Happy February everyone, and happy 8 months of officially living in Ecuador! Coming into this country I had absolutely zero expectations as to what my life was going to look like these two years abroad seeing as we aren't able to pick our permanent work site when we accepted our invite to Peace Corps Ecuador. With this in mind, I can say that I couldn't have hoped for a better situation to be living in during this experience. I continue to be very thankful for my quaint rural site in the Amazon Rainforest and I'm mostly thankful for my amazing host family who makes me feel like one of their own.
Last you all heard from me, I was enjoying all the Christmas and New Years celebrations. This month I wanted to talk about the fiestas that are held here in Ecuador. Ecuador essentially is always having celebrations for one reason or another, which I love about here! The country is more or less broken down into regions (Oriente, Sierra, Costa), provinces, canton's and communities. Essentially anytime that the province or canton has a founding date during the year, there are celebrations, and of course there are many more national holidays in addition to this. For example, the cantón of Santa Clara, which belongs to the province of Pastaza, had their annual fiestas this month which lasted for two weekends. The fiestas of my cantón,
Arosemena Tola will be in April. Santa Clara was celebrating what is called their cantonization of their cantón. Each cantón has these fiestas which include many different activities such as a reina (queen) competition, which is essentially a beauty pageant, which was one of the most extravagant events that I've been to. Having never been to a beauty pageant before, I still think this would beat any local pageant I would maybe see in the US.
The reinas were each from a different community within the cantón. In the competition includes a presentation of the reinas, speeches, ball gown show and a dance (this part was the craziest of them all with how elaborate or "extra" the show was). During the dance presentation, all of the reinas had gorgeous elaborate feather outfits, and many had men carrying them on pedestals with fire torches. The makeup, the outfits of course the performances were incredible. The competitors for la reina de Santa
Clara were all between the ages of 16 and 18. It was interesting after the reina won to see how the other participants acted and the town was saying that the girl who won reina only won cause of fraud. Interesting local chisme (gossip). I enjoyed watching nonetheless and am looking forward to see our cantón's fiestas in April. I'd honestly never seen anything like it before!
In addition to the reina competition, other events included the pregón, which was the opening parade where a bunch of the local schools and dance clubs paraded through the streets and danced to Ecuadorian music. I'm officially a fan of Ecuadorian national music by now and love watching the dances. I even got pulled into the parade at one point. It seems
to be a theme that in any semi big event somehow I get pulled into it or put in the spotlight for being a gringa (foreigner), hard for my 6 foot tall blonde self to not stand out here in the small towns. Other events that I attended included car races through the town as well as motocross races the second weekend. And of course, wouldn't be a fiesta without the torros (bulls). Got pulled into the comedy show that was being held by the clowns at the bull area, which was interesting, but survived the embarrassment.
Last but not least, at every Ecuadorian party/fiesta, etc, there is always music, dancing, and beer. The Ecuadorians in my region love all three of these. During the two weekends each night there were musical performances accompanied by dancing. In my site, beer is the drink of choice. In Ecuador, it's considered rude to not accept a drink from another person, thus I have had to get somewhat used to drinking beer. Drinking beer in Ecuador (or at least in my site) is different than in the US. In the US we sip on our one beer, where as here one person purchases a large bottle of beer to share in the circle. The person who buys the beer pours one at a time using the same glass for each person. They'll pour a glass, pass to the person next to them who will drink the beer in one swig. That person will then toss the espuma (foam) out of the cup and pass back to the pourer, who will pour a more beer into the glass and pass to the next person in the circle, and repeat. They say they drink it this way cause if you sip on beer it gets warm, and "beer is to refresh in the hot weather." So, there is a fun little culture info on beer drinking in Ecuador!
