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!
Monday, April 23, 2012
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.
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