This last weekend, I ate half of a chocolate cookie pie and spent the day at Jas' place watching Disney movies. We got really into the songs. As we sat there, drinking wine and watching Pochantus, we started laughing uncontrollably. This is our Peace Corps Life: meeting up with other Americans, not to have crazy wild parties, but to watch Pochohantus and eat cookies. Who knew that this would be Peace Corps?
The host family situation has cleared up a bit. That's one of the great things about being here- you really learn ALL of your flaws and your strengths. I learned that one of my flaws is that I hold things in until I burst. I'm like a New Orleans levee cerca 2004, and two weeks ago I had my own personal Hurricane Katrina. And people here really don't hold things in. I'm always in awe of my 14 year old host sister, who says every annoyance immediately (usually directed at her mother). "Ayyyyyy MAAAAAA!" she shrieks (usually right into my ear, since I'm usually sitting next to her, leaving me half deaf for the night. Teenage angst is LOUD.).
I finally had to talk to my host family and explain why I was so upset. They didn't really understand why being called "lazy" or a "pig" or a "man woman" or "someone who will never get married" was so offensive. I guess they thought that by saying these things, they would spur me to action, to become an insta-Martha Stewart. But I'm not like that- I hate being told what to do if I don't see a point behind it. So telling me to sweep every day doesn't hold weight unless I can personally see a benefit from it. They haven't gotten that. And they don't view themselves as insulting me, even though in American culture, being called a pig or lazy is extremely insulting. Oh well. The levees burst, I tried to pretend that they didn't by ignoring them, and it all came to a head anyways. After a year here, I am still butting heads with the culture constantly. Hopefully with a little love and better communication, it will all get smoothed out.
Cool things I get to do this week:
1. Meet a group of needy kids whose parents don't have enough money to feed them lunch, who get fed by and hang out with a group of church ladies. I am going into meet them on Tuesday and hopefully can do some fun activities with them after lunch.
2. Revamped my schedule to include the middle schoolers. HEYYY puberty and braces!
3. The rector said that he would give me the keys to hte pool and become an official coach, so I get to talk to the Cubans and see if they will cede control of the girls swimming team to me. Or let me work with them with all the teams.
So many things happening! I feel stupidhappy about it all, even though so much of the time, I am screwing up. But learning and growing from it all. That's the lovely part. I'm glad I had this host family freakout- now I really know how I process with and deal with being angry. I ignore it and wait for it to boil over. Not effective! Not useful! Completely counterproductive.
Hopefully some good will come out of all of this....
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
estreza, estreza, estreza
I don't know what I thought life would really be like before I came here. I think I imagined living in the jungle, waking up to monkeys walking over my roof, and hearing the buzzing of a million insects every night. I imagined knowing my entire village, peeing outside in a latrine, and becoming a generally enlightened person as a result of the whole experience.
None of that has happened. I am in a wealthy town, a "Posh Corps" town, where the average resident drives an SUV and where the majority of the teenagers own Blackberries (which cost about $600 here). A town of 20,000, which can feel suffocatingly small at times, but where I know that most people still don't know who I am. So, it's small enough that everyone pretty much knows everyone elses' business, but big enough that at the end of two years, most people still won't know me.
I pee in a toilet, although above it there is a "window" with absolutely no covering to the outer world, so that all slugs, mosquitoes, ants, cockroaches, moths, and even rats can come in at will. I've seen each of those creatures in here at least once.
The hardest part about being here for me isn't the insects or the rats or even the crying baby that lives next door that keeps me up at night. The hardest thing for me is dealing with the people.
Now, there are tons of wonderful things about the Latin culture. Many people have huge hearts and are incredibly generous. They love their families fiercely and stick together like Pat Robertson supporters to Republican candidates. Brothers and sisters hang out at school, which is so alien to me. My sister and I, like proper American teenagers, avoided each other like the plague at social events. We never went to parties together or had the same friends. Here, siblings chill together after schol, go to parties together, go shopping together, and even have the same group of friends. Mothers are incredibly attached to their children. Families gather every weekend for a big, long lunch, including soup and a big main plate that almost always includes rice and some kind of meat. They sit and talk and laugh for about two hours, go off to take naps, return at 4 for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread (called the entrecomida), scatter again, and return at 6 or 7 for a small dinner. It's a beautiful and calm life that the people here seem to have, a life centered around the togetherness and joy of family.
The bad thing about the culture is the rigidity of gender roles. Many women in this town (more from the older generation) are taught that their most important duties in life are that of a wife, mother, and homemaker. The house should be neat at all times, and beautifully decorated. The floors should be swept, the bed made, everything organized neatly, the shirts ironed crisply. Failure to keep your home beautiful reflects horribly on you as a woman. It means you are a machona, a man-woman, a woman who doesn't know her place.
As you all know, American women aren't taught the same thing (at least, not the women where I live). We are encouraged to play sports, to develop ourselves. This Olympic Games, the majority of the US medal winners were women. We are encouraged to get good grades, play a musical instrument, go to college, get a good job, get an apartment. Women in their mid twenties should have a fabulous life- full of freedom, full of friends, family, social activities, fashionable clothes, and dates. Some women get engaged and married at 23 or 24, but so many more wait until they are 29, 30, 34. There is no rush to marry- why should there be? Weddings are expensive, freedom is enticing, and we want to know that we have found The One before we get married.
My mom was a feminist, and never taught us to stay at home once we got married. Working and having a life outside of kids and a home is a value I absorbed as a little kid. Because of this, knowing how to iron perfectly or make tons of food never has been my top priority- they've been skills I've picked up slowly (and painfully) along the ride.
This I've been having major problems with my host family. I get criticized almost daily by my host mom, who says that I am lazy for not cleaning more and that I will not be able to find a husband if I don't learn to be more of a "woman." When she says "woman," she, of course, means a Latina woman, who values family above all, and stays at home to care for her kids and her husband. This idea is so foreign to me. I'm so stressed by the constant criticism, the constant nagging, to be a "better woman." When you throw in the crying baby next door, the puppy that poops all over my host, and the general loudness of living on the same street as both the market and the dance hall, it's too much to deal with. It's driving me crazy and making me stressed out. I feel like I cannot escape the loudness of life here.
So, I am trying to move. Hopefully, this week I can find a new apartment to live in, one that is both cheaper and quieter. Cross your fingers for me, because finding an empty apartment is pretty difficult here in Zaruma. I don't know how I will explain this all to my host family, but I've come to realize that they aren't my real family, so it doesn't matter. I will be a horrible volunteer if I continue to be so miserable and so stressed out.
So, deep breath, one, two, three, LEAP! Who knows how this saga will unfold.
None of that has happened. I am in a wealthy town, a "Posh Corps" town, where the average resident drives an SUV and where the majority of the teenagers own Blackberries (which cost about $600 here). A town of 20,000, which can feel suffocatingly small at times, but where I know that most people still don't know who I am. So, it's small enough that everyone pretty much knows everyone elses' business, but big enough that at the end of two years, most people still won't know me.
I pee in a toilet, although above it there is a "window" with absolutely no covering to the outer world, so that all slugs, mosquitoes, ants, cockroaches, moths, and even rats can come in at will. I've seen each of those creatures in here at least once.
The hardest part about being here for me isn't the insects or the rats or even the crying baby that lives next door that keeps me up at night. The hardest thing for me is dealing with the people.
Now, there are tons of wonderful things about the Latin culture. Many people have huge hearts and are incredibly generous. They love their families fiercely and stick together like Pat Robertson supporters to Republican candidates. Brothers and sisters hang out at school, which is so alien to me. My sister and I, like proper American teenagers, avoided each other like the plague at social events. We never went to parties together or had the same friends. Here, siblings chill together after schol, go to parties together, go shopping together, and even have the same group of friends. Mothers are incredibly attached to their children. Families gather every weekend for a big, long lunch, including soup and a big main plate that almost always includes rice and some kind of meat. They sit and talk and laugh for about two hours, go off to take naps, return at 4 for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread (called the entrecomida), scatter again, and return at 6 or 7 for a small dinner. It's a beautiful and calm life that the people here seem to have, a life centered around the togetherness and joy of family.
The bad thing about the culture is the rigidity of gender roles. Many women in this town (more from the older generation) are taught that their most important duties in life are that of a wife, mother, and homemaker. The house should be neat at all times, and beautifully decorated. The floors should be swept, the bed made, everything organized neatly, the shirts ironed crisply. Failure to keep your home beautiful reflects horribly on you as a woman. It means you are a machona, a man-woman, a woman who doesn't know her place.
As you all know, American women aren't taught the same thing (at least, not the women where I live). We are encouraged to play sports, to develop ourselves. This Olympic Games, the majority of the US medal winners were women. We are encouraged to get good grades, play a musical instrument, go to college, get a good job, get an apartment. Women in their mid twenties should have a fabulous life- full of freedom, full of friends, family, social activities, fashionable clothes, and dates. Some women get engaged and married at 23 or 24, but so many more wait until they are 29, 30, 34. There is no rush to marry- why should there be? Weddings are expensive, freedom is enticing, and we want to know that we have found The One before we get married.
My mom was a feminist, and never taught us to stay at home once we got married. Working and having a life outside of kids and a home is a value I absorbed as a little kid. Because of this, knowing how to iron perfectly or make tons of food never has been my top priority- they've been skills I've picked up slowly (and painfully) along the ride.
