The Long Awaited Blog

The long awaited next blog. I am sorry that I have been uncharacteristically late in writing this blog. I have been swamped with other important things to do and have not had the time or energy to sit down and write an account of my experiences over the last three weeks. So grab a beer, glass of wine, cup of tea, or whatever else you desire and give yourself some time to read the latest in the adventures of Jer & Sue.

The last weekend in April Sue and I headed up to Tena to help out Mary Fifield (from Global Pediatric Alliance) on a composting toilet project in a Kichwa community near there. Chris Canady (the guy who runs Parque OMAERE in Puyo - and the eco toilet guru/expert - was leading the project). The plan was for Sue and I to help out and in turn learn how to build these things so we could replicate them when we go to the Waorani communities in a few weeks. In fact, we were going to try to construct the floor in Tena if we could.

Susan headed up to Tena on a Friday afternoon, I had planned on joining her, but got roped into staying in Puyo to coordinate another water monitoring day with the local high school kids. Fundacion Natura was down at the University giving a workshop on how to do the monitoring - in the hopes that two new students would want to participate in the project so that we can do another year of monitoring. I felt compelled to stick around, though my presence really was not necessary. So Friday afternoon, I went down to the River to meet the group of high school students and university students. Not to my surprise, the high school students didn’t show up because Douglas and Diana failed to inform them of the day, again. F. Natura, Douglas, Diana, and the other University students were also 1.5 hours late showing up. Normally, I would not have been upset at this, but I chose to stick around for this instead of accompanying Sue to Tena. I was also peeved, since getting refreshments is my responsibility and normally we have a group of 25. However, I was informed that I had to provide refreshments for the University students as well (an additional 15 students). This meant that I had to go through all the channels to get the funds approved to get extra food - not an easy task, and I had to go restaurant to change my order.

I got the refreshments all situated and then, to my delight, only 12 total people show up. At least we all were able to drink our fill of coca-cola and had 3 sandwiches a piece - always a silver lining.

So the monitoring went ok, but ran until 7:00pm (normally we are done at 5:30). I raced back to the office, changed, grabbed my bag, and caught the next bus to Tena. I got to Tena around 11:00pm and went to Mary’s house. She offered Sue and I a room to sleep.

Mary’s house was huge and very comfortable. When I got there, they were all preparing for bed - I was tired anyhow, so I crawled into bed and had a restful sleep, more or less, until the rooster outside woke me up at 3:30am.

The next morning, we headed to the bus stop with our gear and me up with Mary Fasnaught, Jason Kamisky, and Kelly (3 other volunteers). The five of us went to the community of Cuye Loma, about an hour from Tena. I should have known what the day was going to be like given the fact that we missed our stop and ended up 3-4 miles down the road from the town. We got off the bus with our cement, tile, and tools and contemplated our next move. I attempted to shoulder my 50kg bag of cement, got about 10 steps and then proceeded to yell a profanity, something like: this is too $*!@!+ heavy. A bus came by in our direction about 30 minutes later and we finally got to the community.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Chris (who arrived the night before) had already started with the community members and all seemed organized. The plan was to build 14 toilets during 2-3 mingas (work days). Chris gets jazzed up when talking eco-sanitation and this often results in him going on long tangents - all fine and good over cocktails, but not when you have a group of volunteers, community members, and engineers from the local government there eager to start the project.

We quickly found out that nobody had thought about bringing the right kinds and sufficient numbers of tools to work with metal wire and cement. We had 25 people and only 3-4 could work at a time. Things were quickly unravelling and I was beginning to see the signs of complete inefficiency.

I can’t stand - standing around - so I quickly asked Chris and Mary if I could organize people into groups - I did and things started to take shape. We modified the tools we had available and got things to work more or less. The going was slow, but by mid day we started to make some noticeable progress.

The people in the community were really nice. I taught some of the kids my trick of stacking coins on my elbow and then swinging my arm forward to catch them. I do this in every community I go to, and for some reason the kids are completely amazed. It often entertains them for a good 1-2 hours. They eventually lost the coins I gave them so I taught them to do it with small rocks.

