dannypeck.net – Page 13 – An Occasional Ecuadorian

Virus

For those of you who actually read my blog here on www.dannypeck.net, I have a virus. Most of you are probably already aware of this due to the unfortunate side effect of being redirected to some adsite. I’m in the process of fixing it, but I have the odd problem of having TOO good an anti-virus software, and I actually am unable to see the effects of the virus myself.

For the rest of you, you should still be able to use my RSS feed without any problems. Link below, and I’ll be sure to post a “Virus Fixed” post when that statement becomes accurate.

http://www.dannypeck.net/?feed=rss2

Thank You, First Amendment

Not my usual topic of discussion, but I couldn’t resist. In certain ways, you see a ton of total propaganda here in Ecuador. Granted, I’m sure that Yahoo news did not intend for this headline to come across the way that it did to me, but when gems like this appear in American news, it really makes me appreciate our Freedom of the Press.

I can’t imagine the heads that would roll if a sentence like this was published in some of the countries where I currently have friends residing. The mere fact of how true that statement can be adds to the hilarity in my book as well.

A Day of Adventures at Carmen Bajo

On Friday afternoons I teach at Iglesia Carmen Bajo. This is a glimpse of what that tends to look like, though in the style of another blogger friend, I”m mostly going to let the pictures do the talking on this one.

Laura’s art room at Carmen Bajo, which becomes my guitar classroom on Fridays:

Cameron Vivanco and Sarah Marr helping with lunch. This is always a great project if you want to make yourself useful at Carmen Bajo. I don’t think Sarah was expecting to spend her afternoon preparing cow livers, though.

A close-up of the liver-preparing process. They got dunked in egg mix and covered in cornmeal before being fried into something that looked a little more edible.

An impromptu ping-pong tournament ensued as we were waiting for kids to get picked up. Fabian and Santiago were both totally cheating.

One of my newest students, Ana, working on the notes on the first string.

First Article Published

Finally, with a lot of help, input, and editing from around Youth World, I’ve actually published the first article I’ve been working on. For those of you who aren’t on Youth World’s mailing list, you can check it out here in PDF format. If you’d like to be added to Youth World’s mailing list, which I’m administering at the moment, you can send an e-mail to mail@youthworld.org.ec to subscribe.

Communication

This weekend the Quito Quest staff went to Riobamba, Ecuador, partly to participate at ministry sites in the area and partially as a scouting mission for some short-term teams we will be taking there during the spring and summer. It was an absolute blast that the whole of QQ got to go. We absolutely have the best department in Youth World. Not always the most serious, amicable, or reverent, especially when ill-rested, but still the best.

We actually mainly just slept and occasionally ate in Riobamba proper, because the ministry sites which we visited were all pretty far removed from the city. This meant driving usually over an hour up and down crazy mountainsides with sheer cliffs to the side and rocks, ditches, dogs, and sleeping women in the path of our bus. On the way to a second ministry site on Friday, a makeshift bridge actually broke under the driver’s side front wheel and we spent the next significant portion of the afternoon attempting (and finally succeeding) in removing our only realistically conceivable mode of transportation from the ditch in which its entire front had become lodged. I might add that we did this with only rocks, a long but rather flimsy-looking log, and elbow grease. We were also all incredibly thankful that the wheel, tire, axel, and surrounding body were undamaged, especially considering we had exactly zero spare tires.

At the ministry sites themselves, it was one surprise after another. We had been told to expect a colder-climate style culture than what we are used to in Quito or on the coast or in the jungle. What stood out to me after two days was the difference between each ministry site and each of the others in terms of how people reacted to our presence and our activities there. At our first stop, with only twenty people or so, those who came sang with us, responded to questions, and jumped into our ridiculous games. Even the older adults were enthusiastic about running around during a fantastic gato y raton game that I’m going to have to take back with me for North American youth activities. Our second ministry site was much the same in enthusiasm, probably more so here, however, because of the huge number of children present. But Saturday morning, we went to another mountain community and felt like we were pulling teeth to even get “yes” or “no” answers or hands raised to simple questions.

