Home, Home, Home...

I arrived to Ecuador on May 17^th 2012, I arrived to my site in Lloa on August 1^st 2012, a year ago from today.  I have lived in Lloa for a year… could this be right? 

Seconds tick away faithfully on my watch and my calendar is filled with x’s going back for over a year, but I do not feel inside me that I have weathered a year.  Has my host sister Adamarís grown an inch?  Has my relationship with Mayra bound itself stronger?  Adamarís looks the same height, and I love Mayra with the same sisterly love I did from the beginning.  I feel frozen in time to the day I first arrived.  My calendar is my evidence that this must not be true.  My calendar and my hair, which seems to fall a little further down my back.  Maybe it is because it is harder to distinguish the passing of seasons here, maybe it is because the sun rises and sets in the same hour of the day every day of the year, maybe it is because Isabel and Alonso’s routine never changes from day to day, maybe it is because Lloa is so small that there is no surprise or variation in who I see in a day… it is because of these things and others that I am now perplexed to realize that a year of my life has passed.  I was 24 then 25, now I face 26 in a matter of weeks. 

People often look at how fast a child has grown and they say, “Where has the time gone?”  I have said this before, but then it was always a statement provoked because there was an obvious difference in the child, it was visually apparent that they had grown.  Now I ask the same thing, “Where has the time gone?” but instead of asking it because it is clear something has changed, I ask it because today seems the same as it did yesterday and yesterday seems the same as it did the year before.  I look in the mirror and I see the same face looking back that I did a year ago.  Is there something more to my eyes?  Maybe… I cannot tell.

If you have been someone who has followed me in this blog, maybe you could point out something I have stated previously that would remind me of the passing of time.  And I hope anyone reading this would know that I am not trying to be so dramatic as to say that in this year I have accomplished nothing.  I know this is not true, when I go through the picture on my camera, I am reminded that it has been a full year...  But, the truth of the matter is, that in this moment I feel that I went to bed last night and woke up this morning, in the flutter of my dreams, a year passed by. 

From these words, you can probably gather that time has been prominent amongst my thoughts recently.  While it might be obvious that I might reflect on this now as I approach my year mark in Lloa, I think this is also largely due to the fact that in a matter of days I will be heading home to the states.  My sister Julie is getting married, and I of course will be standing beside her as she says, “I do.” 

It has been a little over 14 months since I have been in the USA, this will probably mark the longest stretch of time I am ever away from US soil in one stretch.  So, I am getting myself ready to insert myself back into the rhythm my life played living in the states.  As I am doing this I am trying to find the right words to use to explain what I have been doing while I was away… 

To all of my friends and family in the states, I have followed your stories the best that I have been able to while here in Ecuador.  It has been like watching a TV series whose cast is made up of my family and friends.  I have heard of or seen weddings, cousins pregnant, engagements, births, wedding planning, new boyfriends… even my parent’s dog Honcho who was a puppy when I left has not only grown, but also obtained the status of a therapy dog.  All of these things have unfolded before my eyes through the Internet.  It has been an exciting series to watch.  And now, I get to step inside the screen and be a part of the show, for two weeks anyway.  So, while I am immensely excited to be visiting home, I am also a little anxious because I don’t know where to find my script.  How do I jump back in?  How will I know what to say?  How do I put my feelings into coherent thoughts that I can then organize into words?  I can’t. 

While it might be next to impossible to describe the feelings and thoughts I have day to day in this experience, I can do my best to paint a picture of what the environment I find myself in looks like.  I can describe the people, the smells, and the sights… I can describe what I do and where I go.  I feel it is my responsibility to do this. 

SOOoo, here I come USA!  I am ready to shock my world back into a balanced perspective of who I am and where I came from.  I am ready to push the refresh button on this experience.  While I do this, I am ready to share with anyone who will listen where I’ve been and who has been there with me. 