This I've been having major problems with my host family. I get criticized almost daily by my host mom, who says that I am lazy for not cleaning more and that I will not be able to find a husband if I don't learn to be more of a "woman." When she says "woman," she, of course, means a Latina woman, who values family above all, and stays at home to care for her kids and her husband. This idea is so foreign to me. I'm so stressed by the constant criticism, the constant nagging, to be a "better woman." When you throw in the crying baby next door, the puppy that poops all over my host, and the general loudness of living on the same street as both the market and the dance hall, it's too much to deal with. It's driving me crazy and making me stressed out. I feel like I cannot escape the loudness of life here.
So, I am trying to move. Hopefully, this week I can find a new apartment to live in, one that is both cheaper and quieter. Cross your fingers for me, because finding an empty apartment is pretty difficult here in Zaruma. I don't know how I will explain this all to my host family, but I've come to realize that they aren't my real family, so it doesn't matter. I will be a horrible volunteer if I continue to be so miserable and so stressed out.
So, deep breath, one, two, three, LEAP! Who knows how this saga will unfold.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Second Trimester Eve
Zaruma was dead today. The streets were nearly empty. Cars whizzed by, full of families going to El Cisne, a church two hours away that is in fiestas all of this month. Dogs wandered around the streets, bored, looking for something to do. Men sat on the steps of their houses, looking out. Kids ran around together, kicking soccer balls and racing each other.
Tomorrow is the start of the second trimester at my colegio, 26 de Noviembre, and everyone is gearing up for it after three blissful weeks of vacation. I don't know how it will go. I hope the teachers come to my workshops, and my new schedule works out. I hope that they're more willing to try new activities out of the book, and to plan with me. I basically just hope we can reach a happy place where they feel like they're being helped, and I feel like they're benefitting and putting in the time. Basically, like I'm being productive, and a Good Volunteer. We'll see.
The pool's open, which has been blissfulincrediblelovely. I've been going with my two youngest host "nieces". The older one, Dani, is a little dolphin. She is a fast learning, tall and still growing girl with no fear. I LOVE kids like that. I've taught her how to dive (although she still flops her back feet), how to swim the freestyle (though breathing is so so) and how to do a streamline. The youngest, Ari, the baby, likes to practice kicking and smiles and shakes her head when I try and get her to do freestyle. But her sister is toughter than me, and, with both of us, I think she'll learn soon.
The pool is like this rectangular, chlorinated, blue body of hope. Hope that the swim team will become a reality. Hope that I can actually teach kids how to swim, help build their confidence, and give them a place where they can exercise, have fun, and take risks. Everytime I leave the pool, I'm so happy. I'm glowing with peace, my muscles sore and aching, the sun drying off my hair and my arms. The mini traffic jams and groups of staring guys seem more manageable, less annoying. It's pure bliss.
Tomorrow is the start of the second trimester at my colegio, 26 de Noviembre, and everyone is gearing up for it after three blissful weeks of vacation. I don't know how it will go. I hope the teachers come to my workshops, and my new schedule works out. I hope that they're more willing to try new activities out of the book, and to plan with me. I basically just hope we can reach a happy place where they feel like they're being helped, and I feel like they're benefitting and putting in the time. Basically, like I'm being productive, and a Good Volunteer. We'll see.
The pool's open, which has been blissfulincrediblelovely. I've been going with my two youngest host "nieces". The older one, Dani, is a little dolphin. She is a fast learning, tall and still growing girl with no fear. I LOVE kids like that. I've taught her how to dive (although she still flops her back feet), how to swim the freestyle (though breathing is so so) and how to do a streamline. The youngest, Ari, the baby, likes to practice kicking and smiles and shakes her head when I try and get her to do freestyle. But her sister is toughter than me, and, with both of us, I think she'll learn soon.
The pool is like this rectangular, chlorinated, blue body of hope. Hope that the swim team will become a reality. Hope that I can actually teach kids how to swim, help build their confidence, and give them a place where they can exercise, have fun, and take risks. Everytime I leave the pool, I'm so happy. I'm glowing with peace, my muscles sore and aching, the sun drying off my hair and my arms. The mini traffic jams and groups of staring guys seem more manageable, less annoying. It's pure bliss.
Musings from the almost-year mark
It's Friday night here. Pretty typical night. The neighborhood boys are playing trucks down the steps outside of my house. A family who will sell fruit at the market tomorrow arrived, and a swaddle of children and babies are all watching their parents arrange the food for all the people who will swarm our street tomorrow morning. One of these days I need to take my camera out there and photograph the chaos of the market.
This last week, I went up to Quito to go see the Peace Corps dentist. Fourteen hours on a bus and I'm transported into a big city with traffic jams, men in suits, and volcanoes in the distance. It's so nice being amidst the whirring of a city. It's like being back in DC. Hearing cars honk and seeing restaurant after restaurant, and not knowing a soul that passes me by on the street thrill me. The kabobs, the bus line, the Ecovia (metro) whirring by, not giving a damn that I'm there, flying by to the ticking, impatient City Clock.
I met some Trainees from Omnibus 108 who were about to swear in, and it struck me that we really aren't the "new" volunteers anymore. It's been almost a full year since we swore in. We're the old, seasoned, veterans who somehow, somehow, are still in the field, chugging along.
At the (almost) year mark, it's hard for me to say that I've accomplished a lot. I don't feel like I'm this giant, important figure in the community. I think that many people still don't know who I am. Sometimes I even wonder if the isolation is getting to me too much, and that instead of reading Tolstoy, I spend my free time watching movies or on the Internet. That, when given the chance, I'll sleep all morning. I thought that by this point, I'd be more established, more known, and more happy.
It seems like some of my projects are just now starting to take off. Like the teacher workshops. I've managed to wrangle all of the together for a few workshops, and we are planning to do more next week, and throughout the school year. I like working with them. I like getting them all together and trying to muddle through the English language with them.
The teenagers have been really hard to teach. Because of their age, they are constantly moody, constantly on their Blackberries, texting in class. Sometimes they come in with huge smiles, and other times they put their heads on their desks sullenly and don't want to participate. Some of the teenage boys ask me what I'm doing after school and want to hang out- HA! It's such a dramatic age. My seventeen year olds are on the cusp of leaving home, of becoming adults, of figuring out who they are.
I've gotten frustrated with them and been impatient. I don't see their English getting better. I don't see them improving, or trying. It's made me want to switch classes. But my boss told me the other day that in education, you need to wait until the end of the year to see any results. I won't know anything until the end of February. Then, we'll see if they improved. And if they didnt, she said, you readjust for next year.
Teachers are some of the most patient people on the planet. I mean, you have to deal with everything. Family and relationship problems walk into the classroom with the student. You have to deal with the kid whose angry because his stepmother is cruel, the girl who gave birth to twins last year, and the boy who is always sad because his mother had to leave him to work in the US. Then, you have to get them interested in the language. Then you have to teach it. Day in, day out, even when they give you bullshit and act like hyper monkeys. Even when all they want to do is ask you questions about the US, like
"are there only white people in the US?" (yes....that's why we have a black president)
"do you let boys pay for you on dates?"
"in the US, does everyone smoke marijuana?"
"how many wives do jewish men have?"
I always want to see quick flashy results. I want to hear them speaking the lanugage. I want to be surrounded by laughing children who are all speaking in English and who get enthusiastic and clap during every class. I want all of my teachers speaking English, for the whole class. I want to see them planning outside of their standard book. I want all of this, and I want it NOW! Now, now, now. But now never is what I think it is going to be- and it's always changing.
So, at the year mark, I feel a great reverence for the god of Patience, who is at best a passing acquaintance of mine. Hopefully, this year, we can be more aquaintance. It's a long haul. Slow and steady, slow and steady.
This last week, I went up to Quito to go see the Peace Corps dentist. Fourteen hours on a bus and I'm transported into a big city with traffic jams, men in suits, and volcanoes in the distance. It's so nice being amidst the whirring of a city. It's like being back in DC. Hearing cars honk and seeing restaurant after restaurant, and not knowing a soul that passes me by on the street thrill me. The kabobs, the bus line, the Ecovia (metro) whirring by, not giving a damn that I'm there, flying by to the ticking, impatient City Clock.
I met some Trainees from Omnibus 108 who were about to swear in, and it struck me that we really aren't the "new" volunteers anymore. It's been almost a full year since we swore in. We're the old, seasoned, veterans who somehow, somehow, are still in the field, chugging along.
At the (almost) year mark, it's hard for me to say that I've accomplished a lot. I don't feel like I'm this giant, important figure in the community. I think that many people still don't know who I am. Sometimes I even wonder if the isolation is getting to me too much, and that instead of reading Tolstoy, I spend my free time watching movies or on the Internet. That, when given the chance, I'll sleep all morning. I thought that by this point, I'd be more established, more known, and more happy.
It seems like some of my projects are just now starting to take off. Like the teacher workshops. I've managed to wrangle all of the together for a few workshops, and we are planning to do more next week, and throughout the school year. I like working with them. I like getting them all together and trying to muddle through the English language with them.
