The Real Peace Corps

I am back and well from my site visit!

It was QUITE the week. I had an overall incredible time and am so excited to be living there for the next two years!

I left on Thursday morning at 7am and travelled with a fellow trainee on my whole trip down to Azogues, the capital city of the province Cañar. I got into the terminal there at 6pm where my counterpart picked me up. My counterpart is Dra. Lucy, the director and only doctor at the subcentro in my town. She is young, fun, smart and unbelievably kind, so I am thrilled to be working with her for the next 2 years. She picked me up at the station with another of her friends, took me to a dinner of papas fritas and salchich (french fries and hot dog...mmmm), then took me around Azogues and to the main park where we hung out with her friends for hours! They were all really nice and it was fun to hang out and meet people around my age.

I stayed the night at Lucy´s on Thursday in Azogues so that I could meet the director of the medical center there who is the boss of all the subcentros in the Azogues 1 district. Friday morning we went and talked with a few people at the medical center so they knew who I am and what I will be doing with Dra. Lucy. From there she was going to drive me to Zhoray (the unofficial name of my site), but she got a flat tire on our way out of town. We got the tire repaired, but couldn´t drive it all the way to Zhoray, so we ran a few errands in Azogues, ate lunch, then I left on the 2pm bus for my site.

The bus trip took 2.5 hours from Azogues along very windy, mountainy roads. I´m paranoid when it comes to travel like that, but you know it´s bad when the locals are gasping as the bus whips around the hairpin turns. I´m pretty sure we may have been on two wheels at one point...but I made it!

Zhoray is a quaint little town. The population of 2,020 that I received in my initial report is the populaion of my work community, which is actually composed of 14 different communities. The population of Zhoray is about 50 families, so it is very small (the main town center probably 4 square city blocks in size. Yep, the CC campus has it beat!). My host ¨sister¨met me at the bus and immediately took me to drop off my bags and ride with her in her pickup truck. She drives the truck as a taxi service in the area, so I rode around for about 3 hours bringing people to their homes.

The countryside is indescribably beautiful. I am in the heart of the Andes, surrounded by tall mountains on all sides. The mountains are lush green, but are patchworked with all of the farm lands that reach to the highest points. The patches are spotted with cows and the occasional houses, but the houses are very spread out and remote. Zhoray is at the end of the paved rode from Azogues, so going into the other communities where people live and I will be working is all on bumpy, potholed, dirt rodes. Travel is...slow... in the area, but the gorgeous view makes it enjoyable!

I went home with Zoila and met the rest of the family. She lives with her older sister, Carmita, and an 8 year-old girl Evelyn. It is a non-traditional family, but the house is very nice, we are surrounded by tons of extended family, and I have my own room that is separate, so I think it will work out. There was some confusion on expectations for the weekend, so I ended up sharing a room with Zoila on Friday night because she has two beds in her room, and I had failed to bring my bed with me from Quito (?). The next day I bought a mattress and they loaned me bedding so that I could move into my own and permanent room. My room is quaint, but private, and it is on the third floor. Also on the third floor is a bathroom, kitchen and bedroom that belong to the PC Volunteer who is currently living there. She was on vacation in the States when I was visiting, but I will be happy to meet her and have her at site for the first 3 months I´m there! Turns out I am about the 5th PCV in Zhoray, but I am the first health volunteer.

Saturday was my first Cuy experience, and I  got the fullll experience! I watched Carmita as she gutted the cuyes, then I went with them across the street to the grandma´s house to roast the cuyes over the fire in the back pit. Something didn´t seem right about roasting cuyes in the same hut where the live ones are housed, but asi es. Then, when Carmita´s was near roasted, she brought it in, snapped off the two roasted hind feet, and handed one to me. I waited to see what she did, then I popped the cuy foot into my mouth and crunched it down as my first tasting experience. The roasting was followed by a cuy dinner where I had a back quarter of a cuy with my potatoes. It was greasy, but not unbearable.

The rest of the weekend passed a little slowly, but I worked on all of my paperwork that we had as homework over the visit, which helped things. I´m learning that life is definitely going to move more slowly, so I´m sure I will get used to the many hours of seemingly nothing, but just hanging out with people in the town.

