Imagine

First things first… sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted something here.  As life in Ecuador feels increasingly more 'normal,' my motivation to record my day to day has decreased. 

Where have I been?  What have I been up to?  Maybe you are wondering these things, I am stuck pondering these things too. 

I last posted to this blog in January.  Since then I have had visits from my sister Molly, cousin Tom, and my Parents.  Since then I have made more friends in Quito, started to regularly teach art classes in Lloa, perfected a carrot bread recipe with Mayra, injured my knee, explored farther into the hill sides of Lloa, found waterfalls a three hour walk from my home, been to the jungle, been higher in the mountains, gotten fed up with the packed buses in Quito, written pages upon pages in my journal, cut my hair again (not my best work), been frustrated with the process of getting projects started, felt on top of the world when part of a project works, I have missed home, missed Maine, I have been swallowed by the internet, I have been consumed by the TV series “Dexter,” I have been shocked by hard to swallow news from the states, I have been immensely happy that I am in no other place than here…

Time stretches and I continue to face every day with a range of emotions sometimes feeling defeated but more often then not, feeling that the world is getting bigger as I question the infinite possibilities of my imagination.

Ecuador is amazing.  It is filled with things that you could scarcely imagine.  Have you read a story or heard of one in which a tree talks to an ant, where trees walk, where vines grow flat like a piece of paper, where vines full of vanilla beans dangle lush and gleaming over a pristine river, where a lake glows green then brown then blue in the mouth of a volcano whose throat tunnels downward into the core of the earth, where clouds spill like waves against the mazes of green valleys in the mountains, where the cure to a sickness is made by collecting things in the forest or garden, where a people exist that have never contacted the outside world, where a people exist that do not know that they live in a territory we have named Ecuador and a planet that we know as earth.  This is a place that makes you appreciate that stories of fiction may have more truth than those that are based in facts.  It makes me think that the imagination is not transparent, it is tangible and its sources can be traced to the mixing of realities we see and experience. 

Ecuador then is one of the most fertile lands I know where the imagination can grow.  Animals, nature, people that you thought only existed in stories, exist in the dance of the sun and the moon every day.  My heart flutters as I try to understand the part of me that is my imagination and then I stumble and fall as I try to convey the importance of this in my daily dealings with people.  Whether I glide or I stumble, I feel fortunate to be here.            

I feel fortunate but I also find myself very often confused.  Time widens the gap to my connection with the US.  I miss friends, family, and places, but not because I think my life in the US was better.  Life in Ecuador is good.  It is comfortable and I am happy.  I have less clutter of things, less desire to consume, and with this more clarity in my thoughts.  I saw a tea pot in the store the other day and thought… “o wow, teapot, your awfully pretty but unnecessary in my life.”  A little further down the isle I saw stacks of popcorn bags (the kind you put in the microwave)… how wasteful this seems… why not just put some kernels in a pot, crank the stove to high and let them pop, doesn’t this make more sense then all the trash that comes from the thick popcorn bags. 

Less is more.  Maybe you have heard this before.  But, less of what?  What kind of things?  For me this would be less clutter in material things and words that don’t need to be spoken, this gives me more room to imagine.

I love the United States, and I love Ecuador.  I appreciate that a teapot is unnecessary, but I am also excited to pull my teapot out of storage when I get home in another year so that I can hear it's whistle pour some tea and sit on the porch to weave different realities together… continuing to imagine.   
  

Molly, Tom, and I at lake Quitatoa

Painting and Drawing workshop

Holding up our self portraits.

Taking a moment to breathe after Saturday morning yoga.

Vanilla Bean Vine

Rhythms

I have had a good start to the New Year (pictures included below):

•  I spent New Year´s Eve with my Spanish tutor and best Ecuadorian friend, Diana, and her family in South Quito.
• New Year´s day my host family from my time in Tumbaco (Rocio and Pedro) surprised me by showing up at my home in Lloa.
• Julie and Kevin visited for a week; we hiked volcano, Guagua Pichincha, saw toucans in the cloud forest of Mindo, and caught up on the nitty-gritty of our lives.
• My counterpart Yolanda came back to work with me in the Faro!!!
• I was lucky to have visits from friends both from the Peace Corps and the United Sates.
• I went to the jungle, Tena/Puyo, to give a recycling art workshop to a group of volunteers in the region.

