January

Jen made a worthwhile comment to me after my last blog post that I’ve become accustomed to listing out my activities and posting photos of them instead of reflecting on or going into depth about my time here. So, I’m going to switch things up a bit this month and discuss one project that I’m working in: Eco Amigos.

I mentioned in November that Darwin and I were giving some workshops on solid waste management, and then in December that the students who went to those workshops started an environmental club and made and presented a Christmas tree out of garbage. Well, in January the high school students started a three-month break and things have died down a little, but we still have good attendance and participation. In total, we have had 29 kids who have participated at one time or another. Of those, there are about 15-20 who regularly participate.

I’m proud of the kids and their participation, which is complicated, not because they’re particularly busy, but rather because parents here aren’t used to kids being involved in their own activities and families depend on children being much more involved in the household. Also, several of the group members live in communities outside of Zapotillo and it’s more difficult for them to get into town: they have to pay for transportation, it takes longer, etc. For these and other reasons, often times parents won’t let kids leave the house to go to club meetings and activities.

I have two ideas on how we can improve this. One, I want to invite the parents to a meeting where the kids can present what they’ve been doing, maybe we can get some representatives (professionals) from town to talk about why their work is beneficial, let the parents socialize, etc. I’d like to create more of a sense of community among the families, particularly since there’s been talk about sending the kids to the city for a conference and I can just imagine how a father would react to his 15 year old leaving to go to the city for a week with a gringa he doesn’t know and for a club that he’s not even really sure what they do. Also, I’d like to do is have a set weekly meeting time. Until now we’ve been planning meetings and activities as needed and it’s been difficult to communicate. The kids didn’t want a set meeting time at first, but I think it’s best now to have one.

Also, the kids have to fight a social resistance which I commend them for; the general attitude here is not one of environmental conscientiousness. There’s been a shift towards consumerism and consequently social stigmatisms towards the rural population, which is seen as contrary to the consumerist ideal. The rural population, whose way of life was not too long ago the social norm, looks to meet its needs as locally and naturally as possible. Consumerism supposedly looks to meet needs with the lowest economic cost through commercial activity. However, with the influence of things like marketing and externalized costs, the market usually ends up serving corporations and itself meaning that consumerism looks to feed and grow the market. The rural populations grows its own fruits and vegetables; raises its own animals; know how to work the land; were brought up using local seeds which don’t require chemicals but whose products can’t compete commercially; reuses its waste; are concerned with survival of themselves and their families; etc. The new generations shop in supermarkets and transport plastic bags of processed foods to their homes in their own cars or taxis; encourage the use of agrochemicals for hybrids and other plants that aren’t naturally suited for the local climate and soil; have become more concerned with fashion, status/image, material wealth, and physical appearance, etc.

These differences manifest themselves in attitudes and habits that at first glance don’t seem to be connected, but are. Let’s take, for example, the overuse of plastic bags. Tradition in this area is to have reusable baskets woven from local, natural fibers, which were used to carry locally-produced fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products, etc. This doesn’t much help any market because nearly everything is part of a closed system where the producer is also the consumer. At best it would enter into a barter-and-trade system within the community. Consumerism tells us that this results in high costs because the scope of what is involved in the definition of costs in the current system of economics is extremely narrow (externalization of costs). So the consumerist mentality is that we should outsource the production of both the foodstuffs and the basket. The market decides that it is best to have fruits and vegetables grown with chemicals; meats, dairy products, eggs, etc. from animals raised with hormones and processed feed; and finally plastic bags in place of the natural-fiber basket. Not that any of these new substitutions actually cost less, but more of these costs can be externalized. I.E. the producer doesn’t have to pay for them and thus the consumer does not pay cash for them…the damages to health caused by working with chemicals with little or no protection or supervision in order to keep producer costs down and yield larger and more crops than natural; the damages to health in consuming residual chemicals; cost of education denied to children workers; cost of water, air, and ground pollution from agrochemicals, factories, transportation, and the fabrication of all the machines involved in the factories and transportation of goods, etc. What I mean to say here is that modern economics does not factor in all the costs of production, but rather a small percentage of the total costs which either the producer or consumer must pay with money or opportunity costs meaning how much productivity potential (also monetary value) you give up for any particular decision you make. And in those terms, buying processed foods in plastic bags comes out a lot less expensive than the traditional model. However, human beings do not just produce, in fact our lives and the factors that decide our quality of life are much more complex and vast than the current economic model. It's crazy to think that just because certain costs don’t figure into the current economic model, they somehow don’t exist or don’t matter. Like it or not, we do depend on this planet, on the environment. So, anyway, in life terms instead of modern economic terms, the traditional way of obtaining foodstuffs is much less expensive. But modern culture here values consumerist tendencies and thus processed foods, supermarkets, and plastic bags become status symbols while locally produced whole-foods and natural-fiber baskets become social stigmas. Perhaps not everyone recognizes it as such, but it is evident in the attitudes and habits of the people.

