trying to catch up on the last month

starting back with Thursday June 25th i went to town, then to Ibarra to get some money out of the bank, then back to town, where i ran errands for the guy who filled out the paperwork to get me at this site. He works in Quito. it is very unfortunate that he doesn´t work here for the project. he and i both get frustrated at the way things go, but him more so because he can´t do anything about it. anyway, so he wanted me to keep trying to get these maps i might have mentioned before. the guy i have to talk to to get them is a real pendejo. by that i mean ass. he goes on and on about how he knows so much about thie computer map system thing, and he repeatedly fails to give me the maps we need. i don´t mind typing bad about the guy, because one of these days i´m gonna tell him to his face. anyway, so this time i have evidence that the last time, when he promised that he had given me all the maps of the county, he had in fact given me less than half. so i point out all the maps i need. i write down their codes, and i say, look, just copy and paste these on my hard drive. he dithers for about 10 minutes. manages to copy 1 file. then decides that i´ve asked for too much. hey man, i got the oficio, you wanna see the oficio? the freakin mayor signed it, bitch. so he does and talks to his boss, who is reasonable, and tells him to give me the maps, because if not, i´m just gonna come back and bother them both some more. so the pendejo goes back to his computer and shows me the big overview pictures. he showed me them before, when he offered me the choice of either overviews or details, but for some reason i couldn´t have both. i´ve come to realize that reason is his being an asshole. so he gives me the overviews, and i say, no, i want the details. these have the same detail, he blows me off. no they don´t. yes they do. no they don´t. yes they do, let me show you. he opens one up and zooms in. see, they have the same. no, i see that they don´t. let me check, i ask, hoping to just see the file size of the overviews and compare it with the detailed versions to prove that he is, in fact, an ass hole trying to shit on me. but no. i can´t touch the computer, because he is the expert (who can´t manage to copy and paste a few files without first complaining about it for 15 minutes and then doing it especially inefficiently). and then, to top it off, he deletes the detail file that he had put on my hard drive. why´d you do that? i ask, i´m starting to get pissed. oh, because. he says. alright dude, my ride is about to leave, so i´m not gonna waste any more of our time -today. but i´ll be back, and you´re gonna give me my maps godamit

so i went back to site. gave my first English class to the young adults in the community. they liked it.

Friday June 26th taught my little kids´english and computer classes in my community. went down to the central community to organize a meeting of all the community presidents. met with the new employees of the Project. they seem like a good team. but problems will arise. then i went back up to my other class then i went home.

Sat June 27th went to milk the cows with the host ma. studied some LSAT. slept. taught the young adults computer skills. Sunday June 28th slept in some more. thats what weekends are for. exercised. cleaned room. etc.

Monday June 29th taught classes
Tuesday June 30th woke up early to go to the agronomy classes in the community on the other side of the mountain. Made it there this time. Learned some grafting skills. have since tried them out with the host pa. we´ll see if it works. The most interest thing i learned that day which i can easily communicate via text is that it is possible to revive an old tree by cultivating several saplings close around it and grafting the saplings in to the trunk of the main tree. it is a good way to maintain a producer. anyway, on the way back, the guy who had invited me suggested we take a "short cut." cause he was in a hurry. i wanted to talk to the engineer who taught the class about making a video, but i like short cuts, so i went along. turns out our short cut was anything but, and this guy was intent on marching all the way back to the central community. this is an hour drive, but marching over the mountain as opposed to driving around it makes it an hour march instead. i like to think i´m in pretty good shape. me blood has thickened to adapt to the altitude and i can generally keep up. but i was in no mood. for one thing, i´s planning to hike to a lake the next day and i didn´t want to start tired. for two, he said it was a short cut, and i was kinda pissed about that. so when he kept calling to me to hurry, i eventually stopped trying to explain that he could go on if he wanted but i was in no hurry. instead i just started cursing him in english. great stress reliever. anyway i eventually got to the road and my host family happened to be driving back home so i jumped in back.

Wednesday July 1st I´m a little pissed at typing this because i typed it last night in an attempt to not spend all my time in town blogging, but there was a power outage and i lost the work. anyway, i hiked 9 hours with some local guys to a lake, Laguna Puruhanta. i wasn´t gonna go, because i sharted my pants at breakfast that morning from stomach issues. shart, in ecuadorian colloquial spanish is translated as pedo con caldo or, "fart with soup." anyway the stomach issues cleared up and i went. it was 9 hours in the rain and the mud with a back pack on an overgrown path, parts of which were so steep we were doing pull-ups with exposed roots to get past, other parts i had to crawl to get under the overgrowth, other parts the mud was up to my thigh. it sucked. and they want to develop this for tourists. at least it was interesting to see the transition to páramo, the high altitude wetland. similar to the peat bogs of scotland, páramo ecosystems maintain a lot of organic matter. while the cold is a limiting factor on biomass production, it is more limiting on decomposition, so there is all this slowly decomposing biomass which acts like a sponge, soaking up water. it is a really important ecosystem for watersheds. but it isn´t that great for camping. when we got there, i started cutting grass for the sleeping mat, but i wasn´t much better at that than i was at the hike. in gringo standards, i am pretty good with a machete, but nothing compared to the locals. they made a tent out of several sheets of plastic. lit a fire (using gasoline, everything was soaking wet). and made dinner.