As you can see, things are happening and I have a lot of reasons to be happy and grateful.   I am starting to appreciate a rhythm to my day to day; a rhythm to my steps and words and a rhythm to the world around me.

Without fail at 3:30am, through the colors of my dreams in the darkness of the night the rhythm starts where it ends in the shuffling feet and muffled bickering of my 70 year old host parents.  3:30am is when Isabel and Alonso leave to milk the cows.  They close the door behind them and with it the darkness of the night slips away and again I melt into the colors of sleep.  By 6:30am shuffling and bickering returns, they are always in a hurry, this time to catch the bus to Quito where they will sell their milk.

Then I am up, peeking out my window.  Sometimes fog, but more often a clear sky is the picture of morning.  And the mornings are cold.  My feet sting when they leave the warmth of my covers for the ice covered lake which is my cement floor.  Breakfast, coffee, turn a few pages in a book and then I am on the streets of Lloa.  Walking four blocks to my “office” I smile passing neighbors draped in numerous wool shawls and more than one hat, then I grunt and frown at the dogs whose persistence in following me and barking at my heels has strangled any desire I might have had to go for jog.  

Work is a place throbbing with potential, potential for projects, potential for failure, and potential for success.  These are the projects I am working on supporting with my counterpart:

• With my Kids Club, create a book, the story and illustrations - focusing on themes of creativity, imagination, teamwork, goal setting, art, and to strengthen their desire to read.
• School and community garden.
• Running and yoga club – we meet in the park Saturday and Sunday mornings at 6:30 (why I picked 6:30 I have no idea, I regret it, this is too early).
• Supporting efforts for a youth group.  It is hard to motivate the youth!
• Recycling arts and crafts workshops.
• Teaching English classes in the school through the arts.
• Secondary project – supporting an amazing branch of my counterpart organization in Quito, CREO Arte.

Like I said, throbbing with potential… ideas upon ideas of things to do, but to be sustainable…  These ideas are like tiny seeds within my hands that I wish I could toss into the wind like the Lupine Lady, letting them fall to the ground on their own will, letting the natural order of the sun and the rain turn them into something real, something beautiful.  But these ideas come from seeds that will not sprout from the ground and continue to grow unless they are planted by the hands of my community.  I have to force my hands into my pockets being the motivator whispering again and again that maybe it is time to plant the seeds they have identified as important for the continued beauty of the community. 

Rhythms continue.  Conversations will only get me so far in efforts to motivate, so my ears take in the dull rhythm of my fingers on a keyboard.  Every key pressed twists the knife a little deeper into the heart my expectation that the Peace Corps would be a place that would provide me with the relief of being unplugged from the virtual world.  But the pounding of computer keys becomes the music of my days because in order to motivate I need to prove that something is possible; I need to prove this through written words.  Words and words fill project proposals and progress reports, emails to Peace Corps friends, emails home…

Like I have to force my hands into my pockets to keep myself from imposing ideas on my community I also have to force my eyes from locking on the smiling faces of my friends and family which I find on social media networks through the internet.  It takes a significant effort to peel my eyes away from the screen.  When I finally do, I look outside.  And there my eyes find the most beautiful, the most alarming thing I have ever seen and I see it every day.  The clouds and the mountains…    

I don´t know of any place in the world where the relationship between the sky and the ground is more apparent.  This is a rhythm you cannot predict, born from the footprint of the day before, every day is completely distinct.  In the morning, clear blue skies and a sun to the east fill Lloa with shadows stretching westward toward the cloud forest of Mindo through the rolling green Mountains.  By noon shadows have receded into their hosts and large cotton ball clouds form to the west, a magical sea contained by green walls.  Magical is the perfect word to describe the feeling because you look down onto the top of the sea of clouds, as if you were in an airplane.  My imagination has grown roots here and as such I have at times imagined what it would be like to be in Captain Hook´s ship when it is has freed itself of evil and sails up and through the clouds.  

Sometime after noon the cotton ball clouds ooze forward.  (Can you believe it?  Cotton can ooze!)  Characteristic of something that oozes; the clouds get stuck in the crevices of the mountains.  This gives their procession forward a strange longing and watching this I have found myself at times felling anxious.  Before you know it you are face to face with the cotton ball clouds.  You don´t need to lift your chin up to look into its eyes.  It is right there, eye level with you.  You can put out your hand and touch its face.  In the moment that you try to do this, you suddenly find you are in it.  The rest of the afternoon you remain in the belly of the clouds.  

