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Carnaval y'all

Phew, where to start?! This past week has been, hands down, my best week in Ecuador (so far). Before I get to that, though, let me catch you up to speed on what I’ve been up to since I last checked in.
Since I’m still holding my breath that Shelby will come through and grace us with a blogpost about our trip, I’m going to refrain from giving you the blow by blow. Instead, I’ll give it to you by the numbers:

Number of PC Volunteers Shelby met: 8
Number of PC Sites Visited: 3
Number of Parades Watched: 4
Number of Mangos Shelby Consumed: 25+
Number of Days Spent Without Running Water in My Site: 3
Number of Hours Spent on Buses: ~40
Number of Days Spent by a Body of Water (Beach or River): 6
Number of Hostals/Hotels Stayed at: 3/1
Number of Ecuadorian Provinces traveled: 5

Overall, we had a really fun time. She got to see where and how I live, got to meet my counterpart and host family, got to shop at a huge market, got to meet a bunch of my PC friends, and so much more. She came during peak mango season which reminds me, I’ve been asked a few times when a good time to visit is and my usual response is “whenever,” but I’ve been thinking about it and now that I’ve been here for over a year I have a little bit of a better answer for those inquiring minds:

March (or whenever Lent/Fat Tuesday is)- Carnaval
April- Riobamba Festivals/ Rainy Season in Sierra (mostly just really good weather and then rains for about an hour a day, so not that rainy)
Jun-Sept- Whale Watching Season
End of Oct- Halloween/ Cuenca Festivals
Nov-Jan- Mango Season
Dec-Mar- Beach Season/ Rainy Season on Coast

So after I dropped Shelby off at the airport and went home to recharge and repack, I headed off to the beach to celebrate New Years with some friends, seafood, mosquitoes, and bonfires. I think I already told you about my New Years, or at least my resolutions so no need to get into all that again.

After I got back from the beach, there seemed to be some sort of post-New Years/ pre-Carnaval lull in Cebadas. No one was moving too fast to start, continue or finish any projects so I did what any other bored, seemingly out of work, 20-something would do, I traveled. I went down to Cuenca for the Super Bowl, ventured as far South as I’ve ever been to join my friends at a good old fashioned sheep slaughter party, and then even further south to a town where people supposedly live well into their 100s called Vilcabamba. After making my way back up- and stopping at a few friends’ places along the way- I finally made it back to my site just in time for the start of Carnaval festivities.

I’m still not really sure what the main point of Carnaval is. To be honest, I was entirely too busy foam and water balloon fighting to even think about asking por que. From what I’ve gathered, it has something to do with Lent. A quick look at the Ecuador Carnaval Wikipedia page, however, says that they’ve been celebrating Carnaval here since before the arrival of Catholicism. Either way, it’s a long weekend of drinking, foam fights, water balloon fights, parades, and chancho (pig) cook outs. I was in Cebadas for most of Carnaval. Who could stay away when bull fighting, concerts, parades, and reina competitions were on the schedule? I hung out a lot and completely rekindled with my old host family/ counterpart. Things weren’t necessarily bad; they just seemed kind of off ever since I stopped working primarily with Jaime. Sure, I still stopped by my girl Manuela’s booth every Sunday (when I’m in Cebadas) to help her cook lunch and hang out for a couple hours, but I hadn’t been over to the house in months and something just felt different whenever I would try to hang out with them. Carnaval changed all that! I was with them the ENTIRE time I was in Cebadas. I even helped them sell papipollos (French fries and fried chicken) during the bull fighting. On Monday, I went into Riobamba and celebrated Carnaval with some other volunteers at a town nearby called Guano and then I went back to Cebadas on Tuesday to hang out with the fam all over again. At 7am sharp they killed a pig and spent the rest of the day cooking, drinking, water balloon/ foam fighting, napping, etc. The whole extended family was there- all 10 of Manuela and Lucho’s sons and daughters, their husbands and wives…and all of their sons and daughters. They all speak Quichua (the native, indigenous language) and I only know a couple of words and phrases because everyone (except the really old indigies) also speaks Spanish, but sometimes it’s frustrating to hang out with all of them at once because they talk SO much about me right in front of me. I don’t really care because I basically can figure out what they are saying, but still it’s super frustrating because we will be in the middle of a conversation and they will just turn to one another and say something, laugh, and then turn back to me and continue like nothing ever happened. Whatever, I’ll talk a little talking behind my back/ right in front of me as long as it means I get my Ecua-family back!

