Talk about an exciting day! Yesterday Erik and I took up the reins of the microfinancing program. Today Erik, Duncan (the old microfinance PD) Bibi (the country director) and I met with two professors from ESPE, the military polytechnic college in the Chillos Valley (remember, the valley where MPI works) to discuss small business classes. Dunc offered one of those last year, with mixed success, mostly due to the timeline he had to work with. Well, we are going to try again this year in a big new way. This class is offered by college professors, which is incredible, but honestly just not properly formatted for the people we work with. It is a 40 hour class that they teach in one week, with 5-eight hour sessions. Most of the people we want to offer this class to work during the day. I basically sat in on this meeting conducted in very rapid Spanish, but while I initially thought I picked up about 30% of what was discussed, it seems like I picked up about 80% with only one huge translation error (they will not in fact be charging us $200 for the class this time around). But beyond it being an exciting meeting because of how successful I feel my Spanish was, we talked about a big new idea. We (and I mean everyone at the table, as far as I can tell) want Erik and I to undergo training to be certified to teach instructors for this small business class, which would make us more than qualified to teach this class in Conocoto at our leisure. This is great for a whole bunch of reasons. First, if Erik and I are able to administer these classes, then we could teach them at a schedule that actually works for our community—probably every Saturday afternoon for two months, instead of one impossible week. Also, if we are certified to train instructors, we can find someone in the valley and train them to continue to teach these classes to others, making it a sustainable program, something we are always striving for with our growth philosophy. Third, we can change the classroom dynamic so our attendees are not scared away (a problem Dunc encountered last year). Finally, it just sounds cool to say that I am certified to train small business class instructors in Ecuador.
The only requirement for attending a class is that you are literate, though they do prefer those who have completed high school (colegio). However, to complete the coursework for be an instructor trainer, you need to either have a university degree (which, incidentally, I do. In fact, here one describes an undergraduate degree as a licensure; apparently I’m an economista licenciado.) or be pursuing one. So Erik and I need to make 13 friends who either have degrees or are actively pursuing one by September 1, when we call the professors back to set up the class. If everything goes according to plan (and we really hope it does) we should be done with the class and ready to teach our own by the end of September. It is really exciting to already have something concrete to work for.
Chao,
Chet
Song of the Blog: “Swagga Like Us” by Jay-Z & T.I.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Birthday weekend!
It has been an interesting—well, week since the last time I updated. I’d really rather be sleeping right now or reading “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” but feel like I owe all of you an update.
I turned 22 last Thursday the 16th here in Ecuador (though I personally have a belief I would have turned 22 no matter where I was in the world). Throughout the day there were three different cakes consumed in my honor, a new record! We nine PDs had all signed up for a cooking class in the afternoon, so that morning in language school we were each given an ingredient and told to go to the market with our teacher (the school is a 15ish minute walk from the Santa Clara Market). I was told to buy 10 tomatoes de arbol (Tree Tomatoes) which are a delicious and fairly unique fruit I’ve had the juice of several times. I like them much more than their fake vegetable cousin, the American tomato. During the 11am break, we had a huge cake as a snack for 30 or so people. That afternoon we took a fieldtrip to the Guayasamin museum. Guayasamin is Ecuador’s most famous artist, and boy is his art depressing. I encourage you to google him and see some of his art. He used his art for a lot of political and social commentary throughout Latin America, but it is all very dark, and, on a personal note I disagree with his view of the world. There was only one painting in this huge permanent museum devoted to him that I liked. On the way back home I got lured into the hostel where a lot of the current PDs stay in Quito (it is cheaper to grab a $7 room than take a $8-10 taxi and spend so much time commuting). Holly (another current PD) was waiting there with another cake! This was probably my favorite of the three. It was made from an “imported” American white cake box with homemade chocolate frosting and sprinkles. Holly had made it in Conocoto and bussed it in on her lap all the way into the Mariscol in downtown Quito. Cake number three was a smaller pineapple cake at dinner with my host family. Then I did my homework and went to bed. It was a good if perhaps not overly exciting day.
Friday was the real celebration. My teacher was sick on Friday, so I spent two hours being taught by Luis, the director of the school. I learned a future tense (conjugation of Ir + a + infinitive verb) and the past preterit for regular verbs, some pretty important stuff in my opinion. In the afternoon we went and lounged at a park for a while, but the best part of the day was the evening. We ate at a restaurant called Crepes and Waffles for my birthday, and it was incredible. A little pricey as far as food goes in Ecuador (entrees were 5 or 6 dollars) but worth it and it is apparently the place to go to fix a salad craving for the next year. We ended the evening with the 10pm showing of “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.” The theater was huge and new, and while we did not pay for VIP seats (apparently with recliners and a wait staff) we still had great seats that leaned back a little. The movie was in English with Spanish subtitles.
