Warning: Weepy Reflection Ahead

It’s my last night in my site as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I feel surprisingly calm. Surprising is probably the best word to describe my time in PC. It’s been over two years since I decided to join, and well, things definitely did not go as I expected. I didn’t expect to be evacuated, I didn’t expect to have to start over so many times, I didn’t expect to fail so badly and so often, I didn’t expect to fall in love, I didn’t expect to start craving large amounts of white rice, I didn’t expect to become a dog person, I didn’t expect to feel so many different emotions at the same time. Even something as simple as contentment becomes complicated because if you’re happy here it means you’re happy despite being away from your friends and family and this then confuses and depresses you. You think about your other life and how you were happy there too, how you miss making jokes that people understand or eating Thai takeout. But then you make a joke in Spanish and people actually laugh and you feel great or the guy with the best encebollado in town is at the bus stop and you eat a big steaming bowl for $1.25 and it’s delicious. Then you think, I could be here for a while, I could make this work.

When I think about what I accomplished during my PC service I can’t help but be a bit disappointed. I try to focus on the positive and forget the failures, of which there were many. I have found it almost impossible to make any of the work I've done in the community sustainable. When I leave no one is going to teach an extracurricular class for the children of the community. My neighbors will hopefully continue planting and harvesting in the community garden but for how long? Will more people join or start their own gardens? I would hope so but I can't say for certain. I know some people started composting and planting but I'll always feel like I didn't have the scope to reach enough people. Part of it has to do with the dynamics of the community but I feel like on a basic level I failed to engage enough people to form any kind of sustainable or productive group. The people who want to learn will show up and if that means teaching compost to two people, well, I’ll be there with a shovel ready to go. I’ll drop nutrition tips into regular conversations or denounce machismo comments any chance I get. Being a volunteer is about more than the numbers on your quarterly report. Failure is very real and very painful but at the same time I know that my community will remember me for all the positive things I did and not that time no one showed up for my charla. Just walking through my community makes me feel good about the time I spent there. In just a few minutes I’ll go from the school where I taught, danced and played indor, then pass by the church I helped paint and then the fields where I helped my neighbor harvest pineapple, further up is where I held my Friday afternoon class and painted the World Map, right next to that is the community garden where the lettuce that everyone told me wouldn’t grow here is big and ready to be harvested, along with some tomatoes and green peppers, past Magola’s house where I had so many good meals, down to the river where I bathed and washed my clothes when there was no water, over to where I planted some balsa trees, that in a few years will be thick and tall, I take this all in and I realize that if nothing else I participated. And that’s how you need to live your life; you need to participate if you want to get anything out of it.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of life I want to live exactly, what things really matter to me, what do I really need. The more I think about it the more I want a simple life, not focused on material possessions, but on experiences, relationships and hard work doing something you care about. It’s still hard though, at times, to shake off the mentality of more is more and I’ll admit that when I walk into the Supermaxi I want to immediately buy every American product I see, things I would never even buy in the states. It’s a combination of my ingrained consumer impulse and nostalgia for home. I was raised believing you have to live a certain way, own certain things and reach certain goals in order to be successful. But I’ve slowly come to realize that my definition of success is a lot different than what I was taught. I’ve lived without a lot of things that people in the states would claim “they can’t live without” (TV, internet access, hot water to name a few) and yet I’ve lived a very pleasant and comfortable life. Yes it can be a hassle to not have complete communication capabilities, to not understand my friends’ pop culture references or to pour a bucket of cold water on myself when it’s not hot out, but when I think about what I’ve missed, I mean really missed from the states, those things don’t seem to matter. What matters are all those milestones on the life spectrum that I wasn’t there for, weddings, births, funerals, moments that you should be present for the people that you care about and I couldn’t be. But what I really missed out on is the sometimes mundane, sometimes absurd comedy of life, the everyday, the stuff that binds us. By being here I gave all that up and it’s not something I can get back as easily as ordering from the Thai takeout menu. I wasn’t there to help move, to proofread a term paper, to visit in the hospital, or to celebrate birthdays, holidays, promotions, Saturday. I can’t help but feel guilty about this. And now I’m leaving again. When will you be back? I’ve been asked that practically since I got here. It’s almost as if being here doesn’t count unless I return. Maybe it’s because most of the people in this community know that they’re not going anywhere. If I do come back, they’ll most assuredly still be here. When will you be back? I haven’t even left yet.