If you are interested in hearing a more direct account of my experience in the Peace Corps thus far, I will be giving two presentations while I am home.  One in CT at the Weston Public Library, Tuesday, August 13^th at 10:00am…. And one at the CCIA in Christmas Cove, Maine, Thursday, August 15^th at 6:00pm.

Lastly, I have to say… I am so happy that the reason I am coming home is because my sister Julie is marrying the stupendous Kevin Posman.  So much happiness!

In the beginning of July I traveled by bus 15 hours south to  Loja where I helped give a recycled art workshop at one of my PC friends host organization.  On the way down I stopped in Cajas National Park outside of Cuenca, it was beautiful!!

This was the most excited I have ever been to celebrate the Forth of July!  I was lucky to be in Loja to celebrate with good friends.

Ratoncita Sisa

“In the middle of Lloa there is a park lined with red, yellow, and grey bricks.  In the middle of the park there is a fountain, usually empty.  In the middle of that fountain there is a spot light which is unfortunately broken.  Under that spotlight there is a hole, and in that hole there is a little mouse.  A little mouse named Sisa.”

Ratoncita Sisa, or Sisa the little mouse, has become the current focus of my service.  Sisa is the creation of a group of kids I am working with in a project to write and illustrate a Children’s book about Lloa.  Above in quotations is the first page of the book that the group wrote.

Characteristic of most mice, Sisa is very nervous and skittish.  Sisa has been this way all her life, but she doesn’t want to remain this way any more.  Sisa knows she wants to do great things, but she does not know what those things could be.  Sisa thinks that if she had more self-confidence she would be able realize her dreams.  Telling this to her grandfather, he tells Sisa that if she really wants to overcome her nervousness she needs to eat a magic wedge of cheese that will give her confidence and vision… he gives her a map to find it.  Unfortunately, the map is very badly smudged so Sisa decides she is going to have to explore every destination on the map in order to find the cheese.  In the course of her journey, Sisa discovers all kinds of stories and legends about Lloa.  She learns more about herself and more about where she comes from as she searches for this magic cheese.  When she finally finds the cheese, Sisa realizes that maybe she does not need it after all… through all her traveling around Lloa she finds she has lost her nervous nature and has found clarity in her dreams which she is motivate to work toward.
 

The premise for this story might sound familiar.  It is an age old lesson on realizing the potential that is in each and every one of us.  But, no one can be told this lesson.  We need to realize this for ourselves.  I am hoping that the self-knowledge Sisa gains though her journey to find the magic cheese will be paralleled in the children as they create her story.

I am very impressed with my group of kids for thinking up all the details of this story.  I coached them a little, giving them example of other stories, talking about their own goals and dreams, helping them interview people to discover more about the history of Lloa... but in the end the group collectively created the characters and framework for the story. The group decided on the name “Sisa” because it shows a bit about their heritage, Sisa in Quichua means, flower.  They also decided that a mouse would be a perfect main character because mice generally like to eat cheese.  As Lloa is primarily an agricultural and dairy producing region, many families and larger community groups make and sell cheese.  So, there is lots of cheese for Sisa… it will be tough for her to find that magic wedge.

In the weeks to follow I will be sure to add more of Sisa’s story here!

Besides this project with the kids I am gearing up to start working more seriously with the youth and women to create crafts/jewelry from recycled materials.  This comes after a great event we put on in which the senior citizens had a fashion show for the entire community to show off different accessories they made from recycled materials.  I was a little worried for how the event would go, but in the end it turned out to be one of the happiest moments of my service so far.  The seniors proudly strutted their stuff in their creative outfits and afterwards invited all the spectators to join them as they danced to some hoppin’ Ecuadorian beats.    

Tomorrow I head to Loja, the southern most province in Ecuador, to help a friend do a workshop in recycled art with her organization.  I am excited to see more of Ecuador, and mildly excited for the 15-hour bus ride.  When I come back to Lloa in a week the countdown begins... on August 7^th I will be in the states for my sister Julie’s wedding.  More on all of this to come!

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.