Macas or Loja??

Hola,

Things are still going well here and on the 6th of March I will have officially been in Ecuador for a month – 26 more months to go! This week was rainy again, but we’re all getting used to it. Standing out in the rain and laundry that takes 5 days to dry on the line somehow seems normal!

Last Monday, the Natural Resources group took a trip to Pifo to visit a tree nursery where we got some hands on experience with plant propagation, grafting, seed beds, etc. My group ended up having to stuff soil in plastic bags or “fundas” for an hour and we were happy we didn’t have to do the 1200 bags that the workers there fill everyday! Even though it was pretty monotonous we had fun learning some jokes in Spanish from some of the facilitators. As a follow up later in the week we learned about a bunch of organic remedies for crop pests that you can make at home using everything from garlic to beer.

The crazy nurse paid us a visit again later in the week - dressed in a chicken suit - and spoke about the avian flu for a while. When the roosters outside the classroom saw the chicken suit they got a bit excited and started cock a doodling like mad. Of course, the nurse played along and flapped her wings, which was interesting to say the least! We also went over a bunch of first aid information, discussed some case studies (i.e. your foot gets run over by a tractor – what do you do?), and talked a little bit about poisonous snakes in Ecuador even though there’s never been a Peace Corps Volunteer bitten by a snake in the country. At the end of the day, the language facilitators hooked up some speakers and we had a blast putting our dancing skills to the test, trying out merengue, salsa, cumbia, and a bunch of other common local dances.

On Friday, Ambassador Jewel visited our group at the training center and talked a bunch about US-Ecuadorian relations, which was pretty interesting. In the afternoon, we learned about starting up community banks at our sites, which is a pretty neat and easy to implement concept. Every week, the bank members would meet and would all deposit the same amount into the safe (i.e. one dollar). Members can take out small loans (to buy raw materials for their products, for example) at a 10% interest rate and the loans need to be paid back by the end of the month. 10% sounds like a lot, but it’s not that much on a $30 loan, and is especially worth it if it allows the borrower to produce products he/she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to produce. At the end of a specified period of time – usually a year – all the money in the safe (deposits + interest) is distributed to the bank members. The members can then decide if they want to start the bank over again.

We ended the week with a language simulation test where we went to 5 stations and chose a card at each station with a different scenario that we had to talk about for 5 minutes. I did pretty well and had fun fighting with the “bank teller” when my ATM card got trapped in the machine.

This past weekend was pretty low key. A bunch of us hung out at another trainee’s house on Friday night, and I went to the SuperMaxi (supermarket) with my family in Ibarra on Saturday. We made pizza both Saturday night and Sunday night, since the family is now obsessed with my dough. Saturday was a flop since the fire wasn’t hot enough, so on Sunday we used the oven for the first time since I moved into the house! On Sunday, I went to Café Aroma (AKA Gringo Café) for breakfast with some other trainees, and then walked around the town of Ayora just north of Cayambe, which was nice.

On March 11th, I officially find out where my site will be. Right now, the two natural resources IT sites are Loja in mountains or Macas in the jungle. Loja (pop about 120,000) is one of the oldest cities in the country and was founded in 1548. This site would be the most city-living of any of the sites available to volunteers. The city sounds pretty nice and is known as the “Garden City”. It’s also supposedly the cleanest city in Ecuador, and the people speak the best Spanish. It’s located at about 7300 ft above sea level so the weather is a bit warmer than where I am now. My counterpart at this site would be an organization called Nature and Culture. Some activities I’d be involved with include promotion (radio and mass media), upkeep and management of some kind of Biosphere declaration, website design and maintenance, environmental education in local schools, school gardens, eco-clubs, and assistance with the design of a hydroelectric project to the south of Loja. Macas is located in eastern Ecuador in the jungle. It’s a smaller town of about 15 or 20,000 people. Here I’d be working with the Amazonian Forest Service. Although I’d be living in Macas, most of the work would be way out in the rainforest and I’d get to work with the indigenous Shwar tribe (formerly famous for shrinking heads!), which sounds pretty neat. Some activities I’d be involved with at this site are sustainable forest management, zoning of farms for forest management, elaboration of materials and curriculum for forest management techniques, and a bunch of GIS and GPS work, including teaching the Shwar tribe GPS skills so they can better manage their land and make more informed decisions when, for example, an oil company approaches them wanting to drill on their land. Let me know your thoughts as to which job you think is better!! I have the ability to lobby for one or the other, but the decision is up to the tech trainers in the end.

Click on the pics below to enlarge...