One Month at Site!

Hello friends! I've been at my site in Alausi for exactly one month today. Yay! In honor of this anniversary, this morning I baked a Carrot Cake to share with my family. They wanted to save it for dessert tonight, so I haven't tried it yet, but it smelled delish coming out of the oven.

Instead of boring you with my thoughts and feelings, I've prepared some facts and figures to capture my first 31 days of work and play in Alausi and Tixan. Enjoy!

Altitude of Alausi in meters: 2,347
Altitude of Alausi in feet: 7,700
Altitude of Tixan in meters: 2,940
Altitude of Tixan in feet: 9,645
Number of communities the clinic in Tixan serves: 44
Total population of the parroquia of Tixan: 10,619
Population of Tixan under 15: 6,695
Previous cost of 30 minute bus ride from Alausi to Tixan: 40 cents
Current cost of same bus ride after price hikes: 50 cents
Number of times bus guy has said "Texas?" after I said "Tixan" when asked where I'm going: 3
Cost of lunch in Tixan (soup, rice, meat, salad, juice): $1.50

Number of nutrition/hygiene surveys I've done at the clinic: 82
Number of women who have walked out of survey because they couldn't understand me: 1

Percent of interviewees who traveled one hour or more to clinic from home: 54
Percent of interviewees who walked to clinic: 41
Percent of interviewees who report eating meat 2 times a week or less: 81
Percent of interviewees who own a milk cow: 58
Percent of interviewees who own chickens: 30
Percent of interviewees who report always boiling drinking water for their kids: 35
Percent of interviewees who report always boiling drinking water for themselves: 30
Percent of interviewees who have a family vegetable garden: 53
Percent of interviewees who report eating vegetables every day: 50
Top three vegetables that interviewees report consuming frequently: Chard, carrot, cabbage
Percent of interviewees who report eating fruit every day: 15
Top three fruits that interviewees report consuming frequently: Apple, banana, orange/mandarin

Typical hours of running water at host house: 4:30 am to 9:00 pm
Number of pounds I've gained since I got to Ecuador: 13
Pairs of pants that will fit me if I gain any more weight: 0
Number of books I've read since June 1: 3
Number of pictures I've taken since June 1: 852

Alausi, Week Three

Hello from Alausi! This is where I live now.

ALAUSÍ

I've been here 3 weeks now. Here's a recap:

Day 1: Host mom tells me the family is moving September 1. Is that a problem? Uh, yeah.

Days 2-4: I spent these days getting to know the town, limping through some truly horrible Spanish, and wondering what I'm doing with my life. Also, I made Banana Bread.

And also wondering what the heck I´m eating. This is fruit?

Day 5: First day of work. Surprise! My counterpart got back a week early from vacation. We visited a couple rural clinics and I stood around awkwardly while my counterpart (a nutritionist) and the doctors discussed paperwork.

Day 6: Visited some more health clinics. This video shows a part of the road to a particularly remote clinic in Sevilla. Consider taking a Dramamine before watching this if you have a tendency to get car sick.

Day 7: First day at the clinic in Tixan. It was PACKED. One of the nurses introduced me to the entire waiting room (40ish people), I said a few stuttering sentences in Spanish, and started giving nutrition counseling. Later I went with the host family to pre-approve the new house. It has 5 bedrooms and a regular size kitchen!

Subcentro, aka clinic, in Tixán

Day 8: Hung out at the clinic in Tixan.

Day 9: Day tripped to Riobamba with a few of my fellow Omnibus 106ers. Ate a delicious cheeseburger. Later I screwed up 

the bus schedule and arrived 2 hours late to an extended family's baptism party. No one seemed concerned. I ate cuy at 11pm, danced with very old man around 12am, and drank watered down whiskey until 1:30am.

Day 10: Bought an oregano seedling for 25 cents... Let the herb garden begin! Made Oatmeal Cookies with 10 year old host nephew.

Day 11: Peace Corps came and approved new house. Yay, I have a place to live!

Day 12-15: Hung out at the clinic in Tixán, occasionally giving sensible nutrition advice, mostly reading health manuals, staring into space or Super Jewel Questing. Went with Vivi to day care center to set up possible cooking class with parents.

Kids under 5 in the Centro de Buen Vivir

Day 16: Are we ever going to move? Oh yes of course, why don't we start at 4pm Saturday afternoon? Also, Nick visited for dinner.

Day 17: More moving, mostly avoided by lunching with Meredith for many hours. (Don't judge; you would've done the same thing.)