I'm happy to be closing my Peace Corps service on a good note. At the very least, this time I get to say good-bye. In the coming days there will be despedidas and I'll make the rounds to all my friends and neighbors, assuring them once again with my best Terminator voice that I'll be back, I just don't know when. I'm excited to start a new adventure, without the watchful eye of the government, but also without it's safety net. Most of my wordly possessions have been given away or sold. All of my clothes have holes, are stained or smell like mold. I feel like a vagabond and will be living like one too. No set schedule, a rough outline in my mind of where and when, but not knowing is half the fun. Plus the minor detail of me having to learn to drive stick shift. And who knows what other useful skills I'll pick up along the way, surely by the end of this trip I'll be able to do an invisible bribe pass and talk my way out of tickets in Spanish. The possibilities are endless when you're up for anything. Coming and going are the hardest parts of Peace Corps, but if you're constantly moving then you're always coming and going and that will be our greatest challenge on this trip. That along with the constant strikes, breakdowns, explosive diahrrea, border crossings, lack of money, politicial turmoil and who knows what else. I can't wait!

Changing the World- Literally

Christmas, New Years, the end of my Peace Corps service, my puppy’s unwanted pregnancy and doubts about the future all add up to a very stressful couple of months. Or as stressful as life can be when you have four day work weeks and can sip maracuya juice any time you please. But still. I was pretty stressed. First, the Christmas pageant which I had been rehearsing for over a week with my students was a partial disaster. Not because my students forgot their lines or cues but because the sound system was terrible. The narrator sounded like static interspersed with stray syllables. Turns out the mic needed new batteries, but no one thought of that until it was too late. I came out at the end dressed as Santa (completely dying from the heat of my fake beard and stomach) and gave all the kids candy, so all’s well that ends well.

Then the kids all played games and won “prizes” like towels and socks. Who picked those prizes? They also got tons of candy, cookies and some cheap-o toys. The new Christmas Princess was crowned and her court danced and generally sat around being adorable.

I’m telling you, the pageant thing starts early and they have them for EVERYTHING.

On Christmas day the older students from my Friday class came to draw the World Map. A few weeks before I had taken them around the neighborhood to ask for donations to buy the paints and other materials that we needed. This was the best thing I’ve done here. At first they were reluctant, shy, and nervous; they didn’t want to do it (except for Alison who I can always count on for enthusiasm, “yes, let’s go right now!”) I told them that this mural was going to benefit the whole community and so they should seek the support of the community members to pay for it. We went to the cancha first where a bunch of men who’d finished working were watching a game of voli. With the solicitud in hand we made our pitch and right away got almost 4 dollars. This invigorated my students and after about 2 hours of going from house to house (my community is really spread out) we had over $15. They wanted to keep going but it was getting late and I figured we had enough to buy what we needed and we did. I was really proud of them and happy that the majority of those we asked contributed something. Plus it made me feel really good that the girls were hanging all over me and talking about how much they were going to miss me, how they didn’t want me to go and how no one’s ever done anything like this with them. It made me happy that I dedicated so much time to working with children but also sad knowing I could have done more. I still had activities I wanted to do, lessons to teach, but time was running out and with no one to carry on the class after I left they would go back to sitting around being bored on Friday afternoons. Of course I want them to continue to learn, dream and try new things and I’d like to think that they will.

