Volunteers from Abroad

When I joined the Peace Corps I mentally prepared myself for a very solitary experience, one where I was going to be working alone in a foreign land with the only resources provided to me were by the Peace Corps and my surrounding community. But in my time here I am happy to say that that has not been the case as I have received support from all kinds of people who are still living in the US but want to help me in my cause any way they can.
That is where Jay and Melanie of New Mexico come in. About 8 months ago the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that I work for, the Colinas Verdes Foundation, was going through a small lull in-between projects. In that time I was looking for stuff to do so I went to our website, http://www.colinasverdes.org/, and decided that it needed a drastic overhaul. After choosing to take on this project I was going through a list of friends in my head who might be able to help me with the web design and amazingly enough I received a message that same day on my blog from a couple by the name of Jay & Melanie who own a web design company (check them out at http://www.websitesanddesign.com/) and were very interested in helping to redo the Colinas Verdes website. Well the first thing I did was jump for joy at the fact that someone other than my Mom & Dad was actually reading my blog and then I celebrated the fact that these people were so eager to help.
First off I guess I should give you a little bit of back round information about the Colinas Verdes Foundation. They were formed in the mid-1990’s as an organization to help with the conservation of southern Ecuador’s natural resources (with a focus on Podocarpus National Park) as well as to help with the development of the local farmers and their practices to provide a better standard of living for them and their families. That being said, Colinas Verdes solicits money from all over the world to fund projects in areas such as irrigation, coffee, a starch made from the Achira plant and marmalade production to name a few. With some NGO’s I have had heard horror stories about how they just take the money and do minimal work on the proposed project and just keep the rest of the money but I am happy to say that that is not the case with the Colinas Verdes Foundation; they are truly a remarkable group that is very organized and dedicated to helping the people of southern Ecuador.
Now, given the fact that the first action possible donors will take in approving the foundation for a project funding is to go to their website, I thought it essential to update http://www.colinasverdes.org/ to a tool they could use to portray their professionalism and successful past projects. Therefore, over the past 8 months I have worked essentially as a liaison between the Colinas Verdes team and Jay & Melanie to create a website (in both English and Spanish) containing the mission, vision, past projects, galleries of images and enabling outsiders to contact us from all over the world.
As well as building a website to benefit Colinas Verdes, we have also created “buttons” on the home page of http://www.colinasverdes.org/ that will direct people to some of the other smaller organizations of the San Pedro de Vilcabamba community. The beauty of these “buttons” is that these small organizations now have a web presence that will enable them to direct people to should they pose the interest. (We have actually had one person contact us who is interested in importing honey to the US!)
From a personal standpoint I am deeply indebted to Jay and Melanie for all their help. Previous to this project I felt as though even though I was a member of the Colinas Verdes team I was not really providing too much value to the organization. I was more or less just another set of hands that could work a shovel or fill a plastic bag with dirt. But since the website project I have felt that the team has grasped what I can do to help benefit the foundation and the resources I have available to me.
As well as receiving help from Jay & Melanie at http://www.websitesanddesign.com/, I would also like to thank my Mom the English teacher for all her help going through the English portion of the website. In sending her the pages to proofread I was amazed at how bad my English had gotten and I know myself as well as the Colinas Verdes team are very grateful for her help.
So if you are bored at your computer and looking for things to check out online (and I know you are if you are reading my blog) please check out http://www.colinasverdes.org/ and you will get an idea of everything this great organization stands for. I am especially proud of the Contact Us page, check it out!

SSssccarrryy Gringos

“to promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.”
Above is the second goal of the Peace Corps and I believe that the following story is relevant.

