New Faces, Jungle Walks and Business Plans

   What has turned into nearly three weeks since my last post was intended to be 1 or 2 at the most. So I find myself once again scanning through memories of the last few weeks to start at the beginning.

   Last I wrote I was preparing for another business presentation; following up our first talk of missions and visions, with proper goal setting. By the time we had gotten underway with that Friday's "workshop" the only people to show up for my presentation were the three that hadn't made it to the first talk. Taking it all in stride as a Peace Corps Volunteer must, I switched back to my first workshop and spent the day catching them up to speed. Having not accomplished anything new, I never-the-less went into the weekend happy that we were all on the same page. The reason for the absence of the other communities was soon explained to me as we arrived at the annual Cacao Festival down town. Apparently I had scheduled our meeting at the same time as the parade, and these people love parades. So the fault lies with me, and I will be sure to check the festival schedules in the future. That night we went to the Miss Cacao competition which included your standard beauty pageant events (formal dress, swim suit walk, answer a question about cacao...) as well as various performing artists and a hot air balloon!

   The following we was spent working in the office and making the rounds to our communities. We drove down river to Ponce Loma one day to help in the community minga to continue construction of the green houses. Upon arrival we saw that more than our standard 8-10 people had come to the minga; we had around 30, leaving very little for us to do so we dropped off the supplies we had brought and returned to the office (the plants are growing quickly in greenhouse 1). That week we also made a trip down to Campo Cocha, an hour down river, to talk to a group of American University students that were volunteering there for about 2 weeks. They seemed to be loving the experience of working with the community and taking part in the day to day life, definitely makes me appreciate where I'm at a bit more.

  The following day (Friday the 10th) we loaded up the truck with about 2,000 lbs of chicken food and headed downriver to our last community, Wachi Yacu. In order to get to Wachi Yacu we have to go on a dry day in order to drive through the river when it is very low. The past two times we attempted to get to Wachi Yacu it had rained that morning and we instead left all of the chicken supplies at the river for the community to carry back on foot (about an hour and a half walk). This week however, we were able to drive over the river and down to the community of Wachi Yacu (literally at the end of the road). We helped to carry our 2,000 lbs of chicken feed into the community center and then set out to check up on the various groups of chickens. We have delivered 100 chickens to 9 different families, as part of an income generation project, in 3 groups. As we are planning on selling the first round of chickens in mid July, we set off to visit the houses that were raising the first group. Our hike took us about 2 km out into primary jungle, passed cow pastures, over 3 different rivers, 3 different houses (each offering us a snack and some chicha to drink) and a dried up river bed where we saw an 8-9 foot black and yellow snake (the Kichwa name translates to Bird Hunter). Once we reached the last house we returned back to the community center for a chicha break, a quick meeting, lunch and, of course, another chicha break before leaving.

   That weekend I met up with some of the volunteers here in Tena for a quick beer at our local bar. It was nice to see friends and speak English for a bit. Also, we have added one more volunteer here in Tena who had her site switched from the coast, and will be working in Guayusa production just outside of town. We will also be adding one more to our ranks later this week with another volunteer coming from the coast and working here in rain-catch systems and composting toilets.

   The majority of last week was spent hanging out in the office and filling time since we didn't have much to work on. Wednesday I attended a workshop at the Provincial Government building, helping to build an agenda for environmental initiatives. The Friday I held another workshop on business planning. This time we had a pretty solid attendance and discussed goal setting, the importance of planning and establishing target markets (we even identified some of our markets and set a few goals). We also reviewed the mission and vision statements I had built following our previous workshops and everyone seemed to be quite happy with them.

  This last weekend we had a Father's Day party on Saturday down in the community house. The party was for my host family, starting with my host parents at 76 and 75 years old and complete with 8 of 10 kids (with spouses), grandchildren and even some great-grandchildren. The party was complete with some song and dance performances for the dads, an eating contest, a blow up a balloon till it pops contest, karaoke and dancing. And yesterday I made a giant pot of spaghetti and watched movies in between bowls of pasta.

  This week we are working around the office and Friday morning my friend Colin Scott is flying in to visit for 2 weeks. My host brother, under protest from myself, insists on cleaning out his room for Colin and move downstairs so that we can have to the top floor.

  Lastly I would like to say Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there reading my blog and I hope you all had a great weekend! Cheers!   

120 Days in Ecuador

    Well, now that I finally have forced myself to sit down and get back to writing I have realized that nearly a month has gone by since my last post. While I do apologize for the delay I must say it's been a busy last few weeks.

    Over the last few weeks I have spent most of my time with my counterpart Lenín Grefa. He is the vice-president of the organization with which I work as well as the director of the new eco-tourism project we are working on. The last few weeks have been pretty pack with trips down the Napo River, delivering 300 baby chickens to a community at the end of the road (almost a 4 hour drive out), building green houses for the production of local edible foods, and preparing presentations on the development of a business plan.

    A few weeks back we spent the day driving down the Napo River to a small crossing on the river in which you have to take a 3 car barge to get across. The barge has 2 outboard motors on the back and for 2 dollars will take you and your car across the river. We followed the road out the other side of the river which winds along through the amazon to a small community called Campana Cocha. Campana Cocha is a community within the organization I work and is one of the six communities within the new tourism-network. Our task for the day was helping to clear an old botanical garden which had been planted years ago and had long since been over grown by 8 foot high undergrowth in the jungle. So for the better part of the morning we spent our time trying to clear space under the tree with machetes and watch out for snakes. It was good work and we of coarse had time to spot for some tradition chicha (a native drink made from fermented yucca). After a few hours of hacking away in the jungle we took a trip down to the river to wait for the president of the community, Ernesto, to get back from the other side of the river where some of the community members had been clearing away weeds in the cacao fields. They arrived by canoe some 10-15 minutes after we had gotten to the river and we were asked to lunch at his home there on the hillside. Ernesto's house is a very comfortable home, built of native hardwoods and has plenty of open space to sit and drive chicha whilst we talked about future plans for the community. After a lunch of beef and plantain stew we headed back across the river and returned to Tena. It was a great experience to get out and see more of the Napo River, as well as make new contacts with some of our community members.

