May 27, 2008
Tuesday
10:45AM
Our Room
Sayausi
We made it back from our four day, 4,000 vertical meter, horse trip!
For those of you interested in the details, here they are…
Friday
The first day of our four day horseback trip into the outer regions of the developing world.
We met at the church in Sayausi at 9:00am to discover that my padre, Padre Oscar, would not be coming with us on this trip (nor would Benito the ecua-poodle). Instead, Padre Constantino and two seminaristas would be coming with us. Now having returned from the trip I do have doubts about Padre Oscar’s motives for sending another priest in his place. He says the other Padre wanted an opportunity to get to know these caserillas because he hadn’t had a chance to visit them yet so he graciously allowed this new Padre to go in his and Benito’s place…my doubts about the altruistic nature of this great padre switch should be made clear by the end of this post.
So, the five of us (Padre Constantino de Colombia, Bernarnardo de Bolivia, Giovanni de Colombia, myself, and Mike) crammed into a small pick-up truck along with a driver to travel up to 4,200 meters above sea level (this is almost as high as the highest peaks in the continental United States….brrrrrr-chilly) to rendezvous at the trail head in Parque Nacional Cajas with 15 members from Leon Huaco (one of the caserillas), 18 horses, and dozens of sacks of rice, plantains, noodles, and who knows what else.
Needless to say the cabin of the small truck was a little cramped with myself, Mike, and the driver all in the front seat. Legs were everywhere but where they would naturally rest and by the time we arrived at the rendezvous point nerve endings were not functioning to their normal capacity. This is best exemplified by describing Mike’s exit from the truck. Please keep in mind that there are 15 people from these small caserillas watching our arrival anxiously and with all of their attention. Mike opens the door. Mike puts one leg down on the ground. All is well. Mike turns to step away from the car to let me out and puts the second leg down. Mike’s second leg collapses beneath him and his entire body follows suit tumbling several feet from the car. After seeing that Mike is OK, Mary bursts into fits of laughter and gracefully exits the truck. The 15 observers showed much more tact than I as they merely continued to watch with interest but without laughing (Turns out Mike’s entire leg (up to, and including, his hip) was fast asleep and it just didn’t hold his weight because he couldn’t feel anything. Please don’t worry, Mike is and was fine, just a little muddier than he started out….but not nearly as muddy as he would get).
Thus began our trip into the wilds of the caserillas that border Parque Nacional Cajas.
An hour later we were saddled up, me on the biggest horse and Mike on the smallest (go figure), and headed toward a caserilla named Baute. After about five minutes I was way ahead of Mike , reference my former statement about horse size, and holding on for dear life as my horse tripped, stumbled, teetered, scrambled, and tumbled down the slippery, rocky, narrow, steep, scary, wet, quasi-trail that we would be on for the next six hours. If only I had known then that this was the easiest trail we would be on for the next four days.
After 3 hours I arrived in Baute where we stopped to have some lunch. I dismounted, gracefully again, after watching Bernando tumble off his horse and roll around on the ground as he tried to dislodge his leg from the stirrup (he was fine too just not used to mounting, riding, and dismounting from horses). Mike arrived about 10 minutes later much muddier than when I had last seen him.
As we shared a lunch the townspeople had packed, in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere, of guinea pig, mystery bird meat, corn, mote (another type of very watery corn), hard-boiled eggs, boiled bananas, and little bag of salt, Mike told me about his morning on horse back.
It begins with the fact that the other villagers kept referring to his runt horse as “pendejo” which translates to “fool” or “ass”. It continues with Mike’s knees being about level with his chest for the entire ride because the ecua-sized stirrups were not long enough for his legs. Then, somewhere in the middle as his horse was tripping, stumbling, and teetering down a muddy, slick, narrow, quasi-trail Mike threw himself from his horse because it seemed as though the tripping, stumbling horse was actually going to flip over and fall with him on top. It turns out the horse did not flip over but both its front legs were resting on its knees when Mike jumped off into the muddy paramo grass to the side of the trail. It ends with Mike being advised by the accompanying villagers that he should not have “botar”-ed himself from the horse. I side with Mike on the fact that the horse could’ve flipped and was much better for Mike to be off the horse than on it if that happened (Again, please don’t worry Mike is and was fine, just a little muddier than he was…..still not as muddy as he would get).
So, we ate lunch in what really looks like the shire from the Lord of the Rings laughing about the first half of the trail, the lunch of meats and corn, and the fact that we still had three to four more hours to go. Surprisingly, the rib cage of a guinea pig is rather delicious. We washed our hands in the stream, hid behind shrubs when needed, and then continued on our way.
Thankfully, the first half hour we got to walk through an absolutely beautiful field with streams running through it and a light mist blurring the surrounding hillsides. It might have been because the landscape was so beautiful, or that he was talking to one of the villagers, or that the “little muddy patch” was just inherently deceiving in nature, or that he was not really watching the terrain in front of him, but for whatever reason Mike went confidently walking through a patch of wet mud that the villager had just passed through (I was still several steps behind, thank goodness for short legs) and he sank immediately down to his thighs past the point where his farm boots protected him into thick, sloppy mud! I, again, broke into fits of laughter as I then jumped around the spot where he sank and crossed to the other side, completely mud free. Mike quickly dislodged himself from the muddy stream and continued through the field with no damage to his person (I feel I must warn all of you that this is still not the muddiest point in our four day adventure).
We then mounted our steeds, again me on the largest horse and Mike on Pendejo, and continued on for another four hours with little to impede our progress except rain, more muddy trails, thick fog, and sore legs.
When we arrived in Leon Huaco, we were greeted by very nice people that were very concerned with our well-being and immediately gave us café con leche and a light dinner of mountains of rice, sardines, beans, potatoes, and chicken stew. It was only after we had eaten, when it was dark, rainy, and oh-so-cold, that we realized we had no idea where our bag with all of our clean clothes, sleeping bags, and toiletries was located. Last we had seen it was packed in a used grain sack on horse several hours ago. We also knew that some of the horses were going on to another town several hours further down the “road”. “No preocupen!” was what we were told by the nice women who had made us dinner. “Estara aqui.” Don’t worry, it will be here. So, we went to mass (one of five in the next forty-eight hours) and no nos preocupamos.
Mass was held in a tiny chapel made out of adobe and tin, just like the eight other houses that made up the entire town of Leon Hauco. It was freezing inside and all twenty to twenty-five people from Leon Huaco attended, including ourselves and few local dogs as well.
After mass we were shown to our room, where luck would have it our bag was propped up in between an adobe wall and a saco of plantains. We stayed in the room where the teacher from the school used to sleep when the town had a teacher for its five to ten students. The teacher left last year and as far as we can tell the kids haven’t been in school since and there is no teacher planning to come back to Leon Hauco. In the room there was a small cot which they loaded up with all the blankets they could find, two small tables, a chair, and lots of random stuff which would take a long time to write about, and since this entry is already exceedingly long and we’re only on day one, it should suffice to say that there was a lot of random stuff in that room with us.
Despite the cold, cold, cold we actually slept surprisingly well all through the night until the next morning when some random villager came into the room (the door isn’t solid, it has a large opening so that you can put your hand through and unlatch it), said “Perdon,” continued to walk all the way into and across the room where she grabbed the sack of plantains that our bag had been resting against, then walked back across the room carrying the sack of plantains, out the door, stuck her hand back through the door, latched it, then left. At this point, we decided it was time to get up and out of bed.
