Home, home on the range

I have a house! And it’s a-freaking-dorable. Honestly, I love it. It’s a little casa de bono, meaning that it was built recently by the government (for the longest time I thought that it was called a casa de abono, meaning fertilizer… like a storage house where they would store the cow poo or something.) It’s not leaky, moldy, smelly, or cold, and has cement floors, a luxury.

It’s painted blue inside and has a little indoor bathroom with a shower, and the kitchen has a nice sink, the little fridge I bought, a plastic table donated by the Red Cross with a bright tablecloth, and gas burners where I can cook and use my campo oven. The campo oven, which is really just a big pot you put over the burners with empty tuna cans inside to rest your baking dish on, works fantastically, just like a real oven. I’ve already made little brownie-cookie things, carrot cake, and roast chicken. I hung my Otavalo hammock from the ceiling in place of a couch, and it’s nice to lie in during the evenings.

I have a comfy bed and a nice dresser in my room, an area to wash my clothes outside, and a stray dog that eats my scraps and wiggles happily whenever he sees me. Though he is not my dog, I’ve still taken the liberty and named him Tilney, continuing with my habit of using last names of Jane Austen characters for animals.

So, what else is new? I’m turning twenty three in eight days (as I write this Saturday night), on June 7th, and I’m going to Rio Bamba for the weekend to celebrate. Around other Americans! Though my time so far at my site has been great, I look forward to speaking some English and feeling, well, like a twenty three year old again. I miss that. After that, on the 10th, I’m going with my sort of adopted family in Patate to the big soccer match in Quito, Ecuador vs. Argentina. I’m thrilled. That was something I always regretted from Spain: that I didn’t get to see a big game in a country wild about soccer.

My work has been going well, though we’re still in the planning stages for many things. There are so many possibilities right now it will be exciting to see, in the end, which ones we actually end up doing. I’m starting the big organic garden with the local high school and also helping to plan an environment “open house” for June 5th at an elementary school in Patate. School lets out in about two weeks, though, so both of my projects will soon be put on hold.

I’ve started my CAT tools…barely. One interview so far, and hopefully more the week after next. The good news is that my community is so small that the interviews shouldn’t take long, not like people who live in towns or cities, who could have 100 families to talk to. I’ll have maybe around 20.

The Red Cross is thinking of starting projects to create large community organic gardens to help get some good food into the people around Patate, my community included. They are also thinking of treating the water to make it safer to drink, and implementing nutrition and alcoholism programs. There is a married couple (a gringa and an Ecuadorian) who live near here and might help me give charlas and possibly implement some form of garbage collection, so the people stop burning all their trash. And there is a pair of nuns who come to my village every Sunday to speak with the children, and I’m hoping that they will be interested in giving talks with me. And I haven’t even spoken yet to the local elementary school near my community, which will also be letting out for the summer soon. There are so many options right now, it’s a little hard to keep track of them all.

I joined a soccer team!...sort of. I don’t know how I ended up in it, but suddenly I was on the court and told to meet some women in my community the next day to travel to another town to play some “indoor”, aka soccer on a cement basketball court with a smaller ball. I sucked, naturally, and everyone laughed at the tall, awkward gringa playing futbol, but it was definitely an integration process. Hopefully I’ll play better this week.

I’ve been writing more lately. It feels good to get back to that part of myself after so long a break, to sink comfortably back into those worlds of my creation. I promised myself that I would finish up my online story first, for the people who have been sitting through it these three long years, but then I’ll finally be able to turn back to my baby, my book, and finish rewriting/revising it. I have a photocopy of the fantastic picture Nicky drew for me on the wall in my room, and I look at it whenever I’m feeling stressed. It feels so wonderfully ironic to be writing that story when I’m in the Peace Corps, like a clash of ideals. My beautiful characters, for all of their insanity, keep me sane.

I should probably stop now, this entry has been long enough. But I wanted to end by saying a huge thank you to Laurie, who left me a beautiful message at the end of my last post. I guess my reverse psychology worked, lol. Honestly, though, if you’re reading this, you made my day. I even read what you wrote out loud to my mom over Skype. I love to think that people are reading this and smiling, and that in some small way, my story is touching someone else out there.

I’ll write again after my birthday! V excited.

Love, Sarah