La Yapa

Hello!,

It’s been raining here non-stop for the last 10 days and the President of Ecuador declared a state of emergency since there have been a lot of landslides and roads washed out. The flooding hasn’t affected the area where I am, but much of the area in the southwest part of the country is in pretty bad shape. The sun popped out this past weekend finally, which was a nice change from the thick clouds that we had the rest of the week.

Other than the rain, last week involved a bunch of cooking, which was fun. My language group cooked lunch at one of our host family’s houses and even though we were supposed to make Ecuadorian food, we were so tired of soup and rice that I think 75% of what we made was Mexican (Guacamole, tortillas, sautéed peppers and onions, queso fresco, blackberry/lime juice, fried plantains, and caca de perro). The caca de perro is a dessert/snack that's made from maize, panela (sugar cane) and a bit of oil. On Friday, we spent the morning learning about how to stay healthy by eating the local foods. One of the current Peace Corps volunteers is a former chef, so he showed us a bunch of recipes and techniques in the kitchen at the training center. It looks like I still may be able to bake something now and then since he showed us how to make a “campo” oven that works on the stovetop. All it is is a huge pot with a brick at the bottom and a tight fitting lid. You put the cake pan on top of the brick, light up the burner, and bake away. We made a carrot cake in it that came out pretty good. We also had a pot luck lunch on Friday and each of the 11 community groups made something. My group made patacones (fried green plantains) yet again. The night before, I went to the local market to pick up the plantains and decided to put my bargaining skills to work. I ended up getting 7 plantains for 50 cents. Plus, we learned recently in our language class about “La Yapa” or the “freebie” so I decided to work that into the deal as well. If you’re buying a couple of just about any fruit or vegetable, just ask for La Yapa before the deal is done and usually the vender will throw something else in for free. This time around I ended up getting a dozen of the mini-bananas as my yapa. Seven plantains and a dozen mini-bananas for 50 cents… not bad!

Besides the good eating this week, we went on two trips. The first was just about 10 of us that were selected to go up to a school in Cangahua, which is about a 40-minute bus ride from Tabacundo. The school was located way up in the mountains at about 12,000 feet above sea level. The way the bus driver navigated the dirt and stone roads was pretty amazing. At the school (called La Escuela de 29 de Octubre… for some reason lots of things in Ecuador are named after dates), we observed an environmental education session by the Fondo para la proteccion de agua (FONAG). Many schools have little or no environmental education, so FONAG travels from school to school and does a monthly workshop for the kids. We watched and helped out with two activities in a class of 10 year olds. In the first, the kids watched a movie about deforestation and then were given two sheets of paper - one that had lots of trees and the other one with lots of tree stumps. On both sheets there were several bunnies with different facial expressions, and the kids had to color in the bunny with the facial expression that applied to each scenario (i.e. happy bunny with trees, sad bunny without trees). I’m not sure how effective that activity was, since half the kids just wanted to color the whole sheet. After a morning recess (there are like 4 recesses during the day!), the kids got into groups and used colored clay to create some scenes on pieces of cardboard showing a healthy forest, an unhealthy forest, etc. The kids were pretty engaged in this activity which was good. The recess before the activity was pretty crazy… Some kids brought bulk bags of candy with them to school and were trying to sell the candy to us and other kids during the recess. In talking with the FONDO people, we learned that the quality of education here (and many other places) is pretty poor. The teachers are often more babysitters than anything else, and the kids have recess for about half the day. The trip was a good way to see what’s in store for us if we end up helping out with environmental education sessions at our sites.

For the second trip, we were divided up into 5 groups. My group ended up going to Cotacatchi which is about an hour and a half north of Cayambe. The weather turned out to be great, which made the trip much more enjoyable. Cotacatchi is known for its leather artisans and the stuff on display was pretty nice (belts, handbags, briefcases, jackets, etc.) The stuff was relatively expensive by Ecuadorian standards, but pretty cheap by US standards ($25 for a handmade leather handbag). It was nice to see the stuff being made right in front of you from cows that grazed right down the road, rather than some Made in China bag in the States that probably costs 4 times as much. Besides touring around the markets and shops in Cotacatchi, we also piled into the back of a camioneta (pick up truck) and drove to the Cuicochi crater, which is now a lake with two small islands in the middle of it. The scenery was awesome and the roller coaster ride there was a blast too. We all went for a mini-hike to check out the crater from above, and a couple of us are planning on going back next week to do a longer hike. At one point on the road, two mini-grandmas (both of which topped out at maybe 4 feet) had a string attached to a tree on the other side of the road. As our truck was about to pass, they pulled up on the string in an attempt to make us stop. Our truck just ran through the string, but our language facilitators told us that some people do this in an attempt to make cars stop and give some pocket change. These women, on the other hand, definitely had a few looses screws. After we passed, they started laughing hysterically, waving and pointing. We think it was just some weekend entertainment for them. The whole scene was quite the site!

One other exciting/scary event this week was during a transportation safety training session. We all piled into a bus, and about 10 minutes down the road 3 undercover police officers posing as thieves got out of their seats and started waving their guns around screaming and yelling for everyone to put their heads down. They stole 5 trainees’ backpacks and then ran off the bus. The whole event was pretty unexpected and definitely a bit scary! We were all glad it was a training event and not the real thing!

Finally, on Sunday my host family and I went to the nearby park to hang out. We played some basketball and volley (a variation on volleyball) and then I pedaled the 8 year-old around on his bmx bike while he stood on the pegs on the rear wheel. I can’t believe how much the elevation here (9300 ft) can affect you. I was totally out of breath in about 5 minutes. Some others trainees that jogged frequently in the States have said that they can now only go about 6 blocks before their hearts are pounding out of their chests. The nurses said it will take about 1 – 3 months to fully adapt. At that point I’ll be Rocky! After the park, we went out for lunch and basically ate a variation on the same thing that we eat in the house most days (soup, rice, a fried egg, a little piece of steak, a quarter of an avocado, fresh squeezed pineapple juice and a grease-bomb empanada for dessert. Even though it’s the same thing we always eat, it’s not too shabby for $1.80! Finally we came back home and eventually made some pizzas in the fireplace for dinner. I took over the dough making process and my host family now calls me “maestro” since they were pretty impressed with my rolling pin capabilities. :) Next time, I told them that I’d make some sauce from scratch though since the “bagged” tomato sauce here is absolutely hideous. It’s more like a very acidic ketchup than tomato sauce. Nevertheless, I was ecstatic that there was no rice on my plate for the first time in about two weeks!

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