The Mench Strikes Again

Menchie's been MIA lately.  For about a year, I'd say.  Maybe more.  He first appeared in Ecuador two years ago come November, and from there he started popping up in place after exotic place.  He's quite the little traveler.

His latest trip was one step more adventuresome: he braved the cold and windy slopes of Mount Chimborazo.  Chimborazo is an inactive volcano whose peak (approximately 20,500 feet) is the furthest possible point from the center of the earth.  This is due to the way the earth bulges and to the mountain's position on the globe (very close to the equator).

Summiting requires guides, climbing skills, and crampons, seeing as the top of the mountain is completely covered by glaciers.  We set our sights a little lower: making it to the bottom of the glacier. 

Day 1: We hiked from the base of the mountain, which is surrounded by fields and livestock, and made it past the first hut and up to the second by mid-afternoon.  The change in altitude was dramatic.  Immediately upon reaching the hut, we put on more layers, unrolled our sleeping bags, and climbed in to wait until dinnertime.

Upon which we woke up, cooked, ate, and promptly hunkered back down in our sleeping bags for the cold night ahead.

Every time I find myself in this type of sleeping situation, I say a special prayer that I will not have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night: it is pretty darn cold.

Usually though, I have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Which was the case on Chimborazo.

Despite the discomfort of forcing yourself out into the dark, windy night, the blessings of the situation always include a breathtaking view: dark shadows of the Andes rising up all around, perhaps with a pocket of light in the distance denoting a bigger city, and the sky above that looks so deep you can see layer upon layer of stars.  And then turning away from all the vastness and wriggling back into your own warm sleeping bag.

Day 2: In the morning, we woke to blue skies and a clear view of Chimborazo behind us:

Despite the strong winds (see photo above), we made it to the glacier and back in one piece.  Incidentally, did you know that if a piece of volcanic ash blows into your eye, it solidifies and cements itself to your eyeball?  ...But that's another story for another time.

Birds, and the Noises They Make

Not too long ago, a group of songbirds made it their habit to sing me awake in the morning.  (Well, I doubt that was their intent, but it was certainly their effect.)  Every morning for about two weeks, they'd alight on the shared terrace outside my apartment and warble away to their hearts' content. 

The first day it happened, I awoke confused: the reverberating chorus had an unearthly quality about it, as if it were playing inside my head, a surprising melody emanating from some unknown place within me, rather than coming from an external source.

I hopped out of bed and rushed to the window.  There were five of them perched on the windowboxes, and when they sang they threw back their heads - beaks pointing straight into the air - and bent their legs as if the gathered effort of the entire body were required to release the song inside.  And it may well have been; I saw images of my high school chorus instructor admonishing us to give ourselves "good support" and sing "from the diaphragm!"

The birds faced inward, throwing their song into the sound-amplifying space towards my door.  Apparently they liked to hear themselves sing.

 

Alas, one morning they failed to appear.  I was forced to drag my own sorry self out of bed, taking a bleary look out the window before resorting to coffee: No sign of them.  I felt a fleeting moment of regret at the absence of my morning songbuddies and then went about the business of waking up (which, for me, is slow and tedious).

 

Little did I know that fleeting moment would come back to haunt me.

 

Four or five nights ago, I woke up around 3:30am to a strange sound coming from the street outside.  It was a kind of hoarse, throaty sound somewhere between a moan and a hacking cough.  Strangely, it repeated at intervals.  That last sentence probably clued you, dear reader, in on what the sound actually was.  Later, around 6am, I would realize that the conjectures floating through my mind at that earlier, groggier hour - drunk guy retching; person with stomach ulcers; woman giving birth - made no sense in connection with the sound itself.  At the time, I simply pulled the pillow over my head and went back to sleep.

 

Lucidity at 6am, when the hacking sound renewed itself with a vengeance.  My eyes flew open.  It couldn't be.  Not here.  I live in the largest city in Ecuador.  There is an extensive bus system, about 20 different shopping malls, and if I really wanted to I could, for my own entertainment, pay money to bounce around inside a giant inflatable hamster ball floating on a pond.  What I'm trying to say is, There's infrastructure! commercialization! and something resembling culture!