Day 18: Met nutrition intern Viviana in Tixan and observed her giving informed counseling in intelligible Spanish. Took copious notes. Introduced myself to people at the PDA, or Plan del Desarollo del Área or Plan for Area Development. Talked about coordinating efforts to work in communities surrounding Tixán.

Vivi the nutrition intern gives a charla to the ladies in waiting.

Day 19: More observing in Tixán. Also started testing an abbreviated interview about nutrition and hygiene habits. Baked about 5 dozen Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Cookies (with Quinoa flour!).

Day 20: Handed out cookies to interview participants and their kids at the clinic in Tixan. Great reception! Note to self: No one will refuse to be interviewed in exchange for a cookie. 

Day 21: Tixán all day! Did lots more mini-interviews, which are are turning out to be extremely helpful. Ate an entire deep fried fish at lunch.

Alright, hope everyone is doing well! Send me an email or a letter or something. I would be delighted to hear from home!

Acting Intentionally

"Daily Reminder," a typographic woodburn plaque by Becky Murphy

On the eve of our Swearing In, I've got a lot on my mind. I don't feel thoughtful enough to elaborate much at the moment, because its the first free one I've had in 11 weeks! Almost. What I can say is that I'm not taking this experience lightly and I feel truly determined to make the most of my time here in Ecuador. We've discussed the Role of the Volunteer in Development ad naseum during training, but the truth is I'm just beginning to grasp the enormity of my job and the potential difficulties I'm going to face in the months ahead. And I really think it's going to be an awesome challenge.

I saw the piece above on Design is Mine (a delightful design blog by a fellow Portlander) and thought that it really captured the importance of acting intentionally, which is a crucial part of being a PCV. Why do we do what we do? What's the end game? We've talked a lot about sustainability in terms of project design and implementation and I think that asking "Will I be proud of this in a year?" could be a really useful question to analyze not only the validity of a project, but your personal motivations for doing it. I don't think that the answer always always need to be "yes"... but having some foresight, or at least attempting to have some, is important.

I swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer Wednesday morning! I move to Alausi for reals on Thursday! Let the games being.

Also, my new address is:
Chloe Pete
Correo Central
Alausi-Chimborazo
ECUADOR

Send me a letter and I will send you a kiss! Plus, I just uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Flickr. Yes, everything is as beautiful as it looks.

Week 10

Hello! I really thought I'd be better at posting updates more consistently since I've got an embarrassing amount of blogging experience, but it turns out that I don't really like writing about daily events. Its boring. I prefer to write about Ideas and Things. Maybe one day I will do that.

So I've got just 6 days left of training! Its very weird to think that in 2 weeks I will be moved into my new host family's house in Alausi. For many weeks it has felt like training would never end. Ever. And yet here we are, in week 10, and the passage of time shocks me once again.

Anyway, last week was our second technical trip so I was in Ecuador's biggest city, Guayaquil, for a couple days with the health program. The trip from Quito is 10 hours by bus so Monday and Friday were traveling days and we only had 3 days to work. I gave a couple charlas (talks/presentations) on HIV/AIDS and STIs to teenagers in high school. One class had 45 kids. Ridiculous! The charlas didn't go all that bad, but there were plenty of awkward moments considering my Spanish is not totally capable of facilitating sex discussions just yet. Especially when you throw in the coastal accent, which is faster and less anunciated. I had little to no idea what the students were saying. The good thing about these experiences is that so many funny and weird things happen during the charlas that could never happen if we were more prepared. You just have to laugh when a fellow volunteer says "huevos" in reference to female eggs leaving the ovaries, when in fact that translates to "balls" in Spanish.

In other news, I have some intestinal problems again, which is always fun. I ate well in Guayaquil, lots of fish and shrimp, but I guess it was too much. Or maybe it was the fried fish I had for lunch on Friday at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere on the way home. Personally, I think it was the combination of many, many hours of traveling with little sleep and several stressful days of work. My host family sort of hates the coast (because they live in the Sierra and its like some kind of regional rule or something) so they think its the seafood and people that made me sick. Probably.

Well, I suppose thats all for now. I will try to get inspired to write more soon! Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to know.

Alausi!

45 First look at Alausi, a photo by chelopate on Flickr.

Hey everyone! I got my site assignment last week and I am delighted to report that I will be spending the next two years in Alausi!

Located in the central province of Chimborazo, Alausi is the beautiful home to 6500 residents (a number which I have yet to confirm, so please do not hold me to it) and an enormous statute of Saint Peter.

You all must visit. It is so lovely you will cry. Promise!

More to come very soon.

Tech Trip!

Our group!, a photo by chelopate on Flickr.

