Salinas, Salinas...

It was one of those days when so much could have gone wrong. So many connections, so many new places, so many chances to get lost or take the wrong bus, but somehow we managed without losing any time. We started the day by heading to a community south of Quito, ¨Valle de los Chillos.¨ Like nothing else in the world today, it could not be located on any map, or anywhere on the internet, including Google Maps. The purpose of our trip was the home and now museum of Ecuadorian artist Eduardo Kingman. He was one of the first artists in the modern art movement in Ecuador, and painted mostly on the plight of indigenous people. His house was extraordinary; he had built all of his own doors and windows, using a lot of natural light and his surroundings. Part of the house overlooked the nearby river, and was built on three large trees, and the changes from where the house had settled and moved were visible throughout the house. Once we arrived here, it is safe to say that we were off the beaten path. It is amazing how much nicer people are the less that they see gringos on a daily basis. It is also good for us because the further we are from the gringo trail, the less the trusty guidebooks tell us, and the more we have to ask for help to find our way. In total, to get from Quito, to the museum, to our final destination of Salinas, we took one taxi, four buses, and a ride in the back of a pick-up truck for the last 19km.

We arrived in the square of Salinas after winding through magnificent countryside, and found most of the young people in the town playing soccer or volleyball right there in the center of town. We hopped out of the pick-up, and no sooner get our backpacks, when a man approached us and asked us if we need a place to stay, and that he knows of a great hostel if we indeed needed one. He then started to walk in the opposite direction from which we thought we needed to go, and as we started to walk out of town and becoming a bit nervous and wary. However, he leads us to the exact hostel that we were indeed planning on finding, and for a few moments, I am embarrassed by my lack of confidence in human kindness. It was a nice reminder of the fact that most people really do just want to help you.

Salinas is beautiful and picturesque, a town of 1200 that is a model community for successful business partnerships and tourism. In the 1970´s, a local priest started a few businesses to help the people in the community to become economically viable and independent. Today, there is a chocolate factory, a cheese factory, soybean processing, soccer ball manufacturing, salt mines, mushroom drying, and a salami factory. I use the word ¨factory¨loosely, as most of these operations employ only a few people, with the chocolate factory having two shifts, with twelve people. The businesses are run as cooperatives, and all of the workers are paid their wages, but any money that is brought in from the sales of these products is put back into the community through a foundation that spends the money on local infrastructure, education, and starting new businesses. The young people in Salinas attend elementary and high school in town, and then most go away to university, but 95% return to Salinas after school to live and work, mostly because there is valid and well paying work for them to do there. It is also a model of how small communities can use tourism to benefit themselves. During business hours, you can walk into the tourism office and receive a two hour guided tour of the town and all of the local factories, along with a little history thrown in, for $3. The products made in Salinas are sold all over Ecuador, and are regarded as some of the best produced in the area. It was surprising to learn that the majority of the chocolate made here is shipped to Europe, where it has an equally strong following. 70% of the people in town and the surrounding area own milk cows, and therefore sell their milk to the co-ops, generating even another source of income. They seem to have figured out how to thrive in a developing country, as well as maintaining their traditional ways of living that are rapidly dying off in other parts of the country.

One of my favorite parts of our tour was the salt mines. All of the local people participate in the salt cultivation, and its end products are used in the cheese that is made there. In the middle of the salt mines, there is an underground spring. As you climb down to it, you cannot see it, but are able to hear it clearly as it is pumped hard through the Earth, and gurgles so loud and baritone that it almost sounds pretend. The water is high in arsenic, and any animals that venture into the cavern will die. There is a trench that has been dug deep into the rock, and extends nearly 100ft leading from the mines, to the opening where we stood and heard the rock speak. For generations, they have been trying to find the source, but have not been able to locate it. This is a very sacred and holy place. Many shamans in the area come here to pray and literally speak to Nature. They believe that the sound they hear is the voice of the world, and is how Nature communicates with man and his Earthly surroundings. When they perform rituals here, they believe that they are talking to Mother Earth, and the mystery of the place is amplified by their beliefs. After years of digging, the sound is just as clear, and just as mysterious as before, leading most to believe that in fact, this is the voice of Nature.

