Rhiannon Commune-ity - 9/4/09

My first few days at the Rhiannon Community have been lovely. When you´re driving through the country roads and towering mountains, all you can smell is the eucalyptus trees. Never mind the fact that they are completely sucking the life out of the soil, they smell damn good. The house is pretty huge and so beautiful, including a yoga studio, wood floors, and killer views. They´ve only been here a year, but they´ve managed to get some changes done with a giant chicken tractor/vegetable garden, a greenhouse, composting toilet and shower house, greywater system, and a laguna for some inexplicable reason... literally nobody gives me an answer as to why it is there. There´s also a tipi, a sweatlodge, and a yurt that are pretty cool. We do four hours of work a day and our afternoons our free. We also have extra chores outside of work and mine are putting out the goats and donkeys in the morning and evening which is quite strenuous compared to taking one bag of trash to a trashcan 30 paces away, but the animals are pretty awesome, and bags of trash are not. So I guess it´s a pretty good job. We have no electricity and alll vegetarian meals. It´s at about the same elevation as Quito, right near the equator, usually sunny, and obscenely windy. So far I really enjoy the work. The people who own the place, Helen and Nicky, don´t really know any better what they are doing so you basically get to do whatever you think might work for situations like worm composting and wind fencing, which clearly I am no expert on but it´s awesome to have a place to experiment. I also love the word burning stove that we use every night and bake cakes in, delish!

Adios Rio Muchacho - 9/1/09

Finished up our last week at Rio Muchacho, it was really sad to leave everyone, we´d become a pretty tight knit group. But I´m excited to move onto new things. One of the days we took a hike through a nearby village. The hike itself was really pretty, passing through river beds and farms, however, the first part of the trip we were walking through a bunch of brush and got absolutely covered in tiny tiny ticks. You would look down at your pants and there would literally be thousands of them. When you tried to brush them off you could only get some of them; the ohters would be all over you hands,socks, legs, shoes, stomach, face... god it was disgusting. And they don´t brush off all that easily so you really have to scrape them off your skin. It was so gross and resulted in a lot of us looking like we had the chicken pox. Another cool thing we did was learn all about bees and harvesting honey. An apiculturalist (I think that´s what their called) came to the farm and then we all put on these big white bee suits and went to the bee boxes to pull out the boards that had huge collections of honey comb. There were thousands of bees everywhere and the buzzing was unnervingly loud. It´s a little (a lot) scary at first because its really difficult to believe that the suit you´re wearing could actually fully protect you. Also, the bees are africanized so they´re really aggressive and Nicola told us that when she got stung it was the most painful thing ever. Not so encouraging. But no one got stung, and we all ate delicious honey. We got a really strange volunteer our last week. She was supposed to stay at least 3 weeks but then deicded that she was only going to stay for 3 days so that she could go be with her boyfriend who lives in the States. She thought it would be a great idea to just go to Quito from Canoa right away, go straight to the airport, and hop on an earlier flight. It never occurred to her that she might not be able to just hop on a flight right away because she´s always seen at least one empty seat on all the planes she´s been on... dumbass. She was also shameless in just asking for peoples stuff like someone´s full pack of cigarettes, or their last bite of food, or, and this is the weirdest, if I had any extra underwear to give her... No I don´t have any extra underwear and why in gods name would she want it!? Freak. I also had to tell her not to smoke in our room and then explain to her why it might not be the best idea to smoke in a house made of dry bamboo and thatch. Then there was her painfully annoying habit of constantly asking questions and especially when she would sit in on our class and ask for an explanation for everything - things we had already covered, things that had no relevance, things that were painfully obvious - which was so irritating to the rest of us that had paid for and attended the entire class. Unanimously decided, she sucked. After we all left, Steve, Tania, Jo and I went to Mompiche. Mompiche is paradise; it´s a small and minimally touristy beach in the north that has lush, jungley vegetation up until a white sand beach that stretches for miles. We got there at 7 pm which is when they turn all the power out for an hour each evening,which was really disorienting. Immediately we found a hostal which ended up being a filthy dump. They led us through a kitchen that smelled like everything was rotting, up a creepy staircase, to a hallway where a fat old man in tiny underpants was leering at us from the doorway. The room looked like a crack house - no windows and a bathroom that had no door and was not really separated from the rest of the room. I hated it so much. I slept on a towel all night too, ugh. We spent one night there then Jo and I moved to a super chill, clean, nearly empty hostal in which the sleeping area and the toilet were two distinct areas. Major upgrade. On the last night Jo and I wandered into a surfers bar and had so much fun, the guys there were hilarious. We also ditched these two obnoxious guys who were trying to guilt trip us into hanging out with them by telling us that we would be liars if we didn´t have one drink with them because we told them that we might earlier. I yelled at him and told him that we would not be having a drink with them. I guess I´m a liar now. Funny enough, the guy I yelled at ended up being on my bus to Quito and we shared a ride in the cab from the terminal to the city... in silence... guess he´s still unhappy about that drink. Now I´m onto the super hippy farm in Malchingui called the Rhiannon community (you can google it) where there is no electricity and no internet for miles, so i´ll be a bit out of touch, but hopefully it´ll be great!

