Week on the Coast

I´m intimidated to begin this blog post because I feel like so many incredible things passed in the past week and I don´t know that I´ll be able to fully explain the amazing experience I had. Even photos can´t do justice anything that has happened here. But if you wouldliketo seepictures, here are the links to my albums, just click them:

Last Week in Los Chillos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098941&id=16507147&l=a83a17cb60

Jungle: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098943&id=16507147&l=091bd518fb

Coast: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098945&id=16507147&l=2ddb48a1d9

Wednesday

Anyhow the trip began last Wednesday morning when my Mom here in Quito drove my friend Lisa and I to the airport. After a horrifically painful and scary flight, in which the air pressure was not working right in the cabin, we arrived on the coastal city of Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. We had a touristy couple of days there. We walked along the beautiful new boardwalk and went to a Contemporary Art Museum, that night we climbed the 460 steps to the Santa Ana Chapel at the top of a big hill with a beautiful view of the city. You may recall I made this journey with my old/crazy host family during my second weekend here in Ecuador.


Thursday

On Thursday afternoon our bus began driving up the coast, dropping off two students in each tiny village along the way.

My friend Alice and I arrived at our village and were greeted by a portly woman of about 55 years old, Bella, and her daughter, 19 year old Marjorie. We walked up the stairs to their apartment located above a pharmacy, convenience store, and bar owned by the family.

There we met Grandma, a sickly woman who had had 17 children and was now constantly hacking up a lung and carrying around a cup with her to catch the expulsions flying from her mouth. Her husband, Grandpa, a toothless, happy man who spent most of his time in bed other than mealtime. Sometimes he´d lay on his back in bed and read soap operas comics in the newspaper, sometimes he´d take a nap by putting a coat over his head, his room had no door at was right at the stairs entering the apartment. Other times he´s sit in a plastic chair and look out the window, the apartment overlooked the hopping main street of our town, Libertador Bolívar. I think he only knew my name because every time he entered the kitchen he´d say ¨Margarita!¨ Actually the family only greeted me by name, after awhile, Alice started to feel neglected.

Also living in the apartment were Bella´s sisters Francisca and Nelly, and her brothers Luciano and Flavio, and Flavio´s wife and three children. The grandparents no longer talked or slept in the same room, I think they were just sick and tired of each other after all this time. Flavio and his wife and kids all slept in the same room with two beds pushed together, Francisca had her own room, and since he took Luciano´s room he slept on the couch. Luciano and Nelly were the sole wage earners. Luciano was a portly bachelor of about 50 years old and owned the bar and store downstairs. Nelly operated the pharmacy though we could never gather whether or not she earned money from it, it was a project supported by the Center for Rural Promotion funded by Spain.

The town was located right on the beach, with the beautiful blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. It´s crazy the amount of oceanfront property here that is taken up by extremely poor villages. So Alice and I spent our week walking around town, talking to everybody and generally having a really fun time. It was just so different there than anything I had ever experienced. The town had about 2,500 inhabitants, and two paved roads. Most people work as artisans as there is no work in agriculture or factories. The town produces some beautiful crafts, sturdy furniture made of bamboo, hammocks, jewelry, and religious statuettes made of a dried leaf that looks kind of like hay called Paja Toquilla. People in the town were extremely curious about us and very friendly and open. We were pretty much celebrities as a couple of random white girls walking around town. Our second day in town we met Brooke, a Peace Corps volunteer who was stationed in the town as well. She was only in her second month, of a tow year stay but she was widely loved throughout the village. Everyone knew her and she was super friendly and talked to everyone. She really helped us come to understand what was going on in the village.

Friday - Sunday

Academically, our assignment was to keep a journal of our observations and conversations with people. This left us free to basically do whatever we wanted. On Friday, our mom, who we would later learn was a little slow in the noggin took us on a walk. We stopped to look into the grammar school and the teacher invited us in to teach some English words. The kids had just finished their exams and they were making decorations for the open house. I´ll try to paint a picture of the scene in the village. There are hens and roosters walking all over the streets, tons of stray dogs, pigs wandering around, and really muddy little roads. As we walk by everyone stops to look and greet us. We are equally as interested in them so we stop to talk to a couple making toy trucks out of wood and a woman and her two daughters making hammocks in a shop called, ¨La Casa de las Hamacas¨(The Hammock House).