   Two days after this trip I found myself sitting in the office at FENAKIN, waiting out the rain and working on a few last minute projects before the weekend (it was a Friday). We returned home for a late lunch and decided that since the rain had stopped we might as well take advantage and not return to work in the afternoon given that it was in fact a Friday. It is important to know that in the jungle, when it rains the rivers swell and turn a deep coffee brown, full of silt and earth from upriver. This is known by the men and women who live here, as the perfect time to go fishing. Here in the Amazon people use a net to fish with and in the particular stretch of river I live near, the only fish are small bottom dwellers known as Carachama (about 4 inches long with a scaly shell across their backs). Unbeknown to me, and I assume the majority of the world, the best way to catch the carachama is with a net traveling down river as fast as the current will take you. So, knowing that this is definitely one of those "you had to have been there" moments, I can at least tell you that the next 2 hours were full of laughing and me asking Lenín if this was some kind of a joke they play on the Gringos, as we ran downstream, up to our chests in the river and holding the net between the two of us. Much to my surprise, this looney method of fishing did in fact yield its results and week took home a bag of around 40 of the little guys.

    To add to our bounty, Lenín´s wife Mari, who had accompanied us down to the river, had spotted a downed Chonta, a kind of spiky palm tree, which is known to the natives here as the favorite home of the grub worm. They say that once a Chonta falls over, you are to leave it for 40 days at which point you can hack your way into the trunk and look for the happy little grubs, ready for harvest. And that...is what we did. We only found 5 grubs in this trunk and moved on to forage down the jungle path. The river near our house runs around the property of the family with whom I live and includes cacao, yucca, and plantain fields as well as a pathway that follows the river. So it was on this path that we returned back to the house. We stopped in a more forested area to pick the soft tops of the ferns that grow there and cook up similar to asparagus. We stopped in the cacao field to grab a few few cacao pods, full of their seeds covered in an amazing white, sweet pulp, and we also grabbed some fresh yucca on the way up to the house. That night was a feast, complete with all of our bounty and space for 10 people at the table! (We also watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs that night.)

    The following week was spent at the office and meeting with the Ministry directors for a grant that we had been working on for a few weeks. On Wednesday we got the chance to head down river again to deliver supplies and two truck loads of wood to another community which is also within the tourism-network. The supplies were for some repair work on the cabins they have there and replacing a few of the floorboards before a big group of students from the US came down that week.

   That Friday we had a meeting at FENAKIN with the members of our tourism-network,  known as WAYLLA (Kichwa for green horizon), in which I was given a proper introduction to our members as well as 5 hours to present to them, in Spanish! From the expected 16-20 people, we only had 7 show up, which was fine by me because it lessened my stress of presenting to the group as well as the fact that only the more motivated members came, making the meeting fairly productive. My main project with WAYLLA at the moment is putting together a business plan for the tourism-network. Therefore, I spent 5 hours first discussing what a business plan is and how it works, how to start any form of accounting (at least writing down expenses) and the beginnings of a marketing plan. Over the coarse of the day the group came up with new Mission and Vision statements as well as planned out our next meeting. I was very happy with the day, and quite happy to find out that my Spanish abilities weren´t as bad as I thought.

    Last week was a pretty big and exciting week for us at WAYLLA. Early on Monday we were asked by the provincial government to send them a summary of our proposed eco-tourism project including all of our costs. The project that we are planning consists of 6 communities along the Napo River. Of the six, only three communities are actually working in tourism at the moment, though we are planning to completely remodel all the communities. In each community we are going to be building a series of cabanas, one room with three beds, a private porch and bathroom. Each cabana is a stand alone structure and will be very nice when built (I've seen the blueprints). On top of that, each community will have a brand new restaurant, jungle pathways complete with observation decks, and various other tourist attractions that will bring our communities up to a fairly high standard. In all, the project will cost nearly $2 million in construction and another $1 million in start up costs like furnishings, training, and supplies. Once we had finished our lists of costs on Wednesday morning we sent it off to the provincial government who responded by 4 'o clock that afternoon granting us $1.2 million dollars for the full construction of 3 community projects! So all we have to do now is finish our impact studies, business plan and present to the government planning board in August to begin construction in 2012!

   At the end of last week we also took our 4 hour trip down the Napo River to deliver another 300 baby chickens to a community at the end of the road, brining the total number of chickens to 900. Once again the river we have to cross by driving through had risen due to the rain and we therefore unloaded all the chicken supplies, including 12, 90 pound sacks of feed, onto the shoulders of the men and women who came to meet us and joyfully turned back for their 1 hour hike home. This project is part of an income generation plan and we will start selling the first round of chickens, delivered at the beginning of April, in about a month.