Thursday July 2nd I was resigned to hang out in the tent all day. i would have left if they had wanted to, but somehow, they were enthusiastic to put on their cold wet pants and go out to the lake. eventually i followed them and watched two of the older more experienced guys catch a fish with a machete. machete fishing method: cut grass and pile rocks at mouth of stream entering lake. poke around upstream with stick. bash fish with machete at dam. i was impressed, but the water was high from all the rain so we went back. i then executed my plan to stay in the tent, while they inflated a raft and went out on the lake. i offered my video camera and they were excited about that. they caught some more fish too. that night it rained again and this time the tent leaked.

Friday July 3rd another 9 hour hike back. i fell less. i got used to the cold wet pants. and when we got back, it felt really really good to take a hot shower. i guess it is good sometimes to do stuff that sucks because you feel better afterwards. anyway, i made sure to thank the guys for having invited me and treating me well despite my lameness. they would make good guides, but if we are gonna develop this for gringo tourists, we gotta do something about the conditions. i can´t imagine paying for that. a $5k grant from USAID would be sufficient to cut another trail (there is a 3 hour route, i´m told) and build a cabin, or at least a foundation so you don´t have to camp on the aforementioned wet organic sponge.

Saturday July 4th went to Ibarra to celebrate our great nation´s independence. the other PCVs in the area had set up a barbq by another lake. Yaguarcocha, this one is called, which means puddle of blood. named after an especially brutal battle between invading Inca and some defending tribe. anyway, there was no hike to this lake. parking lot is right next too it. and instead of a leaky inflatable raft, they had swan boats. (sidenote on the leaky inflatable raft: superglue mixed with baking soda creates a cement sealant which can be used with old bicycle innertubes to fix leaky inflatable rafts. i was nicknamed macgyver by my training class, but the ecuadorians are the real macgyvers around here, speaking of which, did i mention welding with a tub of water, lemons, salt, wires, pliers, and the welding electrode?) anyway, the other peace corps people are nice. except all the ladies were taken, and no one wanted to party that night despite having talked it up all day.

but i picked up a pile of good books from one of the guys who is heading out soon. including The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. published after his death, it is more of a compilation of his writings, but it was good. Also a funny right wing family values book. funny because by studying for the LSAT i have become picky with the logic of written things, and there are mistakes. but the mistakes are apparently only funny because i don´t agree with some of the conclusions. when i read Noam Chomsky´s Latin America book, the mistakes just piss me off, probably because i would readily agree with a lot of the conclusions if only he would back them up with more than bs. Hey Chomsky, ever find the universal grammar center in the brain? no? then why don´t you keep looking instead of ranting about shit that is out of your scope. Does Chomsky have any experience in latin america? i don´t know. the first few pages of his book did not indicate any such thing.

anyway, Sunday July 5th I went with Anita, the Italian NGO worker, to the jelly group meeting. she had not been informed of the jelly group having a meeting until i called her the night before hoping for a ride back to site. this angered her because she had spoken with the jelly prez, and he had said nothing. more problems forthcoming. anyway, they decided at the meeting to charge $400 for membership in their little group. before, it was $100, based on the expenses they had incurred getting the group to where it is today. but they had actually never done the math, so when Anita helped them add it all up, it came out substantially higher. i was busy printing out the group statutes during most of the meeting, but i came towards the end. i made a few comments, namely, that charging $400 is functionally equivalent of charging $300, or $500, or $50,000, because any of those numbers mean that no one is going to join them. Furthermore, they need to clarify whether they are charging for the costs they the old members have incurred, or for the benefits a new member will recieve, because charging for both doesn´t make sense to me. for example, they are charging $6 per meeting held, which adds up a lot. but new members are hardly benefiting from the wasted meetings of the past. (and that value for the time required for a meeting is pretty questionable. $6 is the going rate for a day´s work, and it was only $5 in the past). they are also charging a substantial albeit depreciated amount for the cost of equipment which was not only donated to them but also will be rendered inconsequential upon the arrival of the new equipment which the Project is supposed to get them. then there was the vote by which they decided on $400: out of 15 people, 6 voted for $400, 5 voted for $300, and 4 voted for $250. Now, $400 clearly has a plurality, but a majority has voted for less than $400. You are using the mode average when maybe you should consider the mean or even the median average as a more democratic way of aggregating your votes. this kid is smart, they said, but we´ve already voted, so $400 it is. In one lady´s eyes in particular, i could see little dollar signs spinning. This jelly group is kinda pissing me off. they spend half the time complaining, and the other half thinking up ways to get money without producing anything. they´ve made a total of $93 in five years. actually, i´m impressed by their persistence.