In my free time, I have joined a soccer team! I am the only gringa on the team and am playing with girls from my cantón Arosemena Tola. Most of them live in the outlying communities including where the campeonata (championships) is being held, the community of Santa Rosa and Nueva Esperanza (a 10 min drive from where I live). We started games early January and apparently will go until August. At first we play two rounds of full field 11v11 and then we move to games of futsal on the smaller turf playing 6v6. It's been fun to get to be a part of a team sport again, especially since it's been so long since I've played soccer on a team. The winners of the leagues will supposedly go and play in the capital of the province (Tena, Napo) to compete against other teams from in the province, which would be a super cool experience! Currently we have 2 wins and 2 losses, so we will see how it goes. Otherwise I'm really enjoying getting to know my teammates and playing with them :)
At work, yes I promise I work and don't just play here in the selva... at work things have been slower than they have been the past few months when we were busy giving charlas each week at 5-6 schools. January new people were being contracted at work and getting settled and I myself was in the planning phase of projects and working on turning in a report to Peace Corps on my community assessment that I did when I arrived at site. What I have planned for the next few months of work include community and scholastic gardens, gardens with people with disabilities, accompanied by nutrition and health charlas. I will be working with the senior center (abuelitos) again on physical health and nutrition. Often times they are sedentary at the senior center doing craft activities and don't get much movement, so I've been starting to visit them 2-3 times per week to do little exercises or games to get them moving, and 1-2 times per month I will be giving them a charla (lecture) on a health
topic. This last week I talked to them about My Plate (MiPlato) and healthy foods and portions for prevention of diabetes, obesity, etc. We are also working on a garden at the senior center where we will plant fruits, veggies as well as ancestral plants so that the abueltios can continue their tradition of ancestral medicine and pass it on, super cool. This last week we had a minga where a group of community members/workers got together to help work in the garden. We will be having weekly mingas on Tuesdays in order to help complete the garden project at the senior center, which should be fun and good exercise! Today we just had a meeting with one of the communities, Flor del Bosque who we will start working on the community/scholastic garden with. We (Mary and I) have recently teamed up with an engineer at our work place who has great agricultural experience
and is going to help us with our garden projects. Peace Corps goal is sustainable development, which means having the community themselves produce the projects and do the work, it is theoretically our job to just help plan and get different parts of the community to work together, which is what we have done! Super excited to get our garden project up and running! Additionally, we have continued to work with the kids at the community Nueva Esperanza helping with some English in addition to nutrition charlas and working on a garden there as well. There are so many projects to do with so little time it seems like, but super happy to have so many options of projects to contribute to! So, for those of you who just see the fun photos, yes I am doing work behind the scenes, here projects just take awhile to start, and currently in the phase of developing/planning so not as much action! Lastly, hoping to get into running some programs at the communities as well on the topic of alcohol and drug prevention, but that will be a little bit more in the future after we get these gardens up and running :)
The engineer who will be working with us on the garden projects invited my site mate Mary and I to a cacao finca (farm) last weekend, which was an amazing experience! This was a local finca that grows two different types of cacao and they sell the cacao to vendors and have their own café here in Arosemena where they sell chocolate products. The great thing about the owners of the finca is that they are working and teaching other members of the rural communities how to cultivate cacao for economic development, so when we did our visit, it was actually a training of how to cultivate and maintain a cacao finca. I learned that you can create new branches of the cacao trees. This is done by trimming the leaf/branches from other healthy trees, cutting a slit in the side of a cacao tree, and implanting the small branch into the slit. You then wrap the newly inserted small branch with saran wrap around the trunk to create a moist environment when it will grow and attach for one month. After that, you take the saran wrap off and let it grow! And even if a cacao tree has a disease, if you insert a healthy branch onto that tree, that limb will somehow not be affected! Cool stuff, hope I semi explained myself! It was a great experience and cool to see how the community is working together to help one another. The owners of the finca were even scheduling dates to visit the other rural communities to help the farmers start their own cacao fincas!
In other news, this coming weekend is the fiestas of the province of Napo, in the capital city of Tena, which should be fun. And then in end of February it is the famous carnaval fiestas that happen prior to starting the 40 days of Lent. There are fiestas all weekend and people buy foam guns and squirt each other, throw flour at one another, and apparently eggs as well! Will see! Last year I spent my carnaval in Colombia, but have yet to get the Ecuadorian experience, so check back in a month and I'm sure I'll have some good Carnaval stories as to what it was like! Overall, all is still going well here at site, and enjoying life! My parents are coming to visit me in April, and I'll be going to visit Alaska over summer solstice this year, so excited to be getting to see my friends and family over the next 6 months! That is all from me here in the Amazon for now, felíz February!
Fun Fact: The majority of chocolate produced in the Amazon region uses the yellow cacao plant as opposed to the red. The yellow cacao is a lot sweeter, where as the red cacao is more acidic with more fat, thus they use the red cacao for making beauty products or creams such as cacao butter.