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.