    Other than that, I've been spending a fair amount of time laying in my new hammock, reading, and catching up on world news. Given the release of the FINAL HARRY POTTER MOVIE in July (very exciting), I have taken it upon myself to re-read all 7 of the Harry Potter series books and am currently on the 6th. This is following the completion of the 5 Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy books and Greg Mortenson's new "Stones into Schools". It has been a very nice transition to life here in the jungle after spending 3 months up in the mountains of Ecuador. I have taken to the warmer climate, slower pace of life, and lack of hot water quite well and have even started a jungle work out routine using random things in my room as weights (like a 25 pound carry-on suitcase). I continue to find new bugs in my room, including some very interesting beetles, moths, centipedes, grass hoppers, and our returned friend the big black tarantula (who took it upon himself to guard our bathroom last night from robbers, camped upon the wall above the door).This week I am preparing  for our second eco-tourism meeting in which I will be presenting over goal and objective building as well as defining target markets, very "edge of your seat, exciting" type stuff, I know. Though hopefully this will bring us one step closer to our final goal of building a business plan, in Spanish.

   Lastly I wanted to say that it has been quite interesting hearing of the various on-goings of my friends and family back home. From all the recent and soon-to-be college graduates, to my girlfriend who has started her Doctorate in Physical Therapy in Florida, to birthdays and parties and the welcoming of the new BBQ season and boating, it's good to know that life back home hasn't changed much. Also, I am looking forward to the visit of my friend Colin Scott at the end of this month who is taking some time after graduation from UW to travel south before starting up a PHD program in San Fransisco in the Fall.




-Cheers!

Insects, cultural exchanges and the number forty-two

Exploding Volcan Tungaragua in the distance

    So the last week at work has been spent largely in meetings with the ministry giving talks about "Socio Bosque" and project assistance, researching on the internet and driving to more meetings. First to clear up this "Socio Bosque" thing for those of you who for some reason or another might be finding yourselves slightly out of touch with the inner workings of the Ecuadorian government and its various activities to protect chunks of primary forests (for those of you who already know- I apologize for the repeat and suggest you get out more). Socio Bosque, or Social Forest in English, is a program set up by the government that will pay land holders lump sums of money on a monthly basis to protect and simply stay out of a specified area of their property. The payments start at around US $25 per hectare for the first few hectares protected and decline for the greater number of hectares protected (i.e. if you are protecting 2,000 hectares you only get around $10 for the last few). What this means for me is that some time in the near future I will be helping to protect some 4,000 hectares of primary forest over the various communities within FENAKIN (the organization I am working with), which is great because it allows the communities to have an income source without have to go in and log the land they own. The latter of these meetings was discussing various tools that local communities here have to help start eco-tourism and small business projects.

A Raging River near Wachi Yacu

   One day this week we had a meeting all morning including a light lunch, which my counter part followed up with a larger lunch before we drove an hour an a half south to Puyo to meet with our web designers. This means that not only will we soon have a functioning website for the new "Walla" (pronounced why-lyah) but we are also getting cool business cards. After the meeting we of coarse stopped off for a quick bite-to-eat as to survive the hour and a half drive home before dinner.

Presidente Rafael Correa

   We also went to see President Correa speak here in Tena to inaugurate the new International Airport!

Kichwa Dancers from Campana Cocha

   Over the weekend, and really much of the week, I have had more time to relax and catch up on some reading. For those of you who are interested, I have in the last week or so read the first three installments of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (for those of you who have not read these books, the answer is 42) as well as the first half of Greg Mortenson's new Stones into Schools. I have also recently started working out again in light of not having yet signed up for a local soccer club (they take soccer very seriously here and only play on teams). This has resulted in what I like to call the Amazon CrossFit. It is similar in many ways to the CrossFit workouts you see in the States though weights are replaced by metal poles laying around, suit cases and rocks, and I'm sure the 90 degree heat 90% humidity play their part as well (luckily we live by a beautiful swimming hole in the river). Also to my advantage, I have recently become the keeper of the Tena Cluster movie library, passed down from the previous Peace Corps Volunteers containing some 4-500 movies (I hope I don't run out).

   This brings me to my cultural exchange for the day. I must say my life here is full of fun cultural exchanges between the U.S. and the local Ecuadorians who only experience the United States through movies and music. I was sitting in the car with my counterpart's wife discussing her current role in helping to establish an autonomous government for the native Kichwa communities here in the Amazon. From what she explained it seemed very similar to the system we have with the Native Americans back home. She asked me if we had a similar system to which, as I just said, sounded similar to that in the States. She immediately proceeded this answer by asking, "And who are the hippies"? After I was able to fight back my laughter I told her they were a group of people in the U.S. who lived on their friends couches, listened to music and liked to walk in the park ( I couldn't really think of the best way to describe the term hippie). She nodded a nod of understanding and said, " So do they have their own government then?" Other questions that arose included,"Why do they never go back to where their parents live?" and "Why don't they take showers?"  It's moments like these that give working as a Peace Corps Volunteer an aspect to life no traditional tourist would ever get.

My Friend the Firefly

   And finally having run out of things to talk about this week (shocking but true) I wanted to take a moment to recount the number of bugs I have personally seen in my room and around my house the last two weeks here in Tena. From my room alone, I have swept up some 40-50 different species of bugs (caught in the trance of my light until they tire and fall to the floor making a nice little circle- at least they are all in one spot). These include various mouths, butterflies, flies, mosquitoes, a fire fly, a few spiders, at least 5 different kinds of ants and a grasshopper that looked like a leaf with legs. In the rest of the house we have caught a mouth whose body alone was some 7 inches long, a few cock roaches, some more mosquitoes, some pretty amazing looking caterpillars, an interesting looking fly about 2.5 inches long and a friendly black tarantula that has come back more than one (and its the same one). This goes without mentioning the frog I found one morning on the floor bellow my second story window and the big humming bird who flew into my open window one afternoon as I sat in my armchair reading a book, stopped in mid air to watch me watch him for some 30 seconds before continuing out my open door in search of an afternoon snack.

