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...

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!