FEBRUARY 2011 Table of Contents

Volunteer Life Arts & Entertainment Gringos Go On Vacation 2 Ave María 34 By J. Grigsby Crawford By Sonia Vasquez Finding Adventure in the Mundance 35 MacGyver In the Bathroom 15 By Marion Cory By Alex Pellett Rocking Out: Life in an Ecuadorian Band 36 MacGyver Goes to School 18 By Caitlin Leach By Alex Pellett American Rebels: Oliver Stone Sits Down 37 With Latin Leaders in South of the Border Better Know a Staff Member: Joshua 20 By J. Grigsby Crawford Cuscaden By Clint Armistead From Coconuts to Rugby Balls 38 By Tristan Schreck Better Know a Volunteer: Mike Armenta 21 A Returned Volunteer Reflects on Life in 39 By J. Grigsby Crawford Ecuador By Kristen Mallory Two Years in Facebook Statuses (aka: The 23 Recollections of a Soon-to-Be RPCV Via New Releases to Look for at Your Local 39 Online Social Medium) Pirated Movie Store By Sarah Evans By George Beane Feeling Funky? 40 The Good Ole Times 31 By Caitlin Leach By Ben Palmer The “Marrieds” 41 Ask Rob! 32 By Laurel Howard By Rob Gunther This Issue’s Recipes 43 By Sarah Zelcer

24 Book Reviews 47 By John G. Mannion

El Clima Magazine

Editor-in-Chief J. Grigsby Crawford Layout Editors Roxanne Lee & Brent Williams Volunteer Life Section Editors Rob Gunther & Sarah Evans Copy Editors Elizabeth Wyner & Jordan Shuler Arts & Entertainment Section Editor Caitlin Leach Email [email protected] Assistant Arts & Entertainment Section Editor Sarah Zelcer

Cover photo courtesy of Christina Curell, an HIV Program Volunteer from Omnibus 104, living in Guayas. Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 VOLUNTEER LIFE

Volunteer Life lying in hammocks. We will agree to dis- agree. Gringos Go on Vacation We will eat your sea- By J. Grigsby Crawford food, but if your seafood is not We will check the inter- satisfactory, we will NOT return net and bitch if the connec- “There are known knowns. to your establishment. tion is not high speed qual- There are things we know that ity. But most of all we w i l l we know. We also know there We will drink your rea- read news from back home are known unknowns. That is sonably priced beers. But if your and silently wonder what it to say, we know there are some beers aren’t reasonably priced is exactly we’re so anxious to things we know we don’t know. or chilled to our liking, we will get home to in four months. But there are also unknown not return to your beer-serv- unknowns—the ones we don’t ing establishment. We will have conversa- know we don’t know.” We will ask whether ho- -Former U.S. Secretary of De- tels have hot water and if that fense Donald Rumsfeld water is not indeed piping-turn- your-flesh-red hot, we will take DRAMATIS PERSONAE: our Gringo Traveler business elsewhere. First Person: Peace Corps Vol- (The Gringo Traveler is unteer since February 2009; the somewhat of a roaming profes- author of this story sor of economics doling out les- PCV#1: Male Peace Corps Volun- sons in capitalism.) teer in his early 30s; business- We will sit at tables with man groups of other Peace Corps PCV#2: Female Peace Corps Vol- Volunteers and listen to them unteer in her late 20s; married to talk about other volunteers. PCV#1 (Because if volunteers spent as much time working as they PCV#3: Unusually tall male Peace spend talking about e a c h Corps Volunteer in his mid 20s A Booby minding his own Booby business other, this country would look PCV#4: Unusually good-looking like Switzerland.) tions about who owes money male Peace Corps Volunteer in to whom and pretend to not We will rub sunscreen his mid 20s be uptight about it. onto each other’s backs so ~ many times it will no longer We will meet other We are gringos and we are go- feel vaguely homoerotic. Gringo Travelers and grin- ing on vacation. go café owners and other We will get cranky from white travelers (some of This is what we do. being around each other so whom aren’t from the U.S. long and snap at each other, We will find the finest and speak English as a sec- only to make up and be best hotels that $14 a night can buy. ond language and probably buds all over again. We will read books while shouldn’t be referred