Mary was flustered most of the day because things were not going as fast as she had planned and there was a lot of miscommunication between she and Chris. I was going strong because I had stuff to do. My task during most of the afternoon was to mix cement and supervise the placement of tiles and the building of the floors. By days end, we completed 10 floors - not our goal of 14, but it seemed like we made good progress and people were in high spirits.

My inquisitive mind kept analyzing the whole process and I was devising methods to make it more efficient. Chris had never tried to build 14 toilets at once and I think he failed to realize the logistical challenge it presents in so many different levels. Mary really wanted my input - since she is planning another project later in the year to build 40 toilets. I kept telling her that we needed to make forms for the floors to speed the laying of cement and to make the process more uniform. We spent a lot of time making precise measurements and cuts and then discovered that when laying the cement we did not need to adhere to those measurements, that it was ok to be off by a cm or two.

We left the community around 6:00, completely worn-out. We did not make the floor for the Waoranis, but ended up making the metal frame for it. We took that and ourselves back to Mary´s. The plan would be that we would return the following weekend to attend the 2nd minga in this community and to build the floor there.

After showering at Mary’s, she treated us to dinner at Tena’s finest restaurant. It was a good evening and it was fun working with my fellow PCVs, Mary, Chris, and the communities. It was one of those experiences that remind you of what Peace Corps is all about.

The next morning we headed into Tena and met up with a few more PCVs there. All was well in Tena. Sue and I headed back to Puyo in the afternoon. Two PCV friends, Janet and Lindsay - both a year ahead of us - and both on their way home - followed us to Puyo and stayed with us for the night. It was to be Lindsay’s last night in country. Janet was passing through on her way to seeing other volunteers, including Matt Bare, the new volunteer here in Puyo.

My week was to be a very hectic week. I have the two Waorani trips coming up, our Mid-Service conference in Quito, and some Env. Ed. Presentations to give during May, I have to keep putting out those Env. Ed. Kids pages on a weekly basis and to top it all off this week was the Feria de Puyo (the Fair). Like last year, CODEAMA was going to have a booth at the fair and that would mean I would have to staff the booth from Thursday through Sunday - 9:00am to 9:00pm.

I started off the week super sick, my intestinal parasites apparently decided to come back with a vengeance. Monday was a blown day - I worked basically a few hours and then went home to rest. Tuesday, I was feeling better, but still was under the weather. I worked most of the day, but really couldn’t focus on anything important. Wednesday I was doing much better and had a productive day at work. I finished a kids page, wrote a couple of reports for work, and got some items ready for our Mid-Service workshop.

Thursday started the Feria - I was supposed to be handing out literature and answering questions about the Water Fund for Puyo. Most of CODEAMAs booth was dedicated to our Organic Fertilizer project - so as we started to set up, my space within our booth vanished. This was both good and bad - the good being that I am not really involved in the fertilizer project and therefore might not be expected to be there the whole time, the bad being that the Water Fund is a huge project in Puyo and now it essentially had no place at the 4-day Fair.

The organic fertilizer project is simply amazing. CODEAMA works with 10 communities around Puyo to teach them how to compost and use the compost to increase their crop yields and to crow new types of vegetables, normally not grown in the Amazon, like: tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini, squash, lettuces, carrots, etc. Usually you can´t grow them here because the soil is too poor and we get far too much rain. But with good soil, that drains well, you can grow them in abundance. The communities receive organic waste for free from the City of Puyo. The city collects organic waste 4 times a week and then hauls it to be composted at these communities. This is a great program that reduces the strain on landfills, increases food production, is better for the environment, and provides an alternative source of income for these communities.

The community members are ecstatic about the new crops they are growing and it is obvious how proud they are. There is something to be said for growing something from seed and harvesting the fruits of your labours. Anyhow, 7 of the communities brought their goods to the Fair and we shared our booth with them to promote the project and enable the communities to showcase what they are doing. They sold a lot of their vegetables and were also selling bags of compost at the Fair.
This project really touches me for some reason. It gives you hope and inspires you to keep working. While I had no direct involvement in the project, I did provide my counterpart with loads of Peace Corps information about organic agriculture methods. I gave him a copy of our Peace Corps Sustainable Ag manual, which he read like the bible on a daily basis for about 4 weeks. From that, this project grew and grew and now is a full-fledged success.

