So we're still here...in Bucay, Ecuador...in southern Ecuador, 100 kilometers east of Guayaquil at the base of the Andes mountains. Guayaquil is actually Ecuador's biggest city...almost 3 million people. It's a port town on the Guayas River. Bucay is about 10,000 people when you total up the whole canton (think county). We've been in Bucay for 8 and a half months now. We've been in Ecuador for a total of 11 months. So we've got a year and 3 months to go complete our 2 years (at site).
Our success story so far is that we just completed 16 weeks of teaching English to people who work in tourism...or anything related to tourism. This was our first substantial project and it ended up being fairly successful. We started with 44 students and finished with 26. By Peace Corps standards that's successful. We are planning on following this up by trying to help some of our students with marketing, advertising, etc.
Now let me be very clear, this experience is very challenging. We each get paid $292 per month plus and additional $100 that covers our rent and electric. This is just enough for food, necessities and maybe one trip out of site per month. These trips involve traveling on one of the regional buses for 2-6 hours to visit other volunteers and/or visit the coast. But riding on the buses gets really old, really fast.
Why else is our experience challenging? It's kind of like we're put here and we have to create a job for ourselves. And most of the people here, including those we are trying to help, don't understand why we are here or what we are trying to do. We've explained it many times to many people but it still doesn't seem to be well understood. “We work for the US government...but we're called volunteers and no, we don't have any money to buy you a truck, a tractor or build you house.”
We were told we'd be working with the local government, a foundation and the provincial government. The guy at the local government is totally useless to work with. And the guy at the foundation that we were supposed to work with repeatedly, repeatedly would tell us he's coming to town to meet with us and then wouldn't show up, wouldn't call, wouldn't answer calls, etc. But the bright, shining hope for us has been working with the provincial government. They've been great to work with, they helped us organize the English classes and they seem to understand the Peace Corps mission better than anyone else so far.
We also have to deal with ants and insects of all kinds that make for very ichy welts when they bite you. And it seems the insects here love gringos. We also have to deal with power outages, water problems in our building and for a small town Bucay is really noisy. They will “share” really loud music and all times of the day or night.
Now, we've also had many really cool experiences too. The challenging thing is that it is really hard plan things and know exactly how things are going to come out. We spend so much time trying to figure out stuff like which bus goes to where or when is the big parade for the virgin? Our Spanish is good enough to be able to ask the right questions it's just that the answers people give you aren't always completely clear, we don't understand their Spanish completely or they just tell us something rather than tell you they don't know. So we try to ask several people then take an average.
Bucay sits at the base of a cloud forest and there are guides that will take you hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, etc. There's also rivers that they do rafting and kayaking on. But Bucay is really well known for is“canyoning”. This means rappelling down waterfalls. And the cloud forest has dozens of waterfalls. So just hiking to see the waterfalls is really cool. And I have twice done canyoning. It is really exciting and cool (to put it mildly). And the guides are really professional with all the proper harnesses, helmets, safety ropes, etc. Cherith was going to do it right after me the first time I went but the guide wouldn't let her go because it had started to rain and the water flow became to heavy (which pushes rocks over the falls). I know because I felt small ones hitting my helmet and shoulders.
So wealthier tourists drive from Guayaquil to see the waterfalls and go canyoning. But sadly, a lot of the local people have never even been to see the waterfalls. So we organized two trips with our students to go to waterfalls and see some of the other tourists services that are offered along the way (Cabins, food and sugar mills). This way they can be better representatives of their area.
The sugar mills (trapiches) are small scale sugar presses that they use to extract the sugar cane juice. They are human powered and/or mule powered, and sit under open-air thatched roof huts. Sugar is a big part of the culture here. They process it into several grades of raw sugar, brown sugar, molasses and of course they distill into moonshine they call “puro” or“aguardiente”. The sugar cane juice with a squeeze of lime or orange is quite tasty and refreshing. And it's very unique because you watch them press it and then you drink it. You can also have it with puro for a cocktail, of sorts.
If you interested in reading more about our adventures/misadventures down here you can check out our blog that we infrequently post on. (cherithandrich.blogspot.com) Or just check out our facebook pages...those have lots of good pictures of our experiences.
So enough for now. And please. please send us updates on your lives. It feels good to keep in touch with people back in the USA.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Rich and Cherith
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