Catching Up, Again

Hola,

There is so much to tell. Let´s see how much I can recall at the moment.

Today marks the middle of my third week here in Ayacucho de Huamanga. Only ten more days to go. As usual, time seems to be flying by.

Since my last entry (more or less), I´ve changed assignments. Since this program doesn´t require me to commit to a single activity, I´ve been jumping around a bit. In addition to the soup kitchen and the nursing home, I´ve worked in a medical clinic, visited the local prison, and visited a health center located in the mountains. Not sure where else I´ll go in the coming weeks.

In the medical clinic I served as translator for one of the non-spanish speaking volunteers who was a neonatal nurse (Mandi). That was fun and also challenging as I haven´t studied medical terminology. I could understand most of what the doctors explained, but I had difficulty expressing myself. At one point the doctor left and allowed Mandi to diagnos patients, which meant I had to do the translations. Some how we got by.

One morning I accompanied one of the nurses as she went to a neighborhood to seek out pregnant women who had missed their scheduled check ups. The way the neighborhoods are organized makes it difficult to find houses (and some people don´t know their exact address). We found three of the five women we were seeking, and met three other pregnant women who had not yet come to the clinic to get check-ups.

I also spent a couple of days in the pharmacy doing drug inventory. Counting inventory was boring, but I enjoyed chatting with the women who worked in the pharmacy.

The clinic, located in a very poor neighborhood, does a good job of treating the patients. They can handle basic needs, and then they refer patients to the main hospital for more complicated treatment. The place is clean. Privacy during patient examinations is non-existent as various people feel free to enter the room during examinations with no consequence. The pediatric doctor handled two or three patients at a time. Things appeared a bit disorganized at time, but everything seemed to work out.

One day I accompanied Mandi to the prison while she did an examination of a 1.5 year old boy who has cerebral palsy. Lenny is the boy´s name. Lenny was born in prison to a woman who is serving time for some drug related crime. She never received treatment for high blood pressure and an infection during her pregnancy, despite her visits to the prison doctor. Lenny was born with cerebral palsy. Despite his issues, Lenny is a beautiful child. He has a sweet temperament, and often cracks up with laughter. Mandi did an examination for a report that will be sent to a treatment center in Lima,Peru. If accepted, Lenny will go there to receive treatment for his cerebral Palsy. The sad part is that he will be separated from his mom.

Another day a group of volunteers took all the children who live at the prison with their mothers out for the morning. Children under the age of 5 years old can live at the prison with their mothers. And every Friday our organization takes the kids out of the prison to various places in Ayacucho. Last Friday we took them to the Zoo. Yes, Ayacucho as a zoo. And what a sad zoo it is. It has birds, a snake, a couple of bored pumas, some turtles, and several monkeys. But the kids seemed to enjoy themselves. My little boy was named Beckham. He was a sweet, calm boy. About 2 years old. He liked to stare out the car window as we drove through the city. On the way home he fell asleep, and had nightmares. What kind of nightmare does a 2 year old boy have?

The prision is not a scarey place. It feels more like a community, than a prison. There are about 1000 prisoners, both male and female. The inmates spend time making crafts that are sold outside of the prison. And sadly, for many of these people, the conditions inside the prison are better than their living conditions at home.

Most of the people in prison are there for drug related activities. The foothills of the mountains in Ayacucho is where 180k tonnes of coca leaves are grown. Pervuians consume 80k tonnes of coca leaves in the form of leaves. The make tea, and they chew the leaves for energy and hunger, as well as other health reasons. The remaining 100k tonnes are used to make cocaine. Some peasants make paste from the leaves. Cocaine is made from the paste. Paste is transported by people in backpacks. And so the prisoners in jail for drug related crimes are in there for production or transportation of paste. Coca production, as well as the production of coca paste and cocaine provide a major source of income in Ayacucho for hundreds of thousands of people.

Today a group of us went to a health center located in the mountains. This health center is the only health center within a three hour walking distance for several communities. Sadly, it´s the closest place for medical care for these communities. And the people are so poor that they cannot afford the medicine that is prescribed to treat their illnesses. One of the volunteers is a mid-wife in England, so she did examinations of patients. The rest of us gave demonstrations of proper hand-washing techniques. Most of the people know how to do this, they just choose not to do it. Many people in the mountains wash their hands once a day! and maybe they use soap. So we did a demonstration using paint to show how easily germs can be spread from person to person, and then reviewed proper handwashing techniques. Everyone left the clinic today with clean hands.