A couple of weeks ago I was working with my organization, the Colinas Verdes Foundation, in a little town named Chalaca, about an hour south of San Pedro de Vilcabamba. In this small “pueblo” we were putting in one of our “Support Centers” which is part of our initiative to furnish groups of coffee growers with the facilities to wash and dry their coffee as well as to grow new coffee plants. While we were there I noticed how all of the kids were keeping their distance from me. Usually the kids are very curious about the gringo and always come up to me to talk but this instance wasn’t the case. After trying to talk with them a couple of times and the kids running away from me I asked the people we were working with why the kids were so scared of me. That is when they explained to me that someone, most likely their parents, told the kids that if they aren’t good little boys and girls the gringos will come and either cut out their eyes or chop off their arms/legs to sell in the United States or Europe. After we all laughed about the absurdity of this idea I made it my mission to befriend these kids. So for the rest of the day I sat with the kids and we just chatted it up about school, what kinds of games they like to play and any other topic that may be pertinent to a 7 yr old. By the end of the day I had three little boys following me around asking me all kinds of questions and trying to help me with whatever task I was doing at the time. So I think they got over their fear that I was going to rob them of certain body parts.
This past week I went back to the town of Chalaca to show the people there how to compost and make organic fertilizers/pesticides. My new friends finally came around after about an hour and were hilarious in their attempts to help me. Making compost constitutes mixing all kinds of organic material that needs to be finely chopped up with machetes and then put into levels in the designated area. My little new little helpers were basically fighting over who gets to carry the bag of cow manure over to the compost area, something that was cracking all of the grown ups up. One of the little boys even made his shirt into a makeshift basket and filled it with about 30 oranges to give to me.
Well after a couple of hours both the compost piles and organic pesticides were complete and it was time for me to go home. But before I left, I decided to give these sweet, poor little boys a couple of gifts. The first was some coloring books with magic markers that my Mom had sent me from the US. As I pulled them out of my bag their faces immediately lit up and I literally felt like Santa Claus on Christmas morning and I realized how rare it was for these great, sweet, well-mannered little boys to receive a gift, especially something new. My next gift was an old Nerf football that my girlfriend, Katie, had brought from the US and had given to me just before she left. At first these little boys had no idea what it was and thought I was giving them some new type of sponge to wash dishes with, but after a little explanation of “Futbol Americano” and showing them how to throw it they were soon chucking it around the yard and chasing each other in circles.
As I mentioned above the second goal of the Peace Corps is “to promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served.” The idea of this is to give the people in the countries we are serving a feel of who Americans are, why we are here and ultimately for us to give them an idea of the culture in which we live. This isn’t done through a class or workshops, it is accomplished by the volunteers living in the communities and interacting with the people on a daily basis. This situation with the children of Chalaca was definitely an extreme example of this but it really made an impression on me how truly uninformed these people really are, especially in the poorer communities, about the world outside of Southern Ecuador.
After this experience in Chalaca I sent the Peace Corps office in Washington DC an email suggesting that they change their second goal to read; “to promote a better understanding that the American people will not cut the arms or legs off of the peoples served…” Just kidding.

Sweet, Sweet Compost Project

One thing I have found that we as Peace Corps Volunteers can offer in our respective communities is our access to information. This information can come in many forms, whether it is teaching people how to use computers and the internet, showing farmers a new technique that is used in a different part of the country or by introducing a small business to a distributor based out of Quito to sell their products. For you see many of the people in my site (and other sites I would assume) basically just live in their own little world surrounded by the same people and setting for their entire life, rarely venturing out of their tiny little bubble or if they do it is only for a small, short vacation. Therefore I have found that I can use this access to information and contacts through the Peace Corps, whether it is another volunteer or an Ecuadorian contact, to help my community with their progressive development.
One such case of this utilization of contacts is a recent compost project I have been undertaking the past six months or so. It all started out when my NGO, The Colinas Verdes Foundation, was preparing to give a small workshop on composting and organic fertilizers. In preparation for a composting/organic fertilizer workshop my co-workers mentioned to me that it was hard to convince the local farmers to utilize compost because of the long drawn out process that can last as long as a year before it is ready. Remembering a training session we had in my first couple of weeks, I contacted a volunteer from up north who had presented to us a special kind of composting bacteria he had access to in his site and after speaking with him he was very excited to help me and immediately sent me about a half pound of these special bacterias that come in powder form.
Together, Colinas Verdes and I, did a test as to whether or not these bacterias actually worked and sure enough they broke down all of the organic matter and in just a little over a month the compost was ready to be applied. So that following week I presented these “magic bacterias” in our composting and organic fertilizer workshop to about 20 of the local farmers from San Pedro de Vilcabamba. In my presentation I showed how easy it was to make and that even though it required a little bit more labor in the first couple of weeks, the compost would be ready in about a month. I also expressed to them that within each pile of this now “living” compost they made, that if they saved a third or fourth of their pile and started another compost pile, that the bacterias would transfer over and start breaking down the new organic material. The farmers seemed to be very impressed with this new type of compost and at the conclusion of my presentation I offered to set up a time with each and every farmer in attendance to come to their farms and make this compost with them and I am happy to say that five of the farmers accepted my invitation and we have since made some huge mounds of this “sweet, sweet compost.” (I was even able to talk my girlfriend Katie into helping with one of the compost piles).
This Friday the Colinas Verdes Foundation will be having another composting workshop in a neighboring town where I will be presenting my “magic composting bacterias” again and hopefully I can persuade a couple of these farmers to begin composting using this new technology.

