A lot to be thankful for. . .

Cuenca, the 3rd largest city in Ecuador is known as the city of beautiful churches, intellectuals, and great coffee cafes. We bussed down to Cuenca to celebrate Thanksgiving, potluck style, with 13 other P.C.V.´s. Cajas National Park has a big rustic cabin on the shore of a gorgeous lake so that´s where we slept and ate, played cards and listened to American music. The park entrance is at around 3,300 meters altitude and some of the hiking trails go up to 4,000 meters, so it wasn´t any hot tropical paradise but wow, the scenery was spectacular as was the bird watching. We highly recommend this park, high up in the cloud forest but be sure to bring your waterproof hiking boots and rainjacket.
If you wonder, what we spend our time doing at our site these days. . . here is a list: (Lucy is writing this entry and I do love lists) teaching English to 4 different groups, gardening and related activites i.e. the compost pile, repackaging and selling seeds cheap, researching and writing up the milking goat project proposal, planned and performed a skit regarding trash and recycling, chess and other foundation kid activities, keeping our tiny house tidy and functional and knitting socks and hats.
We´ve had a few stomach related health problems but nothing that "remedios" can´t fix. I am very thankful to be in Ecuador. Here is a list of a few things I am grateful for: fresh juicy mangos, kids that know my name and call out to greet me in the street, gorgeous Cajas National Park, the challenge of learning Kichwa, P.C. volunteers, my best friends here in Ecuador, e-mail, knitting shops that carry alpaca yarn, 3 papayas for $1 in the market, a dry day now and then, our Ecuatorian counterparts that are always encouraging and appreciative. We have quite a few family and friends arriving for a visit at the end of December and for that we are especially grateful. Happy Holiday season to all.

Potato Heads

Dear Readers,

As is apparent from some of the photos, we are excited about potatoes. Being the main staple of the Sierra diet here, we want to see if we can plant and grow them organically.

Lucy and I are teaching classes here at the foundation every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. As in the U.S., it is challenging to get young people interested in agriculture. They are more interested in becoming consumers with a 9 to 5 job in urban areas. But we were able to motivate some of the younger ones to climb the steep hillsides with us. Two teen age girls (as is common in the kichwa culture), were proud to show us how much compost fertilizer they could carry. Aside: I am still blown away by the tenderness and care men show toward children, and the physical prowess women proudly exhibit in this culture.

So the potatoes are in the ground in expectation of the heavier rains to come.

A couple of weeks ago we made a trip to Quinche outside of Quito to check on a goat farm we heard about. Carlos, 80 years old, full of energy and still passionate about agriculture, showed us around his impressive farm with more than 100 goats. We came away more determined than ever to initiate a goat project here in San Bernardo. The people here, including our counterparts are starting to warm up to the idea. We are talking about starting with 3 or 4 families, each of which would receive a pair of young pregnant females. The families would have to invest labor and some materials in building a small stable, corral, feeders, and milking stand. The first female offspring would have to be returned to the project to be presented to new families. Currently I'm calling the project, Milk for "Kids". A good buck goat (check out the Chilean bucks in the photo) will be kept for breeding purposes at the foundation.

We are applying to the Peace Corps to be approved as a Partnership Program. This approval would mean we will be listed on their website and people will be able to donate directly to the project there at http://www.peacecorps.gov/. Of course our friends at Farmer to Farmer (http://www.farmertofarmer.org/) will certainly expedite any support for this goat project also.

Yesterday I indulged in a little beekeeping with our counterpart, Jose Pilamunga. At one point he said I was covered with about 1000 africanized bees - which means they are very aggressive but also hardy and resistant to disease. On inspection, one hive needed to be harvested so we took out about 9 liters (worth about $5 per liter here). No stings for me but 2 for Jose. A few of these little buggers waited around 10 minutes until he took off his protective equipment, and zapped him!

Didn't mean to write a book but we are staying busy. Nine of our original training group of 43 have returned home, most because they weren't happy here. Certainly life in a strange culture can be lonely....less so for married couples like Lucy and me. Maybe there's a lesson here about trying to find happiness in external circumstances......