Well, I need to head back for dinner.

cheers,
Stacey

Carnival

Carnival sucks!

Today is the last day of Carnival, thank God! What madness it has been! Women and foreigners are walking targets for water balloons and squirt guns, talcum powder, and shaving cream. Guys walk up to you and spread paint or motor oil on your face. Gangs of boys will hold you and pour crap on you. When I leave the residence, I am armed with a large can of shaving cream (especially created for Carnival). The can of cream doesn´t prevent the attacks, but I can get even with my attackers. Retribution feels sooooo goooooood.

Carnival started last Saturday, and ends today. And there was the PRE-Carnival water bomb squirt gun attacks that took place the prior week. During the actual days of Carnival, groups of people dress in traditional Carnival costumes and march in an endless procession of groups through the city center. Marchers do a little traditional dance. People in the crowd shoot water, cream and talc at the marchers. Marchers shoot water, cream and talc at the people in the crowd. Marchers stop and drink booze along the way. Marchers and non-marchers start drinking after lunch and continue drinking and dancing all night long.

Carnival in Ayacucho is much more tame than Carnival in Brasil. And we wear more clothing. (Thank goodness. Some sights are not worth seeing.) Apparently many children are conceived during these five days, so many that there is a festival in November that celebrates the births of Carnival-conceived babies.

Our residence participated in the parade. They taught us a simple dance, and we wore traditional costumes. Women wore a white skirt and blouse, a striped manta (a cloth used to carry things on one´s back), and a white hat with a black ribbon. Men wore black or brown pants, a white poncho, and a brown or black hat. The women did the dance choreography, and the men walked behind us playing instruments (or pretened to do so). We also hired a group of rasta-looking musicians to play traditional music. And we had a capitain who marched in front. Our capitain was tall and thin, and was dressed in purple, with a long purple cape and mask that made look like the psychotic from A Clockwork Orange. We received a lot of applause from the audience along the route. We walked for four hours in the hot sun, but we did manage to stop for a beer along the way. It was fun, I guess.

I´m so happy that Carnival ends today.

cheers,
Stacey

Running here and there

¡Hola!

I am beat. Today was another busy day. The people running program the volunteer program have almost every minute of our day planned this first week. There is little time to relax between activities.

Today was my second day at the nursing home. I decided to change from the soup kitchen to the nursing home because there wasn´t enough work to fill the morning at the soup kitchen. The nursing home at least keeps me busy. I work in the women´s section, playing with whomever is willing and able to interact with me.

The nursing home is clean and bright and not depressing. The place doesn´t smell. And the women sit outside in a courtyard surrounded by flowers and plants. There is a cage with three peacocks, and there is a small tucan who visits with the women from time to time.

The home is divided into male and female sections. I work in the women´s section. These ladies are native Quechua, and dress in the traditional dress. They are really quite striking, even in this environment. Most are about half my height. They are so tiny. While the cognizant ones understand Spanish, most tend to speak in Quechua. That makes attending to their needs difficult as I don´t understand Quechua. Yesterday I played catch with some of the women. Some of these ladies have quite an arm. We also played with Leggos, and I massaged lotion on their arms and legs.

Today the ladies preferred to sit in the sun and sleep. Guess I wore them out yesterday. So today I helped the girls who clean the diningroom to clean the diningroom, to serve food, and to hang up laundry. It made the day pass quickly, but I was exhausted when I left.

The girls who work in the diningroom are cute. There are very giggley. One is 18 and one is 14 years old. The 14 year old lives at the nursing home and travels home to visit her family once a year. She tried to teach me some Quechua, and I taught her some Chinese and Japanese.

After lunch I started private Spanish lessons with Gustavo. Gustavo is the handsome young Spanish teacher who teaches at the residence. All the women have a crush on him. By chance he also teaches my private lessons. The others are jealous. I will take four hours of class each week. Classes are inexpensive at $5 per hour.

