October Update

Well, the update your blog emails have started flowing, so I guess that means it’s time to give you guys something. Not too much has been going on the past few months- well, not much by my standards but according to Mom, you guys will find anything I write fascinating, so here goes nothing…

Last time I updated the blog was the beginning of October, right before my birthday. It wasn’t the most exciting birthday I’ve ever had, but I’m a pretty tranquila gal, so hanging out with the host fam was all I needed to honor that fateful day 23 years ago. After that, I hung out in site for a few weeks helping out with a few garden projects that are going on. More on my work a little later, I’ve got to ease my way into that whole schpeil. At the end of October, I headed down to Cuenca to celebrate Halloween and Cuenca’s Independence Day. While Cuenca’s Halloween didn’t quite rival the few Santa Barbara Halloweens I’ve experienced, the Independence Day festivities definitely blew me away. There were artisanian and craft markets, concerts, and all sorts of expositions set up all over town and at night in the main park, there were huge firework displays. Let me explain a little bit about the fireworks because they are not at all how you are picturing them right now. There were 4 or 5 huge firework towers set up, with massive crowds surrounding the towers from all sides. Someone, usually a small group of fairly drunk men, would go up and light the fuse which set off a chain reaction of fireworks snaking their way up the tower getting bigger and bigger as the crowd huddled closer and closer. I tried to take some pictures- both mental and digital- but I was entirely too preoccupied with not getting set on fire by all the sparks and FIRE (!!) spewing out into the crowd. As some of you know, I used to have a pretty decent sized fear of fire, so imagine my blood pressure when a 20 foot tower not more than 15 feet away from me was essentially shooting fire directly at me. Some of the other volunteers I was with were either really drunk or really brave because they ran up to about 5 feet from the burning tower and took pictures with the sparks and flames flying all around them. I wasn’t having any of that- I’m not sure if mousse is as flammable as hairspray or not, but I wasn’t about to find out! In between the firework tower lightshows, there were a couple other shows- marching band performances, rock band performances, the Vaca Loca- basically a paper mache mold of cow with a firework launcher attached to the back that someone holds on top of their head and runs around the crowd with, shooting off fireworks at random…directly into the crowd. At one point, as if my blood pressure wasn’t already high enough, one of the fireworks was launched into a palm tree and the tree started smoking up. After that stressful weekend, it was time to go back to my site and try to do some actual work.

Speaking of work, I guess I’ve never really explained what it is that I actually do around here on a day-to-day basis. There are many reasons for this lack of explanation; mainly the fact that there isn’t really a straightforward answer or explanation, I am basically at my community’s beck and call with qualquier cosa. I’m an Agribusiness Volunteer and when I was assigned Guayllapishi/Cebadas as my site, the main project that my Peace Corps bosses had in mind was for me to help with a dried fruit company that many of the community members are a part of. Some possible side projects include teaching at the local schools, community/family/school gardens, helping set up community banks, and miscellaneous agriculture workshops (compost, bioL, etc.). My counterpart, Jaime, is the leader of the foundation that is in charge of the dried fruit company, but other than that he doesn’t have much pull in the community. Because of that, I’ve had to branch out for other working opportunities. Having another volunteer in town, especially one who has a “real” counterpart (one of the doctors in the subcentro), has helped tremendously because we are able to tag team and work together on a number of projects where our two fields overlap- gardening/nutrition, environmental/health education, etc. Unfortunately, after the whole housing debacle with my counterpart, our relationship never fully recovered. I was really hopeful after Reconnect, because the entire time we were there, we kept thinking of more and more possible projects, but once we got back to Cebadas, everything we tried kept falling through so eventually we made the mutual decision to stop working together- if there is any sort of movement in the dried fruit company while I’m here, I will be there 100%, but in the past 8 or so months that I’ve been here, I have yet to see the dryer even be turned on, so I’m not going to hold my breath. Luckily, there are a couple of other organizations in town who are doing the same sort of projects and activities that I want to be doing, so I’ve been able to join forces with them. One of the organizations that I am going to be starting to work with pretty much full time is a branch of World Vision or Vision Mundial. I found this online so maybe it can explain a little bit more about the work they do: http://www.slideshare.net/zurdinho10/proyecto-pda-cebadas Also, the local government, the Junta Parroqia, has a big ongoing garden project that I have been helping out with. Food security and diversity are huge issues here because most of the families grow only potatoes, corn, and weeds for the cows and cuyes. Because of this, their eating habits and nutrition are abysmal and need to be changed. The locals are incredible farmers and know more than I will probably ever know about the subject, but they sometimes lack the outside ideas and knowledge that could easily improve their way of live. That’s were I come in, while I am almost certainly un- or at least under-qualified to be offering actual farming advice, my ideas and suggestions when it comes to diversification or innovation are seemingly endless. I’ll let you know how the new organizations and projects pan out.

Phew, that’s more than enough blogging for one day, so I’ll wait a little bit to catch you all up on my November happenings. Hopefully I’ll get to it before Shelby gets here, but I make no promises. I’ve already explained to Shug very clearly that if she wants me to pick her up from the airport and be her personal interpreter while she’s here, she has to write out a blogpost detailing our trip, so expect that someday soon. Hope all is well back in the States and that Thanksgiving and Hannukah weren’t too hard without me around :)

Here are some pics from Cuenca. One of them is a kind of blurry pic of Migo, another PCV, as the Vaca Loca and the other is of the group of volunteers who got up close and personal with the firework tower.