This Saturday we went to a town called Mindo, which is about an hour north of Quito in the Cloud Forest. The travel plans made for an early morning on Saturday. I was packed and out of the house by 7 and at our chosen meeting spot on 10 de Deciembre (one of the major North-South streets in Quito, close to our school, named after an important historical date) at 7:45. We taxied and then took the MetroBus up pretty much to the north bus terminal. Here things got interesting. We got off across from the MegaMaxi (a mall) and waited on the corner of the road for about an hour. Finally a bus to Mindo came by, and after Mark chased it down we all got to climb up a ladder into a window at the back of the bus (they wouldn’t open the door). We were later told that they have started sealing the doors at the station with tape so they can’t pick up people along the way, but that obviously doesn’t do any good. It was a little under two hours into Mindo driving through some of the most extreme I have ever seen. We were in mountain passes the whole time. These mountains are steep like the Rockies (probably even steeper, with narrower bases) and thickly forested all the way up to the top. It made for a very interesting drive. At first glance, Mindo looked like a sleepy little pueblo barely larger than its town square. That was more or less the impression I still have of the town, even after seeing that it is in fact bigger than I first realized. The hostel we stayed at had several freestanding houses that were constructed almost as tree houses, with several different levels and rooms shooting off on all sides. Rumor has it everyone except Krysta spent the afternoon napping and reading (Krysta spent the whole time reading). Despues de our siestas, we took a tour at “the chocolate factory” next door. A couple from Minnesota has recently opened a rival hostel and is also making their own chocolate. We got to see (and taste) the whole process, from popping open a pod to fermenting the seeds to grinding, separating, and finally sweetening. If you ask me, chocolate tastes terrible until they add sugar and a little milk at the very end, which was eye opening. This hostel did sell the best brownies ever made with their own chocolate, though. Other events from the weekend include eating pesto pizza at an Italian restaurant (I don’t expect to have that again in Ecuador unless I go back to Mindo) and making friends with some locals who were drinking and salsa-ing in the town square at night. The first part isn’t technically legal, but they only had minimal problems from the local police.
Sunday Mike, Mark, and I spent some time just wandering around Mindo’s outskirts. We did not make it to any of the waterfalls, which it is known for. We also only saw a couple of humming birds. We did meet plenty of mosquitoes though. I learned an incredible trick to repel mosquitoes: eating a tablespoonful or two of brewers’ yeast with B1 in it. Apparently it bonds with the alkalines in your blood (or something) and repels mosquitoes naturally! It doesn’t taste all that great, but I think it works wonders. We also got to enjoy some of the cleanest air in South America in Mindo—I’m told this is the case because of all the conservation efforts centered around all the different types of humming birds that live there. Mindo is in a region called the cloud forest, aptly named because, while it doesn’t rain as much as the “rain forest,” a forest has still sprung up because of all the moisture it absorbs from the surrounding clouds. It also rained both afternoons we were there.
On Monday we went to the teleferiqo, the ski gondola that for $8 ($4 if you have a censo, or foreigner card from the department of immigration, like I do) will take you up to the top of Mt. Pinchincha for beautiful views of Quito and the surrounding area. Well, the views are beautiful if it isn´t cloudy. We couldn’t see a thing. It was a total waste of an afternoon; I’ll have to go back. It was a valiant effort, though.
Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were exciting for very different reasons. On Tuesday Erik went to the hospital for what can only be described as “food poisoning from Mindo.” Poor Jackie also suffered, but did not go to the hospital because of it. I was spared, because I ate at a local place offering a trout almuerzo. Apparently everyone else ate at a Mexican restaurant. We all think it was probably the homemade ice cream only Jackie and Erik ate, but they both felt bad for most of Monday and spent most of Tuesday throwing up. I got to go see Erik in the hospital during my lunch break. Eulalia, our madre, called and asked if I could come and sit with Erik because she had to run to the bank. The Clinica Pinchincha is very new and very clean (I believe it’s the second best hospital in Quito) but it is not quite as private as an American hospital. I took Ian Flemming’s “From Russia with Love,” a James Bond thriller. I walked into Erik’s semi-private curtained area, said hello, and then explained how whenever I was sick when I was younger my Mom would read to me, and thought he might like the same treatment. Erik, still feeling sick and bored out of his mind, was very excited by the idea. I spent the next hour reading aloud, which is much harder than I had previously thought. Bibi, our new country director, relieved me and everyone except Erik and Jackie headed out to Conocoto to have our first of what will be many, many talks with the current program directors about what exactly they do and we will do. After Duncan explained the microfinance program and the library, I got pulled aside by Eliah to work on the community surveys while everyone else got to take a tour of the library and play some ping pong. Don’t get me wrong, I volunteered to be in charge of the community surveys. Two years ago MPI spent a ton of time administering community asset surveys to everyone in their surrounding communities, to find out who has what skills and what other things people want to learn, in the hope that we can use the assets the community already has (i.e. having a local carpenter teach a class about carpentry rather than some outsider) to strengthen the community. I have some experience with data sets in general and this is the kind of thing that seems like it’s a real chance to practice some developmental economics. I will have to learn how to use SPSS, a new statistical package, but the more skills like that I have the better.
