January, shmanuary, says the parrot

Just sitting out on the patio of a cafe, using wireless, drinking coffee, soaking up some sun, and thinking about how happy I am to be in a warm place, in the middle of "winter". Life is good. That is all, really.

Burning the old year, bringing in the new

Ecuadorians have a fantastic tradition for wrapping up each year and welcoming the next, in a celebration that is bigger and more raucous than even Carnaval. The days leading up to New Year’s Eve are punctuated by fireworks and the building of sometimes rather large effigies made out of highly flammable materials. These effigies are usually famous people or entities, real and imaginary, like: local, national and international politicians, Tweety Bird, Santa Claus and just about anything else you can conceive of. You can also purchase life-sized dolls on almost every street corner. (Most of the homemade effigies are over 10 feet tall, while the pre-fab ones are only about 5 feet tall.)

On New Year’s Eve Day, people put the finishing touches on their displays, and set them out for people to see, sometimes with signs explaining what they have made, but usually none are necessary. Meanwhile, should you try to go anywhere (walking or in a car), you are stopped by costumed individuals, and made to “colaborar”, or pay a toll. The costumes range from gorilla suits, to police uniforms, to very elaborate cross-dressing. (In fact, cross-dressing is interestingly the most beloved costume for these festivities.) The toll that you pay is usually just a few cents, but, if you don’t have spare change, you can contribute something else. (I had a friend who ran out of money once, and so paid with his shoelaces, for example.) As you might imagine, it takes a very long time to go anywhere, even on foot. On the roads, they block you from passing by putting a long branch in the road, or by holding a rope across your lane. Then, the toll-chargers typically do a little dance and (since they are usually cross-dressers keeping in character, or Michael Jackson), they verbally sexually harass the men in the vehicle. This is my favorite part. Once you pony up, they usually let you pass. (Alternately, they have the prerogative of deciding that you have not given them a sufficient amount, and force you into a few more centavos. It is, of course, very helpful if you know that this is all going to happen in advance, and so make a point of having lots of small coins on your person. Otherwise, it gets very, very expensive. In many of the smaller towns with no police (like in Salasaca), they also make you drink after you pay your toll. And it’s almost never something subtle like beer: we are talking moonshine here. When you finally do get to wherever you are going, you sometimes can’t see so straight.

Some neighborhoods get together and build haunted houses, and charge a fee for entry. The one haunted house that I went into was, predictably, very scary indeed, and featured men in scary costumes, brandishing various power tools, like chainsaws, jackhammers, and industrial-grade welding machines. I really need not mention the additional fact that there is also lots of drinking going on simultaneously, but there you have it.

At midnight, all of the effigies are set aflame, sometimes with the help of accelerators like gasoline and/or fireworks.

For those who haven’t had the time or inclination to build their own effigies, they may borrow the use of a pyre from somebody, in order to set aflame their own list of things from the previous year that need getting rid of or letting go of. These lists, like secret wishes that one makes before blowing out birthday candles, are supposed to be known only to the burner (lest they not come true, of course).* The streets are literally filled with people, and you spend a little while walking around and dodging the fireworks that people throw into the pyres and wishing people a Happy New Year. It is kind of apolcalyptic-looking, but far more fun than you might imagine the apocalypse to be.

And then, you dance until the sun comes up (and eat pork).




*Actually, I lied about the sexual harassment of men being my favorite part. The list-burning is.

This is not about dogs. Really.

So, about a week ago, I was sitting in my living room with friends, when Sisa Mati the Dog, began frantically barking and whining and running from the balcony, through the living room, into the bedroom, and back. She could not be persuaded to calm down. I figured that she was reacting to the thunderstorm outside, or maybe just the volcano sounding off, or something. It was not until the next day that I realized what had been going on.

There is a little river, (more of a stream, really) the Bascún, that runs along the edge of town, and into the Pastaza River. A lot of people live along the stream and the valley it runs through, and although it is currently considered a high-risk zone (due to the volcano), the land is gorgeous and fertile and the road is capped at its high end by a set of volcanic hot springs that are just lovely. Many people in that valley, directly or indirectly, live off of the tourism generated by the hot springs, which are the second-most-visited in Baños.

This is what it used to look like.
It does not look like that anymore.

Unbeknownst to me (although not unbeknownst to local officials, who had been warned repeatedly by people living in the area), a natural dam of sorts had built up, further up the mountain, from accumulated volcanic debris and tree trunks, etc.. A large lake (50 meters wide by 100 meters long, by who knows how deep, they say) had formed, in the course of a week or so, and when the heavy rains over the weekend weakened the makeshift levy, it broke, sending a 50-foot wall of water, boulders, and mud down the chute. Unfortunately, the rainstorm hit its apex at about 11:30 pm, and most people were sleeping when the wall of debris hit around midnight. There was no real warning, and houses were washed away; lives were lost. Even the hot springs, which have been there for as long as people can remember, were scraped away from the hillside. This, for example, is what is left of the El Salado baths.
It all happened in a matter on minutes. There are stories I have heard, of a mother trying to save her 3 children, and having to chose which to save, in the middle of the night, in the dark, cold, boulder-filled water. She and the baby are still in the hospital. The bodies of the older little ones have not been found, and likely won’t be. There were only neighbors and passers-by to help. Had I known what was going on some 3 blocks from my house, I would have at least tried to be one of those neighbors, I think.
But, the authorities, in fact, seemed to just be arriving in force around the same time that I did; at 11 am the next day. By that time, the rains had passed and there was nothing to do, save for look at the (nearly straight) path that had been carved through the valley, where houses had been, and where the water and mud and rocks had actually come up over the lesser of the two bridges that cross the valley, which sits some 50 feet over what is normally the streambed. The larger of the two bridges (also part of the main road into town) had one of its immense concrete pilings almost completely taken out at the base. Hopefully, the mayor will think to fix that sooner rather than later, and not say (as he is now rumored to have said about the dam) that “It will come down when it comes down”. And come down, it sure did.