Pig poop - 8/22/09

Rio Muchacho is still incredible. It´s unbeliebable that this will be my last week; time seems to be blowing by faster and faster as my trip progresses. The course is still so fascinating to me. We´ve been talking a lot about compost and permaculture. For my morning jobs I first worked with the horses and cows and then with the pigs. I was a little nerbous about the horses; they get a little worked up when they´re hungry and I would imagine that getting kicked by one would really hurt. HOwever, there´s a donkey in with the horeses and cows that I think is awesome. First, the noises donkeys make is the funniest thing I´ve ever heard come out of an animal. This donkey is also super friendly; it will come up to you and nudge your arm so you´ll pet it. I´m a big fan and he kind of reminds me of Mackenzie. So that weeks job wasn´t so awful. Then, this past week I had the pigs. The pigs are serious pooping machines. I was pretty comfortable with animal poo and even human poo after working in the composting toilets during the first two weeks, but the pigs are completely different. There are 7 small pens, some with two smaller pigs, one with a huge mom pig and her adorable babies, and four massive pigs, thne there are two more giant pigs that hang out in the horse/cow/donkey section that are gross and I don´t like, and then there is the absolutely evil Isidoro. Isidoro is a male pig that is the size of a cow who hasn´t been castrated and is so agressive that he pushed one of hte volunteers to the ground when she was trying to get into his pen to feed him. I hate him, I refuse to go in there and feed him, he can starve or turn into breakfast sausages as far as I´m considered. So the first part of hte job is mixing about a liter of molasses (sp?) with a bucket of water and dish that out before someone starts shovelling; this keeps them at least a bit occupied. THen yo uhave to shovel four of the pens of the poo and put sawdust down. The other three pens you shovel into a different bucket to use the poo for the biodigester which turns poop into usable gas energy. While that´s going on someone mixes up and dishes out the pig food. The pigs sole thought is on being fed so they are unleashing blood curdling screams while waiting for the food. Sometimes they try to nibble on your boots or the shovel or knock over the poo bucket. Sometimes they just have temper tantrumbs, stomping around, squealing like toddlers, which is actually the funniest thing I´ve seen an animal do. The sawdust poo goes to the compost. With the biodigester you have what I consider to be the most disgusting job on the farm. You mix the poo with water and have to pull out the sticks and straw you find in it and then CAREFULLY pour it into the tube that feeds it into the biodigester. If the biodigester is clogged, as it was a couple of day ago, you have to feed a hose through the poopy tube, pull out the now shit covered hose, then turn the tube (about 7 feet long) so it´s standing up right and hit it on the ground until about three liters of smelly pig shit comes flowing out and you are trying not to thing about the droplets falling on your head from the other end of the tube hovering right about you. This was so damn gross. On the last day I got to partake in that as well as poo collecting to make a certain kind of compost called bocashi. We went down the road a bit to an area that was filled with cows and horses. The ground was 100% dried up poop. I had to use this tool which is like a pole with a board perpendicular to it and you drag it on the ground to make mounds so its easier to shovel into bags. One of the workers, Jinsin, was pulling the pole while I was on the ground pushing the board and getting poo dust all over and in my mouht/eyes/nose. I was absolutely exhausted after doing this for like thirty minutes, sweating, and Jinsin was really encouraging by telling me "Tu cara es pura mierda", your face is pure shit, when I stood up. There was a little boy there playing around who was hilarious and "helping" us. He had completely peed his pants and as he was running down a hill, yelling at all of us to watch him jump, he tripped and fell face first into a pile of shit. I was crying I laughed so hard.