The teenagers have been really hard to teach. Because of their age, they are constantly moody, constantly on their Blackberries, texting in class. Sometimes they come in with huge smiles, and other times they put their heads on their desks sullenly and don't want to participate. Some of the teenage boys ask me what I'm doing after school and want to hang out- HA! It's such a dramatic age. My seventeen year olds are on the cusp of leaving home, of becoming adults, of figuring out who they are.
I've gotten frustrated with them and been impatient. I don't see their English getting better. I don't see them improving, or trying. It's made me want to switch classes. But my boss told me the other day that in education, you need to wait until the end of the year to see any results. I won't know anything until the end of February. Then, we'll see if they improved. And if they didnt, she said, you readjust for next year.
Teachers are some of the most patient people on the planet. I mean, you have to deal with everything. Family and relationship problems walk into the classroom with the student. You have to deal with the kid whose angry because his stepmother is cruel, the girl who gave birth to twins last year, and the boy who is always sad because his mother had to leave him to work in the US. Then, you have to get them interested in the language. Then you have to teach it. Day in, day out, even when they give you bullshit and act like hyper monkeys. Even when all they want to do is ask you questions about the US, like
"are there only white people in the US?" (yes....that's why we have a black president)
"do you let boys pay for you on dates?"
"in the US, does everyone smoke marijuana?"
"how many wives do jewish men have?"
I always want to see quick flashy results. I want to hear them speaking the lanugage. I want to be surrounded by laughing children who are all speaking in English and who get enthusiastic and clap during every class. I want all of my teachers speaking English, for the whole class. I want to see them planning outside of their standard book. I want all of this, and I want it NOW! Now, now, now. But now never is what I think it is going to be- and it's always changing.
So, at the year mark, I feel a great reverence for the god of Patience, who is at best a passing acquaintance of mine. Hopefully, this year, we can be more aquaintance. It's a long haul. Slow and steady, slow and steady.
Monday, July 16, 2012
roosters and dogs
The roosters and the dogs in the neighborhood seem to be having a noise competition. The roosters throw out a caw, and the dogs respond with vicious barks. I wonder is there is a showdown in a field somewhere between a pack of roosters and a pack of dogs. Never a dull moment in Zaruma. Even the Monday nights are full of action.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Lovely, Lovely, Lovely
Today I hung out with the school librarian and her family.
The school librarian and I have this kindred connection because we both love books and solitude, neither of which is too common for most people I know here. Most people I know here love talking, talking, talking, talking to relieve stress. When I get stressed at school, I run into the library, where the solitude of the books and the sweetness of the librarian soothe me until I have enough courage to go bakc out and teach yelling kids.
Today the librarian and her daughter, who is my age, her DJ son, and her daughter's daughter, who is three and adorable, went to a pool in a nearby village called Ortega. Ortega is tiny. It has maybe one tienda, and if it has a restaurant, I've never seen it. It is up in the mountains, surrounded by green green trees, and when you go you always hear the sound of running water from the river.
We went to a "pool" which consisted of:
A volleyball court (Necessary, for Ecua-Volley, a version of volleyball, is insanely popular)
Two pools
A snackbar area
Pretty normal, pretty standard. The difference between this pool and a normal American pool were the animals. A white dog guarded the pool and followed us around wherever we went, begging for attention and food. Roosters wandered around on the volleyball court and the grass. Reggaeton music blared out of the speakers.
The water was freezing freezing freezing, but the three year old kept jumping in with her big inflatable duck "Pato" and kept throwing her duck at us. I taught the librarian how to do some kicking and then the three year old mimicked us.
Then we went home, the daughter and I made oatmeal raisin cookies, we listened to the DJ brother's electronic mixes, and the three year old learned how to take pictures, so she ran around documenting her whole life: her mom cooking, her Barbie, her Pato, her uncle. After eating tamales and coffee, they paid for my taxi all the way back to Zaruma, and sent me home with a giant bag of grenadillas (passionfruit) and oatmeal raisin cookies.
What a fantastic day. I can't believe how generous and full of life the people here can be. I want to bottle today up and remember it forever. This is the Peace Corps at its best.
PS. Here is a grenadilla:
So cool.
The school librarian and I have this kindred connection because we both love books and solitude, neither of which is too common for most people I know here. Most people I know here love talking, talking, talking, talking to relieve stress. When I get stressed at school, I run into the library, where the solitude of the books and the sweetness of the librarian soothe me until I have enough courage to go bakc out and teach yelling kids.
Today the librarian and her daughter, who is my age, her DJ son, and her daughter's daughter, who is three and adorable, went to a pool in a nearby village called Ortega. Ortega is tiny. It has maybe one tienda, and if it has a restaurant, I've never seen it. It is up in the mountains, surrounded by green green trees, and when you go you always hear the sound of running water from the river.
We went to a "pool" which consisted of:
A volleyball court (Necessary, for Ecua-Volley, a version of volleyball, is insanely popular)
Two pools
A snackbar area
Pretty normal, pretty standard. The difference between this pool and a normal American pool were the animals. A white dog guarded the pool and followed us around wherever we went, begging for attention and food. Roosters wandered around on the volleyball court and the grass. Reggaeton music blared out of the speakers.
The water was freezing freezing freezing, but the three year old kept jumping in with her big inflatable duck "Pato" and kept throwing her duck at us. I taught the librarian how to do some kicking and then the three year old mimicked us.
Then we went home, the daughter and I made oatmeal raisin cookies, we listened to the DJ brother's electronic mixes, and the three year old learned how to take pictures, so she ran around documenting her whole life: her mom cooking, her Barbie, her Pato, her uncle. After eating tamales and coffee, they paid for my taxi all the way back to Zaruma, and sent me home with a giant bag of grenadillas (passionfruit) and oatmeal raisin cookies.
What a fantastic day. I can't believe how generous and full of life the people here can be. I want to bottle today up and remember it forever. This is the Peace Corps at its best.
PS. Here is a grenadilla:
So cool.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Why I Don't Appreciate Comments About My Vagina and other random happenings
I don't know if it's a cultural difference, if some people are just comfortable around the gringa now, or if it's disrespect.
All I know is that in the last two days, TWO ladies have commented on whether or not I am a virgin.
The first is this sassy teacher, who was explaining to me the difference between a Senora and a Senorita. "Senoras are women who have children and aren't virgins," she said. "And senoritas are unmarried virgins. So although you're not a virgin, you're not married, so you're still a senorita."
I nearly choked.
This woman and I have never had a personal chat about my virginity. We aren't particularly close, although I sometimes do appreciate her bluntness.
I don't know if it's because I'm foreign and they assume all American girls are walking Paris Hiltons- short dress wearing, no underwear at all, ready to jump on the first interested man, be he 15 or 55- or because I've been dating for Justin for two years and we aren't married and that shocks them- but she said it so matter of factly as though it was a well known fact.
Then, my host mom today was talking to me on the balcony outside their home. The crowded balcony that is in front of the food market and right next to the meat shop. So then she asks me point blank: "Do you have relations with your boyfriend?"
So much for subtlety.
It makes me mad because I don't think that is something you should just talk about openly- I dont think it's anyone's business. But in a heavily Catholic town, there is still so much secrecy, shame, and judgement surrounding sex. I am constantly told that the Ecuadorian woman is very conservative and waits until marriage to have sex. But I know students who have sex- and who use birth control- and who have to escape to another town to do it. It's not that people don't have sex here, they just hide it. Not just from the judgement of their families, but from the ears and judgements of their whole community, who love nothing more than to talk of the corruption of the young.
Of course, this only relates to women- men go to brothels together on any night of the week. Goign to a prostitute is not a big deal for a man. It's joked about. It's accepted. But the woman- the woman is expected to be as pure as the snow on Chimborazo.
This stuff doesn't just happen here- it happens everywhere, especially in the good ole US of A. Remember the HPV Vaccine Controversy when people argued about whether getting the vaccine would turn girls promiscuous? And when it became safe for boys, people only cared about whether it was safe? The same idea applies here. Boys can do whatever they want, girls need to protect themselves and save themselves until they say "I do."
Some people still have the idea that virgins are pillars of strength and virture- and that nonvirgins are dirty, easy, or vile. That makes no sense to me. A woman could do a thousand good things- cooking dinner every night for their mom, saving babies from fires, curing cancer- but if she's an unmarried virgin she is still worth less than a married one. She's still tainted. Damaged goods. Not as worthy.
It still happens in the states with the preaching of abstinence only education. Men go with their daughters to Purity Balls, and girls as young as 8 pledge to their fathers that they will be "pure" until marriage. Teens are still given promise rings and take "virginity pledges" to wait until marriage. All of this doesn't work- it just spreads the idea that sex is bad unless under the cloak of marriage. That being a virgin is the best way to be.
I highly reccommend everyone to read The Purity Myth
Maybe if enough people do, society will start to challenge and shed our old beliefs about virgins, like one sheds a really itchy and uncomfortable polyester coat after years and years of sweating in it. I don't expect to change anyone's minds here, but hey, maybe one day I'll grow the cajones (balls) to confront the issue instead of shirking it. Or maybe I'll just end up doing what most people do to sexuality- sweep it under the rug, and the go back to telling chisme.
Time will tell.
All I know is that in the last two days, TWO ladies have commented on whether or not I am a virgin.