The Dog Made Me Do It* (Part I)

Despite several signs that I should not have a dog (one of them being Biblical in nature) last week, I heard that one of my landlord’s 6 sons had brought me a dog from the jungle. I steeled myself to say “Thanks, really, but hell no”. That is, until I actually saw her. And then, I was even less poised to say no after she nuzzled up to me and made those little grunting sounds that I used to think that only the Nina made, but which I have, in the last year, learned that baby pigs make, too. Thusly, I had to make the walk of shame back to my vet with the new puppy, who of course said to me (with a smile, but kind of ruefully), “Ooooh... another... puppy”. I am sure he is thinking “Let’s hope that this one lasts a little longer under your care”. (And he doesn’t even know about the puppy carried away by floods before I could take possession of her, or the other one that I watched get hit by a car, just as I was merely thinking of getting her off the street and bringing her home.) We commence with the shots and the de-worming. I carry her over to the scale. I know the routine by now.

In the meantime, I get word from a sick loved one who was planning to come to Ecuador for medical treatment, for a disease that has no real treatment in the States, but that here, is treated fairly non-chalantly with an experimental treatment, and with good results, from what I can discern. This loved one, who I will just call “Theo”, cannot make the trip down to Ecuador. I talk to the doctor who was going to do the treatment, and he says that in such cases, he sends the medicine to the patient. I consider this, and relay the news to said loved one.

I get home from this visit with the doctor and what did I see:

Yes, she weighs about 10 pounds and somehow dragged my suitcase out from under my bed. She sat on it (cutely, of course) in case I didn’t get the hint. I open the suitcase and start packing it, half out of habit and the other half out of hope.

While this is all going on, a friend of Theo’s named Angela calls me to offer her frequent flyer miles to send me to the States with the medicine. I love this woman. I agree, of course, and set our plans in forward motion.

Now, if I can just get my travel documents in order before my flight leaves....

This turns out to be a larger project than expected, but so is almost everything here, and so, after some initial screaming at the government officials, and then some crying (over the course of 4 trips to the capital to the immigration visa offices) they grant me the visa transfer I need, and I am internationally-able. I then go to local immigration services, to get my national ID card renewed (which I could not do until the visa transfer was completed). These guys all look about 12, and being drunk with power makes them appear even moreso like kids playing dress up in their uniforms with guns and big-man attitudes. I doubt that any of them even have to shave.

These guys have caused me problems before, and even once stole my lucky $2 bill, but since I usually need their services to be able to stay in the country, I grin and bear it and then complain about it later. This time is no different. They makes jokes about having my cell phone number and knowing where I live. Ha. Ha. They ask to see my old national ID card, and the corresponding stamp in my old passport (which I happen to have with me, just having come from Immigration in Quito). They proceed to keep it, and when I realize what they have done (later, of course), I go back to get my old passport (with 10 years of visas and entry and exit stamps) and they say that noooo, we would never ask you for that, we only need your current passport, and anyway, if we were to have your passport, it would be right here in your file with all of your other personal information, and yet, look, it is not here. I give them my best you-are-useless-sacks-of-shit look, and tell them that no, I am absolutely sure that I handed it to them, and that they never gave it back to me, and that it must be there somewhere, maybe in a drawer or something. My idea is to give them an out, so they don’t have to admit to having stolen it. They pretend to look for it, and then repeat the same condescending litany of BS about not needing my old passport, and that they wouldn´t have asked me for it to begin with. I tell them that surely they are mistaken and that they should notify me when it turns up. They patronizingly tell me, “Of course, señorita” (knowing full well that I no longer qualify for this moniker, since all Ecuadorian paperwork and identification documents your civil status, including divorce, which I have always thought was highly invasive, but so are a lot of things here.) In turn, I address the Grand Puba of this gaggle of assholes in the vos form in Spanish, just to remind him again that I don´t give a shit who he is, and that I want my f*$&ing passport back, and they all sit there shocked as I walk out of the office and out onto the street.**

Then comes the final doctor consult in Riobamba and the handing over of the meds (after my 27 other phone calls and meetings with him, which I am sure he is getting annoyed with by now). The puppy, at this point, has a name: Sisa Mati (the first of which means “flower” in Quichua, the second name, being there just in case, and for entirely superstitious reasons). I had wanted to name her just Mati, but I got the same “God, you are a dumb gringa, don´t you know that´s a masculine name?” look from every person I said it to...

The trip to Riobamba and then Quito was beautiful, and Dr. Chávez, acting on behalf of one Dr. Bond (yes, James is in fact his first name), bequeaths me three clear glass bottles filled with the components of this formula, and gives me a list of things to buy in the pharmacy that is attached to his clinic. His instructions are fairly detailed, and he humors my questions about mixing them into the IV bags and administering the formula, and all of that. (This is all fairly run-of-the-mill in Ecuador, it seems.) Then, we get the paperwork ready for my bringing these meds over international borders. Of course, the documents have to say that the treatment is mine, and not for Theo. The good doctor decides that, for the purposes of my trip, I will have Lupus. He writes up the certificate, saying as much, and somewhere in the middle of the Quito airport, I realize that I know close to nothing about Lupus, should anyone ask. What I do know is that Lupus is not as uncommon as it would seem, and that, with my stellar traveling luck, the customs official will likely have a sister or cousin with the disease. The only other thing that I know about Lupus is that doctors seem to know only slightly more about it than I do, and so I decide on generalized and intense pain and weakness as my symptoms, and just hope that nobody looks in my checked bags, which are now full of saline IV bags, needles, IV tubing, and three glass vials of clear liquid that could be anything, as far as an even minimally-conscientious customs official is concerned. Considering that one of my more recent flights to the States involved being pulled out of the gate area by Interpol and having my boarding pass confiscated until they could discern that a certain bag in the cargo area was not mine, I am anticipating some variety of problems. ***

However, St. Christopher (it is St. Christopher, right?) must’ve been watching over me, since my arrival at U.S. customs was only punctuated by a “Welcome home” and then a wave-through. This.has.never.happened.before.



Meeting me in California was a different saint with a similar name and disposition, along with my father, both uncomfortably crammed into a slick convertible, and with wild hair from the ride to the airport. If Ira Glass were to be scripting a soundtrack to all of this, the song from the opening credits to the O.C. would have been ironically playing in the background, I’m sure.

It seemed that the hardest part of the trip was over, and so we all enjoyed the ride with the top down through Beverly Glen to the house.