2 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 to as gringos but are anyway) We will nearly get sold López, where the beaches are and we will have conversations fake bus tickets, but it will be far less pristine, but the town with them about their travels all right in the end. is more exciting. and then the conversation will The stretch of land turn to us and we’ll explain between Guayaquil and Salinas who we are and what we do “We will fall in love with each is a shock to my system. It here for two—really? two? is so desolate and bare it is yeah, seriously, two—years other in a friends stunning. It’s like Dust Bowl- and they will widen their eyes sort of way, with era Oklahoma. It’s like parts in pensive interest. all of our flaws of Africa I’ve seen. It’s ripe for As if it even needs to be and charms a National Geographic photo said, we Gringo Travelers will stripped bare out shoot, but not in a good way. thumb through old copies of in the open...” It’s empty and dry and the The New Yorker while reclining signs that tell people not to under a beach umbrella. litter aren’t ha-ha funny or sad-funny or even sad; they We will plan the week’s We will discuss the exact are only cruel. activities with militaristic definition of hemorrhoids enthusiasm for timeliness, and determine that what has ~ accuracy and efficiency. plagued me for the last six During the voyage, I talk to months is in fact ‘swamp ass.’ I will feel the tristesse PCVs#1, 2, 3, 4 about the (PCV#1 is somewhat of an that comes from being around importance of sunscreen. I am authority on the issue.) other people for so long and absolutely determined that will cover it up by being more We will have arguments none of us get burned. I’ve outgoing. Then I’ll get home about Spanish grammar and had a few incidents in the past when it’s all over and be so people will get defensive. where I thought the best way to ‘get bronzed’ would be to depressed and tired from all We will laugh so hard it wear no sunscreen at all and the pressure that I disappear hurts. into my apartment for a few let me say, it was a mistake. We will fall in love with days until the self-loathing I’ve packed a gloriously each other in a friends sort of wears off. massive tube of SPF 50 Banana way, with all of our flaws and Boat and I’m already having We will snap high charms stripped bare out in obsessive thoughts about how resolution, low aperture, the open. digital photographs of nature I’ll rub it in and be impervious scenes that will likely merit And we will eventually to the sun’s tropical glare. go home, because even for the sharing on an online social Three days later PCV#4 Gringo Traveler, reality sets in networking platform. will get so sick of hearing me and one realizes that vacation and PCVs#1-3 say the words We will floss before bed. can’t last forever. ‘reapply’ and ‘rub in,’ he will We will take exotic day ~ attempt to ban all verbs relating trips and if a travel agency to sunscreen application. even dreams of ripping us off First we’re going to or giving us something other Ayampe, a small, quiet beach ~ at the far south end of Manabí. than absolutely satisfactory Ceviche (s__v_ ch _; - ch _) After three days there, we’ll service, we will be pissed. noun: a South American dish go 15 minutes north to Puerto

