Cafecito, anyone?

I’ve never been a huge coffee drinker. Even in college, if I absolutely needed a caffeine jolt at any point in the day, the drink I ordered was something along the lines of one part coffee to two parts milk and flavored syrup.

Now that I live in Ecuador, Land of the Early Risers, I have been forced to give up my nocturnal ways and find myself getting out of bed before seven in the morning (read: definitely need coffee).



And it’s not just me; coffee is an integral part of daily life here. It is both a dire necessity and a social practice. When someone offers you a cafecito, you say, Why yes, thank you! and can expect to receive coffee, tea, or hot chocolate - but usually it is coffee.

Strangely, the coffee that is widely available and commonly consumed in Ecuadorian households is not what you might expect in a country that has all the right conditions for producing a top quality product. Certain regions and cities - Loja, for example - are known to produce greater quantities and better quality beans. In general, however, poor harvesting and processing practices prevent this country’s coffee from reaching its highest potential. I do hear about efforts from the Agricultural Department to focus on education and adherence to high standards (and some PCVs who are pitching in along these lines), but in the meantime, the cooperatives and organic farmers who currently produce high quality specialty beans export most of their product. Wah-wah. That leaves us with powdered coffee, the most prevalent of which is NesCafé, followed by a couple other household name brands from Ecuador and Colombia.

I don’t think your average José is as disappointed as I am by the whole coffee situation here, and maybe you’ll see why when I divulge The Ecuadorian Coffee Recipe:

1 – Take a mug of boiling-lava-hot water
2 – Stir in one spoonful of coffee powder
3 – Dump in THREE HEAPING SPOONFULS of sugar

Presto, cafecito!

I accepted a cup of coffee once from my host family and nearly didn’t live to tell the tale; these people really know how to rev your central nervous system into overdrive. After that I took to drinking the stuff black, having decided it was worth the risk of offending my hosts. They were not in the least bit offended – in fact, they were rather entertained – but they deduced incorrectly from this my idiosyncrasy that I did not like sugar at all.

I quickly put them to rights for fear of missing out on such delectable treats as flan, and manjar, and flan. Because that woulda been a real shame.

Happy Carnaval!

Last weekend, Menchie got to do a bit of traveling for Carnaval. We went to Bahía de Caráquez, San Vicente, and to visit PCV Corey at her site in the small town of Salinas de Manabí.

[Kids lying in wait along the roadside take advantage of the necessary slow-downs presented by speedbumps and potholes to spray foam on unsuspecting passengers, such as Jordan and Corey]

Carnaval, corresponding to Mardi Gras in the states (only on a much grander scale), unites the positives and negatives of Ecuadorian culture. Most people head to the beach, and all over the country adults and children alike celebrate by dousing each other with buckets of water, shooting each other with water pistols, and spraying each other with foam. It’s a lighthearted celebration, the one downside being that increased alcohol consumption can potentially bring to the foreground more insidious aspects of Ecuadorian culture, such as machismo. This can take many forms, and in the end one has to decide where to draw the line: As one friend said, I didn’t “integrate” into the fraternity drinking culture while attending college in the states, either.

We focused on the parts of Carnaval that included relaxing on the beach, eating delicious ceviche, walking the newly constructed bridge spanning the bay between San Vicente and Bahía (the longest in Manabí province), and cooking by the light of cell phones when the power went out. In the end, we had a grand ole time.


[Menchie is introduced to the traditional salchipapa dish: french fries and sliced hot dog topped with ketchup, mayo, lettuce, and tomato]

Hello, Again

March 1, 2011. I am sitting in bed with the door open to the breeze coming in off the balcony. To my left are streetlights and the autopista bridge traversing the nearby megamall silhouetted against the dull ochre sky, which stretches away through my window and the white bars my landlord affixed to the outside of it lest any ladrones should somehow scale the four stories to my floor with malintent. All windows have bars here. I see from behind bars, and I see other people behind bars every day when I walk to and from work. There are also gates, and padlocks, and jagged broken bottlenecks playing sentinel atop cement walls. If you have something worth keeping but don’t make the effort to keep it, perhaps you didn’t really think it worth keeping after all. [Photo: View from the balcony]

This is my life in the Peace Corps: I sit on a four-story balcony apartment with city lights and city traffic and city sirens blaring below, and I use my Peace Corps-issued cell phone to place an order for pizza (pepperoni, medium) to be delivered to my building. The delivery man will arrive on his moto in approximately thirty minutes. Since it is Tuesday, I will pay the Tuesday half price special.

Who knew!


Woven into this urban pastoral are other things like diseased street dogs and lines of Spanish-language poetry that always seem to find me at the most unexpected moments; beachside thefts and mountain festivals; bus scams and street vendors who have started giving me discounts off prices originally designated for la gringa. I am sitting here on the bed with my cat (I was hoping for something more like a horse, truth be told) thinking about life, and Peace Corps, and Guayaquil, and how being a gringa is sometimes something you want, and lots of other times it is something you don’t want. Very rarely is it whatever lies in between the two.

Example: You do not want to be a gringa when you are at a party and are trying to blend in and are ready to go home at what you think of as a reasonable hour. You do want to be a gringa when it is a holiday weekend, the bus terminal is complete chaos, and instead of standing in line for a two-hour wait, you can play the dumb gringa card and walk right up to the counter and buy your ticket then and there.


[Above: Some of the kids from Guasmo on a field trip to the library]

I did, however, have one of those in-between moments the other day. Walking down the street came a girl I know. She greeted me with the standard kiss on the cheek while her kid brother exclaimed, “Hey, but you’re white, look, you’re really white!” He addressed me formally, which seemed contradictory, the same as when my host brother uses the formal to tease me or make a joke at my expense. It is definitely a false formality, which perhaps also made me doubt the verity of what this young stranger was saying, because I glanced down at my arms to make sure they were really white. My acquaintance rolled her eyes and dragged her brother off, and I went on my way, the air above my head punctuated by a cloud of question marks.


