Say it with me: Tungurahua!

I don’t see any comments, dears. I’m disappointed in you. But I love you anyway.

It’s raining, again. In fact, it’s been more or less continuously raining these past few weeks. However, where MY SITE IS it’s not supposed to rain as much. Actually, the weather is supposed to be rather lovely, warmer in the day than it is here (it’s about 600 meters lower, at an elevation of around 2, 450 meters) and cool at night. PLUS I’m the nearest volunteer to Ecuador’s most active volcano, though I’m not allowed to go to Banos, the city right under the volcano, because of it. I’ll probably use that face mask once or twice, though, for the ash.
Ready? Alright. I’ll be spending the next two years of my life in the province of Tungurahua, in a disperse community of about 100 people that I can’t name but is about 45 minutes south of Ambato, a nice big city where I can buy anything I need. According to Lonely Planet, I should be able to see the active volcano Tungurahua from my town. I’m in the Sierra, people! No big ol’ spiders or malaria medication for me.

I’ll be working with the Red Cross to help teach about nutrition and family gardens. I’ll also be (hopefully) helping to create an irrigation system, working with organic fertilizers, and maybe raising small animals such as cuy or chickens. It’s exactly what I want to do, and while it’s scary to be the first ever volunteer at my site, it’s nice to know that I have the Red Cross to work with and give me some stability and supervision.

Overall, I’m extremely happy, but nervous. Tomorrow I leave for my site visit, and I’ll meet up with my counterpart, a doctor who works for the Red Cross. I hope that they take me seriously, youth and blonde hair and bad Spanish included. I hope that this all goes smoothly, and this site turns out to be the right one for me. I’m ten times happier here than I ever was in Spain, and I hope that things keep going as they are, and that everything falls into place.

The days this past week have been pretty chill, except for my computer getting a virus that was causing it to crash and me spending hours at an internet café trying to download antivirus software (as mine conveniently decided to stop working.) I think (think) that everything’s ok now.

Last weekend I went with my friend Gloria to an indigenous sun celebration of the equinox in Cayambe. It was really such a unique experience. We (the crowd) were cleansed by the shaman by having water blown over us, smoke wafted on us, and a rose dipped in water pressed to our foreheads, like a blessing. It was ancient and spiritual and honestly, the kind of tradition and belief system that I love because of its roots and because of its thankfulness to this earth. It calls to our ancestors who worshipped the earth and sun and sky, whether they were shamans in South America or druids in England and Scotland, where I am from. There is a feeling of connection to the past that is just beautiful.

Yesterday the Ag group went back to a farm that we had been to once before, to learn about small animals. We learned how to castrate a cuy (not as bad as you’d think, though the cuy sure wasn’t happy about it), and how to vaccinate baby chickens with drops in their eyes. There are several great pictures of us chasing half-grown chickens, grabbing them, and holding them up to get the eye drops. Those little birds can run, especially when they were all outside and it started to rain (and hail, big ol’ serious hail), and we had to grab them and chuck them into the coop, which they kept trying to escape from. I swear, it was like The Great Escape, chicken style, though not like that weird claymation movie.

At the end of the day, one of the other girls, a facilitator, and I stayed behind to get some fresh produce from him. We stayed for over an hour, talking, eating fresh picked strawberries and getting some amazing lettuce, carrots, beets and beet greens (mmm), elderberry flowers for tea, and more. In the end, despite the fact that his organic farm usual charges more than the average supermarket produce, he tried to give it to us for free. It was a great feeling, this hard working man who struggles to find clients and expand his farm, to do the right thing by growing completely organically, to offer us this as a gift, especially in a country where you are told repeatedly how people will rob you or will charge you a much higher price for goods because you are white. We of course forced money on him, and probably more than the food was worth, but it was our way of saying, thank you for your time and talking us and being so generous.

Alright, I’m running out of time, and I still have to talk to my mommy via skype, post all my photos, finish packing, help cook dinner (with my fresh veggies, to add some kind of vegetables into the diet of my host family), and go over everything I have to have/know for tomorrow. It’s going to be a busy week.

Love to you all,

Sarah