Days I have spent working in Quito I often find myself looking toward Guagua Pichincha which shelters my home in Lloa.  As the clouds greet Lloa first, I see them then spill out over the ridge that divides Lloa from Quito.  

The rhythms of my steps and the world around me continue; consistent and even and completely unpredictable.  Time ticks on.  I can´t believe more than a quarter of my service has passed!

New Years Eve with my spanish Tutor Diana (furthest on the right) and her family.

New Years Eve Turkey

At midnight on New Years it is good luck to eat one grape for every month of the new year... hard to do in the minute before midnight!

Top of Guagua Pichincha, looking toward Rucu Pichincha.

On New Years everyone burns "Años Viejos" (dolls that represent everything you wish to get rid of in your life) at midnight.

Julie and I, at the crater.

Julie and Kevin almost at the top!  Feeling the altitude, nearly 15,000 ft.

Mountains, Clouds, Me

I found some angels in LLoa...

What did I think this blog was going to be?  What did you think you would find here?  An account of my day to day?  I seem incapable of this.  At least incapable of recounting the steps I take and the hours I take them.  My imagination and emotions are what define me, and so under their direction my words flow from my fingers.  I hope that is okay.

It is hard to be away.  To try to understand and accept a life in a different culture, to accept it… that means letting go of your own for a little while, or at least loosening your grip.  This is hard to do.  Sometime I have moments of utter misery born from a longing for people, for places that I love, for things that I could do without but don’t want to.  These moments are too frequent.  When will the dreams I have at night be of the world I am now in, not the one I have stepped out of for a little while?  When will crossing off a day on my calendar be marked my sadness for another day in Ecuador gone instead of the glorious morning ritual it is now?  This is hard.  But, then I come across moments that make me smile despite the stubbornness of my desire to cuddle up on my pillow of sadness. 

In Ecuador, in the United States, in any place of the world, these are moments that are waiting to be found.  My heart has been wracked with disgust and misery learning about the lives that were lost in Newtown Connecticut.  Glowing beams of potential, imagination, unguarded love… faces torn from their host of light, buried in the ground.  But while the faces are gone, the light is surely still there; I know this to be the case. 

To get through things like this that are too hard to understand I look for moments that make it impossible to do anything but smile.  Sometime I stumble across them and sometime I need to work for them to be found.  This is important for me to remember; sometime I need to make these moments for myself.  That is ultimately why I am here, isn’t it?

Today I found such a moment when I found myself surrounded by a group of little angels.  This is how I found them…

Standing at a distance, distance being a comfortable home I often make for myself, I spotted the group of angels.  They had wings that were as white as the snow that will never fall here, and they had dresses that floated around them like little puffs of clouds.  Their little laughs and smiles were enough to make me smile… and then they started to sway side to side.  Swaying turned to twirling at the hip with their arms delicately slapping their fronts and their backs, and then little feet picked up a rhythm and began to hop up and down.  Soon hopping feet danced in circles, slow to start but gradually gaining momentum spinning faster and faster.  As tuning a guitar and baking a cake are based off of unique ratios of sounds and ingredients, the spinning angels had their own kind of ratio based in a majestic energy.  As twirling increased in speed, laughter got louder, smiles got bigger, flailing arms more difficult to control.  The angels must of felt somehow that my heart could not bear the overwhelming happiness of the moment much longer; for they collapsed in the same moment I turned away overwhelmed by emotion.  And I felt so lucky, because those same little angels then got up giggling relentlessly, and took form in front of me to share in the tune of my guitar and send their little voices of light and joy out into the world.  ‘Silent Night’ will never feel the same again.

 

This is a moment that has been rooted to my heart and my memory forever.  It is a moment like this that helps me appreciate why I am here.  I am sure I have been present in similar moments like this in my home in Connecticut or Maine, but did I ever appreciate them before?  Distance has cracked me open to a well of emotions I didn’t know I could feel.  Sometimes pain and longing for that ambiguous word, “home,” but other times joys for the beauty of little moments my eyes where never before trained to see.