Wednesday was also programmatically exciting. After the PD talk of the day, Duncan held the Microfinance interest meeting, which consisted of myself and Erik. So that will officially be one of my tasks for the next year, which I am super pumped about. Dunc and Eliah spent a lot of time last year trying to get the microfinancing coop, EPV (Esperanza y Progreso del Valle, or hope and progress of the valley) incorporated with a larger Ecuadorian microfinance network, sadly to no avail because of the size (too small) and (lack of) transparency of EPV. But, there are a lot of really exciting opportunities for the microfinance program to grow for next year, and I can’t wait to get started. I already have one major idea, which I will keep secret for now. But regardless, I am excited that I will 100% be working on the program that interested me most and have a long transition report to read (and a computer program to learn how to use).
Chao (the proper spelling and the ONLY way Ecuadorians say goodbye)
Chet
Song of the blog: “New Millennium Homes,” by Rage Against the Machine
I turned 22 last Thursday the 16th here in Ecuador (though I personally have a belief I would have turned 22 no matter where I was in the world). Throughout the day there were three different cakes consumed in my honor, a new record! We nine PDs had all signed up for a cooking class in the afternoon, so that morning in language school we were each given an ingredient and told to go to the market with our teacher (the school is a 15ish minute walk from the Santa Clara Market). I was told to buy 10 tomatoes de arbol (Tree Tomatoes) which are a delicious and fairly unique fruit I’ve had the juice of several times. I like them much more than their fake vegetable cousin, the American tomato. During the 11am break, we had a huge cake as a snack for 30 or so people. That afternoon we took a fieldtrip to the Guayasamin museum. Guayasamin is Ecuador’s most famous artist, and boy is his art depressing. I encourage you to google him and see some of his art. He used his art for a lot of political and social commentary throughout Latin America, but it is all very dark, and, on a personal note I disagree with his view of the world. There was only one painting in this huge permanent museum devoted to him that I liked. On the way back home I got lured into the hostel where a lot of the current PDs stay in Quito (it is cheaper to grab a $7 room than take a $8-10 taxi and spend so much time commuting). Holly (another current PD) was waiting there with another cake! This was probably my favorite of the three. It was made from an “imported” American white cake box with homemade chocolate frosting and sprinkles. Holly had made it in Conocoto and bussed it in on her lap all the way into the Mariscol in downtown Quito. Cake number three was a smaller pineapple cake at dinner with my host family. Then I did my homework and went to bed. It was a good if perhaps not overly exciting day.
Friday was the real celebration. My teacher was sick on Friday, so I spent two hours being taught by Luis, the director of the school. I learned a future tense (conjugation of Ir + a + infinitive verb) and the past preterit for regular verbs, some pretty important stuff in my opinion. In the afternoon we went and lounged at a park for a while, but the best part of the day was the evening. We ate at a restaurant called Crepes and Waffles for my birthday, and it was incredible. A little pricey as far as food goes in Ecuador (entrees were 5 or 6 dollars) but worth it and it is apparently the place to go to fix a salad craving for the next year. We ended the evening with the 10pm showing of “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.” The theater was huge and new, and while we did not pay for VIP seats (apparently with recliners and a wait staff) we still had great seats that leaned back a little. The movie was in English with Spanish subtitles.
This Saturday we went to a town called Mindo, which is about an hour north of Quito in the Cloud Forest. The travel plans made for an early morning on Saturday. I was packed and out of the house by 7 and at our chosen meeting spot on 10 de Deciembre (one of the major North-South streets in Quito, close to our school, named after an important historical date) at 7:45. We taxied and then took the MetroBus up pretty much to the north bus terminal. Here things got interesting. We got off across from the MegaMaxi (a mall) and waited on the corner of the road for about an hour. Finally a bus to Mindo came by, and after Mark chased it down we all got to climb up a ladder into a window at the back of the bus (they wouldn’t open the door). We were later told that they have started sealing the doors at the station with tape so they can’t pick up people along the way, but that obviously doesn’t do any good. It was a little under two hours into Mindo driving through some of the most extreme I have ever seen. We were in mountain passes the whole time. These mountains are steep like the Rockies (probably even steeper, with narrower bases) and thickly forested all the way up to the top. It made for a very interesting drive. At first glance, Mindo looked like a sleepy little pueblo barely larger than its town square. That was more or less the impression I still have of the town, even after seeing that it is in fact bigger than I first realized. The hostel we stayed at had several freestanding houses that were constructed almost as tree houses, with several different levels and rooms shooting off on all sides. Rumor has it everyone except Krysta spent the afternoon napping and reading (Krysta spent the whole time reading). Despues de our siestas, we took a tour at “the chocolate factory” next door. A couple from Minnesota has recently opened a rival hostel and is also making their own chocolate. We got to see (and taste) the whole process, from popping open a pod to fermenting the seeds to grinding, separating, and finally sweetening. If you ask me, chocolate tastes terrible until they add sugar and a little milk at the very end, which was eye opening. This hostel did sell the best brownies ever made with their own chocolate, though. Other events from the weekend include eating pesto pizza at an Italian restaurant (I don’t expect to have that again in Ecuador unless I go back to Mindo) and making friends with some locals who were drinking and salsa-ing in the town square at night. The first part isn’t technically legal, but they only had minimal problems from the local police.