Then I had to go to dance practice. This weekend is the start of carnival. The volunteers will dress up and perform a traditional dance on Monday. Today we had to practice. Luckily the dance is not difficult. they also want us to sing a quechua song, but that´s not going to happen. Quechua words are very long, and so trying to memorize a song is impossible. It´s enough that we have to dress up as Quechua women.

Yesterday we visited the site where the Peruvians defeated the Spanish and won independence. The site is located in the mountains. The ride was spectacular. This part of the Andes is even more dramatic than the part outside of Quito. And there are alot of cactus growing everywhere. They grow on rocks and on the walls of houses (used instead of glass shards to keep theives out of the yard). On the way home we stopped at village that makes ceramic sculptures. And we also visited the ruins of the Wari culture. The wari preceded the Incas. For me the scenery on the way to the sites is more interesting than the actual destination.

Tomorrow I will go on a two-day llama trek. We will hike at 14K feet ASL. Vamos a ver....

cheers,
Stacey

Where there´s smoke there´s food

¡Hola!

Today was my first day at the soup kitchen.

The soup kitchen is a cooperative effort of several women that provides a low cost lunch (30-45 cents) to about 60 people every day. Everyday a different member of the cooperative prepares the food. The facilitates are very basic. There is no electricity or gas. They use wood to fuel the stove. The single room where they cook the food is so full of wood smoke that I can´t stay inside more than a minute.

Today I peeled over 200 medium sized new potatos with a large dull knife. Then I cut them into tiny pieces. I also cut onions and tomatoes into small slices. It took me three hours to complete the work. Fortunately I enjoy cutting and chopping vegetables. Since this will probably be my job for the next four weeks, I went to the store and bought some sharper knives and a peeler.

One of the two ladies that prepared the food brought her two year-old daughter to the soup kitchen. She was a doll. It rained all morning, and as a result the dirt floor of the courtyard was muddy. The little girl played in the mud with a bottle cap and a plastic bag. She would occaisionally¨"wash" her hands in a mud puddle. She seemed to enjoy herself. Two year olds are easily amused.

When I came back to the residence, I smelled of smoke.

Well, that´s it for the moment.
cheers,
Stacey

Safe and (still) Dry in Huamanga

¡Hola from Huamanga!

Huamanga is the colonial name of the city of Ayacucho. The Peruvians use the old name of Ayacucho (Huamanga) to distinguish the town of Ayacucho from the province of Ayacucho. Huamanga is located south and east of Lima, in the Andes Mountains. The town is poor, and is not as attractive as any of the places I have visited thus far. Even San Jose, Costa Rica looks beautiful compared to this place. But it is calm here.
There are many native indians here. They speak Quechua, a version different from that which is spoken in and around Quito, Ecuador. They dress similarly to the indigenous people that live in and around Quito. The poverty rate here is 70%. The literacy rate is 50%.

The government spends little money to support the province of Ayacucho. Most of the money used to support the people in the province of Ayacucho comes from the cultivation of coca plants. The type of coca plant that is grown in Ayacucho provides a larger yield of a more potent chemical that is desired for cocaine. About 99% of the coca grown here is used by drug dealers. Drug dealers pay farmers alot more money for coca leaves than they would receive growing other crops. And there is a supporting industry in the growth, processing and transport of the leaves and paste that provides a source of income for many, many people in the region. Jobs are scarce here, so coca agriculture supports many people.

The remaining 1% of the harvest is used by the people for private consumption. People make tea from the leaves (it alieves altitude sickness), and chew it to for energy and to alieve hunger. Coca leaves are not addictive.

I arrived in Huamanga early Sunday morning. I arrived in Lima from Quito at 10:30 PM and had to wait in the airport overnight until 4 AM to check in for my flight to Ayacucho (Huamanga). That I was able to stay awake through the wee hours of the night is amazing to me. As many of you know, I´m not a late night person. There were ten volunteers who joined me in the cafeteria awaiting the same flight. We had time to talk and start to get to know each other.

The managing director of the Ayacucho Program came to Lima to flew with us to Huamanga. He was there to attend to any glitches there might be. And there was a glitch: Since were were a group traveling together, they made us pile all of our luggage on the scale at once. The combined weight was more than the weight allowed for the tickets we purchased, so we had to pay more money (over $80). But it was impossible to determine whose luggage was overweight. Rudy was able to convince the airline to charge us less money for the overage. Thank you Rudy.