Though Salinas has so much to offer, there are a few things that it lacks, which helped us design the ¨Salinas Weight Loss Program. ¨
1.) No restaurants open on Friday night at 6:00pm, except one that was only serving spaghetti, even though they had a full menu...
Dinner: white bread for the bread shop, ironically not stale (Ecuadorians prefer somewhat dry stale bread- yummy!) Dana ate raisins and almonds, and we shared the last of our emergency Larabars...a sad moment.

2.) The only place in town open for breakfast was the spaghetti place from the night before.
Breakfast: Fresh stale bread, one scrambled egg, unknown fruit marmalade and instant coffee. No electricity, but offered the bonus of the cleanest bathroom in South America to date, as it had toilet paper, soap, and of the toilets had a seat.

3.) Lunch: We learn that the only other real restaurant in town, a nice looking pizza place with a bar, is closed, as the front stairs completely collapsed. Even though they have a path and a perfectly good set of stairs on the other side of the building, they are still closed. There is one other place we passed, but had no menus, and served one option for lunch, that includes a soup with meat and a main dish with meat and some mystery things that we didn´t understand. There are no grocery stores in Salinas, only a small corner store. Apparently they have a once a week market on Monday, but it is a Saturday, and we are out of luck. When we ask if there is somewhere to buy fruit, we are directed to a store, that claims to sells fruits and vegetables, but of course they are out. We ended up eating cheese from the local factory (awesome), fresh stale bread, and one large bag of corn puffs. The saving grace, local chocolate, and lots of it!

At this point, we have gone two full days without a ¨real¨ meal, and the energy level is at an all time low, as well as morale. For dinner, the spaghetti restaurant claims to have pizza, and when we asked when they would be serving pizza, their honest reply was ¨whenever the man arrives who makes the pizzas.¨ Our skepticism was at an all time high, as this is the same place that is supposed to have pizza all the time, and even calls themselves a pizzeria. We arrived at 7:00 as instructed, after completing a ceremonial pizza dance during the walk, we were happy and relieved to see the pizza man in the restaurant. The three of us ended up eating an entire family size pizza, much to the amusement of the restaurant owners, who chuckled a bit and chatted as we took down the whole thing.

The amazing veggie pizza redeemed Salinas, and we whole heartedly give it two thumbs up, and there is definitely some magic in this place. Listen closely to the sound of nature, and don´t under any circumstances forget to bring snacks, and to do a pizza dance before dinner.

Notes on Poverty

We chatted with Josefina during lunch and learned a lot. What it boils down to is poverty is poverty regardless of your skin, nationality or culture. Poverty holds people down.

Josefina told us that many women in the community don´t finish high school and even fewer go on to a college or university. The woman´s role is still seen as solely to have children. Many uneducated women work for the flower companies, but because they are unable to write their own names or the date, they are unable to cash their own checks, their own money, at the banks. So, their husbands or other family members must do it for them, so their own money isn´t ever really in their own hands. Josefina saw this and organized a literacy class for the women to at least learn to write their own names and the date so they could cash their own checks. However, when Josefina started the classes, she also knew that a lot of the same women were beaten by abusive husbands. So, Josefina used this time to also educate the women about their rights.

"You are human beings, no one has the right to hit you or make you feel pain." For many of these women, this basic human right had never been expressed to them. Josefina said she has seen a difference in the women and they way they allow themselves to be treated since the classes.

Another interesting phenomenon that is occurring in this community is that the young people are getting married younger and younger. In Josefina´s generation (she is 43 years-old) to get married at 20-25 years-old was very common. However, now it is common for 15-16 year-olds to get married which means a lot of them aren´t finishing school. Josefina feels a lot of the young people are getting married to escape abusive homes. But by getting married so young and quitting school, the cycle of poverty continues.

Josefina was adamant that women should definitely finish high school and go on to a college or university. She kept saying that women need an education to defend themselves, to support themselves. They need an education so they don´t have to depend on anyone else for their livelihood.

No matter where you are--in Chicago, in the South, in Ecuador--it is these cycles of poverty that are the hardest to break. As long as their is sustained poverty without education, the cycle continues. Josefina is trying to set an example for women in her community. She is the first woman elected official in her community as she is the president of the community water board. She presides over some fifty people including three commercial flower companies to determine how the community water should be shared and distributed. She is also planning on returning to school to finish an agricultural engineering degree. She has four years down and two more to go. It has been so wonderful to get to know Josefina and her family. She has been a wealth of knowlege for us and has so graciously opened up her home. By far getting to know her and her family was the best thing about working on the farm.