Anyway, may you be happy and know the root of happiness,

Craig

Some Easy Travelin'

Hi Friends. I wanted to write for those who check, to let you know we are live and well. We had a great time traveling with our friends, Marty and Jeri. They spent three nights at our (now) cozy place. I think they were genuinely impressed with the warmth and generosity of the kichwa speaking people at our site. From here we went south to Cuenca, a truly charming colonial city. Cuenca has so much charm that it seems European. I wondered why so few tourists were to be seen on the street-- a few Europeans but no Norte Americanos except us. That made it more appealing to me! We took a little side trip to the very pretty little artesania town (especially jewelry and pottery) of Chordeleg. After that excursion we met up with our two friends in Tena, in the Oriente region of Ecuador. It was great to be on the edge of the Jungle and experience the vastness of jungle and river water, all flowing to the Amazon and the Pacific Ocean. Both Marty and I tasted enough to be wishing we had time to explore a few weeks further down the river and into the jungle.
Notwithstanding time being an artificial human construct, we had to move back up in the mountains to Baeza, shockingly pretty and cleaner than any other town we've seen. It was surrounded by three big ecological reserves (with their own volcanoes). It was great to see so much forest (primary I think) when so many other parts of Ecuador are deforested. Our goal there was to see the goats at a municipal farm in the hopes they might have some good breeding stock for our site in San Bernardo. Turns out they have lots of Saanen, one of our favorite breeds.....and they want to sell them at a reasonable price! They are not up to the challenge of marketing goat milk to a population not accustomed to drinking goat milk or eating goat cheese. They are located several hours at least from any large population. So we are very interested in some of those goats and savor the challenge of commercialization of goat milk in the Riobamba area. A ver. After Baeza we said our sad farewell to our brave friends, Marty and Jeri who went on to Octavalo and home. They lost there son, Roberto, a welder, who fell to his death in May. We hope they found ways to see their son alive in the beauty of the people and natural phenomena of Ecuador.
I promise to update our recent activities within a week. No pics because a virus infected our memory card so we have bought new one today. Will post some pics next post. Love to all.
Craig

Hace 3 Meses Aqui

We have been here in San Bernardo/Sasapud for 3 months now. As expected the newness has rubbed off and we are down to the normal rhythms of life with its usual ups and downs. At first it seemed like things happened without too much effort on our part. Now it seems like we have to really make a strong effort with a measure of thoughtful concentration to make helpful change happen.

We still deal alot with issues of daily life: being with the ever increasing boredom, how to bathe without a shower, keeping warm, how to keep the mice out, keeping the dogs out of the garden, and now, dealing with the dust driven by strong winds. Our best times continue to be connecting with the people and living things in our little part of the world. These photos show a couple of families we visited (Lucy wasn't as sleepy as she looks). One includes a retired pastor who still works for the benefit of his community and asked Lucy to put on a workshop to help the women learn something new. She is going to help them make tapioca pudding as there is plenty of eggs and milk produced here. The other family spins their own wool yarn by hand to make ponchos and handbags. Lots of wool produced in this valley as well. Rosa, the young woman in the last photo is receiving a scholarship from a Peace Corps volunteer committee to attend high school (colegio) as her father died a number of years ago. The animal in the picture is a "cuy", or a guinea pig as Norte Americanos know them. Cuys in Ecuador are a traditionally favorite food reserved for special occasions. We have tried them on twice -hard to refuse as they are offering you their best. But it is very difficult for me to know they are killing one of these little guys in my honor!

Lucy is finding her teaching and cooking skills in big demand. I'm struggling some because my skills seem less in demand. Yet one more lesson for me in patience and letting go of identity. The I Ching says that success usually leads to failure and failure usually leads to success.....two sides of the same coin.

That's all for now folks. If you haven't checked out our friends' in Wisconsin, Farmer to Farmer, at their website, you should. They are doing great work: www.farmertofarmer.org

Craig

Padre Rumi---sacred rock in the paramo

Hi Folks. I'm trying this post for a second time from Ambato as yesterday the electricity went off in Riobamba and my work was for naught. Thought I'd post a few more pics of Padre Rumi, the sacred rock that Lucy and I hiked to (at around 13,000 feet)a couple of hours from our house. Juan and his son Oscar were our guides. As you can see from the photos, this rock is a very strange phenomenon sitting 4 stories tall on the fairly level top of the grass-covered mountains. My favorite of this series is the couple working their steep field with azodones. The women appears to have a baby on her back which is very common here. In this indigenous culture, men and women appear to share equally in physical work as their strength allows. Believe me. These women are strong! Lucy insisted I put up a photo that includes myself, so there's one of the ol' geezer showing off the drip irrigation system I installed just before it started raining almost non-stop. That's all for today. Love to all.

Craig

It's still raining

Alli Chichi friends. I'm in sunny Riobamba again today and thought I would catch you up on what's happening in our lives. Out at our site it has been raining several times every day (all night last night). This is very unusual for this time of the year when usually it is dry and windy now with no rain until September. Perhaps more evidence of global climate change.