The first is this sassy teacher, who was explaining to me the difference between a Senora and a Senorita. "Senoras are women who have children and aren't virgins," she said. "And senoritas are unmarried virgins. So although you're not a virgin, you're not married, so you're still a senorita."
I nearly choked.
This woman and I have never had a personal chat about my virginity. We aren't particularly close, although I sometimes do appreciate her bluntness.
I don't know if it's because I'm foreign and they assume all American girls are walking Paris Hiltons- short dress wearing, no underwear at all, ready to jump on the first interested man, be he 15 or 55- or because I've been dating for Justin for two years and we aren't married and that shocks them- but she said it so matter of factly as though it was a well known fact.
Then, my host mom today was talking to me on the balcony outside their home. The crowded balcony that is in front of the food market and right next to the meat shop. So then she asks me point blank: "Do you have relations with your boyfriend?"
So much for subtlety.
It makes me mad because I don't think that is something you should just talk about openly- I dont think it's anyone's business. But in a heavily Catholic town, there is still so much secrecy, shame, and judgement surrounding sex. I am constantly told that the Ecuadorian woman is very conservative and waits until marriage to have sex. But I know students who have sex- and who use birth control- and who have to escape to another town to do it. It's not that people don't have sex here, they just hide it. Not just from the judgement of their families, but from the ears and judgements of their whole community, who love nothing more than to talk of the corruption of the young.
Of course, this only relates to women- men go to brothels together on any night of the week. Goign to a prostitute is not a big deal for a man. It's joked about. It's accepted. But the woman- the woman is expected to be as pure as the snow on Chimborazo.
This stuff doesn't just happen here- it happens everywhere, especially in the good ole US of A. Remember the HPV Vaccine Controversy when people argued about whether getting the vaccine would turn girls promiscuous? And when it became safe for boys, people only cared about whether it was safe? The same idea applies here. Boys can do whatever they want, girls need to protect themselves and save themselves until they say "I do."
Some people still have the idea that virgins are pillars of strength and virture- and that nonvirgins are dirty, easy, or vile. That makes no sense to me. A woman could do a thousand good things- cooking dinner every night for their mom, saving babies from fires, curing cancer- but if she's an unmarried virgin she is still worth less than a married one. She's still tainted. Damaged goods. Not as worthy.
It still happens in the states with the preaching of abstinence only education. Men go with their daughters to Purity Balls, and girls as young as 8 pledge to their fathers that they will be "pure" until marriage. Teens are still given promise rings and take "virginity pledges" to wait until marriage. All of this doesn't work- it just spreads the idea that sex is bad unless under the cloak of marriage. That being a virgin is the best way to be.
I highly reccommend everyone to read The Purity Myth
Maybe if enough people do, society will start to challenge and shed our old beliefs about virgins, like one sheds a really itchy and uncomfortable polyester coat after years and years of sweating in it. I don't expect to change anyone's minds here, but hey, maybe one day I'll grow the cajones (balls) to confront the issue instead of shirking it. Or maybe I'll just end up doing what most people do to sexuality- sweep it under the rug, and the go back to telling chisme.
Time will tell.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
pooooor! poooor! poooor!
I am spiritually growing but materially very, very, poor.
I wasn't always poor.
Before I moved out, I was comfortable every month.
But since moving out, and being saddled with electricity bills, internet bills, having to buy the "uniform" the teachers have so that I can match them has taken out a LOT of my money. And my other Peace Corps friends have mastered the art of living frugally. They save fifty or more bucks a month, while these last two months I've been scraping by and borrowing money.
What happened? When did my personal finances begin resembling the Greek debt?
It all started when Justin got here. I got swept up in going from place to place that I didn't budget out the vacation. So we stayed in 44 dollar a night hostels for two nights, which added up to 44 dollars for me total, which is a LOT of money for a PCV.
Then my host sister from Tumbaco wanted Converses, so I paid money for that. All that leaves me with is now is...debt. I need to start tracking all of my expenses, and I realize now, with three looming weeks until I get paid, that I will need to (gulp) ask for money from the parentals. After buying all the stuff I need for my apartment, and getting my life in order, I should be OK from this point on.
There are some PCVs whose parents supply them with money every month, who take vacations once or twice a month all over the country, seeing the parts of Ecuador that every guidebook reccommends. That's great for them- I'm glad they're living it up. But it annoys me sometimes that I can't do the same. Some people act like the Peace Corps stipend is lavish. Lavish! Ha! If I can pay everything I need to pay in a month and still manage to travel soemwhere nearby, it is a success.
So, that's the main thing I've been doing today. Making a budget and thinking about money. I'm not sure if the PCVs around my site were always frugal, but I've found it so hard to get used to this new belt tightening. Gone are the days of 25 dollar Guapos dinners, or buying a new dress from Forever 21 just because I felt like it. Sighn. Apparently, also, gone are the days of eating out in Zaruma. It's time to get austere.
The lights just went off all around Zaruma. Typical. It's a Saturday night. I don't know why this always happens during Saturday nights. When it went out, people all around my neighborhood gasped and my host mom screamed "Que iras!' which means, loosely translated, "I'm so pissed!" So yeah. I'm in complete darkness now, except for my laptop. I can see the moon from the open window, which is nice, because at least there's light somewhere. Things like this don't even phase me anymore. Power outage? Whatevs. This could last for five minutes, or it could last for hours. The power's probably out in Pinas and Porto Vello too, meaning a lot of people are sitting around their houses with candles.
Which reminds me.....I forgot to buy candles. Fantastic.
(Twenty minutes after writing this, seeing my teacher, and making pasta in the dark, the lights came back on. Finally! It's such a thrill when they do. It makes you appreciate everything electrical so much more.)
Good night, lovelies. Hope everyone is having a good Cinco De Mayo (which is nothing here, because it's not THEIR day of independence. It's kind of funny that we celebrate another country's Independence Day- or, as K says, "take other people's holidays". But it's a great excuse to wear a sundress and drink a maragarita.
So, Happy Cinco de Mayo!
I wasn't always poor.
Before I moved out, I was comfortable every month.
But since moving out, and being saddled with electricity bills, internet bills, having to buy the "uniform" the teachers have so that I can match them has taken out a LOT of my money. And my other Peace Corps friends have mastered the art of living frugally. They save fifty or more bucks a month, while these last two months I've been scraping by and borrowing money.
What happened? When did my personal finances begin resembling the Greek debt?
It all started when Justin got here. I got swept up in going from place to place that I didn't budget out the vacation. So we stayed in 44 dollar a night hostels for two nights, which added up to 44 dollars for me total, which is a LOT of money for a PCV.
Then my host sister from Tumbaco wanted Converses, so I paid money for that. All that leaves me with is now is...debt. I need to start tracking all of my expenses, and I realize now, with three looming weeks until I get paid, that I will need to (gulp) ask for money from the parentals. After buying all the stuff I need for my apartment, and getting my life in order, I should be OK from this point on.
There are some PCVs whose parents supply them with money every month, who take vacations once or twice a month all over the country, seeing the parts of Ecuador that every guidebook reccommends. That's great for them- I'm glad they're living it up. But it annoys me sometimes that I can't do the same. Some people act like the Peace Corps stipend is lavish. Lavish! Ha! If I can pay everything I need to pay in a month and still manage to travel soemwhere nearby, it is a success.
So, that's the main thing I've been doing today. Making a budget and thinking about money. I'm not sure if the PCVs around my site were always frugal, but I've found it so hard to get used to this new belt tightening. Gone are the days of 25 dollar Guapos dinners, or buying a new dress from Forever 21 just because I felt like it. Sighn. Apparently, also, gone are the days of eating out in Zaruma. It's time to get austere.
The lights just went off all around Zaruma. Typical. It's a Saturday night. I don't know why this always happens during Saturday nights. When it went out, people all around my neighborhood gasped and my host mom screamed "Que iras!' which means, loosely translated, "I'm so pissed!" So yeah. I'm in complete darkness now, except for my laptop. I can see the moon from the open window, which is nice, because at least there's light somewhere. Things like this don't even phase me anymore. Power outage? Whatevs. This could last for five minutes, or it could last for hours. The power's probably out in Pinas and Porto Vello too, meaning a lot of people are sitting around their houses with candles.
Which reminds me.....I forgot to buy candles. Fantastic.
(Twenty minutes after writing this, seeing my teacher, and making pasta in the dark, the lights came back on. Finally! It's such a thrill when they do. It makes you appreciate everything electrical so much more.)
Good night, lovelies. Hope everyone is having a good Cinco De Mayo (which is nothing here, because it's not THEIR day of independence. It's kind of funny that we celebrate another country's Independence Day- or, as K says, "take other people's holidays". But it's a great excuse to wear a sundress and drink a maragarita.
So, Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Neverending Story of Laundry
So today was both absurd and completely normal, as are most days here (as is life? says Camus).
So the first absurd part of today was the holiday. It's El Oro Day! What is El Oro? El Oro is the province I live in. So, El Oro day is just a day off from work and school to celebrate the fact that we live in this southern coastal province. Are there parades on El Oro day? Are there fiestas? Nope. It's just a day off of school. A week after school started back up again, we have our first of many holidays. So, here's to El Oro day.
I woke up at 8, which for me is a very early time to be conscious and moving, but is kind of late for Zarumeno standards. They have a saying here: Quien le madruga, Dios le ayuda. This means that people who wake up early are blessed by God for their early rising prowress. Yep, still trying to master the whole "morning person" routine. Many of my friends have slowly become morning people here.