3 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

of marinated raw fish or whiskey. another lemonade and barks something else at the waiter seafood, typically garnished She’s so beautiful that and then stares me in the eye and served as an appetizer. other guys are always staring and says, Why are you still in ~ at her when we walk into this country? restaurants and bars and she PCV#4 is talking about ceviche acts like she doesn’t know why. with intensity—such intensity She’s so beautiful I’m digging Some time later we sit in her that I too am worried he will into my US bank account living room eating big slices of not get enough. Quite simply, funds for this ceviche lunch. mango for breakfast. Hanging on PCV#4 is jonesing for some the wall in front of me is a giant ceviche. “I’ve packed painting of Jesus wearing a crown a gloriously of thorns. The painting is so vivid I’ve had ceviche just once in and grotesque it looks as if the my life. massive tube of SPF 50 Banana blood from his forehead could February 2010. I’m at Boat....” drip right off the wall and down a restaurant in Loja sitting onto the Persian rug. across from a girl. It’s a nice Today’s the day it ends restaurant on the far end of So beautiful I tolerate her and we can’t be seeing each town past the old church and smoking and even look at the other anymore and I tell her on the way to the stadium. way the plumes of smoke leave this. I’m tired. I look at the menu her lips and disappear above She is surprised when I and it all looks expensive and us and think it’s… sexy. tell her (which is strange since unappetizing to me but I order After seeing her for many just weeks before she told me the ceviche. weeks I now feel comfortable she had another boyfriend and She is twenty-five years telling her about my in a few months was moving to old and beautiful. Born and epididymal/prostatic infection Belgium to be with him [which raised in Loja. She is the type of and the ensuing pain that lasted is strange because he lives in upper-class Lojana that would six months and necessitated Holland]). She leans toward me prefer to pretend like the parts trips to Loja, Quito and, yes, and I’m not sure if she wants of the country that my site is multiple testicular sonograms. to kiss me or tackle me. I look in don’t exist. If I ever brought I also tell her about how last up at the Jesus painting. her to my site, she would be year I got pickpocketed but Suddenly her cigarette disgusted. She would unload how it seriously wasn’t a big smoking isn’t sexy anymore. an entire bottle of Purell by the deal because I only had like time we reached my doorstep. $1.75 in my wallet and the All I can think is I should Needless to say, she prefers other important stuff was have ended this months ago on her natural habitat of Loja and stuffed away in my shoes and that Sunday when I ordered she sure as shit doesn’t settle other pockets but how I was the bad ceviche. really just sad to lose the wallet for no $2 almuerzos with I haven’t eaten any because it had a picture of Che the commoners, so here we ceviche since. are in some fancy restaurant Guevara’s face on it. Back at the beach PCV#4 with white tablecloths that She laughs, but it’s not a is still pining for it like a serves ceviche and it’s a warm ha-ha laugh, it’s a pity laugh. fiend. Sunday in Loja after a long She smiles and leans over and We try to go back to the night of dancing and drinking kisses me and pours herself

4 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 same place he got his ceviche to silent and mysterious, no but not as bad as me and the night before but it’s closed matter how hard you try.) PCVs#1-3. so we go to the only other But the important thing This wasn’t for lack of restaurant in town and order that comes of this is that when reapplication. And there will shrimp. We make a toast and your older brother is getting be no hate mail sent to Banana someone says, Not a bad way Boat, Inc. I and at least two to spend Christmas Eve. “I realize I haven’t others of PCVs#1-4 are taking ~ packed any snacks doxycycline. Not only are we taking it, but if we for some We finish lubing up and I an- for the day and I reason do not take it, we will nounce with an enthusiasm feel the scaly hands be Medically Separated from that startles even me: There of anxiety start to the US Peace Corps. will not be a single sunburn on grip me.” this trip! We are taking doxycycline as a malaria prophylaxis. (And any reader can see where married and you aren’t it Like other antibiotics, a side this is going.) means one thing and one thing effect of doxycycline is that it ~ only: He is an adult and You makes you more susceptible to are a child. And all you can Christmas day. My brother and sunburn. think is: Time to grow up. step-sister are on the phone. They’re in Asheville and it’s I lie in the sand and We’re already low on lotion. I snowing. before going back in the water have about one-half of a fluid I hike up my bathing suit to get My brother and I talk ounce of aloe gel. PCV#2 has some sun on my pasty white about how on January 1, 2011 some lotion. PCV#4 has another upper thighs. This is the single in Vermont, he will propose to bottle of lotion, but it’s really run- biggest mistake I will make in his girlfriend. ny and the writing on the bottle 2010. is in German. We use it anyway. Being his only brother ~ The lotion is seriously scarce but and he being my best friend, we’re all lubricating as much as I believe I’m on the fast track Oh dear God! we can. for Best Man. (I mention this It’s evening and we’ve all Shortly thereafter we to PCVs#1&2 earlier in the taken showers and we’re all in are scraping at the insides of trip and they ask me if I’m our beach hut staring at each bottles and tubes. Our use of practicing for my speech at the other and we’re all burned. the dwindling lotion products wedding. I say that in a way I’ve Deep pink. Medium-rare. The resembles drug addicts licking been practicing for it my entire stinging has already set in. life. In other words, there the insides of plastic baggies How could this have will be all sorts of invisible and sniffing at the carpet for one happened? pressure on me during that more bump. speech because I am the family PCV#1 didn’t put enough Before dinner I’m lying talker, the entertainer, the on his face. PCV#2 simply down and I look at PCV#4’s smart aleck who can talk, and underestimated the sun’s bottle of German lotion and I try once you’re the crowd-pleaser equatorial might. PCV#3 was to decipher the ingredients and of the family—once you’ve sunburned from rafting before I figure out that it’s aftershave. been placed in that family our trip even started, so that’s And the only part of my body I role—there ain’t no going back moot. PCV#4 is looking toasty, haven’t rubbed it on is my face.