And now I conclude with one more thought… in the moment that I watched the little spinning angels, the joy I felt connected me to a moment when I was one of those little angels, twirling wildly for no other reason than the fact that it felt so wonderful and free; sisters, friends, acquaintances, twirling and twirling with me.  I am 25, still very young.  How lucky I am to be reminded, now, that there is still a little angel within me.  I have so much of my life still before me.   In that time I can continue to discover the beautiful wisdom and freedom I radiated as a little girl with big eyes, short hair and a poufy dress.  In honor of the children who lost their lives in Connecticut, and for the love and faith I have in my life; I am making it a life resolution to never lose sight of the potential, imagination, and unguarded love that I knew as a little girl.  I don´t feel it is my place to tell any of you to do the same, but maybe you will; maybe you can find that child within yourself and see the world with those fresh, eager eyes.

¡Feliz Navidad 2012! 

Thankful

                  What are you thankful for?  At your dinner table on Thanksgiving, do you think about this question?  In the Brown´s house, this is never something we formally express, but, through the act of making food together, setting the table, making nifty nametags, smiling, laughing… it is felt that we are all thankful for each other.  Here in Ecuador, in explaining Thanksgiving to people I have really begun to think about this question.   In this moment, what are the things to which I would like to express thankfulness?  My thought process starts with thoughts about guilt…  (Bear with me; I get to the thankfulness part eventually!) 

                  I recently read an article about feelings of guilt that can accompany a PCV in their community throughout their service.  The article did not surprise me at all, and maybe this is presumptive, but I feel like a lot of times that is what you might expect to hear.  Going from first world USA to a small community in the third world, shouldn´t I expect to feel guilty when I see how little others have in relation to how much I have waiting for me back at home.  And I am not referring to only material things, but things like food, and the fact that I have the privilege of choices in my life. 

But, guilt is not a feeling I have had in my first six month in Ecuador.  I have felt guilty before.  Backing down on a promise I made someone, forgetting to be somewhere, intentionally lying about something… these things have left me rolling in feelings of guilt.  I would describe myself as an introverted person, and as such, feelings of guilt have left me paralyzed.  So, to feel guilty would be completely unproductive.  How do I feel now?  Sometimes I feel like I have been thrown in a turtle shell and then asked to run, or like I am trying to swim through a pool of honey.  Words like development and sustainability heighten these feelings.  But, mixed with frustrations of having my feet planted deep in mud (or maybe cow manure is a better image for Lloa), I also feel incredibly lucky.

I feel lucky when I think about all the kids who are starting to become my closest friends and my host sister Mayra who has already become an influential figure into the development of who I am.  And this is where guilt starts to swell ominously like clouds in the horizon of my thoughts.  Its pending approach is what clarifies a reality for me.  This reality being that guilt is an emotion for me that I feel as the result of something I have done, an action I made that I was able to control.  While I cannot feel guilty for being born into the situation I have in life, I would feel guilty if I did nothing to try to understand other people and how I can use what has been given to me to work with others.  I would feel guilty if I left in two years having done nothing to help Mayra see how amazing of a person she is, and all that she can do in her life.  I would feel guilty if I didn’t make an effort to develop sincere relationships with everyone I was able to.  In two years it will be relationships made that stick in memories forever.

And here is where I become thankful.  I am thankful that as I write these words, I do so with tears swelling in my eyes and with a distinct turning of emotions in the pit of my stomach and cap of my mind.  I am thankful I am able to feel these things.  These feelings are what motivate me, inspire me, and remind me constantly that I am exactly where I am because I need to be here for my community, but more directly, for me.  I am thankful that I was raised by a family who shares a capacity to love that approaches unbearable limits, and I am thankful that the people of Lloa are open to accept a similar kind of love that I feel compelled to give. 

So, Happy Thanksgiving!  I admit to having many moments where two years feels like an eternity and I desperately miss home.  But, then I think about it for two minutes, and I continually find myself at the same conclusion.  I feel so lucky, so thankful to be exactly where I am.  If you’re reading this and thinking about your own life, I hope you will end up at the same conclusion.   

October flew by!

Wow!  I can´t believe it has been a month since my last post.  I would not describe my days as being busy, yet time seems to be flying.  Time is a funny thing.  This month was filled with more days trying to fill out community surveys and working on my analysis of community needs.  I also began a steady routine of teaching English in the schools of LLoa and am starting to look forward to projects with the youth of creating crafts made of recycled materials to be sold in LLoa on busy tourist weekends.   

