Best Present Ever

In late July, I came down to Southern Ecuador to make a preliminary site visit. During this visit, I helped two other Peace Corps Volunteers (a married couple) start a garden in a community about 1.5 hours outside of my site. The land had already been tilled by the club de madres (group of mothers), so all we had to do was plant seeds and put down tubing for irrigation. Recently, we went back to the garden to check on its progress, and I was floored. The garden was spectacular.

Plants of every kind were blooming, including vegetables such as carrots, lettuce, swiss chard, radishes, cucumbers, and tomatoes, just to name a few. These women are also part of a group that makes horchata, a red-tinted infusion composed of various organic herbs and flowers. We had also helped the women plant the herbs and flowers for horchata, and those were growing spectacularly as well. The best part about the garden was that it was completely organic, with organic compost supplied by the Municipio to use as fertilizer.

On this sunny day, as I looked out on the tall, thriving plants and the women hard at work weeding and tending the garden, I felt a swell of pride. To have stood on a piece of land when it was barren and to see it literally thrive with vegetation in a few months, knowing you made a tiny contribution, is an incredible feeling. Even though I am not an agriculture volunteer, I felt that this was one of the things that made me proud to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.

As I was turning to leave, one of the women stopped me to give me a bag full of produce. I picked up a head of lettuce and marveled at its thick, waxy leaves and thanked her for giving me one of the best presents I’ve ever received.

So, what do you DO anyway?

This is the question I am asked most often, and my job is a little different in that it is not the “typical” Peace Corps role. I am not just working in one community with no official job, rather, I am a health/nutrition extensionist working for a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called PLAN International. This is a London-based NGO founded after WWII that works in 49 countries worldwide. PLAN’s work centers on promoting the health and rights of children and youth, focusing on areas such as self-esteem and sexual/reproductive rights. My work with PLAN mainly involves me going out to various communities outside of my site to assist the Community Health Workers in their jobs or to give charlas (informal talks) about various health-realted topics. For example, I have recently given charlas on sexual/reproductive rights, birth control methods, nutrition, and personal hygiene. The closest of these communities is an hour away from town, on windy, dusty, bumpy roads, and I usually in one of PLAN’s vehicles or a contracted camioneta (truck).

Another part of my job with PLAN involves monthly meetings with the local networks of health volunteers in several outlying communities. The purpose of these meetings is to determine what are the acute problems in these communities and how we (PLAN) can assist the Community Health Workers to help their communities. On Mondays, I spend the day volunteering in the post-consulta wing of the hospital, giving nutrition information to mothers waiting to vaccinate their children.

As an organization, PLAN does a lot of great community-based work, such as building latrines and education around children’s rights, maternal health, and combating domestic violence. In our PLAN office, all of the people I work with are Ecuadorian although the Director of PLAN Ecuador is American and is friends with our Peace Corps Director.

Ann’s Index

(Apologies to Harper’s Index, from which I shamelessly stole this idea)

Number of times I am called Mi Reina (my queen) in a typical day: 5
Number of times it will take for one more person to call me Mi Reina before I clock them: 1
Number of times I hear “Pssst, pssst” in a typical day: 6
Number of times I turn to look at the person who says “Pssst, pssst”: 0
Mean age of person saying “Pssst, pssst”: 16
Number of Ecuadorian friends who find my utter annoyance at Latin machismo hilarious: 2
Number of times someone calls me China or Chinita in a typical day: 7
Percentage of Ecuadorians who consider this offensive: 0
Number of children who come up and stare at me in a typical day: 10
Number of random children who have touched my feet (to see if I am real?): 1

Number of times the electricity has gone out recently: 2
Number of times I have had to take a cold shower upon arrival in-site: 2
Percent likelihood that one ever gets used to cold showers: 0
Number of days recently that the town had no water: 1.5

 

Ecuador’s ranking out of 178 countries in a recent worldwide survey on corruption: 156
Number of Presidents that Ecuador has had in the past 10 years: 8
Rank, in the Ecuadorian economy, of funds sent home by Ecuadorians overseas: 2
Number of Ecuadorian immigrants currently living in Spain, legally: 500,000
Percentage of the voting public that supported an April referendum to rewrite the Ecuadorian Constitution: 82
Number of Constituents in the new Constitutional Assembly voted upon 9/30/2007: 130
Number of candidates: 3,200
Length of ballot, in feet: 5

 

 

Average temperature in my site: 22° C

My preferred temperature: 16° C
Average days of sunshine in my site per year: 300
Days of sunshine that I would prefer per year: 150
Number of friends that have called me crazy because I love cold, rainy weather: 2

 

Ratio of carbohydrates to protein in an average Ecuadorian meal: 3:0
Number of potatoes I have consumed in the past week: 1.5
Number of green salads that I have consumed in the past week: 3
Number of times I have exercised in the past 7 days: 5
Average time in minutes to run around the hilly perimeter of town: 45
Percentage by which I feel physically healthier now, compared to PC training: 100

Number of good friends who recently got married on October 7, 2007: 2
Percentage by which I regret missing their wedding: 100
Score at the bottom of the 9^th of the Red Sox-Angels series, two days before the wedding: 3:3
Number of home runs hit by Manny Ramirez to win the game: 1
Final score, Red Sox: Angels: 6:3

Congratulations Mary & Dave!

 

 

Howdy

So, despite much reluctance, I am finally starting a blog about my experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, blogs are really coming into their own. Right. And Hilary Clinton is the current front-runner in the 2008 presidential race. Oh wait.

I’m not terribly good with this blogging thing yet, so please bear with me as I figure out how to navigate all of this. I’ll leave you with a picture of the amazing view at sunset from a lookout point in my site. Bienvenidos!