Knives + fridge + a silly gringa= problems

me with the massive ice chunk


I feel compelled to write this entry and share my sad tale in hopes of sparing some other volunteer or whoever the same sad fate. Last month when my freezer freaked out and the ice grew beyond what could be kept and i could nolonger close my fridge i decided to take a knife to the ice. I felt so powerful chopping away at the massive chunk of ice- breaking off pieces and feeling it´s icy coldness (it´s hot here and it felt like a bit of wisconsin). After several hours of hard work I managed to get out about 1/3 of the ice and was able to close my fridge once again. Well.... last week after several days without electricity I realized that I had stabbed my fridge. When the electricity came back my fridge never got cold and the ice began to melt exposing the stab wounds. I still had no real clue that it was the stabbing that was causing my fridge to malfunction. While talking to several friends in town they mentioned how the volunteer before me had used a knife to get rid of extra ice and had stabbed her fridge and damaged it. They laughed telling this story, i mean how crazy does someone have to be to take a knife to their fridge. I turned red and confessed that I too had used a knife and that i too had accidently stabbed my fridge. They told me not to worry. The volunteer before me was able to get her fridge (which is currently my fridge) fixed and that miguel´s cousin is the fridge repairman. So we found Jerardo sitting barefoot on the malecon and walked back to my house. He took one knowing look at my broken fridge and told me that when i stabbed it i had struck gas which had all leaked out. So very very sad. Jerardo was great though. We went to the city the next morning so he could buy the supplies and then he fixed my fridge. 40 bucks total but i was thrilled that my fridge was not dead. But then.... several days later i realized it´s not cold again. Jerardo fixes it again. another 20 bucks. Now 60 dollars in the whole and my fridge appears to be in good health. So here is hoping that this is the end of the fridge saga. But my sage wisdom is-- please! never knife out your ice! just unplug your fridge and let it melt naturally.


rainy season

so the rains have come to palmar and the things are green again and the dust has settled! it´s wonderful. but oh-- the pure mud and mosquitos. just thought i would send you a coupla mud photos, also some of our quails and the giant hole that miguel and i dug.

Here are a coupla of New Years Poems

Gratitude.

I am content
waking alone
brush the sand from my sheets
slip my dirty feet into my dirty flip flops

light the stove, boil water
for coffee
and mutter something like a plea
for salvation

I doubt this will keep me
from all the wrong that I have done
but still, I wake with this desire
to let it fall away
be new
and wear my life like the most beautiful dress
that I could never afford



under the pelican´s blessing

returning with silver gifts from
deeper waters
the boats come to shore

hard shoulders
bearing plastic buckets of fish
pressing through the shallow waves

returning to offer
the next meal, pay rent
and clothe the children

hard shoulders and cracked lips
returning after the sea has rattled their bones
all through the darkness
and they will wake do the same tomorrow

New Years in Ecuador!

Happy new year to everyone!
One of my very favorite Ecuadorian customs is the burning of viejos when the clocks strikes midnight on New Years eve. What exactly am i talking about? I mean burning life sized human figures in the streets-- well, sometimes human. In the weeks leading up to january 31rst the streets fill up with papermache hulks, sponge bobs, political figures, heads, limbs etc.

The tradition changes from town to town and especially between the culture of the sierra and the coast. In Palmar we burn the good and the bad and believe in doing so we will start the new year fresh. It is also said that if you take on the task of making, building or buying a viejo that you must keep doing that in the years to come or risk having a bad year. The photo below is Marcelo building our viejo: both he and miguel are in charge every year of this important task.

Once the clock strikes midnight the viejos are lit on fire in the street and most of the time firecrackers and other fireworks are thrown in as well to add to rowdyness. Then it´s time to jump of the burning papermache dolls. With my youth group only the boys do this and i am okay with that. I have never been cool with leaping over flaming people dolls.

This year was extra special because my sister, Amelia was visiting. It was really great because my youth group celebrates new years on the 30th so they can be with their families on the actual 31rst. So we had the traditional ecuadorian new years on the 30th and then went to puerto lopez to meet up with some other volunteers to celebrate with a gringo twist.