Our New Pet Tarantula- A Bit Bigger Than Your Palm

Finally, I would also like to take some space to pass out my new mailing address to all of my friends and family. To those of you who would like to send letters, gifts, boxes, candy and any other things by mail:

Send All Mail To 


Alex Helpenstell
CASILLA 15-01-224
TENA-NAPO, Ecuador


Please DO NOT send packages over 4 lbs and DO NOT declare a value (put zero if you must).
Any large packages or high value packages will either be stolen or cost me lost of money to pick up and I will send them back.


-Cheers!

"What's the knife for?" - "Panthers"

To my fellow readers,

   Sorry for the lack of updating my blog, the last few weeks have been a bit busy to say the least. Last I left off we had just gotten back from a family trip up to the Otavalo native market. The following week was spent back in class and doing the final eval. tests (I scored Advanced High on my Spanish test). We also had a volunteer potluck, a value added fair and us 5 business volunteers had most of a day to teach the other volunteers about various business topics. I covered costing and pricing and then a bit of Econ 101 (my professors would be so proud haha). We also played plenty of soccer and a bit of frisbee. Saturday was family appreciation day for which all us volunteers were responsible for planning out the day and bringing all the food. We had 40 of our chickens that were raised in back of the training center slaughtered and prepared for our families as well as fruits and vegetables and drinks. I was on the activities group and being the loudest of the group, got stuck being MC for the day. We had an egg carry, sack race, 3-legged race, soccer, frisbee and basketball to name a few. That night we all met up at one of the volunteer's houses for a fair well party and danced away until the wee hours of the morning. The following day my host family took me on a 3 hour car ride south to Ambato where we saw the big leather markets and ate cuy (guinea pig) and rabbit.

   That Monday we started our final week of training which really lasted two days. We had some over view sessions for scheduling the week and met with various people from the embassy. Tuesday we took a "cultural: trip" into Quito and toured the churches, much better in the daylight, and were done with training by 2:30, free to go home and pack. The following day we all got to the training center at 8 am and were met with lunch. Everyone had on their Ecuadorian best completed by our PCVL who wore a corduroy green sport coat. By 9:00 we started our swearing in service accompanied by the current Chargé of the U.S. embassy (due to the previous Ambassador's PNG status). Swearing in was short and sweat and had a few nice speeches from fellow volunteers. After some pictures and a few good byes, half of the training group hopped on buses and headed to their sight. The other half met up later that afternoon for a nice good by dinner, or "Last Supper" if you will, at were gone by 6. I however, had the privilege of  staying one more night in Tumbaco with my host family who were personally driving me to Tena the following day. Therefore I only saw it necessary to treat them to the Liga soccer game that night at the Casa Blanca stadium (Liga won 1-0).

   Thursday morning I left my host in Tumbaco for the last time with my host family extra early, only to stop off  at our aunt's house for a quick breakfast and coffee before getting underway. We had a beautiful, sunny drive up over the mountain pass of Papallacta and into the Amazon. We made a quick stop in Archidona, about 15 miles north of Tena, for some Mitos (tilapia wrapped in a leaf and bbq'd) before arriving at my new home in Tena around 1. After some words of thanks on my part and words of wisdom and encouragement from my host family, they were off back to Tumbaco to de-Gringo the house. I am grateful for all they have done for me.

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  And hear begins the Tena saga. Having arrived to an Evangelical Kichwa community on the Thursday of Semana Santa, I was just in time for church. We began with dinner, at the church mind you (everyone had chipped in weeks before), followed by the opening mass of  weekend festivities. I couldn't quite tell you how long it went but I left around 10:30 and they were going strong. My guess is they were there till around 1 or 2 am. The following day we went back to the church for breakfast followed by morning mass which lead, conveniently enough, straight into lunch at 1 pm. After lunch we were free to relax in the shade, hiding for the 90 degree heat, or try as I may to throw the fishing net out back in the Tilapia ponds. Then back to church around 6 for dinner and repeat of the night before. The night time mass was highlighted by various church groups introducing themselves, some having come from as far away as Quito, and a few even had songs to share, both in Spanish and Kichwa.

   The following morning I was up by 3 am, headed to the church with my counterpart to cook breakfast for the 1,500 Kichwa people who had come to Tena (how could you say no to that?!). So there we were at 3 am on a Saturday morning in back of a church, cutting mountains of freshly slaughtered beef from the day before, chopping piles of onions, tomatoes, carrots and cilantro. We boiled pots of plantain bigger than I am and massed them in the traditional for with what can only be explained as a wooden bludger from Harry Potter. Then by 6:30 am we served our massed plantain with beef stew and Colada Mora and trash cans full of Chicha to drink to around 1,500 happy and smiling faces. Having made breakfast that morning, I was able to sneak out of morning mass to go buy food from the local market for lunch that day including 300 pounds of potatoes. That afternoon we went swimming in the river that wraps my community and little to my knowledge there was a big swimming hole in one bend in the river deep enough to dive into and race across the river. The water was perfectly refreshing and the sand on the fair side of the beach nearly rivals a real beach from the west coast. That evening I was in bed by 9, having snuck out of the evening mass early due to my immense lack of sleep.

   Sunday was the final day of Semana Santa and looked much more similar to a traditional church mass. After   a breakfast of fresh chicken slaughtered the night before, rice, veggies and more trashcans full of Chicha, we had mass until 11 or so. I spent the majority of the rest of the day napping and reading a book. Apart from my 4 day Evangelical church experience, I was able to meet nearly every Evangelical Kichwa family within 100 miles of Tena and at the least everyone in my community and the surrounding communities. I got a chance to talk, joke, laugh and drink chicha from the traditional pilche (a cup made from a local tree growing gourde) with many of my community members and can not count how many times I have been asked if I am married and have children. I met family members, a professional white water kayak and rafting guide who won Survivor Ecuador a few years back, a local teacher at a bi-lingual Kichwa school, expert hunters, and village elders. I've met mothers and daughters and last year's Miss Tena. And I've been personally introduced as an Engineer of International Business and Economics to many of the Presidents of the surrounding communities in which I will be working over the next two years. So needless to say, apart from the aspects of being in church, I got a lot of important work done over the weekend.