It is seemingly inconsequential instances such as this that have given me pause in blogging after a trip home for Christmas. [Photo: A trip home for Christmas was a real treat - even got to visit in Arkansas] Please excuse the two-month hiatus. It was not planned, but it has given me time to store up some thoughts. Of the thousands of occurrences and interactions that form my daily life, I hope to present them to you all at least thoughtfully, since I’m not convinced the term “accurately” means much when speaking of anecdotes. A college professor once related an incident in which she was among a crowd of people who witnessed a hit-and-run, after which none of them could agree on the color of the offending car.

[Above: Jason teaches Sally how it's done]
[Below: Mom and Carl can't agree on how it's done]


In the past couple months, things have changed here and there; mostly I’ve grown accustomed to leading my own life in Guayaquil. I have an apartment now. The toilet is located in the shower, but otherwise it’s pretty standard as far as apartments go. I still don’t have a stove, so I tend to eat lots of cereal and PB&J sandwiches. I go for runs in the park. I’ve done a bit of traveling: seen a little more of this country, eaten a little more of its food, and drunk a little more of its beer (Pilsener, Club, and Brahma, to wit).

[Above: The toilet is in the shower. A multitasker's fantasy.]

These are the vacation months for Ecuadorians living on the coast, and everybody and their mom wants to participate in a vacation program. Actually, it’s mostly the moms. I am one month into running two vacation programs in the Casita de Chocolate, and mothers still interrupt class to ask if they can sign their children up. Interrupting class is not such a big deal; if someone comes to the door, you are expected to stop what you are doing and address them. The same goes for answering your cell phone: drop everything and answer it. In the middle of a conversation, meeting, or class.


[Above: There's a kreecher in my sleeping bag! - I didn't have a mattress for the first few days]

Upon completing Peace Corps Training in August, I felt exhausted and in need of a vacation. Instead, we were sent to site and expected to jump in at the “gear five” enthusiasm level new volunteers usually show. September through December was a time to conocer, to get to know the people and places around me. I got to know my host family, sitemates, and work colleagues (some of them well enough to pick nits out of their hair), but during these months I was also at a loss as to what I was supposed to be doing for work.


The more I’ve talked to other PCVs, the more I’m realizing that this is a process we all go through. Whether we are in the big city or in a village of 800 people surrounded by shrimp farms, we each face our own set of challenges. The hazards of city life, such as crossing the street in Guayaquil, aren’t present in a place like Salinas, Manabí; but then in Salinas you can’t leave work and retreat to the privacy of your apartment at the end of the day. Then again, Guayaquil’s streets and public transit systems give me access to tons of businesses, public spaces, food, and other resources, while Corey will grow closer to and become a part of her small community in a more integral way than I ever will with my counterparts in the city.

[Gram models the latest in hair pieces worn by fashionable Guayaquil ladies]
After spending half a year on 100% active cultural-exchange duty, a trip home for Christmas provided a much needed break. Coming back to Guayaquil afterwards felt like some magical switch had been flipped: I got back to the barrio and felt welcomed and at home. After talking to lots of people in the states about my work as a PCV, I was more enthusiastic about doing it. Also, the flight back to Ecuador helped me feel excited and relieved, rather than homesick, to be back.*


The Unsinkable Molly M. has given me tons of encouragement and helped me out by pointing me back to the basics: a volunteer’s job, any volunteer’s job, is to contribute new ideas and give a fresh perspective to the organizations they partner with. Next question: what Important New Ideas could I contribute? (This question used to hound me at every meeting with the women’s group, and at the weekly INFA teacher’s meetings, where I would sit and rack my brain for some idea that I could blurt out, which would simultaneously stun everyone with its brilliance and vault the entire program to a new level of excellence. Needless to say, this never happened. Usually I just sat there.) Well, I will probably be thinking about this question for the next year and half. [Photo: Molly pitches in at our Christmas party in Guasmo]

In the meantime, I’m working on developing the half-baked ideas that are already out there, both mine and the people’s with whom I work. The teens in the summer youth program want to continue meeting once school starts again, we are planning to paint an outdoor mural with some of the younger kids, and we are working on a grant to renovate the Casita de Chocolate. I find that it’s best to take advantage of the ideas and people who are willing to pitch in immediately rather than spending inordinate amounts of time planning and organizing. I’ll invite you, dear readers, to help me with the thinking part, and I will treasure whatever encouragement and insights you can give me upon the execution of projects I collaborate on here at site.

[Above: All in the family!]
[Below: The guy cousins show off their Ecuadorian soccer jerseys, and Sam shows off his penchant for flexing muscles]


*Mom and Dad dropped me off at the airport with time to spare before my flight took off, time I spent doubled over trying to control stomach spasms. I was doing a pretty good job of it, too, until we boarded the plane. I hadn’t taken two steps down the gangway before breakfast and lunch came back up. It is a testament to the general kindness of the Ecuadorian people that the woman behind me called for help and handed me my vomit-covered passport, which I’d dropped. They had to wheel me back up the gangway in a chair and halted the boarding process until the janitor came to clean up the mess. Finally, after I’d convinced the crew I was okay to fly, they let me on the plane. Since I was the last person to board, I did a walk of shame to reach my seat near the back row. Halfway through the air, come to find I was not finished being sick. It was not a fun flight. The only other time I was happier to be touching ground was that one time I got food poisoning in the Reno airport…some of you may remember what I am talking about.