Part of this, I’m sure, had to do with language. Certainly not all, which I’ll get to in a moment, but part of it, at least, had to do with language. While pretty much everyone did speak Spanish, it is a second language for a significant portion of all of the communities which we visited. These were very much indigenous communities, and most of the people there, particularly the older ones, grew up speaking Quichua. We actually got some Quichua lessons over breakfast, and I now know the phrases for “What is your name?”, “How are you?”, “Yes,” “No,” and “Flower,” in Quichua. We practiced the first four over and over again during breakfast, and “Flower” happens to be the only word of somewhere around 4o million that one of the pastors’ sons taught me on a bus ride Saturday morning. I won’t attempt to spell any of them here in Quichua, but I can say them.

That said, there were a few stumbles, especially among gringos and Quiteños attempting Quichua, and depending on whether Spanish or Quichua was the first language of each individual indigenous person, but overall that aspect went well. The epic fail was our humor. By Saturday afternoon we had learned how not to make to much of fools of ourselves, but up until that point, there were a lot of times when someone would make a joke (in Spanish), and everyone from Youth World (Ecuadorianas included) would laugh and everyone from the community would just stare at us. The one time they were sure to laugh, however, was when one of us would ask how to say something in Quichua, someone else would tell them, and then we would proceed to butcher it. We’ll take what we can get, though.

Aside from some awkward moments where the kids and even the adults would hardly talk to us, we actually got to plug into what was going on at these sites, and I am looking forward to the possibility of going back with some of this Quito Quest crew to these sites this summer.

Socks, Sickness, and Breakfast

As Cameron said tonight, “There might be some truth to it, but…” Every time anyone gets sick here, it gets blamed on the temperature and your awareness and preparedness for it.

Kelsey and I constantly joke around about wearing socks. For instance, after having been seriously sick last week (which was 100% due to dehydration, though Lourdes blamed it on my not having on a sweatshirt that day) I have had a small cold for the last two or three days. I feel perfectly fine, but I’ve just been coughing a lot, and it’s going away now. But I came home to Lourdes’ house yesterday afternoon just in time for it to start raining as I was walking from the Trole station back to the tienda. If it had started raining while I was on the Trole, I would have stood around and waited for the bus, but the bottom dropped when I was almost exactly halfway between the station and the house. No sense turning around, I ran for it, but go drenched anyway. Jose laughed at me a little when I walked in the tienda, but concernedly made sure he told me to go upstairs and change. I did just that, but having taken almost all of my clothes back to the intern apartment in the north in preparation to move back there, I had no socks in the house. I walked out of my room barefoot to fill up my water bottle in the kitchen, and Lourdes came upstairs at just the same time. So of course, I immediately got the “You’re sick because you’re not wearing socks” lecture and went to put on tennis shoes.

The next story won’t seem related at first. Be patient.

I tend to be late for morning meetings because of breakfast. Breakfast with the family is both non-negotiable and a bit of an ordeal. In the US, if I had an 8:30 meeting with an 60-90 minute commute to get there, I might grab a Pop-Tart on the way out the door, or more likely just skip breakfast or hope the meeting was finished before Hardee’s stops serving Cinnamon & Raisin biscuits at 10:30. That’s not an option here because (we don’t have Hardee’s, we don’t have Pop-Tarts, and mostly because) nobody in the house, from abuelita down to the kids, is going to let me leave without sitting down and eating with me. One morning I had to be at Youth World early, so I made myself coffee so I could honestly tell Lourdes I had breakfast already (coffee is always the main component of breakfast and dinner). I should have left the dishes out so there would have been some evidence, but since I washed them, Lourdes asked me all that day and literally all the next if I was sure I had made myself breakfast that morning.