For those of you who remember me writing about the woman, Yadira, who worked in my office, this was her project. Now it is her replacement’s, Juan Carlos. Sometimes I find that the best role a Peace Corps Volunteer can play is to be a resource and provide valuable information to people. That was all I did in this project and it is awesome.

Because I had to work the Fair, I could not return to Tena for the 2nd minga. Susan got up early on Saturday to head up there. The weather was horrible and her trip was thwarted by a landslide. She returned to Puyo and we debated how we were going to get the floor done. Ultimately, it was decided that Chris would come back from Tena with our materials and that Sue and I would build the floor at our apartment on Sunday afternoon.

I attended the Fair in 2-3 hour spurts. I was weak all week from my intestinal parasites and really couldn’t eat too much nor did I feel much like engaging people in dialogue about the Water Fund. To make matters worse, after the first night of the Fair, someone broke into our booth, stole 400 posters about the Water Fund, and dispersed them all over the wet, rainy streets of Puyo.

By the time Sunday rolled around, Sue and I had plans of building the floor and then heading to Quito in the afternoon. Getting everything we needed, sand, more tiles, tools, and our metal form from Chris, proved to take longer than expected. We started the floor around 3:00pm and finished it around 6:00pm. Chris came over at the end to see how it looked and said that we did a fine job. I did have to pilfer a little sand from the local government. They have been doing a huge road project on in our neighbourhood and there are piles of sand everywhere. I ¨borrowed¨ what I needed. I feel little remorse for this since, because of their work, we have been without water in our apartment for the good part of 15 days.

We invited Chris up to the apartment for a beer and to talk shop about eco toilets. By 8:00 we realized that going to Quito was not going to happen and that we would just take the early 5:00am bus.

That night I was so engaged in my Harry Potter book (the last of the series) that I kept reading until 2:30am, thus finishing the book and lightening my load to Quito. Sue, meanwhile was engaged in watching the dvds we have of the TV series 24 - she was up until 1:30am.

We made the trip to Quito with few problems, got the PC office, and took showers there. How nice to have water, water pressure, and hot water to boot. Our meetings started at 12:45. It was great seeing everyone in my Omnibus and most of us seemed to be content with our PC experiences. That afternoon we each presented to the group about our first year of service and what we were doing. I was completely stunned the incredible work that the my peers are doing. I am so jealous of the different experiences they are having and the things they are doing. This, of course, is one of the normal things of Peace Corps. All volunteers think the grass is greener on the other side. We all envy other volunteers and fail to see how incredible our own communities and work are. Every volunteer has a unique experience in Ecuador and trying to compare one site to another is like comparing apples to oranges. All said, after the first day of Mid-Service I was proud to be a PCV and proud of my fellow volunteers.

That night, the group went to the Mariscal section of Quito to get dinner and then to hit a bar where we were going to do a Pub Quiz (basically a game of trivia). The group of people I was with went to get Mexican food. We went a place that had good food, but had small portions. It was not the restaurant I had in mind. When other volunteers showed up, I convinced a couple of them to go to a different Mexican restaurant - I chose to go with them and ended up having a second dinner - gotta feed those parasites.

After dinner, we all met up at a bar and played our pub quiz. We divided ourselves into teams based on our training communities. La Esperanza was united again. Roger, Kris, Susan and I were ready to take on the others. We were the only training community that is still completely intact. The questions were obscenely difficult and we ended up finishing third in every round of the competition. How am I supposed to remember the capital of Botswana, the father of the modern computer, or the name of the dam between Zambia and Tanzania. I least I knew what a Parsec was and that it is incorrectly referenced in the movie Star Wars IV.

The next morning we continued our training. It wasn’t nearly as fun as we went over work reports and had sessions on managing solid wastes etc. I had to do a presentation on monitoring and evaluation of projects since I and two other volunteers in my group attended a workshop on it back in October. The session went ok, I suppose, however, anytime you try to put the Peace Corps experience into numbers you run into all sorts of problems. How do you quantify cultural exchange? Peace Corps is a government entity and is accountable to Congress, so we have to provide numbers to justify our existence. This is such a pain in the butt and many volunteers complain about the process, however, it is a necessary evil. Needless-to-say, my peers were not thrilled with my presentation.