Potable Water Project in Zhucos, Ecuador

When my girlfriend, Katie, first came to her site in the city of Loja in southern Ecuador she was assigned to work in a small town just outside the city named Zhucos (pronounced shucos). After working there a couple of weeks she decided that Zhucos would be a good place to do some surveys that the Peace Corps requires us to do in our first couple of months in site. These tools are basically just a long list of questions to help us identify areas within our communities where we may be able to help. As Katie went from house to house asking the same questions she found that the people of Zhucos were all expressing the same thing, the need for a source of healthy drinking water.
Fast forward a year, Katie’s family in the US are all part of the Great Bridge Presbyterian Church of Chesapeake, VA who was starting to participate in the “Living Waters” program. “Living Waters” is a non-profit group that supplies the necessary filtration systems to churches who wish to do potable water projects in third world countries and the circumstances couldn’t have been better for the church, Katie and Zhucos. So Katie went to work, first testing their water which turned out to be filled with bacterias and then she began to set up everything for the project which included ordering about 300 plastic bottles, organizing the town to have participants come help and learn, and figuring out where we were going to put the filtration system. It was a long drawn out process but things all came together at the last minute (as they always do here in Ecuador) just as the installation team from Great Bridge arrived.
The installation team was composed of the two Sam’s, Sam Howard (Katie’s Dad) and Sam Chalk whose responsibility it was to set up the system and make sure it ran properly. The other Great Bridge team members were Karen Gibson and Traci Chamberlain Bagley who worked alongside Katie in educating the women and children about the importance of clean drinking water and in how to clean the re-usable bottles. My friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Jason Kreisselman and I were able to help the two Sam’s as helpers and as translators to the locals who also assisted in the installation process.
The system consisted of the water running through three initial filters to catch any sediment in the water then passing through the “ozonator” where ozone was mixed with the water for the ultimate step in the cleansing process. The water then went to this huge storage tank where it was stored until required by the community. We were very lucky to have some great hard working Ecuadorians helping us which enabled the system to be completed, including the construction of an enclosure around the system for security, in only two days.
After the system was installed and all of classes were over we celebrated the completion of the project with a small fiesta complete with bubbles, candy and our new, clean water. The community came down from their houses all over the hillsides just to try their new water and to express their appreciation. The “Living Waters” team of Great Bridge Presbyterian Church should be very proud of the great job they did preparing for and delivering clean drinking water to this small community and from a Peace Corps Volunteer’s standpoint it was very fulfilling to be a part of something so great and I will definitely look upon this project as one of the highlights of my time here in Ecuador.

Tsachilas visit to Vilcabamba

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a friend of mine who lives with an indigenous tribe named the Tsachilas (Pronounced Sachilas) who reside outside of the city of Santo Domingo, Ecuador. My friend, Clay, had come to visit me a couple of months ago and I took him to my women’s group to see the artesenia they made. One their products, baskets hand-made from banana leaves, seemed like they might be a good thing for the Tsachilas to make as well seeing as they have an abundance of bananas where they live.
So Clay and I arranged for what is called a “Tech Trip” through the Peace Corps. A tech trip is basically where the Peace Corps pays for one volunteer and a member of their community to travel to another volunteer’s site to learn a specific skill. In our case, Clay was going to bring the mother from his host family to San Pedro de Vilcabamba in order to learn how to make these baskets and sell them with the jewelry they sell in fairs. Tagging along with Clay and his host mother was his host father who is also a Shaman medicine man. Unfortunately the Peace Corps would only pay for two people’s trips so we decided that Alejandro, Clay’s host father, would do some “cleansings” with the some of the local Peace Corps volunteers in order to pay for his trip. Also the goal of this trip wasn’t just for Clay’s host parents to come and learn how to make the baskets and to do the cleansings, but to experience the people and places of a part of Ecuador which they have never seen before due to the fact that they can rarely afford a trip like this.
So a week ago Clay and his host parents came into San Pedro de Vilcabamba at about 8am following a long 14 hr bus ride. After a brief rest and a change into their native dress, we all went over to my women’s group to get his host Mom started with her class. While she was in training, Clay, myself and his host Dad walked around my town to introduce him to the people in my community. I was fascinated how intrigued they all were to meet him and how they all were very interested in his culture and in being cleansed. We also were able to meet with the people of my organization, Colinas Verdes, to give Alejandro a tour of our nursery and the work we do there. He was very interested in all the coffee we had planted and so as a gift we decided to give him some coffee plants to take back to his farm and plant.
After Rosa, Clay’s host Mom, was finished with her class we all headed back to my house to prepare for the cleansings. That night we had about 15 people show up who all participated in an individual spiritual cleansing which he used different rock statues and some grain alcohol to basically tell us about our past, present and our future. Then he used an egg to cleanse our spirits and rid us of all the evil surrounding us. (The entire process is very hard to explain, you will just have to visit and experience it for yourself!)
After the cleansing it was time for our herbal sauna. This involved boiling a number of different herbal plants in a large pot as well as digging a deep hole for a sauna. What they do is fill the hole with the water and herbal plants, then drop a super hot rock in the hole to create steam. Then they put a stick over the hole for you to place your feet as you sit in a chair with a blanket wrapped around your body and the hole, thus creating a “mini” sauna for your body.
The entire cleansing and sauna experience was very soothing and relaxing (even though it felt like my feet were burning off in the sauna at one point). I literally almost fell asleep while he was doing my cleansing and the sauna felt amazing!
The next day we decided to head to the nearby tourism town of Vilcabamba and hike to the top of Mount Mandango to give them a view of the Valley of Longevity. Both Alejandro and Rosa really enjoyed the view from up there even though they hard time understanding why we would do a hike like that for pleasure. After treating them to a spaghetti lunch, the Tsachilas unfortunately had to head back to their town, but not before buying some souvenirs in the local artesenia shops.
The Tsachilas visit was a great experience for everyone involved and even though it was brief they really enjoyed being somewhat celebrities in my site and seeing a new part of the country. The cultural exchange for both the Tsachilas and the people of my site was really something special and both Clay and I were very happy we organized the tech trip. Their visit also got me super excited to go and visit Clay to experience their culture first hand in his site (and maybe get another cleansing/sauna).