Saturday
The second day of our four day horseback trip into the outer regions of the developing world.
The kitchen in Leon Hauco is a large room made of adobe with a pitched tin roof and many two-by-four beams spanning its length and width. Precariously balanced on top of the two-by-fours are various sacks filled with kitchen ingredients and slats of wood positioned to create shelves. In the corner farthest from the door, on the floor, is some smoldering firewood with an iron grate on top that serves as the cooking surface. Above this grate is a tin hood that is supposed to serve as the chimney but it has a closed top, thus all of the smoke from the firewood stays inside the kitchen. In another corner was a non-functioning sink and countertop that you couldn’t see because it was covered with tons of stuff (again we won’t go through the list but it was a ton of stuff). The final corner hosted a wooden table with benches that were only functional if people were sitting at both ends, if only one person were seated at one end the other end of the bench would pop up and the person seated would fall to the ground.
At each meal our little traveling party of five was served first and as we finished the rest of the town would trickle in until all twenty-five of us were huddled in the kitchen eating rice, rice, mote, various pieces of meat, rice, mote, fried eggs (only for us, don’t know why), and some slightly warm drink. Breakfast our first morning was good and hearty and settled in my stomach well enough to stomach the mid-morning activity.
Shortly after eating Mike and I were standing outside talking with the Padre, his seminaristas, and some local villagers when a few men went and untied a young bull that had been grazing beneath a nearby tree. Then, a forth man joined them with a piece of long rope which he started to lightly toss at the hind legs of the bull, trying to lasso the legs. This man was followed by a fifth who carried a five inch knife. This is when we were advised that they were in fact going to slaughter the bull for their festival (the festival is the reason why our trip was scheduled for this weekend). You can imagine the scene that followed. Mike and I watched the entire thing and it certainly made me think again about the consumption of meat. Once the bull was actually dead, and no longer groaning, I stopped feeling quite so queasy and began to watch with more interest than uneasiness (however, as different parts were removed and they all went into the kitchen, including the bucket full of blood, I did start to feel a little uneasy about lunch).
The men had obviously done this many, many times before and their attitude was jovial if anything. Throwing parts of the bull around was acceptable and hilarious. One man actually tried putting the testicles of the bull in another’s pocket…he was unsuccessful but it did elicit many laughs from the group. About half way through the process we thought to get out the camera to see if it was working. You’ll all be happy to know that is was and that the pictures from this morning are included in this post!
As the carcass diminished and the viscera remained, the men were replaced by the women of the village. The women were in charge of cleaning the viscera, locating and discarding the gallbladder, emptying the multiple stomachs, and of course cooking the actual meat. And nobody was thrown off their work when a soccer ball from the nearby field bounced through the viscera as they were sorting through it.
While lunch that day did consist of more beef than any one person should ever eat in one meal, there were no mystery parts to identify or digest (thank goodness!). We sat by the fire in the smoked filled kitchen for the entire afternoon. We sat there nice and warm until it was time for another mass. The two o’clock mass was held in the same chapel, as there is only one, the same people and dogs attended, and the exact same mass was given, sermon and all. We then returned to the kitchen fire until it was time for the next mass. The seven o’clock mass was also exactly the same the only difference being that it was also the first communion for two of the local children and that without any warning Mike was asked to speak on their behalf. Yes, Mike who everyone had met a day ago was asked to speak during the mass for a first communion and tie in how Peace Corps’ mission was related to their festival and the first communion of these two children. With some leading questions from the priest, and an impromptu St. Francis reference, Mike successfully managed to accomplish all of this within one or two minutes.
The mass was followed by dinner, more beef and some mystery mountain fish, and a baile (dance) which we only stopped by momentarily as I was still with the “gripe” (cold/flu) and wanted to get to bed early and get some rest. Well, getting to sleep early and getting rest while an Ecuadorian baile is going on do not go hand in hand. The music was blasting until at least three o’clock in the morning and followed by much jovial chatter until at least five o’clock in the morning. By five o’clock in the morning the roosters had long since begun their daily calls, followed by the sheep, the pigs, and the villagers of Leon Huaco starting their morning activities.
Sunday
The third day of our four day horseback trip into the outer regions of the developing world.
Before we went to bed on Friday night Padre Constantino informed us that he would be up at five o’clock if we wanted to come by to use the only bathroom that Leon Huaco has. At seven o’clock in the morning the chapel was still locked up tight with a Padre and two seminaristas sleeping soundly inside. At nine o’clock they emerged and were surprised that we hadn’t come by.
After a quick breakfast of beef, fried eggs, rice with rice, and tinto (warm water with instant coffee and an unimaginable amount of sugar) there was a procession from the top of Leon Huaco down to the bottom half of Leon Hauco. At the bottom of Leon Huaco is another small chapel. When we reached this chapel there was another mass and again the readings and the sermon were the same as the previous three masses.
After our fourth mass in less then thirty-six hours we left for the next caserilla, Chacanceo. Chancanceo was located four hours by horse back from Leon Hauco and was about 2,000 meters lower than Leon Huaco. The trail between Leon Huaco and Chacanceo was steeper, slicker, rockier, and by far scarier than the trail that led from the highway to Leon Huaco (where Mike jumped off his horse for fear that it might fall on him). And there was more rain on this day than there was on the previous day we had traveled by horse. So, I endured another day of tripping, sliding, stumbling, and clinging for dear life to the homemade saddle and reins. Mike opted for walking this trail instead of riding on horse. This worked out especially well because they actually didn’t have enough horses for all of us. I only wish there had been two too few horses so that I could have walked as well. The two seminaristas dismounted halfway through the trail to walk. This was not the reason they gave. They got off so that our two guides (local villagers) could have a chance to ride the horses through the steepest, slickest, scariest part. This meant I had to stay on the horse as there was no one to lead it if I got off. Thankfully, we all arrived safely to Chacanceo in time for an early dinner and another mass.
The dinner was good…it consisted of beef, fried egg, rice with rice, a chicken stew, and tinto. Our dinner company was also nice: a few older village members, two cats, a few chickens, and thirty-five guinea pigs that have free range of the kitchen….don’t worry though, they never leave the kitchen because if they did the dogs outside would eat them.
The mass was held in another small chapel at seven o’clock and consisted of the same readings and sermon as the previous four masses. Those forty years in the desert sure do sound awful.
The mass ended with a grand discussion about what time we should leave in the morning to make it to the next town that has one car that leaves at 7:00am each morning, so we could get to another small town to get a bus to yet another small town to get another bus that goes to Cuenca, so that the Padre could catch his afternoon international flight to Colombia. But people didn’t want to lend their horses to us because they needed them and they wouldn’t get back until late in the afternoon because the first small town was “two hours” away. This conversation went on for a good forty-five minutes and the strangest part was there wasn’t any real official end to it. When it ended we were still a few horses short and no one knew if the car actually left at 7, 8, 9, or 10 in the morning. When we left the Padre to go to bed he told us to meet him at the chapel at four-thirty. Now what I do next may sound odd but it really does make sense here to do what I did. I set my alarm for four-thirty five.