Sunday Mike, Mark, and I spent some time just wandering around Mindo’s outskirts. We did not make it to any of the waterfalls, which it is known for. We also only saw a couple of humming birds. We did meet plenty of mosquitoes though. I learned an incredible trick to repel mosquitoes: eating a tablespoonful or two of brewers’ yeast with B1 in it. Apparently it bonds with the alkalines in your blood (or something) and repels mosquitoes naturally! It doesn’t taste all that great, but I think it works wonders. We also got to enjoy some of the cleanest air in South America in Mindo—I’m told this is the case because of all the conservation efforts centered around all the different types of humming birds that live there. Mindo is in a region called the cloud forest, aptly named because, while it doesn’t rain as much as the “rain forest,” a forest has still sprung up because of all the moisture it absorbs from the surrounding clouds. It also rained both afternoons we were there.
On Monday we went to the teleferiqo, the ski gondola that for $8 ($4 if you have a censo, or foreigner card from the department of immigration, like I do) will take you up to the top of Mt. Pinchincha for beautiful views of Quito and the surrounding area. Well, the views are beautiful if it isn´t cloudy. We couldn’t see a thing. It was a total waste of an afternoon; I’ll have to go back. It was a valiant effort, though.
Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were exciting for very different reasons. On Tuesday Erik went to the hospital for what can only be described as “food poisoning from Mindo.” Poor Jackie also suffered, but did not go to the hospital because of it. I was spared, because I ate at a local place offering a trout almuerzo. Apparently everyone else ate at a Mexican restaurant. We all think it was probably the homemade ice cream only Jackie and Erik ate, but they both felt bad for most of Monday and spent most of Tuesday throwing up. I got to go see Erik in the hospital during my lunch break. Eulalia, our madre, called and asked if I could come and sit with Erik because she had to run to the bank. The Clinica Pinchincha is very new and very clean (I believe it’s the second best hospital in Quito) but it is not quite as private as an American hospital. I took Ian Flemming’s “From Russia with Love,” a James Bond thriller. I walked into Erik’s semi-private curtained area, said hello, and then explained how whenever I was sick when I was younger my Mom would read to me, and thought he might like the same treatment. Erik, still feeling sick and bored out of his mind, was very excited by the idea. I spent the next hour reading aloud, which is much harder than I had previously thought. Bibi, our new country director, relieved me and everyone except Erik and Jackie headed out to Conocoto to have our first of what will be many, many talks with the current program directors about what exactly they do and we will do. After Duncan explained the microfinance program and the library, I got pulled aside by Eliah to work on the community surveys while everyone else got to take a tour of the library and play some ping pong. Don’t get me wrong, I volunteered to be in charge of the community surveys. Two years ago MPI spent a ton of time administering community asset surveys to everyone in their surrounding communities, to find out who has what skills and what other things people want to learn, in the hope that we can use the assets the community already has (i.e. having a local carpenter teach a class about carpentry rather than some outsider) to strengthen the community. I have some experience with data sets in general and this is the kind of thing that seems like it’s a real chance to practice some developmental economics. I will have to learn how to use SPSS, a new statistical package, but the more skills like that I have the better.
Wednesday was also programmatically exciting. After the PD talk of the day, Duncan held the Microfinance interest meeting, which consisted of myself and Erik. So that will officially be one of my tasks for the next year, which I am super pumped about. Dunc and Eliah spent a lot of time last year trying to get the microfinancing coop, EPV (Esperanza y Progreso del Valle, or hope and progress of the valley) incorporated with a larger Ecuadorian microfinance network, sadly to no avail because of the size (too small) and (lack of) transparency of EPV. But, there are a lot of really exciting opportunities for the microfinance program to grow for next year, and I can’t wait to get started. I already have one major idea, which I will keep secret for now. But regardless, I am excited that I will 100% be working on the program that interested me most and have a long transition report to read (and a computer program to learn how to use).
Chao (the proper spelling and the ONLY way Ecuadorians say goodbye)
Chet
Song of the blog: “New Millennium Homes,” by Rage Against the Machine
Friday, July 17, 2009
The 2009-2010 Program Directors
Here we all are! This picture was taken in Miami, during orientation.
Cuaderno de un economista licenciado
As you may or may not know, my first true experience with Latin America was in July 2007 when I spent a week in Cuba. While I had spent three spring breaks building houses in Tijuana before that, looking back now I can see that those trips were geared towards building houses and not towards immersing us in life in Mexico. The differences between daily life in Havana and Austin are striking, and since experiencing this I have always found it interesting to compare the infrastructure and technology I see in new countries to other places I’ve been.
The roads are in excellent condition here in Quito. Almost all of them are smoothly paved with asphalt; the rest are smoothly cobbled with large cinderblock hexagons like I saw in Nicaragua. I have seen one dirt road, and it was more like an alleyway in the Chillos Valley (where we work). I find this especially impressive seeing as how Quito is literally up in the mountains. Quito’s mountainous location makes it hard to have long straight roads like those in centrally-planned Cuba, but they still don’t strike me as overly curvey or even as serpentine as the roads in Tijuana. Perhaps the fact that water almost never freezes in cracks contributes to the roads’ smooth surfaces. Roads in general strike me as a key component of infrastructure for growth (other more professional economists agree on this). However, I hear it takes 30 hours to get to Peru, so I will reserve judgment until I see a little more of the country.
