Some Advice for Omnibus 100

Dear Omnibus 100,

In less than one month, you will be arriving to serve for 27 months in Peace Corps Ecuador as Community Health and Youth & Families volunteers. There are a whole range of emotions that you are probably going through right now – excitement, fear, anxiety, giddiness, relief, etc. I know this because I was in your shoes exactly one year ago. I didn’t really know what to expect, even though I had lived in the country before. Serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer is an experience like no other. So, here’s some advice for the 100^th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to come to the Republic of Ecuador:

I. Ditch the packing list that comes in that PC/E manual that you have been emailed. It’s useless. You do not need to bring a frying pan to Ecuador, nor do you need a kitchen knife. It’s a developing country, not a destitute one. There are many stores that sell perfectly serviceable kitchen gear, such as pots and knives. Even if your site is in the campo, you will be able to visit a SuperMaxi or Mi Comisariato at some point in your service. And what genius decided to include a garlic press in the list of must-bring items? You can buy garlic paste here and it’s cheap, so don’t bother bringing a garlic press unless you will die if you can’t press your own garlic.

II. There are two kinds of PCVs: a) those Volunteers who are only friends with Host Country Nationals (HCNs), are generally site rats, and avoid hanging out with other PCVs because “I didn’t come here to make friends with gringos.” b) Everyone else. It’s OK to hang out with other gringos, especially during the first few months (well, you have to since you’re all in training together). You will spend 95% of your time with Ecuadorians, so you will have plenty of time to practice your Spanish and “whip it out” (i.e. our deputy training officer’s way of saying “making friends”) when you are in your site. That being said, don’t spend all of your time hanging out with other gringos, you’ll never learn to speak Spanish and you won’t integrate well.

III. You are an employee of the United States Government. That is, The Man. Ironically, Peace Corps often attracts people who are rather, how shall I say this, “idiosyncratic” and/or “free thinking.” The combination of this personality type and working for Uncle Sam often results in some unfortunate head-butting. Bureaucracy is an inevitable part of life as a PCV. Deal with it. Plus, compared to the infuriating Ecuadorian bureaucracy you will face getting anything official done, PC bureaucracy is a cakewalk.

Devastating Earthquake in China

The death toll from Monday’s earthquake in southwest China has reached 19,500 and is still climbing. It’s so horrific, I can’t even fathom the depths of the despair that people there must be feeling. A friend who works in humanitarian aid told me that the relief efforts in China are actually going remarkably well, compared to the cyclone in Burma or even last summer’s earthquake in Peru. The Chinese government is being very open with the international community about the extent of the destruction, which is quite a departure from past natural disasters that China has suffered, which can only be positive in terms of getting aid to the region. All of this, however, is small consolation for the parents grieving for their children, buried in the rubble of a collapsed middle school. And that is just heartbreaking story among many. Being here in Ecuador, I have felt particularly helpless, but I did find a good list of international aid agencies that helping with the relief efforts in China, for those who are interested. One small glimmer of hope, although I know this sounds incredibly callous, but at least the pandas are safe.

Cooking under Pressure

I’ve been on a cooking binge lately. I bought a used pressure cooker from a departing PCV and it’s a miracle worker. I’m definitely buying one when I get back to the States. Below, are some pictures of some dishes I’ve made recently using the pressure cooker, all from scratch. Both recipes come from an amazing cookbook called, Buen Provecho! which was compiled by a Volunteer from Omnibus 78 and is the cooking Bible of PC/Ecuador. Click on the title of each dish to download the recipes.

Since we don’t have a supermarket in my town, I modify the recipes to the ingredients I have at hand. For example, I don’t usually have access to mushrooms or dried basil in my site, so I make the Pasta Sauce without those two ingredients and it turns out just fine. Similarly, with the black bean hummus, I can’t make the tahini sauce for the hummus without sesame seeds, which I can only get at the SuperMaxi in the city. I also usually make much less food than the recipes call for, since I’m only cooking for one and don’t have a refrigerator.

Eggplant (and Mushroom) Pasta Sauce

Black Bean Hummus

Basta con Machismo

That’s it. I’ve had it with machismo. If you have not experienced this phenomenon particular to Latin countries, it’s the attention, whistling and catcalls that women (particularly foreigners) receive simply by walking down the street.

You may think it’s silly to complain about being hit on, but believe me, it’s not a compliment. Men hit on anything with out male anatomy, it doesn’t matter how you look. I usually wear sweats and no makeup when I am in my site, and that is no deterrent to the catcalls and “psst psst.” Machismo is not about appreciating female beauty, it’s about male power. I’ve never heard Ecuadorian men whistle/ogle Ecuadorian women the way they do to gringas (foreigners). It’s a respect issue, because women from the US/Europe are perceived as morally “loose” thus we “deserve” this kind of harassment. I read a cultural manual with a story about an Ecuadorian woman who traveled to the US; after an entire afternoon of no men whistling at her, she back to her hotel and burst into tears, feeling oh-so-unattractive. I wanted to vomit after I read that. What utter BS.

Machismo makes me feel bad, it makes me feel unsafe. It makes me afraid to walk around town by myself at night, it makes me dread walking across the square during the day. It makes me time my running so that I will avoid the peak periods when trucks by, so that I can minimize the whistling and honking. I’m also sick of well-meaning Ecuadorians, who tell me that machismo is just a custom, something I have to get used to. No, you know what machismo is? It’s rude, stupid, and (at times) threatening.

La Caminata Loca (The Crazy Hike)

Last Friday was a national holiday, so my friend Katie and I climbed a mountain with fifteen moppets (Ecuadorian children), a dog, and a tiny puppy. The children were from a barrio only about fifteen minutes outside of Loja by car, although their standard of living was much more similar to that of campesinos (people who live in the country, usually poor). Neither of us brought our cameras, although there were many moments in which I wish I would have.

I started off the hike hoping that my new running shoes wouldn’t get too muddy. Little did I know that by the end of the hike Katie and I would be sliding down the mountainside, using our shoes as makeshift mud-skis. The hike began innocently enough, walking through fields and pastures. There was a rainstorm early on, but it was blessedly brief and provided us a good laugh, as we took the children’s hands and rushed across a cow-filled pasture to take shelter under an abandoned shack.

The group of kids we went with was wonderful. The oldest of them was 12, and the youngest was 5. Even though their neighborhood is only a little ways outside the city, their community is quite self-sufficient and the kids were unspoiled, not jaded know-it-alls like many city children. As we hiked along merrily, the children picked berries they called salapas along the way. They shared these little treasures with us, and although we were hesitant at first, the berries were delicious and soon Katie and I were eagerly foraging for them along with the kids. Roughly the size and shape of blueberries, the salapas were a reddish-green in color and tasted like nothing I’ve had. Probably not the absolute smartest thing in the world to be eating unknown berries in the mountains, but hey, they didn’t make us sick.

The kids were so sweet. They picked us berries, clamored to hold our hands, and one little girl even gifted me with a bouquet of wildflowers. One little boy, David, seemed to be the wise man of the group. He never said much, but showed us the best route to climb when the trail seemed impossible and told us which berries were poisonous. When Katie and I lagged behind the children (we told him we were viejas, old people, when we couldn’t keep up), I was relieved when I saw him waiting for us.