After mass and the cyclical discussion about the morning, Mike and I went right to sleep on a what looked like a mountain climber’s crash pad on the floor of the local school (maybe someone told all these villages that we used to be teachers and that we would be most comfortable sleeping in school related places). The school room was surprisingly nice especially when compared to the other seven adobe structures that made up the town. We slept relatively well considering at random intervals throughout the night people set off firecrackers that sound like gun fire (I guess it had something to do with the festivals).
Monday
The forth and final day of our four day horseback trip into the outer regions of the developing world.
At four thirty-five my alarm went off, we packed up, brushed our teeth, and met the Padre at five o’clock at the chapel where we waited for him, the horses, and for the local women to feed us a piece of bread with some tea until 5:40 when we actually left. I should note that Mike was thrown from a horse while he was trying to mount it. It was still very dark, so all I could hear was the horse moving and Mike hitting the ground. Startled at first, he seemed to be ok. He then tried to tell the owner that he would walk instead and the owner of the horse responded by saying Mike just didn’t know how to mount the horse. The owner then proceeded to mount the horse to show Mike how it was done. The horse then proceeded to throw the owner off as he tried to mount. Mike felt redeemed and was allowed to walk…at the beginning.
So, off we went, before sunrise, to get to this small town (Caimantal) with some car to take to some other small town (Manta Real)… I was tired at this point in the trip and was relieved that the villagers had told us that the trail between Chacanceo and this random small town was wide and flat. I feel like it’s worth saying here that all during training they had warned us that Ecuadorians don’t like making anyone upset and that because of this they often tell people what they want to here instead of the truth. The truth is that this trail was muddier, slicker, and if you can believe it scarier than all of the other trails we had previously been on. What’s funny here is that Mike was comfortably walking when the Padre told Mike he should “rest” and ride the horse for a little bit. Mike said he preferred walking to which the Padre insisted that Mike should “rest” and ride the horse. Mike responded, “I’m fine but if you want to walk I will ride the horse.” The Padre consented and got off to walk as Mike, knees to chest on such a small horse, stumbled and slipped down the trails on horseback.
I dismounted several times during this trip after my horse had nearly gone face first into the mud below only to be told that there weren’t any other steep muddy parts and I should get back on the horse. Silly me, I listened and got back on the horse each time until the time they made everyone get off because the mud was so deep the horse couldn’t walk with anyone on it.
The mud in this part was so deep my feet got stuck in several parts and the mud went past where my huge rubber farm boots covered and got into my socks! This is the muddiest part of the trip and Mike and I emerged looking like we had literally rolled around with the chanchos. When we made it out of the muddy part a guide and my horse were waiting at the bottom but the horse Mike had been on before the muddy part had been reclaimed by Padre Constantino as the rest of the trail (20 minutes max) was actually flat and wide.
We did finally arrive at the small town (with the car that was leaving at 7:00) at 8:30am, a full three hours since we left. Fortunately, everything seems to run a little late and the car was still there. Thirty rainy minutes in the back of the pickup truck got us to the local bus which, after an hour, got us to the first road we had seen in days. From there we got a real bus, and even though Mike had to stand for the first hour and a half, it was a nice ride back up into the mountains.
Everything else went well enough and we arrived back in Cuenca at 2:00 that afternoon, having had only a piece of bread (breakfast in Chancanceo) and a slice of watermelon (from a vendor on the bus) since eating dinner at 5pm the previous day. Being out of water, and incredibly hunger, we were really, really happy to see that vendor.
We were absolutely filthy when we got back home, not to mention tired, and hungry. Luckily there was water, a clean bed, and we had gummy candies, rice krispy treats, and granola waiting for us in our room in Sayausi when we got back (thanks mom, dad, and the store in Cuenca where we buy granola)!
Conclusion
We traveled from 4,400 meters above sea level (just below the snow line) to less than 200 meters above sea level, in 4 days, on a horse. While the people were great, and the scenery fantastic, we would be very surprised if we did it again.
Enjoy the pics....
as always, click to enlarge and to see the captions!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Mailing Instructions and much, much more!
May 22, 2008
Thursday
11:15am
Computer Lab
Cuenca
We have lots to write this time but we are going to start with mailing instructions because we love getting packages and there are a few tricks to make sure they get here as quickly and inexpensively as possible. So, here we go.
Mailing Instructions
(1) The package must be under four pounds.
(2) Send contents in a padded manila envelope. Small boxes are OK but may end up costing us money and taking longer.
(3) Send as normal delivery by regular USPS (not UPS or FEDEX).
(4) Declare a $0 value. This sounds counterintuitive but do it, otherwise we have to pay money to get the package. We don´t have money.
(5)Declare contents as `stuff´, `papers´, `magazines´, or any other vague declaration you want to make.
(6)Also include a list inside the package that says everything you sent, that way we know if customs stole anything...which they have been known to do every now and then.
(7)Please feel free to include small bills and we will let you know exactly what we spent it on (ex: taxi ride, laundry when it´s raining all of the time and nothing will dry, extra snacks, more internet time to post blogs and email loved ones, books, movies, bottled water, fancy toilet paper, curtains, cat, house plants, the nice frying pan not the aluminium one, ingredients to make cookies and cakes, more fancy toilet paper, granola, other foods with fiber, etc..)
(8) Our address is:
Name of Volunteer (Mike Carbone or Mary Driscoll)
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla 01-01-2001
Cuenca-Azuay
Ecuador
So, those are the mailing instructions as best as we can give them. Please follow them. They may sound silly but it´s a kinda crazy postal system. We have received several hassle free packages within two weeks of when they were sent at no cost to us. We have also received a package that had declared value of $2 that took us three days, four lines, a trip to the bank (to pay customs fees of $5), and several chats with a customs official with her armed assistant to receive. We did get the package and everything was in it (which we enjoyed greatly and still appreciated a lot) but it took a long time and cost us money. So, please follow the guidelines and everything will work out fine.
We really do love getting packages, so thank you so much to those of you who have sent something, whether it be gum, magazine articles, books, or a simple note...we love it!!
Living Situation
As most of you probably know we have had a few housing issues since we have arrived in Sayausi. Last week we implemented a new eating plan which has helped tremendously. We told our family that we were instructed by our bosses (this is not entirely true) to eat outside of the house during month two. We explained that by doing this we get to know the comedores in the area and get to know more people by being out of the house. We did not explain that we really just do not think it is quite good for our health to be eating in their kitchen everyday (ex: the glasses we drink out of at times have mold in them or have at times been used to collect urine samples from sick people in the house). While the family is still extremely nice we have successfully removed ourselves from eating there. And as a benefit, we have actually met a lot more people and received a discount on our laundry because the laundry owner is also the owner of the comedor where we have started eating breakfast each morning!! In light of the success we have had with this impromptu strategy we are thinking of relaying the idea to our bosses because, though unintentional, it does have legitimate merits.
Furthermore, it looks like we might be able to move into an apartment during the first or second week of June, assuming the apartment meets the stringent standards that Peace Corps requires for our housing. We will tell more apartment details if it is actually approved. For now it should suffice to know that we have spent a considerable amount of time in a hairdresser´s salon to work out some of the details (the hairdresser is the niece of the owner of the apartment that we are looking into). Don´t worry, no radical new haristyles have resulted from out time spent there, yet.