I was just glad to not have had to blame the dog for making me pack my bags, and in doing so, condemn her to a life of little-dog imprisonment. They are especially hard on those cases, I hear.



* An appreciation for Magical Realism will help somewhat in reading this. Some names have been changed; others have not.

** At the time, I thought about filing a report so that I could at least document that my old passport was stolen (U.S. passports, even expired ones, sell for top dollar here), but I would have to file the report with... guess who... the people who stole it from me in the first place. Nice touch, that.

*** Of course, the bag in question was not mine, but, judging from the frantic Beagles that accompanied the officials, and the fact that the other 4 people pulled out of line were all women around my age, I assume that this inconvenience had something to do with Plan Colombia, and that there was a good possibility that I would also be having my stomach x-rayed that night, should they feel like it.

Katitawa video

Lots going on/having gone on here and elsewhere. Still not sure to say about it all, so for now, I give you a wonderful video created by one of our volunteers at the school.

Be patient. The video takes a little while to load.


Katitawa school from Justin McIntosh on Vimeo.

The Big Dance Number

So, somewhat after the fact now, I would like to say that our end-of-the-school-year program at Katitawa went swimmingly. Actually, it by far exceeded all expectations.

This is not to say that there wasn’t a significant amount of preparation involved, which certainly helped. But hot damn, it was quite impressive.

First of all, at the suggestion of one of the students (hats off to Wamari!), we turned our broken water tank into a small store/command central for events. This ended up being a slightly larger task than we imagined, but it was well worth it. Some bricks, a little cement, bamboo, and plastic and straw (and the requisite landscaping, if course) and then some electricity, and we were all set.

We also went up to the volcano, to collect some rocks for the pachamanka. In case you didn’t know this, you can’t make an earth-oven out of just any rocks. They have to be strong ones; rocks that will not have moisture in them and then explode from the expansion that the heat causes. Volcanic rocks are perfect for this (because, you know, once you get spit out from a volcano, chances are that not much else is going to make you explode). So, up we went to the lava flow, hauling an entire truckload of rocks back to Salasaka. I nearly broke my ass in half in the process, during a gracious (of course) slide down part of the flow, but hey, these things happen.

The kids all did a fantastic job, of course.

The older kids presented a program, or more of an ode, really, to all of the volunteers that had been up at the school in the past year. This involved juggling, and wearing funny hats, and presenting flags for each country represented by the various volunteers (there were 9 in total). And, for the most part, the kids did this all in English, with translations for the guests. It was fantastic. The little kids (ages 3 to 9) did an equally charming program, presenting a story in Spanish about the “Battle of the numbers”, where the different numbers argued with each other over who was “better”, and where they agreed, in the end, that they were all equally important, regardless of their size.
They had the audience busting at the seams with laughter, it was so cute and well-done. Maria Pozo, their amazing teacher, did an incredible job in working with them, as usual.

After the different grade levels were done presenting their separate skits, the kids all got together for a traditional dance program, choreographed by the illustrious Fabiola.

How she got all those kids stepping to the same tune at the same time, we will never know. It was truly a sight to see, though, with everyone swirling around in unison, in their fancy best dress.

We also ate a lot of lamb (one whole lamb, in fact), hot out of the pachamanka oven. Literally, we just grabbed pieces from the oven, and shared between ourselves (yes, eating with our hands). This was after having pet the fat little guy the day before, and having looked into those sweet lamby eyes, and even after the kids had named him, and then later our seeing his hide and wool on the kitchen floor. It was still oh-so-lovely to eat. And then we danced. And ate some more. The parents of the students brought ears of corn and potatoes, and chochos (my favorite), and giant lima beans, and made soup out of the lamb intestines and other innards (yum, magaritza, as if I didn’t love it enough as a kid) and a host of other things, including homemade booze made from agave and then, some not-so-homemade booze, as well. There was nary a guinea pig in sight, I am happy to say.



At some point, our solar power ran out (our battery capacity, even on good days, does not last all that long). But luckily, one of the fathers of the kids had had the foresight to bring up a generator, along with a complete DJ outfit! So, we had music and electricity all night. We even had the perfect DJ booth, what with the new store/event-central building, and all.

Let me just say it one more time: it was all fantastic.

Hats off to all of the volunteers and the teachers, and especially the kids and their parents.

¡Que viva Michigan! (En el Ecuador, pero.)

Frequently you see or hear things here that make you unable to keep a straight face. Sometimes it’s because it is just so unusual (for you), like a random dancing monkey, or a family of four (with one sleeping child included) on a single motorcycle, or a poodle riding on the handlebars of a seventy-year-old man’s bike, with his tongue sticking out like he had his head out a car window (the dog, not the man). Or maybe you hear from your taxi driver that he had to quit his former profession as a welder, due to it having damaged his vision too much to see well anymore (as he is careening you through heavy traffic in the mountainsides of Quito). Lo que sea.

Other times though, the things that make you smile are out of sheer familiarity, within the context of a not-so-familiar place.

I guess that the man in the U of M leather jacket didn’t shock me too much. They are a Big 10 team, after all, with plenty of merchandise to spread all over the world. But still, even in the fairly cosmopolitan provincial capital, it is a bit strange. American football is not televised here at all, and so it made me wonder whether he even knew what a Wolverine (or a Michigan) was.

HOWEVER, as I was coming home from working the other evening, I got stuck behind a bus (with no time to pass, not in my terms, anyway) and started to get impatient. And then I looked up to see this. There truly is a reason for (almost) everything, as it turns out. Yes, that is correct: the biggest and most ostentatious of the decals that he has on the bus is of the Saginaw Eagles, of all things.* I couldn’t stop laughing, for whatever reason. And so, that puts you to thinking: How did he even end up with that particular decal? Does he have family there? (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t seem to remember there being a large Ecuadorian immigrant population in that (or any) part of Michigan.) Alternately, was there a huge boatload of hockey/other sport paraphernalia “lost” on its way to Saginaw, and unloaded at the Guayaquil port, only to end up somewhere on the back of a bus in (literally) the middle of Ecuador? I imagine a bunch of adolescent males in Saginaw, melancholy over not being able to trod out their fanaticism on the back of their lowered, black-lit-from-the-bottom Hondas, because the merch ended up on a side-road off the Panamerican. This makes me laugh even harder.