Public transportation is very accessible. Busses all over the city run about as frequently as they do in Dublin, Ireland. It could easily be that I was traveling with the wrong group, but I do not remember this much accessible public transportation in either Nicaragua or Cuba. Neither Nashville nor Austin is known for its accessible public transportation, so I have relatively little to compare Quito’s public transportation to in the United States. I guess I should ask Shawn, our resident New Yorker, how Quito compares. There is no printed bus schedule that I have seen, but I really cannot think of a time we have waited more than about five minutes for the bus we wanted. I would classify the busses as “clean,” even if they would not pass an emissions test in America. From what I can tell the busses are safe to ride even at night, which I know is more than can be said in some parts of America. It costs $0.25 to hop on each bus in the city, no matter how far you ride. If you keep your eyes peeled and find the right bus, you can probably get anywhere in the city for a quarter. You can get from the Chillos Valley (where MPI lives and works), to anywhere in Quito for about $0.50. However, if you are living on two dollars a day this fare changes from “accessible” to “impossible.” As a final note on busses for now, the current directors guessed that there is something like 80 different bus companies that operate in Quito and the surrounding area. I wonder if this is an example of almost perfect competition (remember, all busses are $0.25) or an example of a place where a natural monopoly should have occurred.
Food is cheap. Shockingly cheap for a Norteamericano. You can get a gallon of strawberries or 30 small oranges or a star fruit or many, many other things for one American dollar (remember, Ecuador dollarized and does not mint anything besides 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 centavo coins, which are used interchangeably with US change. They also love the dollar coin here; it is estimated that about half the dollar coins in circulation are in Ecuador). Eating lunch out normally costs between $1.50 and $2.00; if you really splurge you can end up paying $4.00. It is hard for me to tell, but I would say prices seem about comparable to food prices in Nicaragua. Ecuadorians are very proud of the fact that so many fruits and vegetables grow here, and rightfully so; you can eat a much tastier, healthier, more balanced meal here then you ever could in Ireland for a fraction of the price. Food also does not seem to be scarce here, like it is in Cuba. Seeing how we are in the mountains, it is hard for me to trust the fish for sale in the markets of Sanloqui (other than trout).
Water is “passable” a best. At its worst it can do some real damage. We are encouraged to drink the water and eat the food in Quito, but we use filtered water in the house out in Conocoto. Even in Quito, it is easy to catch a parasite (I have already heard too many stories). From what I can tell, this problem affects gringos much more than Ecuadorians (surprise!). I think I once heard that it takes a clean population to have clean water, so I don’t really know how to fight this problem. My plan is to make friends with the first parasite I get and try to set up a symbiotic relationship with it. Naming it should help.
Inflation is currently low, but that hasn´t always been the case. Ecuador Dollarized in 2000, and before that inflation was apparently high (I had a discussion about this with mí profesora yesterday, but I still have a lot to learn). When they dollarized, prices jumped way up, but since then they have apparently been pretty constant. Things produced in Ecuador are pretty good, imported goods, especially electronics, are pretty expensive.
There are plenty of other major features of life here, like healthcare and education, that I just don’t know enough about to form an opinion on yet. But I’ll be sure to continue to take notes on what I see.
Chao!
Chet
Song of the Blog: The name escapes me, but one of those traditional tunes you sing to babies. Emelio (6 months old) was playing with something that played one of those songs a lot yesterday.
The roads are in excellent condition here in Quito. Almost all of them are smoothly paved with asphalt; the rest are smoothly cobbled with large cinderblock hexagons like I saw in Nicaragua. I have seen one dirt road, and it was more like an alleyway in the Chillos Valley (where we work). I find this especially impressive seeing as how Quito is literally up in the mountains. Quito’s mountainous location makes it hard to have long straight roads like those in centrally-planned Cuba, but they still don’t strike me as overly curvey or even as serpentine as the roads in Tijuana. Perhaps the fact that water almost never freezes in cracks contributes to the roads’ smooth surfaces. Roads in general strike me as a key component of infrastructure for growth (other more professional economists agree on this). However, I hear it takes 30 hours to get to Peru, so I will reserve judgment until I see a little more of the country.
Public transportation is very accessible. Busses all over the city run about as frequently as they do in Dublin, Ireland. It could easily be that I was traveling with the wrong group, but I do not remember this much accessible public transportation in either Nicaragua or Cuba. Neither Nashville nor Austin is known for its accessible public transportation, so I have relatively little to compare Quito’s public transportation to in the United States. I guess I should ask Shawn, our resident New Yorker, how Quito compares. There is no printed bus schedule that I have seen, but I really cannot think of a time we have waited more than about five minutes for the bus we wanted. I would classify the busses as “clean,” even if they would not pass an emissions test in America. From what I can tell the busses are safe to ride even at night, which I know is more than can be said in some parts of America. It costs $0.25 to hop on each bus in the city, no matter how far you ride. If you keep your eyes peeled and find the right bus, you can probably get anywhere in the city for a quarter. You can get from the Chillos Valley (where MPI lives and works), to anywhere in Quito for about $0.50. However, if you are living on two dollars a day this fare changes from “accessible” to “impossible.” As a final note on busses for now, the current directors guessed that there is something like 80 different bus companies that operate in Quito and the surrounding area. I wonder if this is an example of almost perfect competition (remember, all busses are $0.25) or an example of a place where a natural monopoly should have occurred.