Lucy and I are fine. We have been busy. We did a very successful yogurt making workshop in Sasapud attended by 30 women and some of their curious husbands. We were assisted by Crystal, another PCV whom you will see in one of the pics posted today. Now we're getting requests by others to teach them how to make yogurt also.

I had fun experimenting with drip irrigation which I installed in our little garden. This had attracted a lot of interest until about a week ago when it started raining almost nonstop and people are starting to think how they can dry their land out. Lucy and I also started another map of the world on the wall in a classroom in Sasapud. Already were finding it a good way to meet more people up there in that remote town. Lucy is also teaching a sunday afternoon English class in Sasapud which was well attended last Sunday. The Indigenous seem to have little regard for the Spanish language but hold the English language in high esteem. Of course many see it as a way to access more opportunity, both educational and economical.

We also accompanied a couple of people from our community to visit another community south of here that neither had visited before. This was to reciprocate a visit another PVC initiated to our site with a woman from her community (Capulispungo)---A new inter-Ecuadorian solidarity project? Maybe they will actually start helping each other. The other community did make us grateful for where we are. It was even colder there and much windier. The soil is much sandier and in many places was completely eroded away. The people seemed downtrodden---poor not only financially but also in spirit.

You will see here a couple of photos of us trekking up to maybe 13000 feet to visit Padre Rumi, a sacred rock located in the paramo a couple hours from us. As you can see Lucy got a little help from a burro and then a horse. The paramo is beautiful, but maybe endangered as well from to much cattle grazing. As we understand it, it acts as a big sponge for all the winter rains and then slowly releases it to the water table the remainer of the year.

Enough for now. Our thoughts are with those of you who have suffered loss. May peace be with you.

Strange weather here too

I hope this finds you well and happy. Lucy and I have been reading news of home in Wisconsin where the weather has been challenging to say the least (baseball-sized hail and tornadoes). One friend of ours lost her barn. Here we have cold rain 4 or 5 times a day and it has been this way for the last two weeks. The sun rarely comes out and lots of crops are being lost to fungus and blight.

Despite the challenging weather, we're fine. Not to say there are no ups and downs but for the most part we feel we have adjusted. I think the most difficult adjustments are behind us. We have stayed busy with a number of things besides keeping house. Lots of families are trying to build houses when the weather cooperates. We have been helping Jose (notice Lucy with the women helping prepare concrete mix and Jose with his father, Feliciano in the pictures above). We have also been working on a map of the world which the community is now excited about. The last couple of days many have been painting the many countries of the world and asking endless questions (another pic above). The picture of the children is in Sasapud where we just had the luck of connecting with a group of women who want us to lead a workshop on yogurt making. I say luck because because of auspicious coincendences that led a man to be present who helped translate to Spanish for us as these women mostly speak Kichwa.

The last picture is of one of the ¨hungry ghost¨dogs that come by regularly to see if we have any food to share----which we usually do. My heart always goes out to these beings who are lacking in essential nourishment and of course, love.

my this find you well nourished in all that is essential.

Craig

alli tuta May 9, 2008

Hi folks! Things are looking up for us right now. Lucy and I are both healthy and we have moved into a more comfortable house. The first picture is of our house above the foundation "Inti Nan" from across the river. The second one shows Lucy on the steps we have to climb to get up to our home. I included a typical street scene and a couple of the vistas as we look down the valley from San Bernardo (at 10,700 feet) towards the town of Llin Llin. I'll post some people shots tomorrow. We are heading out to eat now here in Riobamba where we are shopping for household goods and a good matress. Hasta pronto.