   Monday I officially started work. We went to the office and planned out some of my schedule for the next few months here and then spent most of the rest of the day at the hardware store and the Office of Tourism. Yesterday I was up by 5:30 and out of the house by 6:30. My counterpart Lenin and I, accompanied by two other employees at FENAKIN, drove about an hour south out of Tena to a community called Ponce Loma. We dropped off some farming supplies bought the day before at the hardware store and then donned our rubber boots and hiked out into the jungle. It was an hour long hike through an old muddy trail that lead us to our first destination, a community called Yana Urcu. There we met our guide, a 50 something kichwa man clad in camo from head to toe and armed with a 6 inch kitchen knife. Along with 4 other village members, 2 early twenties boys armed with a machete and a shotgun who literally ran out in front of our group for protection and to hunt, and 2 late 50's men also armed with machetes to clear the path, one of which was missing more than half his teeth. After a few cups of Chicha de Yucca we left Yana Urcu and headed north, following an old, muddy hunting trail out through the Amazon Jungle. At various points during our hike which was more of a slow jog, our guide would point out various trees marking the edges of properties lines of the men in his family (most properties were around 40 hectares minimum). Within an hour we got to the end of the trail where they had put in a little wooden cabin on the edge of a cliff looking out over the valley. From there we dropped off the side of the trail and picked our way through the jungle, all the while our guide new exactly where he was going (and when I say through the jungle, I mean zero trail, jumping over trees and clinging to branches as we switchbacked down the cliff. Once we were about an hour off the trail and walking along a cliff drop, our guide stopped quickly and hacked down some branches in front of the cliff to reveal an amazing view out over the valley to a giant waterfall (literally named Mother Waterfall in Kichwa) completely in accessible but for this one foot path. At this point in our hike I asked our guide why we was carrying a kitchen knife, he looked back at me and simply replied, "panthers," and carried on with our conversation. After 5 minutes of rest to talk about building a pathway out there and a look out we quickly turned around, and with the same speed as our walk down into the valley, we ascended and hiked out. By the time we arrived back and Yana Urcu, I pulled off my rubber boots and rung the sweat out of my socks to let my then pruney feet dry out in the sun. My pants had wicked sweat to mid-thigh and my shirt had soaked through- I drank over a gallon of water.  One hour back through the mud saw us to the car and we headed home, all-in-all it was 7 hours of hiking with a short break for chicha, chicken and yucca soup.

   Needless to say, when I woke up this morning after one of the more solid nights of sleep I have had to date here in Ecuador, I was a bit soar. Never-the-less a  Peace Corps Volunteer's work is never done so by 7 am we were back in the truck off to pick up 335 baby chickens and deliver them out to a community 3.5 hours down the Napo River. For the first 2 hours we followed a well groomed gravel road, maintained by the oil company drilling somewhere out in the jungle, but for the next hour and a half we were on a...more humble gravel road that was determined to make us turn back. There was no stopping our little Mazda truck from delivering those baby chicks however and we made it out to our destination in good time. The road ends at a river, which during a dry period is easily crossable by trucks, though the heavy rains last night and this morning brought the trickling stream to roaring life, easily 8 feet deep and churning thick with mud and silt. We were met by many members of the community there at the river who had come to carry their supplies back over an old, shaky suspension footbridge and out an hour's walk to get home (supplies included nine 100 pound sacks of feed) and they did so with smiles from ear to ear.

Compost, Bracelets and Ham Sandwiches

   To whom ever may find themselves reading this blog,

  Having left off on the 25th of March, I will try and best remember what I have done in the last two weeks. That weekend I did in fact get to try the famous Cuy (guinea pig) from Ecuador and it was indeed rather tasty. Sunday night the PCVL's invited the "Jungle Crew" out for dinner following a work party on composting. We ate 3 different kinds of Pita bread (yuca, plantain and fava bean flours) as well as a giant plate of salad which we had all been craving for weeks. It was a great opportunity to unwind a bit and talk with the PCVL's (volunteers that stayed on an extra year to help us with our service) about their time in the Amazon and share stories.

   The following week was spent learning Kichwa, and apparently I am at the Beginner Advanced level already, discussing HIV in Ecuador, working on our garden plots, teaching middle school kids business practices and Sports Day. Kichwa has definitely proved itself to be a difficult task, however I feel like we are all picking it up pretty quickly and it is fun to be able to throw phrases around in class with other students. So far I've learned to introduce myself and talk about certain things and events in the present tense as well as count to a million. Wednesday we had an open house for the first half of the day in which 120 middle school children from the neighborhood school came to the training center and rotated around the 10 stations we had set up. My group and I taught about good business practices including marketing, costing- pricing, product quality and handling money. In other words, we made lemonade stands. They had fun and all but the youngest group of students seemed to fully understand the concepts we had taught. Then on Friday we had a Sports Day. We began with a 2 hour session of talking to current PC volunteers who had come to the training center for the day for an open forum. This was followed by the commencement of the Dia de Deportes. I gave the inaugural speech, followed by the national anthem and a Mrs. Sports Day competition or Reyina in Spanish. This was followed by 4 or 5 hours of soccer games, 30 minutes each and a huge lunch buffet prepared by the PC Volunteers who had come for the day. My team didn't win the games however we did win nicest Reyina.