Later in the day, the PC Country Director came in to make his token appearance and ask his usual impossible to answer questions about how we are doing in our sites. I will talk more about my boss, Cisco, in a minute - since he has been a huge part of my stress and busy schedule over the last week.

After that session we finished up the formal part of our day. I am the Peer Support President and I had scheduled a Peer Support session for our group so that we could share frustrations and concerns. Many volunteers expressed an interest in having a group ¨therapy¨ session and I got Peace Corps to give us time during Mid-Service to do it. Unfortunately, we ran late on our schedule and PC nixed the session. I offered my fellow PCVs the opportunity to stay late on the last day to chat if they wanted to. To my surprise 20 of the 28 volunteers left in my group came to the session. It was an awesome session and we helped a couple people reconsider leaving the country. We also vented some of frustrations and shared some successes. The session was very informal, totally optional, and it ended up lasting for an hour and a half.

I was going to head back to Puyo that night so I could to a meeting at FRATES the next morning, but my fellow volunteers convinced me to take a well-deserved break. I thank them for that, because I needed a break for sure.

That night our group ordered 10 pizzas and we hung out in the hotel eating, drinking, playing cards, and just talking. It was one of the better nights I have spent in Ecuador. The next morning I got up early and went to the PC office to give my Peer Support Advisor, Nurse Sarah, some feedback from the Peer Support session. She listened to what I had to say and then asked me to write it all down so that she could share it with the staff, as well as, to write a report about all the things Peer Support had done over the last year.

I then went to my Program Directors office to share with him some of the concerns that volunteers raised: lack of professionalism in the office, favouritism, looking down upon volunteers who are not producing #´s, not getting enough support from the office, etc. He was a little defensive, but understood that I was just relaying concerns that other volunteers have had and that this was our feedback to the office. He wanted me to talk to Cisco about these issues. I had to get back to Puyo, however, agreed to go to Cisco’s office to share with him as well.

I went to Cisco’s, but he was occupied on the phone and asked me to wait around and that he would meet with me. After an hour of waiting I left, not angry at Cisco, I just left because I had stuff to do.

When I got back to Puyo, I immediately went to the office and started in on the myriad of things I had to accomplish before the first Waorani trip. It was Wednesday afternoon and I had one week to plan three presentations, make three kids pages, write a report, and organize stuff for the trip.

The first order of business was to write the Peer Support report. I did this and sent it to nurse Sarah. Then I got to work on the other stuff. Sue returned from Quito a day after me. She was with the students from Duke who would be going with us into Waorani territory (read her blog to get more details on this project). I ended up working the whole weekend.

Monday, Andrea and her brother Alex came into town. They were going with us on the trip as well. That afternoon, I got a call from the Assistant Country Director, Dana Platin, about my Peer Support report. She was furious about the volunteer concerns I had put in the report - calling them serious accusations. I talked with her for an hour and kept trying to tell her that I was only the messenger. She wanted specifics and I explained that I was bound by a confidentiality agreement and could not tell her volunteers´ names - this didn’t make matters any better.

I was completely caught off-guard. The office always tells us that they have an open-door policy and that they want us to tell them the good and the bad about what is going on. However, when you mention anything bad, they immediately get defensive and try and turn the issue around on the volunteer. Anyhow, after talking with Dana, I immediately called my Program Director, Kerry, and asked him what happened at the staff meeting where my report was shared. He explained that volunteers often complain and whine (which we do) and that we rarely appreciate the support that the staff gives us. He told me that it would have been better if Sarah would have reviewed my report before passing it out to everyone. I agreed and reminded him that I was simply asked to write a report - I was 100% honest in it and that it was not my fault if it was not reviewed or well received. The majority of the report contained pages and pages of the incredible work Peer Support is doing in country and how valuable it has been for other volunteers. Just like the office to focus on the two paragraphs that focus on the administration and concerns with the administration. Anyhow, I agreed to query my fellow volunteers to get some positive feedback to add as an addendum to my report. I figured that the issue was resolved.