Food is cheap. Shockingly cheap for a Norteamericano. You can get a gallon of strawberries or 30 small oranges or a star fruit or many, many other things for one American dollar (remember, Ecuador dollarized and does not mint anything besides 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 centavo coins, which are used interchangeably with US change. They also love the dollar coin here; it is estimated that about half the dollar coins in circulation are in Ecuador). Eating lunch out normally costs between $1.50 and $2.00; if you really splurge you can end up paying $4.00. It is hard for me to tell, but I would say prices seem about comparable to food prices in Nicaragua. Ecuadorians are very proud of the fact that so many fruits and vegetables grow here, and rightfully so; you can eat a much tastier, healthier, more balanced meal here then you ever could in Ireland for a fraction of the price. Food also does not seem to be scarce here, like it is in Cuba. Seeing how we are in the mountains, it is hard for me to trust the fish for sale in the markets of Sanloqui (other than trout).
Water is “passable” a best. At its worst it can do some real damage. We are encouraged to drink the water and eat the food in Quito, but we use filtered water in the house out in Conocoto. Even in Quito, it is easy to catch a parasite (I have already heard too many stories). From what I can tell, this problem affects gringos much more than Ecuadorians (surprise!). I think I once heard that it takes a clean population to have clean water, so I don’t really know how to fight this problem. My plan is to make friends with the first parasite I get and try to set up a symbiotic relationship with it. Naming it should help.
Inflation is currently low, but that hasn´t always been the case. Ecuador Dollarized in 2000, and before that inflation was apparently high (I had a discussion about this with mí profesora yesterday, but I still have a lot to learn). When they dollarized, prices jumped way up, but since then they have apparently been pretty constant. Things produced in Ecuador are pretty good, imported goods, especially electronics, are pretty expensive.
There are plenty of other major features of life here, like healthcare and education, that I just don’t know enough about to form an opinion on yet. But I’ll be sure to continue to take notes on what I see.
Chao!
Chet
Song of the Blog: The name escapes me, but one of those traditional tunes you sing to babies. Emelio (6 months old) was playing with something that played one of those songs a lot yesterday.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
¡Bienvenidos a Ecuador!
Buenos dias Donors, friends, and family!
(Writers note, the sentence fragments have been added for emphasis. Though I am told I will slowly lose my ability to speak and write proper English over the next year.)
It has been quite a week. Tuesday (7 days ago as I write this) I flew to Miami for three days of training with all the new program directors from Nicaragua and Ecuador. They. Are. Incredible. It was a blast getting to meet them and I am sure the programs in Nicaragua are in very capable hands. Right now, I’d classify the Ecuador PDs as a group of very different but energetic, caring individuals. At training we got to hear the short but vibrant history of MPI (from VIDA—Vanderbilt Intercambio De Amor {Vanderbilt exchange of love}—a group of friends who went to Peru for a spring break trip to the organization with the two permanent sites in Latin America it is today.
But we soon learned that the real reason we were in Miami was so that the Ecuador PDs (including myself) could apply for volunteer visas from the Ecuadorian Consulate. Before showing up in Miami we had quite a scavenger hunt for all the things we needed for the visa: an original copy of our birth certificate, four passport sized photos, a certificate from our doctor saying we did not have any communicable diseases (especially HIV) with attached labwork, and a certificate from the police saying we did not have a criminal record. It was an hour and twenty minute drive from our clean, beachfront budget hotel in Ft. Lauderdale to the Miami consulate, but we got there at 9:20 (20 minutes after it opened) turned over all our stuff and sat down. And waited. We waited until about 12:30, when a lady came out and told us we did not have the proper police reports; we needed them from Miami. We got lost a couple of times along the way but did manage to find the Miami Police Headquarters, where we were informed that because none of us were citizens of Miami-Dade County, we obviously would not have any criminal records so they could not give us a background check. Mark, the country director, then called both the County office and the central police station in Tallahassee, Fl only to get the same response. Dejected, we ate lunch at a small delicious Cuban restaurant near the police station around 2 and got back to the Consulate at 2:50, ten minutes before it closed on Thursday. Mark was told that the police reports from our home cities would work after all and to come back tomorrow (Friday, the day we were all flying to Ecuador) at 11:30. They kept our passports overnight. Incidentally, I’m told a US passport is worth about $5000 on the black market here in Ecuador. It must have been a very stressful day for Mark, but for the rest of us it was just a lot of sitting and getting to know each other. The Nicaragua PDs don´t need anything like this and spent the day at the beach. We only had to wait an hour Friday morning to actually sign our visas and get our passports back, which meant we made it to the airport on time for the first round of flights. Because we were in charge of booking our own tickets, people left at all different times. Once I cleared security, it was a pretty uneventful trip (to clarify, clearing security was also uneventful). I did learn several things you should keep in mind when you plan your next trip to Ecuador:
1)It is 4 hours 40 minutes from Houston to Ecuador
2)The Quito airport is right SMACK in the middle of downtown (until August 2010, when it will move south into the valley about an hour south)
3)QIO is one of the top ten most dangerous airports in the world to fly into, because of the mountains.
