Arctangents & A Miniature Queen

Growing up, my sister Elyse would often refer to me in not so favorable terms. “Uch… you’re such a nerd Jason,” she’d say in a typical Long Island accent.  Well after this post, I’m sad to say that I think I may have provided enough evidence to support that claim.

For the past several weeks I’ve been building all my own living room furniture since the Peace Corps doesn’t exactly provide a six-figure salary (or even five-figures for that matter).  Just 4 blocks from my apartment there’s a place called Placa Centro, a Chilean company that sells big sheets of particleboard covered with a wood-looking finish just like the furniture you can buy at Ikea.  Hmm.. I thought.  Could I build an entire living room from 2.5 meter by 2 meter particleboard sheets? Of course!  So, like a good nerd I broke out some 3D modeling software and started to design.  I measured the heights of some chairs in my office and a sofa at a friend’s house and even found out that through a lot of research, Herman Miller, the company that designed the famous $700 mesh-backed Aeron office chair, determined that the most comfortable seatback angle is 25 degrees.  After about a week (and after several passionate uses of the arctangent function to determine the best locations to mount the seatbacks), I had models of a chair, a side table, a coffee table, and – most challenging – a working futon, all made from 1.8 centimeter thick particleboard (a tad less than 3/4 inch for those of you still stuck in the Stone Ages).  I then broke apart all the models to create a list of all the pieces I’d need to build all the furniture.  At Placa Centro, you give the list to a woman at a computer, and after entering all the dimensions the computer optimizes the layout of the cuts on the board to minimize the amount of wasted wood.  The computer then prints out a diagram of the board with all the cuts on it, which then gets passed on to the guys that operate a big wall saw.  Here, they cut the board into all the rectangular pieces you need for free.  They’ll even glue a wood-looking border on the sides of the pieces you request so you don’t see the particleboard innards.   Most people get a few big cuts, so I think the guys cutting the boards wanted to kill me when they saw my list of lots of tiny cuts. Usually it takes an hour or two… I was told to come back tomorrow by a guy clenching his jaw and shaking his head back and forth. :)  The next day I headed back there and immediately spotted my order resembling a giant-sized pile of cards during a game of 52-card pickup.  Back at home I began the construction process, and three weeks later after installing well over 300 screws I had my very own living room.  I even used the scrap wood from my order to build a floor lamp complete with a 99-cent paper shade supported by 4 strings.  Coming soon to an Ikea near you… the latest line of flat-pack furniture by Kreiselman Designs.  There may be an ounce or two of dork in me, but for $150 I’ve got a pretty damn cool living room!  Check out the pics at the bottom of this post.

Besides my venture into the world of furniture-making, this past week was a BIG one for Loja.  All the offices closed at noon on Wednesday and many people didn’t come to work at all.  Why? Because The Queen was coming.  Not the type of queen you typically think of though.  This one’s less than 3 feet tall, made out of wood and lives in a glass box.  She’s the Queen of Cisne, or La Reina del Cisne. All throughout the province of Loja in southern Ecuador, you see stickers, shrines, pendants, figurines, and business names all dedicated to this Virgin Queen.  (I’d imagine it would be pretty hard for her to have sex trapped in her little glass box.)  Even the stadium here is called Estadio Reina del Cisne. Most of the year she sits in the town of El Cisne about 45 miles from Loja in an enormous, Gothic-style church, but from August 16 – 20 she’s carried from El Cisne to Loja by an enormous procession of 500,000 people (yes, half a million people!) from southern Ecuador and northern Peru.  This is by far the largest religious procession in the country.  According to local lore, the ancestors of the people in this area made the long and difficult journey to Quito in the late 16th century to find a fitting religious statue.  They returned in 1594 with the carving of La Reina del Cisne, and since then she’s been the ‘Queen’ of the people here. (Thank you ‘Lonely Planet’ for filling in the blanks in this story!) When she finally arrives in Loja, there’s a lot of fanfare to say the least.  Dancing troupes, military salutes, marching bands, fireworks, thousands of rose petals released from balconies, doves released from paper mache bells, a concert and a huge outdoor mass on the main plaza in the city.  I didn’t do the whole 3 day walk, but I did walk against “traffic” for an hour or so and then turned around and walked with everyone else back to Loja, which was good enough for me to get a feel for it!  The number of people walking was astounding and there were tons of people selling everything from sunglasses and umbrellas to freshly grilled pork skin and bags of cotton candy, each stuffed with a fake $100 bill.  It was definitely something to see!  On November 1st, the whole process is repeated in reverse and the Reina will rest in El Cisne again until the following August.

