Week One.

First and foremost I would like to welcome my new baby niece - Gianna Rasikah Reese Draine, born June 20th, 2009, - into the world. Even though she came six days early I had a feeling that I should get touch with home while everything was going down. I am sad that I can’t be there but ecstatic that she is healthy and all is well. Congratulations to my sister and her husband, I can‘t wait to see the pictures. Heather, thank God that’s over.

It is 5:50 in the morning and I am awake because this is the time the rooster outside my bedroom door has decided to get up. I politely asked him to go back to bed or at least keep it down until 7 to no avail.

My host mother will leave in just a few minutes to walk up the sierra in order to go milk the cows. I would join her, but my legs and back are still pretty sore from yesterday’s trip up to the cows. Yesterday was my first day here with the host family, and so it was a very long one. I was resting in my bed for about an hour in the afternoon until I heard two of the children making noise outside my bedroom door. I went outside and asked them what they were doing. When my host brother, Angel, told me that they were headed “to the cows” I thought it would be a good opportunity to go check out some of this cow milking business. I looked at the cows right next to the house and wondered why the kids were acting like they were about to backpack across Europe when they were going to milk some cows that were literally about fifteen feet away. But, I shrugged my shoulders and followed them down the driveway. About 3 minutes into the walk and after passing the cows that I had assumed were ours, I looked at Angel and asked him again where we were going. He gave me a “what’s with this chick’s short-term memory” look and patiently responded, “to the cows.”
“Those cows?” I asked, pointing back to the cows by the house.
“Those aren’t our cows!” He laughed.
“Ok, where are your cows then?”
Angel pointed about two miles up the sierra to some slow-moving black dots.
I swallowed hard.
“All the way up there?” I asked, straining to see these alleged cows.
“Yup.”
“How long does it take to get up there?”
“Only about 40 minutes.”
Now, I will have you know that despite what many of you may think, I am not so lazy that I can’t handle a 40 minute walk. But already being at about 10,000ish feet, I can feel the altitude just standing still. I quickly realized that this 40 minute trek even higher up the sierra would be no walk in the park. Seemingly reading my mind Angel asked if I still wanted to go. “Oh of course!” I responded and simultaneously said a little prayer.

So far, all is good. We arrived in Miami, FL last Tuesday to begin what the Peace Corps calls “staging.” In a conference room at the hotel we finally met everyone face-to-face. There are about 45 of us. After some brief introductions, we sat and listened to some not-so-brief safety, security and travel instructions. Five hours to be exact. At about 7 o’clock they let us go find food and see a little bit of Miami.
By 3:40 the next afternoon we were in the plane trying to entertain ourselves for the four hour fight to Quito, Ecuador. When the pilot announced that we were about 125 miles away, he suggested we open our windows and get some pictures of the view while landing in Quito. Its hard to describe how cool it was, but I’ll try. (Wheat, you know what I’m talking about.) The whole city is built on dozens of mountains and in between valleys. There are houses of all colors and little villages scattered all over, some that seem to be built all the way up the sierras to the clouds. Sarah, the Volunteer next to me, looked at me and asked if I could believe that we would live here for the next two years. I think that was when it finally sunk in for the first time. I was very excited when the plane finally touched down and thought it would be appropriate to start the slow-clap. Successful.

Once we got to the hostel in Quito, they informed us that we would not be staying there for the 4 nights that we had anticipated, but that we would be leaving for out training site in Cayambe the next afternoon. In Cayambe, everyone stayed together at a compound that PC rents out for two nights. My roommate was a 22 year-old named Stephanie from Miami. She spends a lot of time by the water and consequently calls me “dude” and “bro” on a regular basis. After a lot of sitting, listening, paperwork, immunizations, and receiving our cell phones, it was finally time to meet our host families.

The city of Cayambe is divided into about 20 different communities. The PC split us up into about 7 or 8 different groups based on language ability, and then assigned each group and one facilitator to a different community to live in for the duration of training. Soon after the meeting I was in the back of a truck with Carla (my host mother), Rubi, (host sister), the rest of my group, and their host families, driving up the sierra to Paquiestancia, the community that we were assigned to.

When I got to the house, I met Miguel, my host father, Marta, my fifteen year-old host sister, and Angel, 13 (see cow story). Along with Rubi, who is 6, and eleven year-old Flor, who I would meet later, there are six people: a mother, father, and four children. After I set my stuff down Rubi insisted on showing me the farm. It is pretty small (I would guess about one acre) but they have chickens, pigs, cats, dogs, guinea pigs (they eat those here), and cows (note: two miles up the mountain).

The accent is a little more difficult than I had anticipated, and I though I have few problems when they are talking to me directly, I find myself straining to understand when the speak amongst each other. The six year-old is by far the hardest for me to understand. After showing me the farm she turned to look at me and asked something in Spanish. I didn’t get it and asked her to repeat what she had said. After a couple more rounds of this I gave up and just told her to show me what she was talking about. I followed her over to the piglets where she picked one up by the hind legs and to my horror began spinning it around as fast as she could. She then set the piglet on the ground and laughed hysterically as it stumbled and struggled to regain its balance. As we walked away, I looked at the pig and mouthed a silent “sorry” as I technically had given her permission to do that.

Nobody in my community looks like me (it is very indigenous) and consequently I am stared at for an uncomfortably long time wherever I go. Though there are Africans in Ecuador the vast majority of them live on the Northwestern coast in a province called Esmeraldas. I didn’t realize how few Black people they see around here until my host sister Flor told me that I looked just like Tyra Banks.

After retuning from watching Angel milk the cows and Rubi terrorize them, we had a dinner of soup with milk, peas, noodles, potatoes, lettuce, and corn. Then the kids asked me if I wanted to join them in watching Fear Factor. Thinking it would be some Ecuadorian version of the show I was surprised to see Joe Rogan and all American contestants with their voices dubbed over into Spanish. The kids huddled around me and each other as if we were watching a horror movie.

Anyways, so far, so good. There is a lot to get used to and my stomach is slowly adapting to the change in diet, but other than that I think that this place and family will be a good fit for me during training. I am excited to see more of Ecuador. I think of everybody back home a lot and pray that all is well. Take care and stay in touch!

P.S. My blogs will not all be this long.
P.P.S. Let me know if you would like my cell number. I can not call internationally with it, but I can send texts to the U.S. though it is pretty spendy. I guarantee calling me here will not be cheap either.
P.P.S. I will post my address as soon as I know it, but I can not receive anything over 2kgs for the first few months of training.