A Suprise Pig Roast

Josefina invited us (Dana, Andy and I) to her house on Sunday, our last weekend on the farm. We were definitely her favorites, maybe because we actually work and we can understand her Spanish (even Andy). The most exciting part of the day was supposed to be the Class V hike to her house through the neighboring fields and one deep, steep ravine. I remember saying aloud, "I want to have a relaxing afternoon with Josefina. I hope I have nothing to write about." We arrive at Josefina´s house and no one is there. We situate ourselves on her front porch to wait. Within fifteen minutes, Josefina´s dad walks by and tells us that Josefina is up the road. As the sixty-eight year-old man escorts us at least a mile up the road, we struggle to keep up. Josefina is at her brother´s house. We walk in the backyard and instantly I knew I would be writing....

In celebration of Carnival and the holidays, Josefina´s whole family is there (3 sisters, 4 brothers, their wives/husbands, some friends, 8 children under five years of age, and 2 dogs).

Laying on its side in the backyard is a whole dead pig and someone is taking a blow torch to it. After the pig is sufficiently blow-torched, a water hose and knives are taken to the skin to remove dirt and the hair from the pig. The men then hoist the pig up so that is hanging from a rope cut through its jaw from the house. As a few men begin to cut and clean the pig out, another man begins removing the skin in squares about 1/4 inch thick.

The squares of the skin are then passed around and some people begin eating them raw. For the rest of us we put salt on it and throw it over an open fire for a minute (literally, one minute). Let me describe the meat skin. The outside is a tough thin layer because....it is skin. The bulk is the outside layer which is all white fat. So as you bite into it, your teeth first sink into the white fatty layer and then you must literally rip the tough skin. As you begin to chew it is an odd mixture of the really tough skin and the really chewy fatty part. I will let you think about this a moment....


Now as you are thinking about chewing it and the textrue in your mouth, let me tell you what is in every little piece of the fatty part...black hair. Wait...one more time...let me say it again: thick little pieces of black hair, everywhere, because while the knife cut the hair off of the skin, the hair follicles and hair remain under the skin.

Now my meat ethics--having not eaten meat (fish excluded) for better part of a decade--I have finally realized and come to terms with my meat ideals. While I will probably never eat chicken again, all other meat I do not eat now based largely on the way it is raised and processed in the US. Therefore, when I return to my family´s farm I am happy to eat grass-fed cows raised on our land. This also means that I will not eat a hamburger from a restaurant in the US, but in a strange irony, I am free to try meat raised by a family here in South America and butchered and cooked in the backyard. Before you picture me gorging myself on Ecuadorian pig skin in a backyard, while I feel I can eat the meat in good conscience, it usually means I will only try a few bites. Regardless of where it came from, I will never be a big meat eater. Josefina knows this and hands me the smallest piece of skin, Andy on the other hand being the token meat-eater in the group received a healthy portion (Dana hasn´t eaten meat since she was eleven, and I am sure that regardless of how good the pig looked hanging from he house with children and dogs running around it, she wasn´t THAT tempted).

This is how my eating experience went: tore off the smallest piece I could from the skin, let it sit in my mouth for a second and get the taste, turn around when no one is looking and spit it out on the ground. I ended up having to do this three times before it looked like I had taken one bite. Between those bites, I stood facing the crowd, pretending to chew. I handed my meat to Josefina as soon as it looked like I had one full bite.

I look over at Andy and while his face portrays how he really feels about the pig, he is eating his down like one of the family. After being with Andy for four and a half years now, I know exactly what was going through his mind. He was pretending he was with Anthony Bourdain on Travel Channel´s "No Reservations." With this scenario playing in his head and the video cameras I am sure he was imagining being in front of him, he finished every bite. Impressive.

Every part of the pig is used: skin, hooves, eyes, innards. The women set about cleaning the stomach and intestines as soon as they came out of the pig. They would be going into a soup; a huge black caldron over the open fire in the backyard awaited. To clean the intestines of a pig:
1. You must accept your position as an official "bad-ass".
2. Clean off the outside first, the little bits of white fat.
3. Cut into sections and spread the "fertilizer" that comes out of over your plants in the yard.
4. Rinse the intestines out with water and once more spread the "fertilizer" on your plants.
5. Take a stick from your back yard and push it through the intestine several times to get it REALLY clean.
6. Then on a rock slab, take all the clean intestines and work in lots of lime juice for 15-20 minutes. It should look like you are washing clothes, fiercely working the intestines. (I like this step the best because I think the acid from the citrus is killing any bacteria)
7. Put in the soup.