In the mean time, Susan Birch-Carl and Becca Liskens came to Puyo on Tuesday. They too were headed on the Waorani trip with us. Tuesday night I shared my Dana story with them and we all talked about how the office in Quito just is not a happy place to be these days and how the administration has dropped the ball on a number of issues.

The next morning we were ready to go on our trip, but discovered that the road was closed and that we would have to try again the next day. I chose to go to the office to get more work done. When I got there, I received a phone call from Nurse Sarah. She had just been in a meeting with Cisco and he was pissed about my report. She said that he sent an email to the group. I read the email - it was a direct attack on Peer Support and on me as its President. I was pissed!!! Peace Corps asked me to write the report and now was upset at its contents - hmmmm should I have lied and made it all flowery? I am one of their biggest supporters, I believe in the PC mission and I also realize that it is bureaucracy and is inherently not efficient and has its problems. Hell, it is not much different than the kind of stuff you deal with working in a public school system.

Many of my fellow volunteers have never ventured into the working world and thus, they fail to understand how certain things work. Some of their concerns are ill-founded, however, many of them were right on the mark. My boss, Cisco, proceeded to call my Omnibus a group of whining jerks, said I was out of line, and suspended all Peer Support activities until he got specific details on our concerns. He said that I was responsible for collecting this information and that I had two weeks to do it. If we didn’t have anything to back them up then we had to shut up. Yes, this sounds like a supportive and open PC office doesn’t it?

Nurse Sarah and my immediate supervisor, Kerry, both called me and gave me their support. They told me to talk with Cisco. The two of them have been great in all of this. That afternoon, I called Cisco and had a long talk with him. It got heated at times, but I was not backing down and neither was he. I kept trying to tell him that he was attacking the messenger and ignoring the real issue - that these concerns were coming from the majority of my group - he kept demanding specifics - which I refused to give him - confidentiality. Who in their right mind would openly complain about their PC country director when he has the authority to terminate your service for any reason he wants. The gloves came off when he told me: ¨Jeremy, you were a teacher, you should know better than that¨ scolding me like a 10-year old is no way to draw me to your side. Know better than what? Telling the truth? I told him that I was one of his best and most successful volunteers, I have always helped the office when asked, I do what I am asked to do, I believe in the Peace Corps mission, I support the great work of my fellow volunteers and the PC office and that he was barking up the wrong tree. After a few more heated exchanges things calmed down enough that our phone call ended with the agreement that I would do my best to get more information for him. This was the worst day of my Peace Corps experience. In Cisco’s defense, we do complain a lot to him and the other staff about the most trivial of things - like having cell phones, we rarely acknowledge the good that happens, and we often make things out to be worse than they really are.

Oh, there is soooo much more to write about this issue, however, I know that I have said too much for a Public forum and none of you readers really have a context to fully grasp the extent of this situation.

So, Thursday came, it was a sunny day and we loaded up the bus, with equipment, food, our composting toilet floor, Duke students, PCVs, Chris (our eco-toilet guru), Susan’s counterpart Manuela, and a handful of other Waoranis. The four hour trip to Menepare was not too bad. We got there and were greeted by a lots of naked Waorani kids. They helped us unload the bus and we spent the afternoon setting up camp and tossing the Frisbee - a device none of the Waorani had ever seen before.

That night was our first run at cooking food for 40+ people. We made a big soup - it took longer than we though, but also fed more than we thought. After dinner we had a short planning session for the next day’s work and then went to bed.

Menepare was not what I expected. I though it would be more open, more deforested, and a little more developed since it is located on an oil road. I was pleasantly surprised by the forest surrounding us.