One reason why I think so many women wake up early is to do the laundry. Doing the laundry in the US is so simple. You take a giant batch of clothes, put it in the laundry machine, pick whether you want hot or cold or warm water, pick whether you want a bleach cycle, pick if the clothes are "Normal" or "Delicate" or whatever, and then in 40 minutes, you have dry clothes. After throwing the clothes in the dryer for an hour, you're done. Poof! Clean, good smelling clothes.
Here, I dread my laundry days. My host mom knows this and, like an old lady, constantly chastises me to my laundry more often, which just bugs me. The whole process of laundry bugs me because of its tediousness but I'm trying to get more patient.
This is how we wash laundry in Zaruma.
1. I thoroughly scrub my kitchen sink so make sure there is no pasta or tomato sauce or any other vestiges of my Italian food obsession in the sink. Tada! The sink is now Laundry Central.
2. I touch the soap bar, which has to, like Madonna's ego, be handled very carefully, or it becomes the Bar of Pain. It's full of very concentrated detergent, and holding it for too long makes my hands get angry and painful and itchy.
3. I lay out each piece of clothing, soak it, then use my laundry brush and the Soap Bar of Death to scrub both sides of the cloth. Then I rinse it with the brush, turning it over, and bunch the cloth together to make sure all the soap is out of it. I scunch it up to get all of the water out and drop it in the "clean clothes bucket."
4. I repeat this for an hour, more or less, until all the clothing is washed.
Here's the fun part:
5. Then, I go outside to the clothes line to hang everything up. Hopefully, it's a hot, sunny day. This means the clothes will dry in an hour or two. If it's cloudy, they can take all day. Or, if it's the rainy season, where it rains all day, day after day after day in raindom, it can take four or five days for a single shirt to dry.
To spice things up, some days, like today, a clothing line will topple to the floor, and all of my hard washed clothes will be covered in dust and dirt, leaving me to repeat the process over, and over, and over again.
So there you have it. The saga of laundry in Zaruma. It's the never ending story, and one reason women here are always on their feet. I can only imagine how long it takes a mother of four to do laundry. How many hours every week she must spend washing, kneading, and hanging clothes. She must spend one third of her life doing laundry. One thing is for certain: i will never again take for granted the miracle of the washing machine, and the life of convenience we have in the States.
Hasta pronto!
So the first absurd part of today was the holiday. It's El Oro Day! What is El Oro? El Oro is the province I live in. So, El Oro day is just a day off from work and school to celebrate the fact that we live in this southern coastal province. Are there parades on El Oro day? Are there fiestas? Nope. It's just a day off of school. A week after school started back up again, we have our first of many holidays. So, here's to El Oro day.
I woke up at 8, which for me is a very early time to be conscious and moving, but is kind of late for Zarumeno standards. They have a saying here: Quien le madruga, Dios le ayuda. This means that people who wake up early are blessed by God for their early rising prowress. Yep, still trying to master the whole "morning person" routine. Many of my friends have slowly become morning people here.
One reason why I think so many women wake up early is to do the laundry. Doing the laundry in the US is so simple. You take a giant batch of clothes, put it in the laundry machine, pick whether you want hot or cold or warm water, pick whether you want a bleach cycle, pick if the clothes are "Normal" or "Delicate" or whatever, and then in 40 minutes, you have dry clothes. After throwing the clothes in the dryer for an hour, you're done. Poof! Clean, good smelling clothes.
Here, I dread my laundry days. My host mom knows this and, like an old lady, constantly chastises me to my laundry more often, which just bugs me. The whole process of laundry bugs me because of its tediousness but I'm trying to get more patient.
This is how we wash laundry in Zaruma.
1. I thoroughly scrub my kitchen sink so make sure there is no pasta or tomato sauce or any other vestiges of my Italian food obsession in the sink. Tada! The sink is now Laundry Central.
2. I touch the soap bar, which has to, like Madonna's ego, be handled very carefully, or it becomes the Bar of Pain. It's full of very concentrated detergent, and holding it for too long makes my hands get angry and painful and itchy.
3. I lay out each piece of clothing, soak it, then use my laundry brush and the Soap Bar of Death to scrub both sides of the cloth. Then I rinse it with the brush, turning it over, and bunch the cloth together to make sure all the soap is out of it. I scunch it up to get all of the water out and drop it in the "clean clothes bucket."
4. I repeat this for an hour, more or less, until all the clothing is washed.
Here's the fun part:
5. Then, I go outside to the clothes line to hang everything up. Hopefully, it's a hot, sunny day. This means the clothes will dry in an hour or two. If it's cloudy, they can take all day. Or, if it's the rainy season, where it rains all day, day after day after day in raindom, it can take four or five days for a single shirt to dry.
To spice things up, some days, like today, a clothing line will topple to the floor, and all of my hard washed clothes will be covered in dust and dirt, leaving me to repeat the process over, and over, and over again.
So there you have it. The saga of laundry in Zaruma. It's the never ending story, and one reason women here are always on their feet. I can only imagine how long it takes a mother of four to do laundry. How many hours every week she must spend washing, kneading, and hanging clothes. She must spend one third of her life doing laundry. One thing is for certain: i will never again take for granted the miracle of the washing machine, and the life of convenience we have in the States.
Hasta pronto!
it's the weekend, weekend
Here is my weekend in pictures.
Jasmine and I went to Machala for my good friend Nicky's 24th birthday. When we got to our friend's apartment, the sun was just setting over the city. It looked like this:
We spent the night eating delicious paramsean noodles and drinking fruit juice mixed with alcohol. Then we sat on the balcony and talked about zombies, other volunteers, weather, good music, and mental health. A neighbor was having a birthday party, and we had a clear view of the dance floor from our balcony. Of course, the music started blaring salsa and reggaeton around 9, but all the guests stayed seated in a circle, eating and not dancing, until 11, when the first brave souls stood up to jiggie.
Saturday, we went to Jambeli, which is an hour away from Machala by boat. The "life jackets" were foam with President Correa's face etched into them, and the seats were cramped together. Ben put it best: "My whole left ass cheek and leg are completely asleep." The boat ride was tipped to the side for the entire ride. Very comforting. The ride does take you through the mangrove forests off of Machala's coast, and timid dolphins lurk in the waters. Jambeli is a very nice beach, although when we went the water was filled with trash. By trash, I mean vats of cream cheese, plastic cups, and big logs. It was impossible to swim. Usually it is a very tranquilo place to swim, but because of the rising water levels this rainy season, it was filled with trash.
Sunday, Jasmine and I were looking for a purse and I heard my name being shouted out on the city streets. I looked back and saw a Zarumen friend and his friend. In typical Zarumeno generosity, they dropped what they were doing to help us find a purse for Jasmine. I really love Zaruenos sometimes. When you need help, they help you, even if it's something as small as find a cheaper purse on the city streets than you'd find in the giant mall.
Yesterday, after I got back to Zaruma, it rained and was freezing. But we were rewarded with this:
Then today, after the saga of laundry, it started to thunder. "Help me!" called my host mom. I thought something bad had happened, and rushed down the stairs, expecting to see her on the ground. Instead, she was hanging up orchids...on the clothes line. To soak up the rain. Here in Zaruma, we hang not just clothes, but flowers. Totally badass.
So there you have my weekend. Braving the rainy season, doing laundry, drinking fruit juice, visiting friends. Just another few days in Zaruma.
Hasta luego,
Andrea
Friday, April 20, 2012
I live next to a concert hall....
Whew. Things continuously surprise me about Zaruma. Things that leave me scratching my head, wondering who in the hell decided what was appropriate and what was not appropriate. Here's my top five list of appropriate behaviors that befuddle me.
5. Male teachers talking about sex/sexual organs/pornography with married female teachers Maybe I'm just an American prude. Maybe I'm repressed. Maybe I knew really prudish old men in the States. But I can't get over all of the sex jokes I hear from older male teachers on a regular basis. Today, for instance, an older female teacher was talking about her laundry machine. A male teacher then started joking about his male appendage getting caught in it. Something like that. The female teacher laughed hysterically while I stared on in half confusion, half horror. And they say Ecuador is such a conservative country. Bah! I'd love to see something similar go down in the Bible Belt.
4. Singing is appropriate anytime, anywhere The mystery singer on my street turned out to be one of my neighbors, Diego, who works in the meat shop next to where I live. Almost every day, he belts out some song about far away love or beauty. At all times of the day: in the morning, when they're cutting the meat, in the afternoon, when they're bored, whenever he has a free moment. There are two teachers who walk into the office and greet the teachers by singing ballads. This is mainly a male phenomenon. It might be part of the machista culture. Males who normally are expected to be strong and stoic can let their emotions out by drinking copious amounts of booze on the weekends or by singing. Or maybe it's more of a "fuck it, I'm a man in Ecuador, I can do anything" type of attitude. I'm not sure. But there is much more bursting into random songs, a la Oklahaoma or South Pacific, than anything I've seen in America.