Work Stuff
As far as my work goes, things continue to pick up. I´ve had several meetings over the past week to plan for the festivals of San Pedro of Sayausi. In particular, The incorporation of ecological activities during the festival. For example, a trash pick-up in the surrounding barrios, a plantaccion in the nearby Sanctuary (a place very near the national park where the Virgen Mary was sighted some years ago. You can imagine this has attracted a lot of people to the area and thus damaged the environment), and a Museo de Agua which will display information about the water cycle, how water is used in daily activities, how we contaminate the water, how we can make it better, and how God created water for us as a gift as well as it´s symbolic role in the Bible. Yes, I am working with a priest lest anyone forgot.
I also met up with a volunteer who was giving health lessons to the catechism classes in Sayausi. She lives in Cuenca and is finishing her service in about two months. The grand plan is that I will take over these classes when the new class begins in September. This is very exciting as I kind of love teaching about the birds, the bees and STDs to adolescents...and the priest okayed teaching about condoms (don´t tell the Pope).
This weekend, we´re headed out to the small villages around Cajas that I will be working with over the next two years. We had a meeting with all the community leaders last week about the cost and feasibility of putting in bathrooms and it looks like it´s a go. So, this weekend we´ll get to check the places out and get to know the people a little bit better. We´ve heard that the area is supposed to be beautiful, freezing, and that Padre Oscar takes his poodle on the trip carrying him strapped to his back like a baby as we travel on horseback (we will try to get a picture but it depends on our unreliable camera). We´ll be back safely on Monday and we´ll fill you in on all the details in our next post.
On the house keeper side of things, the competition for free wire to hang drying clothes has picked up a notch this past week due to continued rains and absence of sun. I´ve started to leave my clothes up even though they are dry until I am ready to hang up new clothes...this is only mildly working as the family is OK with the layers of drying clothes which means our clothes get stuff piled on top of them...I´m currently brainstorming a list of new and more foolproof methods. Also, the wash bucket we use has moved with the cows a full 200 yards from the house through mud, grass, and poo. I´m not sure if this is a retaliation to my wire-hogging scheme but they have successfully deterred me from doing laundry this week. However, I do think the cow is on my side as I saw her eating their clothes off the line the other day (this may also be the reason for the yellow milk last week).
Now for Mike´s work updates. Mike is still going into the office, though apartment dealings have kept him in town more than once this past week. Apparently, there is is a gigantic mudslide in between Sayausi and the office where he works and for some reason the workers are digging it out from the bottom which only makes the top more precarious. The road was completely closed Friday and then again on Tuesday but no one was hurt during either slide. I try not to think about it but Mike keeps telling me all sorts of worrying details, I will not pass them on. The bright side is that by Tuesday when we get back the road should be cleared of the twenty vertical feet of mud and Mike does not have to go to work between now and then.
At the office Mike got a computer this week! But he can´t have internet at his desk because there is no available connection to the network at his desk. But he wouldn´t have been able to use email so it´s not really that big of a loss. In more useful news he did get an extra rain pancho from the office which we will be bringing with us this weekend (yes, it is still raining everyday in large quantities and getting very cold).
Random
Baby chickens hatched this week and, for some reason we have yet to extract form our family, the mother is tied by the foot under our staircase (see picture from last week) and the chicks just mingle around her.
There are a ton of Ecua-poddles in Sayausi and the people call them raza (race) frreynch (french). They are the dirtiest dogs you have ever seen because they have white fur but it rains all the time and the roads are dirt and they are outside all of the time. That being said it is quite the status symbol to have one. The Padre has the most famous raza frreynch named Benito who dons a sweater when it is chilly and attends all of the meetings held in the convent (he usually jumps up on the nearest chair to the Padre and remains there for the entire meeting). The Padre also has a kitty named Violeta-Gertrudis, not just Violeta, Violeta-Gertrudis. She wears a bell with a purple ribbon around her neck and spends her time batting Benito in the face as well as having her tail pulled by Benito. It seems like one of those love/hate relationships.
Last but not least, I had la gripe (a cold/flu) this week which means more home remedies. Not quite so many as the last but enjoyable all the same. Appartently, if you rub cocoa butter all over your neck and chest then cover it with a brown paper (very much like the kind lunch bags are made of) this will help the gripe. Also, it is good to eat a little cocoa butter with a little aguita de remedios (a homemade pink, sugar tea).
Today
Today we are in Cuenca to post this blog, go to the bank, check our mail, eat fresh vegetables, and enjoy the celebration of Corpus Christi, a.k.a. the best celebration in the entire world. As far as we can tell the next 12 days are celebrated by eating tons and tons of cookies, cakes, and candies, and watching tons of crazy fireworks at night!! How cool is that! We´ve already tried a coconut cookie, a peanut treat, a donut-like cookie, and some other cookie. The streets are literally lined with cookie and candy vendors and at night the streets fill with three-story high castillos (castle-like structures filled wtih fireworks) and vaca locas (crazy people with cow-like structures on their heads also filled with fireworks).
Hope all is well! We love you, and miss you all!!
Thursday
11:15am
Computer Lab
Cuenca
We have lots to write this time but we are going to start with mailing instructions because we love getting packages and there are a few tricks to make sure they get here as quickly and inexpensively as possible. So, here we go.
Mailing Instructions
(1) The package must be under four pounds.
(2) Send contents in a padded manila envelope. Small boxes are OK but may end up costing us money and taking longer.
(3) Send as normal delivery by regular USPS (not UPS or FEDEX).
(4) Declare a $0 value. This sounds counterintuitive but do it, otherwise we have to pay money to get the package. We don´t have money.
(5)Declare contents as `stuff´, `papers´, `magazines´, or any other vague declaration you want to make.
(6)Also include a list inside the package that says everything you sent, that way we know if customs stole anything...which they have been known to do every now and then.
(7)Please feel free to include small bills and we will let you know exactly what we spent it on (ex: taxi ride, laundry when it´s raining all of the time and nothing will dry, extra snacks, more internet time to post blogs and email loved ones, books, movies, bottled water, fancy toilet paper, curtains, cat, house plants, the nice frying pan not the aluminium one, ingredients to make cookies and cakes, more fancy toilet paper, granola, other foods with fiber, etc..)
(8) Our address is:
Name of Volunteer (Mike Carbone or Mary Driscoll)
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla 01-01-2001
Cuenca-Azuay
Ecuador
So, those are the mailing instructions as best as we can give them. Please follow them. They may sound silly but it´s a kinda crazy postal system. We have received several hassle free packages within two weeks of when they were sent at no cost to us. We have also received a package that had declared value of $2 that took us three days, four lines, a trip to the bank (to pay customs fees of $5), and several chats with a customs official with her armed assistant to receive. We did get the package and everything was in it (which we enjoyed greatly and still appreciated a lot) but it took a long time and cost us money. So, please follow the guidelines and everything will work out fine.
We really do love getting packages, so thank you so much to those of you who have sent something, whether it be gum, magazine articles, books, or a simple note...we love it!!