Organic Certification Workshop

About six months ago another volunteer and I were approached by the Peace Corps office to spearhead a workshop to educate both coffee and cacao growers on the process and benefits organic certifications. The Peace Corps approached Brigitte and I because we were both working in communities that were very active in the cultivation of coffee. The other crop this workshop was to focus on was Cacao, which is the bean they use to make chocolate and comes primarily from the hot and humid coastal communities where we have many volunteers located as well.
So Brigitte and I started the long, hectic and often times annoying process of dealing with Ecuadorian hotels/convention halls, restaurants and organic certifiers to arrange the food, lodging and presenters of our workshop. First we had to contact all of these possible places to have them send us a cost breakdown, which can be very frustrating given the level of business we were both accustomed to in the US and how extremely different they do things here. Then we wrote what is called a PL480 grant to apply for funds established by the US Dept of Agriculture specifically for Peace Corps projects. (I am also in the process of writing another grant like this for a greenhouse and nursery project in my site). About 4 months later we finally got the money and were ready to set up the workshop.
Fortunately we found a great place located in Quevedo, Ecuador which is known as a distribution hub for Ecuador’s huge banana production. We had our workshop at the Instituto Nacional Autonomo De Investigaciones Agropecuarias, aka INIAP, which is an area of about 3000 acres set up by the Ecuadorian government as a farming research and training facility. It was a great location for us because we could eat, sleep and conduct the seminars without having to leave their campus.
The training started on May 4th and lasted for three days and was conducted by a group named Conservation and Desarollo who are auditors for the Rainforest Alliance certifications. They gave a great presentation on all the different types of certifications, the process of becoming certified and we even went on a little field trip to a farm to show the growers the auditory process that is conducted in a certification. After their presentation we were also lucky enough to have a Cacao distributor come in from Guayaquil to do a brief presentation on the commercialization and exportation of cacao.
Given the amount of participation of both the Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts I think the workshop was a great success. We had about 30 people attending with 7 of them being volunteers, thus it was a great learning experience for the Ecuadorian coffee and cacao producers and hopefully they are spreading that knowledge back in their communities.
Personally this workshop couldn’t have come at a better time for the coffee growers in Loja and in my community. I was able to bring representatives of 8 different coffee groups from my area, including Carlos Lapo from San Pedro de Vilcabamba (my site). Within these 8 groups, a number of them are starting the process of becoming certified. San Pedro’s coffee organization, named APECAEL, has only been together for about six months so they still have some more internal issues to address before they can pursue their certification, but with their formation they are fulfilling the first goal of becoming certified, coordinating the coffee growers. The goal of this workshop was to give groups like APECAEL an idea of what to expect on down the road when they do decide to pursue some type of organic certification and I am confident we achieved that. (Just to give you an idea, groups can earn about $75 more per sack of coffee if they were certified which is a substantial chunk of change here in Ecuador).
For now Carlos and I are planning on giving a small presentation to the local coffee growers on what we learned in order to pass it on to them. The entire certification process lasts about 3-5 years so unfortunately it won’t happen in my time but I hope that I have at least helped to lay the foundation for them to be certified in the future.

Landslide City

If you talk with five different people in my site you will probably get five different answers as to when the seasons change here. Oh and there are pretty much only two seasons here, summer from May until September and winter from October until April. The winter is in no way classified by a drop in temperature that is for sure; where I live it stays pretty constant at 65-80 degrees all year round. The only difference in the seasons here is the excess of rain that comes right around February and lasts until April. When I arrived to Ecuador the entire country was having many troubles with landslides and floods in various places all over the country. Fortunately my site and Loja weren’t too affected last year. But unfortunately it was all waiting for this year.
The rains started to get stronger about mid-February this year, it wasn’t as though it was raining here all the time but when it did rain, it rained really hard. So for about two months we received some really hard rains about 3-4 times a week. In the beginning things were ok and we didn’t see too many problems. Then one by one I started to notice how in the neighboring mountain there were about 9 landslides, then 13, then 18. After one hard nights rain I heard the roadway was blocked to get back to the city and that travelers had to walk through the mud to meet the bus on the other side. These types of adaptations seemed somewhat minimal to me. Then after a very hard night of rain it seemed like the entire town was going to slide into the river. There were houses who were swept off their foundations, the main road was again closed due to the HUGE landslide that took about 3 days to clear, the road to another smaller town was completely blocked, and lastly one of my good friends’ pig farms was just about wiped out by a landslide. I went to visit him to see if I could lend a hand and his pig pens were full up to the top board with mud. Thank goodness not a single one of his 40 pigs was lost. But he did have two crops wiped out and rented a third bit of land to a poor farmer who lost about 3 months of work in the landslide…very sad. The main highway that runs right alongside my site also had a HUGE cave in, thus causing the road to be unusable and diverting all the daily traffic to Vilcabamba through my quiet, sleepy little town of San Pedro.
Not to mention all the damage done to the peoples houses and farms but our new potable water system, which had tubes running down from high in the mountains down the river banks, was very damaged in the rains. The workers were going up everyday to fix the system where every time they fixed one part, they discovered another area broken. With these damages to the water system we were basically without water for about six weeks, yes that’s right SIX WEEKS! In order to get by the local firefighters would come by and fill all of our plastic water tanks up that would last for about 3 days. I have to say it was mighty annoying but after about the second week of not having water I became accustomed to life without it.
In a conversation with my counterpart a couple of weeks back we were talking about the issues we were facing and it was then that I made a very interesting realization about Ecuadorians and their culture. I asked him, “If you have this problem pretty much every two years or so, then why don’t you do anything to proactively fix it.” Basically his response was “We just don’t.” With that response I came to the conclusion that the Ecuadorians function pretty much only in the here and now. What are they going to earn today(money wise), where are they going to get today’s meals, ….if it rains all night and my house is filled with mud I will just shovel it out and continue on until it happens again and will shovel it out then too. In my brief experience here I have found it hard to find someone that thinks ahead into the future (not to say they don’t exist). Their tradition is solely to address problems or challenges when they are faced with them and not to have any type of forethought about what might happen to them or their families in the future.
Henceforth in hopes of possibly lessening the impact of future landslides I am looking into possibly doing a small project of finding certain types of native plants here that we can plant in critical areas where their roots will strengthen and hold the land from falling. I am hoping to do it with one of the local schools to introduce them to certain strategies to combat these landslides which have pretty much ransacked my small town this year.

