Monday, March 17th, 2003
      I found out in Spanish class that a bus on the same hair-raising route between Quito and Santo Domingo that we had taken to get here had plunged off the precariously perched highway and fell more than 1000 feet down the mountainside. In order to get out of Spanish class early, we told the “language facilitator” we needed her to show us how to use a bank card. We had no such need, but it successfully got us out of class for the day. We then found a restaurant so good, or rather, with food so non-Ecuadorian, that I ate myself into a delirium. Our “language facilitator” then left us to do what we really had wanted to do all along: roam the city aimlessly. We refused to go home. We belched loudly and played 10 cent video games because they were stupid and frolicked about without the least reservation.

      When I got home, I found my bamboo had arrived. Micah and I set about hacking it into strips with machetes on my porch. A small crowd of bored neighbors assembled to watch. The woman who plays my mom on TV repeatedly intruded on my work to correct everything I did. That's how EcuaMoms are down here. She irritated me. If there's anything worse than having a crowd of Ecuadorians staring slack jawed at you while you're trying to work, it is having that same slack jawed crowd watching your EcuaMom treating you like a complete idiot. Eventually she took the machete away from me and did all the work herself. I didn't need that. I will now say something that has been on my mind for almost 29 years: A large percentage of you people out there become a bigger obstacle to a project when consulted for something than stumbling through the project in ignorance would have been. I have been encountering you people my entire life. It is time for you to understand that when someone asks you, for example, “where can I find bamboo around here?”, they are not asking, “what should I do with the bamboo after I get it?” or “how should I go about getting this bamboo home?” They are not saying “why don't you just take over the design and construction of my chicken coop” and they are definitely not saying “would you please override my free will the very second I deviate from exactly what you would have done at that very moment.” You people need to check yourselves. Being consulted on a single dilemma is not the same as being coroneted king of the entire project. If you ever find yourself making suggestions to the back of someone's head, please stop yourself immediately and go take a cold shower. You are being a pain in the ass. Later on, the first lightning and thunderstorm took place since I have been here. It has rained a lot here, gently, but never with lightning. As the rain pounded our tin roof, 3 locals showed up. They were brothers and sisters. We could not communicate over the noise of the rain. I think I consented to giving one or all of them English lessons. I am not, as yet, sure.

  Tuesday, March 18th, 2003
      I am so done with this crap that is supposed to be Spanish class. I am so done. When I took Spanish in college, it was merciless. They gave us an almost impossible workload. Here, they give you baby homework but occupy as much as 8 hours of your day. In a university in Ohio, it makes sense to inundate students with grammatical lessons and vocab tests and “all things 2-dimentional” concerning the Spanish language. But here we are living in the real deal- a 3D Spanish world- and yet we are hugely distracted from this valuable resource by day long 2-dimensional Spanish lessons that would be ineffective in any country. Meanwhile, we have many other things going on that are getting pushed to the outer remnants of the day. Things such as networking in the community and learning about farm animals and bussing into town to buy things- and most important of all- just having a little free time to blow off some steam and repair one's tattered sanity. But there is too little free time and our involvement with the 3D world is devalued because we are stressed and always rushing through it to get too many things done. It's like being introduced to 10 strangers all at once- you'll remember not one of their names. The tighter they wind us, the faster the world flies past and the less we profit from being here. So in short, if you've already had 2 years of Spanish in college, spending all day in Spanish classes while immersed in a Spanish-speaking country is actually counter-productive.

      So being in Spanish class today was not at all sitting well with me. I was kind of a jerk, actually. I couldn't fake like it didn't bug the hell out of me. We saw a few pointless videos about Ecuador for which I didn't even pretend to pay attention. Then we went to a tree nursery for something Micah and Jason needed and then I just ditched the group as they headed for a KFC in town. I spent the next 5 hours at an internet place working on this website. It takes so long because the connection speeds suck. But I don't mind it because being anonymous and motionless and clicking things on a slowly opening page for hours in some corner of an internet place is the only respite from the non-stop chaos of life that I get here.

      On my way home from Santo Domingo, a massive downpour began and our bus had no windshield wipers. On top of this, the bus was running late and for that reason the bus driver drove like a man possessed. Even the Ecuadorians on the bus found the situation to be over the top. When I got home, the rain poured down so hard it made conversation of any kind impossible in our tin-roofed abode. Various EcuaFamily were visiting but could only drift about in silence as the rain smashed down. When it subsided a little, I placed a prescheduled call to my parents in the US.

  Wednesday, March 19th, 2003
      The Peace Corps wasted much of my time again today. We all bussed to Calazacon but mostly just milled around there because whatever they had been planning fell through. Later, Animal Production climbed into vans and bussed to -of all places- Micah's house to give injections on an iron supplement to the piglets there. I gave a piglet an intra-muscular injection. I held it up by its back legs and sank the needle half-way into its thigh. I held the syringe with my 4 fingers and pressed the plunger hard with my thumb. The plunger would not budge. I pressed as hard as I could and eventually launched the entire syringe downward and out of my grasp, thereby sinking the entire needle inside the thigh. The piglet courteously ignored my blunder. I pulled the syringe back out to the half-way mark and dropped 1 cc of iron into him to stave off the onset of anemia, which young pigs are vulnerable to. Other people cut the pig's teeth out with a pair of side-cuts. The teeth feel nothing and serve only to damage the mother when the piglets feed. Clipping the teeth is like clipping fingernails.