After inviting ourselves to hang around and watch they taught us how to put on the fringe decoration and put us to work. We had a great time talking to the two daughters, aged 18 and 20. Since there is no high school in town they only went to school up until 7th grade. It´s a pretty big commitment to continue on to high school as you have to take a one hour bus ride to the nearest city with a high school every day. The girls were funny and got a kick out of us so we made plans to come back on Sunday when they would be crocheting hats out of paja toquilla. The Hammock House seemed t me a pretty successful business, they also made lamps and jewelry, and hats, and the mother named Reina (Queen) told us she has recently filled an order for 50 hammocks from an Australian hotel owner.

That afternoon we met the President of the village. Bella had run into him on the street after she left us at the Hammock House. She told him we were in town and asked if we could meet him. This seems a pretty mundane interaction, but Bella repeated the story of their meeting no fewer than three times over the course of the day. She would even interrupt other people to tell us again how she ran right into the President and told him about us. A story about her friend running into an elf on the way home from the store during the El Niño storm, and we were sure she was nuts. She always repeated, ¨Whatever you need, my little girls, I´m at your service, you have to leave Monday? When will you come back?¨ The effect of all this spoken in Spanish and with a lisp due to her toothlessness made for a pretty funny scene. We thought her older sister Francisca might be normal until she started up with the same smiling at us and repeating the same things. The real stand-out in the house was Nelly. A bit younger, probably around 45, and the operator of the pharmacy, she seemed to us smart and capable. And oddly enough, Bella´s daughter was beautiful and smart as well, she was attending college for tourism in a neighboring town about an hour and a half away. She had gone to a better grammar school in a different town, and was learning English at college. Though Bella was a bit off, she seemed to know what was good for her daughter. How?, was beyond us.

Overall, it was an incredible experience. The cold showers, massive amounts of rice and fish with bones in them, and getting stung by a jelly fish in the water aside, I have decided to return to that village for my final month in Ecuador. I´m going to do my Independent Study Project working with the village midwife, Gladys. Gladys, learned her trade 29 years ago from an American who came and gave a workshop. It was really a breakthrough experience for her since most women in the town never have the opportunity to do anything other than stay at home, cook, care for the kids - a huge struggle at that level of poverty. Anyhow, she showed me a room I could have in her house and told me there were five births scheduled for November and I was sold!

Monday

After a sad, LONG, goodbye we left our family. The aunt did my hair in french braids and gave us head bands she had crotcheted as well as baskets for our earrings or change she had made from paja toqilla. Bella gave us each a pair a earrings, a necklace, and bracelet. The generosity was just unbelievable, everyone wanted to now when we´d be back. Actually they´d been asking that since the second day we got there. Right after Grandpa asked me how far New York was from the United States. Geography is not a real strong point in the village. On our way out of town we stopped by our friends at the Hammock House. The day before we had learned to make hats and started the beginnings of one. The women had spent the night finishing them and gave them to s as gifts along with picture frames decorated with sand and seashells to put in picture of us with them. We each bought a hammock too.

After leaving the village on Monday, we met back up with the group at a beautiful ocean front eco-lodge called Alandaluz. We spent the next two days lying on the beach, swimming during the day, skinny dipping at night, relaxing and reading. It was wonderful,! My birthday on Tuesday was topped off with a huge bonfire on the each. It was incredible! Probably the best birthday I´ve had.

Anyhow, I´m sure I have more to say but for now I´ll leave it at that. This is my last week with my family in Quito and I´ll be off to the coast on my own for the month of November. I feel so grateful for all the great experiences afforded me here in Ecuador and during my 20th year. Thanks so much for your emails and birthday wishes.