananas!

Visit to the campo

Tech Trip

Scrolling through my ipod, Billy Joel’s greatest hits seemed to fit my mood, head phones in, play...  And thus, Billy Joel rang in my ears as my eyes took in our buses decent through the lush green mountains that ushered us into the coastal region of Ecuador.  This past week the 14 trainees in the Youth and Family program headed to the coast of Ecuador for a week of technical training in the district of Manabi.  This was my first experience on the coast of South America.  My body seemed to register the change of environment more readily then I was able to process it in my mind.  My hair doubled in volume from the humidity and my skin instantly became sticky from the hot clammy air.  I had to change my rings to smaller fingers as my hands swelled from the heat.  While some trainees seemed to be delighted to be back in a climate they loved, I admit to grumbling a bit and having to bite my tongue once or twice as this kind of heat is really not my style.  I will have some major adjusting to do if my site ends up being along the coast. 

While I tried to tame my hair, my mind ran in circle trying to process the fact that such amazing biodiversity exists in a country so small and in the course of so short a bus ride.  Beautiful beyond comprehension.  The bus ride was around eight hours and when we finally greeted the coast it was along side rolling hills filled with banana trees, not flat plains as I had imagined.  Once we arrived to the coast we hopped off the bus and onto a little boat taxi that took us across the bay to Bahia, where we were based for the week. 

We had a busy week, which included visits to 4 current Peace Corps Volunteers sites.  Seeing volunteers in their sites started to help me see past the bubble I’ve felt we’ve been living in in our Tumbaco life.  The sites of all of the Peace Corps Volunteers were very different from one another.  They helped me appreciate, once again, that the best way I can prepare for my site is to have no expectations and be open and flexible toward anything.  That said, I cannot help but draw comparisons between the different regions in which I could be placed.  Note that these are large generalizations, but, the people along the coast seem to live a much more open, welcoming and louder lifestyle from what I have experienced in the sierra where people seem to be much more reserved.  Integrating into a community in either of these regions would pose very different kinds of challenges for me.

Excited to be on the coast and on a boat!

Bahia

Visiting different communities and practicing giving presentations in Manabi.  Note, ´Honcho Frisbee´ flying through the air.  My ´Honcho Frisbee´ was a gift from my amazing cousins before I left.  Maybe I can use it as my version of ´Flat Stanley´

Next time I post, I should have my site!  I also wanted to thank people for sending me messages.  I love the updates and soak in every word.

Tumbaco Life

I am realizing pretty quickly that my time here training in Tumbaco is going to be a completely different experience in Ecuador then the time I will have for my two years in site.  For one, I spend the days in training with my fellow Peace Corps Trainees.  It has been fun learning about everyone’s lives leading up to May 16th.  In the morning, the bus I catch to the training center jerks along picking up other local Tumbacians and PC Trainees.  I don’t know how everyone fits, it is like a clown car, we all cling to bars or handles scanning for empty seats slamming into one another the whole time from the rugged stop and go.  So, within a three-week period all of us PC Trainees have gotten very close, both in sharing stories and aspirations, and in understanding a very different concept of personal space.    

Life here has started to fall into a steady routine.   In writing this I am trying to thinking back to a month ago when Ecuador and the Peace Corps seemed like such a mystery.  I had so many questions about what Tumbaco would look like, whom I would be spending my days with, what would I be eating…  Now I find myself shrugging and thinking, of course this is how it would be. 

My Room!  Note, my recently purchased guitar which I have named ‘Blacky’ for its o-so-stylish rendered black edging.  When I asked Pedro if he knew of anywhere I could get a guitar, he wipped out the phone book, we all hopped in the car, twenty minutes later I came home with Blacky.  My days are divided with training and time with my host family.  When at home with my host family this is generally where I hang out.  Studying, practicing guitar, or chatting with Rocio.  She often comes into my room and we talk about our days while hanging out on my bed.  At 7:30ish we usually sit down for some Manzanilla con Miel (Chamomile and Honey) tea, and a snack of rice, chicken, and potatoes.  Pedro is turning me into a major Ecuador soccer fan, and Rocio likes to question me about the strange ways I cook quinoa.  She only uses it in soups, which is the custom here.

  Training Center.  In training we have been doing a lot of traveling to Quito and nearby school to start to get comfortable working with youth in a variety of different social situations.  Training is divided up between technical training and language and in moments in between we are learning about all sorts of crazy illnesses, and safety and security issues.

   

Rocio, Me, and Pedro... on our way back from the hot spring in Papallacta.  The hour drive through the mountains was beautiful, the natural hot springs were delightfully warm, and afterwards we enjoyed a lunch of fish, rice, and potatoes.  All in all, a great day.

Achotillo (left)... I am not sure if I spelled that correctly and I do not know of any english translation.  BUT, this little fruit is my favorite among the many interesting ones I have come across in the past few weeks.  You break open the spiky shell and squeeze the little white fruit into your mouth.  It has a pit like an olive and the texture of a what I can only think of as a hard to chew grape.  Simply wonderful!  Above to the right are tree tomatoes.  Besides blackberry juice, tree tomato juice is my favorite.  Rocio makes it almost every morning.

Quito... Last weekend I joined three friends on a bus tour of Quito.  This was one of our views. 

View on the way back from Papallacta.