      Then we returned to Calazacon to eat. I ordered “a lunch” and put so much ahi on it that I was delirious with bliss. I ordered a second lunch and put even more ahi on it. Full and glowing with endorphins, I drifted for a spell among the wonders of nirvana. Then I returned to the “college” and waited from 1:30pm to 4:00 pm to be interviewed for some worthless crap the Peace Corps does. At 4:00pm, I had had enough and just left, as did Micah, Grace and Jason from Talwaza. Micah and I had plans to explore a hill near San Miguel- Micah needing leaves for his project and I needing sticks for my chicken coop. EcuaMom interfered with the plans and redirected our search to “the coliseum”, or chicken fighting arena, to score a few actual boards someone had there. Locals were beginning to assemble at the “coliseum” for a town meeting about something concerning potable water. We got our wood and took it back to my backyard. Between EcuaMom and a guy who attached himself to the project, the plans were completely hijacked and changed into something that required more wood than we actually had. So once again the chicken coop is on hold. Sadaam's deadline passed.

  Thursday, March 20th, 2003
      Calazacon. The US ambassador to Ecuador came to talk to us. She was a fairly impressive human in spite of the fact that I caught her red-handed trying to stroke our egos. After lunch, we learned that anti-war protests in Quito had turned violent. Glass bottles were thrown at the embassy and police blew tear gas and beat everyone up. In Santo Domingo, mass peaceful protests of school kids in uniform with balloons took place. All embassy non-essentials were sent home. We had our “site fair” today, which was a PowerPoint presentation of little value that discussed all the potential places in Ecuador we will be living after training. Then 1 page descriptions of each place were passed out. We have until Monday to choose our top 3 favorites and we will hear the verdicts on Tuesday. I went home to look over my sheets. EcuaMom was very excited. She snatched the papers out of my hand but found them in English. She made me break out a map and indicate each location on the map. Even though she acted like she had never seen a map of Ecuador before, she declared which site was the closest to her and demanded I take that one. I replied by doing impressions of a little fire-eyed 5 year old neighbor girl who speaks very crisply and is all business all the time. EcuaMom nearly died laughing.

      Then I mentioned my unfinished coop. EcuaMom slipped outside to discuss something with unseen persons wearing a wise ass expression on her face. In a matter of seconds, 2 men came into the house carrying large, sturdy pieces of wood and proceeded to finish my entire coop while I stood around blinking and scratching bug bites. I suspect the men were slipped a little silver. Micah stopped over while I was eating dinner and took up residence at the table with me. EcuaMom was especially talkative so Micah and I kept her in stitches with mischievous observations and inquiries of a facetious innocence. EcuaMom then reminded me of my earlier impressions, so I broke out a short story whose punch line was yet another impersonation of the fire-eyed 5 year old (Karin) and again it brought down the house. Then I turned my clippers loose on Micah's head on the front porch, taking his hair down to 1/8th inch. The very moment I began cutting his hair, the underemployed throng of sophomoric men in front of the tienda exploded in laughter. I have no idea why. They zinged endless one-liners. The clippers seemed unable to draw enough electricity from the outlet and kept getting stopped in Micah's thick hair. His irritation grew by the minute as this prolonged his haircut and thus exposure to one-liners. Everyone else then wanted haircuts too but I told them the machine was too hot.

      Micah went home and Grace showed up just as footage of the Quito protests came on TV. They were pretty wild. It definitely got violent. Grace, Micah and I spent the rest of the night sitting in front of the tienda, which on this night, for some reason, led people both up the street and down to try to catch clandestine glimpses of our activity.

  Friday, March 21st, 2003
      Spanish classes today consisted of the San Miguel and Talwaza gringos plus language facilitators getting together on my front porch to cook “coconut fish”. It was time wasted that could have been spent better elsewhere. At about 1:00 PM it broke up and the gringos of both towns bussed to Santo Domingo to internet.

      It appears, from internet news sites, that Iraq is getting thrashed and the whole world is brimming with massive, often violent protests. Then I bought 5 two-week old chicks for my newly completed coop along with feed and vaccines. I bussed it all home and after vaccinations, welcomed the 5 new chicks to their humble abode.

      I blew town at 7:30pm with Micah and Grace to Talwaza and "went fishing." At about 1:00 AM, we San Migs began our long walk (or stumble) back from Talwaza. As could be expected, all the bravo country dogs along the way went bananas and had to be fought off with sticks and stones the entire hour-long hike.