There are 14 volunteers who started with me in Huamanga. Three others from a previous group are still at the residence finishing their time here in Huamanga as volunteers. Most are from the USA, but two are from Canada, one is from Ireland, , one is from Scotland, and is from England. Two are men, the rest are women. And the ages range from highschool on up. We all live in a residence house. There are two to a bedroom, but each room has two sets of bunkbeds (and a private bathroom). Four people to a room would be awful! My roommate, Rosemary, is from San Francisco. She´s older. A former stock trader. A very smart woman. So far we are getting along fine.

Today we took a tour of some of the places where we will do our volunteer assignments: a soup kitchen, a boy´s orphanage, a prison, a school, a health center/ clinic. I´ll be working in the soup kitchen. The soup kitchen is a cooperative started by several local women to provide inexpensive meals to women and children. The kitchen itself is small and smokey. Very low tech. They use wood to heat the stove. I start tomorrow.

Yesterday a group of us took a walk around the town. As we walked, we had to dodge boys throwing water and water baloons. This is week preceding Carnival, and the boys have a habit of throwing water at women and each other for Carnival. This peril lasts for about ten days. they appear from out of no where. They are on the tops of rooves. The roam in packs. They carry balloons and buckets full of water, and super soaker waterguns. Yesterday I avoided getting hit. Only my feet got wet. Other volunteers weren´t so lucky. But I expect my time will come soon. It´s only a matter of time.

Time to get ready for this afternoon´s activities.

cheers,
Stacey

Galapa-glorious

¡Hola!

Last night I returned from 8 days in the Galapagos Islands. What a marvelous place!

The plane lands in Baltra, a small island off Santa Cruz. A bus takes you from the airport to the boat dock, where you then take a short boat ride to northern part of Santa Cruz. Another bus takes you to Puerto Ayora on the southern part of the island.

Baltra is arid, with low, scraggly, silvery ground and a special type of small green tree. A special desert. The soil is rocky, deep red and black. This is all you see until you approach the port. And what a gorgeous sight! The water is several hues of turquoise blue. It looks surreal. As the bus approached the dock, I saw a pelican land and scoop up a fish. Immediately two other birds landed on the head and the back of the pelican! Even with the boat traffic, the water is clear. You can see fish swimming around dock.

The landscape from the northern part to the southern part of the island is similar to that of Baltra, however, there are mountains in the distance off to one side.

After a 20 minute ride, I arrived in Puerto Ayora, which the town where most people live, and is the center of tourism for Santa Cruz. For a tourist town, it is very clean, and extremely safe. And also very expensive, for both locals and tourists. Quito is inexpensive. The Galapagos Islands are not.

There are two types of touring you can do in the Galapagos: Ship/yacht-based, and land based. A ship-based tour is more expensive, ranging from $4000 for 8 nights on a luxury liner, to $1000 for 8 nights on a small boat. You sleep on a ship and visit the islands from the ship. You also get to visit more islands than if you do it the land based way. The land-based tour means that you return to a hotel at the end of the day to sleep. Land-based tours are less expensive. My host organization in Quito arranged a 5 day land-based tour for me based in Santa Cruz, and then arranged a three day homestay on the island of Isabela.

While in Santa Cruz, I visited the Charles Darwin Research Center which is devoted to preserving the iguanas and giant tortoises of the galapagos. That the government takes great steps to preserve the wildlife of the Galapagos is magnificent. The tortoises would be extinct if the government took no such steps. Tortoises in the wild have a 1% chance of survival due to predators introduced over the years. Wild dogs, pigs, goats, as well as rats and ants all destroy the tortoises in the wild. The center has a tortoise nursey where they collect tortoise eggs in the wild, and in the nursey, hatch and raise the tortoises until they are 3 or 5 years old, then place them in the wild. A five year old tortoise is about 8 inches in diameter. The really big tortoises weigh over 600lbs (300kg) and live to be over 150 lbs.