5 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

We go off to dinner with our backs, chests, thighs and arms glistening with aftershave. ~ We play games. We play cards, we play ping pong, we play a spinoff of Scrabble called Ba- nanagrams that is addictively fun. I am so incredibly competitive in every single thing I do that at this stage in Visitors brave the elements on the island my life winning has begun to embarrass me. and the excellent whale-watching The resulting behavior from just off its coast. me is incredibly rude: I avoid Five days later in a other gringos when we are beach softball game, I will in big gringo groups. People have blood running down my Shortly after arriving, we run into probably see me off to the side shins after diving for a catch another volunteer. She tells us ignoring them and think that I in the outfield. that there will be maybe a dozen think I’m ‘too cool.’ But I can other volunteers showing up in ~ assure the world that there town in the days preceding New is nothing more uncool than Occasionally we wax nostalgic. Year’s Eve. Even worse, some will social anxiety. We only have four months left be at the same hotel as us. here. We can’t believe it. But the ~ My knees buckle with conversations fall short because terror. One morning we wake up to nostalgia is longing for a place the sound of the couple in the that doesn’t exist and no one likes This is not what we were room next to us making love. talking about it. hoping for. We were hoping to PCV#3’s bed is next to their ‘avoid the crowd.’ This freaks wall and he informs us that it all of us out, but especially lasted nine minutes. Not bad, Also, one of us hasn’t had a bowel me. Facing this many other says PCV#1. movement in nearly five days. Gringo Travelers at once will be unsettling, but right now I walk into the hallway Also, on Christmas Eve there is a I’ve got anxiety in anticipation and I see the girl from that bus crash outside Chone that kills of future anxiety. room tiptoeing half naked to the bathroom. Her face is flushed. 41 and injures 36. This is a post swearing- She looks at me, giggles, and sort ~ in phenomenon for me. I was of covers up her bare breasts. not such a freak back home. I After Ayampe, we Gringo Travel- Coming from her room I hear the used to enjoy crowds of people. ers migrate 20 minutes north by Rolling Stones song ‘Tumbling Now they make me nervous bus to Puerto López , a bustling Dice’ and I get a feeling somewhere like I can’t breathe and I am fishing village that is now a tourist between jealousy and loneliness. going to have a heart attack destination because of its proxim- and maybe also lose my mind. ~ ity to Parque Nacional Machalilla