Inka Trail and Machu Picchu

Before I came to live in South America, I made a small list of a couple of the sites I wanted to see and at the top of that list was hiking the Inka Trail and seeing Machu Picchu. So in late December my girlfriend, Katie, 2 other Peace Corps friends , my friend from back home Brad, his girlfriend and I all made arrangements to head to Cusco, Peru and hike the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu.
We arrived in Cusco on Monday, April 6th after spending the night sleeping on the couches in the Lima Airport’s Starbucks. Cusco reminded us very much of the city of Loja, tucked into a valley surrounded by low-lying mountains. After resting a little while we headed out to explore the Plaza de Armas of Cusco and visit the local markets with all of their Peruvian handcrafted goods. At these little shops I got to practice one of my favorite pastimes about living in South America, that is price negotiation. It is almost like clockwork how you can ask the vendors a price for something and at first they give you some absurdly high number, aka the Gringo price, but then once you negotiate with them you find you can get much more bang for your buck if you just hold out for a little bit. One of my favorite things to do, which I think is hilarious and I am sure the vendors think is annoying, is to ask the price of an item, then offer them a substantially lower price that the vendor immediately rejects. Then I offer them a price that is even lower with a big beaming smile…usually this gets a little giggle out of the vendors and then we continue to negotiate until we reach a good price for both.
Anyway, moving on, we really enjoyed Cusco, it is a beautiful little city of about 300,000 people filled with churches, town squares and many narrow streets that have a very European feeling to them. The people were extremely friendly no matter where we went and the food was excellent. Even though we were only there for about a day and a half we were still able to sample some of the staple dishes of Peru such as cebiche and alpaca.
The following day, Tuesday, April 7th, we were greeted by our bus at about 6am to start the 2 hour bus ride to Ollatamba. After winding through beautiful valleys of forests and rivers we arrived at this small town and were immediately inundated by scores of women trying to sell their coca leaves, walking sticks, water bottle holders and pretty much anything else they thought the hikers might need or want. I was lured in and bought a winter hat with some gloves, plus the essential coca leaves with their magical “activator,” all of it cost me about 8 bucks total. After that we headed to the trail head where we sat and watched all of our porters divvy up the things they were going to carry. By the way we had 10 porters for 8 people total, makes you feel a little excessive when you think about it. On us, we carried all of our clothing, personal items and sleeping bags while they carried all of the tents, food, safety equipment and pretty much anything else there was. At the trailhead we all got checked in with the Peruvian governments monitoring staff and then headed out for our initial leg of our 4 day journey.
The first day wasn’t too bad, we only hiked for about 4 hours and stopped about 5 times to see the ruins along the way and have lunch. Just to give you an idea how good the food was, I think that day we had some fried trout with a vegetable medley on the side for lunch!(Oh and one day we even had cake for breakfast, every little kids dream!) We continued to walk for about another two hours where all along the way there were indigenous Peruvian families selling Gatorades and waters from the front steps of their homes along the trail. Also there was a resting point for the porters where a woman was serving “chicha” which is an alcoholic drink made from corn. The drink is supposed to be filled with all kinds of vitamins and minerals to give the porters energy so we stopped to have a little taste and it, like the chicha I had in the jungle in Ecuador, tasted just like gasoline. That night we arrived in our camping site at about 5 to find all of our tents all set up and our dinner being prepared by our excellent team of cooks.
The following morning we were all preparing ourselves for what everyone told us would be the hardest day. So after a breakfeast of crepes and coca tea we all slung our backpacks over our shoulders, threw some coca leaves in our mouths and started the long walk “..up,up,up and up….” as our guide, Saul, would say. The trail wasn’t too bad at first but as we progressed we hit the biggest staircase I have ever seen. These stairs were remarkably made of rock hundreds of years ago and basically take you all the way up to the 13,500 foot summit. The incline was definitely hard at times but we all commented on how the coca really helped with our adaptation to the altitude and opened our lungs for the hike. It was so interesting that I did a little experiment after a snack break we had. Upon resuming the hike I decided not to chew on the coca while we climbed and I could not believe the difference. When I had a coca wad in my mouth I was slightly winded the whole time but not gassed and could keep walking at a steady rate. Without the coca I found myself completely out of breath after walking for about 5 minutes feeling really drained of energy. Apparently after talking about it the coca works by re-directing blood flow to your heart and lungs thus enabling you to climb at high altitudes easier. So after my little “experiment” we continued to climb where we hit some rain from time to time which caused us all to frantically cover our bags and put on our rain coats but we finally reached the top at about 11 o’clock in the morning. After the summit we immediately started a huge decline down the other side of the mountain on a very steep rock staircase. We all felt that the hike down was harder on our bodies than the hike up just because it was so much stress on our knees coming down. We finally arrived at our camping site at around 3 for a late lunch and a chance to rest up for the rest of the night.