Living Situation
As most of you probably know we have had a few housing issues since we have arrived in Sayausi. Last week we implemented a new eating plan which has helped tremendously. We told our family that we were instructed by our bosses (this is not entirely true) to eat outside of the house during month two. We explained that by doing this we get to know the comedores in the area and get to know more people by being out of the house. We did not explain that we really just do not think it is quite good for our health to be eating in their kitchen everyday (ex: the glasses we drink out of at times have mold in them or have at times been used to collect urine samples from sick people in the house). While the family is still extremely nice we have successfully removed ourselves from eating there. And as a benefit, we have actually met a lot more people and received a discount on our laundry because the laundry owner is also the owner of the comedor where we have started eating breakfast each morning!! In light of the success we have had with this impromptu strategy we are thinking of relaying the idea to our bosses because, though unintentional, it does have legitimate merits.
Furthermore, it looks like we might be able to move into an apartment during the first or second week of June, assuming the apartment meets the stringent standards that Peace Corps requires for our housing. We will tell more apartment details if it is actually approved. For now it should suffice to know that we have spent a considerable amount of time in a hairdresser´s salon to work out some of the details (the hairdresser is the niece of the owner of the apartment that we are looking into). Don´t worry, no radical new haristyles have resulted from out time spent there, yet.
Work Stuff
As far as my work goes, things continue to pick up. I´ve had several meetings over the past week to plan for the festivals of San Pedro of Sayausi. In particular, The incorporation of ecological activities during the festival. For example, a trash pick-up in the surrounding barrios, a plantaccion in the nearby Sanctuary (a place very near the national park where the Virgen Mary was sighted some years ago. You can imagine this has attracted a lot of people to the area and thus damaged the environment), and a Museo de Agua which will display information about the water cycle, how water is used in daily activities, how we contaminate the water, how we can make it better, and how God created water for us as a gift as well as it´s symbolic role in the Bible. Yes, I am working with a priest lest anyone forgot.
I also met up with a volunteer who was giving health lessons to the catechism classes in Sayausi. She lives in Cuenca and is finishing her service in about two months. The grand plan is that I will take over these classes when the new class begins in September. This is very exciting as I kind of love teaching about the birds, the bees and STDs to adolescents...and the priest okayed teaching about condoms (don´t tell the Pope).
This weekend, we´re headed out to the small villages around Cajas that I will be working with over the next two years. We had a meeting with all the community leaders last week about the cost and feasibility of putting in bathrooms and it looks like it´s a go. So, this weekend we´ll get to check the places out and get to know the people a little bit better. We´ve heard that the area is supposed to be beautiful, freezing, and that Padre Oscar takes his poodle on the trip carrying him strapped to his back like a baby as we travel on horseback (we will try to get a picture but it depends on our unreliable camera). We´ll be back safely on Monday and we´ll fill you in on all the details in our next post.
On the house keeper side of things, the competition for free wire to hang drying clothes has picked up a notch this past week due to continued rains and absence of sun. I´ve started to leave my clothes up even though they are dry until I am ready to hang up new clothes...this is only mildly working as the family is OK with the layers of drying clothes which means our clothes get stuff piled on top of them...I´m currently brainstorming a list of new and more foolproof methods. Also, the wash bucket we use has moved with the cows a full 200 yards from the house through mud, grass, and poo. I´m not sure if this is a retaliation to my wire-hogging scheme but they have successfully deterred me from doing laundry this week. However, I do think the cow is on my side as I saw her eating their clothes off the line the other day (this may also be the reason for the yellow milk last week).
Now for Mike´s work updates. Mike is still going into the office, though apartment dealings have kept him in town more than once this past week. Apparently, there is is a gigantic mudslide in between Sayausi and the office where he works and for some reason the workers are digging it out from the bottom which only makes the top more precarious. The road was completely closed Friday and then again on Tuesday but no one was hurt during either slide. I try not to think about it but Mike keeps telling me all sorts of worrying details, I will not pass them on. The bright side is that by Tuesday when we get back the road should be cleared of the twenty vertical feet of mud and Mike does not have to go to work between now and then.
At the office Mike got a computer this week! But he can´t have internet at his desk because there is no available connection to the network at his desk. But he wouldn´t have been able to use email so it´s not really that big of a loss. In more useful news he did get an extra rain pancho from the office which we will be bringing with us this weekend (yes, it is still raining everyday in large quantities and getting very cold).
Random
Baby chickens hatched this week and, for some reason we have yet to extract form our family, the mother is tied by the foot under our staircase (see picture from last week) and the chicks just mingle around her.
There are a ton of Ecua-poddles in Sayausi and the people call them raza (race) frreynch (french). They are the dirtiest dogs you have ever seen because they have white fur but it rains all the time and the roads are dirt and they are outside all of the time. That being said it is quite the status symbol to have one. The Padre has the most famous raza frreynch named Benito who dons a sweater when it is chilly and attends all of the meetings held in the convent (he usually jumps up on the nearest chair to the Padre and remains there for the entire meeting). The Padre also has a kitty named Violeta-Gertrudis, not just Violeta, Violeta-Gertrudis. She wears a bell with a purple ribbon around her neck and spends her time batting Benito in the face as well as having her tail pulled by Benito. It seems like one of those love/hate relationships.
Last but not least, I had la gripe (a cold/flu) this week which means more home remedies. Not quite so many as the last but enjoyable all the same. Appartently, if you rub cocoa butter all over your neck and chest then cover it with a brown paper (very much like the kind lunch bags are made of) this will help the gripe. Also, it is good to eat a little cocoa butter with a little aguita de remedios (a homemade pink, sugar tea).
Today
Today we are in Cuenca to post this blog, go to the bank, check our mail, eat fresh vegetables, and enjoy the celebration of Corpus Christi, a.k.a. the best celebration in the entire world. As far as we can tell the next 12 days are celebrated by eating tons and tons of cookies, cakes, and candies, and watching tons of crazy fireworks at night!! How cool is that! We´ve already tried a coconut cookie, a peanut treat, a donut-like cookie, and some other cookie. The streets are literally lined with cookie and candy vendors and at night the streets fill with three-story high castillos (castle-like structures filled wtih fireworks) and vaca locas (crazy people with cow-like structures on their heads also filled with fireworks).
Hope all is well! We love you, and miss you all!!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
El Dia de la Madre
May 13, 2008
Tuesday
1:45 PM
Our Room in Sayausi
First and foremost a belated Mother’s Day wish to all those mothers and mother-like figures who are reading this blog!
Flashback to Mother’s Day Eve when Mike and I were sleeping soundly…until 12:00am…
Beginning at midnight and continuing through until six o’clock in the morning we were treated to serenades, of the loud and prevent people from sleeping sort. Little did we know at the time, but it is the tradition here in Sayausi for a traveling band to serenade all the mothers in Sayausi all through the night. So we, along with everyone else in the town, were awake from midnight ‘til dawn listening to the sweet stylings of our local musicians singing to moms for Mother’s Day (those with less musical talent rent what is known as a dicsomobile and drive up to the house, open the doors, and let the bass do the rest).
Unfortunately for this predominately Catholic town, mass was still at 7:00am which means that at 6:30am (only a half an hour after the serenading stopped) the Padre began blaring music from the church speakers to ensure no one accidentally slept through the service (this happens every week but was particularly painful after a night of bass and ballads). Doing our best to integrate into the community here in Sayausi, we joined the throngs of sleep-deprived masses and headed to Sunday service (where last week we each had to address the congregation by microphone).