Its All About the Poop - 8/10/09

My first week at Rio Muchacho has been incredible. The actual farm itself is so beautiful. There´s lots of thatched roofs, bamboo constructions, incredible gardens with so many flowers and food, a meditation garden, and even the animal section isn´t too bad. On the farm they row a million kinds of fruits and veggies, basically whatever the climate will allow. They have cows, donkeys, chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, guinea pigs, and lots of cats and dogs running around. Our days begin at 6 AM with either preparing breakfast, watering the gardens, or taking care of the animals. My monring chore for the first week was taking care of the cuyes (guinea pigs). On the coast they don´t eat them so on the farm there just a source of organic material (aka poo). The cuye cages are situated on top of the worm composting beds, the cuyes eat lots of grass and other grains, then poop it all out into the worm beds, which the worms then eat and poop out to create nutrient rich humus which is then used to fertilize the plants. So what I actually do is dump the poo from the litle cuye hiding places in the cage into the worm beds and give them food and grass. Then I water the worm beds and the compost. Breakfast is around 730 which is always fruit, muesli, bread and tea. This is probably my favorite meal. Then at 830 am we start the real work. This can be a whole variety of jobs such as weeding, planting, harvesting crops, or, today I shoveled out the contents of one of the composting toilets for about 2 1/2 hours. At 12 we have lunch which is usualy suop with yucca or beans or carrots or peantus or a million different things from the garden. After we have a heap of white rice which is always excessive and then some sort of hot dish, salad, and sometimes more bread and juice. We start working again at 130 where we work on a whole variety of projects from preparing bamboo with machetes for construction to clearing out a plot of land to start a new garden or making chocolate from the coca plant to make a delicious chocolatey spread. We finish at 4, I usually shower unless the electricity is out and we have no water, and then we have dinner between 6 and 7 which is usually similar to lunch without soup. On Wednesday afternoons we have a cultural activity instead of work. So last Wednesday we went to go see an enormous palm that has been taken over by a parasite and has grown these crazy roots and vines so you can no longer see the actual palm. Later we made rings out of seeds. The other part of my time here is psent in my permaculture and organic farming course. I love this course! THus far we´ve learned the theory and pricniples of organic farming and a little about composting. We have class instead of after breakfast work, 3 times a week. We also watch movies the nights we have classes and some of them have been so interesting. THe firs one we saw was called"Peak Oil" and it was about how Cuba had to basicallly change everything to become completely self suficient and more sustainable after the USSR fell. THey changed everything to organic farming, solar power, huge public transport, bikes, an urban farming. It´s really impressive and of course appeals to my mild obsession for Cuba. THe second movie was called "The Future of Food" which was mildly frightening about GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Basically, Monsanto created these GMO sees and patened the gene in the seed, the seed is only showing its good attributes for one season and then they have to rebuy the seed. They started asking o test farmers crops and found that certain crobs were exhibiting the genes of their seed, sue them, an won with the judges saying that the farmers were responsible for making sure these seeds did not get into their fields, even if these seeds were blown in by the wind or pooped in by a bird. It alo talked about the agro and food industry. So frightening and interesting. Al the volunteers are great and I´ve been able to practice my spanish a lot.