  Saturday, March 22nd, 2003
      I was feeling rough from last night's festivities so I spent the whole day doing paperwork from my swinging hammock on the front porch. It was a strange day: sunny, not too hot and yet the streets were all totally empty. Occasionally, a kid would shuffle up to the tienda to buy candy or popsicles, maybe once every 45 minutes someone would walk past with a load of wet laundry they had just washed in the river, but besides that, San Miguel was a ghost town. All the gringos were in Santo Domingo for various reasons.

      At 3:00 PM, the big cockfight at the “coliseum” nearly got me to leave my porch, but alas, the 1 dollar entrance fee plus the probability that the fights would not begin on time led me to renew my vows to the hammock. I got a lot of work done and later made a very long call to the US.

  Sunday, March 23rd, 2003
      I didn't realize it was my birthday today until EcuaMom reminded me. That triggered the secondary memory that I also had a field trip to the Tsatchilas today. I had been thinking I had the whole day free. I shuffled over to Grace's house to see what time we were supposed to leave. She was watching the local news. A big fire at an armory at the naval base in Guayaquil was making huge explosions and sending giant shells flying into nearby neighborhoods. The footage they showed featured various holes blasted in roofs and walls by renegade shells. For some reason, the shells seemed particularly prone to hitting refrigerators and blowing the food and shelves out all over the kitchen floors.

      Soon after my arrival, Micah showed up. Micah and Grace snuck away with the little girl Grace lives with (Viviana) and a moment later they emerged from a bedroom with a birthday card Viviana had drawn, as well as a pen/comb/mirror thing that Grace had bought. The card featured a friendship poem as well as many little chickens because Viviana had heard that I was raising some.

      Tsatchala was a semi-fake traditional indigenous community that is operated as a sort of theme park by modern indigenous peoples. By day, those indigenous folks dress in hand woven clothes and paint their hair red. By night, they sit in front of TV's in jeans and t-shirts. We were welcomed by a shaman type who purified us by whacking us repeatedly with a handful of plants. Then he dipped 2 stones into a bowl of liquid and touched the stones first to our temples, and then to the backs of our necks. When I exited the purification area, the places the liquid had touched began to get warm, like a watered-down solution of Ben-Gay had been applied. Then we were shown how the Indians dye their hair with bright red seeds, how things are weaved and basically all the stuff of everyday life in traditional communities. We had a spear throwing contest. My lance actually hit the post we were aiming for. We were then fed a meal of burnt chicken and a platano served atop a leaf.

      Later, we were led to an outdoor area beneath a thatched roof. The men played various musical instruments while the women danced. The dance floor cleared and they asked for whomever had hit the post earlier with their thrown lance. That was me. I had to come to the middle of the dirt dance floor where an indigenous girl placed a necklace on me. The music then resumed and the girl began dancing. She told me to dance too. I tried very hard not to understand what she was saying, but after the third time I simply cut the crap and attempted to replicate the dancing I had seen earlier. Of course I was absurdly bad and yes the whole ordeal was excruciating. My fellow Peace Corps nimrods dove for their cameras. A minute later, everyone else was also ordered to dance and I instantly vanished in a crowd of clumsy gringos gyrating awkwardly and looking chagrined.

      After Tsatchila, 6 or so of us Peace Corps folks went into Santo Domingo for ice cream. Then everyone dispersed and I went home. I would liked to have ducked into an internet place and spent the rest of the day clicking things in anonymity, but I had told EcuaMom I would return at 2:00 PM, and since it was my birthday, I didn't want to be a no-show for anything she may have had planned. She had nothing planned. Soon after I arrived home, Micah and Grace came by and we went to the river to swim. A few little girls joined our procession along the way and we spent the next few hours diving, splashing, clambering over felled bamboo and behaving at an average age of 8 years old.

      We borrowed a bar of soap from nearby bathers and left the area dapper and smelling good. Micah and I immediately got sucked into a game of basketball at the school yard and our cleanliness was swiftly obliterated. The best thing about sports in Ecuador is that no one knows any of the rules. This bothers some people, but not me. I prefer people double dribble and miss 85% of the baskets shot. I would rather have 1/3 of the players on the court be girls and children running up and down and ultimately serving no purpose. Who cares, let the testosterone junkies vie for their rung on the ladder. I like chaos.

      Micah had a wound on his hand reopen so he, Grace and I went across the street to my house to raid my first aid kit. We discussed going into Santo Domingo to eat at a pizza place, but we weren't sure if EcuaMom had a birthday dinner planned. We didn't want to ask her directly because we feared that if she didn't have anything planned, she would feel like a heel that we had asked, then lie and say she did in fact have something planned and then run around trying desperately to scrape something together. For this reason, we scrapped plans to head out for pizza. I then proceeded to eat the nastiest non-birthday dinner ever by myself at a big empty table.

      Micah and Grace drifted back over and we consumed cokes on the front porch while they apologized profusely for the under acknowledged birthday I was having. I assured them I could not care less about things such as birthdays, but like everyone I tell that to, they remained unconvinced. Then 2 amorous dogs got tied up in the street and we forgot about birthdays and such and changed locations so as to get a better view. You heard right. YOU try a month in the campo and see what passes as entertainment.

WEEK 4       WEEK 6

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