   That weekend was spent packing for the Tech Trip to Arenillas, attending a birthday party and being invited over to Grandma's house for cow tongue. We left to Arenillas, on the coast near the Peruvian boarder, around 5 pm on Sunday evening and arrived to Arenillas around 8 in the morning on Monday. After a short stop to drop our things in the hostel and a quick breakfast, we headed to the Municipal tree nursery to see how they were working to reforest much of the area and what techniques they used there. Around noon we drove south to the boarder and visited a local National Reserve run by the military. They gave us a tour through the Tropical Dry Forest and discussed various projects being run through the park, we also bought our first frozen chocolate bananas. The next morning we were up early and on a bus out to the Mangroves. We hopped a Navy boat for the price of 10 gallons of gas and a quart of oil and headed into the mangroves. Our guide took us to a shrimp farm and we walked the perimeter of their 5 hectare plantation amongst the mangroves before heading back to Arenillas. Then following lunch we spoke with the local government about their waste management practices and their new campaign for recycling.

   The next day we spent the morning at a local girls high school teaching about recycling and family gardens. I was in the garden group and over the coarse of the morning we taught around 120 girls how to prepare their garden plot behind the school which had long since over grown in waste high weeds and been covered in about 4 trash cans of garbage. With each of our 8 groups of 15 girls we cleared the garden and dug rows, all the while discussing proper technique and ground preparation with compost. Being the more talkative person in our group (go figure) and the most comfortable Spanish speaker, I ended up giving most of the introductions and major speeches while the other volunteers felt more comfortable talking to smaller groups during our projects. As a comical highlight, one of the girls asked 3 different volunteers for my number (they thankfully all declined) and to my credit she was the most mature 14 year old there haha. Other than that, the morning went well and was topped off with the purchase of 2 chocolate covered bananas. We also visited a local Reserve in which a High School teach had reforested farmland over the coarse of 25-30 years back to what is naturally a Tropical Dry Forest. We walked around the forest and also helped to clear some of the pathway with machetes. Afterwards he and his wife gave us each an Ecuadorian bracelet made by their family. That night some of the volunteers and I attended the local pickup basketball game in Arenillas. I must say I have never sweat that much outside of a sauna with the heat turned all the way up. After sitting on the concrete bench to cool down afterwards we left a large pool of sweat where each of us had sat.

  The following morning we bussed East about an hour to the site of another Volunteer who has been working with a local organization of coffee farmers who are trying to move into the bigger markets here in Quito and Guayacil. We toured a coffee plantation and saw a venomous snake related to the Equis, or Fer-de-Lance, the most venomous snake in Ecuador, which caused the tour guide to jump quite high before killing it. We also got to sample some of the coffee they roast there at the plantation. It was interesting to see all the volunteers go wild over the "best coffee ever" which I would stack very low on any shelf in the states (not to mention in Langley).Though I must admit even I was happy to drink anything that was not Nescafe. We then headed about 2 hours north to Naranjal, a larger city of around 50,000 occupants, for the evening of street food and beer in our air conditioned room at Hotel Delicious. I have to say that stay was much appreciated and I enjoyed our 3 bed room between the two of us including the A/C and hot water. Also, the two dollar pork chop I picked up for lunch was probably the better pork I have had to date in Ecuador (while it might be more risky, street food is usually quite amazing).

   Friday morning was the bigging of my longest day yet. We started off around 6:30 am leaving the hotel and heading to the Ecological Mangrove Reserve in Churute, about an hour long bus ride to the north. We learned about problems within the park and how the ministry goes about improving the park. This was followed by a 5 hour tour of various parts within the park including a short hike up a hill to look out over the valley, an hour and a half hike through the jungle where we saw monkeys, tarantulas and waterfalls, and a quick stop at the mangrove forest. It was during the jungle hike when I truly began to appreciate the power of Vitamin B1 and DEET insect repellent. As we walked through the jungle nearly everyone was followed by a thick cloud of mosquitoes and nearly everyone was eaten alive with the exception of myself and one other volunteer who is also taking B1. This goes to show that I will continue taking it in Tena and highly recommend it for the itchy traveler.  Following a short bus ride back to Naranjal and a crab salad lunch for the bargained price of $3.00,   I took a group of volunteers to a jersey shop we had passed the day before. I picked up 5 different jerseys (2 Real Madrids,  Chelsea, Barcelona from Ecuador, and Oriental Petrolero) all for 20 dollars, or 4 bux a piece. After a quick meeting with a volunteer stationed in Naranjal, we hopped the 3 hour bus to Guayacil which passed a giant chocolate factory and then the Chiquita Banana factory, the combination of which was nearly a religious experience. After a 3 hour layover in the four story mall that is the Guayacil bus terminal, we boarded our 10 pm bus headed to Quito. I believe I managed to get some 2 or 3 hours of sleep in over the coarse of the bus ride which ended in nearly everyone freezing cold by around 3 30 am. We arrived in Tumbaco by about 8:15 am on Saturday.

   After a quick hot shower and a big cup of coffee Saturday morning, the host family and I jumped in the car and drove out to Otavalo, 2 hours north-east of Quito. Otavalo is the single largest indigenous market in the entire continent of South America and is one of the better cultural treasures for today's tourist. After wandering aimlessly through the sea of tapestries, gold jewelry and local Kichwa dresses, I was forced to pick up an Alpaca Poncho for the price of $15 after some haggling, as well as some very comfortable woven pants and a giant pumpkin. For lunch we went to a local favorite restaurant where I got what is probably the best Cuy  (guinea pig) in all of Ecaudor and topped off with biscotti and coffee. I finally got to bed around 11 pm that night after watching the soccer game between La Liga and Deportivo Quito (a local rivalry) with my entire family.