Whales and Boobies - 8/2/09

How in the hell do these months keep flying by? Since leaving Salasaka I´ve been indulging in some touristy fun. I started my trip off by heading to Puerto Lopez. It was by far the worst bus ride yet. I took a night bus hoping to sleep through and literally did not get a minute of rest. It was so bumpy I was constantly being bumped off my seat and the night before I only got 4 hours of sleep. It was a rough one! FInally I made it to Puerto Lopez and got into my hostal. I fell asleep for a couple hours. When I woke up I kept having seriously painful stomach pains. These lasted a few hours and then I decided to pay a visit to the oh-so-convenient hostal doctor. Apparently I have amoebas and something else. Excellent. I got loaded up with some meds and crawled back into bed. First day in PL, kind of sucked. The next day I was feeling a lot better and went to the Los Frailes beach in the national park nearby. It has a beautiful white sand beach with turqouise blue water, and I spent the whole day relaxing there. The next day I fially went to go see the whales! During July and August you get to see the whales migrating from Antarctica to Puerto Lopez; they go there to mate ad have their babies in the warmer waters. TO get to where the whales hang out you have to take a really rough boat ride out into the ocean for about an hour and a half. I´ve never concentrated so hard on not vomitting. However, it was well worth it. They were jumping out of the water and crashing back down a couple of times. It was incredible! They are so huge, it´s super overwhelming. After seeing the hwales for wahile we headed to Isla de la Plata. This island is home to many birds but most importantly, the blue footed booby. So many people had said that this part of the tour wasn´t worht it, but I thought it was incredible. I mean, unless you have blue footed boobies running around your backyard, I don´t know how you couldn´t have been impressed. We hiked around the island for a few hours and then headed back tothe boat for lunch and snorkeling. Honestly the snorkeling wasn´t that great but there were a few really pretty fish; the coral was totally dead though. Then we made a long and nauseating voyage back to the port. The next day I headed out to Bahia de Caraquez to get everything settled for my next volunteering stint at the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm. It turne out that none of the volunteers were really goig to start until Monday so I decided I would follow suit and just hang out until then. Luckily there were two sisters from the US staying at my hostal who were great, Keera and Ana. They were there to volunteer at an organization called Planet drum. I was thinking about volunteering there for a bit but after seeing where the volunteers live I am pretty sure that I will not be volunteering there. It´s defining characteristics include a serious bug infestation with no flushing toilets or running water for that matter. Anyways, I spent the weekend with the girls going to the beach, taing the tour of some mangroves, and eating a lot of foods. They were so fun and really made the weekend. And now I´m just relaxing before I start my new volunteer gig.

Last Bit of Salasaka Living - 7/26/09

No surprises, I stayed in Salasaka. I just couldn´t leave! I also got rid of my cold, so I think it was for the best. The last week of teaching was actually the most annoying week ever. 2 twelve year old boys joined my 2 tweleve year old girls and I´ve ever seen such annoying results. Bad 12 year old hormones, bad! THey would hit eachother, say bad words in Quichua and then the others would tattle, they refused to pay attention, or I guess they were just too distracted. Clearly I never produced such a ridiculous scene at that age. So it was a frustrating last week but we got through it. The time outside of class though became more and more fun. We all got into the habit of cooking ridiculously delicious treats, from soufles to salsas. I have made my mark on Pacha Mama cuisine with the peanut butter cookie. I also made some kick ass zucchini bread muffins. Saturday we went to a reggae/metal concert and save the Amazon festival all day. We ran into a girl that I volunteered with at Arutam as well, which was fun. THere was one reggae group called Rasta Alma that was so fun. Later that night a group of us went to Baños for dinner and then a last all night party at the Leperchaun bar. We ended up leaving at 5 am and made like an hour trip back to Salasaka which resulted in a really rough morning. Now I´m packing up all my things to leave Salasaka, for real, and making my way to Puerto Lopez to see the whales!