(The way everyone washed their hands was to scoop out water from the gray bin in the very left of the picture, scrub vigorously and go about their business (no soap)).

At this point we had been there for two and a half hours and had watched a pig being cleaned and prepped for cooking, we had eaten pig skin, we had watched the intestines and stomach be prepared for soup, we had watched as one mom and the children gathered around one of the girls and had picked lice out of her hair as they ate. It had been a full day in our eyes. We excused ourselves right after the mandatory one cup of wine had been passed around the group (we were at the end of the line, but really didn´t care at this point). Josefina was upset that we wouldn´t get to try cooked pig--so she found Andy a grocery bag and picked out some pieces of meat from the plastic bin in the yard that she was cutting the meat into for Andy to cook later. We hugged Josefina goodbye and left. I apparently left with some pig parts on my shirt from the hug as Josefina was in the middle of cutting up the pig. Immediately after we left, and got out the celebratory hand sanitize and doused all of us in it.

On a side note, Andy cooked the meat that night. While I did not partake it smelled great and did not have a hint of pig smell. It doesn´t get much fresher, it was alive that morning.

Bob Marley in South America

I watched Bob Marley smoke dope all day.

Andy and I have a small old kitchen with only a small sink off of our bedroom. There is a large open doorway covererd by a Bob Marley tapestery, a remanent of a previous occupant. A profile of Bob Marley smoking a joint is on the middle surrounded by a circle of lions, a circle of pot leaves and finally by a ring of fire. Colorful and vibrant the red, yellow and green were a masterpiece in its own time, I am sure.

With the kitchen window open, the wind currents suck the tapestery in hard into the open doorway, and then exhale the tapestery gently letting it go limp and sailing through the doorway across the foot of my bed. In this way, I focus on Marley and watch as the tapestery is pulled tight and imagine him suckig in on his joint, holding it....and then exhaling as the tapestery blows back out. Marley would be proud, inhaling and exhaling his inextinguishable joint throught the winds of time.

I watched Marley smoke because I was sick in bed and for the better part of the day this was my entertainment. I started getting stomach cramps yesterday during the day and last night. I thought they had subsided, but at 1:00am they returned with a vengeanace and kept me up the rest of the night. I got out of bed at 6:30am that morning partly because I couldn´t sleep anyway, and partly because I had a mission. The president of our organization, a very intelligent man in the ways of agriculture, has had his son come to stay at the farm. "Juanito" is a twenty-year-old highschool dropout who has been living wiht his grandma for the last few years. His idea of a haircut is a mowhawk mullet, his idea of a suitable accessory around all the children on the farm is a lit cigarette, and his idea of hygeine is not to shower or change clothes. His idea of work is to show up late, start something with the rest of us and quickly abandon the activity to walk aimlessly on the farm. While this behavior may be tolerated on the farm because his dad is "el jefe", living in a communal house sharing responsiblitleies, this cannot be tolerated. Juanito had already bailed on a previous supper responsibilty he was supposed to be helping make dinner and instead decided to hide in his room and not come out until dinner was almost ready.

Juanito was on breakfast duty this morning, a one person job, but since he had just not shown up for the cooking duty the previous night and there had been no consequences, I was interested to see how this would turn out. He had also infromed us that he had always had a maid at his house that did the cooking. So he didn´t know how to cook or have any interest in learning. At 6:20am, the usual breakfast prep time, Andy and I discussed the options. There was the "let him crash and burn" mentality of everyone showing up at 7:00am without breakfast and making it ourselves. However, there were two arguments to this: he had not helped at all on his previous responsibilty and nothing had happened and I do not think he minded not doing anything or helping out. For the second argument, I thought to my high school kids. As long as they have the excuse, "I don´t know how." They are happy to sit there and do nothing, but as soon as you sit with them and explain it and make them do it, they can never use that excuse again.