 

YET.

 

Guess what else there is in Guayaquil?

 

I'll tell you what else there is in Guayaquil, there's roosters in Guayaquil.  Live roosters.  The kind my colleagues who live in rural areas complain about.  The kind that wake you up at all hours of the night and morning.  I should know, there's one living right down the street from me and he's been announcing his presence at the worst moments all week.

 

In a frenzy of research on how to get roosters to can it, I came across something helpful in the trusty advice column of a back issue of our Peace Corps-Ecuador volunteer magazine:

 

Do you know anything about training a rooster to crow at 6am instead of 3am?
Sleep Deprived in Súa

So here is the thing about roosters: they usually crow when they wake up.  If your rooster is crowing at 3am without any sign of dawn, I say there is a problem with its circadian rhythm.  One’s circadian rhythm is pretty much an internal clock dominated by a light exposure, namely the sun.  Nicknamed the “Third Eye,” the superchiasmatic nucleus is responsible for the functioning of the circadian rhythm in humans.  I’m not that familiar with avian neuroanatomy, but I would guess the rooster has some analogous nucleus which operates in a similar fashion.

So what do you do?  If the answer isn’t obvious enough, you simply need to blindfold your rooster.  When?  The best time to nab your male chicken is when it’s asleep, BUT don’t remove the blindfold until around 6am, or whatever time you want for that matter.  After a week or two of blindfolding, your rooster’s biological clock will start to adjust to this new schedule.  The only thing you’ll have to worry about is that you may have obviated its use as an alarm clock because you’ll be waking up before he does.

By the way, I knew all that stuff about circadian rhythms BEFORE I fact checked myself with various web-based resources.

This pearl of wisdom comes to us from Ronald, long-time advice columnist and our in-house expert on Everything.  Practically speaking, here is what Ronald's advice means for me:

 

Step 1 Find the rooster's house

Step 2 Sneak in and blindfold the rooster every night

Step 3 Sneak in and unblindfold the rooster every morning

 

As for a contingency plan...  Despite the fact that I've never harmed an animal in my life, I really would love to get my hands on this one. I'm sure I could manage.

Un poco picante

Ají is the name of the spicy peppers that grow in profusion in this part of the world.  At the market, the pepper vendor points them out to me in order of más picante (the stunted, unripened green ají) to medio picante (the ripe yellow, orange, and red peppers the size of my little finger) and then on to the other, bigger pepper species.  "Poco pica," he says of this last group, shaking his head despondently.

I ask for the ripe peppers and he hesitates, inquires don't I want the más picante?  I shake my head no, knowing from firsthand experience just how spicy the green ají are: last year, one of my more mischievous students picked one off a bush near the community center and offered it to me, he and his friends shrieking in laughter at my reaction (which was to spit it out rather violently).  Oftentimes it seemed that my students and I were there to entertain each other at each other's expense, me laughing at their childish shenanigans and they at my bumbling efforts to speak and act as an Ecuadorian.  It certainly made for an interesting atmosphere in the community center classroom, and I think one that was on the whole more productive than in their normal school classrooms, where they are expected to sit still, copy from the board, be silent unless called on, and behave.  In any case, we were all learning together, which made us more of a team than anything else.

Nowadays, I work less with the kids at the community center, but I still try to avoid the green ají.  The pepper vendor grabbed a plastic bag and scooped some peppers into it for me, tied it with a flourish, and accepted my quarter with a Gracias, que le vaya bien.  Frankly, I don't know how he makes a living.  The Ecuadorian palate generally abhors food that is even remotely spicy.  He must work hard to move the ají along, but the good-sized handful I bought for a mere 25 cents still left me wondering how in the world he makes a profit.

The one thing ají is used for on a common basis here is in a salsa of the same name.  Any restaurant will have a small bowl of ají on each table, and it's commonly made and kept in the house as well.  It goes with basically any dish you can imagine: empanadas, soups, stews, fried eggs...sortof like some people use ketchup in the States.  There are a few staple ingredients (the ají peppers, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt), but aside from those it is up to whoever's making it to decide what other ingredients to add, how to make it, and the level of picante they want it to be. 