The next day we continued our trip down for a little while and then it leveled out. This third day we had the chance to stop at number of different Incan sites that consisted of small towns with signal towers to send signals through the valley or a corn storage facility for the Incans on the trail. This day was probably my favorite because even though the high parts of the trail were usually covered in fog, once we got into the thick forest the trail was covered under a canopy of huge trees where the wildlife was amazingly active all around us. We arrived at our camp on the third day at about 6pm to find a large building serving food and alcohol with music playing, not quite what we expected to find on the Incan trail! That night we turned in early to prepare for the 4am wakeup to head to the “sun gate” in order to catch the sunrise at Machu Picchu.
On Friday morning we all hustled to get our stuff packed and get on the trail to get a good spot at the sun gate. After about 45 minute walk we arrived at the Sun Gate to find it completely covered in fog, if you haven’t noticed there was a common theme on our trip….fog. Anyway we waited around for about an hour hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun shining on Machu Picchu but no such luck. So we grabbed all of our stuff and headed down the trail to Machu Picchu. Once we arrived surprise, surprise more fog…. We could only really make out about half of the ruins from our point of view. But after about an hour or two the sun burned off all of the clouds and we were able to really enjoy the beautiful spectacle that is Machu Picchu and the valley surrounding it.
From there we spent about a half day walking around with our guide, Saul, where he told all about the history of the ruins and of the Incan people. Some highlights of it were the sun dial, sacred rock, the alter where they made sacrifices to the Gods, a mummy rolling rock, the Condor Rock, the list goes on and on so you really should go and check it out for yourself! After our tour we all said our goodbyes to our guide Saul and the married couple that was part of our group. We took sometime for the rest of the day exploring the ruins and then headed off to the town of Aguas Calientes for a little R & R at their hot springs.
So I have to say that this trip was truly amazing and am so glad I did it. If any of you are thinking at all of heading to Machu Picchu I definitely suggest doing the 4 day hike on the Inca Trail if you are able. The trail itself wasn’t too terribly hard (there were a number of 50 and 60 yr olds on it) but just the experience and the beauty of the trail are more than worth your journey.

My First Year

Can you believe it has actually been more than a year since I left, I sure can’t . When I decided to look into working abroad I was looking for an experience that would get me out of the everyday routine that I was stuck in. I was seeking an adventure where I could experience new cultures, make new friends, see new places and try to do some good while I was at it. Now I can honestly say that my first year in Ecuador has more than exceeded my expectations (oh and I still have a year left).
From the time I left my parents in Washington, DC for our “staging event” there has been a steady level of adrenaline running through my veins. The sheer excitement of jumping on a plane with 45 strangers and heading for Quito was something I will never forget. Then on top of it all I was introduced to a culture that even though it seemed to be very similar to ours was incredibly different in very many ways. As my first days went by I came to the realization of how bad my Spanish actually was (see previous blog entries to understand my frustrations) and how utterly exhausting learning a language in a foreign land can be. Then after about two months of training, my Spanish improved and I bonded with the 45 people who were in the same situation as me. Then, the day came which we were all dreading, on April 19th we were all split up and sent off to our different worlds of Peace Corps service. Some went to cities others went to the most God awful places in Ecuador, I was extremely fortunate to go to beautiful San Pedro de Vilcabamba.
I can remember riding on the bus for my first time to San Pedro like it was yesterday. Seeing my host brother Angel running up the highway towards me not knowing if he was coming to help me with my bags or to rob them from me. Ever since then this past year has been filled with a lifetime of experiences, some have been tough or aggravating but most have been great times . All in all I can honestly say that I definitely am living the adventure that I was yearning for.
So, in order to entertain you I figured I would give you two of my first year’s top ten lists:
Top Ten Things that drive me nuts about Ecuador and Ecuadorian Culture (not in any specific order):
1. Butting in line is acceptable and pretty much routine
2. Women hauking loogies
3. Dog’s barking and roosters crowing all night long
4. Sitting in meetings where all they do is plan and then having another meeting 3 days later to plan some more and then following up on that meeting to plan for the next meeting.
5. Bus and Taxi drivers that drive like they are on a death wish
6. THE LITTERING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7. No one ever has change for a $20… so you wait…and wait…. And PRESTO they magically have just found change even though they haven’t moved or looked anywhere different while you just stared at them…
8. 15 hour bus rides to Quito where half of it feels like your are in a pinball machine
9. Gringos that think they are super cool cause they bought a “finca” (farm) in Vilcabamba
10. Showing up to work drunk on a random Tuesday is acceptable