Back to home base - 7/21/09

I´m getting pretty bad at writing regularly which, at the moment, is a sing that I have been pleasantly busy. The Friday since I last worote, we went to a club in Ibarra called Mojito where they were playing a wildly eclectic mashup of classic rock, spanish tunes, techno, and, of course, copius amounts of Michael Jackson. Definitely a good time. The next day we brought obscene amoutns of food ( everything from red velvet cake to chilli cheese covered hot dogs and hamburgers) and spent the day celebrating the homelands´independence. We fnished up the night with an array of really crappy fireworks. The highlight was when on of the fireworks turned on us and shot this little rocked directly at our heads; it was the most exciting one by far. The next day I embarked on a long journey towards Cuenca. I spent one night in a hostal called Casa Blanca in Baños which I do not think I would recommend to anyone who is not enthusiastic about other peoples´pubic hair in your bed and on various areas of the bathroom. I got out of there the next morning and finished up my journey to Cuenca. I stayed at a weird hostal, but it was lacking the hairy decor and so I couldn´t complain too much. The hostal, called El Cafecito, was more of a bar with rooms right off the sides which allowed for some loud tunes and even louder talking to fill the room until the wee hours every night. But I did meet some fun people, such as a crazy Chilean man who spoke a mile a minute, and, incidentally, I met a man named Phil who came to volunteer in Salasaka after. Cuenca is pretty and quite tranquilo; it looks like a city in Spain and has a lovely river, but other than that there wasn´t a whole lot to do. For the weekend I headed to Vilcabamba, the Valley of Longevity. It was so gorgeous, with rolling hills, jungle, forest, and everything in between. You can do hikes or just relax. I met a ton of the rahter sizable expat population and they took me around to their friends houses and their favorite spots. The people I met there seemd to want nothing but to make everyone feel welcome, comfortable, and happy. It was a very lovely weekend. Although, one night I went to bed, feeling fine, read a bit, and all of a sudden I was thought, oh god I am going to throw up, and had to run to the bathroom to up chuck my previously delicious meal. But other than that, I really loved Vilcabamba; so much so that I might only stay at Rio Muchacho for two months and then go back to Vilcabamba for a month to volunteer at an ecolodge there. After Vilcabamba I made my way back to Salasaka, my home away from home. On the way I had to stay at a scary ass hostal near the bus station in Loja that was tended to by a drunk, verbally abusive, psycho (verbally abusive to his girlfriend not to me). The next night I finally made it into Salasaka. I was so ready to pull up to the front door of Pacha Mama (the hostal), however, there was obscene amounts of construction blocking my way. I told the cab driver to just let me out somewhere and I¨d trek the rest of the way. Easier said than done! Every path I knew to take, there was a tne food ditch in my way and it was pitch black out. Finally I decided I was just going to blaze my own freakin trail. So I busted out the headlamp and started walking in the general direction of Pacha Mama. It was going okay until a pack of angry, inbred, weiner dog, mutts came growling and barking at me. Weiner dog mutts may not seem so scary, however, all I could think of wasif I had to get those massive rabies shots in my stomach, it´s really going to suck. Luckily the owner of the rabid mob came out to save me. I frantically explained to her my plight and she escourted me back to Pacha Mama. This is why I love Salasaka! I was definitely shocked by the amount of people there; some old faces, some new, and a couple who had also skipped out on Arutam early and made their way here. The next day I felt a tad out of my element because we were now running semi private lessons instead of holding regular class, but I have found that I actually prefer it. THe kids actually want to learn and there´s way less of them, so it´s easier to teach and more personaly attention for the kids. Personally, I think I´m an awful English teacher; I don´t understand the rules in English and explaining them in Spanish is just that much more complex. However, I found a copy of Frog and Toad are Friends in the