It also seems that Stephen Colbert has to be culpable here, somehow.**



*The other decals, in case you don’t read Spanish, proclaim things like “Don’t follow me, I’m lost”, “Danger: Cheater’s Zone”, “The Immortal” and “Just because I’m really friendly, they call me a womanizer”.

**Yes, we could likely recognize this as yet another form of branding in the so-called “3rd World”, or of exoticism, or as any number of other things involving class and race and power, but (and I apologize for this in advance) it is simply funnier to think of dudes in baseball caps in (lower) Northern Michigan, pining for their Eagles gear. And of course, the very happy bus-driver that ended up with it instead, in rural Ecuador. Don’t you think so?

This Salasacan Life

It has been raining a lot, even in Salasaca. In the late afternoons, the clouds sometimes clear up and you are treated to a couple hours of sun and breathtaking views, and then an even more breathtaking sunset usually follows suit. Not so bad.

With all of the rain, our crop up at the school has really shot up. It is amazing to see what a little water can do, especially compared to our drip irrigation system. (In addition to that, we only get irrigation water in our sector of the community one day a week, on Tuesdays.) Anyhow, the corn seems to have grown literally overnight. This is as green as things get, around here. In the recent photo, (besides the obvious corn), if you look hard enough, you can see: onion, radish, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, beans, peas, quinoa, wild spinach, chamomile, carrots, swiss chard, baby stinging nettles, ají pepper, aloe, nopal cactus, and tree tomato.*

Also, just compare the recent photo (at left) with a photo from one year ago (below). It seems like we have grown some stuff, that is for certain.

The apple, avocado, and citrus seedlings (not pictured) have also appreciated the long cold drink of water that the rain has given them. Hopefully someday, they will actually bear some fruit.

In the far right of the (top) picture, you may notice a chicken coop and a small fence (which predictably, is made out of... you guessed it... chicken-wire). This is our new experiment. We have 6 chickens (which have grown even faster than the plants lately). Two of them, someone realized, are roosters, so one will have to be eaten (by us) before they mature completely and start fighting. Darn. The coop itself was built and donated by some lovely volunteers. They (the chickens, not the volunteers) spend most of the day roaming around in their enclosure doing what it is that they do best: peck at stuff that they think might be food and bobble around. Both the coop and the fence are also movable, which is key. We can rotate them around the rows, where they aerate the soil for a period of time and also provide fertilizer for it. Then we plant again. The soil here needs lots of amending, and while our compost helps greatly, the caca de pollo fertilizer does even more so. We could buy it, I suppose, but it is expensive (not to mention stinky to haul around in sacks). Plus, why buy it when we can make it right here for a fraction of the cost? And have fresh eggs, too?

Otherwise, the kids at the school are all preparing for the end-of-the-school-year program, where they get to showcase what they’ve learned in the last year.

Me, well, I am getting ready for that, too. Along with the whole lamb we are going to roast in the pachamanka oven for the day of the program.






*Side bar: Does anyone know what tree tomatoes are, exactly? They are called “tomate de arbol” in Spanish, but I have never seen or heard of them outside of South America. As their name suggests, they grow in rather large (nay, treelike) plants, and are shaped like Roma tomatoes. They don’t seem to be tomatoes at all, though; or at least, they don’t taste anything like tomatoes. Their most common application is in juices.

Recent happenings, in (not so bullet-like) bullet points

-Have been a bit busy down in these parts. Things at the school are still coming along, as per the usual, and then some. (cf. the forthcoming This Salasacan Life post)

-With respect to the volcano, just this last week, Mama Tungurahua has started to wake up from her little 7 (or so) month nap. On Sunday, the Geophysics Institute recorded 125 "moderate" explosions, and 32 earthquakes inside the mountain itself. Down in town, I barely noticed a thing. Although, I did recently go up to a lookout point, (where the highway to Riobamba used to be, before the 2005 outburst that she had) and watched a spectacular lava show, complete with an almost full moon and a sky full of stars. It was really beautiful and completely eerie at the same time. At this very moment, there are some rumblings coming from up in her general direction. I´m not sure if this actually happens more late at night, or whether one just notices it more then. Whatever the case, I hope that she just has the volcanic equivalent of indigestion, or something like that.

-In less explosive news, and partially due to the rains, I have some purty flowers blooming right now. Yee. Haw.

-And speaking of, rainy season (winter, here) has begun, along with the occasional landslides and other fun stuffs. I am having a hard time believing that it has been a year already since the last time, yet, the scars on the mountains from last years rains have grown over some (albeit mostly with the fast-growing ground cover). But nonetheless, they once again look like mountains they used to be. We shall see what this year’s rains have in store. There was already a massive series of slides between Rio Verde and Rio Blanco, which filled up one of the tunnels completely. It is amazing that nobody was killed, in fact. If you don’t know this road, (which you likely don’t) there are a series of tunnels that took something like 40 years to complete, which are carved straight through several very, very large mountains. These now obviate the need to take the old road, which was constantly being washed out by landslides and waterfalls and such. I remember taking that old road when going between Tena and Baños, and it could be quite the trick to get the bus around the curves and through the washouts and waterfalls. Usually, the busdriver’s helper had to get out and direct the driver. Sometimes, only 3 wheels of the bus would actually be on the road. I imagine that a good portion of said old road is no longer there. It is a relief to no longer have to take it.

-As for other roads, the one between Baños and Ambato has, on the other hand, been quite good. Since last year’s lahar debacle, the national corps of engineers has been hard at work on a fix for the problem. They started (unintuitively to me, not being an engineer) by building a two-lane bridge where the lahars were the worst, with long cement anchors on each side. From there, they excavated under the bridge, leaving a small canyon for the lahars to run down. This seems to be working, for now. I am knocking on wood that it continues to do so.

-The Sumak Kawsay Yachay Foundation is still coming along as planned, and has been doing a lot, between the Biblioteca Rosa Maria, the Katitawa School, and various other smaller projects.



-Tula is gone for good. I think that I know where she lives currently, though; with a family that includes a couple of children. I am feeling like it would be worse to steal her (back) from the family that has had her for the last 6 weeks, and in turn break the kids’ little hearts. Maybe she likes it there.