 Enjoy the pictures below and as usual click a few times to make them bigger.  Then click “Slideshow” to view them full screen.

Unshackled

For the first three months of service, the Peace Corps wants you to stay in your site (more or less) and become familiar with the town and its people.  So, as soon as we hit the 3-month mark, nearly half of my group converged at Mompiche Beach in the province of Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador for a little break from our sites.  The place is very “tranquilo” as they would say here, consisting of two sand streets and a handful of open-air bars and restaurants serving about 40 different types of batidos, or fresh-squeezed juices mixed with ice and milk, and all kinds of seafood that the local fisherman pull out of the Pacific Ocean early each morning.  The coast of Ecuador in general is a lot more laid back than the Sierra, or mountain areas, where the people tend to be a bit more conservative (and work a lot more!).  It was a nice change from the “big city” life in Loja.  There aren’t many places to stay at the beach, but we lucked out and were able to get a big thatched roof cabana that was able to fit a bunch of us.  There’s not much to do here except relax, which we didn’t have any problem with!  A few of us arrived early and paid some fisherman to take us out to an island that we had heard about.  After about 30 minutes of flying (literally) over some huge swells we arrived at the island which didn’t really have much to offer except an unbelievably wide beach, lots of birds and tons of giant-sized sand dollars covering the sand.  We hung out here and talked with the super-friendly fisherman for an hour or two, and then headed back to Mompiche. On the way back we stopped to watch some surfers do their thing for a while which was pretty impressive.  Mompiche is known to have some of the best/longest surfing waves in the world, and a bunch of international surfing competitions have taken place in the area.  Back at Mompiche, we didn’t do much but swing in the hammock, sit around a campfire, wade in the ocean and sip Caipiriñas at the bar.  Speaking of which, the electricity here isn’t too reliable!  We lost power about 3 times during the weekend and one night at the bar, the blender wasn’t working so well so the bartender proceeded to unscrew the two light bulbs and turn off the CD player so that more juice could flow to the blender!  (and it worked!)  One of the coolest parts about the beach was going into the ocean at night.  There are lots of tiny organisms called bioluminescent dinoflagelettes (say that 10 times fast) in the water here, and whenever you swing your arms through the water they light up like little stars.  Very neat!  There’s also a black sand beach within a 20-minute walk from Mompiche with silky smooth pitch black sand that was pretty cool too.