I settled on this and decided to intervene. I went and knocked hard on his bedroom door at 6:35. "Juan are you ready to cook breakfast?" I say in Spanish. I woke him up, obviously, and have to go back one more time in the passing minutes to knock again and make sure he is coming. For the next half hour, I give him instructions on how to start a gas burner, how to make oatmeal and how to heat milk. At the end of the thirty minutes, breakfast was ready and he had made it. I would be lying if I said it went smoothly. This is a developing country so there are always unseen obstacles--as I am doubling over during the cooking lesson because of stomach cramps, Juan has run outside once because he thought he was going to throw-up (he didn´t), the propane runs out on the stove and we must halt everything to find another propane can. Iit was as successful as could be expected.

I myself could only muster hot water for breakfast, but decide to brave the day because Josefina is giving a medicinal plant talk. We head off--I´m taking notes, Andy is taking pictures. About thirty minutes into the talk we are in a field below the Foundation, I realize what a poor choice it was not to eat breakfast even if my stomach was hurting. I tend to "bonk" as Andy and I call it, which is a much more fun way to say I get nauseous and pass out. Right at this moment I am standing in a field in direct warm sunlight in big yellow boots, long sleeve pants, long sleeve shirt, a bandana around my neck, a big sunhat on my head because any exposed skin at this altitude (8500ft) on the equator tends to burn instantly. With all the clothes, lack of food, stomach cramping and warm sun, it was a recipe for disaster. At times like these there are two thoughts in my head 1) How can I get to my bed as quickly as possible? 2) Why is my bed always so far away?

Josefina notices something is wrong and I tell her I need to go back to the house. Andy comes with me and before we get to the edge of the field to crawl under the barbed wire fence (really, barbed wire, could this get any worse?) I realize I am about to lose it, so I lay in the grass in the shade. Within seconds, Josefina is beside me. In my life I have met very few people, two to be exact, that can come into a situation and take complete control while immediately putting you at ease. One is my aunt Rosa, and the other is Josefina. Both women dispense remedies, recipes and sound advice like it is their paying job, and both do so with such intense sincerity and concern that you fully trust them immediately. I had witnessed Josefina´s whole concern for all living things throughout the morning. She showed us the brand new baby rabbits. She had picked one up and held it for us to see and feel. Before setting it down in the nest, she kissed its little head. As we passed cows in the pasture, she would gently stroke them. So when she kneeled down beside me, and took my hand and wrist in her hand to check my pulse, I had no reservations that I too was in good hands. I don´t know what it is about these women that exudes such confidence. Maybe becasue the knowledge they are passing down didn´t come from books, but from their parents and their grandparents and great-grandparents, so it sin´t so much knowledge they remember specifically learning, it is more like something they´ve alwyas known, passed down as much through their bloodline as through their psyche. An innate ability to care for others and put them at ease.

Josefina imediatley starts to ask me questions, "when was my last menstrual cycle, could I be pregnant?" To which I can emphatically say NO. I tell her about my symptoms, she tells me about my pulse. When I am feeling well enough to walk back, she tells me she will make me a tea after her lesson. I return to the house with Andy and promptly climb into the bed feeling very lucky to know Josefina. But no matter how fortuante we are for knowing her there are far more lucky ones in Josefina´s life.

Ecuador provides the U.S. with about one third of thier rose production. So when you bought roses for Valentines Day, one out of every three you saw were shipped from Ecuador. There are so many flower companies here that from up above it looks like the valley floor is blanketed in plastic from the greenhouses. Conditions are not good in the industries becasue of the heavy amount of chemicals (pesticides and herbicides) sprayed on the plants. The workers work forty hours a week and at the end of the month, they recieve $250. During the first of the year, to prepare for Valentine´s Day, they will work six-seven days a week and for each hour of overtime, they will recieve fifty cents. Many people have heath problems because of the chemicals: lots of birth defects in babies, women not being able to have children and even some mental problems. Josefina worked at the flower companies for more than ten years. She had one bably, but for reasons I am not entirely sure of he died at about six months of age. Years went by and Josefina and her husband became proponants and teachers of organic agriculture in their community, and they started a bread business, but were never able to have children.

One morning when her husband was out delivering bread, he found a bably on the doorstep of a house. He took the baby and called the police. The mother was found, but did not want the child. So, Josefina and her husband have since adopted the child. Now on the minimal salaries they bring home, they manage to send four-year-old Milagros (Miracle), to private school where she is learning multiple languages.