-Also relating to Tula being gone, the neighbors felt bad for me, and so were going to give me one of their puppies. BUT, before they could be weaned, all NINE of them were carried away by the recent floods. No joke.

-More randomly, although it does deserve saying, Langston Hughes never gets tiresome. Ever, ever.

¡Mira la perritita tan angelita! or: Why Tula is not allowed to sleep in my bed

Yes, more about the dog.*

When people say to me “Oh, your puppy is so cute! She must just cuddle up with you at night and sleep like a little angel.”, I have to tell them, “Well, no not exactly…”

Aside from the fact that her favorite game is attack-the-feet, she has also been known to play attack-the-face at 5 in the morning.

And aside from that, she occasionally shows up with fleas, from who-knows-where, and then I end up with fleas, too, until I can spray her with the flea repellant and wash (by hand) everything that she has lounged around on (which is pretty much everything BUT the bed). For those who have not had the pleasure of a flea infestation before, let me tell you, it is not fun. They are fast. And tiny. And hard to kill. And can jump feet at a time. Oh, and they make you (me) really, really itchy for days on end.

ANYway, my charming little sweet-faced angel Tula also loves (and I mean, loves) to torment the chickens at the house. Somehow, she gets them out of their pen, and then chases them up and down the stairs and through the garden and around the patios for hours on end. This can also sometimes be problematic for our egg consumption around here, since scared, frantic hens aren’t really that into laying eggs. Also, I should add that these are no normal chickens. They are campo chickens, and thus, enormous. The roosters are probably about 2 1/2 feet tall, and they are her favorites to pester, as they are also a bit more surly than the hens, and will puff their chests out and peck back at her. She jumps up in the air, landing in the “play” position, with her butt up in the air, and lunges back at them. This goes on until somebody sees her, and puts the game to an end. The other day, I caught her pulling one around (kind of gently) by the wing, and was really glad that it was me that found her, and not somebody else. It's all fun and games, until somebody gets their eye pecked out, I keep telling her.

When she gets INTO the chicken pen (which is huge, by the way), her activities include the above chicken antics, in addition to her other preferred pastime: generally basking in chicken feces. She rolls around in it; she throws it around and then pounces on it; and then, for her grand finale, in a circus side-show fashion, she eats it. (This is still (if maybe only slightly) better than the gigantic hunk of semi-dried horse excrement that I had to wrestle away from her on our last walk in the hills, however.) The scent of chicken poop on her fur and breath is just lovely, really.

Needless to say, there are also frequent (bimonthly, lately) visits to the vet, for the magical anti-parasites. One time of cleaning up live, adult worm-crawling dog poop was enough for me, thank-you-very-much.

Anyhow, I am reminded of all of these charming little characteristics of hers, because last night, Tula brought me an extra special gift. Only, since it was dark by the time I got home, I didn’t see it waiting for me on my balcony, next to her little (other, outside) bed. Rather than being able to thank her at the time, I just let her into my apartment, fed her, and made her go to sleep (on her little bed on the floor in my bedroom). This morning, at 7 am, which is when she wakes me up by putting her front paws on the edge of my bed and poking me in the face, I let her out the front door, only to step on something wet and squishy, that looked kind of like a wet, furry towel. I was thinking, “What the….?”. I thought that maybe one of the towels on her bed had gotten dirty somehow. And then I noticed the oh-so-distinctive smell, as whatever-it-was had been out in the hot sun for a good hour, and the fumes were wafting around in the breeze. By the time I noticed the little face and distinctive bucky teeth, I knew that it could only be one thing. A freaking guinea pig. Or rather, the tossed about hide of a guinea pig, still attached to the head. (Oh, did I forget to mention that we have guinea pigs at the house, too, and that they are very much not pets?)



In the 7 seconds it took me to go back in the house and get the broom and a plastic bag, Tula’s “present” had disappeared from my balcony, and I heard a thrashing sound coming from my bedroom. And there she was, with the guinea pig carcass in her mouth, looking as proud as can be, poised to jump up onto my bed, already having sprayed guinea pig juice on the walls and floor. Oh, the smell of it all.

If you have never eaten guinea pig before, you can’t know or fully appreciate its gamey, sort of earthy, salty, vinegar undertones. Even when you eat it cooked, it leaves an oily gamey scent on your hands for days (because you have to eat it with your hands, since there is hardly any meat to speak of). But back to the story at hand, consider this same meat, uncooked. Mix that with a wet, dirty sock smell, a day or three's worth of decomp, and then some hot Andean sun for good measure.

And that, folks, is what I had to wrestle away from Tula at 7:07 am. And then clean off of my walls and floor. She gets her bath later. But not until after I've had some coffee and have stopped gagging.




*It is actually easier and more entertaining -- trust me -- to write about Tula than it is to describe the various other complicated things going on at the moment, like: the fact that there is a movement in Ecuador to abolish all bilingual education, or that our little school could lose the (absurdly small) support that it does get from the government, or that one’s research does not always go as planned, or the 237 steps that one has to go through to create a not-for-profit foundation around here, or any number of other things.

Back by popular demand, Teh Cute

Lots going on here, but for now, I give you more of Teh Cute.



She actually disappeared for a few days this last week, having been carried off by some kids in the neighborhood. However, the word must´ve spread through my neighborhood that there was a sad gringa looking for her puppy, and Tula was returned unharmed, and a little more rambunctious than usual (this may have also contributed to her being brought back, I suspect).

Ho-hum and random

So, the "Big Mama", as my own Mama calls her, is quiet. We are all knocking on wood here and hoping that la Sra. Mama Tungurahua stays that way for at least a little while.

It has been raining quite a bit and the orchids are happier about it than I am.

Otherwise, things in the school are plodding along. We have had between 3 and 6 volunteers there at any given time in the last few weeks, which is fantastic. We have been painting the outside of the building that houses the kitchen and dining room, and have been trying to fix our water (or lack thereof) "issue". The latter has involved digging lots of holes in unintuitive places, in order to find where the pipe is broken, then repairing the breaks and then finally, digging a new trench to lay a new line along part of the old line. I have been compulsively planting various little things, and ho-ing it up in the garden, to get the beds ready to plant new vegetables.


We also had a cookout up at the school this week, in honor of a volunteer´s birthday.