I tend to get excited when I find a restaurant where the ají is actually spicy, and I'm routinely disappointed by the watered-down versions that are more popular.  So, in the spirit of being self-sufficient and adventuresome, I decided it was time to adopt the habit of making my own ají and keeping it at home.  Which is how I found myself buying a whole 25 cents worth of ají peppers at the market.

There are different types of ají; the recipe I use was found on this website, which features quite a few gems of Ecuadorian cuisine. 

The gist of it is, you squeeze the lime, mince up the rest of the ingredients, and throw everything in the blender with a bit of potable water.  It comes out looking something like the goo the Swamp Monster might live in (not too appetizing).

Typically, the ají you find here is heavily tomato based and will be red in color.  But this kind - this is the seriously spicy kind, sans tomato.  Like most other ají, it's fairly watery (so it doesn't compare much to Mexican-style salsa, probably what the majority of Americans are familiar with in the way of salsas), which simply means it soaks up well in rice, plantains, or whatever it's mixed with.  Dee-lish.

Best things about this ají sauce: you can tweak it however you want, and it gives a healthy dose of zing to pretty much everything.  My eyes are watering in anticipation.

Fiestas de Paccha, Parte Dos

10 Reasons to Love Small-Town Fiestas

 

 

Reason #1: The Food

Here, we have a cored half pineapple stuffed with three flavors of ice cream and topped with syrup, vanilla cookies, and sprinkles. 

The myriad pointy things sticking out of it are meant to be used as utensils.

Whitni demonstrates the usefulness of the straw, which may be employed to access the pineapple juice sitting below the level of the ice cream.

Get it, girl.

Reason #2: Dancing with Guns

 

Welcome to the rodeo.

 

Reason #3: Everybody's There

 

  

  Everybody, everybody.
The entire town.

     Reason #4: Pomp and Circumstance

It's all very pompous and circumstantial.
There must be at least one parade per day.

Today's was at the rodeo, as each participating hacienda
sent their team out to represent.

 

Reason #5: Prizes

In this case, the prize (for parading the best) was a jaba --
a crate of 12 Pilseners.
Just what you need before attempting to ride a buckin' bronco.

 

Reason #6: Watching Other People Do Dangerous Things While You Sit In Relative Safety

 

 

Reason #7: The Food, Again

Choclo con queso:
corn on the cob,
covered in cheese crumbs, on a stick. 

This is a popular Ecuadorian snack and may be commonly found throughout the coast and the Sierra. 

Reason #8: Clowns
In this case, rodeo clowns.

  

 

  


Reason #9: Música!

 

 

Reason #10: Paragliders

 

Granted, this is not a usual feature of small-town fiestas and should technically be included as a subcategory of #6.  In this instance, however, I made an exception, seeing as how the entire crowd watching a paraglider approach from the outlying mountains; waiting in anticipation as he landed just outside the rodeo grounds; and cheering wildly upon his grand entrance, provided a stunning conclusion to the rodeo.  Que viva Paccha!

A Tuna is Not a Fish

Tuna fish is eaten in coastal Ecuador fairly frequently.  It's considered something of a fast food, and you'd be "cheating" and not "really cooking" if you used it in your kitchen at home.  Nevertheless, people do open a can of tuna and dump it on top of stewed vegetables as a last-minute meal, or they mix it in with chilled pasta, hardboiled eggs, herbs, and lots of mayonnaise as a main course salad. 

If you come here and ask for tuna, however, you will not receive what you think you asked for. 

If you come here and ask for tuna, this is what you will get:

The edible fruit of a prickly pear cactus.

(If you come here and ask for atún, then you will receive fish in a can:

Most canned tuna comes in oil as opposed to water, making tuna the decidedly healthier snack option.)

Back to the tuna.

You can find them in supermarkets as well as outdoor markets. I've found that the supermarket versions are more reliably de-prickled, although I've still managed to get some spines stuck in my hand. Careful with these guys; you'll definitely want to make sure you get the skin off before putting the tuna anywhere near your mouth.