6 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Isla de la Plata is an island 40 they climb onto Island Tours. I have gotten sick klicks off the coast of Manabí. Gringos. Gringos. Gringos. on airplanes and filled Sir Francis Drake hid his boo- GRINGOS! complimentary Delta barf bags ty there in the 16th century, to capacity. hence the name. Nowadays I have flown in a glider We get on the boat last. We sit it’s known as the Poor Man’s over the Mojave Desert, in the back by the motor. I sit Galápagos and Gringo Travel- stumbled out of the cockpit down next to PCV#1 and he ers take day trips here from and vomited at the base of a looks at me and says, Why are Puerto López to fire off hun- Joshua Tree. dreds of photos of Blue-Footed you sitting so close to me? He Boobies, Red-Footed Boobies, says it as if I have just held a I have gotten sick on albatrosses, frigate birds and turd under his nose. sailboats, motorboats, ferry other scenery. boats and Mexican parasailing boats. “We’re rocking. We’re rolling. It’s been over a decade We meet our guides at 9:30 since I’ve had a true motion on the beach. Our main guide Everything is ON.” sickness incident and I don’t is Humberto. He is a consum- want to break the streak mate professional and is 4’11”. today. The other guide is Luis—also a The Gringo Traveler I’ve come prepared for consummate professional. invented Personal Space. the physical and psychological I’m sitting so close to battle required to defeat the But first… PCV#1 because quite simply motion sickness. there is nowhere else to sit. See the gringos getting But I scoot a few inches to my their cameras ready. See the I feel the nausea setting in and left anyway. gringos lathering on their it becomes a form of warfare: high Sun Protection Factor Now I’m sitting in a me versus the sickness. I’ve lotion. See the gringos filming small puddle of water, meaning packed three different anti- things that should not be there’s not enough cortisone seasickness substances in my filmed, such as an authentic in all of Ecuador to quell the fanny pack. PCVs#1-3 mocked fish market and authentic rash that will be plaguing my one of these because it is ho- Ecuadorian fishermen and our ass tonight. meopathic and said I may as authentic sailing vessel, which well rub an egg over myself. is named not Santa Maria or La Needless to say, they also The boat ride will be a little Milagrosa, but Island Tours. mocked my fanny pack. under two hours. After ap- See the gringos talk in proximately three minutes I I’ve already popped the their gringo language. See the decide I’m never getting on a Dramamine tablet, which is gringos ooh and aah as real boat again. making me drowsy. I’m already Ecuadorians hawk trinkets to chewing one ginger candy to them by the seaside. See the settle the stomach. We are gringos take off their shoes I have gotten sick in cars and pitching front to back and to and put on their life vests. See buses and emitted streams of the right as swells hit Island the gringos smile and laugh. vomit that decorated the vehi- Tours from the port side. The See the gringos try not to cle in a racing stripe of bile. motors are too loud for me slip and break their necks as to listen to my iPod without

7 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 putting it at a volume that side of the boat to feel the My eyes are still locked on would cause long-term aural cool spray of seawater. I am the horizon. My hair is still damage. My eyes are locked sweating through my shirt. soaked with sweat. My hands on the horizon. My lifejacket feels too tight, are white. My jaw is still like it’s restricting me from I feel gas coming in my clenched. My ass is itching. taking deep breaths. bowels and I know that even My stare is stoic. I’ve with the sea breeze this would I fear that I might been locked on the horizon be the Chernobyl of farts. So lose my mind and in one fell this whole time and I’m I hold it in. swoop I’ll vomit, tear off my sure I won’t make it without lifejacket and begin writhing Now I have my eyes causing a scene when all of a on the floor while the foul locked on the horizon. My sudden… hull water sloshes over me eyelids fight the drowsiness. and the Ecuadorian guides LAND. My focus on the distant line look on in disbelief. where sea meets sky is trance- like. This will not happen The other Gringo I am the first one off the to me today. Not here. Not Travelers would probably boat. I stagger onto the now. take pictures. This has beach and immediately drop happened to me before. I And then I feel the nauseous to my knees. I roll over onto was once traveling alone in a jolt in my abdomen and calm- my back and stare up at the barren corner of a forgotten ly ask PCV#2 if I can have blue sky. The morning clouds continent and I passed out her seat by the railing. At have cleared and it’s turning from altitude sickness and this point, PCV#1 is stand- into a high SPF kind of day. while I was lying on the ing. This whole time, PCV#3 floor of a restaurant being Everyone around me is is reading. fed llama soup and coca leaf smiling and adjusting their PCV#2 scoots forward tea while taking hits from cameras and reapplying their and I am by the railing. I an oxygen mask, a table sunscreen. chew another ginger candy. of Gringo Travelers… took I try to breathe slowly and PCV#3 looks at me and pictures of me. calmly, in through the nose says, What the hell are you and out through the mouth. It doesn’t work. I feel the hot pang of anxiety coming over me and now I’m not so worried about the motion sickness per se as I am about having a full meltdown in front a group of over a dozen Gringo Travelers. I am rubbing my thigh with my left hand in a mechanized Pavlovian device to avoid a crippling anxiety- induced incident. My other hand is reaching over the A Gringo Traveler examines the nostrils of a sea lion from three miles away