Top Ten (or twelve, now thirteen) Things I love about Ecuador and its culture:
1. The Soups and the Drinks
2. Sitting on the porch stoop with whomever and just chatting it up
3. Ecuadorian resourcefulness and work ethic
4. The fact that at the most random times when you need something random (eg. broom, toothbrush, flash drive, stethoscope, inflatable pool) there will be a salesman walking by selling that item. And yes we did have one walk by and try to sell us a stethoscope.
5. THE WEATHER!!!! (At least where I live)
6. How Ecuador is really 3 countries wrapped into one with its Jungle, Mountains and Beach.
7. Realizing that these people are content with living day to day and enjoying what they have, there isn’t such a desire for success as in the US
8. The fact that if I ever need a Sashe for any kind of beauty contest, I have the ability to shop around at 50 different stores that sell them in the city of Loja.
9. Riding in the back of a pickup truck
10. $1 Big Beers!!!
11. The far off sound of a Donkey HEE HAAWING… still cracks me up when I hear it.
12. Hearing “Hola Andres!” shouted by one of the many little kids I have befriended in my community.
13. Taking my dog for a walk in the early morning or late afternoon and recognizing how blessed I am for living in such a truly beautiful place with such great people.


Next Blog Entry…. Machu Picchu!!!

My Ladies

As many of you may or may not already know, I am not only working with the NGO Colinas Verdes on their coffee projects, but I am also working with a local women’s group and their recycled paper products. Mis mujeres, aka my ladies, organized about 20 yrs ago in order to create more income for themselves and their families. Originally they just toasted and ground coffee but then a Peace Corps volunteer came to San Pedro about 10 yrs ago and got them into making recycled paper products. They originally started making just the cards but then expanded their product line into boxes, large books and photo albums and bags.
The process for making the paper is amazingly simple. They just collect discarded paper from area businesses and schools, wet it down and then throw it into a large industrial sized blender. While it is blending they mix in the fibers from the banana plant stalks or from other plants to add some color/texture into the paper. Then once done blending they dip “framed screens” into the pulp, these screens give the paper form while draining most of the water out. Then they take the top part of the frame off and place a large thick vinyl like sheet on top of the pulp and flip it. The pulp stays on the vinyl sheet in form and then they place it on a drying rack where it takes anywhere between 1-3 days to dry, depending on the amount of moisture in the air. Once dry they take the paper and, using pre-designed patterns, make them into the bags, books and boxes. Then they hand paste, yes I said hand paste, the petals of flowers into beautiful designs on whatever it is there making. I have sat and watched them go through this grueling process and cannot believe they have the patience for it. But I will tell you that these women take great pride in each one they make because after they have completed each product they will call everyone to attention and show their artwork off to the rest of the group.
Since they started to make these recycled paper products ten years ago they have been able to perfect the process of making their products but, as with many small businesses of this nature in Ecuador, these folks have no real sales or marketing sense. In regards to marketing they really do nothing other than set up a booth in the local markets on Sunday afternoons and when I say “sales sense” I mean that they literally just sit and wait for people to come to them and do not go out and try to find locations to sell their products in either Loja or the tourist town of Vilcabamba, both gold mines! So in return, these women were really only selling about $15-20 of their products per week, thus paying the workers about $.50 per hour.
So given my backround and my experience I felt like the sales and marketing side of their business was the best place I could help. The first thing I did was to help them cut down their product line ( for example they had about 4 versions of a small book that were all pretty much the same) and to create versions of products that might sell better. Then I created a catalog in both Spanish and English to serve two functions. One it enables me to email the product line out to potential buyers and two, we can now visit all the local artesenia shops in Loja and Vilcabamba and show them pictures of each product and the prices easily. Just in doing this alone we have been able to sell about $1200 of their products in the last 6 months. Many thanks to Melissa Howard for selling about $800 of that!!!
In an effort to get these older women more in touch with technology, the other Peace Corps volunteer in my site, Lindsay Dudley and I, have started computer training classes with the women. I just recently signed them up for an email address and am trying to train them to check it on a regular basis in order to start receiving international orders.
Looking into the future, we are developing more marketing materials to help them attract more tourists to come to their office and see how the products are made and to hopefully buy directly from them. Also we started selling our products in the US Embassy in Quito and have found two more stores to sell their products (they were currently only selling to one) and are hoping to find more. My goal for them is to train one of these women in simple sales strategies so they can continue to find more locations to sell and to maintain their existing relationships in order to create sustainability once my Peace Corps time is up. Lindsay and I are also going to be making a flower garden in their facility so the women only have to go out their front door to find the decorative flowers. Lastly, as I am sure you all are thinking, we need to start selling our products on that little thing called the World Wide Web, maybe you’ve heard of it? My goal here is to develop a website (or to utilize a web service) where we people all over the world can view their products and purchase them with a credit card. But, seeing as these women just learned how to turn a computer on though I think we are still a little way off with this…. Baby steps….Baby steps….