After lunch, Andy brings me the tea Josefina has made for me. Before long Josefina has come to check on me. Immediatley she surveys the surroundings, "this room is too cold." She then surveys my blankets and sleeping sack, they must have passed inspection because nothing was said. "There are twenty herbs in the tea," she tells me and instructs me how to drink it. It tastes of thyme, lime and very floral. I also have some juice she made for lunch with tomatoes, carrots, alfa-alfa and celery. She chats and invites us to her house that weekend and leaves. I learn later from Dana that Josefina still thinks the real reason I am sick is because I am pregnant (I AM NOT), so as I drink the tea that does soothe my stomach, I wonder how many herbs are for my upset stomach and how many are the pre-natal herbs she has probably slipped in.

Reforstation in Las Lagunas de Mojanda

I have lived in Ecuador before. It was only for four months in college, but it was one of those life-altering experiences that I loved so much I somehow convinced Andy (who up until this point in his life had only studied French) into taking a hiatus from our lives and join me on this South American Adventure. While I lam loving our journey so far, I am constantly reminded of the differences between my trip eight years ago and my trip now. The good side: I am not in school this time, so I no longer have to plan my travels around classes or assignments. Also, I am not alone here, I have Andy. Also luckily, it seems that with age, we have not lost our desire to do new things. While almost everthing you do in a foreign country is new and exciting, it seems that especially with South America, you must also use the adjectives "dangerous" or "not so safe" or ¨I don´t think my mother would approve." While not much has changed since eight years ago in that I, and now Andy, still do these things and think of them as rare opportunites in traveling. However, the main difference between then and now is eight years ago I did them worry free, and now while I am doing them, I am doomed to think of all the things that can go wrong and the ways to die or escape death while doing the activities.
Take for example my fear of flying (a relatively new fear of mine that has come with age). In short, I am afraid of falling from the sky and the fire-y crash that will surely ensue. The only thing I have found to calm my fears is I imagine myself escaping from the fire-y crash. So, in order to do this, I locate all exits, count the number of rows to the exit (in case it is too smokey to see). If I am in the window or middle seat, I imagine the chaos and think about whether I could crawl over the seats if I needed to. This can go on for the whole flight, but you get the picture. I think about the possible disasters and how to escape them which brings us to our newest adventure.
The foundation where we are working brings high school students from Quito to help in reforestation projects and to help out in general around the farm. For the latest group of students, I imagine their permission slips for the trip went something like this:

Dear esteemed parent,

We are delighted to inform you of an amazing educational opportunity for your son/daughter. We will be spending seven days on a beautiful farm forty-five minutes north of the city. Your son/daughter will be able to learn about the workings of a farm from milking cows to planting vegetables. It will be a wonderful lesson in the value and appreciation of our resources.

Also on this trip we will be helping in a reforestaton project. We will be traveling to the Lagunas de Mojanda--picturesque lakes near the top of a volcano--to plant native trees that have previously been destroyed. The children will be riding in the back of a dump truck for the hour drive up muddy switchbacks. There will be no adult supervision in the dump truck, and the students will be clinging to the sides of the truck to remain standing. A few of the boys will probably climb onto the top of the cab of the dump truck to ride there without sides or anything to hold onto. They will be grabbing onto trees and low hanging electrical wires as we drive. If your son/daughter has a girlfriend/boyfriend, this is an excellent opportunity for them to make-out and cling to each other almost like having sex, but with their clothes on. The road may be so muddy that we cannot make it all the way to the lakes, or it may be just muddy enough that we get stuck and have to roll back down the road for a while before we get to a place flat enough where we can get enough momentum to make it up the side of the volcano.

Everyone is greatly looking forward to this trip. Please sign and date the bottom of this form as permission for your son/daughter to attend. Also, by signing, you acknowledge we are not responsible for accidents or the sudden death of your child in the back of an open dump truck.