library and I¨m pretty excited to make the kids read it. I also teach math whic I pretty much love. Takes me back to when I was ontop of my arithmatic game in middle and high school (Shout out to Russ Pline!). Any who, the week went relatively smoothly and I became fast firnes with everyone here; it´s very much so a brady bunch family. Friday night we did a bit of indulging which included meat (MEAT!) and potatoes, I made riquisimas chocolate chip cookies, a banana and blackberry sauce cake, a freshly squeezed juice bar with rum, and to top it off, we roasted bananas in tin foil in the fireplace (camp style), and had a contest of who could create the best filling the the naners. My personal favorite was Gretta´s campo fresco cheese and cinamon. A lovely evening indeed. The next day was the confirmation of twenty kids in Salasaka. Gretta, Bill and Justine were all padrinos, godparents. That morning I did my first ever souveneir shopping (it was great) and then went to the church to watch confirmation. Later that night, we were invited to help celebrate at the house of Bill and Justine´s newest godson. Well, first we had to find the house, and in the campo, it´s just not that easy. THey told us to listen for the loud music which is like telling someone in the US suburbs to look for the SUV. So we headed in the right direction and, low and behold, there was a house with enormous speakers, blaring music. So we went up to ask if this was the right house, and of course it wasn´t, so we said sorry for barging in and turned to go find the party we had originally set out for. Then, the little girl who had been confirmed, and it was her quinceniera (15th bday), asked me ¿Pues, porque no estan entrando? Why aren´t you guys coming in? And, as with any food, beverage, or party invite, we could not decline. So we thanked her profusely and entered the party. THere was an enormous chicken, veggies, cuye, a homemade three tiered cake, fruit, cookies, and candy. And as soon as we sat down we were handed a giant bowl of chicken soup and some of the strongest chicha I¨ve ever had. Everyone treated us like royalty, but it was still a bit awkward, being that we accidentally crashed the party. We stayed for awhile; some of the girl´s relatives made extremely heartfelt speaches and everyone of them welcomed us and thanked us for joining their party in the celebration. I mean personally, I didn´t feel to burdened crashing a party and getting free food, but your welcome random Salasakan family! These people give a new definition to hospitable. More chicha was followed by dancing with the family. After a while we excused ourselves to go find the party we hadinitially set out for. Eventually, we got to the right party. Again, we were greeted with copius amounts of food and drink and followed it up with some wild Salasakan dancing (not wild at all, we were two-stepping). After that we decided to head back to the first party we were at. THere were even more people now, all of whom were plastered. The dancing continued and more speeches were made. One of the volunteers had a bit too much to drink and started vomitting in the corner of the room while an incredibly drunk relative made a speech. I looked over in utter disbelief, ¨was she really just puking in someones living room during a toast?¨ Not many people noticed, thank god, and the drunk ass relative making the speech fell over. A distraction! With all the attention on him a couple of guys escourted the volunteer out of the house and back to the hostal. But disaster striked again when another volunteer attempted to remove the box that contained the contents of the volunteers sotmach; the bottom fell out. Luckily I did not have to witness that part, but I felt the shame nonethless. Apparently no one was too offended by the display; we continued to be served drinks, asked to dance, and Phil was asked to be a godfather. At the end of the night we all managed to stumble out way back home. The next morning was a rough one for everybody. I was supposed to leave Sunday night to go to the coast but I changed my plans, a couple times actually. Now I´m supposed to leave tomorrow to go to the coast but I have a bad cold and it just doesn´t seem like a good idea to hit up a beach party while I´m sick then go onto my next volunteer site. It´s also really very sad for me to leave here, and it´s really easy to stay. So we´ll see how I feel tomorrow I suppose.