4)Sarah and Krysta inform me that if you fly LAN, they will make you wear a medical mask the entire time because of that recent H1N1 scare. I wouldn’t know; I flew Continental.
We landed at 11:10 Central time (which is currently Quito time, though because Ecuador doesn’t believe in saving their precious, this will change. Perhaps living on the equator has that effect on sunlight) and took about an hour to clear customs, which included having my temperature taken by infrared camera. Luis, the director of the language school we will all study at for the next three weeks, was there to greet us. I was one of three PDs whose host families were unable to come and pick us up from the airport. Luis crammed the three of us and all of our luggage (two huge bags a piece) into the smallest SUV I have ever seen and took us to La Floresta, the neighborhood we are staying. I was led in, said hello, bumped clumsily into a lot of furniture, shown my room and went to bed.
My family is great. My host mom is Eulalia, who lives with her sister Emelia and 80 year old mother, Abuelita. Their house is huge, freestanding, and beautiful. The house is bigger then my parents back in Austin, although the individual rooms are a little smaller. The shower has hot water, which I can already see is a necessity in a climate such as Quito; the only problem with it is that the water is heated by an electric showerhead with wires sticking out of it (called a widowmaker by some of my more humorous new friends) which runs out of “steam” very quickly. My family is very nice and tries very hard to talk to me solemente en Español. I haven’t had a dinner last under an hour, which is great even though I’m ready for bed by about 8:30 and have readings from Manna and homework from the language school to do. In general, Ecuadorians talk slow enough to be able to pick out individual words even when they are talking to each other, which should make learning easier. The food is great but very different than what I am used to. I have café in the morning, (normally a bowl of cut up fruit with yogurt sauce and un pan), a large almuerzo, and another café at dinner. Dinner is always a soup, made from scratch, which is incredible even if I can only identify about half of what I’m eating. Eulalia’s family is huge: she is one of ten children. There is always family in and out of the house. Yesterday was Emelia’s birthday, there were 18 family members present. I’m told there will be a big barbecue on July 25, and that there are 60 total family members.
It has been a real whirlwind of activity since I got here. On Saturday morning we met at the language school, about a half hour walk downhill, and then rode the busses out to Conocoto, in the Chillos Valley, where I will be living and working for the next year. The house is huge, great, and has an incredible rooftop with a view of Quito and the surrounding mountains. I have been to outdoor market in Sanloqui, the largest outdoor market in Quito. This is the market we will buy most of our fruit and vegetables for the next year. On Monday, I started intensive Spanish classes which will run for the next three weeks. I have one-on-one intensive tutoring four hours a morning. I have only had two lessons, but I am optimistic about how much I will be able to learn in three weeks. I definitely have a lot of homework and vocabulary to memorize.
So how is what I’m doing different from a vacation so far? Well, we certainly have had out share of just getting to see the sites. But, in addition to spending a lot of my time and energy learning how to communicate (es muy importante), I/we are learning the lay of the city, how to use the busses (I think I might have just about figured it out yesterday) and where to buy things. I have also gotten to see the library/teen center where Manna runs its programs and hear about the programs we will run and what the communities we will be in are like. Next week the seminars about how to run the current programs will begin, so I should be able to report more about my future work soon.
I´ll try to get some pictures and more of a description of what the country is like soon. Chao!
Chet
Song of the blog: "Bonjour" from Disney´s Beauty and the Beast
(Writers note, the sentence fragments have been added for emphasis. Though I am told I will slowly lose my ability to speak and write proper English over the next year.)
It has been quite a week. Tuesday (7 days ago as I write this) I flew to Miami for three days of training with all the new program directors from Nicaragua and Ecuador. They. Are. Incredible. It was a blast getting to meet them and I am sure the programs in Nicaragua are in very capable hands. Right now, I’d classify the Ecuador PDs as a group of very different but energetic, caring individuals. At training we got to hear the short but vibrant history of MPI (from VIDA—Vanderbilt Intercambio De Amor {Vanderbilt exchange of love}—a group of friends who went to Peru for a spring break trip to the organization with the two permanent sites in Latin America it is today.