The subcentro is open Monday-Friday, 8am-4:30pm, so I was going to get to see how things worked on Monday and Tuesday. Lucy called Monday morning around 9 to say that she would be getting to Zhoray around mid-day or afternoon, so there was more sitting around. Luckily right around then Britney showed up in a Ministry of Salud truck with Carlitos, the driver for the area. It turns out that Britney is living in the first town on the way to Zhoray from Azogues, so she is about an hour from me in car! She is also a health volunteer, working at the subcentro there, and she had arrived just 10 days ago, so was also brand new! I got in the truck with her and went back to her town to see the subcentro there and hang out until Lucy got me on the way to Zhoray. Britney is really enthusiastic, outgoing and nice. I´m thrilled that we´re living near each other and we will probably get to collaborate on a lot of projects!!

Lucy and the nurse got me around 3:30, so we got to Zhoray and the subcentro in time for them to see a few patients before hanging out for the night. The staff (Lucy, the nurse, the dentist and the assistant) all live at the subcentro during the week, then go home to Azogues on the weekend. We went back into the kitchen for coffee and hung out for a few hours, then they walked me home and hung out for another hour with Zoila and others outside of my house.

Tuesday morning, my host family ended up leaving very early for a trip, so I was on my own for all of Tuesday because I didn´t leave until Wednesday morning. Luckily Lucy and the subcentro staff are fantastic! I went to the subcentro a little after 8am, when it opens. They were all eating breakfast (which they had also made for me) and still in their PJs, just hanging out. After breakfast, we went into the subcentro around 9 and I sat in Lucy´s office for the day where I got to observe all the patients who came in and see how things worked. The morning was busy, then the afternoon pretty quiet. I went with the nurse and assistant to a house visit in town, where they were bringing pain meds to a very elderly women, so I got an idea of what the house visits are like, which they also do a lot of.

After the subcentro closed at 4:30, we went back to the kitchen and went over my work plan for the first 3 months in site. My four main projects are going to be:

1) Working with the Voluntarias de Salud, a women´s group with health volunteers representing each of the 14 communities that I´m working in. While the group exists, I asked when meetings are and was told they will start when I get back, so it sounds like we´ll be starting from the beginning. A main focus of the group will be working in and maintaining the medicinal garden in the subcentro, then creating medicinal gardens in their communities and spreading knowledge of herbal remedies!
2) Crecimientos Nuestros Hijos (CNH) is a project designed to provide classes that stimulate the learning and growth of children 5 yrs and younger. There are currently classes in 6 of the communities, so I will be working with these to continue improving, then assessing the need and feasibility of creating classes in the other communities.
3) School charlas are given in the 14 escuelas and 1 colegio twice a year over sexual and reproductive health, dental hygiene and nutrition. I will aid in creating more activities for the charlas that the staff of the subcentro gives.
4) I will be giving the staff of the subcentro a 2 hr English class each week, something that they are really eager to have. I came in thinking I would not want to teach English, but realize that they are educated and want to have the classes, it is not something that I´m imposing on them, so it should be great!

These are the main projects, but I think more will develop with Britney, especially in the areas of drinking water treatment, handwashing, and women´s sexual education, family planning, self-esteem, etc. Overall, I am unbelievably excited for all of my work!

I stayed and ate dinner at the subcentro and played two games of Monopoly until midnight! It was a lot of fun and I am so thankful to be working with such a wonderful group of people! I went home to my room, packed up, and got a few hours of sleep before the 6:30am bus out on Wednesday. I took the bus to Azogues, took a taxi to the other terminal in Azogues, took a bus from Azogues to Quito, another from Quito to Tumbaco, then a taxi home. Overall, 14 hours of travelling alone! I feel much better about being able to travel now and figure things out on my own. I also got to talk to Mom, Dad, Darcy, Russ and Gail for over an hour, as they are now travelling on the East Coast!

I got home exhausted, happy to see my friends and host family in Tumbaco, and excited for all that is to come! I will be shopping here to buy warmer clothing because it was COLD  in Zhoray - it is high up and while it is not unbearably cold at any given time, it is always being cold that is the issue because there is no heating anywhere. I slept in wool socks, leggins, pj pants, and a fleece each night, under my 4 wool blankets. A few more layers will be accompanying me on the next trip, and bucket baths are in sight for the next two years because ice cold water along with cold air temperatures are not a good combination. The other difficulties will be that I am the 2.5 hour bus ride to Azogues away from cell phone service, internet, mail, pharmacy, etc. There is supposedly 1 spot in my house (out of the whole 2.5 hrs...) that has cell service, but I have yet to find it, so we´ll see.

It was a long, trying, but also exciting week and I cannot even imagine the adventures that I will have in Zhoray over the next two years. Hello to everyone at home, I miss you all very, very much, but I am loving life here in Ecuador!

¡Besos!

Kerry