We grilled hamburgers and generally overate.

The kids had a blast, and camped out overnight up at the school (with supervision).





And then one day, I came across this in Pelileo, while on a hike.

It was on the top of the gated entryway to someone´s property.

I have asked several people what it is, exactly, and have gotten several answers.

One said that it was a policeman, another a devil, and another still just laughed and said, "Obviously, it´s a little boy".

I will call him Biki Boy.

Mama Tungurahua

Things have very much quieted down (for the time-being) with the volcano.

She has been burping out ash plumes, and is a little gassy, but not much more than that. The chivas up to the mirador are full most nights, although tourism here in Baños is definitely suffering in most other ways. Many communities on the opposite side of the volcano have had devastating problems with ashfall, however.







This is the view from the road to Ambato, which is open.




















This is the view from my living room on a clear evening.


Todo normal.

Ruh-Roh.

Meet Tula.

Volcano, shmolcano; Our school bus is busted!

Up until this school year, Katitawa had a contracted taxi (truck) picking the kids up (some of them live very, very far). Since that money was basically being payed out constantly, with nothing to show for it in the end, we managed to finagle the money together over the summer for a little investment, and now the school has its own bus. A 1972 orange Volkswagon Combi.

Except, now, it is broken. There are kids who can't actually come to school without the daily pickup, because they live at such a distance (and up, and then down several mountains). So we've had to go back to the "old way", which is to pay the taxi. This is costing us money that we don't have (since we invested it in the bus). Long story short: we are short about $250 to fix the transmission and get the bus out of hock.

(Shameless plea for donations follows.) So, if you have an extra $5 or $10 laying around, please think about maybe going over to the Katitawa website and using the Paypal button to donate. (If you don't already have a Paypal account, you can get one at the Paypal Main Page .)

Good night, indeed!

So, about 10 minutes after I finish writing that last post, there is an abrupt knock at my door, which was strange, especially for it being after midnight. It was one of the neighbors, saying only, “We have to leave right now. The volcano.”

I guess I hadn’t noticed that all of the drunk singing people were heading in the same direction; namely, along the evacuation route and down to the bridge to get the hell out of town. Within 3 minutes, I gather a bag of necessities, find some warm clothes, put on my running shoes (as if that is going to help in the event of an “event”) and head outside to see what the hell is going on, exactly. Lots of things, apparently. By this time, all of the metal grates on the businesses are shuddering, as is the ground itself. There is a smoky orange glow coming from up in Mama Tungurahua’s direction. The neighbor’s one car is already packed full with the old people and the kids, and the other neighbor with a car has decided to hang around until it gets worse. This leaves us “middle-aged” people to head to the bridge, as quickly as possible. It takes about 4.5 minutes to get there, walking at a fast pace.

The bridge itself, which straddles the Pastaza River Gorge, was built specifically for evacuation purposes, after the last major evacuation in 1999. Then there is a connected road that takes you up another mountain, and ostensibly, out of harm’s way. There is a more or less steady stream of cars crossing the bridge, along with plenty of pedestrians. Most people are sitting just on the other side of the bridge, watching the lava show, which is more visible from that vantage point, and pretty spectacular, too. Everybody is calm. People are laughing and listening to their transistor radios for more news. “There is an eruption happening”, says the news. Yes, we knew that, thank you. We eventually learn that the alert level for Baños is still only at orange, though, which is good. This also means that the evacuation is not mandatory (which is what happens when the alert level hits red). After walking up the mountain for a better view, and being slightly dissappointed that the activity had diminished, a few of us decide to go back into town to the radio station, which has a direct line (via shortwave) to the vulcanologists. The radio also happens to be in the church, which is an extra bonus, as is the fact that one of my friends is there alone, doing the broadcasts. It is about 4 am at this point. So, I end up at the radio station, hanging out in the control room and drinking wine and listening to the vulcanologists on the shortwave until the sun starts to come up, at which point there is also almost no activity up on the Mama. Time to sleep, finally.

Will post more photos soon.

Viva Carnaval!

Aaaah, Baños. I awoke in the morning (in my very volcanic-ash-filled apartment) to the green of the mountainside, and to the milk lady bleating “leeecheeeee” outside my window. Lots of cleaning to do. And, many dead plants, sadly enough. BUT, the one plant that I thought for certain would be dead, was in fact anything but. And, thus, my little Ascocenda surprised me, with blooms the size of my hand. (This is THE hardest-to-grow plant I have ever had, let alone getting it to bloom… and here it was, so neglected, and had just opened up the day that I got here, as it turns out.) My landlady was so excited about how pretty it was that she pointed it out almost before she even said hello.

Aside from that happy surprise, it turns out that Baños was also having a big party just for me. They are calling it “Carnaval”, or something quaint like that. How nice of them.

Anyhow, Carnaval here is quite the event, complete with parades of half-naked (or in some cases, fully-naked, but painted) women, fireworks, lots of throwing of water baloons, eggs, silly string, and various other spray items (like carioca). It is kind of a zoo, actually. I have never seen more people in the streets here. Oh, and of course, there is the burning things. In fact, there was an entire parade just dedicated to the things that would be burned later in the night.

As I write, Mama Tungurahua is grumbling away, in a series of small explosions. It is hard to tell the difference between that noise, and the firecrackers being exploded all around town to mark the end of Carnaval. The volcano makes the windows shake, though, whereas the firecrackers do not. That said, it is a good night, with the sounds of drunk singing people drifting in through the window, and a brass band playing somewhere off in the distance.

I Heart Guayaquil

So, getting into Quito was quite the issue this time around. First there was the 11 hour bus ride from the Upper Peninsula to Chicago, in white-out conditions. Then, there was about 36 hours of laughing, eating and drinking in Chicago. Then, the Chicago-Atlanta leg of my flight. Then Delta Airlines put us on a broken plane, hoping that the technicians could fix it while we sat there (um, please tell me that they check the planes before they go out to the terminals). After quite some time aboard the broken plane, we de-planed, only to be told that they were looking for a plane that worked. So, we set out very, very late for Quito (about 3.5 hours, in fact). Once we got to Quito, we learned that they had closed the airport to incoming air traffic approximately 3 minutes before our approach (of course!). Dense fog. Freakishly enough for this time of year (again, of course). Also, for those of you who haven’t flown into Quito before, it is kind of like a roller coaster ride, even on a normal day. The airport is set in a valley (at about 10,000 feet) and is surrounded by mountains (which are around 22,000 feet). The pilot has to first clear the mountains, then drop into the valley. Overshooting the runway results in (you guessed it) running straight into more mountains. So, it is an interesting landing, to say the least. Very fast, with a very abrupt descent.