Imagination and creativity have been the words at the forefront of my mind when I wake up every day, for both my own personal thoughts and in my interactions with others.  

Highlights of my month have been:

•   Spanish tutoring.  Twice a week I take the bus into Quito in the evening to meet my Spanish tutor, Diana, in her home for an hour of tutoring on Spanish grammar and pronunciation.  I feel so lucky to have Diana as a tutor, she is fantastic!  The more I am growing comfortable with Spanish the more I am realizing that there might only be room for one language in my head.  It is not hard to notice that my spelling and general understanding of English words seems to be digressing as Spanish begins to make more and more sense in my mind.  There are times when I am searching for words in Spanish, and then I realize I don´t know how I would say it in English either.   

•  Generally felling like I am a part of LLoa.  On the streets, in the schools, neighbors, tiendas…  I feel like people have accepted me into the community and are opening up more and more in their interactions with me.  The kids shout my name (Rebe or Rebequita) whenever they see me and I am graced with lots of hugs whenever I pass by the school.  The second weekend in October there was a regional meeting for all the volunteers in my cluster (11ish volunteers).  I realized part way through the meeting that I have become proud to be able to say I live in LLoa.  This realization hit as I became aware that all my conversations seemed to turn back to how great LLoa is.           

• Finding humor in random things like… Hair Gel.  Many of the male teenagers in Quito understand style to be something achieved with buckets of hair gel.  I imagine their mornings to be reenactments of the opening scene to the movie, ‘Grease.´   In my mind this is how I see it… After jumping a few times to fit into complicated jeans with zippers all over the place the radio would be turned to techno salsa and their position would be taken in front of the mirror.  The mirror would reveal a face scrunched up in a self-critical expression as a comb is wielded this way creating intricate sculptures out of their hair.  I have had a few moments sitting behind particularly intricate, hair-art on the bus when I have had to fight the urge to touch it… how satisfying it would be to rustle that hair making it crinkle as dry leaves do under your feet in the fall. 

• Another joy of mine this month has been the start of project with an amazing friend of mine from college, Stacey Seiler, who is currently a third grade teacher in Baltimore County, Maryland.  Through the World Wise Schools project of the Peace Corps we have started a blog in which her class will communicate with me and others in my community as way to learn a bit about one another’s culture.  For those that are interested, the blog we created can be views at this address:  marylandecuador.blogspot.com  

•  Another reliable source of happiness for me has been my host family.  My host Mom, Isabelle is a little fire cracker.  Without fail every morning at 4:00 I hear her frenzied shuffling of feet as she rushes to go milk the cows.  My slow moving host Dad, Alfonzo, is the polar opposite and according to Isabelle´s shouts at him, he always seems to be running behind.  I live upstairs with these two.  We have a nice balance of respecting each other’s space while also always leaving our doors open for conversation.  Isabelle, who reaches about my shoulder in height, has gotten into the habit of hugging me, picking me up and down a few times a day.  Everyone should have a lesson in hugging from Isabelle, she gives the best hugs.  Downstairs lives Carmen and her two daughters Mayra and Adamáris.  Mayra is undoubtedly my best friend in LLoa.  Her favorite thing to talk about is what kind of bread we are going to make on Saturday… this has become a fun little tradition of ours.  So far we have made:  honey oat, chocolate, tomato, carrot, blueberry, and corn bread.  Adamáris, is a four year old with the attitude and style of a teenager.  When my friend Ryan cut my hair realllllly short, I can home and she instantly told me, ‘How ugly.’  She then told me everyone one going to think I was a boy.  She also had a solution; she put her bow in my hair.       

I would like to send a few messages out to anyone reading this…  

I hope everyone is doing okay in the wake of hurricane Sandy.  My thoughts are with all of you.  

Happy Halloween to everyone!

And, finally, a HUGE joy to share with the world… My double cousin Dan, and Mili had their baby today.  I have been smiling all day thinking about my new niece, Kaia, the leader of the next generation of Browns!

Here are the only new pictures I have on my flash drive at the moment...

Kids group, Arte al Aire Libre, attempts to draw a bunny rabbit together with a marker attached to a tennis ball.

Mayra reads the book, 'The Giving Tree,' while Adamáris draws pictures and waits for her hair to curl.

Sunset in the Andes from my bedroom window.