I don´t know what the danger to the lizards are. There seem to be alot of them in the wild, especially the marine lizards. There are two types of lizards: Marine Lizards and Land Lizards. Marine lizards are black, with bodies of about 12 to 14 inches long, and tails equally as long. They live near the sea, and you can see them sunning themselves on the rocks. Their long tails help them swim very long distances. One sailed out to our boat in the middle of the sea from who know where. Guess he was curious. He stopped a while to allow us to take photos.

Land lizards are dark yellow. I didn´t see any of these outside of the Charles Darwin Research Center.

One morning we took a walk through a forest where tortoise live. One tortoise met us in the road. She was big one, about 85 years old. She watched us for a while. However, as we passed, she became scared and retreated in her shell. We saw several tortoises bathing in a pond of bright green tortoise vomit (tortoises tend to spit up their food while in the water). And we saw two tortoises mating. The male tortoise climbs on top of the female, and will stay there for 4 to 8 hours. He makes a loud groaning sound as he mates. The females don´t like being mounted (Gee, I wonder why), and try to escape when a male approaches.

The guide said that every now and then a big tortoise will walk on to the road, then get scared by the cars and won´t move. It takes 8 strong men to lift the tortoise off the road and back into the woods.

We did a lot of snorkeling. Snorkeling in the Galapagos is easier as the waters are relatively calm. You didn´t need flipper to swim and stay afloat. One day we snorkeled off the beach. The fish were gorgeous, lots of different colors and sizes. Another day we swam with sea lions. A snorkel allowed you to see the sea lions swimming and playing around you. And we snorkeled over white-tipped sharks. The sharks ignored us -- thank goodness -- as we swam over them. The guide swore they were vegetarians.

And the beaches are magnificent. White, soft sand, warm blue clean water. We visited three beaches in Santa Cruz -- the one where we snorkeled, and then another, more secluded beached that required a 45 minute walk in the hot sun to get there. The walking keeps the number of visitors down. But boy is it worth the walk! The third beach is easier to access and so has more locals swimming in it. The water is as warm as bath water, and is very calm.

We also visited a natural pond that is located in what looks like a quarry. It is surround by rocks, and is 14 meters deep in the center. After the walk of death over slippery jagged rocks in the blazing sun to get there, the cool water is refreshing.

To get to Isla Isabela, you have to take a speed boat. The ride is 2.5 hours (8 hours in a regular boat). The ride is choppy. One thing I know for sure is that I don´t get sea sick. There were 18 people packed in the boat, with no room to move. And no place to rest my back as I sat near the back next to the motors. But the ride is peaceful. The sound of the motors and the rhythm of the boat was hypnotic.

Isabela is the largest of the islands, but it the newest island, and has only 2000 inhabitants. It´s also much hotter than Sant Cruz. Santa Cruz was hot, but Isabela awfully hot. It´s the hottest place I´ve ever visited. Even at night it´s hot. And the proximity of the equator makes it feel even hotter. The humidity wasn´t bad. The sun was strong. Even I got burned on my shoulders and back while wearing number 30 sunscreen.

On Isabela, I stayed at the house of a woman who usually houses volunteers who come to work at the tortoise nursery on Isabela. Gladys is her name. Gladys and her husband have three bedrooms that they rent to people associated with the organization I am working with. I got to know Gladys, her aunt and uncle, and her adorable, precocious 2 year old neice.

Her uncle owns horses, and is a tour guide. He was my tour guide while I was there. His specialty is a tour of the Sierra Negra Volcano on horseback. The day I went, I was accompanied by a swedish honeymoon couple. The horses are small and scrawny, and we were three big people. Part of the road up the mountain was muddy and slippery, and so the horses had a hard time walking. They almost fell several times. On the way down, we dismounted and walked for a while until we passed the dangerous part. As we rode, I thought of the spanards who traveled the Central and South America on horseback. And they work heavy, hot clothing. My padillas hurt after only 3 hours of riding. I can imagine riding for days. But maybe your padillas get used to the saddle after a couple of days. Actually, my padillas are still sore, two days later!

Horses aside, the scenery up the mountain was beautiful. And the volcanic crater was amazing. It is about 6 miles in diameter and is the second largest volcanic crater in the world. And it was filled with lava. The lava looked like black and gray mud. And we also had a view of Isabela from where we were. It was green and looked similar to Central New York farmland. It was also much cooler up in the mountains.

