So lately I’ve been thinking about going home for the holidays. Been homesick and missing my family. Right now the tentative plan is to be home for "day of fake peace after we stole the land from the indigenous."
The work situation has managed to cycle through the entire spectrum recently. I went from feeling confident to abandoned then super pissed-off, and now finally back to a place where I feel like I have support and a purpose. Super excited about this.
The National Police went on strike last week which was pretty exciting. But as my dear friend reminds me there is probably a PC code about not wishing instability in your host country during service. I won't bore you with the details, as if you care enough to read this you were probably paying attention to the news last Thursday.
Since I haven’t posted in a while here is the news that will catch you up: mid September was a conference where all the people from my omnibus (class) came together with their counterparts to go over the needs assessments we had been working on for the first 4 months and to begin discussion about the potential projects we could undertake in our respective communities. My counterpart was a no show. The whole event lasted nearly a week and while it was nice to see everyone again it had a very summer-camp-esqe sort of a vibe. I might add that we lost three people that week. One who was pretty committed to leaving, one broke her leg dancing, and the other was sort-of forced to resign.
Anyway, after reconnect was over a group of friends came back to my site with me to enjoy the splendor that is N*****l. We made pizza and had a bonfire in my fire pit. The following day I took them to the waterfall and we went for a dip. It was pretty awesome.
Later that week I set off for a tech exchange in my friend’s community in the province of Santa Elena. She was placed in a tiny community that was built by a Cuban woman. Anyway, said Cuban lady built them a community center complete with built in bakery (stove, fridge, scale, cooling rack and all). Only nobody in the community knew how to make bread. So I went down to share my knowledge of all things yeast. Turned out that the man and wife duo that has taken to running the bakery were already versed in the art of pan de sal, so we spent two and a half days working on pan de dulce and various twists thereof. Also, I got to weed the garden and spend 6 hours at a 2 year olds’ birthday party complete with music so loud you couldn’t talk to the person sitting next to you. (note: Ecuadorian birthdays and parties in general are usually like this, in my experience though there is always alcohol in involved, the thing was that being a dry community, the drunken dancing and sharing of shots of beer wasn't happening and made the 6 hours seem like a lifetime.) All and all I’d say it was a success, plus she lives literally two blocks from the ocean, which I didn’t realize I missed so much.
Been back at site now for a while. Revived the cooking class and converted it to a women’s group. We made a sold pizza at last weekend’s volley game. Made a profit of about $30. We are planning on another fundraiser and then we want to use the money to fence in the new demonstrative garden we are going to do together. I am really excited about this because it will be in the center of town where people will be close enough that they can stop by to work on it, AND the community will see it while passing by. I really want to make this garden perfect. My credibility as it stands now is sort of questionable, so this could really help. Plus it was my host sister who got the permission to use the plot of land, so it’s not just me, there are actually other people interested.
That's all for now, the daily tuna ration is calling and my tummy must answer.
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