After 3 relaxing days at the beach I decided to check out two other volunteer’s sites in northern Ecuador.  The journey started with a bus from Mompiche to Atacames, a bigger city on the coast a bit north of Mompiche.  The ride is only an hour and a half, but of course the bus driver and his ayudante (or helper that does everything from collecting the fare to hanging outside the bus and washing the windshield with powdered laundry detergent and his hand) had to stop for a sit-down lunch mid-way through.  Why they couldn’t wait the 45 minutes to have lunch in Atacames is beyond me!  From Atacames, we were able to hop on a chartered bus to the city of Ibarra that would get us there in 6 hours instead of 8 on the regular bus.  The only catch was that the five of us heading that direction couldn’t sit in the regular seats with the folks that chartered the bus.  Instead we were relegated to the front compartment with the driver and his ayudante, Pepe, who proved to be quite the character and liked hanging out the door train-conductor-“All Aboard!”-style and informing us of the areas where it was and wasn’t safe for the bus to stop for us to take a leak on the side of the road.  Ari and I sat on the sweltering seats above the engine compartment, while Chris manned the dashboard and Shelley and Gaby sat on the floor on the top step.  And of course the people that chartered the bus had to stop at every roadside stand selling everything from mamacita's coconut candies to strings of grapefruits in yard-long mesh bags. When we finally made it to Ibarra, we ended up spending the night at another volunteer’s house before continuing on our way.  In the morning, Ari and I continued further north to her site in the province of Carchi, adjacent to the Colombian border.  This was another nice 4-hour bus ride, but at least we had seats this time around!  Ari’s site is located at the end of a painfully bumpy dirt road that any bus driver in the States would refuse to drive on.  The Ecuadorian bus driver, however, navigated the hair-pin turns with streams running across the road with ease.  Ari’s village is an Afro-Ecuadorian community of a few hundred people with a nearly perfect climate.  I think my initial reaction to the site was, “Wow this is a real Peace Corps site.”  It couldn’t be more different from Loja.  All that was there were a few houses, a volleyball court, an overgrown soccer field, and a tienda selling a few drinks and snacks that opened a month or two earlier.  Ari’s host family’s house was rustic to say the least, complete with newspaper wallpaper.  There was electricity but the only running water was an outdoor pipe diverted from the river for washing dishes and clothing.  The kitchen looked like something out of colonial times in the US with a wood burning fire inside for cooking and walls coated with black soot.  It was a gathering place, not just for Ari and the family, but for the three dogs, one cat, two ducks, and the plethora of chickens and chicks that roamed the property.  Thankfully the pig had to stay in his pen outside.  Armadillos are pretty common here and outside on the rafters of the porch was the family’s armadillo shell collection from all the ones that they’ve eaten recently.  The difference between this place and my host mom’s “palace” in Loja was shocking.  As rustic as the place was though, it was kind of nice to live the “simple country life” for two days.  All the kids were a ton of fun (and were pleading with me to stay another day… I think I gave them too much attention since they were a novelty and Ari was sick of them already!). 

After two nights in the world’s most uncomfortable bed, I headed 4 hours back to Ibarra, another hour to Cotacachi and then another half hour to Shelley’s site.  Her site is a small farming community in the mountains with neat views of the Imbabura volcano.  Many of the people at her site speak Kichwaa, which was/is the language spoken in the Andes long before the Spaniards arrived.  Most of the women and girls dress in traditional clothing as well.  I only had time for an hour or so here, so I just got a quick tour of the town and her house, which like Ari’s is also pretty rustic compared with my posh Loja life!  

From here, I really wanted to spend some more time on a bus so I headed back to Cotacachi, on to Otavallo (one hour) and then to my old host family’s house in Cayambe (1.5 hours).  It was good to see them and this was the first time I felt that my Spanish had improved tremendously.  When I left there three months ago I could still only understand about 50% of what was going on.  Now I think it was up to 80 or 90%! 

After a night in Cayambe, I headed back to Quito (2 hours) and then toured around the city for a few hours (the center of which is a United Nations World Heritage Site) before heading back to Loja on the always-enjoyable 13 hour overnight bus ride (which turned into 14 hours because of the landslide we hit along the way that some of the bus/truck drivers collectively shoveled a path through so that vehicles could pass).   It was awesome to see some other parts of the country and a bunch of other volunteers from my group, but I was pretty happy to be back in my own bed after the countless hours of bussing watching dubbed jackie chan and steven segal movies and listening to hours and hours of bachata music about everlasting love and aching "corazoncitos" (little hearts). And just remember, next time your toaster-oven isn’t working too well, all you need to do is unscrew a few light bulbs and all your problems will be solved! 

Enjoy the pics below and as usual click a few times to enlarge.  Then click “slideshow” for the full screen pics.

Jungle Juice and Cheese Doodles

To protect the sort-of-innocent, some information in this blog post has been modified...