Anyhow, we flew in circles above Quito for about 2 hours, hoping that they’d re-open the airstrip, until the pilot announced that we’d run out of gas if we didn’t head to Guayaquil soon. So, that’s what we did. Lovely, heavenly Guayaquil. At 2 am. Luckily, I had the good fortune of meeting some nice Ecuadorian folks, all of whom were as pleased as I was to be stuck at the Guayaquil airport in the middle of the night, so at least there were some good jokes and laughs bandied about (not too many, though). I tried to sleep on those oh-so-comfortable airport benches, with my belongings both under my head and hooked to my person. Then we all stood in line, hoping for boarding passes, but instead were given the chump prize of a “food voucher”. Considering there were about 200+ of us, and one little café open, I figured I wasn’t going to be eating any time soon, and so went back to sleep (which I would later regret, of course). We were also told we’d be getting on another plane at 5 am, to attempt another landing in Quito. So, since I had people waiting for me in Quito, I could finally tell them what time I’d be arriving. Miraculously, my Ecuadorian cellphone worked. They’d be there, they said. Nice. At approximately 7 am, we finally board the plane. We get to Quito, and are told we’d have only one attempt at landing. The pilot says that he’s going for it. He does. We descend into the valley. People are crossing themselves. I am, too, at this point. I want to frikking land, and in one piece. Through the clouds, the turbulence, the stomach-in-your-throat jolting up and down, the pilot overshoots the runway (he can’t see it, after all). He has to pull up, and fast. We make it over the mountains, at least. But, we are on our way back to Guayaquil. At this particular point, I am not sure which option would have been worse; the mountain, or the Guayaquil airport.

SO, back in Guayaquil, again, we are herded through customs, so as to get onto a domestic flight later in the day. There is an extremely long line for this, as you might imagine. An airport official approaches me, and says that there is an elevator with no line just down the hallway. I sieze the opportunity, and go. As it turns out, I somehow still arrive to the re-ticketing counter late, and at the back of the line. I, along with about a dozen other people, don’t make it onto the 2 domestic flights that Delta has planned for us. We wait. And wait. After about an hour, somebody comes to take our names. Another hour goes by. Then, two. Most of us are fairly pissed off at this point, especially since the domestic airline that we are waiting in line at has no more flights until that night. None of us has slept. One woman has a three-year-old, who is, surprisingly, in better spirits than all of us combined, dancing around and singing. We are a weary bunch, though, at this point, even with the entertainment. Aside from cheerful Anita and her mom and abuela, there is Hendry and Nancy, Quiteños who have been living in Brooklyn for the last 10 years, Sophia and her father (Germans), a young girl from rural Massachusetts coming to Ecuador for the first time, and some English backpackers. The abuelita is pissed, as are the Brooklynites and myself.

Three of us stage a mini-coup, and go storm the Delta offices upstairs. There are about 20 people, sitting in the office, doing nothing. They all look shocked and embarrassed when we trounce in. They tell us, before we even ask, “12:15pm, you have a flight out, just go downstairs and wait”. So, after complaining to them about the ridiculous treatment, we do just that. Until noon, when we realize that we have been bamboozled. We storm back up there (through the security checkpoint where we need little badges to access their very busy offices, of course). Shockingly, they have all gone for lunch, only to have left the baggage woman there to deal with us. We are not pleased. There is nothing that she can do, she says at least 10 times. We will have to speak with the domestic airline to arrange things, she says. We assure her that that is not the case. She insists. We leave, frustrated. Obviously, the domestic (non-Delta) airlines have no idea who we are, nor do they care that we are apparently stuck in Guayaquil for some undetermined length of time. This is clearly Delta’s problem and responsibility, although nobody from Delta ever shows up. It is now 1pm. Finally, the domestic airline takes pity on us, and promises that they will get us on their next flight out, at 5 pm (hurrah, Icaro Air). At this point, just the thought of having a boarding pass sounds extravagant, so we all jump on it. The excitement is, in fact, palpable.

The plane, once we get there via a shuttle right out onto the tarmac, is painted bright yellow, with all of the emblems of the Barcelona soccer team, for some reason. I have never been on a plane like this before. Once inside, it is truly the jankiest plane that I have ever seen. A Fokker, in fact. Quite old, but an all-Ecuadorian crew. This is perfect, I thought. This guy will be able to land in Quito, no matter what the conditions. And after much bumping around (seatbelts were necessary, actually) through the rain and the fog, and through Sophia grabbing my hand in fear, we landed in Quito. Finally. I have never been so happy to not be able to breathe at 10,000 feet before.

And so, my tired sorry friends and I started the 4 hour drive to Baños, at night, through the fog and cold of the paramo, in a car that belches fumes directly into the car itself. Good times, I tell you. Good times.

Katitawa is in the news

That's right, Katitawa is in the news!

A journalist from the big national paper, El Comercio, went up to the school recently, and spent some time with the kids.

The full story is here.

When I get some time, I will translate it from Spanish into English. (Don't hold your breath on that one, though.)

n.b. The photo associated with the story, as it appears on the online version, has absolutely nothing to do with the school. In fact, nobody knows where the image of the rich, overly made-up woman blending a wheat grass smoothie, came from.


At left is the image that was supposed to appear with the story.

Like my mother might say, cool beans!

Also, as many of you know, sending materials through the mail costs us a lot of money, because of customs fees. Any package that weighs over 2 kilos (4.4 lbs) is subject to taxation by the dreaded aduana. This tax seems to be calculated loosely by package weight, but also varies greatly depending on who the customs official is and how s/he is feeling on that particular day. (It additionally doesn't matter if you send separate packages, all weighing fewer than 2 kilos, because they then use the "additive weight" excuse, and charge you anyway.) No, it doesn't seem to matter that the school is run as a not-for-profit. Nor that it is a school, for that matter. In fact, one of the only ways for us to receive materials is to have somebody physically carry them down to Ecuador on a plane. I am trying to figure something out with airline cargo services, so that we can perhaps evade the aduana completely, but, until then...