3. It's perfectly to discuss medical conditions, or personal problems, with people you barely know This might be part of the chisme, or gossip, that comes from living in a small town, or maybe people are just more open. I met a woman the other day at a party. She started telling me about her daughter, who was an acquaintance. "She suffers from depression, she's had a hard hard time with it," the woman told me. We hardly knew each other, and she was already telling me about some of the biggest struggles in her family. Similarly, when I got back from the States, and had put on an extra 7 or so pounds thanks to the gallons of Starbucks peppermint mochas I'd consumed, the teachers felt the need to comment on my weight to me and to others. "Andrea, you've put on some weight!" the gym teacher said, as if I'd been blind. Another teacher turned to my sitemate Jacob and asked him, "Don't you think Andrea's put on weight?" Similarly, the teachers like to talk about which female students are gaining weight. It's a spectator sport in a small town. In Washington, the go-to conversation is politics. Here, it's gossip or physical appearances.
2. Reina competitions, or beauty contest, which showcase 13 to 18 year old girls walking around in bikinis, is normal and celebrated Again, American prudery. But these damn reina competitions are something I don't know if I'll ever get used to. The girls who compete in them are usually about 14 or 15. Depending on the competition, they parade around a stage in either a dress or a bikini. The audience, mostly male, but often times scattered with families and groups of teens, cheers and hoots. The judges, who are always middle aged men, then huddle and decide who the queen should be. The biggest competition is for the queen of Zaruma, a title held by one of my students, who admittedly is gorgeous, vivacious, but so so vain. In the reina for Zaruma competition, the newspaper writes articles about the different contestants. They have photo shoots. They get interviewed for the Zaruma television channel. They have multiple days of competition. Beauty and youth are really really important here. But it makes sense, though. After they're 18, many of these girls get married or go on to school. This is their "pure" time, the time when they go from being little girls to beautiful women. After 15, when they have they're quincenera, they're considered real women. Being the queen of Zaruma is like being the head cheerleader and the prom queen. So many girls here want that crown.
1. Music that plays in the streets, all the time It's a Thursday night. Tomorrow is a work day. Yet tonight I've heard two different music groups on my street. The first one was a guy with a guitar whose music was probably recorded and blasted from one of my neighbor's houses at 9pm. That was kind of annoying, but not too bad. Maybe they just wanted everyone else to join in on the good time. But then, the icing on the cake was when the Jehovah's Witnesses decided to crank up the sound in their church, which is on my block, and blast Jesus music from 11 to 1230 tonight. WHO decided this was OK on a school night? No neighbors went outside, outraged. No police came to break up the party. Nothing. This is one of the greatest mysteries of Zaruma. The constant, unending concert that happens right outside my house, almost nightly. Even the roosters are in on it. Someimes they start crowing at 1 or 2 in the morning. By 5, there is a whole rooster orchestra, crowing from every hilltop and every corner of the city. Sometimes, they coordinate their crowings, and other times, they sort of mimic each other.
On a really good night, the rain will chime in and come down in buckets, waking everyone in Zaruma up. Like last night, where it seemed like Noah's flood was about to be upon us as it dumped buckets at 2am. On a really good night, like the night before last, the newborn baby will wake up in the middle of the night, crying. Since my host family thinks that me having a glass window in my kitchen will prevent ventiliation, the sound of the baby crying travels from my kitchen right into my room, so it sounds like there is a baby in a cradle right by my bed that is howling. So sometimes this is all really stressful. The noises, the constant criticism of physical appearances, the strange relationship between conservative small town cultural and open sexual jokes, etc.
But before you think that all I do is bitch about Zaruma, let me let you in on some of the good things that I'm starting to dig. One of them is my barrio. My neighbors are very close-knit, which is kind of hard because they don't understand what in the heck a young, unmarried girl is doing away from her family (gasp!), unmarried (double gasp), without kids (aaaaaaah!), in her prime child-bearing years, in a foreign country, LIVING ON HER OWN. I'm like this strange, tall, gangly, white alien to them. But they do nice neighborly things like have monthly lunches together and they have a big Christmas party. I like living in a place where everyone looks out for everyone else.
Another thing i love is how family oriented everyone is here. My host dad and mom are the best parents to their kids and the most supportive and caring grandparents. The grandkids are ALWAY over at the house, and always loved and looked after. I had my students write me paragraphs about themselves, and a few of them wrote sentences like this: "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world." How many American teenagers would write a sentence like that about their moms? Openly? That they would share with their class? I don't think many. One of the perks of this Catholic, Virgin Mary worshipping town is the emphasis on motherhood. I love how much people here openly love their moms. It's cute. It makes me think about how much I love my own quirky, no bullshit taking, spontaneous, deeply affectionate mom. Go Mom!
Lastly, we are in pineapple season. This means that all the vendors are selling big, juicy pineapples for the ripe price of 1.50. Which is nothing, when you have money. I have four dollars left in my bank account which has to last me until....I don't know, a day from now, so the pineapples will have to wait. Still, I am totally spoiled by the food prices here. Fifty cent mangos. One dollar for a pound of apples. Forty cents for a pound of potatoes. I really live in fruit paradise. I'm nodding off. It just started raining. I love the sound of rain falling lightly on a tin roof. This is my lullaby, most nights. Good night, y'all.
5. Male teachers talking about sex/sexual organs/pornography with married female teachers Maybe I'm just an American prude. Maybe I'm repressed. Maybe I knew really prudish old men in the States. But I can't get over all of the sex jokes I hear from older male teachers on a regular basis. Today, for instance, an older female teacher was talking about her laundry machine. A male teacher then started joking about his male appendage getting caught in it. Something like that. The female teacher laughed hysterically while I stared on in half confusion, half horror. And they say Ecuador is such a conservative country. Bah! I'd love to see something similar go down in the Bible Belt.
4. Singing is appropriate anytime, anywhere The mystery singer on my street turned out to be one of my neighbors, Diego, who works in the meat shop next to where I live. Almost every day, he belts out some song about far away love or beauty. At all times of the day: in the morning, when they're cutting the meat, in the afternoon, when they're bored, whenever he has a free moment. There are two teachers who walk into the office and greet the teachers by singing ballads. This is mainly a male phenomenon. It might be part of the machista culture. Males who normally are expected to be strong and stoic can let their emotions out by drinking copious amounts of booze on the weekends or by singing. Or maybe it's more of a "fuck it, I'm a man in Ecuador, I can do anything" type of attitude. I'm not sure. But there is much more bursting into random songs, a la Oklahaoma or South Pacific, than anything I've seen in America.
3. It's perfectly to discuss medical conditions, or personal problems, with people you barely know This might be part of the chisme, or gossip, that comes from living in a small town, or maybe people are just more open. I met a woman the other day at a party. She started telling me about her daughter, who was an acquaintance. "She suffers from depression, she's had a hard hard time with it," the woman told me. We hardly knew each other, and she was already telling me about some of the biggest struggles in her family. Similarly, when I got back from the States, and had put on an extra 7 or so pounds thanks to the gallons of Starbucks peppermint mochas I'd consumed, the teachers felt the need to comment on my weight to me and to others. "Andrea, you've put on some weight!" the gym teacher said, as if I'd been blind. Another teacher turned to my sitemate Jacob and asked him, "Don't you think Andrea's put on weight?" Similarly, the teachers like to talk about which female students are gaining weight. It's a spectator sport in a small town. In Washington, the go-to conversation is politics. Here, it's gossip or physical appearances.
2. Reina competitions, or beauty contest, which showcase 13 to 18 year old girls walking around in bikinis, is normal and celebrated Again, American prudery. But these damn reina competitions are something I don't know if I'll ever get used to. The girls who compete in them are usually about 14 or 15. Depending on the competition, they parade around a stage in either a dress or a bikini. The audience, mostly male, but often times scattered with families and groups of teens, cheers and hoots. The judges, who are always middle aged men, then huddle and decide who the queen should be. The biggest competition is for the queen of Zaruma, a title held by one of my students, who admittedly is gorgeous, vivacious, but so so vain. In the reina for Zaruma competition, the newspaper writes articles about the different contestants. They have photo shoots. They get interviewed for the Zaruma television channel. They have multiple days of competition. Beauty and youth are really really important here. But it makes sense, though. After they're 18, many of these girls get married or go on to school. This is their "pure" time, the time when they go from being little girls to beautiful women. After 15, when they have they're quincenera, they're considered real women. Being the queen of Zaruma is like being the head cheerleader and the prom queen. So many girls here want that crown.
1. Music that plays in the streets, all the time It's a Thursday night. Tomorrow is a work day. Yet tonight I've heard two different music groups on my street. The first one was a guy with a guitar whose music was probably recorded and blasted from one of my neighbor's houses at 9pm. That was kind of annoying, but not too bad. Maybe they just wanted everyone else to join in on the good time. But then, the icing on the cake was when the Jehovah's Witnesses decided to crank up the sound in their church, which is on my block, and blast Jesus music from 11 to 1230 tonight. WHO decided this was OK on a school night? No neighbors went outside, outraged. No police came to break up the party. Nothing. This is one of the greatest mysteries of Zaruma. The constant, unending concert that happens right outside my house, almost nightly. Even the roosters are in on it. Someimes they start crowing at 1 or 2 in the morning. By 5, there is a whole rooster orchestra, crowing from every hilltop and every corner of the city. Sometimes, they coordinate their crowings, and other times, they sort of mimic each other.