Two weekends ago, my host mom invited another Peace Corps volunteer and me to an Inti Raymi ceremony to celebrate the summer solstice. I had no idea what I was getting myself into! Because the Incans were sun worshippers, the summer solstice is a pretty huge affair. I thought it was going to be a big parade/festival type event, but it turned out that there were only 8 of us plus a shaman.  The ceremony started at 9:30PM when all of us crossed a gushing river on the sketchiest suspension bridge I've ever seen and hiked up the side of a mountain to a small cleared area. The shaman had set up a a small circular seating area and in the center was a firepit with hot coals arranged in all sorts of patterns.  North, south, east and west were marked off around the circle and the shaman sat on a ceremonial lion-shaped stool in front of the fire. In front of him was a blanket on top of which he had laid out all kinds of rocks, crystals, herbs, powders, drums, bells, flowers, and bottles of interesting looking liquids, all of which were used at some point during the night.  We got up to the cleared area at about 10:30PM and the ceremony lasted until 10AM!!! Unfortunately pictures were not allowed.  A (very) abridged list of events if as follows:

• 1" diameter tobacco pipes hand rolled in corn husks passed around the circle all night long
  
• Drinking a thick green bitter drink called San Pedro made from a cactus in the area that's supposed to cause hallucinations and allow you to talk to the gods (my friend and I decided to sit out on this one)
  
• Having to listen and watch everyone else in the circle gagging and vomiting from the hallucinogenic drink that apparently affected them quite a bit
  
• The shaman drinking firewater (100 proof) mixed with jungle herbs and then walking around the circle and spraying it out of his mouth all over us
  
• Having to see my mom sit on a ocelot skin in front of the fire, lift up her shirt exposing everything and then watch the shaman encircle her with burning branches. This was followed by more alcohol mouth spraying on her stomach, and body slapping with branches and grasses.... all in an attempt to cure her gastritis.
  
• Watching others pour alcohol mixed with tobacco juice into their nostrils from a conch shell and then gagging and puking some more to 'cleanse' themselves (we politely declined, once again)
  
• Burning corn, fruit, and flowers as an offering to the gods
  
• Being pelted with colored sprinkles in the morning
  
• Laughing uncontrollably after being awake for 28 hours when I saw a white carnation in the back pocket of my friend's jeans and thought she was wearing a bunny costume
  
• Sneaking a banana and cheese doodles out of my backpack at 3AM and trying not to crinkle the bag so the shaman wouldn't scold me
  
• Being asked to return to my "place" in the circle when I went to stand on the other side of the fire to avoid passing out from excessive smoke inhalation
  
• Lots of drum banging, bell ringing, conch horn blowing, and chanting
  
• Freezing my ass off since it was drizzling half the night
  
• Getting 6 mosquito bites on my forehead
  

The guest list only made this event even more interesting:

• One Shaman, age approx 40, fond of hand rolled tobacco
  
• Two Ecuadorians, mid-20's, nearly mute
  
• One host mom, age 60, needs to reduce white rice and cheese intake and increase fiber consumption
  
• One 6'5" skinny German guy, age approx 58, claimed that the Finnish are so drunk that they fall over while pushing their kids in strollers
  
• One English guy, age aprox 50, did way too much acid and shrooms in his life and now speech is permanently slurred. chronic chain smoker coughing up phlegm all night long
  
• Wife of English guy, age approx 50, ex-PeaceCorps volunteer, chain smoker, strong believer in the power of the woman
  
• Two Peace Corps volunteers, age 23 and 28, freaked out
  

The next ceremony is for the fall equinox... not sure if I'll make it to that one!

Aside from this experience I've decided to move out of my host mom's house and get my own place.  After looking at about 10 places I finally came across a good one.  It is by far the strangest building I've ever seen in my life, complete with robot statues in the fence, an observatory on the roof, lighting bolt doors, and hexagon-shaped windows.  I'll probably be moving over there this weekend and I'll let you know if there's an alien dissection room in the basement.  A few pics are below.  Hope everyone is doing well!