If you are wondering how you can help, please head on over to the Katitawa website and use the Paypal button to donate! (If you don't already have a Paypal account, you can get one right-quick at the Paypal main page .)

Happy New Year to all!

Mama Tungurahua has some "issues"

Among those issues are: magma, molten projectile rocks, ash plumes, tremors (er, upwards of 200/day), and of course, the near-ever-present lahars, just to name a few. She is one angry mother.

The vulcanologists seem to think that this activity is a precursor to the "event". The cone, which stands at an imposing height of 15,087 feet, is literally full of molten material.

For the time being, Baños is at a yellow alert, as it has been since last year (please knock on wood now). The gov't has issued masks to the Baneños, to deal with the ashfall, but life goes on in a (more or less) normal fashion. However, the other side of the mountain's skirt is on orange alert, and people have been mostly evacuated. They are able to go home during the day, to work their crops and feed their animals, but are sleeping in various refuges that were built during the eruptions last year. Obviously, red alert is what we want to avoid here (or, rather, the conditions that provoke a red alert are what we want to avoid here). Salasaka, on the other hand, is out of the High Risk Zone completely. Although, it is adversely effected by the ash. And the earthquakes.

Anyhow, I am not there yet, although my return is imminent (very, in fact). Woohoo!

And, all of that said, at this point I will gladly trade a little ashy air for negative 9 degrees.

Yes, Michigan!

Yes, I am still in the United States. No, I don´t happen to have a great excuse for this, other than the fact that I don´t know when I will be back next. And, of course, there is also the fact that right now, it just feels like where I need to be.

Autumn in Michigan should also be enjoyed at all costs, and I've been endeavoring to do so. This, as it turns out, is much easier to do when you don't have the specter of an Upper Peninsula winter bearing down on you (that is, when you know you won't have to be here through it).
And, of course, one has to enjoy the good, old-fashioned Michiganders who live deep in the woods and post lots of informative signs at their property lines. Reading the signs aloud aids a great deal in comprehending them.

That said, it is sometimes creepy to come across these things in the woods. You quietly take your photos, and move along quickly.

A few more photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martonia27/

The dog is dead

And, now that she is dead, I can actually admit what everybody has known all along: namely, that she was in fact my dog, not "my landlord's", as I kept calling her (as if that would make it so).

So, the city puts out poison occasionally, to "control" the stray dog and cat populations when they start causing problems. (Spaying and neutering is too costly for most families to do.)

And apparently, there have been a lot of problems in the neighborhood lately because of all the strays. I imagine that the street-food vendors were being overrun. I imagine that there were probably a bunch of females in heat, too (or, in "jealousy", as that term translates back from Spanish), and that the nights were loud and full of barking and howling dogs as the males fought over the females, and as the females fought off the males. I imagine that, as usual, the city didn't let anybody know that they were putting out the poison, and so quietly placed hunks of meat stuffed with d-CON around town under the cover of night, then waited for the hungry dogs to excitedly devour the food, and then came back 12 hours later in a truck to pick up all the corpses with shovels.

I imagine that Lila-Gitana-Duquesa-LittleDog probably thought that she had hit paydirt when she found whatever tasty morsel that she did. Not that she didn't get enough food at home, but since she had been literally starving when I found her, she had some pretty hard-to-break scavenging habits. I imagine she probably pounced on the poisoned meat and made a little gremlin sound or two, as if to say "I gotcha!".

Nobody knows how she got a hold of it, either. She had been down at the farm in the jungle with the landlady for the 3 days prior, and basically did nothing but sleep once they got back to town (heckling cows and chasing monkeys and keeping up with the farm dogs can be hard work, you know). Somehow, though, she must've gotten out, and by the time one of the tenants found her on the patio, it was waaaay too late to save her. Basically, once any symptoms of being poisoned show up, there's nothing you can do.

Oh, and it gets better. ALL the dogs in the neighborhood were killed. The neighbor across the street's mama dog and her 5 puppies? Dead. The other neighbor around the corner's wolfhound? Also dead. Still another neighbor's bull terrier and one of her (furry adorable collie-mix) puppies? Ditto.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that the town doesn't have the money or infrastructure in place to run a shelter, and that they view the poisoning as the "least bad" way to deal with the stray issue. (Let's face it, otherwise, we'd all be getting attacked by packs of wild dogs every time we left the house.) BUT, COME ON! It does not seem to be too much to ask, that they maybe, possibly, might want to think about letting people know beforehand, so that they can make sure to keep a really close eye on their pets. It's not like the word will spread to the strays, who will in turn not eat the meat. They could just make a simple announcement on the radio in the morning, when almost every household has the local news tuned in. Or, put up fliers beforehand. Copies cost almost nothing (and jeez, I would even pay for it, if needs be). It would just be really frikking EASY, in other words, to make sure that a bunch of people's pets don't die.

Anyhow, it seems that I have my work cut out for me when I get back there (yes, I am still in the U.P.), and that it will include a visit to the commissioner's office.

I am pissed. But mostly just sad.

Random Tuesday blogging with photos to make it actually seem like something

Not much to report on the Ecuadorian front.

(Beware: some dog material follows)

Lila-Gitana-Duquesa-Little Dog (as her list of names grows) is doing well. While she´s not trying to hug/scratch your arm or nearest appendage, she´s either tearing up the belongings of the neighbors, trying to electrocute herself by chewing on electric cords, or sleeping like a little angel. She is getting really big.

Lila out on the town with me:


Lila endearing herself to her new best friend and co-conspirator, Helen:


















Otherwise, there are elections coming up for the Constitutional Assembly. Lots of rhetoric, and almost equal amounts of amazing grafitti and murals. This was in the capital:















I have made a few trips lately up to my friend Carol´s organic (WWoOF) farm. She has a plethora of amazing ideas that will hopefully come in handy at the school. It is sure beautiful up there, even if it is in the "high risk zone".



Making fence posts at the school; this was pre-laceration from saw:


And finally, another trip to church, with the requisite "art shot":




That´s all for now, folks!