Monday July 6th teach
Tuesdy July 7th went to Ibarra. primary objective: check out the ownership situation of the trout ponds in San M. the church is supposedly majority owner, but the ponds are dry. been dry for over a year. the sun is damaging them. the community bank is ready and willing to work in them. maybe the church would be open to something for the good of the community. not so fast. the church is running this and other businesses through a company. the company is out to make a profit. how about a little something for the good of the people? i ask. well, we might hire some of them. hmm..

secondary objective: check my mail. mission accomplished. thanks mom.

tertiary objective: find a place to crash for the night. usual friend is out of town. Anita has no room/would feel bad if i slept on concrete. but we go to get a beer with her boyfriend. she met her bf working in another community kinda close. they have organized businesses around their hot springs. they have hotels and restaurants and its all run by the communities involved. sounds nice. i´ll have to check it out. they show me a good cheap hostel in Ibarra. the manager´s daughter had done a study in their hot springs place. she needs another tourism study to graduate, i mention my site. we haven´t followed up on that, but i will next time i´m in Ibarra. also, on the way to the beer, i ran in to the teacher from San I. the one who did the cooking class and is working on growing fruit trees with the PTA. but the teachers are all in training over summer, so she can´t keep in touch with the PTA on the trees, i offer to help, but in this as well I have yet to follow through. I will though.

Wednesday July 8th wake up early to catch a bus back to site. meet with Carlos from Quito and a friend of his who is specialized in tourism. we are heading to the meeting of all the community presidents. we get there late. they talk a lot. i don´t like it when specialists come to a meeting and talk the whole time. really, we should be listening to the people at the meeting, and then make recomendations based on what they tell us about the specific situation. if they don´t feel like they are part of the decision making process, they are less likely to follow through. i point this out, thus somewhat ironically adding my own wind to that of the specialists.

to try and get some participation from the community representatives, i asked them a few questions, like what they see as potential tourist attractions, and when they are having meetings so we can further discuss with the individual communities. we noted the meeting dates and said we´d be there (this turned out to be untrue). also, a lot of the meeting went to debating a proposed canal that would potentially take water from the community to the cities below. unfortunately there was very little information around which to base the debate, and really the communities have very little say in the project. so i noted a contact to follow up on and get more info, and begged the group to move on to matters which we could actually have an intellegent conversation about. i finally succeeded only by ignoring the canal talk and talking about tourism again.

that night we went to San V. the community where i teach and Carlos and William, the tourism specialist, told them we would train them in community tourism (also, as yet, untrue).

July 9th went to town. worked on the map situation. actually i think some of what i was ranting about before occured on this date. regardless, that guy is an ass.

July 10th there was a meeting with the San M. community women´s bank. I told them about the situation with the church and the trout pools. and that some engineers would be coming to evaluate the pools´condition. the prez wasn´t there, she was in Quito getting support from the Ministry of Agriculture and Pisciculture.

Saturday July 11th went to town. probably just wasted time on facebook or something.

Sunday July 12th went to San M. for the soccer match. spoke with the Prez of the womens' bank. tried to get a guy to weld the door of the school in my community. been trying for probably about a month at that point. he always promises next saturday. . .

Monday July 13th toured the trout pools with the engineers. they say it is worth about $70k, and it needs about $90k investment to be fully functional. the water intake is full of rocks, and the water is about a meter below it. will have to look in to some sort of partial renovation to limit initial investment.

then i went to San V. to teach. afterwards i became very ill. and passed the next several days in bed. was very thankful for the books i had picked up in Ibarra. and for the PC medical officer. we can´t go to the doctor without the PCMO´s approval (unless its an extreme emergency) and my viral stomach infection was not approved. all the doctor would do is sell me antibiotics, which don´t do much good against a virus.

anyway, i was fully recovered by Friday July 17th so I went and taught my regular classes.