So after they painted a blue square that would be the ocean/backdrop of the map we had to decide on a time to draw and paint. Not everyone could do it that weekend, which was when I wanted to do it. They suggested Friday, Christmas day because they were off from school and because in Ecuador everyone celebrates on Christmas Eve and Christmas day is basically just a regular day. I figured it would be nice to make a special lunch for them and so I bought two chickens from my neighbor and even helped in their killing and plucking. Merry Christmas!

Christmas lunch, before and after

My friend Garrett, fellow PC Bolivia transfer, was visiting for Christmas so I put him to work helping me draw the grid. It came out just a little crooked. The world’s not perfect anyway. The kids started to draw but I had a LOT of correcting to do so we didn’t paint it. Instead we played Frisbee. Over the next week I corrected borders and gave back countries territory that had been mistakenly ceded to others. Finally, it was ready to paint. This was much easier than the drawing part and the kids did a good job. Once again I went over the borders and tried to make it as accurate as possible although it’s far from perfect. I know there’re probably some former Soviet Union countries that according to us, were not yet given sovereignty and a few islands here or there cease to exist. I changed the world, but not in a way I had hoped for. I’m sorry to those countries who have lost territory or are unrepresented, it was not my intention to exclude or offend. The main thing is for people here to have an idea of where Ecuador is in the world and to think about what lays beyond its borders. Also, when the neighborhood kids come over they constantly ask where this country is or that one, which is the largest, etc, etc, so I figured this would give them a permanent reference and also a small reminder of me.

Painting the ocean

Making the grid

Drawing the world

Painting the world

I was excited to spend New Year’s here since I was in Argentina last year. The tradition is to burn an “año viejo” which are like effigies made out of old clothes and stuffed with paper or whatever you’ve got around. At the last minute David and I decided to make one because there was going to be a party (at the community building right in front of my house) and they were having a competition for the best año Viejo. You have to write a last will and testament for your character of what they’re leaving behind. So I decided, given the major economic crisis, that we would make a US banker type who stole all this money from the states and brought it to Ecuador and we wrote a bunch of things about my neighbors that they would think was funny, like “To Alcidiz I leave $1 to get a haircut” (he rocks a pretty sweet mullet.) Amateur fireworks of the Chinatown variety are a very big part of New Year’s and we stuffed our guy with a bunch of them for when he would be burned at midnight.

Before that though, I had to read the testament. I was the only one who had written one, and it went over well. There were five or six others, but we were the crowd favorite and we won half a crate (6 liters) of beer. Happy new beer! At midnight all the viejos were thrown into the street and set on fire. David and I ran to the house and grabbed our backpacks and ran around the house, as this is what you’re supposed to do if you’re traveling or want to travel in the New Year. Then we ran over and hugged and kissed and happy new yeared everyone. Then we continued dancing and enjoyed our victory beer. It was a good party.

In Ecuador it's not a party until there's a conga line

About a week into the New Year my puppy had a puppy. I was really upset that she got pregnant because of course it was my own fault. I tried to keep her inside during her heat and planned on injecting her with doggie birth control. I was worried about getting her fixed because I don’t know how competent the vets where I get her vaccinated are. I should have just gotten her fixed or asked around for a good vet but anyway…I didn’t. She was seduced by a dog so old that I was pretty certain he didn’t have it in him to do anything. I was wrong. I called the vet and they said I could bring her in to get an injection (like the morning after pill, but for dogs.) Well I don’t know if it didn’t work or if it did because she had just one puppy. It’s a girl and she’s already big and fat because, well, she’s got all that milk to herself. So now I have two puppies. And where I go, they go.

Fresa and Soledad

And where am I going anyway? Back to Bolivia of course. The plan is for David, the puppies, my friend Lebo (the only other gringa I know crazy enough to be on board for this) and I to travel in a truck which will be fitted with David’s ice cream machine so that we can work and travel throughout South America. Yes people, this is the plan, if you didn’t understand it I’ll say again: traveling around South America in an ice cream truck. I’ll soon have a new blog all about it, and I won’t even need a disclaimer….except maybe: don’t try this at home.