June 26,2009 - Privacy or Lack there of

“He who handles poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.” –John Steinbeck

These past weeks I have helped plant rice, which was a first. They make a hole with a stick and then you drop a couple of seeds in the hole and you don’t cover the hole. It was easy, but it took longer to clear some of the plants that had re-grown in the lot than it did to make the hole and drop the seeds in.
I’m getting ready to make the move over to my own house, at the end of July. My community held a minga to fix a couple of things at my future home. Like the roof that has a couple of holes, the termites that had made a home on the roof (they need to move out before I move in) and a “shower” was put in. I say shower but its just four sticks with black plastic surrounding and stones on the ground (so the floor doesn’t get muddy). Oh and the plastic only cover three of the four sides (privacy is not an issue here, for the community). I am working on getting the other side covered. In the future, I hope to have a minga of my own to build a dry compost toilet for myself, since as of now I have to share the bathroom with the boys from the school, not an ideal situation. I can’t wait to move in to my own place. It will be nice to make food for myself and not be surprised with different type of jungle meat or having soup fish for breakfast.
On the note of privacy, its been quite the experience. The indigenous do not have issues with privacy. They take showers in the middle of the day and not in an enclosed place. I have seen most of my community naked at some point. Women breastfeed their babies and just whip them out without second thoughts. I do love my privacy so I will need the fourth side of the shower. Just my American upbringing I guess :)
I’m hoping to get a community bank started soon, so that maybe the handouts won’t be necessary. It will be a great way to teach money management and get the community to save and buy things for the community from their own pocket.

June 12, 2009 Rooster Myth

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Cool Worm/caterpillar Seen on my hike

The stream we walk up to the waterfall

Meet Misi (my kitten)

At the stream making chicha

Brown butterfly, the inside of the wings are blue

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.” – Henry David Thoreau

Ok, so first off I just wanted to vent on something. Who decided to spread the rumor that a rooster crows at the break of dawn? People, it is just that, a rumor! As it turns out the rooster crows at whatever time it feels like crowing; one in the morning, one in the afternoon…it doesn’t matter the time.
I now have a cat. In the words of Sonya, ‘It will one day be a cat’. A kitten named Misi (which is Kichwa for cat). She happened to appear at the door of another Peace Corps volunteer’s house and since I had been saying that the only way to get rid of my rats was to get a cat…I now own a kitten! She has been quite the experience. I have never had a cat and do not even consider myself a cat person, so it has been interesting. Misi sleeps probably every two hours and when she wakes up, she is so hyper! Everything and anything becomes a toy for her and that includes me, which can be very annoying. Shoes, backpack, luggage, mosquito net, my hair, earring, power cord, headphones and anything that she finds entertaining (which I haven’t figured out what doesn’t entertain her) she will play with. The first week it was a ten-minute battle before going to sleep because she wanted to sleep in the bed with me. I of course wasn’t going to have that, no matter how cute she is. She finally gave in and the battle has decreased to about two minutes. The important thing is that I have not heard or seen a rat since Misi moved in :)
These past two weeks we have had two mingas (it’s the community getting together to do community projects). Both have been to put in PVC pipes to direct water from the top of the waterfall down to our community. The first minga we drove about 10 minutes in a camioneta (truck) to the trailhead. There we hiked for about 40 minutes to the bottom of a creek. Then we hiked in the creek for 20 minutes to the waterfall and then climbed up the hillside to the top of the waterfall (waterfall is not that big). By the time, we reached the top I was so tired I could barely move! I was actually quite proud of myself I kept up quite well with everyone. I wasn’t in the front (man do they move fast), but I wasn’t last either. The path is like most paths out here super muddy and unpredictable. I did not fall until I was in the creek (those rocks are slippery). I was not much help to them; I did not have tools or strength to help. Therefore, I help the woman that make the chicha server it and to make lunch. Which was not hard and I don’t think I was much help. So we obviously didn’t get to our community with the tube but we got quite far with it. This past week we put in more tube and got quite far and the community president believes that in two more mingas the tube should reach our community.
Overall things are going well. I have days where I find it difficult to see how I will be able to help the people out here, but I figure that if I’m able to help one person maybe one family that will be enough. There is a big issue that just keeps coming up and its one of the things that makes it hard to help the community become sustainable. It is the handouts that they get. I will leave it at that and will talk about more on the subject on a later blog.