Saturday July 18th I walked about 10 miles trying to meet a Dr. of agronomy in Ibarra. He works with a fungus called trichoderma. very common in soil, it is an antiviral agent, and it has a lot of potential for fighting at least one of several common plagues that affect the tree tomato, the most common cash crop around my site. if it is effective, not only will it prevent these diseases and thus help production, but it will render unnecessary some of the chemicals which they spray every 2 weeks. they don´t use the recommended protection when they spray, and they use red label chemicals, banned in the U.S. for their toxicity to humans and in the environment. so this trichoderma stuff could come in handy. unfortunately there were no cars leaving from the central community, so i started walking to town. this is a 3 hour walk, i figured one would pass coming from another community or something, but no such luck. had i the constitution to wake my lazy butt up at 4am, i could have caught a truck leaving from my site, but i figured i would be able to catch a later ride. nope. by the time of the scheduled meeting with the Doc, I was an hours walk from town, which is still an hour from Ibarra where we were to meet. I happened to get reception in that particular bend in the road, so i called to tell him i´d be late. could we reschedule? no can do. so i turned around, and it started to rain. anyway i crossed the raging stream (up to my thigh at a point what with the rain and all) and got home.

Sunday July 19th i relaxed. did a little exercise, and studied for the LSAT.
Monday July 20th taught my classes, and did another class for the young adults of my community

Tuesday July 21st went to town and got the agricultural engineer from the quinoa and chocho video to come to my community and give a talk. he came and 6 people signed up to grow. actually, i think he had already come. i think i got my dates wrong. but anyway, he came back a second time on this date, and the people who had signed up before agreed to go on a field trip to see people who grow quinoa in another town, Cotacachi, famous for its leather. I´m personally more interested in amaranth, another crop that this guy advocates. i have a little experience with amaranth from austin where a biologist friend of mine grew it to isolate it´s dye to be used to indicate expired medicines. that was his idea. i haven´t spoken with him in years. i hope it panned out. anyway, according to the figures this engineer gave us, we could be making $10k per hectare twice a year on amaranth. considering, as i´ve mentioned, the average annual income is something like $1,500, thats pretty damn good. almost too good to be true. we´ll experiment.

Wednesday July 22nd went by San M. just cause i had time, and it happened to be the day that another engineer, this one from the ministry of agriculture and pisciculture, was scheduled to check out the pools. So I went with the prez of the community bank and the engineer and some other members of the community bank. i chimed in with what i had gleaned from the previous trip. in the end i offered my help in getting copies of some documentation concerning the pools to the engineer from the ministry. this ended up taking several hours longer than i had expected, but that´s what volunteers are for, right? also, i taught a class to the young adults.

Thursday July 23rd this is when i spent those hours getting those copies to that engineer.

Friday July 24th taught my classes and in between, i went to the central community where the Project was giving out the plants it had promised. Actually, they came several hours late, and they gave out a lot less than some of the beneficiaries had expected. 10 plants per species per farmer who had signed up. haven´t signed up? haven´t heard about it? tough tamales.

but what pissed me off a little bit more was that Carlos and William couldn´t come to the tourism meeting they had promised a community on the other side of the mountain. Why not? the director of the Project, also my friend, couldn´t give them any money. Why not? basically because Carlos doesn´t work here, he doesn´t get the full scoop in time. he needed to fill out a budget to send to Italy to get the money. wahwah.

so i tell the people from that community the bad news. They are apparently a well organized group of 60 working to promote tourism in their community. they are relatively close to the lake (the 9 hour route), and they have a locally famous Virgin Mary that, legend has it, appeared out of the rock. they told me that they had prepared food and everything, so i called their president to tell him to stop the stoves, the specialists aren´t coming. but he was like, well, hey, why don´t you come? thats a long way man. (one hour walk coming back from there to the central community, which is 40 minutes uphill to my site, the walk there would be significantly more than an hour because it is all uphill). and the meeting is at night, i can´t reasonably expect myself to make it. but he promises me a ride. he here at this time. so i´m there at that time and there is no ride. i´m still a little chafed about that, but maybe there was a good reason.

Saturday July 25th and Sunday July 26th i mostly just hung out. thats what weekends are for.

Monday July 27th came to town with the president of the county (the town is the capital of the municipality, which is bigger than the county) to get cracking once again on those maps. unfortunately, the mayor wasn´t there. so we couldn´t do much on that line. we were gonna circumvent the a-hole and get it all done. . .anyway, we spoke with an engineer about a budget for a bridge over the raging stream i forged the other week. my persistent questionng led to a $2k cut in the price, bringing it within the amount allocated by the province. sweet.

ok, my butt is sore from all this sitting. not sure how i did it in school. chao.