   . We are now coming to the final stretch of training with this week of classes and then swearing in next Wednesday. I am looking forward to getting out to my site to start working. And with that I better call it a night here, I am up early in the morning to get back to class. I hope you have enjoyed the post for this week y Espero que les vaya bien, Chao!

Alli Alli con la Runa- And Back to Tena, Napo

   So last I left off I had yet to meet the US ambassador. Well last Tuesday we danced an Ecuadorian dance for her which went well and was rather comical to say the least. Wednesday was site placement day and needless to say there was much excitement in the air. The PC staff arrived early in the morning and drew a map of Ecuador covering the futbol field entirely made out of rose pedals. I was placed in Tena which is the same city I had visited on my tech. trip 2 weeks before hand. After a few hours of class we were sent home to pack and head out the next day for a site visit of one week. I left for Tena around 9:30 in the morning on Thursday and got to town around 1 o' clock to meet up with my new counter-part named Lenin Grefa and get some lunch in town. Lenin is a native Kichwa and is the head of the eco-tourism project I will be helping out with in Tena. The organization I will be in is called FENAKIN and is an organization of 7 indigenous Kichwa communities all working in eco-tourism and community based tourism. My primary projects for the next two years are establishing a business plan for this one year old organization and helping to develop a $2 million dollar eco-tourism project in the Amazon. I will also be helping to establish a liquid-organic fertilizer operation to increase cacao production in the area (chocolate) and devise a method of working around the intermediaries in the area. I will be helping to design and construct large greenhouses of native edible plant species as well as native medicinal plant species. We will be designing irrigation systems with automatic rainwater catch systems and start a few community banks.

   Later on Thursday after arriving in Tena and meeting Lenin he took me back to where I will be living for at least the first 3 months of my service in a community just outside of Tena named Awapungo. Awapungo is an indigenous community of about 30 families that live on a single road following the river. I will be living in a two-story concrete house with a man named Franklin Calapucha, who is about 35, and his two parents who are in their 70s. My room is on the second story and has a balcony. Also, the second story is only about 1/3 built so apart from two rooms and a bathroom along one wall the rest of the story is completely open bare concrete with a concrete ceiling. So naturally we have a coffee table with matching chairs and a couch next to our bamboo railing for drinking coffee in the morning and getting out of the sun during the afternoon. Franklin and his parents have a couple hectares of property in which they produce cacao, to sell to the intermediaries, as well as yuca, plantains, and many randomly dispersed native edible plants all for personal consumption in the house. We also have 3 tilapia ponds which they use to sell to neighbors but largely for personal consumption. Therefore we spent the first three days of my trip eating a typical dish called Mitos which is tilapia wrapped in what looks like a banana leaf with a pinch of salt and cooked over an open fire in the communal outdoor kitchen.  The men typically go out before lunch, the biggest meal of the day, to gather food from around the property and catch fish to eat with a net.  The women then prepare lunch and the whole family uses this time to share stories and interact with one another. I also went to a community meeting Thursday night and had a chance to meet the majority of the families in my community and introduce myself formally to the group.

Harvesting Yutsu

   On Friday we went to the office for a bit in the morning then picked up a truckload of supplies for building greenhouses and delivered them to one of our communities within the organization which is going to grow native edible plants for the consumption of the tourists that visit the community. 

   Saturday morning I got up early and went for a hike up the road with my host brother Franklin. It was a good chance to get to know the area and also great to see more of the jungle. After the hike we stopped off at Lenin's house which is just down from my house on the same property since Lenin is married to one of Franklin's sisters.  They took me on a tour of their house and then out into the cacao fields and into the forest. We gathered some cacao pods, walked through the yuca and plantain fields and picked a bunch of plantains for lunch. After the yuca field we went down a pathway through the jungle and picked a local fern called Yutsu in Kichwa which tastes a lot like asparagus and moved deeper into the forest. At some point Lenin grabbed a vine hanging from a tree which had a strong citrus flavor and is supposedly good for combating cancer. Some time later on our hunt (vegetarian style) we stopped off at some small chicken coops that they had built in the forest and got caught by the rain so we waited it out under the roofs eating oranges off the tree nearby. Once the rain died down we walked back to the communal kitchen down next to the tilapia ponds to find a neon green, hairy caterpillar which is supposed to have a strong neurotoxin.... so we used it for fish bait. After some unsuccessful fishing I tried my luck with the trowing net and actually caught one! - Needless to say, lunch was amazing that day. 

   Sunday was a pretty straightforward day. Being evangelical, basically the entire community goes to church on Sunday. We were in church about 2 hours until Lenin leaned over and told me soccer was about to start and we had to sneak out. The rest of the day was spent watching various local teams play against each other and trying the infamous Chicha (a slightly alcoholic drink made of fermented yuca). 

   Monday was back to work and we spent most of the morning in the office. After a nice lunch we headed out to one of our communities called Kamak Maki which I had visited earlier on my tech trip. Kamak Maki is an indigenous Kichwa community located on the bank of the river Napo. They are actively working in eco-toursim and have an animal rescue of native animals as well as a pathway lined with native medicinal plants. We talked with the president of the community and were shown around the property to look at improvements they had made and discuss future projects. After playing with some of the monkeys outside and having a coke we reluctantly headed back to Tena for the night.

