Since using almost every method of ridding my mattress of insects I haven?t had any problems sleeping. I think I have about 10 bites right now, the lowest number I’ve had since arriving.
After the community meeting in Bunche, I worked on cutting the bamboo for platforms for trash (to keep it away from the dogs and allow the trash man to collect it anytime). We constructed 5 in Bunche and I monitor them along with the trash in two locations to see if anything changes in the next few weeks.
We need a lot more bamboo for a large trash platform, which will allow the trash to be pushed into a dump truck and taken to the dump. Currently, the trash is collected and then dumped in the mangroves and the trash truck doesn?t come to Bunche. On Thursday we went into the forest to start cutting bamboo. I’m not sure how much we need, but I think about 50 caña, or full trees, should be enough. Each caña is at least 30 feet long and much heavier than it looks, but with the rain it is even heavier. With 2 boys and 2 girls working in the rain, we managed to cut 27. We got 20 of them over the hill and threw them off a cliff (the fastest way to get them to the station) before lunch. After that we basically slid down the cliff because of all the mud. Only 1 caña made it all the way to the station, so there is still another half-day of work to get the rest here. After lunch I stayed in my bed until dinner.
That evening there was another festival in Bunche with more drumming, singing, and dancing. Alvaro’s brothers came to visit from Quito so we got a table at the discoteca and danced until about 2:30. The discoteca is essentially a room with a sound system and some wooden tables and benches. Some people sit inside with bottles of Pilsener beer or soda but most of the town stands at the windows and watches us dance. All the children, who aren’t allowed to come in, stand at the door and watch until the owner of the discoteca walks by. Everyone dances in pairs and all the lights are on for bachata, salsa, etc. When they play reggaeton and turn off the lights, the younger people dance and even more people watch from the windows.
This week I’ve been fairly busy with my project, conducting interviews and planning for a community meeting about trash. We had the meeting on Sunday and in typical Ecuadorian fashion we started about an hour and a half late. When I arrived at 9, the family that owns the building was washing and chopping up 10 headless chickens. Eventually all that was cleaned up and I had a crowd of 5 year olds following me around. In the beginning we had about 15 children and 9 adults at the meeting; by the end we had about 20 children and 18 adults. At lunch time, everyone seemed to show up for the sandwiches (”sanduches”) and soda. After a lot of shouting, all the kids formed a line for their share of the sandwiches while I poured endless cups of soda.
Yesterday I went to Atacames, a city one hour north with a touristy beach, to use the ATM. Alvaro came with me and showed me where the bank was. I waited in line with about 10 other people to use 4 different ATM machines while a police officer watched over everything. Afterwards, I bought olive oil, ice cream, a soda, and Dragon, which is a popular spray for mosquitoes here. A few days ago I had over 100 bites on my back and almost everyone I talk to thinks it is from my bed. They all offer various methods for ridding my mattress of bugs or fleas, so today I tried everything. I put my mattress in the sun, hit it with a broom, sprayed it with Dragon, changed my sheets, and sprayed my room with Dragon.
On Saturday all the volunteers went to Mompiche, a beach down the coast. It drizzled most of the time so we had an early lunch of Coca-Cola, rice, beans, a salad, fried shrimp, and fish soup for $3. While the boys watched another World Cup game, I went down the beach and swam a little bit. The beach has a very gradual incline at low tide so I walked out quite far and the water wasn’t even up to my knees.
When the tide began to come in, we walked towards the black sand beach, which is hidden over a cliff and along a muddy road. After walking for about 10 minutes down the road, we had to walk through a field to arrive at the beach. We tried to make it in flip flops but the mud, cow footprints, and cow manure mixture plus the mosquitoes were too much. On the way back from Mompiche we took a boat ($20 for 7 people, 20 minutes) which left straight from the beach (we waded through the water). We went through some exciting waves off the coast, raced through the mangroves, and arrived at the dock in Nuevo Muisne where we could take a truck to the station.
This morning I went with Freddy to plant grass on a farm past Bunche. We left at 8 am and walked for about an hour and 15 minutes, on the road to Bunche, past the shrimp ponds, in mud through cacao trees, in mud through a stream, over a bridge (one log for your feet and one log for your hands), and then up a mountain. He brought the small sack of seeds which cost $170 in Quito.
We ran into some people I recognized from Bunche while they were planting maiz. We all had sticks with a sharp end, which we jammed into the ground and then put in a few seeds. We did this while climbing up the mountain and dodging the trees and plants that had recently been cleared with machetes and fire. On the way back Freddy chopped two cacao (cocoa) fruits for us to suck on. The white and slimy part, which looks like a brain and surrounds the cocoa bean, is one of my favorite foods. The flavor is sweet and nothing like chocolate. I sucked on each of the approximately 20 beans in the fruit, holding it in one hand and my gloves in the other hand as we sloshed through the mud and the stream. We arrived back at the station at 1pm, exhausted and starving. I had numerous cups of juice as well as rice, chicken, lettuce, and what seemed to be mashed potatoes.
Although I feel like my Spanish is staying at the same level and not improving, it is a lot easier to speak without thinking and without worrying if I am saying something correctly. The other night I was talking with Alvaro about “what if” situations and I used the past perfect subjunctive verb tense (the one which would take me the longest to conjugate when writing) without a problem. The one thing I wish I could pick up here is the accent in Bunche. I love the way they say “habla serio” (literally, speak seriously) and the way the little kids can say “alla” (over there) with an incredible amount of force.
Thursday was a beautifully sunny day. I forget how nice it is to see the sun and blue sky because the clouds seem to float in endlessly from the ocean. In the morning I painted some of the posts in the station. We mixed black paint with gasoline, used a broom to brush the dust and spider webs off the posts, and encountered one bee’s nest.
After an excellent lunch of rice, shrimp, salad, and juice, we went to the beach as the tide was going down. The water was gorgeous and there weren’t any clouds in the sky (they arrived an hour later). We were the only people on the beach except for a few cows and someone herding them. While I laid on my towel, the crabs slowly crept up out of the sand and tossed an arm-full of sand out of their holes. They have a black and white pattern on their backs, which blends in quite well with the sand, but on their bottoms they are brown and green and orange. They are very easily spooked. When we walk along the beach, you can see the small orange spots vanishing into the sand way up ahead.
Cuco came with us and laid in the sand and then in the shade. On the way back he was exhausted and stopped every minute to lay in the middle of the road until we walked just far enough away for him to gallop (he runs like a horse) up to us. Flea and her puppies have been caged up for the last few days, so she hasn’t been able to come with us and there haven’t been any more dead chickens.