Ok, so i´m in Ibarra, the capital of the province of Imbabura. It is two hours from my site, which I thought was a lot until I heard how long it took other volunteers to get here for the 4th. I didn´t bring my notes. I took notes of what I did everyday for the last couple of weeks. Not having notes for the days before that doesn´t worry me because all the pc literature says most people don´t do anything particularly successful in the first month and a half at site other than try and integrate with the community. I´ll try and remember what it was I did the last 2.5 weeks without notes, then I´ll try and answer Stu´s Q´s regarding land management, then I'll see if I still feel like typing. . .

Sunday June 14th was the county election. Some evangelical from a town on the other side of the mountain won. But they have a sort of multi-party system, so there are 4 others in the cabinet. they all gave speeches, technically that took place next sunday, but i'm gonna type about it here. starting with the bottom cabinet member. he is the president of the jelly making community business that hasn´t functioned for something like a year. they´ve been working for five years, they´ve been paying dues, and they haven´t recieved a penny. not in dividends, not in wages. they´ve had equipment donated to them they have a place to work they are now even legally recognized, but they aren´t working. something about the water, or the certificate of health, or the bathroom, but these things hadn´t stopped them from working before. whatsmore, after all these years, they have a grand total of 93$ in the bank. the president and his wife go to the market to sell the goods and come back empty handed. some say they should check their pockets. . . but face to face he is a nice guy, and he gives decent speeches.

the next up cabinet member was the old prez of my community (not the 23 year old) and is now the sitting prez of the county until the new cabinet takes over in august. he´s cool. some people say he doens´t do much. he had to escort the community´s beauty queen for a week, so he gets made fun of for that. she´s pretty, pretty underage.

the next cabinet member up the totem pole is the rich guy who owns the greenhouses next to the highschool whose worker may or may not have dumped a load of rubble on the intake pipe to the highschool's trout pools, thus putting them out of service for something like 1 year and running. but they weren´t working before that either, so whatev. anyway, this guy is apparently a self made man. he was the first in the area to start growing the tree tomatoes that nearly everyone now relies upon. when he grew them there were no pests or blights to speak of, so he made a killing. now that everyone is in on it they have to throw down thousands of dollars a year on chemicals, and they don´t start producing for a year and a half, and the often don´t produce for more than 2 or 3 years, probably due to the cultivation practices. so now this guy grows tomatoes. and he is thinking about getting in on the jelly making operation by growing a fruit called chihualcan, which currently requires no chemicals. . .

the top cabinet member below the prez owns a truck and lives right next to the parroquial building. he is known as a blowhard. he claimed that if he didn´t win prez he would withdraw, but he is clearly not doing that. he stepped up to his speech late, walking slowly. he started talking about how great it would have been if he had won, and thanking the people for their 'infinite support.' and he ended with a few catch phrases from the president of ecuador, rafael correa. the crowd didn´t go wild.

the new evangelical prez seems like a really nice guy. he talked about working together and taking the cabinet to every community to talk about their needs instead of making community members coming to the cabinet. he also told people not to drink too much.

Monday June 15th i did my usual teaching gig. in two communities. turns out the teacher at one of them wrote a thesis on building a native and medicinal plant nursery for the county. this happens to be approximately what the project i am working with is doing. so i got a copy of her thesis and gave it to the project members.

Tuesday June 16th woke up early to help my host brothers try to fix some electrical problems at the one room school house next to our place. mission accomplished. then we went down to a project meeting with all the contributing partners in from quito. Carlos R, the guy who filled out the paperwork to get me there, Hugo C, the host brother, Sandro and Anita, Italians (Sandro is the boss), Victor the director of the project, and the Prez of the jelly operation. the director of the highschool couldn´t make it. I sat quietly until the end. Sandro called me out, and i made my comment, that the project should hire Carlos as the environmental consultant for which budget money is earmarked. Obviously, since carlos also filled out the paper work for the project, he will not only be the most informed on its purposes and procedures, but he will also have a personal interest in its success. carlos said he didn´t want to do it, and i looked dumb. also i made a grammar mistake and Anita laughed. damn italians. not really, anita is now working with us more and she´s cool. after the meeting we went to another community (Victor, Jelly Prez, myself, and a clown from the travelling circus) to eat some food they had prepared (we were invited). so this other community has two computers, and since the school will be closed, no one will be using them this summer, and the teacher there offered that we take them to one of the communities i teach at so we could use them for the summer. since all the PTA was at the party (it was the graduation celebration for a cooking class that the teacher had organized for interested community members) they voted on it. first proposal, voiced by the teacher was for the two computers to be taken to the community in between my community and theirs, so that we could unite our computers and have bigger computer classes with all the kids invited, and the communities band together to insure repairs if any computer is broken. voted down. second proposal, voiced by me was for one computer to be taken to my community, which is too far for them to want to walk to (which is why i am not walking to them every week). we will pay for repairs if there is an accident. voted yes. so they don´t want to send their computers to where their kids can use them, but they are fine sending one farther up to mountain to where only my community will use it. fine by me.

i walked home, and it was late.