Like most masses it began with fewer people than it ended with. Unlike most masses (I think, although I haven’t been to too many) it ended with a “rifle-flasch” or flash raffle. And I’m pretty sure on this next point, that like no other mass the prizes included in the raffle were two plates of cooked guinea pig, one plate of cooked chancho (or pork), and two live guinea pigs that were just handed to the winners without any bag or box to hold them. By 8:00am we had celebrated Mother’s Day in a manner we never had and, after these next two years at least, probably never will again.
The rest of the day was spent mingling around town, perusing the small Sunday market that comes to Sayausi once a week, and watching the soccer games in the estadio (stadium if you translate directly or large dirt field if you go by what they are actually referring to). The games are really fun to watch and they take place all day Sunday and all Saturday afternoon. The coolest part is that there’s a women’s league (which Mike keeps telling everyone in town that I want to join) and an older person’s league, so everyone gets a chance to play. The strangest part is that throughout the games cars drive across and through the field AND play continues! All and all it´s a pretty neat way to spend the afternoon for both players and spectators.
Other interesting events that took place this week include the birth of a baby bull by our family’s cow. The bad news is we weren’t allowed to watch because apparently the cow doesn’t like to be watched when it is giving birth and something bad would happen if anyone saw the baby being born. The good news is there’s a cute baby cow in our yard now and tons of fresh milk, which tastes different yet better than store bought milk (for those of you who drink skim….well…sorry). And, I never knew this before but for the first few days after giving birth the cow’s milk is different than normal. Here they call it leche tierna, or young milk. It’s yellower than normal milk (in that it is yellow) and they serve it hot mixed with sugar and spices. It tastes good but the clumps are a little hard to swallow, for me, although Mike asked for seconds.
The more mundane events this week include me having my first one-on-one meeting in Spanish with an architect in Cuenca, finding the bank and post-office and vegetarian restaurant by myself, finishing my first book in Spanish (who knew ´La telerana de Carlota´ could take so long to read), and making strides in my laundry washing technique. Mike spent several days digging trash and unwanted plants out of a lake in Cajas while bonding with the six or seven park guards that were also sacando basura, he read a 104 page thesis (all in Spanish of course) from a student at the University of Azuay about park management in Cajas, he then proceded to ¨take the red pen to it¨ as it wasn´t quite ready for implementation, he found a really good street food stand close to our house with the best chuzos (chicken kebabs) and corn pancakes, and has almost finished reading ´El Hobbit´.
Hope this week found everyone with equally rewarding events, and please, for my sake and anyone else who has had to wash every single piece of clothing by hand every single time clothes get dirty, appreciate your washing machine! Side note: when the laundry bucket here is not being used for laundry, it doubles as the portable waterhole for the cattle in our front yard.
….and the good news…..our camera came back to life for half an hour on Sunday. It was a special Mother’s Day treat! Unfortunately our family was out celebrating with their mothers so they are not featured in any of the pictures. Neither is the kitchen, as it was locked. What you will see is our room, some of the house, and its immediate surroundings. The camera died, again, before we could leave our yard but in one of the pictures you can see the church. Enjoy…
As always, double click to enlarge AND to see captions on the pictures.
Tuesday
1:45 PM
Our Room in Sayausi
First and foremost a belated Mother’s Day wish to all those mothers and mother-like figures who are reading this blog!
Flashback to Mother’s Day Eve when Mike and I were sleeping soundly…until 12:00am…
Beginning at midnight and continuing through until six o’clock in the morning we were treated to serenades, of the loud and prevent people from sleeping sort. Little did we know at the time, but it is the tradition here in Sayausi for a traveling band to serenade all the mothers in Sayausi all through the night. So we, along with everyone else in the town, were awake from midnight ‘til dawn listening to the sweet stylings of our local musicians singing to moms for Mother’s Day (those with less musical talent rent what is known as a dicsomobile and drive up to the house, open the doors, and let the bass do the rest).
Unfortunately for this predominately Catholic town, mass was still at 7:00am which means that at 6:30am (only a half an hour after the serenading stopped) the Padre began blaring music from the church speakers to ensure no one accidentally slept through the service (this happens every week but was particularly painful after a night of bass and ballads). Doing our best to integrate into the community here in Sayausi, we joined the throngs of sleep-deprived masses and headed to Sunday service (where last week we each had to address the congregation by microphone).
Like most masses it began with fewer people than it ended with. Unlike most masses (I think, although I haven’t been to too many) it ended with a “rifle-flasch” or flash raffle. And I’m pretty sure on this next point, that like no other mass the prizes included in the raffle were two plates of cooked guinea pig, one plate of cooked chancho (or pork), and two live guinea pigs that were just handed to the winners without any bag or box to hold them. By 8:00am we had celebrated Mother’s Day in a manner we never had and, after these next two years at least, probably never will again.
The rest of the day was spent mingling around town, perusing the small Sunday market that comes to Sayausi once a week, and watching the soccer games in the estadio (stadium if you translate directly or large dirt field if you go by what they are actually referring to). The games are really fun to watch and they take place all day Sunday and all Saturday afternoon. The coolest part is that there’s a women’s league (which Mike keeps telling everyone in town that I want to join) and an older person’s league, so everyone gets a chance to play. The strangest part is that throughout the games cars drive across and through the field AND play continues! All and all it´s a pretty neat way to spend the afternoon for both players and spectators.
Other interesting events that took place this week include the birth of a baby bull by our family’s cow. The bad news is we weren’t allowed to watch because apparently the cow doesn’t like to be watched when it is giving birth and something bad would happen if anyone saw the baby being born. The good news is there’s a cute baby cow in our yard now and tons of fresh milk, which tastes different yet better than store bought milk (for those of you who drink skim….well…sorry). And, I never knew this before but for the first few days after giving birth the cow’s milk is different than normal. Here they call it leche tierna, or young milk. It’s yellower than normal milk (in that it is yellow) and they serve it hot mixed with sugar and spices. It tastes good but the clumps are a little hard to swallow, for me, although Mike asked for seconds.
The more mundane events this week include me having my first one-on-one meeting in Spanish with an architect in Cuenca, finding the bank and post-office and vegetarian restaurant by myself, finishing my first book in Spanish (who knew ´La telerana de Carlota´ could take so long to read), and making strides in my laundry washing technique. Mike spent several days digging trash and unwanted plants out of a lake in Cajas while bonding with the six or seven park guards that were also sacando basura, he read a 104 page thesis (all in Spanish of course) from a student at the University of Azuay about park management in Cajas, he then proceded to ¨take the red pen to it¨ as it wasn´t quite ready for implementation, he found a really good street food stand close to our house with the best chuzos (chicken kebabs) and corn pancakes, and has almost finished reading ´El Hobbit´.
Hope this week found everyone with equally rewarding events, and please, for my sake and anyone else who has had to wash every single piece of clothing by hand every single time clothes get dirty, appreciate your washing machine! Side note: when the laundry bucket here is not being used for laundry, it doubles as the portable waterhole for the cattle in our front yard.