A lot of you have been wondering about my projects, so let me fill you in on those and then that’ll be enough blogging for a while. As you all know, I’m an Agriculture Volunteer. Being an Agriculture Volunteer in a country so overflowing with and run by farming is incredibly difficult to say the least. The people in Cebadas have lived here all their lives and probably won’t ever move too far away- maybe to Riobamba but rarely further. They have been brought up on waking up at the crack of dawn to go milk the cows before heading off to school, on getting back from school and joining their moms out in the fields to tend to whatever crops they have, on lugging huge loads of weeds on their backs to feed their cuyes (guinea pigs) EVERYDAY. What can any foreigner, much less a woman in this machismo society, possibly bring to the table? Peace Corps’ answer is ideas. We bring the ideas, the organization, the structure, and they continue to bring what they’ve been bringing all their lives- the hard work and the desire. With all that said, I’ve been working primarily on breaking through and diversifying what they grow here instead of how they grow it necessarily. Most families here have a piece of land where they usually have a small house and then use the rest for growing papas and maiz (potatoes and corn). Both of these crops are relatively easy and cheap to harvest and are ALWAYS in demand here, so it makes perfect sense, capitalistically speaking, to, well, capitalize off them. Nutritionally speaking, however, it’s an incredibly risky move. Growing only papas and maiz roughly translates into eating only papas and maiz. While I am no expert on nutrition, even I know that eating primarily starchy carbohydrates is not healthy. Here’s where my ideas come in: why not plant a vegetable garden? Why not have a variety of vegetables to choose from for each meal instead of just 2? I asked around and everyone seemed to be interested. So, I started working on small scale vegetable gardens with whoever I could get my hands on- individuals, families, schools, day care centers, communities, etc. There are a couple of organizations in Cebadas who are doing the same thing but on a bigger scale, so I have recently started working with them to expand my reach. Along with the gardens, I have also given a couple of charlas (informal workshop/demonstrations) on how to make and use compost.

Recently, Kellie (the Health Volunteer in Cebadas) and I have been working on a medicinal herb garden project to attach to the vegetable gardens. Kellie works in the Subcentro de Salud in Cebadas and she put together a list of the top 10 reasons why most children come to see the doctors. On Sundays, a Shaman comes into Cebadas to perform natural healing rituals on some of the Subcentro patients, so we asked him to tell us what he would suggest for each of the 10 reasons. We walked out of the meeting with a list of native plants and an idea to team up with the guarderias (pseudo-daycares) in town to plant medicinal herb gardens so that the people, specifically the mothers of the kids at the guarderias, can have better access to these plants. Kellie’s counterpart works in Riobamba and he helped us find an organization that would sponsor us with the plants. Right now, we are waiting for the plants but as soon as we get them we are going to plant the gardens and get down to business with a series of charlas about the different plants, different uses, and different preparations. I’ll keep you all posted on how this projects pans out.

Comments

  1. Hi gladto read the blog. You seem busy travelong and also with good ideas for gardens etc.Hope you got my phone messages. I will try again.Love you and miss you Love G

    ReplyDelete
  2. if there is an award for most traveled pc volunteer you would win hands down...your descriptions of where you have been are so much fun to read, except the pig and sheep slaughtering, miss you beyond...thanks for taking the time to blog...i love them!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love reading what you are up to...sounds like quite an adventure, always so interesting. Maddie is really into barbies, ballerinas and princesses these days, and Nathan is getting very close to taking his first steps. We REALLY want to skype with you sometime soon...xoxo The Aizenbergs

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Rachel,
    Thanks for the update. You make me feel like I am there with you. You are going to come back a different person. I think you need to become a writer. You are so funny and your descriptions of the happenings in your area of the world crack me up.
    I can't believe you have been gone over a year. It seems like it was just yesterday that you left.
    Keep enjoying your time.
    Love you to bits,
    Karen

    ReplyDelete

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