Wednesday June 17th. hm. kinda forgot. . . no, i rembmer, i went back to the comunity with the computers to talk with the teacher about a project she was working on to get the students to grow fruit trees. gave a few tips on gardening (first time, most of the farmers have way more experience), and helped the teacher and her students prepare a garden of their own. got a ride back with some cattle dealers from the next county over. knew one of them cause my host family sold him a cow to help pay off their truck. they took me to San M. a town by the river near the parroquia. They bought a couple beers and we shot the shit for a bit until two women approached me. asked if i was the one who gave english and computer classes, and if i would do them the favor of giving some classes in their community. so far, every single community i´ve been to has asked me this. i am a 40 minute walk from the closest community (ok, well i can get to the parrrochia in 20 minutes running down the mountain, but it is a hard hike back up), and that teaching crap is not my primary assignment, and i really don´t like doing it, and i definitely don´t feel like scheduling yet another hour each way hike every week, so no, i won´t teach classes to your kids, and honestly, your kids are probably grateful for that.

but these were no two ordinary women, these were the president and the treasurer of the San M women´s community bank, the most successful community bank in the area, the community bank that had won prizes for being well organized, that had grown their meagure start up capital to a total of $60k, in a region in which the average yearly income is well under $2k. they weren´t taking no for an answer, so i said fine, i´ll make a page with all the basics and i´ll print a bunch of copies and you can give them out to the kids. towards the end of summer vacation, i´ll come every day for a week, but if those kids don´t know the stuff on the review pages by heart, they ain´t steppin foot in the classroom, and i ain´t coming back.

ok. on a more business note, they used most of their capital to buy land here in Ibarra, the prez thinks it is a good idea to start a satellite community bank here. really? i think in that case it would no longer be a community bank. and when you consider the travelling costs and such, it really doens´t seem like a good idea. she goes on to say that her group is so well organized, if she said 'lets all jump off that cliff!' they´d do it. no questions asked. uhm. ma'am, there is a word for that, and it is 'groupthink', and i'm not sure if i can translate that into spanish, but it is not a good thing.

so now that they´ve squandered all their hard earned capital on what i consider to be not such a good idea, they are looking for ways to raise money. the prez thinks she can get a loan and grow some tree tomatoes, but i´ve been crunching the numbers on that, and i´m not so sure. her other idea was to talk with the owners of some dry trout pools in their community to see if they could get them up and running again. she was shot down, and i´m not surprised. i asked around about this lady (gossip is a hallmark of peaceful communities, not to say that my communities are particularly peaceful, but to say that i´ve got nothing against putting my ear to the grape vine. . . and shaking) (www.peacefulsocieties.org) she asked the municipality for help getting a computer for her bank. he bank, ofcourse, would be willing to put up a part of the total. a small part. $50. so it seems that she drives a hard bargain, and so i am not surprised that she was shot down about the pools. I came to ibarra today in part to talk to the owners of the pools (happens to be the Catholic Diocese) and there is a slight possibility that we can work something out. got another meeting on friday.

thursday june 18th thursday thursday thursday. .. oh yea, i was supposed to help one of the community buds hoe some potatoes. you gotta hoe up the weeds, and throw the dirt on top of the potatoe plants. hard work. i was invited mostly for shits and giggles. on my part i think it is a good practice to give a bit of free labor in return for an interview. (did i mention i have to do 50 interviews by september. to date i have 17) fortunately, none of the other peons (their terminology) showed up, so instead we prepared for the guy´s parent's golden anniversary celebration by slaughtering 2 pigs and painting a wall. you gotta hold the pigs down while stabbing a knife into their heart. then you bring a hose and a blow torch and you singe the hair without burning the skin. then you shave them, with knives, then straight edge razors. then you cut em open without spilling the guts on the meat. then you let them hang for a bit while we eat dinner. then you lay em out and hit em with an axe for a while and rub garlic and herbs all over. then you shove em in the oven over night and your ready to go.

friday june 19th teaching gig every monday and friday. i got picked up from the second community by the family and friends, all piled in the pickup truck, and we went straight to the graduation party on the other side of the mountain. danced some. drank some. ate a lot. they open up the party serving way more food than anyone can handle. actually, i think one dude may have eaten everything. first theres the soup with a fourth of a chicken in it, then the plate of rice and guinea pig and chicken and pork, and ofcourse the chicha. i like the chicha. anyway, they hung up to go bags for everyone. so on the dance floor, there´s this one girl giving me the eye. she´s pretty cute. they put on this Moscow Moscow song from the Soviet era. remixed. the kids go wild. and this girl is bouncing up and down with no bra on. but she looks like she might be a bit young, so i do my due diligence and ask the guy she was dancing with. 13. no, i mean that girl you were dancing with earlier. i only danced with one girl, he says, she´s 13. oh, no, i got the wrong guy, sorry, i was confused. so i point her out. 13. 13. whoa. thats why i do my due diligence.