Here´s a pic from our first tech trip. This is immediately post-banana harvest. Yep, we cut down all those bunches from the trees! Pretty awesome.

The tech trips are a chance for us to visit different parts of Ecuador and practice some of the skills we´ll be using at our sites. This trip we went to Santo Domingo, Pedro Vicente and Puerto Quito, which are about 3.5-4 hours west of Quito. We gave 4 charlas, or talks, about nutrition and hygiene to school children, mothers and young people at an evening high school. The trip ended at a finca, or farm, which is where we did the banana thing. I swam in the lovely, clean river and got attacked by a variety of strange bugs and mosquitoes. I didn´t want to leave!

Next week we´ll be finding out where we´re going to be stationed in Ecuador for the next 2 years. Wednesday we´ll know our sites and Thursday we´ll take off on our own for a week-long site visit. I´m so anxious to find out where I´ll be!

More stories to come, ya mismo.

Siga, no mas :)

Week Three

I've been here for 3 weeks! Wow. I'm finally getting used the training schedule which feels fantastic because I thought it would never happen. It felt like I'd be in a perpetual state of exhaustion and confusion and emotional instability forever. I'm delighted to be proven wrong!

To be sure, I haven't mastered the art of keeping a good attitude during PC training, but I've stopped keeping a list of the crazy and/or frustrating things that happen and I'm trying my darndest to go with the flow. Since I last wrote, several exciting things have happened that have made training rather delightful:

1. Huertos = Gardens! One of the three main goals of the PC Community Health program in Ecuador is Food Security and Nutrition. (The other two goals are Hygiene/Water Sanitation and Sexual/Reprodutive Health.) We're focusing on small home plots and tire planters so people can grow a few extra veggies to add nutrition and variety to their diets... and maybe even sell any extra bounty for profit. Ecuadorian staples are white rice, white bread and potatoes (a small mountain of each for both lunch and dinner) none of which are particularly nutritious, so at my site I'll be trying to convince people to add more vegetables and whole grains to their meals.

We planted a small test garden of spinach, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beets, cilantro and camomile. It was fantastic! I really enjoy digging and planting and hoeing around in the garden :) Fingers crossed, we should be able to harvest the radishes and lettuce before we take off for our sites in mid-August. Yum!

2. Cultural trip to Zuleta! A tiny indigenous community in the Imababura province near Cayambe, Zuleta has stunning views of the now extinct Volcan Cayambe, lovely hand-embroidered goods, and a rich tradition. (Fun fact: At 5790m, Mount Cayambe is Ecuador's 3rd highest peak and is the highest point in the world through with the equator passes directly.) It was an action packed 2 days with lots of hiking, plowing, planting, making bread, eating, dancing, and saying "I could live here for 2 years." Nice little vacation to break up the monotony of training. I posted a few pictures on my Flickr, if you're interested!

3. Cooking demonstrations! I suppose I'm really just enthusiastic about anything relating to food. As part of Community Health's Food Security and Nutrition goal, we've had 3 cooking demonstrations featuring typical dishes from the three main areas of Ecuador: the Coast, the Sierra, and the Orient/Jungle.  I've enjoyed these demonstrations immensely, and not only because we get to eat at the end. In the past, I've done small cooking classes with adults and I really loved them. And also I love cooking, so... yeah. Love.

Anyway, it's important for me to know how to cook Ecuadorian food because how will I ever convince anyone to make changes to their diet if they don't taste some of the delicious options? Obviously, we want to maintain the cultural importance of food, so we're not forcing people to only drink soy milk and eat tofu. The cooking demonstrations with show people how to add more veggies to their menestra (traditional lentil dish) or how to use different spices/techniques to liven up their chicken without keeping on the skin and using a bucket of salt.

Next week, we've got our first technical trip, and we're going to Santo Domingo, Pedro Vicente and Puerto Quito, which are all about 4 hours west of Quito. We'll be visiting a few schools and giving nutrition and hygiene talks to kids and teens, and a "Corazon Feliz" (Happy Heart) talk to a group of adults one evening. All in Spanish! Yikes. Public speaking in a foreign language is what Peace Corps is all about. I kind of feel bad for our first groups because surely our "charlas" (talks) will be a little rough around the edges. However, our Community Health trainer has assured us that these will probably be the hardest charlas we'll ever have to do since we know nothing about the community and they don't know us at all. When we get to our sites, we'll be doing lots of surveys and talking to people about their wants and needs before we inundate them with boring charlas about carbohydrates or whatever, so we'll know our audience! Which is muy importante.

Things are going well! I can't wait to see more of Ecuador and get down to business.