That night, I didn’t sleep well. The Waorani sleeping in the building with us spent most of the night chatting with each other. If you have ever read Joe Kane’s Savages, you will know of what I speak. At seemingly random times, 12:00am, 2:25am, 3:30am etc. they will wake up and just start talking as though it was midday. They have no concern for others that may be sleeping. This was ok the first night, I really enjoyed listening to them. Their language is hard yet, beautiful; tonal, yet nasal. I had no idea what they were saying, but it made me drift into a whole other world - I felt as though I had been lifted out of the 21st century and was placed in a time long ago. The next morning I got out of bed - more refreshed than I should have been given the lack of sleep. After speaking with Andrea, I realized that I was not the only one who had the same experience last night - she too was mesmerized by their talking and immediately thought of Joe Kane.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, oatmeal drink, and mashed plantain we organized the group and set out to work. Part of the group went to one side of the village to work on the seed beds and nurseries for the plants they use in their handicrafts - the other part of the group went to the site where we were going to build a casa tipica (traditional hut) and the composting toilet. The site was in a valley and seemed awfully wet to be building a tourist cabin in, however, this is where the community wanted it. The first order of business was to clear the area. The Duke students were eager to use their machetes and they immediately went to work cutting down an acre of rainforest. I was depressed and really couldn’t participate in this so I wondered back to Susan and her team at the nursery.

This project seemed more organized and more ¨environmentally¨ friendly. They needed some sand to mix with the compost we brought with us so I agreed to get the wheelbarrow and go to the river to get sand. Uhhhhhgggg - the wheelbarrow was new and the Duke students had failed to pump up the tire. Try hauling 200lbs of sand in a wheelbarrow with a flat tire - what a pain. I did it though, brought it from the river to the edge of the forest, and then carried it bucket by bucket about 200-300 meters into the forest where the nursery was. There was too much debris to take the flat-tired wheelbarrow back there. Getting sand turned out to be the second-hardest job of the trip.

By lunch, things were taking shape. The nursery was coming along and the area for the eco-toilet was more or less cut down. After lunch we started back up - I returned to the deforestation section to help clear away branches and the like. I also dug a test hole for clay. The base of our composting toilet system was going to be made from clay from the site. Chris and I dug a hole about 2 feet deep and reached the typical red clay of the Amazon - we had good clay and things were looking positive. We just needed the community to tell us where they wanted the toilet located. This proved to be a problem since the community decided that the Friday we were going to be there would be a good day to go into to Tena. So, the community President and most of the leaders were nowhere to be found.

I wandered back to the nursery to find Susan and Manuela, Chris wanted their input on this matter. Ultimately, after contemplating a number of different locations on our 1 acre plot, a spot for the toilet was found.

That night, we hit the river to bath and then wandered back to camp to get dinner. I made some Guacamole for the group, which was a huge hit with everyone - it was as though they hadn’t had something tasty to eat for years and that my guacamole (which was average at best) was the elixir of life. At dinner time it was interesting to see the Waorani come out of the woodwork when there was food around. It is great that we brought enough food to feed everyone and we all were quite willing to share what we had, however, most of us gringos were annoyed that we were feeding people who failed to come help us work during the day. What made it even worse is that almost none of the men helped us. When we told them they couldn’t have our food unless they worked for it or if there was some left over after everyone else ate - they proceeded to take the food of their kids and eat that. This was not my battle to fight and I kept telling myself to respect the culture no matter what my instincts were telling me.

That night, the community had a fiesta and most of the men got drunk on chicha and beer. Manuela, Susan’s counterpart, was very upset - this meant that the men would be hung-over for the next day and useless once again - she was right - with the exception of two guys (both Waorani, neither from Menepare) our work team was made up of PCVs, Duke students, Waorani women and Waorani children.

Day two of the work trip involved the start of building the base for the bathroom. We were greeted with rain for most of the entire day which put a huge damper on our work. Finally we got a break in the rain and started back up. I was on the clay team. This meant that I had to dig a hole to get clay for the base of the toilet - I think we ended up digging a 2 meter x 1 meter x 1.5 meter hole. Once we got the clay out, we put it on a tarp, mixed it with sand that we hauled from the river - about a 600 meters away, added some water and then mixed it with our feet. When it was ready, the base team put it on and in a circular bamboo structure that they weaved. We repeated this process about 30 times over the course of a day and a half. Things were coming together well enough. I was and am skeptical of a clay base in a humid rainy environment. Chris kept assuring us that it works fine, however, I have a hard time believing that. It was a lot of hard labor for something that may or may not work.

My previous concerns with Chris arose again - he is passionate about building these toilets, but struggles in the organization of work - too many people stand around watching. I jumped in again and got people organized into work teams.