The Spaceship

Inside

The View From My Hexa-Window

Over the Hills and Through the Woods

Things are still going really well down here and I spent the last two weekends in Podocarpus National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet! The first weekend I headed into the western entrance to the Park which is only 15 minutes south of Loja. This area is at almost 10,000 ft above sea level and is mostly small trees and paramo, or highland grasslands. I recently bought a bike from a guy named Rodrigo and he and I are going to be working on the bike trail project I mentioned in my last post. We headed up to the park early on a Saturday morning to map out one of the potential bike trails and enjoy the awesome views. On the way down we saw an incredible rainbow, which was definitely the highlight of the trip.

Last week a bunch of volunteers and two of our Ecuadorian friends headed to the eastern entrance of the park near Zamora, an hour and a half bus ride east of Loja. Zamora is much lower than Loja and the area is a mix of cloud forest and thick jungle. The plant life, birds, butterflies, waterfalls, rivers, etc. here were pretty neat. (check out the pics) We got rained on pretty heavily, but that only added to the atmosphere. We spent the night in the park and then on Sunday crowded into one of the bars back in Loja to watch the Ecuador-Argentina World Cup qualifier soccer game. Ecuador was predicted to lose 0-4, but they came through with a 1-1 tie so it was pretty exciting. They would have won 1-0 if Argentina didn't score in the last 50 seconds of the game. The bar had girafas (giraffes) of beer which are basically really tall beakers on stands with spigots at the bottom, which made the game even more fun.

Outside of our adventures in the park, I’ve had a couple of urban “adventures” as well. The first was when I came home the other day for lunch. I opened the front and back doors for some ventilation and then went out front to fix something on my bike. Then all of a sudden a gust of wind blew the front door closed and of course my keys were inside the house. So now I was trapped in the little courtyard in front of the house, and I couldn’t get out to the street since you need a key to open the door in the gate as well. I didn’t feel like sitting in the courtyard for 6 hours for my host mom to come home, so I put my MacGyver skills to the test. Luckily there was a pile of paper clips, some nitroglycerin tablets, a Q-tip, a chewing gum wrapper and a coffee can in the courtyard which I used to create a small bomb to blow a hole through the side of the house just in the nick of time before the organized crime agents attempted to assassinate me. Well, not actually… But I did finally figure out how to remove the metal bar security door from its hinges and then use it as a ladder to climb onto the roof of the house. I then managed to climb over the house across the piping hot clay tiles and then jump 8 feet down into the back courtyard of the house using one of my host mom’s flower pots to break my fall. Luckily the back door was still open and I was able to get into the house. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the security door back on the hinges so I ended up having to pay some handyman $5 to get it back on.

Other than the house traverse, I had a great time picking up a package at the post office the other day. Who knew it would be such a process! First I waited on line at the post office window and then they told me I had to go to the back entrance. I waited on line there and after typing on the computer for 5 minutes he asked me to go make two copies of my passport and one copy of a customs form. (There’s no copy machine there so you have to find a store to make copies for you.) Then I went back to the post office and gave him the copies and a dollar (not sure why he needed that... maybe lunch money) and then another guy opened the package and sorted through it. Then he re-taped it and I thought I was set. But no. He gave me another form that I had to take to some municipal building 6 blocks away which of course was closed from 12 -3 for lunch. So I bought an ice cream and looked for new sunglasses for 45 minutes since mine cracked. Finally the building opened and I went to the 5th floor (after signing in with the security guard) and sat down with a woman at some Customs company that the government uses to collect taxes on imported items. After she pecked at her calculator for 5 minutes she told me that the tax would be $6.50. So I started to get out my wallet, but no... she gave me three more forms and told me I have to take them to the Banco Bolivariano to deposit the money in Ecuador's bank account (more or less). So I walked another 6 blocks to this bank, waited on line for 10 minutes and paid the $6.50. I got a nice stamp on one of the forms and then walked back to the post office and finally (after then having to look for the package again) got the box! Next time you get home-delivery of a package from UPS think about how lucky you are! :)

Enjoy the pics and click a couple of times to enlarge. Once enlarged click slideshow on the right side of the screen for full screen photos…