Although the highlight of my work thus far has been outings to the reserve, I’m excited to switch to an environmental education focus because the people themselves are the strongest protection that the reserve (and environment in general) could have, but in order for that to happen, the people must value the forest and feel empowered to be able to conserve it. Hopefully I will be able to start working in environmental education in the high school as well, but I haven’t made any concrete plans yet.

Outside of work, life is still wonderful here in Zapotillo. Time goes by too fast, there are too many things I haven’t gotten around to doing yet. I’m trying to shape up some vacation plans for this year, but don’t know when to fit all the traveling in. And now, for those of you who don’t like words, pictures!

The current waste management system in Zapotillo:
Public Waste Receptacles (at least this one is in use...not too common here)

EcoAmigos meets with the mayor to present a project proposal for carnavales (fiestas)


Zapotillo's "Sanitary Landfill." Yeah...right

Painting reused garbage cans for carnavales

More world map project, Cabeza de Toro

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Community bank meeting

Haha i got my picture in the paper...again...and they're always really bad pictures...

I painted my room :) and got a new comforter with bday $ from dad (thanks!!!)

Stupid crickets have been eating holes in everything. they got my swimcap (which by the way has lasted me nine years) and i went on a killing spree, getting somewhere between 50-100 of them in my room alone.
Alright, that's it for January. Now that it's March I'll get started on my February update...haha much love!
sarita

DECEMBER

December was an exciting month (well, for me) so this should be an exciting update! The 2nd I skipped our monthly rancher’s meeting to guide a short tour for a woman studying tourism in Loja and to work on the World Map project we started in Cabeza de Toro.

photo: darwin martínez

On the 7th a group came from the University of Loja to learn about the reserve, practice soil studies, and to help out fixing up the trail.
As you may recall, in November we started a series of workshops on solid waste management with a group of high school kids. Those workshops continued into December as well and on the 10th the group decided to form an ecological club, wrote a constitution, and named the club EcoAmigos.

That weekend a youth service group that I’ve been helping out (JUVENTUDEZapotillo) put on a cultural program to raise money for a young man here who has Leukemia.
The following week, the whole team went to Progreso to do a community diagnostic, since NCI is going to start work in the new reserve there. I was assigned to do an activity to chart the townspeople’s’ daily activities from which I could analyze the division of labor and complete a SWOT analysis of allocation of time, etc. Each diagnostic tool is pretty boring in and of itself, but the diagnostic as a whole, particularly the analyses are interesting and necessary for the development and conservation work that we do.
Progreso
a Kasia tree
Not sure what these are called but it´s some kind of less-domesticated chicken...Guinea or something...
Alligators in the Puyango River!
I don´t know the scientific name for this plant, but the locals call it ¨huevo del burro.¨ If you know spanish, I´ll let you laugh about that for a while. If you don´t, I won´t be vulgar enough to explain it to you ;)

photo: darwin martínez

This parrot thinks its mother is a chicken. Very amusing.

photo: darwin martínez

photo: darwin martínez

The next week I was “a full” (a particularly funny saying here that means very busy) helping out JUVENTUDEZ in a project where they went around town collecting donations to go out to the communities and give cookies, candy, and toys to the kids for Christmas.
Also, Eco Amigos had their first official event on the 22nd, making a Christmas tree they made out of litter found around town and presenting it at a Christmas Carols competition. It was a LOT of work, organizing, finding the bottles, etc., making the tree, preparing the event, getting t-shirts, etc., but it was definitely worth it. The event was great, everything nicely decorated, good attendance, the president of the club spoke very well, the kids were all in uniform and carried themselves well…I only wish I could have gotten a video of the whole thing, but they made me a judge for the competition and I couldn’t leave the judges table to tape it.
The 24th I stayed in my host mom’s snack shop so she could go visit her kids in Machala. That evening I closed to go to midnight mass and then to the Martinez’ for a bit…it was really nice. Christmas day I basically just walked around town, wishing everyone I knew merry Christmas and giving them cookies I made. I got to talk with most of the family as well which was nice. The day after Christmas I went with the Martinez’ to picnic on the river, which was nice because Pauli, Ramiro and the girls were in town (they live in Machala).

photo: darwin martínez

I love these girls!!