Another team formed to work on making some stairs down to the clearing from the main road. The stairs - which all of us worked on at some point in time, ended up being the coolest thing we did on the trip. They turned out really well.

I found myself wandering from group to group and team to team. If I didn’t have something to do right then and there I went and helped another group. This somehow made me the go to guy when questions arose. Everyone seemed to ask me first before doing something. This was mildly ironic since I have never built a composting toilet before (I have read about it extensively), nor have I cut bamboo or woven bamboo. However, I have always been the type of person who can see something done once and then repeat it and teach it - which I did a lot of during this trip.

Each of the meals we had, save breakfasts, involved me making big bowls of guacamole. The first night went over so well that they wanted it for lunch and dinner. We went through about 50 avocados in a couple of days. This was one task that nobody else wanted to do - I couldn’t teach anyone my secret method of making guacamole - that challenging cut open an avocado, remove the pit, remove the fleshy part, discard the skin, add salt and blend. SUPER challenging!!! Actually, I think they just heaped on the praise and duped me into doing it for them.

Finally on Sunday morning, the weather broke and we had sunny skies again. We finished the bathroom project (more-or-less), finished the stairs - complete with railings, and finished the nursery - the trip was a success.

The PCVs, Chris, another woman from Puyo who came with us, and I were going to be returning to Puyo in a truck that afternoon. Susan and the Duke students are staying in the community until Wednesday. They are doing a workshop on Eco-Tourism, Health, and Artesenia.

The truck that was coming to pick us up was bringing more food for the workshop and was supposed to arrive at 3:00p,. We were ready to go at 3:00, however, the truck did not come until 6:30p,. Just as it arrived, it started to rain again. This meant that we had to cram 7 of us, plus the driver into the double cab of a Chevy Pick-up truck. During the hour and half ride to Tena I think both butt cheeks went numb as well as an arm and a foot. In Tena we stopped to stretch and get something to drink. Becca and Susan BC were eventually headed back to Ambato (Becca´s site) and just as we were getting ready to cram back into the truck a bus headed to Ambato passed by - they got on. Now we only had 4 of us in the back seat of the truck - Andrea, Alex, Yvette (the woman from Puyo), and I. Only my right butt cheek lost feeling on this 2.5 hour trip.
We got back to Puyo at 10:45 and immediately headed for the fridge to grab beers and make some food. Andrea made a sick plate of nachos that we downed in no time. We put on the movie Clerks II on the laptop and watched the whole thing before retiring to bed, exhausted.

The Duke students were a complete trip. They were so naïve about things - not wanting to swim in the river for fear that a catfish larvae would swim into their penises (something that can happen, is painful, but also VERY rare and impossible if you have on shorts). When wielding machetes for the first time you weren’t sure who or what was in more danger, the plants, or the students. Treating every cut and scrap as though it was life threatening requiring immediate medical attention with gauze pads, syringes, bandages, etc. Complaining about the rain - it is the RAIN forest after all, and complaining about eating a lot of rice. This is the cycle though of people spending time in the jungle/Ecuador. Us volunteers were the same way when we arrived - it was a good reference point for us to see how far we have become, how adapted we are. Overall the Duke students worked hard and were the most vital part of team. I commend them for taking the initiative of organizing this project, finding the financial resources, and leaving the comfy confines of the States to come to the jungles of Ecuador, sleep in a tent, deal with bugs and snakes, drink chicha, and to put themselves out of their element.

This stretch of 4 days was the hardest I have worked in Ecuador. I personally dug and hauled thousands of pounds of sand and clay. It was great, makes you feel healthy, and when it is all said and done - you are rewarded with knowing that you did some good for a community that certainly needs a helping hand.

Next week we head to Tepepare, another Waorani community 4 hours by canoe downstream from Menepare. It is more remote, smaller, and in even more need of support. We will be there for 7 days - working our tails off. On this trip we will have a different group of PCVs joining us: Roger, Kris, Sadie and Jeff. Mary Fifield from Global Pediatric Alliance will also be coming along. It should be fun and interesting.

Well, that is the news from Puyo - if you made it this far in the blog, you are a dedicated reader and a true friend.

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