On a really good night, the rain will chime in and come down in buckets, waking everyone in Zaruma up. Like last night, where it seemed like Noah's flood was about to be upon us as it dumped buckets at 2am. On a really good night, like the night before last, the newborn baby will wake up in the middle of the night, crying. Since my host family thinks that me having a glass window in my kitchen will prevent ventiliation, the sound of the baby crying travels from my kitchen right into my room, so it sounds like there is a baby in a cradle right by my bed that is howling. So sometimes this is all really stressful. The noises, the constant criticism of physical appearances, the strange relationship between conservative small town cultural and open sexual jokes, etc.
But before you think that all I do is bitch about Zaruma, let me let you in on some of the good things that I'm starting to dig. One of them is my barrio. My neighbors are very close-knit, which is kind of hard because they don't understand what in the heck a young, unmarried girl is doing away from her family (gasp!), unmarried (double gasp), without kids (aaaaaaah!), in her prime child-bearing years, in a foreign country, LIVING ON HER OWN. I'm like this strange, tall, gangly, white alien to them. But they do nice neighborly things like have monthly lunches together and they have a big Christmas party. I like living in a place where everyone looks out for everyone else.
Another thing i love is how family oriented everyone is here. My host dad and mom are the best parents to their kids and the most supportive and caring grandparents. The grandkids are ALWAY over at the house, and always loved and looked after. I had my students write me paragraphs about themselves, and a few of them wrote sentences like this: "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world." How many American teenagers would write a sentence like that about their moms? Openly? That they would share with their class? I don't think many. One of the perks of this Catholic, Virgin Mary worshipping town is the emphasis on motherhood. I love how much people here openly love their moms. It's cute. It makes me think about how much I love my own quirky, no bullshit taking, spontaneous, deeply affectionate mom. Go Mom!
Lastly, we are in pineapple season. This means that all the vendors are selling big, juicy pineapples for the ripe price of 1.50. Which is nothing, when you have money. I have four dollars left in my bank account which has to last me until....I don't know, a day from now, so the pineapples will have to wait. Still, I am totally spoiled by the food prices here. Fifty cent mangos. One dollar for a pound of apples. Forty cents for a pound of potatoes. I really live in fruit paradise. I'm nodding off. It just started raining. I love the sound of rain falling lightly on a tin roof. This is my lullaby, most nights. Good night, y'all.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
SUNDAY night musings
Just got back from visiting friend in Catamayo and Loja.
Catamayo: a dusty town where roosters woke us up every time we tried to nap. Full of kids playing in mud.
Loja: the big nearby city of about 200,000 people. Went to see some live music with songs I'd never heard, but we got to sit with some introverted university students who reminded me of friends from back home. Also got to eat waffles with ice cream and fruit for dinner and schwarma for dessert- incredible. How I miss those combinations of food.
I sat next to the strangest man on the bus back to Zaruma. He was an ex-diplomat and was regaling me with stories from his youth. The bus was overpacked, so people left big burlap sacks of fruit down in the aisles. I got elbowed in the face at one point, because when there are no seats left, people stand in the aisles, and lean against the passengers. We went down an "illegal" road but after the police officers stopped us, the bus driver took him outside to "talk", or to bribe him with money, and within ten minutes we were chugging back along the road. Really, a typical claustrophobic bus ride of Ecuador.
My goals for this week are to figure out what I'm doing all "summer" break, since school is practically over. Wish me luck. It's like a new slate all over again.
Catamayo: a dusty town where roosters woke us up every time we tried to nap. Full of kids playing in mud.
Loja: the big nearby city of about 200,000 people. Went to see some live music with songs I'd never heard, but we got to sit with some introverted university students who reminded me of friends from back home. Also got to eat waffles with ice cream and fruit for dinner and schwarma for dessert- incredible. How I miss those combinations of food.
I sat next to the strangest man on the bus back to Zaruma. He was an ex-diplomat and was regaling me with stories from his youth. The bus was overpacked, so people left big burlap sacks of fruit down in the aisles. I got elbowed in the face at one point, because when there are no seats left, people stand in the aisles, and lean against the passengers. We went down an "illegal" road but after the police officers stopped us, the bus driver took him outside to "talk", or to bribe him with money, and within ten minutes we were chugging back along the road. Really, a typical claustrophobic bus ride of Ecuador.
My goals for this week are to figure out what I'm doing all "summer" break, since school is practically over. Wish me luck. It's like a new slate all over again.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Guayaquil, you tug at my heart
The other day my filling fell out of my mouth. I dutifully called the Peace Corps and they told me I had two choices. Take a 14 hour bus up to Quito, the capital, a city I know semi well (thanks to many good times getting lost there, strange cab conversations) or take a shorter, 4 hour buseta ride to the crime ridden, ¨scary¨ city of Guayaquil. I chose the latter. Thus begins our story.
Guayaquil is the biggest city in Ecuador. It´s the opposite of Quito. While Quito is conservative, cold (not really cold...more brisk...but for Ecuadorians who don´t know the true coldness of ¨snow¨, anything below fifty five degrees is ¨bien frio¨), Guayaquil is HOT. Hot, humid, liberal. Full of some of the ritziest malls in the country and the poorest peoople. Full of businesmen in expensive looking suits and poor street kids, four or five years old, begging clubgoers for change at 2am. Truly. It tugged at every emotion I had.
I started the day out in the dentist´s office, then met a friend and went walking up over 400 steps to the top of the city. It was HOT. Half of Guayaquil also looks like someone dumped Crayola colors all over it. This part is called Las Penas. So, on one side you have the Guayas River, and then huge billowing gray skyscapers, and then on another side you have Las Penas, which is so colorful it makes you happy just looking at it.
I got to see some people from training I didn´t know too well but who are fantastic and hilarious. We sat and did what Peace Corps Volunteers do best when they are together: bitch! Vent! Speak in English! Make vague cultural references that people in site shake their heads over but that we understand. Yearn about far away love.
The night was topped off with STUFFED CRUST PIZZA from Pizza Hut. You Americans are so incredibly lucky to have access to this luxury with frequency. You could even get it delivered to your door! You could eat it all day, every day, and never even have to leave your host.This, my friends, is a great difference. Here in Ecuador, most places don´t have food delivery. I miss it sorely. I will go home and not leave my apartment for a good month because of the awesome power of food delivery. Can´t wait.
Anyways, beer, pizza, and good people made for a lovely night. I´m always surprised how such different people who, under normal circumstances, wouldn´t be friends, can come together and connect because of the incredibly strange situation we´re all collectively in. It´s one of the best parts about Peace Corps.
Today, I wandered around for a few hours on my own. I found this park called the Iguana Park. People friendly iguanas bask in the grass and walk around on the stones, looking for lettuce. They are very energy efficient, either spending their time not moving a muscle, or running towards a piece of lettuce. Smart creatures. There were also a group of turtles. The park workers were cleaning out their little lake area and put all the turtles on the other side of this two foot high rock wall. The turtles kept trying to climb over each other to get back into the ¨lake¨. They would get halfway up the rocks, and then fall back down. Or, if one did reach blissful freedom, a worker would come over, grab it by the tail (ouch! do you think that hurts the turtle?) and put it back in its confinement. And there were pidgeons- erratic pidgeons- who would all randomly fly from one part of the park to another, as if they all had collective thoughts. I gave a few some food and they all started following me, for a second I thought I was going to get stampeded to death by those birds.
Guayaquil was the first time I´ve seen true, genuine, poverty in this country. Some people dress in really raggedy clothes and beg. There are MANy street kids at night. Girls who aren´t older than 5 or 6 who are begging customers in bars and night clubs for money. These kids have to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning, begging. It´s a really sad reality of this country. I´m so glad there are volunteers here. Between the HIV, the poverty, and the violence that goes unpunished, this city has a lot, lot, lot of problems. For that reason, Volunteers are told to avoid it. Many foreigners have been robbed or involved in taxi kidnappings, and everyday on the news, there is a shooting or a robbery in this city. So it´s really everything- hot, humid, incredibly friendly, but also dangerous, congested, and sometimes overwhelming.
Here are some pictures:
The Iguana Park, where the iguanas will come up to any human who may, possibly, have food.
Las Penas, a crayon makers fantasy
That´s all for now. I´m about to enjoy some more delicious American food (hey bus terminal!) before leaving the craziness. I´ll miss you, Guayaquil. You´re like the Amy Winehouse or Mick Jagger of Ecuadorian cities. Unpredictable, seductive, exciitng, scary. See you again.
Guayaquil is the biggest city in Ecuador. It´s the opposite of Quito. While Quito is conservative, cold (not really cold...more brisk...but for Ecuadorians who don´t know the true coldness of ¨snow¨, anything below fifty five degrees is ¨bien frio¨), Guayaquil is HOT. Hot, humid, liberal. Full of some of the ritziest malls in the country and the poorest peoople. Full of businesmen in expensive looking suits and poor street kids, four or five years old, begging clubgoers for change at 2am. Truly. It tugged at every emotion I had.
I started the day out in the dentist´s office, then met a friend and went walking up over 400 steps to the top of the city. It was HOT. Half of Guayaquil also looks like someone dumped Crayola colors all over it. This part is called Las Penas. So, on one side you have the Guayas River, and then huge billowing gray skyscapers, and then on another side you have Las Penas, which is so colorful it makes you happy just looking at it.