Today I was in the kitchen helping Marta when Miguel (my friend and both Lourdes’ and Marta’s nephew, therefore Adrian’s cousin) started frantically looking around the house for some things. Adrian came out of his room a minute later and I realized he was not feeling good. Miguel told me he was taking Adrian to the hospital. As Miguel was running around the house, Marta started asking him about food. It went something like this (though it was, obviously, in Spanish):

Marta: Have you eaten breakfast yet?

Miguel: No.

Marta: Are you going to?

Miguel: No.

Marta: You have to eat breakfast!

Miguel: Well, not this morning.

Marta: I have the water boiling already. I’m pouring coffee right now.

Miguel: I don’t believe we can right now.

Miguel then proceeded to run downstairs to hop in the car, Adrian stumbling along with him, clutching his side like it was going to explode any minute. Marta scoffed at them under her breath until they were long gone, bemoaning her ridiculous nephews, skipping breakfast.

Tonight, Cameron and I had talked about Adrian, and before she dropped me off at my apartment, Cameron called Lourdes to check on the situation. Turns out Adrian had pneumonia. He’s doing much better, but he’ll have to stay in the hospital for three days due to a torn membrane in his lung, which is what allowed him to get the infection. Lourdes’ theory, however? “He works in a restaurant over a hot stove, and then they go in and out of the freezer all day. Hot, cold, hot, cold.” Again, as Cameron said, maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe. Some. At least he was wearing his socks.

This post originally published at www.dannypeck.net

Not Atypically Not Ready

Miguel and I were talking recently about hanging out on a weekend once he is finished with classes after this week. What I hadn’t realized up until even more recently is that today, I’m completing my penultimate weekend before I head home for Christmas. I’m on day 104 right now, which is over a third longer than the longest I’ve been here previously. It doesn’t feel like it at all.

This week is going to be psychotically busy. I’m not even 100% sure yet which days I’m sleeping at which house, and I have people to see and projects to complete and shopping to get done and parties to attend in addition to my normal work week of teaching and writing and meetings.

Although I know I’m going to be busy, I’m trying to be “all here” right now, as we say at YW.¹ I keep thinking about August 2008 when I came home from Quito Quest. Much as I tried to hide it, I had a bad attitude, and a difficult readjustment to life in the States because of it. And a good chunk of that was (lack of) preparation. When anyone from Youth World asked me if I was ready to go home, I simply said “no.” I caught myself leaning in that direction last week, realizing while I wasn’t grumpy about it, my response was not excited either.

I think that part of that is that I know there are certain things about life and ministry here that simply cannot be understood from the safety of your pew in North America, and I’m bracing for it a little bit. And part of it is that there are a lot of things I am leaving behind this time: more connections, ministry sites and projects to plug back into when I return, knowing that this is my last week of living with Lourdes and her family. What I’m trying to be conscious of and intentional about is things I have to look forward to and be excited about at home.²

Almost a year ago I reminded a friend that wherever she goes, God is preparing her for it and He is there already waiting for her. This week while the craziness of life plus preparing for holidays and travel surrounds me, I’m reminding myself the same thing. Much as there are special people and memories here in Quito

I’m really stoked to see my family and people at church, as well as friends who will be in/around Elizabeth City for Christmas. And not that this is in the same class at all, but I’m also really excited about Mexican food.³ I

¹I had this big internal debate whether to use the expression from El Refugio or to quote the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (“Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs.”) I decided that the former was more appropriate, but the latter deserved an honorable mention.

²I hope Cameron doesn’t read this. I misused four prepositions in the same manner in one sentence.

³Contrary to popular belief, the staple foods here are things like rice. Not. Tacos.

Christmas Party to Remember

Tuesday, we had our Youth World Christmas party, a day that I won’t soon forget. I think I must have eaten something sketchy on Monday night, because I felt slightly strange most of yesterday morning, but not bad enough not to work. After lunch, though, Cameron told me I was looking pretty pale, which I’ve learned is a sure sign I’m about to lose whatever food I’ve got in me. Cam drove me home and I actually did get sick, but then slept it off and felt pretty good by 4:15 when I needed to head down the hill to the office for the party. I figured I’d be fine.