It´s really sad to think this is my last new years in palmar and in ecuador. I have spent the past four new years in latin america but i believe 2009 will bring me stateside for new years eve. But... who knows?

I am considering taking on the commitment and starting to make my own viejo and carry this wonderful tradition home to the streets on wisconsin. So if you see a gringuita burning a papermache doll in the snowy street next year, don´t call the cops but rather enjoy the light and let the year burn and start the new year fresh.

Election night in Quito

Last night in a crowded, smoky bar in Quito, Ecuador, surrounded by my fellow americans and ecuadorian friends, I watched as Barack Obama was elected president and history was made. I will never forget this election, where I was and how in one evening I felt my faith in my country renewed. I was really taken by the strong sense of community that I felt among americans living abroad- united by a shared hope for a better future. Over beers and conversations, we cheered and speculated as election results came in and eventually when the results were tallied and Obama was named president we cried and hugged and high-fived with joy and relief.
This is my third presidential election in which I was able to vote and my first time in which I felt such hope for positive change. I am very proud to say that I voted for barack obama and that even though voting here in ecuador as a peace corps volunteer was quite difficult I was able to jump through all that red tape and fill out my ballot and have my say. Cheers to the next four years!

random photos

Kids brigade

This is something I had to write up for Peace Corps about the kids group and art class that I do in my town.

The Kids Brigade is a part of our Youth Group, Neo Juventud that is directed towards children ages 5- 12. The goal is to employ the use of non-formal education to create a creative learning environment that focuses on teaching values, critical thinking, developing leadership skills, increasing self-esteem and environmental consciousness. The children are split into two groups based on age and each group meets once a week for an hour and a half to two hours. Currently there are about 50 active participants.

My personal goal for the Kids Brigade is to provide a safe place for children to learn and express themselves without fear of making a mistake or embarrassment.
Our educational activities follow several themes: health, the environment, self-esteem and human values. We discuss the subject and do a follow-up hands on activity, the children have time to ask questions or share: the Kids Brigade is not school and our meetings are an open conversation. Afterwards we always play: we go outside and run around, play games and sing songs.
After about six months of running the Kids Brigade I started an experimental art class that meets once a week. At first no one came and I was really confused: what kid doesn’t love glitter, glue and colored paper? Then I realized that the children had never had art class before and simply didn’t know what I was talking about but after I clearly explained what art class was, attendance began to grow. The art class is open to anyone, so I have children as old as 13 and as young as 4 (sometimes even teenagers). When we first began, the children were horrified at the idea of drawing without an eraser and a ruler, they kept asking, “What if I make a mistake?”. They had learned that art meant copying whatever their teacher had drawn and the concept of mistakes being a catalyst for beautiful art rather than a source of shame was scary at first.

Since the beginning of the Kids Brigade and art class I have seen some amazing changes in these children. There were children who were too shy to speak but now they are confident enough to greet adults and when we pass in the street, they run up and give me a hug. There were kids who simply wouldn’t participate for fear of screwing up and now they are active members who share ideas and help me plan activities. Specifically I have witnessed a complete turnaround in some of my pre-teen girls. I had several young girls who would come but would never participate. They would just turn in blank papers or the materials for the art project without having even tried to complete it. When I asked them why, they told me they didn’t know how or they were just bad at drawing. It took awhile but everyone participates now. This seemingly small effort is a big step and I am so proud of them. Also one of my newest participants is 13 and mute. When he first started coming to art class the rest of the children kept trying to do his work for him and kept informing that Jhony couldn’t do the project. They really wanted to protect him but I insisted that Jhony was responsible and capable of participating in the class and that my expectations were no different for Jhony than any other kid. Jhony rose to the occasion. Last week we made hemp bracelets and Jhony’s was by far the best and he was so proud and the rest of the kids kept asking to see his and he was helping them with their bracelets. The Jhony I met four months earlier followed the others and last week he was leading.

the mangroves

The Mangroves

Palmar has the only mangrove in the province of Santa Elena and one of the few left in Ecuador. Until I came to this small seaside village I had never set foot in a mangrove or thought much about them and even now I am only just beginning to learn. I may not understand everything about this fragile eco-system but I know that each time I enter it’s muddy heart I am transformed.