It was the most satisfying holiday season since I left home. Luckily I was busy enough this year to not think too much about being away from home for Christmas. I think what really make a difference this year, though, was that despite not being with my biological family, I still got out and spent the holiday sharing with people I care about and who care about me.

The 29th I finally was freed up to be able to go with JUVENTUDEZ to hand out some gifts that were left over. Even though it was after Christmas, it was great to be able to reach out to some communities around here that I hadn’t been to before.
The 30th, Bolívar, Darwin, and I went to Progreso because we had heard that there was a bunch of baby alligators nearby and we wanted to try to capture some. To be fair, the alligators hatch something like 20 at a time and they are lucky if a few survive, and we wanted to catch them with the intention of raising them and releasing them. Unfortunately, the net that we were using was completely ineffective and the gators got away. I’m disappointed that we didn’t capture any gators to raise, but it was still a really good trip.

photo: darwin martínez

The Chaguano trees opened up their fruits!

The guayacán trees had just started to bloom and the whole area was covered in this sheet of vibrant yellow. It’s impressive; something that you really have to see in person to appreciate. I think the guayacán trees stand out most of all the trees when they bloom for two reasons: 1) they tend to be concentrated in certain areas 2) they bloom right at the start of the rainy season, when the whole forest is still dry and leafless so against the dull brown/gray background of the trees, the yellow flowers really stand out.

New Year’s I spent in Zapotillo, mostly with friends. It was cool, nothing too spectacular to tell. Alright, that’s it for December folks.

Take care! Abrazos a la distancia, les quiero hartíssimo,

Sarita

NOVEMBER!!!

November was a good month and seemed to pass very quickly.

Saturday the 7th I celebrated a friend, Paulina’s, birthday with her and her family (the Martinez'...the family I always talk about, with whom I’m very close) during the day.

(L to R: Ramiro, me, Chelita, Moshe, Mayra, and Paulina)

They always joke that her daughter looks like my kid and so we took some photos which were meant to be a (albeit cruel) joke on my parents.

(SURPRISE! I had a kid and you didn't know. Isn't that HILARIOUS???)

At night my host mom and some of my other (shall we say more mature?) friends surprised me with a party in one of the town’s clubs, cake and all! It was touching that they would do this for me considering that I don’t think they’ve ever gone to either one of the clubs and it was clearly outside of the social norm for them. We had a great time though…

(This, ladies and gentlemen, is what SCANDAL looks like...)

Sunday three of my coworkers invited me to some beer to continue the celebration, and I convinced them that we should hold the celebration at the weekly soccer games, which is where I spend my Sundays anyway. Monday, my actual birthday, the Martinez family invited me to a birthday lunch at their house and in the afternoon all of my coworkers closed the celebration with cake, singing, etc.

Three days of celebrations all planned by friends here…the people are unbelievably warm and generous, I can’t remember ever feeling so loved, and so unexpectedly so.

Mid-month I started a World Map project with the kids in Cabeza de Toro. The project is to paint a world map on a wall or a bball court, etc. and integrate geography education.

(So far, we've just traced it.)

Other work projects this month included organizing a group of kids interested in environmental issues and giving them some workshops on solid waste management and, in my spare time, helping out a youth service group (JuventudeZapotillo) that formed here years ago but has recently been inactive.

…and then I went to Quito for Thanksgiving and a little getaway...

(From the Camilo Egas Museum...he was an Ecuadorian "indigenist"/ expressionist/ surrealist/ cubist/abstract painter.)

(A sculpture by Ecuadorian Manuel Chili at the Franciscan Museum "Fray Pedro Gocial.")

Photos from an exhibit by André Cypriano about the Quilombola culture.

The Basilica del Voto Nacional...I climbed up the tower on the far left. For those who worry about me, it was no real risk but for those who like to hear adventurous stories, I suggest you read the Lonely Planet description of the ascent.

Quito from the Paramo...that's the Teleférico on the far right.

Quito, view from the paramo

The city as seen from the Basilica del Voto Nacional

Kasia hangin' out at the paramo in Quito...right before she headed off to Galapagos for a year!!

Akila is clearly better at fake falling off of fake cliffs.

Photos from an interesting exhibit where 10 ordinary Quiteños shot their own unique views of the city in celebration of its anniversary.

Embassy-hosted Thanksgiving. The people, the setting, the food; it was all awesome.

Alright, folks, that's all for now. Take care, I love and miss you all a ton! Abrazotes,
Sarita