Craig

First Week On Site

May 1st
Lucy and I are in Riobamba doing some shopping and staying in a hostel where we have a comfortable bed and hot shower. Our fears about the difficulty of life at our site were realized staying there for the first week. San Bernardo is at an elevation of 10,700 feet and our other site, Sasapud is at (por lo menos) 11,000 feet. It is cold and rainy and we have to trudge up and down muddy paths every time we leave our room. Our room is cold and damp---too cold to sit and read. We do warm up in bed with three heavy wool blankets on us. We eat in a primitive outside kitchen where the family likes to cook with a wood fire which is very smoky. The smoke seems to have aggravated a cold I had so I am now hacking and coughing continously. We had headaches at first due to the altitude but those have stopped. We have no cell phone coverage unless we hike up the hill 20 minutes.
That's the bad news.....the good is that the people are wonderful. They seem to take all the adversity in stride. They are always smiling and laughing and carry themselves with dignity. They remind me a lot of the Mayans in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. While some do speak Spanish, they prefer to speak Kichwa which means Lucy and I need to learn much more. Poco a poco. Last Sunday we attended one of the many evangelical Christian churches in the area. We were introduced up front and then shook hands with the over one hundred people in attendance. Unlike service in the U.S., the sermon was short with many different group singing their hymns in Kichwa (two hours total). We were warned not to be to open about our religious persuasion (Buddhism) as they would probably shun us. We decided to be honest about who we are, emphasizing we are from a Christian background of course! Turns out that people have been very accepting of us, even though one of the first questions they ask is if we are ¨evangelicos¨. I think being an older married couple is a big plus. We went up to Sasapud a couple of days ago and were introduced in a big meeting of about 60 people. People seem freindly and genuinely interested in us.
So now we are trying to change our housing situation. We are hoping to rent a two room place that get more sun where we can cook with gas. We are looking at spending good money on a mattress that won´t leave us with a backache. We haven´t decided on a refrigerator, partly because they are almost nonexistent in San Bernardo, and partly because it is so coool we are not sure we need one.
I confess to getting a little excited about all the dairy activity in our region. There are cows grazing everywhere, along with sheep, burros, and pigs. There are many small cheese factories. I'm already thinking of ways they might improve their dairy-centered agriculture. One big problem is there is no rain in the summer and all the abundant pastures dry up. Some sort of way to store silage would make sense. Of course they have very little money (if any) to invest. There's too much rain to think about drying hay. The climate is perfect for small grains with lots of barley and oats being grown. Alfalfa does well here too. Rotational grazing would definitely enhance their milk production as well as help to prevent soil erosion which is a tremendous problem. So much to do, it´s hard to know where to start.
First we are just going to get to know our two communities....sorry no pics this time but we´ll put some more on soon so you can see that despite the poverty, it is very scenic where we are. Thanks to those who have commented here on the blog. As I sit here there is a big parade going by with lots of drums and civic groups chanting slogans....never a shortage of animo here in Ecuador....My you be happy and peaceful.......
Craig

It's official---now we are Peace Corps Volunteers

April 23 Lucy and I were sworn in as volunteers at the Ambassador's residence last week. It was an uplifted atmosphere with everyone dressed up. There were some terrific speeches and one of the volunteers even composed a song for the occasion. Lucy had to wear sunglasses because her eye was very red from a broken capillary. I wore them too in solidarity. The view from the residence was astounding with a valley leading out to Volcan Cayambe. This was the first day in weeks that the sun was shining and it wasn't raining. After we swore allegiance to our country and to the values Peace Corps stands for, we were lucky enough to receive a tour of the Ambassador's residence from the Ambassador's husband. Lucy and I and a couple of other volunteers are meeting with the ambassador near our site in a few weeks. The ambassador is retiring soon and is being replaced by another woman. There's a photo here of me with our beautiful language teachers.....Cisa, Teresa, Carmen, Alexandra, and Silvana. Chevere!

Presently we're studying Kichwa with Jose who you will see in later photos. Lucy's eye is looking better so we are going out to our site to live at the end of this week. We are feeling both anxiousness and anticipation for our life in San Bernardo/Sasapud. It will be a challenge to live there we know, but we also know the people are resilient and generous. We'll keep you updated.

kaya kama,

Craig

Photos from Chimborazo.

Here we are with our Agriculture Program director. The next photos in order are: vicuna (ecuatorian deer that live in the highland paramo), an alpaca or is it a llama?, two photos from a cacao processing plant.



They gave us a free sample of chocolate (pasta de cacao) and we used it to make no-bake chocolate cookies for our host family in Tabacundo. Yumm
We leave for Quito to swear in on the 16th. Then we will be in Quito for one more week of Kichwa language training. On the 24th we leave to live in San Bernardo, which will be our site' south of Riobamba for the next 2 years.
Thanks for your comments. We look forward to more. Overall we are very happy but at times feel lonely for all of you.