Turns out the Christmas party was an “Amazing Race” that split us up into teams and sent us out to see who could make it to the “Pit Stop” first. My team was Casey, Phil Payne, Ivet, Jorge, Kyra and Beth. We were sent out from the YW office, all around Parque Carolina, and then finally to Plaza Foch in the Mariscal. We rode bikes, peeled potatoes, bought Christmas ornaments, and rented paddle boats. I was in a paddle boat with Ivet and Kyra and we’d made it almost all the way around the lake when we realized Jorge had gotten stuck in a boat by himself, so I jumped ship and helped him paddle back around the the lake. This definitely helped us pull out ahead, but twice around the lake was not a good idea for my health.

We finally completed all our tasks, and made it to the restaurant that was our end-point, meeting Brad and Sandi and discovering that we had won. I’m not sure if it just took that long for sickness plus ridiculous amounts of exercise to catch up to me, or if my body was like “Oh, he’s relaxing now, I can finally freak out.” But I began to realize as we hung out, waiting for the other teams to show up, that I couldn’t relax my arms.

Before I knew it, my hands were clenched into fists that I couldn’t release, and my upper legs and forearms were starting to tense up too. Dave Gardeen came over to sit down next to me, and I told him “Go get Casey now.” I’m really thankful that Casey had been on my team so that he was finished at the same time as me. Before he moved to Ecuador to work with Casa Gabriel, Casey was a physical therapist. I truly think I would have had to go to the hospital if Casey hadn’t been there, realizing that I was dehydrated and knowing where to put pressure and what to have me consume to get my muscles to relax and blow flow going back through my arms.

Now, I explained all that concisely in one paragraph, not for lack of description, but that I simply would rather not relive the experience. On a scale of 1-10 from least to worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life, it was easily a 9 if not a 10. I threw up a significant amount, and Matt took me home (as in, to his home, so he and Marlo could keep an eye on me).

I have eaten a lot of plain food yesterday and today, relaxed and recovered at the Jensens’ house under Marlo’s supervision, and got to go to the regular Youth World meeting this afternoon. At which I was scheduled to lead worship with Brad. So I got to be in front of all those people who saw me in a pretty embarrassing state two nights ago. I decided to just embrace it, so as I got everyone’s attention before we started to play and sing, I made reference to the fact that I tried to die at the Christmas party, but I was wearing my winning-team-Santa-hat, so it must have been worth it. Mary Scholl shouted out in her best mom voice “And what did you learn?”

To which I responded, “Not to try to keep up with Jorge.”

Quito Days Kickoff

I’ve heard many different people talk about fireworks here, and every single description I’ve ever been given includes the phrase “…would be totally illegal in the U.S.” Whether it’s the sheer amount of fireworks used, the danger level involved (you never just stop at sparklers), or the lack of safety precautions or cleanup of leftover open flames, it’s always sounded incredibly dodgy, perilous, and similar to my weekends in high school.

Somehow, I’ve always missed out on fireworks here. I left too early in 2008 and came too late in 2009 for 10 de Agosto, and someone (who shall remain nameless) forgot to purchase 4^th of July fireworks before we left Quito for our intern retreat when I was a summer host. This situation was finally rectified Saturday night, with the kickoff of Quito Days this year.

December 6^th is the anniversary of the founding of Quito, and the week leading up to it is filled with parties, neighborhood band performances, fireworks, bullfights, and food. I’m still working on bullfight tickets, but Marta and Erica took me down the street Saturday night to an empty lot with a bonfire and a bunch of people dancing to the neighborhood band playing traditional Ecuadorian music. A couple of groups performed dances in costume, and it was pretty fun to watch. It wasn’t even so bad when Marta literally dragged me out to dance, despite my pleas.

