Beach Trip and, Alas, No World Cup Trip

Caleb asked that we go to the Pacific coast for his 15th birthday, which we celebrated last Friday. Some friends kindly lent us their apartment near the coastal town of Atacames, and off we went for the long weekend, joined by our 13-year-old godson Edison. We had fabulous views heading down to sea level, like this one. Can you spot the cattle?

We also had fabulous views from the 3rd floor apartment at the beach.
Here Spee and Natalie are drying off by the pool, while Jens is looking up at Caleb the photographer.
We had fun in the water. Here Caleb is emerging from successfully body-surfing in, while Jens is still cruising.
We had fun on the beach as well. Here Jens is digging for the crab that made a hole he spotted, while Edison and Caleb look on.
We had beautiful views on the way home on Monday. We took a new route - newly constructed and new to us - whereby first we drove north along the Ecuadorian coast and then headed inland (east) to the city of Ibarra along a new route not too far south of the Colombian border. Because it's a new road and the road cuts (cliffs, bluffs) haven't yet settled, there were many stones and even mini-landslides that had landed on the road, which made the driving even more tricky than usual. But the valley heading up to Ibarra was absolutely gorgeous. The scenery was stunning for over an hour.

Also on the road were many sticks that had been recently dropped by sugar cane trucks heading up to the highlands in front of us. We stopped and picked up one big stick, then used our pocket knives to make short pieces on which we happily munched for a while.


The other big news is that Ecuador has tried valiantly to qualify for the 2010 World Cup Soccer Tournament. On Saturday afternoon, we joined everyone else in the country to watch Ecuador play Uruguay in the second-to-last qualifying match. They just had to win it and they would likely be selected for the World Cup. How sad it was when Ecuador lost right at the very end of the game 2-1. On the other hand, we had a good night's sleep because the fans went to bed early.

This evening was the final qualifying match, with Ecuador playing Chile, which had already qualified and had nothing to lose. Did they then let Ecuador win, giving them the opportunity to play in the World Cup next year? No, they sent Ecuador to defeat 1-0 and it's a very quiet night here in Quito. Here are Caleb and Natalie's new friend Sam (Lewis & Clark college student who stayed on post-study abroad last spring) modeling their Ecuador national team t-shirts. Tonight after the game, they went to the local park and played some soccer with Caleb's new soccer ball, while Natalie attended an online class for Goddard. College attendance sure looks different these days, doesn't it?


-Spee

Scrapes and Such

Natalie has begun getting trained to work as a doula at a maternity clinic outside of Quito, Clinica La Primavera, which promotes humanized birth and gives mothers the option of giving birth in a tub of water. She's learning the role doulas play in that clinic, the location of supplies and other items, the clinic's procedures, and so on. She's hoping that once she's familiar with everything, she'll get to be the primary doula on some births. She seems excited to be in the world of birth again.

Natalie has driven the 20-25 minutes to the clinic and back twice now and already had a scrape with a taxi that took some of the paint off the side of our car (and kept going). It's nothing serious but it's annoying.

Here I am driving that car, the Hyundai Atso. I'm not sure why Natalie took this picture, but I am reminded of one meaning of the acronym ATSO: Ability to Survive and Operate.

Of more concern has been Helen's health. She was full of energy and doing very well last week, but again fell into a period of weakness this week. Her primary physician today detected cardiac arrhythmia and sent her to a cardiologist, who now has her under observation at the Hospital Metropolitano. She is not happy at all with having to hang out there, but is hopeful that a better understanding of the source of weakness will result in treatment that addresses the problem.

Earlier this week, we had a wonderful reunion with Jens's old buddy Steve Contag (on the left) and his wife Patricia (on the right), who live in Baltimore, MD.



-Spee

Weekend Activities

Jens is back and has reported that this weekend's Alternatives to Violence Advanced Workshop (AVP) went well. He observed all kinds of interesting cultural nuances among Ecuadorians from the Sierra (mountain region) vs. Ecuadorians from the Coast. For one thing, the folks from the Coast are much warmer, joke a lot, and touch a lot more than the folks from the Sierra. The rest of us will have an opportunity to observe this ourselves when we head to the beach this Friday for a long weekend.