April 1-4 training trip Rio Bamba

Craig and I are in Rio Bamba this week with 10 other "aspirantes". We are staying in a nice hotel and during the day we go out to various agricultural sites or farms and learn ag practices. On Monday we went to one of Craig and my sitios, San Bernardo. It is 1 and a half hours from Rio Bamba.
It´s beautiful, very rural, very little traffic and the air is clean. The things that are worrying us a bit are the steep slopes for farming. They are hardworking people and our counterpart is a great hardworking go getter Kichwa man, well respected in the community and also he´s by Kichwa teacher. The paths going up to the little fields were steep and slippery cuz it had rained that morning. It was challenging getting up and down and fortunately we paused often to catch our breath.So that is one worry, getting up and down those slopes without falling !!
The first few months we are supposed to live with the family of our counterpart. I didnñ´t go in the house but it looks kind of on the small side. We´ll see how that goes. I am a bit tired of living with a family but I´m sure it will help us integrate and all that. So then we get our own house. The young guy we are repalacing livied in a shack and he climbed a ladder to get to it and his bathroom was down the ladder in the community building below.
We will not be living there thank goodness. There is a house (very run down) that our counterpart has bought with the idea of fixing it up for us to live in and for his family to use somehow in the futur5e someday. It looks very rundown to me. Another possibility is that there is a clinic in the town with a few rooms to rent and I heard that that is rather new and nice but we didn´t have time to go and see it. There aren´t any stores or tiendas in the town so we will have to walk 1/2 hour or take a bus to Rio Bamba to buy things. The former volunteer went to Rio Bamba almost every week. So I guess the site looks like it will take some time to get used to. We certainly won´t be in the most comfortable site.
The people seemed very friendly and warm. On a sad note, a 13 yr old boy from the community was hit by a truck on the highway (out of San Bernardo 45 min.) I´m not sure what he was doing out on that highway . He was with a friend. So now the whole community is mourning cuz he died.
They just got hooked up to internet in that community and the P.C. volunteer before us and his sister in the U.S. have helped the people have a web site so see if you can find it on line. It would be something like www.sanbernardo.com or maybe you need to say ecuador too. I´ve got to go. We are all going out to dinner somewhere. RioBamba is great. Lots of places to eat, some museums, great markets and shops and yes there is a touristy, scenic train where people sometime sit on the roof. Chimborazo mountain is in site when the clouds go away and it is awesome!!!! Love, Lucy

March 20, 2008 Semana Santa

Lucy and I finally got an afternoon off from training. Last weekend we went to visit our former exchange student, Miguel, and his family in Ambato. We had a great time and were welcomed as family. On the way back from Quito Lucy had her backpack slashed on the bus (nothing taken as we took precaution not to take many valuables with us). This week we went with our fellow aspirantes to a volcanic lagoon about an hour north of here and hiked for nine miles around it at an altitude of over 10,000 feet. It was probably the most beautiful lake I've ever seen. Now everyone is preparing for Easter. The special food is already being served. Tomorrow will be a grand procession imitating the coming of Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey and being adored by the people before he is executed. We heard quite the sermon on this (last week outside of Ambato) from a priest who is a friend of Miguel's family.
Saturday we head to Puerto Quito for more training at a finca over there. I'll try to load some pictures of the vistas from the house we are living in here in Tabacundo. The snow-covered volcano is Cayambe and the equator runs thru it. There are also pics of me with Miguel and another of Lucy and Miguel's brother and mother. Tenga una linda fin de semana.
Craig

February 29, 2008 in Tabacundo

Hola to everyone! Craig and I have been in Tabacundo, Ecuador for three weeks now. We are living with a fantastic family the same age as us. They have a 16 year old son. We have enjoyed a lot together so far . . . cooking pancakes, pizza, dancing in the living room, doing Yoga and LuJong every morning at 6:30 a.m. and long conversations about this that and everything. Our Spanish is improving, I think, even though somedays it seems to go backwards. Also, I am learning Kichwa, a native american language that is spoken widely in Ecuador.
This is my first attempt at starting a blog. One of our fellow Peace Corps aspirantes told me to just go to the site and follow the directions and it would be "easy". We´ll see.
Training here in Tabacundo is full-time, Monday to Friday and sometimes includes weekend excursions. At night, we converse and eat with our host families and we also have other homework assignments. Truthfully, it is exhausting. They say that once we get to our sites (April 15) that we will be wishing we had more to do. We´ll see about that too. At any rate, the training is excellent and valuable for our success as Peace Corps volunteers.
Today, the highlight was a visit by the U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador. She spoke very eloquently about U.S. involvement in Ecuador over the 3 years that she has been here. Then there was time for questions. Craig and I questioned her about WHINSEC and expressed our concern about this School of the Americas. Her opinion was not in agreement with ours but rather that the school is of benefit to Ecuador and that they currently have 20 or 30 students there. At any rate, expressing our concerns brought the topic out and many of our fellow aspirantes spoke to us gratefully afterwards.
Well, this is my first entry. I will try to bring some photos soon and see if I can get them onto this blog. Hasta pronto. -Lucy