   Tuesday was similar to the day before in which we visited the office, had a nice long lunch, and then headed out to another community. This one was further downriver from Kamak Maki and is called Campo Cocha. Campo Cocha is another indigenous community located on the river bank. They have no running water and use the river to bath and gather water. The community is working in eco-tourism and is currently renovating their 2 cabanas for the arrival of the summer tourists. Again we met with the community president and discussed future projects as well as the Peace Corps volunteer who will be living there for the next two years. On our way back my counter-part Lenin told me a Kichwa story of the boa. As the story goes there was a man who went to the river every day to fish. The river was full of fish and he always left with a full sack of fish.  Everyday he would come back to the same place in the river and every day, unbeknown  to him, the boa was always watching. Everyday the boa sat in the shallows and watched its prey hunt and eat and grow fatter, waiting until the opportune time. And one day the boa would strike, having hunted the man from the shallows. For this the Kichwa people have fear of still spots in the river and never visit the same fishing spot too frequently. He also told me that the boa, being as cunning as it is, wills people into the water. He said that the boa calls to you in your dreams in the shape of the "Yacu Warmi", or Lady of the Water. They say that the Yacu Warmi is always a beautiful American woman who comes to them in their dreams and beckons them into the water. 

Lenin and his wife

    Anyways, Wednesday was my final day in Tena and I headed back to Tumbaco at 1. However, before I departed we made a stop off at a local farm store to purchase 900 chickens which the organization will take to 9 different families in one community to grow and sell the chickens for profit. We also went to the office for a bit where I wrote my first grant to the ministry for a list of project we want to start working in when I come back in April. -All in all...a very productive week!

   Apart from the site visit, today I started learning Kichwa and am excited to get some phrases down to use in my site. Also, tomorrow my family here in Tumbaco and I are going to get Cuy for dinner (guinea pig) so I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Hope this post finds you all well! Chao!

Week 6: The Magic School Bus

    Last weekend (the 5th-6th) was the Carnival holiday which luckily lasted through Tuesday. Carnival marks the beginning of Lent, meaning its an excuse to party for four days and through water balloons, eggs, chocolate syrup and whatever else you can think of at passersby. My Carnival experience was pretty low-key by local standards and I did my best to avoid the carnage.... other volunteers were not so lucky. Saturday I climbed up to the top of Ilalo, the 10,500 foot volcano out my back door, with a friend of mine and we ended on the other side of the volcano for a beer and some roasted pig. Later that day I found myself in an Empenada making contest with the women of my family including my host-mom, aunt and grandmother... needless to say....I lost. The following day I went with my aunt and uncle and the volunteer living with them out to a nearby city called Al Quinche. Al Quinche is known for its cathedral and the massive monument within that is completely covered in gold leaf. Sometime in late November there is a walk from the Cathedral in Al Quinche to Quito some 30 miles away carrying a statue of the Virgin de Al Quinche. Anyways, my host uncle drives a school bus during the week so for normal family activities including more than 4 people they end up driving the school bus. So here we are driving down the road with 6 people in the front of a school bus on a Sunday headed to church. For those of you who have not traveled leisurely by school bus I do recommend it for the space and ability to hold up traffic while you stop at roadside food stands.

   On Tuesday my host family and I wound up once again the "Magic School Bus." We headed into Quito to get some more family members (this trip we had a total of about 14 people in the bus) and drove south to Maracas where they have a natural hot spring and a natural mineral water spring. Right before the entrance to the spring were about 10 locals lined up on the side of the road with buckets of water to throw at unsuspecting passersby. This is where the true advantage of the bus began to pay off when my uncle decided he should slow down and block off the whole road while we had a truck with about 8 people in the back behind us. The hot spring was on par with a normal Ecuadorian spring, i.e. too many people, lukewarm at best and random hairs floating around. The mineral water spring on the other hand was rather cold, completely empty due to Ecuadorians dislike for cold water, and by the way it was mineral water. There is a company here in Ecuador that bottles the same water from the source and sells it for a dollar a bottle.... I swam by myself in an entire pool of it. And by the way for those of you who have not swam in a pool of naturally carbonated water.....it's an experience. On the way home the School Bus was invaluable as we were able to make random coffee stops and ice cream breaks on the side of the road to converse and play cards for 10-15 minutes at a time. 

   The rest of the week was back to class in our normal fashion though we were able to catch up with the other 3 groups from the tech trip and exchange stories. Thursday after class we had a good game of Futbol and Friday I learned an Ecuadorian dance (more to come on that in a bit). Friday was also the bigging of the Tsunami watch which put all us Peace Corps Trainees on "Stand Fast" meaning I had an excuse not to leave Tumbaco for the weekend. Friday was also the start of the Birthday weekend in my host which was started off with a sleepover of about 10 9 year old girls for my host sister's 10th birthday.  On Saturday our normal four hour language class turned into a 2 hour trip to a local outdoor market to become familiar with local foods and products. Later that afternoon we commenced round two of the Birthday weekend with my host brother's 13th birthday and the arrival of some 25 family members for lasagna and cake. I learned a number of Ecuadorian party games and was able to teach a few from the states as well. During one game I had a chance to pull out some of the few Quechua words I had learned the previous week which put the entire room almost to tears laughing. Sunday we had a bbq at another volunteer's house where his host mom had made an amazing feast for about 20 of us! Later that night I made M&M cookies for my family which took about twice as long to bake up at 8,000 feet elevation as they were supposed to. My host mom was apparently quite impressed as she had a fresh bag of M&Ms for me when I walked in the door today, "So she could learn the recipe." Those cookies lasted about 20 minutes. 

   Back to school today, we had another dance practice which consists of 3 other guys, 4 girls and myself learning an Afro-Ecuatoriano dance which we are to perform tomorrow for the US Ambassador to Ecuador. Needless to say it should be a good time for all! Also, on Wednesday we get to learn our site assignments and then actually go visit our sites for a week beginning on Thursday. There has been a lot of excitement around the training center as to where people are going and we are all looking forward to getting out to our sites and start meeting our future families.