Yesterday when we were without Jens and had only a short time to do an outing because we slept in, we went up the Panecillo, which was fun. We drove up, which means we didn't test our lungs and legs, but we didn't get mugged either - one of the chronic threats in that part of town.

The Panecillo is a hill in the middle of the Quito valley. It used to mark the southern end of the city, but now is quite centrally located. On top of it is an interesting statue, which was put up in 1975. The angel is standing on some strange snake/crocodile/dog creature on top of the world.

The view gave us all a reminder of the different landmarks Quito has. Here we are looking northward.

Today, we were more ambitious. We left at 10:30 a.m. for Cerro Ungüi, which is at the southern end of that huge mass that is Pinchincha Mountain. Ungüi is a mountain in its own right, in my opinion (and that of my legs, this evening), regardless of its name being "cerro," which means hill. We found the trailhead despite the distraction of hundreds (thousands?) of people who were celebrating the Fiesta of St. Francis right at the saddle in the road where our trailhead was. This picture shows only the crowd on the west side of the saddle.

Anyway, Caleb and Natalie encouraged me enough that all 3 of us made it to the top, which was just over 12,000 feet above sea level (we started at about 10,000 feet). The views from the Ungüi trail and mountaintop were fabulous - of the city of Quito on the east, of the picturesque valley with the village of Lloa on the right, and of the ever-changing mountains and light above us on the huge mass that is Pichincha Mountain.

Quito to the east:

The valley with Lloa to the west:


Pichincha above:
It was steep sometimes:

We made it to the top!

Now we're all very tired and wishing we had a nice bathtub to soak in. But we're happy.

-Spee

Now that's development!

The countryside is so beautiful and the city much less so, that we try to go out on excursions each weekend. This quebrada is on the way to Papallacta.
Last week, I asked Helen and Gene where we could get a Quito phone book. Gene told me I could find one of the telephone company's (Anditel's) offices at the corner of Avenida Amazonas and Avenida Gaspar de Villaroel. He warned me though, recounting how last time he'd gone to ask for one, he had been required to show his Ecuadorian I.D. card and an Anditel phone bill proving he was a customer before being given the phone book. Seeing as I don't have an Ecuadorian I.D. card and we've not yet received a phone bill, I decided to try anyway. For one thing, the office was located at just the right distance from home for a good walk, so I headed out on Friday after work.

I entered the front doors of Anditel and surveyed the lobby. It had booths around two sides of the room with employees attending to customers or seemingly twiddling their thumbs, and in the middle it had the usual rows of chairs for the public waiting their turn. Then I spotted a big pile of telephone books on my right. It looked like I could just take one and leave, but after Gene's story, I thought I should ask permission. No way was I going to wait in line (well, actually, in chairs), so I approached the nearest booth where the employee seemed idle and asked if I could take a phone book. Sure, he said. I could hardly believe my luck, as I went out the door with the thick book under my arm. The bonus was the extra exercise I got lugging the thing home.

When I told Gene about the ease with which I got a phone book, he said, "Now that's development!" Gone are the days when the telephone company couldn't afford to hand out the phone books for free. Gone are the days when many people would cut up the pages and use them as their long-term supply of toilet paper. (However, people still bring phone books to soccer games and shred them for confetti right there on the spot.)

This left me thinking about development. Gene and Helen have worked in various ways to improve the lives of the Ecuadorians for over 50 years and much of their work might have been seen as in search of development. I've worked in my career for 25 years and usually call it "international relief and development." More recently, I've changed from using vocabulary such as "progress" and "development" to "improvements in the well-being of people, especially women and children." I won't go on and bore you with my analysis here, but I would like to share with you some signs of development in Ecuador - some of them improving people's well-being and some of them perhaps not.