saturday june 20th todays the golden anniversary party. i skip mass. take a practice LSAT instead. do well. go to the party. i have to bend over to fit in the dance floor. people laugh. i am self conscious. but the host if very welcoming, shows me a seat. his sister arranges a dance partner for me just outside. then the pretty girl comes. no, not the 13 year old, you creep ball. another chick from San M. she gave me the eye at a party several weeks ago, but before i could come up with a witty, or atleast coherent line, she was dancing with some older dude. and before i could step in on the dance floor, she goes home in his truck. damn. makes sense, though, there aren´t many my age without kids, so ofcourse they are taken. no, actually, my host at this party informs me that the aforementioned older guy was her dad, and this girl is like 19 or 20, so i should ask her to dance. so i do. we even find a spot in the corner where a fortunate architectural irregularity allows me to stand more or less straight. and she likes to practice her english. she is actually pretty good. so we dance and we talk and she tells me about her older brother who is 18. geawdamit.

there is something called the Protect Act, a very decent and needed piece of legislation which allows expats to be charged with statutory rape for sex acts performed overseas. technically, even going on a date with a 17 year old here could get me thrown in prison back in the states. and dates are legally defined, but i haven´t read over it that deeply, just let me make clear that

sunday june 21st was not a date. i went with the local guys to San M for the soccer game. spoke with the prez lady of the bank, and a welder about fixing the door to the school of my community. (did i mention this: the PTA raised a good deal of money this year, like $500, and they don´t want to save it for when their kids are no longer at the school, so they have a meeting. they spend hours counting up the money and tabulating the expenses and the profits from their various activities. this could be done in about 10 minutes with an Excel spreadsheet. anyway, the figure they have $500 bucks to blow, and so they start voting on where they want to go for vacation. they don´t vote on whether to go on vacation or not, they vote on where to go. so we are going to the beach. i am invited because i helped at the fundraiser dance. and the door to the school is broken. its been broken all year, not to mention the electricity problems. i mention this at the meeting. we all have a good laugh. and we are going to the beach.) so anyway, i am trying to coordinate with this welder dude. he still hasn´t come. but i´m trying.

monday june 22nd i must have taught. don´t quite remember much. probably generally uneventful. may have worked in the garden or something.

tuesday june 23rd i had made arrangements with a guy from down in the parroquia to go to a grafting class on the other side of the valley. every tuesday for the next 2 months an ag engineer is gonna come teach useful skills, so i might as well take advantage. 6:45 am, he tells me. the class starts at 9, but it takes a while to get there and he doesn´t like being late. now this is ecuador. and anywhere in latin america is known for tardiness. so when i am held up by a late breakfast, i figure it´ll be fine, i run down the mountain in 20min, my fastest time to date, and i am there by 6:50. dude is gone. no problem, one of the guys on the bench by the road tells me. a truck is coming soon, he went walking, we will catch up. hang out and chit chat. so i do. with him and several other important members of the community, and i´m pretty sure i got some good info, but i´m not sure i remember exactly what it was. anyway the truck comes. a big covered one and we hop in the back, the gate is locked, and it is on its way. but it is going to wrong way. so i pound on the wall and he lets me out and i curse and they laugh and i start walking. i get to the Y in the road where the pick ups are supposed to pass going up to the community where the class is supposed to take place. i know this is the right Y, because it is the first Y i pass and everyone has told me that the first Y i pass is the right Y. it is now 8:30, i had walked for about an hour to get to the Y from when i hopped off the truck, and i was tired so i took a nap. i was later told that i scared the bjeezies out of some lady who was walking by. but no pick ups passed. until 9:30 when one came by but it wasn´t going up it was going back to the parrochia, but it had the italian Anita in it, so i joined her. it later turned out that i was not in fact at the correct Y. perhaps you infered this from the stress i put on my knowing that it was the correct Y. anyway, so Anita is gonna be working with the jelly operation now, which is good, because as i have aluded, it is a sketchy operation. she is looking for victor, but he isn´t in the office, but i´m sure he is in town because their was no lock on his door this morning which means he must have been sleeping inside.