But we soon learned that the real reason we were in Miami was so that the Ecuador PDs (including myself) could apply for volunteer visas from the Ecuadorian Consulate. Before showing up in Miami we had quite a scavenger hunt for all the things we needed for the visa: an original copy of our birth certificate, four passport sized photos, a certificate from our doctor saying we did not have any communicable diseases (especially HIV) with attached labwork, and a certificate from the police saying we did not have a criminal record. It was an hour and twenty minute drive from our clean, beachfront budget hotel in Ft. Lauderdale to the Miami consulate, but we got there at 9:20 (20 minutes after it opened) turned over all our stuff and sat down. And waited. We waited until about 12:30, when a lady came out and told us we did not have the proper police reports; we needed them from Miami. We got lost a couple of times along the way but did manage to find the Miami Police Headquarters, where we were informed that because none of us were citizens of Miami-Dade County, we obviously would not have any criminal records so they could not give us a background check. Mark, the country director, then called both the County office and the central police station in Tallahassee, Fl only to get the same response. Dejected, we ate lunch at a small delicious Cuban restaurant near the police station around 2 and got back to the Consulate at 2:50, ten minutes before it closed on Thursday. Mark was told that the police reports from our home cities would work after all and to come back tomorrow (Friday, the day we were all flying to Ecuador) at 11:30. They kept our passports overnight. Incidentally, I’m told a US passport is worth about $5000 on the black market here in Ecuador. It must have been a very stressful day for Mark, but for the rest of us it was just a lot of sitting and getting to know each other. The Nicaragua PDs don´t need anything like this and spent the day at the beach. We only had to wait an hour Friday morning to actually sign our visas and get our passports back, which meant we made it to the airport on time for the first round of flights. Because we were in charge of booking our own tickets, people left at all different times. Once I cleared security, it was a pretty uneventful trip (to clarify, clearing security was also uneventful). I did learn several things you should keep in mind when you plan your next trip to Ecuador:
1)It is 4 hours 40 minutes from Houston to Ecuador
2)The Quito airport is right SMACK in the middle of downtown (until August 2010, when it will move south into the valley about an hour south)
3)QIO is one of the top ten most dangerous airports in the world to fly into, because of the mountains.
4)Sarah and Krysta inform me that if you fly LAN, they will make you wear a medical mask the entire time because of that recent H1N1 scare. I wouldn’t know; I flew Continental.
We landed at 11:10 Central time (which is currently Quito time, though because Ecuador doesn’t believe in saving their precious, this will change. Perhaps living on the equator has that effect on sunlight) and took about an hour to clear customs, which included having my temperature taken by infrared camera. Luis, the director of the language school we will all study at for the next three weeks, was there to greet us. I was one of three PDs whose host families were unable to come and pick us up from the airport. Luis crammed the three of us and all of our luggage (two huge bags a piece) into the smallest SUV I have ever seen and took us to La Floresta, the neighborhood we are staying. I was led in, said hello, bumped clumsily into a lot of furniture, shown my room and went to bed.
My family is great. My host mom is Eulalia, who lives with her sister Emelia and 80 year old mother, Abuelita. Their house is huge, freestanding, and beautiful. The house is bigger then my parents back in Austin, although the individual rooms are a little smaller. The shower has hot water, which I can already see is a necessity in a climate such as Quito; the only problem with it is that the water is heated by an electric showerhead with wires sticking out of it (called a widowmaker by some of my more humorous new friends) which runs out of “steam” very quickly. My family is very nice and tries very hard to talk to me solemente en Español. I haven’t had a dinner last under an hour, which is great even though I’m ready for bed by about 8:30 and have readings from Manna and homework from the language school to do. In general, Ecuadorians talk slow enough to be able to pick out individual words even when they are talking to each other, which should make learning easier. The food is great but very different than what I am used to. I have café in the morning, (normally a bowl of cut up fruit with yogurt sauce and un pan), a large almuerzo, and another café at dinner. Dinner is always a soup, made from scratch, which is incredible even if I can only identify about half of what I’m eating. Eulalia’s family is huge: she is one of ten children. There is always family in and out of the house. Yesterday was Emelia’s birthday, there were 18 family members present. I’m told there will be a big barbecue on July 25, and that there are 60 total family members.
It has been a real whirlwind of activity since I got here. On Saturday morning we met at the language school, about a half hour walk downhill, and then rode the busses out to Conocoto, in the Chillos Valley, where I will be living and working for the next year. The house is huge, great, and has an incredible rooftop with a view of Quito and the surrounding mountains. I have been to outdoor market in Sanloqui, the largest outdoor market in Quito. This is the market we will buy most of our fruit and vegetables for the next year. On Monday, I started intensive Spanish classes which will run for the next three weeks. I have one-on-one intensive tutoring four hours a morning. I have only had two lessons, but I am optimistic about how much I will be able to learn in three weeks. I definitely have a lot of homework and vocabulary to memorize.
So how is what I’m doing different from a vacation so far? Well, we certainly have had out share of just getting to see the sites. But, in addition to spending a lot of my time and energy learning how to communicate (es muy importante), I/we are learning the lay of the city, how to use the busses (I think I might have just about figured it out yesterday) and where to buy things. I have also gotten to see the library/teen center where Manna runs its programs and hear about the programs we will run and what the communities we will be in are like. Next week the seminars about how to run the current programs will begin, so I should be able to report more about my future work soon.
I´ll try to get some pictures and more of a description of what the country is like soon. Chao!
Chet
Song of the blog: "Bonjour" from Disney´s Beauty and the Beast
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