We went last weekend to visit an amazing farm, where a young woman with her partner and her father have turned their 170 acres of her great-grandparents' huge hacienda into a large organic farm. They provide much of the goods for the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) organization to which Helen and Gene belong and from which they receive a weekly basket of fresh farm produce. The young woman offered to give her community supporters a tour and we signed up.
You can find out more on Natalie's blog. Here's Caleb making friends with 2 cute piglets that ambled over while we were admiring the "chicken tractors" that are moved every day across the field.

Here's another view of the chicken tractors, which were sharing the field with llamas and alpacas.
So that's one kind of development, but many people still believe the better kind of development is large-scale export enterprises, like the flower farms that are prominent in Ecuador and ship millions of flowers to the U.S. every year. You know them by their huge greenhouses and often tight security systems. Here's a picture of one across the quebrada from the organic farm. Click on the photo for a closer view.

Here I'm holding a big $3.00 bouquet of flowers bought on our little street at the local flower shop, where big roses are 25 cents each and smaller ones are 10 for $1.00.
Here's another sign of development: Ecuador has had a huge increase in the number of vehicles on its roads since I first came 24 years ago. Gas is cheap because of Ecuador's large petroleum supply. Another sign is that women are working at gas stations (no self-service allowed in this country).

People have cars, malls in which to shop, and jobs on flower farms (among the pesticides). These signs of development aren't important to me. Instead, I'm thrilled to see how much more education each generation is getting, how much better the houses are for healthy living, how many parents are choosing to have fewer children and then are able to follow through with that choice, and how people in general have a higher quality of life and are living longer. Not that there isn't more to do, but we should celebrate how far we've come.

-Spee

Back-to-School Night

This evening was back-to-school night at Caleb's high school, Colegio Nuevo Mundo, although I didn't realize that until about 30 minutes into the program. The parents of the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders gathered in the school library and the (Executive?) Manager of the non-profit organization that runs the school gave a PowerPoint presentation about long-range goals and changes in the organization's top positions. Then the President (of the Board?) of the non-profit organization, also with a PowerPoint presentation, spoke briefly about several programs in which the school is participating, such as two partnerships with local universities, the purpose of which I did not catch.

Next up was a man I determined must be the new Director of the school. He said their theme for the year is "coherence." That made a lot of sense to me, as some of the 9th grade academics have seem discombobulated and it turns out it's not just my ignorance with the system.

One of the topics the Director raised briefly was AH1N1 flu. He noted that a school committee was diligently working to raise awareness of symptoms and actions to take (applause for the committee). For example, this information was on the bulletin board in a stairwell (click on the photo to enlarge it - "gripe" is "flu"):

We also heard from a faculty member about the curriculum related to drugs, sex, and alcohol, and from another about the Ecuadorian Enterprise Partnership Project, which has paired a telecommunications company with the school to provide technical assistance in management aspects such as human resources and finance. The Finance & Administration Director got up next and pleaded with the parents to pay their monthly tuition and transportation fees within the allotted 10 days at the beginning of each month. Shortly thereafter, we were directed to proceed to our child's homeroom for more information specific to each grade.

Here is a photo of Caleb's classroom with its 22 desks for the 22 students. The side walls are totally blank except for a small bulletin board, and the homeroom teacher informed us that the 9th graders had a plan to paint them in mural fashion. First, she said, they are collecting money to pay for the paint. She assured the parents that the mural would be about something positive and useful, like values the kids want to promote.

At the back of the classroom is a set of lockers, some of which have padlocks. Apparently, the class's supplies they've collected thus far - like the stapler that Caleb brought in? - are in one of the lockers and its padlock key is entrusted to a different 9th grader each week.

At the back of the classroom there's also a boombox. What you see out through the window is the sun setting behind Pichincha Mountain. Maybe you can also detect the denseness of the city at its base.
Here the homeroom teacher Paulina is writing on the whiteboard the name of each class, who teaches it, and what his/her office hours are. The parents diligently copied it all down.

One of the parents' complaints was that the kids were told today to procure supplies for science class tomorrow, which is too little time, especially given the obscurity of the items and the lack of suggestion from the science teacher as to where to procure them. The list for each student included a microscope (??), a dissection needle, an apron, and toilet paper. Most of the rest of the items Jens is currently looking up in online Spanish-English dictionaries, and he seems to be having little success translating them. The homeroom teacher said she would talk to the science teacher about providing more time and more guidance. Overall, she was very open, warm, and encouraging of communication, which I liked.