I got to see some people from training I didn´t know too well but who are fantastic and hilarious. We sat and did what Peace Corps Volunteers do best when they are together: bitch! Vent! Speak in English! Make vague cultural references that people in site shake their heads over but that we understand. Yearn about far away love.
The night was topped off with STUFFED CRUST PIZZA from Pizza Hut. You Americans are so incredibly lucky to have access to this luxury with frequency. You could even get it delivered to your door! You could eat it all day, every day, and never even have to leave your host.This, my friends, is a great difference. Here in Ecuador, most places don´t have food delivery. I miss it sorely. I will go home and not leave my apartment for a good month because of the awesome power of food delivery. Can´t wait.
Anyways, beer, pizza, and good people made for a lovely night. I´m always surprised how such different people who, under normal circumstances, wouldn´t be friends, can come together and connect because of the incredibly strange situation we´re all collectively in. It´s one of the best parts about Peace Corps.
Today, I wandered around for a few hours on my own. I found this park called the Iguana Park. People friendly iguanas bask in the grass and walk around on the stones, looking for lettuce. They are very energy efficient, either spending their time not moving a muscle, or running towards a piece of lettuce. Smart creatures. There were also a group of turtles. The park workers were cleaning out their little lake area and put all the turtles on the other side of this two foot high rock wall. The turtles kept trying to climb over each other to get back into the ¨lake¨. They would get halfway up the rocks, and then fall back down. Or, if one did reach blissful freedom, a worker would come over, grab it by the tail (ouch! do you think that hurts the turtle?) and put it back in its confinement. And there were pidgeons- erratic pidgeons- who would all randomly fly from one part of the park to another, as if they all had collective thoughts. I gave a few some food and they all started following me, for a second I thought I was going to get stampeded to death by those birds.
Guayaquil was the first time I´ve seen true, genuine, poverty in this country. Some people dress in really raggedy clothes and beg. There are MANy street kids at night. Girls who aren´t older than 5 or 6 who are begging customers in bars and night clubs for money. These kids have to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning, begging. It´s a really sad reality of this country. I´m so glad there are volunteers here. Between the HIV, the poverty, and the violence that goes unpunished, this city has a lot, lot, lot of problems. For that reason, Volunteers are told to avoid it. Many foreigners have been robbed or involved in taxi kidnappings, and everyday on the news, there is a shooting or a robbery in this city. So it´s really everything- hot, humid, incredibly friendly, but also dangerous, congested, and sometimes overwhelming.
Here are some pictures:
The Iguana Park, where the iguanas will come up to any human who may, possibly, have food.
Las Penas, a crayon makers fantasy
That´s all for now. I´m about to enjoy some more delicious American food (hey bus terminal!) before leaving the craziness. I´ll miss you, Guayaquil. You´re like the Amy Winehouse or Mick Jagger of Ecuadorian cities. Unpredictable, seductive, exciitng, scary. See you again.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Happy New Year!
So my New Year´s Resolution is to write in this thing more. My mom (hey, mom!) calls this blog the ¨thing I never write in.¨ Subtle, mom, subtle. But she´s right. This blog offers a very limited view of what I go through on a daily basis, or what life here is really like. I´m going to try and change that for the new year. I want to be posting weekly, not semi-monthly, even if things suck, even if there is nothing to talk about, even if the most exciting part of my day was watching American Horror Story.
So, with that, I´ve been here for over four months now. The last time I posted was before Thanksgiving, I think, and not much has changed. It all goes in cycles. The students, the teachers, the town. Sometimes I love it and have a Pollyanna-like view of the world, and sometimes it´s awful and I don´t want to leave my house. Here is a recap of December.
In DECEMBER, tensions with some teachers came to a head. I got sick of sitting in classrooms, ¨coteaching¨ and not saying a word. I finally opened up my mouth and told the persons involved, only to find out that they were upset that my schedule was so varied. See, one teacher had to leave a class he was teaching because a parent didn´t want him there, so I had to switch my entire schedule to have a class with him. With this, I had two or three classes at the same time, and had to pick which one to go to. THat only caused more drama. If I went to one class more than other classes, I was viewed as favoring that teacher. And because of my noncronfrontational nature and desire to please everyone, I tried. Hard. To make everyone happy and to make them like me. But it backfired, because the resentment over having nothing to do, or being constantly pulled in different directions, piled up and piled up and suddently exploded. I found myself crying, alone, in the teacher´s lounge while it rained outside one morning, unwilling to face the teachers who didn´t let me do anything in class.
One day, earlier in training, my boss told me ¨some teachers you will love. Some you will hate. You have to deal with it.¨
And it´s true. Teaching brings out such strong emotions in you. It´s like looking into a mirror for 40 minutes that shows you all your faults. How you control a class of bored 17 year olds. How you get along with the other teacher. What to do when they don´t let you do anything.
So that was December. Slugging through the drama of the teachers and the strong desire I felt to go home.
THANKFULLY,
in an ¨How Andrea Got her Groove Back¨ moment, I did get to go home. For ten glorious days. In this time, I gorged on Bagel Bites, Bagels, pizza, Guapo´s (the best Mexican food in DC, you gotta go if you haven´t been there). I got to see friends that I made in the 90s, my big family, all my cousins who are shooting up like reeds. And Justin. And his family. Even though conversations at the house centered around the Evil of Obama and left me clenching my fork with annoyance, it was good to see them. I feel like I´ve been restored. And it is such a good reminder that there is a place in the world where I really do have friends. Good, trustworthy, honest, funny friends. Sometimes here I feel like this friendless alien who everyone knows. Like Courtney Love, minus the drug problem.
So for the New Year, I just want to figure out how to live in this new home. Understand the people. Integrate.
I think it´s happening, slowly. Very, very, slowly. The people are sniffing me out, and me them. We´re all trying to see if we can trust each other and if this thing called friendship is worth it. I´m in my host sister´s house now, surrounded by her and her family. The oldest, 13, and her friends, are all sitting around the table, studying for exams. It´s raining like hell, and has been since 4pm. It´s cold. Maybe in the 50s, which is as cold as it gets here. Teeth are chattering. One teacher showed up in a cotton pea coat today, which was hilarious. The people here have a flair for drama, in any situation.
I have to go because there is a gaggle of preteens who want to play Wii and check Facebook. Some things, regardless of country, never change.
So, with that, I´ve been here for over four months now. The last time I posted was before Thanksgiving, I think, and not much has changed. It all goes in cycles. The students, the teachers, the town. Sometimes I love it and have a Pollyanna-like view of the world, and sometimes it´s awful and I don´t want to leave my house. Here is a recap of December.
In DECEMBER, tensions with some teachers came to a head. I got sick of sitting in classrooms, ¨coteaching¨ and not saying a word. I finally opened up my mouth and told the persons involved, only to find out that they were upset that my schedule was so varied. See, one teacher had to leave a class he was teaching because a parent didn´t want him there, so I had to switch my entire schedule to have a class with him. With this, I had two or three classes at the same time, and had to pick which one to go to. THat only caused more drama. If I went to one class more than other classes, I was viewed as favoring that teacher. And because of my noncronfrontational nature and desire to please everyone, I tried. Hard. To make everyone happy and to make them like me. But it backfired, because the resentment over having nothing to do, or being constantly pulled in different directions, piled up and piled up and suddently exploded. I found myself crying, alone, in the teacher´s lounge while it rained outside one morning, unwilling to face the teachers who didn´t let me do anything in class.
One day, earlier in training, my boss told me ¨some teachers you will love. Some you will hate. You have to deal with it.¨
And it´s true. Teaching brings out such strong emotions in you. It´s like looking into a mirror for 40 minutes that shows you all your faults. How you control a class of bored 17 year olds. How you get along with the other teacher. What to do when they don´t let you do anything.
So that was December. Slugging through the drama of the teachers and the strong desire I felt to go home.
THANKFULLY,
in an ¨How Andrea Got her Groove Back¨ moment, I did get to go home. For ten glorious days. In this time, I gorged on Bagel Bites, Bagels, pizza, Guapo´s (the best Mexican food in DC, you gotta go if you haven´t been there). I got to see friends that I made in the 90s, my big family, all my cousins who are shooting up like reeds. And Justin. And his family. Even though conversations at the house centered around the Evil of Obama and left me clenching my fork with annoyance, it was good to see them. I feel like I´ve been restored. And it is such a good reminder that there is a place in the world where I really do have friends. Good, trustworthy, honest, funny friends. Sometimes here I feel like this friendless alien who everyone knows. Like Courtney Love, minus the drug problem.
So for the New Year, I just want to figure out how to live in this new home. Understand the people. Integrate.
I think it´s happening, slowly. Very, very, slowly. The people are sniffing me out, and me them. We´re all trying to see if we can trust each other and if this thing called friendship is worth it. I´m in my host sister´s house now, surrounded by her and her family. The oldest, 13, and her friends, are all sitting around the table, studying for exams. It´s raining like hell, and has been since 4pm. It´s cold. Maybe in the 50s, which is as cold as it gets here. Teeth are chattering. One teacher showed up in a cotton pea coat today, which was hilarious. The people here have a flair for drama, in any situation.
I have to go because there is a gaggle of preteens who want to play Wii and check Facebook. Some things, regardless of country, never change.
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