A Very Ecuadorian Christmas (and New Years)

I hate to mention it again but if you are looking for a blog talking about my interactions the indigenous folk trying to explain Santa Claus or the birth of Jesus you might want to do a Google search on “Peace Corps Africa” or something along those lines. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not belittling my experience down here, it is just very different than what I originally thought it would be like and what others might think the stereotypical Peace Corps Christmas would be like.
First off, coming from places where we the climate is cold during the holidays made it very hard to grasp that it was actually Christmas time. To be standing in 90 degree heat looking at a family of lit up reindeer mechanically grazing in an Ecuadorian’s front yard while being offered a plate of pig skin just didn’t have the same feel as sipping egg nog by the fireplace while Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is playing in the backround.
But many of the traditions we have in the US are similar to down here. For instance, each of the organizations I work with had a little office Christmas party complete with the usual cheap gifts, copius amounts of food and drunken co-worker.
On Christmas Eve night, my girlfriend Katie and I went with my host family to the church to celebrate the birthday of the local Padre with a big feast. Naturally they upheld the Ecuadorian custom of serving dinner at midnight and afterwards we fought off dozing off while the Padre and some friends played guitar and sang. That night I was made aware of a funny birthday tradition they have down here. In Ecuador it is customary for the birthday boy/girl to try to take a bite of the cake (just mouth, no hands) before his or her friends can push their face into the cake. At first I thought the idea was absurd and was worried the very tasty looking cake was going to be damaged. But it turned out to be pretty funny and the Padre did in fact get his face stuffed into the cake (and I was able to get a piece of cake too, thank goodness!!!).

Christmas morning Katie and I gave my host families their presents of a battery charger complete with two sets of batteries and a bag of candy, then we headed into Loja to spend the day with Katie’s old host family partaking in another turkey feast (this was turkey feast #4 for me in four days). The lunch was excellent and it felt just like home with a great meal and then retiring to playing games and joke telling(none of which we got) afterwards.
That evening a couple of the Loja volunteers all came over to Katie’s apartment for some hot cider and Christmas cookies. After a couple glasses of wine we decided to break out the hearing and vision test machine, you know the usual kind of thing twenty-somethings do on a Saturday night. Inside the kit was a red/green color blindness test that we were passing around. Our friend Jason looked at it first and said why do they just have a bunch of big dots on this page. We all thought he was joking when he said this cause there were actually numbers in these dots, numbers that Jason couldn’t see. So after getting our laughs out that Jason was discovering his inability to see reds and greens he tried his luck at the hearing test and sure enough he couldn’t hear the highest frequency out of his left year. So unfortunately Jason didn’t have the best Christmas for he learned that he was both color blind and slightly deaf in one ear.
That following morning I headed back to my site with my friend Shelley who was in town for Christmas. It was with her that I splurged and bought myself my first massage and I must say that it was well worth it. After spending two days in my site, Shelley and I caught a bus for the exact other side of Ecuador from me and headed north to our friend’s house in Attacames in the Province of Esmereldas.
Attacames I would describe as the Ocean City, Maryland of Ecuador with t-shirt and trinket shops on pretty much every corner. It is one of the larger beach towns in Ecuador and attracts a lot of vacationers from Quito. We spent two days with my friend Chris in his house on stilts which is located only about 2 blocks from the beach(tough life).
After a couple of days we headed to Mompiche for New Years. Now Mompiche is my kind of beach, super quiet where the waves aren’t so big they knock you over. 15 of us all met up in this small tourist/farming town and enjoyed the rest and relaxation of our $15 cabanas right on the beach. I won’t go into details about all of the fun had in Mompiche but lets just say we all enjoyed a much needed rest from our respective sites.
On the first I hopped on a night bus to Guayaquil to meet up with Katie and her parents and head to yet ANOTHER beach. Salinas is located on the southern coast of Ecuador and is often referred to as a “. We stayed at a beautiful resort and enjoyed the all inclusive buffet, gambling at their casino and wakeboarding out in the Salinas bay. I had a great time with Katie and her parents and it was good to go back to living the “good life” even if it was only for a couple of days. So like I mentioned earlier my Christmas wasn’t too bad with visits to three of Ecuador’s nicest beaches. Even though I was kind of bummed to be away from all of my family this Christmas, being with my new great Peace Corps friends and Katie’s family made it a great holiday season, one that I will cherish forever.