After an hour or so, I saw a man go for the gigantic bull costume that had been stashed in a corner. It was a wooden frame with something similar to papier-mâché on the outside with which a single man could run around wearing. What I did not realize until someone came running over carrying a torch was that it was literally covered in fireworks.

At first, they just lit a few wheel-style fireworks that spun around on the body of the bull and showered us with small sparks as the guy ran around the circle. Everyone screamed as he got close to them, but nobody ran for cover. So, trying not to stick out at this kind of thing more than I already do, I remained seated, (somewhat) calmly covering my head and hoping nothing nearby would burst into flame. After his second round, they started lighting the stuff that actually flew off the body of the bull in who-knew-what-direction. This time people ducked and covered, and I turned tail and found myself watching from 20 yards away near a big wagon I behind which I could take shelter at a moment’s notice. Marta seemed to think this was a good idea as well.

Sometime during the third or fourth time the “bull” ran around the circle of onlookers, they brought out a gigantic heart on a 15-ish foot pole, and set that up near the bonfire. The fireworks all over this thing were lit as well, with sparklers on steroids lighting up in sequence clockwise around the heart. As the provided a little bit more illumination, I realized what I thought was the empty center of the heart was actually a large portrait of Christ being showered in progressively more sparks as a second and third set of sparklers went off, followed by rocket-like fireworks the size of anti-aircraft missiles launching from the top and back of the heart. During all of this, the bull is still running around, still launching its own fireworks, and still sending spectators out of the way, particularly when it begin to set fire to the large stack of fuel, tinder, and kindling for the bonfire. The fuel pile, in fact, was at this point as big as the bonfire itself, and would have become a second one had it not been for the rain. I was also thankful it finally started more than sprinkling, because it gave us an excuse to head home around midnight.

All in all, I have a burn on the top of my head from a stray spark, and it was pretty hard to wake up for church in the morning, but I’d totally do it all over again. Maybe from a slightly safer distance.

Ecuadorian Thanksgiving

I can’t imagine a much more memorable Thanksgiving. For several of us, today was our first Thanksgiving in Ecuador. For several more, it was the first Thanksgiving they’d ever celebrated. We had people from (at least) the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Japan and Peru, speaking (at least) English, Spanish, French and Japanese. In fact, three of those countries and all four of those languages were represented at our table alone.

Somewhere around fifty of us got together on Laura and Jorge’s roof to celebrate as traditionally as possible. There was the traditional turkey and gravy and potatoes and cranberry everything and salads. There were also tropical fruits and Marlo’s pesto dip and sushi. The kids all played in the rooftop hot tub and we listened to Andean music interspersed with country and the Black-Eyed Peas.

I have to say it was cool to celebrate such a holiday estadounidense so cross-culturally. I’m also glad we escaped those “let’s go around the table…” exercises that I really should appreciate but just tend to seem cheesy to me. I do, however, have tons of things to be thankful for. The most obvious to me today was the people in my life. There were people there today from so many different backgrounds, and even among the gringos at Youth World, we have different traditions and cultures from different parts of the United States (and elsewhere). I love learning from people, from their backgrounds and perspectives and individual knowledge and stories. I can think of so many people who blow me away constantly with things they’ve done or scripture they know or the ways they practically apply their experience in missions. I love having people to laugh with, people to share ridiculous moments with, people who think sushi on Thanksgiving should continue to be a tradition, people to learn from and grow with, people who love God, and people who are just as eager to teach with their experience as they are to learn with their lives.

I certainly missed my family today. I missed my brother’s goofy (but sincere) prayers, my dad’s laugh, and my mom’s insight (and potato salad… and gravy… and apple pie…). But I got to see several people who I’ve not run into in a long time, including several friends who have been out of Quito, and my friend John Andrew who I met at IT training in Illinois and who has been working in Guayaquil since this summer. And not that my friends here in any way replace the people with whom I’m used to spending Thanksgiving, but I was glad to be surrounded by so many awesome people and to have a chance to spend the day in such a unique way and be able to share that.