This is the only way a permission slip would have worked, because this is exactly what happened. While we had an amazing time and got to learn a little about the native ecosystem, and got to help out by planting native tree species, the transportation situation was a bit interesting. Interesting in the way that I will never turn down an opportunity to ride in the back of a dumptruck in South America, but the whole time it was happening, I was thinking about all the things that could go wrong and how I "could" escape them. So, for example, I was looking for the exact spot I would need to place my foot and hand in order to jump out of the back of the truck and calculating the distance of my fall if the breaks suddenly went out on the truck sending it careening over the edge of the small dirt road. Or how exactly I would hike out, and my food and water provisions if it were too muddy to get the dump truck out of the tree-planting area.
While these ideas that run through my mind are not always fun, it has lended an intersting new element to traveling in South America the second time around.

Carnival: Ecuador Style

Brazil has Rio De Janiero and Carnival, the US has the 4th of July, Mexico has Cinco de Mayo, and Ecuador has Carnival for the first two weeks in February. Each festival or celebration has its´ own reason and sophistication, but not in Ecuador. Carnival is purely a reason to mess each other up. I have no idea why Carnival is celebrated and have yet to find someone who does know the reason. While we had been warned, Andy and I had no clue as to the craziness of Carnival until last weekend when we ventured into the nearest psuedo-city to find the grocery store had been completely re-arranged to accomodate all of the Carnival celebratory merchandise. I am not talking about when at Wal-Mart they change the holiday aisles and decorations, that would be understandable, but no. Andy and I walk in and the whole store has changed. The checkout cashiers have moved to a whole different side of the store. Now, in the middle of the store there are tables stocked with aersol products that seem to be a mixture of silly string and shaving cream. The purpose of this is to spray people on the streets, but this is not the only thing that occurs. We have also witnessed people throwing water balloons at cars and at people on the sidewalk, and we have even seen people dropping balloons from 2nd floor balconies on people walking on the sidewalk. We even witnessed shaving cream on eggs being thrown at people, and the best was a truck filled to the brim in the cab and in the back with teenagers. The youngsters in the back were armed with buckets of water ready to throw them at unsusupecting victims as they walked or drove by. We have heard in some places after gettng drenched in water, you can then expect flour to be thrown in your face.
While most of the debauchery is saved for adolescents and young adults, we know they also hold a special place in their Carnival mischievous hearts for gringos. So, as Andy and I are going into the interntet cafe, a group of young boys are throwing water balloons by the front door. They don´t think we see them and begin tying off balloons. All of a sudden, there is a balloon malfunction, they look at me, I smile, they know we know, so they smile and let us through the door. Crisis 1 averted.
As we get ready to leave, Andy is beginning to get nervous, "I don´t want to get hit with a water balloon," he tells me. To which my response is "What are we going to do? We can´t stop them." As we get ready to leave, the boys hit a bus with a balloon and all run inside, past us to hide. Andy and I leave quickly and walk as fast as we can away. Crisis 2 averted.
Our first order of business upon leaving is to get Andy some food because it has been way too long since breafast and he is getting very grouchy. We get bread and head to the bus stop. As we are walking, we notice that on our bus stop corner are a couple of mobs of teenagers, and there is a poor girl justing getting creamed with water. Andy stops dead in his tracks, bread in hand, "I can´t do it. I don´t want to be messed with." All hope has left his voice, only exasperation. To which I reply once more that there is literally nothing we can do about it. We´ll just have to take it as it comes. But all the while in the back of my mind, I see how this is going to play out. The food has not hit his bloodstream, so Andy is still easily agitated and irate. We are going to get mauled by Carnival-ers and Andy is gointo freak out--stomping his feet, throwing his bread and yelling, "C´MON, Really? C´mon!" Which will then make us a walking target for any and all other attacks until the bus comes.
Andy stands, staring at the scene for twenty, thirty seconds before we begin walking. "Don´t freak out. Don´t freak out," I try to send Andy telepathic, soothing messages as we walk. As we get closer, people´s eyes start to glance towards us nervously--they know we are targets. Right as we get to the corner, some other person takes off running and all the Carnival-ers take chase. We are safe for one more day at least.
The Carnival (i.e. the time it is ok to purposefully hurl innappropriate things in people´s /stranger´s faces) lasts until February 16th when it ends with two government holdiay days and a large majority of people head to the coast for the weekend. We have decided to lay low and not travel. We have one more day of being targets--wish us luck!