After the session, I went up to ask Paulina several questions I had. One of them was about when there would be school holidays. She said, "Oh, don't worry, we'll give you LOTS of warning. Let's see... the next one is October 9th." (That's the Friday after next.) A couple of moms who were still hanging around were a bit amused by my request and they joined the conversation, helping the teacher figure out the rest of the holidays this calendar year, which are, I learned, November 2-3 and December 25-31. I asked about Quito Day (December 6th) and they noted it falls on a weekend this year. However, Paulina assured me they would celebrate properly during the school days around the weekend. That will be a fun experience for Caleb, I'm sure.

-Spee

Recycling and Car Alarms, Part II

Remember my discomfort with throwing everything into the trash, with no composting or recycling of any kind? Here's the recycling system in Quito, which I saw in action this afternoon: The mother (sorry, I only was able to catch her from behind) is reviewing what's in the trash bags, the daughter is collecting bottles and cans in the green bag, and the son is taking the cardboard over to the side, flattening it, and making a neat pile. They will be able to take their load somewhere north of Quito and receive compensation for it.

Below is a picture taken out our bedroom window. I wanted to show you the car whose alarm is constantly triggered by the airplanes' landing and taking off from Quito International Airport, interrupting Jens's sleep. Just as I pushed the shutter button, look what roared in from overhead - a plane coming in for a landing!

The spectacular mountain in the background is Pichincha.

-Spee

Farms, Fiestas, and Films

As part of Natalie’s agricultural studies this semester, she is taking a series of field trips to markets, farms, and other destinations with her grandfather Gene, who organizes the outings using his many connections. Gene seems to be having a great time participating in his granddaughter’s education and Jens, too, when he gets the chance to go along.


If you’d like to learn about their adventures, I recommend Natalie’s blog at http://nat-travels.blogspot.com/. At the moment, she’s in Latacunga, having joined a friend of a Westtown friend at a big festival called “Fiestas de la Mama Negra.” We look forward to her report when she returns on Friday.

Last evening, we joined Helen at a showing of an Ecuadorian film called “Qué Tan Lejos” at Helen and Gene’s church, put on by the Spanish-speaking congregation (mostly Ecuadorians). The movie is about two young women – one Ecuadorian and the other Spanish – traveling through Ecuador at a time when a general strike has shut down most transportation and businesses. I found the discussion after the viewing very interesting and educational about Ecuador and Ecuadorians. For example, the group discussed the stunning beauty of their country and how it takes an outsider to remind them of that. Here are a couple of pictures I took today during our afternoon walk.



The group also talked about one of the movie’s themes, emigration from Ecuador, particularly to Spain. I was interested to hear their perspectives on why people go, how it changes them, what it does to families, and to what extent the emigrees’ dreams are fulfilled.

I hadn’t realized how extensive this migration was, although I was aware that Ecuadorians are the fourth largest Latino group in New York after Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Mexicans. The topic was particularly pertinent to us, as earlier in the day, Helen and Gene had had a lengthy luncheon with an Ecuadorian from the indigenous population who’s been in Spain for 15 years and is back for a visit. We learned that he’s living a much more comfortable life in Spain than he would have lived here, but he and his family live with negative factors such as prejudice and separation from their home communities. Also yesterday, our neighbor's sister (not of the indigenous Ecuadorian population) arrived from Spain after 10 years there. She decided to come back with her family for various economic, social, and educational reasons. I wonder how the adjustment will go for each family member, especially her school-aged children.

Speaking of adjustment, Caleb continues to work hard in school. You remember his class’s wish list for their homeroom? He reported that some items have trickled in, notably toilet paper. (I had forgotten that that was on the list!) After school/work today, we went on another exploratory hike in the Parque Metropolitano, which I enjoyed a great deal. In the picture below, Jens is explaining to Caleb how some Latino men express their love through graffiti. (Click on the photo to make it larger.)



-Spee