….and the good news…..our camera came back to life for half an hour on Sunday. It was a special Mother’s Day treat! Unfortunately our family was out celebrating with their mothers so they are not featured in any of the pictures. Neither is the kitchen, as it was locked. What you will see is our room, some of the house, and its immediate surroundings. The camera died, again, before we could leave our yard but in one of the pictures you can see the church. Enjoy…
As always, double click to enlarge AND to see captions on the pictures.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
First Enfermedad
May 7, 2008
Wednesday
8:15 am
Our room in Sayausi
Tuesday last week I came down with my first in-country illness. In all honesty I guess it began in the seven days leading up to Tuesday but it was Tuesday morning that I finally called the Peace Corps nurses. (Spoiler Alert: I’m better and everything is fine now)
As you may or may not know the food in Ecuador is different from what we are used to and as you may also know the most common health problems here are usually gastrointestinal (that is another warning for those of you who may not want to know any more than that).
Our meals here usually consist of rice, plantains, and potatoes. Can anyone identify something missing from this triumvirate that might lead to gastrointestinal problems? That’s right, fiber. Well, I went seven days with something missing from a normal person’s daily routine which then led to pretty bad abdominal cramping if you can imagine. When the cramping turned into vomiting and began interfering with eating, drinking liquids, and sleeping I finally called the nurses. They were wholly unsurprised and instructed me to go to the pharmacy to buy some pastillas (pills) y gotas (drops) to help things along. After hanging up the phone I relayed the instructions to Mike who left to go to the pharmacy. However, seconds after Mike left I think our host family got wind that something was going on and start yelling my name, as they thought it was me who had just left. So, here I am laying in bed in pretty rough shape not wanting to move and all of the sudden I hear my name being yelled into the neighborhood (i.e. cow pasture) at 8:00 in the morning.
“Mari! Marita! Mari! Marita!”
“Estoy aqui!” was my weak and apparently inaudible reply.
“Mari! Marita! Mari! Marita!”
So, I willed myself to get up (without vomiting) and go find them to let them know I was just upstairs. I’m still not really sure why they flipped out at this moment in time. I finally got their attention at which point they told me I looked really sick. I said, “Si, estoy enferma and Miguel se fue a comprar algunas pastillas que las enfemeras me dijeron a tomar.” After seeing their nods of what seemed to be understanding, I went back to bed thinking we were all on the same page.
When Mike returned from the pharmacy (no prescriptions necessary in Ecuador) he told me that our host mom and her niece had told him not to give me the pills until they had prepared an aguita (an homemade tea) from four flowers of one plant, but not the roots, several stems of something else, and so on. Keep in mind they still didn’t know what was wrong with me other than that if I took a pill with just plain water it would do more harm than good. Not doubting their good intentions, Mike still came upstairs and gave me the laxative with plain old bottled water and all was well, or at least I was resting as comfortably as possible….for about five minutes. I guess that’s how long it takes to make an aguita.
So, they came in and gave me this tea (which like everything else at this point made me want to go head first into the nearest toilet) told me to drink it and then left. I immediately pawned the tea off on Mike and told him to drink it. He took a few sips then put it on the cement floor near the bed. It was just about a minute after this that the local nurses (our mom and her niece) came back into the room and asked if I had finished the tea and in the same sentence saw the tea on the floor. The look of utter dismay on their faces is hard to describe. What happened next is not. They parked themselves in the room until they saw me drink the entire cup of tea sip by little sip (and they still haven’t asked what’s wrong with me). So, I drank and returned to writhing in the bed…until the next cup of aquita.
This next part of the story was relayed by Mike as he was downstairs eating lunch during the preparation of the next treatment. Please remember that Mike’s Spanish is really good so the usual language stuff that can create confusion in situations like this is not relevant.
Mike was eating lunch (potatoes, rice, and a campo-chicken soup that was made especially for me) and they were asking him what was wrong with me to which he responded I was having stomach pain and that was why I couldn’t come down to eat lunch. Then they told Mike that what I had was gringo-diarrhea and they knew just what to do. At this point the niece left the kitchen immediately to go to the store to buy oregano for the next aguita and Mike remained in the kitchen stuck in some sort of weird cyclical conversation that went something like this:
“Gringos always get diarrhea, this tea will do the trick.”
“She doesn’t have diarrhea, she has the opposite.”
“Don’t worry this tea will fix the diarrhea, it always works.”
“She doesn’t have diarrhea, she can’t go to the bathroom (defecar) that’s why her
stomach hurts.”
“This tea will fix the diarrhea.”
………
So, now the niece returns from the store with the oregano for the diarrhea that I don’t have and they begin to make the tea while the above conversation continues. Mike is exhausting his bathroom vocabulary while still being polite which I have to imagine is a fine line until finally a friend of the family who had been in the kitchen the whole time spoke up. Now if you knew this woman, and I had met her before, it is amusing that she turns out to be the voice of reason in this situation. She will probably come up again in a later story because she is that much of a character.
“Well, if she doesn’t have diarrhea that tea will make it worse!”
“Exactly” or “Exactamente” in Mike’s best Spanish.
The oregano tea at this point was scraped and a discussion began about what tea would be best. The final decision was chamomile served with a spoonful of olive oil. Everyone, including Mike, thought this at the very least would cause no harm so the niece left again to go gather chamomile from the front lawn, where the cows also happen to graze and do other stuff. So, the preparation begins and I guess everyone was feeling pretty good about everything when there was a collective pause, a gasp, and then…
“But what if she has mal aire (bad air)?!?!”
This was followed by some discussion and finally the decision to go ahead and give me the tea but to also treat me with “the” cologne for mal aire. Keep in mind I have been upstairs kind of sleeping/writhing during this whole episode so when the crowd entered my room with a cup of tea in one hand, a spoon in the other, a bottle of olive oil cradled in the arm with the tea, and someone holding an old Tampico juice bottle filled with black liquid and a weird crust around the lid I was a little taken aback. But all of the sudden I was chugging tea and gulping olive oil as someone rubbed that black stuff all over my head and instructed me to breathe it in three times as deep as I can.
I guess it was all over in less than two minutes and it was supposed to help but I still felt pretty awful. And that yucky feeling was only exacerbated when I tried to go into Cuenca with Mike to mail off our Site Locator Form (it’s some incredibly long form that had to be in the Quito office by Friday) but just about lost “it” on the bus so we had to get off and take a taxi back home at which point the pills kicked in and I found myself glued to the toilet at the moment in our house when the water was shut off. Yup, we had water for the seven cramp filled days before this moment but in this moment and for the rest of the day and the following day not a drop of water found its way into the pipes in our house.
When the evening finally rolled around I was given another round of tea and olive oil (no black liquid treatment) with a piece of cake which actually tasted pretty good. I still didn’t fell great and honestly yesterday (an entire week later) was the first time I actually ate normal amounts of food. But whose to say I still wouldn’t be sick if weren’t for the tea (which I received everyday at every meal for the past week with the spoonful of olive oil) and mal aire cologne, or maybe it’s the fact that we now keep a bag of granola in our room, take the local version of Metamucil everyday, and try to snack on fruits whenever we are pasearing around town. I guess we’ll never know.
Other things happened this past week but those are the highlights, or lowlights. We were introduced to the entire mass on Sunday and had to speak in front of everyone with a microphone. It was probably the largest group I’ve ever had to address and it was in Spanish…still it went well and afterwards we were invited over for breakfast at several houses (the priest told everyone we were nice and that they should invite us over for food).
Hope all is well with eveyone back home and just a friendly piece of advice as we end this blog entry: eat lots of prunes, oats, apples, bran, vegetables, beans and chamomile with olive oil!
