A big event

July 14th, 2010

My host mother had to go to Guayaquil for a few days; her niece is in the hospital. So this left me, Walter and Jose alone in the house for a few days. If you take one wheel off the car, it breaks down. The kitchen has come to a standstill and confusion ensues every meal time. The first morning after she had gone, I found Jose in the kitchen making juice and we went through our usual morning ritual hi-how-are-yas. However, his response was not his usual “bien.” Today he was sad, because his wife was gone and we are “mal cocinas” or bad cooks. “We are at war with the kitchen” was another popular phrase for the next few days.
We definitely ate less and poorer quality food in Carlota’s absence but we did not starve! And luckily I was not fed cat. Although every time I ate a meat I was told it was cat. My response would either be, “meow” or “this is one big cat, and it has the rib of a cow!”

July 15, 2010 the night before a life changing day.

There is one thing on all 66 of minds today, and it wasn’t home cooked American food. It was our site assignments. Tomorrow, we will find out where we will live and what we will be doing for the next 2 years of our lives.
It was all anyone could talk about today and with good reason. Everyone has different wants and wishes for their sites, but we all want to know, and we want to know now. We find out at 8:30am tomorrow, or 9:30am eastern time.
I am trying not to picture or hope for a particular location or job description. I do not want to be disappointed. It would not be to my benefit to go into a strange place with a negative point of view before I even got there.
I will certainly have trouble sleeping tonight! Well not too much trouble, seeing as how I can fall asleep on a bus full of smelly loud people.

July 16th, 2010 the day we find out where we will live and work for the next two years.

We all arrive at the same compound we played futbol at last Friday at 8am. Everyone was a little nervous, even if they did not say so. I certainly was. We were asked by one of the staff members to come around back of the compound to one of the fields.
A huge outline of Ecuador and its provinces lay before us created by an array of colored rose petals. One by one, our names were pulled from a hat and we were told our province. After a name was called, that person’s language facilitator walked them (usually skipping!) to their province. My name was called about halfway through. I was lead out to the province Azuay (near Cuenca) http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=es&gl=ec&biw=1440&bih=708&q=Ba%C3%B1os+Azuay+Ecuador&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=NThCTOjvAcK88gbO8PQN&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CAoQ_AU (copy and paste the link into your browser to see my site). There ended up being three of us in the province, me, Clinton and Curlee.
After everyone had been placed in their provinces it was time to move inside and find out more information about our sites. We were divided up into the three main groups of Youth and Families (mine), public health and HIV. In our respective rooms there were power point presentations with the name of our towns and our job descriptions! My town is Baños! The organization that I will be working with is Fundacion Pastoral Social de Baños Virgen de Guadalupe (FUPASBA). My counterpart is Padre Vicente Zaruma. Yes, that is Father Vicente Zaruma. The city has about 12,000 inhabitants.

Here is my job description:

• Family Disintegration: Help in the Senior Citizen Home, the Infant Nursery, and help the social workers that are part of the Center for the Protection of Human Rights-INFA.
• Lack of employment and poverty: Help identify and train the community members on different business alternatives that might be feasible in the community. Support the workshop “tailoring/Dress Making,” the different entrepreneurship trainings organized by the Pastoral Ministry of Baños and support the Tourism Plan of the Community.
• Help in the prevention of violence and abuse: installation of CPD-INFA in 2009, the Canton Council for Childhood and Adolescence made a strategic plan to protect children’s and adolescent’s rights in Baños. The parish committee for Childhood and Adolescence completed a diagnostic beginning in the year 2010.
• Perform activities for the youth: form youth groups, dance groups, public awareness campaigns on different topics, development of a strategic plan on behalf of the Parish Committee for Childhood and Adolescence, Proposal for an Art and Culture Center (approved by the vestry in 2009)
The community has also identified the following secondary activities (as if the first few didn’t seem daunting enough!)
• Assist in the development of projects and strategic plans for the parish
• Help with school gardens and teach agricultural techniques
• Teach English or ICT/computers in the elementary schools
• Negotiate economic assistance for community projects

So, it seems like I am going to be rather busy for the next 26 months of my life. I also found out that my new host family there is awesome, which is comforting.
Now I am sure you are wondering, how they pick sites for us. Well it is based off of your program, language level, personality and what the community requests. Here is what the Padre requested (translated from Spanish).
It is important that the volunteer is not a vegetarian because meat is an essencial part of the diet in Baños, we also eat a lot of cuy. Obviously it would be better if the volunteer was catholic, if not they should at least be respectful of the communities traditions. Also, the volunteer should have a good grip of the language.
The volunteer will work most of the time on his/her own and should have the professionalism to complete tasks without supervision. It is also important that they have initiative and demonstrate confidence at the same time (in the beginning) community members will not go to him with projects or other ideas and the volunteer must actively seek to engage in the Labors of the various people in the community.
There is a “great” volunteer there now who I will meet on my upcoming week long trip this Monday. It sounds like I have some big shoes to fill.
I forgot the mention; it takes about 13 hours by bus to get to Baños from Cayambe. This will be an interesting week.