Taking Numbers

Well we finally did it.  After four trips to Quito, visiting over seven different offices, and taking somewhere around 500 different numbers, we have our year long Volunteer Visas.   I have never had to take so many numbers in my life.  It was like a complicated game of Bingo, that involves traveling to different parts of the city to obtain G63 or N32, only to have to wait two hours until it is called.  By the end of the adventure, we could have easily won a game of cover-all.  The visas themselves are nice; color pictures and printed stickers.  Jana's however said "ninguno" under the sex category.  This of course took another stamp and signiture to fix.  Ninguno (this means "none")?! Fernando in the Office of Strangers dropped the ball on that one.  He at least didn't put her name as "Ana Malbana," which has happened before.  As we were leaving Quito around 5:30pm (the office closes at 2:00pm, but we somehow got the privelidge of being there after-hours. This is after getting there at 9:00am and waiting all day), we got into a cab to take us to the bus terminal.  "Carcelin," we tell him (this is the name of the bus terminal). "Donde?" "Terminal Carcelin.  How much?" "I don't know," he says looking confused.  "Five dollars," we try to help him out.  Ok, deal.  We get in the cab, and he starts inching along.  We are on a busy street in traffic, inching along is not the correct pace.  "Where are you going?" he asks again.  Oh no.  Sir, we are going to the Northern bus terminal in Quito.  It is called Carcelin.  Have you been there? "Let me call my boss." What?? Is this your first day? There are big signs all over the city telling you how to get there.  Did you just move here? "My boss says it's $9." No, no.  We agreed on five.  We are picking up a little speed at this point, but he still looks nervous and can't quite do anything with confidence.  "Ok, $7," he says. Señor!! five dollars. No mas.  We come to a fork in the road.  He slows down, looks scared at this point, turns around, asks "Do I go up or down?" We don't know!!! He panics, pulls across three lanes of traffic to the curb.  "Just get out here." Done and done.  We jump out of the cab and he speeds off.  Poor guy.  But, he did however drop us right in front of “Kentucky” (KFC), which made us happy because we were pretty ravenous at that point.  Free ride to Kentucky! So we got some chicken, hopped into another cab, paid $5, and made it to Carcelin in 25 minutes.

In other news, we did an art project with the senior citizens and the daycare kids.  We brought sheets of paper with the word "gracias" on it to the place where senior citizens go to eat a free meal six days a week.  The idea was that they were supposed to draw something they were thankful for.  This proved to be more difficult than anticipated.  You would have thought we asked them to replicate the Mona Lisa.  "I can't draw," "I don't want to draw, I just want to color this same unicorn outline I've colored for the last two months because today I want to make the magic horn green instead of pink," and silence were our three most common responses to the task.  After some convincing, we were able to get most of them to participate.  We made the mistake of bringing crayons and colored pencils.  They all looked at the crayons as if they were the most unusual things they have ever seen in their lives.  Maybe they were.  Luis got the bright idea to sharpen it so it would look more like a pencil, but got in trouble and the sharpener revoked from his area.  I thought it was clever.  Once the crayons were removed from the situation, the anarchy subdued considerably.  We were able to get some pretty nice drawings from them.  The 99-year-old woman was a tough one to get started, but she ended up doing a fantastic job.  Stef ended up convincing her, I am still not sure how.  One man said he wouldn't do it because he didn't have anything to be thankful for.  I tried to help him come up with ideas.  Family? No family. Friends.  No friends.  I looked around at the other 40 people in the room. No one here? Nope.  Your house, your life, the weather??? No, no, and "it's raining." Are you thankful that I am here talking to you Mr. Stubburn Pants? He finally laughed, said yes, but he couldn't draw.  So I drew an outline of myself, and he colored it in.  He even got the color of my clothes right. They served us lunch and we went home full and happy.  The place is pretty amazing.  It gives people something to look forward to everyday, and for most of them that is all they have.  The government pays to feed anyone over the age of 65 one meal a day, although most of them walk miles and miles for the company.  They usually feed about 100 people every day. They also do other art projects with them and offer some classes.  They wanted us to do an exercise class with them, but we did not come prepared for that.  I can picture it though. Us getting really into it, then elderly folks needing resuscitated.  Not a pretty picture.

We did the same project except with "Happy Birthday" cards at the daycare in Paragachi.  This was just as chaotic.  We only brought colored pencils after we learned from the crayon incident, but I think they may have actually liked the crayons better.  We mostly ended up drawing pictures of cakes and such for them to color in.  They were a little too young for the project.  Some of them turned out nice though, and only one kid got hurt.  I told him not to stand on top of the desk, but he had recently seen "The Dead Poet's Society," and felt inspired by the "O Captain my Captain” scene. It didn't end well for him.

