In-Country Orientation

Hello Everyone!

I don´t even know where to begin! We are just now wrapping up our two week in-country orientation. We´ve been very busy visiting worksites, attending info sessions and workshops (about the community, how to teach, behavior management, etc), learning bus routes, learning which stores give fair prices to gringos and which ones rip us off, and visiting neighbors. It has all been very helpful but also a little overwhelming.

Here´s a little bit (actually it´s pretty long so brace yourself) about my life here…

Living Conditions:

The neighborhood I live in is called Arbolito (Little Tree) and it is in the  ¨canton¨ of Duran, outside Guayaquil (biggest city in Ecuador). Arbolito started as an invasion community 20-25 years ago. An invasion community is when groups of families move to a large area of vacant land (usually owned by a private landlord or a governmental body. A basic cane house can be built in a couple hours so invasion communities can show up literally over night. Since the people on the land do not have any legal rights to the land, there are often conflicts that erupt. Eventually the landowner or government may decide to sell the land to the invaders. This was the case with Arbolito. The government did not recognize the community until 4 years ago. The area has developed quite a bit since it started, but it is still lacking considerably in infrastructure and social services.

The living conditions here are pretty bad. Most houses are very simple and the people have very few possessions. A lot of the houses are made from cane. They use pieces of cane that kind of look like planks of wood. (Hopefully I will be able to take a photo at some point, but it´s not safe to walk with your camera so I haven´t taken any photos outside of my house. This has been hard since I usually take lots of photos and I know it would help you guys better visualize the area where I am living). Some houses also use pieces of scrap metal as walls and/or roofs.

None of our neighbors have running water. They have big barrels of water outside their houses that they have to use for everything.  They have to wait for the water truck to come by and fill them up. (Luckily, my house has running water and we buy jugs of purified water for drinking, cooking, and brushing our teeth). Most people in my neighborhood have electricity. In my neighborhood there are a couple main roads that are paved but most of the ones closest to my house are dirt roads.

For the first ten days in Ecuador we were living in the retreat house (high school and college groups come down for mission trips) while the old volunteers were still living in the volunteer house. The houses are right next to each other. We were so excited to finally move into our house last Friday night. It had almost been a full month of living out of a suitcase which was pretty frustrating. Our volunteer house is really nice – very spacious. We each have our own bedroom (they are very simple but a good size) and two extra bedrooms (for visitors!) The hardest adjustment I think to living here is that we have a lot of critters .Our first day in the house we had to kill a mouse. (I hate mice!) Arbolito was built on a swamp and our house is close to a stream so we have a lot of mosquitoes. We sleep with mosquito nets over our beds. The bugs are going to get really bad during the rainy season (Dec-April). We also have tiny little ants al the time in the kitchen which is really annoying. We have to put everything in the fridge so the ants don´t get it – including sugar, gum, bread and lots of other things you usually don´t have to refrigerate. We also have geckos occasionally and then frogs outside.    

Food:

I went from a college dining plan and my mom cooking all my meals (yes I was spoiled!) to having to cook for 6 people. Since I have very limited cooking experience I told my community mates that I was going to need  to have a cooking partner for the first couple of weeks we´re here. During orientation we frequently had to cook for 33 people (the old and new volunteers).

When we were living in the retreat house we had oatmeal or eggs for breakfast. For lunch we had bread, dry tuna and a mixture of chopped up tomatoes, onions and peppers. So far those are basically the only veggies I´ve really eaten except for once someone made a quiche with broccoli and carrots. Dinners usually are rice and beans/lentils with the signature tomato-onion-pepper mix, or we have pasta. We don´t have too many types of fruit at our local tienda at night so hopefully we can maybe start buying our groceries for dinner in the mornings. It has been hard not having a variety of veggies and fruit available whenever I want. There is a huge market with lots of produce, but we haven´t had time to go since it´s a little distance from our house. I almost forgot…plantains is another staple here – they usually eat them fried in various different forms. Fried food reminds me…we´ve been told that all the guys lose a ton of weight here while all the girls gain weight. I don´t really get why the guys lose, but anyway my house is determined to not let either of these things happen to us this year. We are going to try to eat healthy and Ali has already set up a workout schedule for us. I just hope we have time to do it!

Two more points about food – it takes a long time to prep and cook because you can´t buy certain things such as tomato sauce – you have to make from scratch. Another thing about food is that it is incredibly cheap. I cooked for 17 people and it only cost $10.80!!! Oh a third thing...for meat I have only had one slice of processed ham. They have meat here but it´s more expensive and we have to gut the chickens ourselves…doesn´t sound fun!

Worksite Placement:

Last week, after a very long individual and then community discernment process we figured out our work placements. Here´s my morning schedule:

               Monday: Damien House – a home for people who have Hansen´s Disease (leprosy)

Tuesday: Teaching adult English classes (this will be challenging since I´ve never taught before)

Wednesday: Neighborhood time – meet neighbors

Thursday: English classes

Friday: Meeting for after school program

Compared to other volunteers my mornings are relatively easy, but this allows me to spend more time in the neighborhood forming relationships with neighbors which I´m really excited about. I´ve gotten to meet a handful of our neighbors and I have fallen in love with all of them. They are so friendly, welcoming and hospitable. I can´t wait to get to know them better.

In the afternoons I will be running an after school program called Valdivia in the AJS neighborhood. The program allows kids to have a safe place to do their homework. Many kids come from difficult home situation so this is a great place for them. We plan educational and just-for-fun activities for the kids. All the kids also receive bread, bananas and vitamins each day.

Yesterday was our (I´m working with 2 other volunteers) first day on our own. We got there 15 minutes early and we spent all that time trying to open the gate door while kids were watching us and probably wondering who these new incompetent gringas were – where were the old volunteers?! We finally got the gate open after working up a sweat and then went to open the homework room and found out that just our luck we couldn´t open that one either! The lock and keys were so rusty. Not a good start to the first day of work. After some praying, our Ecuadorian helper came to save the day and opened it.

  

I had to plan the day´s activity which I was really nervous about. Earlier in the day I had practiced saying the script I had written out in Spanish for myself. We made hand-shaped name signs with each finger representing a different fun fact about them (age, favorite color, number of siblings, etc). It went relatively well. I think the kids liked it, but it was hard to discipline them in Spanish.  Hopefully these things get easier as the year goes along. 

Transportation: We have vans but we aren´t allowed to use them unless it´s for retreat s or occasionally for other reasons. People drive crazy here! We mostly use buses or walk. I´ll be busing to Damien House, the English classes are only a couple blocks away and then Valdivia is a 30min walk. It will be nice to have exercise though!

Weather: We have been very lucky that it hasn’t been unbearably hot like I was imagining. It´s still hot during the day but it usually cools off at night and the mornings.  I´m not looking forward to when it gets really hot.

Housemates: I have a great community. They are all very friendly and really fun. So far we have had no community problems (knock on wood)  so it has been really nice. I can´t wait to get to know them better.

Whew!!! That was long! Hopefully future ones won´t be this long. I just wanted to explain everything since hopefully it will help you better understand my life down here.  Please let me know if you have any specific questions or things you want me to discuss in another blog entry. Thanks to all of you who wrote comments on my previous blogs. Those are much appreciated especially with how long it takes me to write these things. It´s nice to get feedback. Also please don´t forget to update me on your lives as well. Emails or letters are welcomed! = ) I´m probably not going to be on Facebook much so please send me an email  instead of sending me FB messages.

I hope you are all doing well!

Emily