I’m going to try and make this a quick post, as so much has been happening. The big events were MY SITE VISIT and THE TECH TRIP, two viages that could not have been more different.
My site is one of the more difficult ones. Ag got all of those; NRC has the tourism, working in caves and on the beach whalewatching kind of sites. Mine is a community way up on the side of a mountain of about 100 people, but about 60 of those people are children under the age of 12 or ancient people with no teeth. It’s small. There are no stores, no bakeries, no nothing. Just a collection of dirty, dirty houses and even dirtier children that go to the bathroom in the grass with the animals.
I can’t really get into it here but let’s just say that some stressful situations occurred during my trip, the upshot being that I may or may not have saved a kid’s leg, or his life. The may not is because later I found out that the hospital the mother was saying she couldn’t afford to take her extremely ill child to is actually free, and she knows it. She was just trying to get money off of me. Imagine how I feel right now about this being my site.
Truth be told, I don’t know how I feel. For a while after my site visit I was very depressed, and convinced I got one of the shittiest sites. But now I’m not so sure. I have a darling little house to live in (and not with a host family, thank god, just with my landlord’s daughter), and an amazing view in what I am convinced is one of the most beautiful places in the sierra. My counterpart, a doctor for the Red Cross, is fantastic. Patate, the city that I live near, is adorable. I’m close to Ambato, Rio Bamba, and not even too far from Puyo in the Oriente. And being that I’m the first volunteer and that the town is so terribly poor and uneducated, there is a lot I can do to help, as long as the people accept me and try to change. I already have a list an entire page long of possible projects. As Russ, the older man in our group who has been volunteering continuously for over twenty years, said: “You’re the one they will remember, the one they will forever compare all the future volunteers to.” So…we’ll see.
The tech trip, for those of you not in the know, is an eight day (it used to be longer) trip around Ecuador to learn technical information that you can use at your site. We spent the first three days in Puerto Quito, in the coastal jungle, swimming in a pool and a river, sleeping in bunk beds and hammocks, hacking with machetes in the jungle, playing soccer, having yoga lessons, dancing at night, and just generally having a blast. In between all of this we had classes during the day, where it was stifling hot and a million insects bit us.
After that we split into three groups, depending on where our sites were: Sierra, Coast, or Oriente. The Sierras went to Rio Bamba and SOME PEOPLE (The NRCers) got to hold baby llamas and sled down a snowy mountain. The aggies went to a farm and got to sit on top of a zebra cow. Seriously. Zebra Cow. Tell your friends.
Then we went to a small mountain town called Salinas, and if you ever feel like getting a piece of Ecuadorian culture without all the tourists and with amazing chocolate and cheeses, go there. They have a million micro-enterprises and we bought so much food and wool products it’s a little ridiculous. We also hiked to some amazing views and to a waterfall, where some brave people (not me) went swimming in the hypothermia-inducing waters.
Today was our last day of class and we spent half of it playing sports with special sport outfits the groups made (our’s was the coolest, naturally). Tomorrow is our last full day in Ayora/Cayambe, and then on Sunday we go to Quito for a few days before the massive swearing in ceremony on Wednesday. I’m so excited. Afterwards we’re going to a big club where we’ll have special handstamps and an entire floor for ourselves and other volunteers. I’m almost a real PCV!
Sunday we’re on lockdown, formally called standfast, and can’t leave the hotel because of the big presidential elections, just in case of any upset or protests. The elections are huge here, propaganda everywhere, and I should really take a picture of it before it all disappears.
Thursday is the day: Moving to my site, the tiny village where I will live for the next two years. And that’s where the adventure really begins.
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