I’ve always loved stories of children entering strange lands through magical books or wardrobes and the mangrove is just that for me: a strange and magical land.
To enter on foot you must trudge through narrow paths of deep mud that can reach as high as your waist and climb through a maze of twisted roots ( the mangroves are the only species of trees with roots that grow above ground). It is not easy. It’s beautiful.
Mangroves are incredibly biologically diverse: there are hundreds of species of fish, crabs, snails, birds and insects that live within it’s boarders. In recent years shocking numbers of mangrove forests have been destroyed in order to make room for shrimp farms and the eco-system is in serious danger- especially here in Palmar.

The story of the destruction of the mangroves is a very important one- but I am not writing about that today. I am writing about the cool of the black mud on my skin and the way tiny violin crabs feel as they crawl across my toes. I am writing about the strange growls of birds that loom below the deep shadows of green leaves and the damp, bitter smell of decomposition.
I am writing about Sunday morning on my knees, digging into the muddy earth to plant more trees so a new forest can rise.

Yesterday I hiked into the mangroves at low tide with Miguel, Marcelo, Salo, Juan, Milton and Luigi. We gathered about 100 seeds to plant inside the forest. There are four species of mangrove trees in our small sector and there are different seeds in accordance to the different trees. The majority of the seeds that we collected were for the red mangrove: the seed is roughly seven inches long and the shape of a thin carrot, the bottom is a reddish brownish that turns to a deep green at the tip. We carried the seeds through the forest to a strange vacant plot of land where years ago all the trees had been cut down for a shrimp farm that no longer is in business. Our goal is to reforest that entire plot of land.
It’s important to understand that planting requires a fair amount of effort: one must dig a hole about seven inches wide and 10 inches deep and that the top layer of earth is hard and dry while the mud below is thick and heavy clay and in that one hole, only two seeds may be planted. After the seeds are all planted the hole needs to be partially filled with water so that the seeds don’t dry out right away in the heat and die. The entire process took us about four hours and we re-planted less than 1/4 of the space. But we will be back.

After working, we all went for a swim to clean off the layers of mud in the tide pool that becomes a small lake as the tide fills in. It felt so wonderful to just let the water make us all clean again and I imagined the seeds taking root in the quiet dark mud and how years from now I will be gone but the trees will grow and become homes for all kinds of creatures and redeem the destruction and mistakes of the past. As we left the fisherman were just arriving in their wooden boats named after saints and women, filled with red plastic buckets of fish followed by streams of gulls and pelicans.

Walking the beach back home, salt on my skin and mud in my hair I felt content and alive. This is the life I choose.

Adventures in Dentistry

A group of catholic doctors and volunteers from LA came to Palmar a few weeks ago: equipped with bags full of needed medicine, medical equipment, candy bars and the energy to work hard. While they spoke English and Korean no one spoke Spanish. While we may smile in the same language, phrases like, "please pull out the second to the last tooth on the left side of my lower jaw" can get a little more complicated. So I got to translate and even dabble a bit in what i like to call, dentistry 101. With the Korean nun speaking Korean and Spanish and me speaking English and Spanish we managed to communicate and have a pretty good time.

Much to my surprise, my duties went way beyond that of translating as I actually assisted the dentist and got to take a trial run at a career as a dental hygienist. ( which for the record = not my cup of tea). While I lack the correct vocabulary, I can tell you that I mastered the art of the air-puffing tool, the mirror-lip re tractor and the tiny stitches scissor. I admit that the first tooth removal was a bit rough-- the unnatural crack of bone followed by the raw gum, pooling with blood, pomegranate red and then how he flung the chunks of rotten tooth like discarded movie popcorn left me a little unsteady but after that I started to almost enjoy watching the dentist yank on the tooth like it were a stubborn nail, deeply rooted weed or a stuck door.