Wednesday
8:15 am
Our room in Sayausi
Tuesday last week I came down with my first in-country illness. In all honesty I guess it began in the seven days leading up to Tuesday but it was Tuesday morning that I finally called the Peace Corps nurses. (Spoiler Alert: I’m better and everything is fine now)
As you may or may not know the food in Ecuador is different from what we are used to and as you may also know the most common health problems here are usually gastrointestinal (that is another warning for those of you who may not want to know any more than that).
Our meals here usually consist of rice, plantains, and potatoes. Can anyone identify something missing from this triumvirate that might lead to gastrointestinal problems? That’s right, fiber. Well, I went seven days with something missing from a normal person’s daily routine which then led to pretty bad abdominal cramping if you can imagine. When the cramping turned into vomiting and began interfering with eating, drinking liquids, and sleeping I finally called the nurses. They were wholly unsurprised and instructed me to go to the pharmacy to buy some pastillas (pills) y gotas (drops) to help things along. After hanging up the phone I relayed the instructions to Mike who left to go to the pharmacy. However, seconds after Mike left I think our host family got wind that something was going on and start yelling my name, as they thought it was me who had just left. So, here I am laying in bed in pretty rough shape not wanting to move and all of the sudden I hear my name being yelled into the neighborhood (i.e. cow pasture) at 8:00 in the morning.
“Mari! Marita! Mari! Marita!”
“Estoy aqui!” was my weak and apparently inaudible reply.
“Mari! Marita! Mari! Marita!”
So, I willed myself to get up (without vomiting) and go find them to let them know I was just upstairs. I’m still not really sure why they flipped out at this moment in time. I finally got their attention at which point they told me I looked really sick. I said, “Si, estoy enferma and Miguel se fue a comprar algunas pastillas que las enfemeras me dijeron a tomar.” After seeing their nods of what seemed to be understanding, I went back to bed thinking we were all on the same page.
When Mike returned from the pharmacy (no prescriptions necessary in Ecuador) he told me that our host mom and her niece had told him not to give me the pills until they had prepared an aguita (an homemade tea) from four flowers of one plant, but not the roots, several stems of something else, and so on. Keep in mind they still didn’t know what was wrong with me other than that if I took a pill with just plain water it would do more harm than good. Not doubting their good intentions, Mike still came upstairs and gave me the laxative with plain old bottled water and all was well, or at least I was resting as comfortably as possible….for about five minutes. I guess that’s how long it takes to make an aguita.
So, they came in and gave me this tea (which like everything else at this point made me want to go head first into the nearest toilet) told me to drink it and then left. I immediately pawned the tea off on Mike and told him to drink it. He took a few sips then put it on the cement floor near the bed. It was just about a minute after this that the local nurses (our mom and her niece) came back into the room and asked if I had finished the tea and in the same sentence saw the tea on the floor. The look of utter dismay on their faces is hard to describe. What happened next is not. They parked themselves in the room until they saw me drink the entire cup of tea sip by little sip (and they still haven’t asked what’s wrong with me). So, I drank and returned to writhing in the bed…until the next cup of aquita.
This next part of the story was relayed by Mike as he was downstairs eating lunch during the preparation of the next treatment. Please remember that Mike’s Spanish is really good so the usual language stuff that can create confusion in situations like this is not relevant.
Mike was eating lunch (potatoes, rice, and a campo-chicken soup that was made especially for me) and they were asking him what was wrong with me to which he responded I was having stomach pain and that was why I couldn’t come down to eat lunch. Then they told Mike that what I had was gringo-diarrhea and they knew just what to do. At this point the niece left the kitchen immediately to go to the store to buy oregano for the next aguita and Mike remained in the kitchen stuck in some sort of weird cyclical conversation that went something like this:
“Gringos always get diarrhea, this tea will do the trick.”
“She doesn’t have diarrhea, she has the opposite.”
“Don’t worry this tea will fix the diarrhea, it always works.”
“She doesn’t have diarrhea, she can’t go to the bathroom (defecar) that’s why her
stomach hurts.”
“This tea will fix the diarrhea.”
………
So, now the niece returns from the store with the oregano for the diarrhea that I don’t have and they begin to make the tea while the above conversation continues. Mike is exhausting his bathroom vocabulary while still being polite which I have to imagine is a fine line until finally a friend of the family who had been in the kitchen the whole time spoke up. Now if you knew this woman, and I had met her before, it is amusing that she turns out to be the voice of reason in this situation. She will probably come up again in a later story because she is that much of a character.
“Well, if she doesn’t have diarrhea that tea will make it worse!”
“Exactly” or “Exactamente” in Mike’s best Spanish.
The oregano tea at this point was scraped and a discussion began about what tea would be best. The final decision was chamomile served with a spoonful of olive oil. Everyone, including Mike, thought this at the very least would cause no harm so the niece left again to go gather chamomile from the front lawn, where the cows also happen to graze and do other stuff. So, the preparation begins and I guess everyone was feeling pretty good about everything when there was a collective pause, a gasp, and then…
“But what if she has mal aire (bad air)?!?!”
This was followed by some discussion and finally the decision to go ahead and give me the tea but to also treat me with “the” cologne for mal aire. Keep in mind I have been upstairs kind of sleeping/writhing during this whole episode so when the crowd entered my room with a cup of tea in one hand, a spoon in the other, a bottle of olive oil cradled in the arm with the tea, and someone holding an old Tampico juice bottle filled with black liquid and a weird crust around the lid I was a little taken aback. But all of the sudden I was chugging tea and gulping olive oil as someone rubbed that black stuff all over my head and instructed me to breathe it in three times as deep as I can.
I guess it was all over in less than two minutes and it was supposed to help but I still felt pretty awful. And that yucky feeling was only exacerbated when I tried to go into Cuenca with Mike to mail off our Site Locator Form (it’s some incredibly long form that had to be in the Quito office by Friday) but just about lost “it” on the bus so we had to get off and take a taxi back home at which point the pills kicked in and I found myself glued to the toilet at the moment in our house when the water was shut off. Yup, we had water for the seven cramp filled days before this moment but in this moment and for the rest of the day and the following day not a drop of water found its way into the pipes in our house.
When the evening finally rolled around I was given another round of tea and olive oil (no black liquid treatment) with a piece of cake which actually tasted pretty good. I still didn’t fell great and honestly yesterday (an entire week later) was the first time I actually ate normal amounts of food. But whose to say I still wouldn’t be sick if weren’t for the tea (which I received everyday at every meal for the past week with the spoonful of olive oil) and mal aire cologne, or maybe it’s the fact that we now keep a bag of granola in our room, take the local version of Metamucil everyday, and try to snack on fruits whenever we are pasearing around town. I guess we’ll never know.
Other things happened this past week but those are the highlights, or lowlights. We were introduced to the entire mass on Sunday and had to speak in front of everyone with a microphone. It was probably the largest group I’ve ever had to address and it was in Spanish…still it went well and afterwards we were invited over for breakfast at several houses (the priest told everyone we were nice and that they should invite us over for food).
Hope all is well with eveyone back home and just a friendly piece of advice as we end this blog entry: eat lots of prunes, oats, apples, bran, vegetables, beans and chamomile with olive oil!
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