In addition to the volcano, I visited the Wall of Tears. It was used to torture prisoners from 1945 to 1959, although I´m not exactly how. It´s a high wall of lava rocks located far off the road in the middle of no where. Isabela also has a tortoise nursery which seems more organized than the one on Santa Cruz. I also did some snorkeling in a laguna, and spent the afternoon at the beach relaxing.

All in all I had a wonderful time in the Galapagos. I´d love to visit again.

Cheers,
Stacey

Catching Up

¡Hola!

Since I have some time to kill until my boat for Isla Isabela departs, I thought I would catch you up.

My last week in Quito went well, but was a little sad, too. But endings, or transitions, are always melancholy for me. Despite all the years of moving and traveling, leaving and saying good-bye always make me a little blue. I even cried when I traded my old car for the new one!

The last week at school went amazingly well. Fortunately, due to student government elections, I didn´t have to teach as many classes. Several hours of class were used to allow the candidates to talk to the students. Fortunately/Unfortunately, I had to listen to the campaign speeches. These student government campaign speeches were no different than those made so many decades ago when I was in high school. Although I did learn something new: kids in Ecuador don´t have health insurance! One of the campaign promises was to find a way to make available low-cost health insurance to kids who wanted it. Actually, very few people have health insurance here. Natural medicine is big here, probably for that reason.

In the classes I did manage to teach, the kids behaved a little better. Who knows why. They certainly didn´t know it was my last week until I told them at the end of each class. One thing I finally realized was that the screwiness of the children and the school had nothing to do with me. The school imposed situations on other teachers as well. One subsitute teacher was asked to fill in for a month for another teacher, but the school wouldn´t give him the teachers´ manuals or lesson plans for the classes he was taking over! (probably because they didn´t have any of these things) So the guy had to come in cold to take over the classes. Imagine having to assert classroom control over 36 kids without having a clue what they kids are doing! That´s what happened to me, however, I had the "foreigness" factor on MY side. Granted it lasted only about 15 minutes in some classes. So, in retrospect, my teach-22-classes-a-week situation was nothing unusual.

As for the kids issues, they don´t listen to anyone. They talk in class. They walk aroung the classroom. They do homework of other classes while the teacher is teaching (until I started collecting notebooks). They just wouldn´t shut up during the student government campaign speeches. The ONLY thing they feared was the Principal, Mrs Valaresa. In one class exercise where we practiced the phrase "One thing I fear is....", her name came up several times. I wonder what her secret is.... (On the flight to the Galapagos, there was a group of kids who would not stay seated during flight landing. The flight attendent was very angry, imploring many, many times "¡¡¡¡¡¡children, shut up and stay in your seats!!!!!!!!") But despite the fact that they don´t listen, they are actually good kids. For the most part, they want to do the right thing, however, their mouths and hormones get the way.

So my last day was a day of gifts: chocolates, jewelry (string bracelets that the kids here wear), farewell cards and notes, and even a seranade from the director of the school. Before leaving the school, the director and I discussed my impressions of the school, the students, Ecuador. Several weeks earlier, the director told me that he had visited Japan many years ago, and practiceds the few Japanese phrases he could recall. So at the end of our farewell discussion, he got his guitar, tuned it, and started playing a Japanese song of farewell that he had learned while there! Then he sang it again in Spanish. Then he concluded with a third song! He was very good. What a wonderful farewell present!

Before I left, I finally made it to the Museo de Guayasamin. Guayasamin is famous Ecuadorian painter (and sculptor) who paints beautifully expressive portraits of people. His subjects tend express either intense agony or feelings of love and caring. There is something about the way he painted the eyes. One look in the eyes of his portraits and you know EXACTLY the emotion he tried to convey. One painting even made my cry, and I wasn´t feeling sad at the time. He is now one of my favorite painters. The grounds of the museum itself are beautiful, and the museum is on a hill that overlooks Quito. I think it may have been his house before he died.

All in all, it was a very good last week in Quito. On February 9, I will spend one night in Quito so that I can catch my flight to Lima, Peru, the next day.

I´ll miss it here.
cheers,
Stacey