On the Farm

The farm we are working on in Ecuador is called La Fundacion Brethren y Unida. It was started back in the 1950´s by two missionary groups. While a lot has changed in the last 60 years as it is no longer religiously affliated, the proof of what the organization has done is very evident in the community. The community itself is called Picalqui and consists of a couple hundred families. The living standards of this community, while still poor in American standards, are much better than many of the surrounding communities. The organization in its current position is a non-profit organization and has three basic roles. One is an environmental education program that brings children in from Quito to volunteer on the farm and help in local reforestation projects. The second is a volunteer program that brings in volunteers to either work on the farm or volunteer in local communities staying with families and helping in local schools. The third is the organic farm itself which sells its local produce in the communities each week and sells the cows´ milk to a local creamery.

The farm has a large area for growing vegetables, a small greenhouse for tomatoes, peppers and herbs, a blackberry orchard (that is going to ruin as there is a horrible drought here), laying hens, chickens for meat, 15 milk cows, 4 sheep, 3 pigs, rabbits and cuyes (guinea pigs) that are sold for meat. There is also a small tree farm as well, and a random llama and white donkey that hang around.

The work on the farm can range from shoveling compost for the garden, cleaning cow poop from the stables, cutting food for the cuyes, weeding, harvesting or planting the garden, making scarecrows, building fences, etc, etc. This week we even went to the local school to work on their school garden.

The living situation is that we share a communal house with about 10-12 other people. While Andy and I are lucky enough to have our own room, we share the bathroom, kitchen and living area with everyone. Cooking duties are shared among everyone, and so when you cook you are cooking for about 14 people. We eat loads of fresh veggies from the garden and eggs from the chickens. Milk is also available at breakfast.

Interesting Facts:
1. We sit in the shadow of Cayambe. It is a 5790m volcano (18,996ft). It is Ecuador´s third largest peak, and the world´s largest peak that sits on the equator.

2. Ecuador is in a huge drought right now. This is supposed to be the rainy season with storms every day. It has rained 13 times since July. Because Ecuador´s energy comes from hydroelectric dams and there is now a shortage of water, sometimes their is no electricity during the day do to rolling blackouts.

3. We do not have a refrigerator. This was a huge deal at first, but now we have learned to deal with it. Before we got here, I am pretty sure the leftovers were used over and over. The leftovers would continue to be put into the next meal, the leftovers from that meal would be put into the next, and so on. Since a new group has been here, we have been trying to watch this more closely.

4. There are roaming bands of children EVERYWHERE on the farm. There are two families that live on the farm with a total of 11 children between them. Other women and children stay a lot as well to help out with the school groups. They are constantly hucking themselves around from fences onto hanging ropes and playing with the fire. They are not shy and will run up anytime they see you. They are usually very dirty but undeniably cute.

5. Children on the farm greet Andy in a number of different ways. Many times if Andy is sitting outside the children will each come up and play with his beard. Other times children will start to sing about Papa Noel around Andy. Apparently Santa Claus is skinnier in South America. This is a pic of the children singing about Papa Noel at the community school.

5. We live with some intersting characters. Micah is a 19 year old German boy completing a year of service at the farm. He is a self-proclaimed communist and has pictures of Castro hanging on the walls of his room. Ironically, he doesn´t like to work much, so communism would suit him fine. Melia is a 22 year old from Sweden who hates to work and will tell us this often. She chooses to take many breaks in the house whenever she can. Her favorite food seems to be rice with ketchup, and plain sugar. She eats it by the spoonful. Billy is the newest member. An 18 year old from New Zealand. He is supposed to be there a year, but somehow did not seem to read the website before he came. He is not at all interested in organic agriculture and hates vegetables. He is at the wrong place.

6. We build things out of nothing here and deal with many obstacles. There is a new stable going up on the farm. The wood comes from the non-native eucaluptus trees. We watch a man cut down the trees and then using a chainsaw make perfectly straight boards. Andy has built a couple of fences using scrap wood and wire. We have so little water sometimes that we do not have water pressure to water the garden. We have watered it by hand with the 3 functional water cans, it took 4 hours to water half of the garden.

7. I have met my personality twin. Her name is Dana, she is 25 years old and moving back to Denver/Boulder area in April. Due to the fact that Dana has no secrets and Andy isn´t afraid to tell mine, we found out that we both have similar germ fears (we sleep in sleeping bags, and won´t get into the shower without flip-flops). We enjoy the same things, cook the same ways and on more than one occasion can finish each other´s sentences or thoughts.

8. We wash all of our clothes by hand....enough said.