We recently discovered that we could use Paul's projector to watch movies at our house.  We don't even need a computer.  Insert disc right into projector! Amazing.  We watched the Hangover 2 (filmed in a movie theatre so it was more authentic) projected on to our new white board (white board!!!).  A week or so later I realized how out of touch I was with most technology.  We got the projector from Paul again to watch another movie. We were all excited for this, I hadn't seen a movie other than The Hangover and various Salvester Stallone movies (on the bus) since before I came here in February.  So Jana, Alex, Stef and I were eating dinner when somehow the topic of United States geography came up.  We started drawing various maps (on the white board!!!), of different renditions of what we thought the states looked like and what was where.  This somehow led into trying to name all of the states and their capitals.  I tried to find a map of the states in the house, but alas, it did not exist.  With no technology available (WiFi/3G, no way), we had to do it from memory.  After about an hour and a half, we were able to name all 50 states and all but two of their capitals (Bismark & Phoenix).  I didn´t realize this was perhaps not a normal pastime until I was excitedly describing what we did on Friday night to Paul. Getting crazy in Pimampiro. 

On Wednesday we went to Ibarra with Paul for a meeting of all of the support staff for the Tierra Viva Project (Biointensive organic agriculture). We got to see everyone we know from the foundation in the same room. It was a lively, encouraging event. On the way to Ibarra a first happened. Just when I thought I had seen it all on the bus. Oh no, there is always more. The bus stopped at the police control as usual, but instead of coasting on through, a police officer came on and asked everyone for their IDs. We are not in the habit of traveling with our passports for safety reasons, so we didn´t have any identification.  We were asked to get off the bus, and wait. We were officially detained. We had no proof that we were legal in the country. Illegal immigrants. Dang. The police officer said we had to wait until someone showed up with our proof, or they were going to take us somewhere else.  So we called Stef, and asked her to bring our passports all the way from Pimampiro. Meanwhile, we called Paul, who spoke at length with the police officer, and got us off the hook.  Being volunteer nurses always helps the cause. After the Tierra Viva meeting, we met up with our friend Gavi (pronounced Gabby). We went with her boyfriend and his friend to a dance competition at one of the universities in Ibarra (La U). Later, we met up with Sonia, and took her and three of her friends to the Inti Raymi festival near Otavalo. The Inti Raymi festival (Sun God Festival) is celebrated every year during the winter (or summer) solstice. They prepare all year for this festival, so everything is supposed to be free, which it was more or less.  You are supposed to bathe in the waterfall at midnight to cleanse and begin again. There were Shamens there to help with this process. We walked to the waterfall around 11pm, got wet enough from all the spraying water, opted not to bathe (it was freezing!!), and walked back. I did rinse my feet in the water, so I think that counts. People actually bathed though, naked or almost naked. The Shamens rubbed/beat their body with special herbs. It was interesting to say the least. We stayed at the festival, drank warm “wine” and danced until 3:30 in the morning. We then took a taxi back to Ibarra, slept on Sonia´s floor for an hour or so, and got on the first bus back to Pimampiro. 

We were pooped, but had a busy day planned. We showered, put ourselves together, and prepared to be in a ceremony that rendered us Godmothers of 65 children in a nearby community called El Tejar.  How we got this “honor” is a little confusing. I think we may have been tricked into it, but we did it just the same.  All we had to do was hold a baby Jesus and do some other things and TA DA, we have 65 God children. We then played some games (for two hours) and ate some yummy food. Jana and I had to dance together holding a tomato between our foreheads without dropping it. We didn´t last very long, but we weren´t the first of the pairs to drop it either.  Not too shabby.  One of the main reasons we agreed to go to El Tejar was to see two orphans we were told about. It turns out that they are not true orphans. Their mom is alive, but lives in Quito and hasn´t seen them in over three years.  Their 21-year-old sister has been taking care of them, along with her own four-year-old daughter for the past nine years.  The grandfather also lives with them, but is getting rather old. The issue is that of many families in this part of Ecuador. The sister has to leave to find work, which leaves the children home by themselves (or with the elderly grandfather). Sometimes the sister is gone for weeks at a time, with no one checking in on the kids.  We talked to the sister for awhile, she was crying, saying that her little brother and sister are like her kids now and that she would do anything for them.  We brought up food and other household items for them, but that´s all we could really do.  When we have our house, we will be able to help people like her more. Those that are really trying hard to do the right thing, but have no odds in their favor.  So for now, we do what we can, and know we are working towards a good goal.