Once the skin is off, you can dig right in and eat it like an apple, or you can be civilized like me and Emily Post and cut it up as shown below.

 

 

The heart of the fruit is juicy and full of flavor, making it the perfect snack for a hot, sunny day.

 

You can't leave the table till you eat your cactus,

jordan

Fiestas de Paccha, Parte Uno

Last month, I visited my friend Whitni in her site of Paccha, in the cloud forest of Ecuador.  I brought two dozen live crabs as a gift from the coast for her host family, and we had fun with those.  After we ate them, we all settled back for an afternoon of watching the Olympics on TV, eventually all dozing off during the speedwalking marathon.  (It was a very exciting event, but we were very full of crab.)

 

The next day, however, marked the last day of Paccha's town festivals.  Town festivals are usually a good excuse for not getting much work done for about a month - I'm talking about for the townspeople, not for Peace Corps volunteers.  It is difficult, however, to get much work done when nobody else in town is doing much of anything.  On the last day of festivities in Paccha, not much work got done, but there was definitely no dozing permitted.  We had a full day, starting with Whitni's host family calling us over and telling us to report immediately to the local elementary school.  Knowing better than to ask questions, we got ready and headed over to the school.  We showed up to bleachers full of people ready to watch the school's presentation in honor of the festivals of Paccha.  They went a little something like this:

 

Dancing.

 

Munchkins.

 

Dancing munchkins.

(This, by the way, is why Ecuadorians can dance and Americans cannot: they learn it in school at age 5.)

 

The teachers were on standby to guide any stray munchkins who forgot the choreography.

 

These traditional dances usually involve the men (boys) and women (girls) splitting up and performing separately at some point during the routine.

My favorite part of the performance was when Emilia, the little girl in Whitni's host family, decided that she, too, wanted to be a part of the school dance.  She wriggled out of her mother's arms and began climbing down the bleachers.  Various adults picked her up and handed her down to the next row until she had reached the ground.  She walked over to the dancing girls and stepped right into the circle.

Precocious, much?

 

Next up came the teachers and staff:

 

Their performance was very similar to the children's, the chief difference being that they knew all the choreography and did not need teachers blowing whistles to signify the next part of the routine.

Also, they were perhaps more graceful than the munchkins, all flowing skirts and broad shoulders.

Little Emilia returned to her seat for this number. 

 

And that's what you can expect to see at a school presentation during the town festival.  This was only the first part of our day.  Upon the end of the dancing, Whitni and I prepared for what came next, the main attraction of the Paccha festival and what the townspeople had waited all month for: the rodeo.  To be continued...

September Garden Update

Before I left for a trip to Peru and Machu Picchu, nearly every one of my family members admonished me to "Take lots of pictures!!!" 

 

Two days into the trip, my camera battery died.  Don't blame me, blame the horse it was riding on; the camera, which was inside a bag lashed on top of a horse, must have been jostled to power on by the gait of the horse, thereby running down the battery while it was inside the bag.

 

But I digress.  This post is not about Machu Picchu, my camera, or the horse - because I don't have pictures.  While I'm waiting on my travel companion to send me her photos, here's a current-day update on the organic community garden.

 

A year ago this month, we planted in fresh soil in our newly built beds.

Today, we planted in second-year soil in newly repaired beds.

We had a few setbacks along the way, including the loss of PCV Mike, who was a major motivator to the group; and, more recently, a two-week period in which the health center next door had no water.

In short, the seedlings we planted a few weeks prior did not survive.  So, we figured it was time for round two.

This time, the group decided to plant the seedlings directly in the beds.  They allocated one end of the bed and prepared the soil with extra care, then divided it into rows and dropped the seeds in.

 

This is a departure from what we did this time last year, but it was the group's decision.  We will see what happens when the seedlings are left in the public domain, where the sunshine and the prying beaks of birds have equal access.  (We endeavored to protect from the birds by partially covering the seeds with a woven sack.)

 

 

Only time will tell the results of this experiment.  Keep your fingers crossed, por favor.

 

Over & out.