But the best moments for me were being able to serve as a mediator between the patient and the doctor. It was amazing to really comfort people by explaining what exactly was wrong and how it could be fixed, to help connect them to their doctor and answer their questions while holding their hands.
The best day was our last afternoon. We went adentro, about 20 minutes to a town with a greater need for medical attention where even without electricity we managed to serve 70 people before night fall. As you can imagine, dentistry in particular is kind of rough without electricity but we managed. The dentist told me that the conditions in palmar were worse than he experienced working in the missions in Korea in the 1970s.

It was a really exhausting week but so worth it and an amazing experience.

crickets, baby showers and visits!!!

June 8

Sunday morning coffee and Paul Simon singing You can call me Al. Last few months have been cockroach invasion— I mean almost every night I would wake up with a cockroach running across my face ( and I even tuck my net under my mattress- they must have tiny tools). Now it’s not the worst thing– they are not rats, black widow spiders or scorpions but they suck. Anyway– as seasons change so do my insect problems- before the cockroaches were mass amounts of ants, flies, mosquitos and now......... ( drum roll please)............ crickets/ grasshoppers! Which are by far the best insect to have except that they jump high and come outta nowhere and they don’t mind jumping on me which always freaks me out. But they are kind of cute and so we live here together in harmony. Last week my friend had her baby shower which I helped with and it was really quite an experience for me. I’m not really a big fan of organized social events with games and forced participation but everything is still new to me here and I wanted to help out so I went happily.

Here in Ecuador there exists the hora ecuatoriana or the Ecuadorian hour which any Ecuadorian appears to instinctually understand while foreigners flounder. It’s the concept of showing up an hour or four hours or even days late to any given event or meeting and it’s okay, you don’t need a pass or an excuse or anything- you get to greet everyone and sit down and that is that. So while the party started at 2:30 even the guest of honor didn’t show up until 4:30. I actually really like the hora ecuatoriana because you don’t every have to do that American thing of being in a crazy hurry where you shove food down your throat and run like mad to your next destination. But this sense of time is tricky because sometimes it is implied that you better be there on time and everyone else gets this but I miss the hint and show up late and feel like an idiot. Anyway the party got started around 5:30 and involved games where you couldn’t cross your arms or legs and if you did the girl that sees you can still your flower pin ( which they gave at the beginning) needless to say I lost my flower pin at about 6:00.
To my credit I actually arrived at 2:30 so I had to compete longer than the other girls. There were games where baby food was feed using blindfolds,diapers where pinned on paper babies, peach wine was drunk from baby bottles, the Mom to be’s belly was measured with toilet paper etc and all of this mixed in with random dance sessions where cumbia and merengue were blasted and all the ladies got up and shook it. Later dinner and cake were served and all the presents opened. It was a nice party ( even for a girl who is not that into organized social gatherings). My mom and sister came and visited for the last two weeks of May which was wonderful! The spent four days in Palmar where they got meet lots of people and really get to know the town.

The people of Palmar really reached out to my family and we barely had to cook a meal because someone was always bringing us fresh fish or inviting us to lunch. The kids from Neo Juventud took my family for a boat ride through the mangroves and threw a welcome party where we sang kareoke and ate so yummy food. The ninos brigadistas came and met my family and we played some games and the kids had a great time practicing their English. On Wednesday we attended the festivals of Saint Rita our saint which involved a really long outside mass, burning castles and the vaca loca which is a cardboard cow that shoots off fireworks and the castle is a huge structure with spinning flaming starts that shoot off fireworks as well. Afterwards is a community dance and a dance for the younger generation. After Palmar we ventured up the Ruta del Sol where we stayed a great eco-lodge and went to some beautiful beaches after that we headed to the Cuenca in the Sierra. Cuenca is an idyllic city that brings to mind eastern Europe and parts of Spain. It was really great having my family here and so hard to say good-bye at the airport. Well— there is so much more to say but I am going to stop here.