anyway, we find him driving back from the highschool. we hop in. pick up a measuring tape, and head to the water intake for the nursery we are constructing for the Project. the welder dude is helping construct it. we moved a big rock. apparently they don´t grunt or groan when putting in a lot of effort to move stuff. i do. know that i think about it, i´m not sure why. just seemed like the right noise to make. anyway, i´m pretty sure the welder dude said i sounded like a hog. having recently helped slaughter two hogs, i can say that infact they do make grunting noises. no one ever said such a thing back in the states. i'm pretty sure most people i've worked with grunt when they move heavy stuff. anyway, i think i´m gonna see if i can stop grunting and just exhale. should be easy. but then again so should whistling and i've yet to accomplish that.

so then we ate lunch, served by the lovely, and yet probably underage beauty pageant queen of the county, the daughter of the shifty welder dude who says he will buy then won´t come fix the school door. then we measured the way from the intake to the nursery. 3400 feet. then we lunched on pork rinds and cola (there is no restaurant in the county) then we went to the jelly operation meeting.

i could say a lot about it, but i won´t. i´ll say that i didn´t say anything till the end, when i asked the simple question of when they planned on getting back to work. several members had expressed eagerness to get the production going again, even before the Project donates more improved equipment. they even seem willing to pay dues to buy the materials. so i got the prez to agree to bring a budget for said materials to the next meeting. walking back up the mountain with one of the members, i was filled in on some of the sketchiness of this operation. well, if you are unhappy with the leadership, why don´t you elect new officers? apparently they had held their elections when they were in the process of getting legalized, and the government bureaucrat had said that they needed to keep the same prez. and the term is two years. so he has another year and a half. well, i said, i've worked with democratic type groups before, and usually there is a way to throw out an officer, if you have a problem. but apparently, the prez keeps a tight grip on the statutes. thats not right. . .

wednesday june 24th i´m pretty sure i slept in. oh yea, the night before there was supposed to be a meeting, the prez of the community had told me he would make it happen. but he didn´t. he says he was sick. others said different. i don´t really care at this point. i was gonna show a movie. actually, this is what i had done on monday in the community 40 minutes away where i also teach. i showed a movie on the cultivation of quinoa and chocho. chocho is a bean. fixes nitrogen in the soil, so thats good, and it is very high in protein. so that is also good. and it can be grown pretty well chemical free, so all together thats great. quinoa also has high protien, but it takes a lot of micronutrients from the soil. it puts them in the product, so it is very nutritious, and can also be grown easily with few chemicals, but you gotta let the soil rest a bit afterwards, which is a good time to grow chocho. anyway, i had gotten this video from a guy in the . . . ok the government organization is a bit hard to translate, but in the bigger than a county smaller than a province capital an hour away from my community. call it the municipality. the guy, another carlos, edits video and happens to be the cousin of both my host father and the county prez. annywaaaaaay to get back to the day i´m at, i went down the mountian to talk to the jelly prez about those statutes. i opened slow. talked about other stuff. when we got around to business, i waited to let him ask me what i thought of the meeting. i gave a few tips on how i think meetings should be run based on my co-op experience. he busted out with the documents. handled them a bit. pointed out some rules which i happen to think are dumb, but i didn´t say so. talked about the unruly members. eventually i got around to slowly reaching across the table to thumb through the statutes, while he vented about how they always argue and stuff. i asked if he had any financial records for the organization. he has kept very thorough records of all the times he has spent money out of pocket, so mybe he will get reimbursed for that, otherwise, nothing. i told him, as a friend, i said, not having financial records makes you look like a thief. you should have them, and you should have them up to date, because that will protect you from allegations. he nodded. also, your treasurer doesn´t seem to be doing much. he is treasurer because he lives close, so he can sign things easily. well, maybe you should take one of those members who argues a lot and make them treasurer (sure its an election, but you know what i mean). that will shut them up. he seemed to agree with that too. now, i said, i´m gonna go make some copies of these statutes. oh, great, yeah we´ve been meaning to get to that, but we haven´t had the money. so i make a copy for the members in my community, and i head back up the mountain. that night several community members watch the quinoa and chocho video. i´ve arranged for an ag. engineer featured in the video to come to the communities i work with and give extension service.

thursday june 25th ehh. . . .i´m pretty sure i went to the municipal town and i should have blogged then. as it is, i don´t have time to finish blogging and get up to date right now. but i´ll get on it. i promise.

stu, the grass grows tall, but the cows cut it low. shrubs do not seem to be a problem for trees. the problem is the cows. aliso. . . i can get the scientific name up on the next blog post. thanks for your interest. there are a lot of acacia species that do well in reforesting andes pastureland, but i´m not sure they do well in this particular cut of the andes. humid montane forest. thats like the ecotype or something, but it the microclimes vary even within the individual communities. ok. i gotta run. chao