8 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

doing laying there? I shouldn’t worry, I will there is normally a sea lion but see plenty of Blue-Footed right now he’s off searching Boobies. for colder water. PCVs#1-3 and I walk up to Throughout the day, Then he says: This sea the guard station and—quelle Humberto will say, Hola lion, he has no woman, he has coïncidence!—we see some ¿cómo estás? to each of the no family. He is all alone. of our comrades: PCV#5 and Boobies that he will pass by. PCV#6. But he doesn’t do so ironically; We begin the hike. The world of the Gringo it’s like he’s actually saying, Traveler is a small one. Hello, and wants to know how Somewhere in the first few minutes of the hike I PCV#6 is in a newer the Boobies are feeling at this particular time and place. realize I haven’t packed any omnibus. She is a sweet, kind snacks for the day and I feel girl who lives in the jungle This is merely the scaly hands of anxiety start but not close to either me or the beginning of the to grip me. PCVs#1-3. She looks happy to anthropomorphism we will But when I snap my be here. encounter today. first high resolution shot of an PCV#5 is in our omnibus adult Booby taking care of his and he has a terrifyingly high As Luis is pointing at the map young, I know it’s all going to amount of charisma. To put (and Humberto is standing off be OK. it simply, he has a smile that I will snap 58 more could make angels weep. “I’m suspended in photos (at various camera His name is Mike settings) before the day is Moscarelli. the water looking out. We exchange pleasantries down at the coral with PCVs#5&6. and the passing Luis says, They are wild beasts, is They paid $30 apiece for it not true? their day trip island tours. We fish when far below He is referring to the fact paid only $25. (SUCKERS!) me, the strangest that we are not to go up super PCVs#5&6 are off on species of all comes close and snap photos of the their own walking tour. Boobies as if they are merely… into view…” animals. We are to quietly and Humberto and Luis direct our gracefully pass by and not make a group over toward a map of to the side, nodding his head big scene vis-à-vis the Boobies. I the island and show us the two up and down as if to say, Wait agree we should give the Boobies trails we can choose from. We till you guys get a load of these their Booby space (and indeed will hike up 80 meters before Boobies) he mentions all the have reservations about being on we have to make a decision things we’ll see. He mentions this island at all) but am worried between the 5 km trail to our the sights. He mentions the that this close-but-not-too-close left and the 3.5 km trail to our birds. And lastly he mentions rule leaves a grey area that could right. I say openly I don’t care something that we won’t be result in a disastrous maneuver which as long as I get to see lots seeing: involving a clash of Gringo of Blue-Footed Boobies. Travelers, Blue-Footed Boobies He says that in this cove I am informed that and technology.

9 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

I am at the back of our walking tour. Part of the reason I’m tak- ing so many pictures is the life- long journey to come this close to the species I wrote a report on in the 2nd grade. Another reason is because I’m worried I haven’t taken enough pictures during my time in Ecuador. Another reason is because I’m genuinely fascinated by the sur- roundings. Every time PCV#3 and I stop to look at a new Booby family, I use a little Booby voice to say things like: Oh don’t mind me, I’m just a rare Booby with brilliant A trail sign like this may have multiple layers of meaning for the Gringo Traveler blue feet. a minute. See the many types of God knows what could happen Or: birds—not just the Boobies. See to us out here. See the humans Nothing to see here! Just the postcard-like rocky cliffs reapplying sunscreen at manic me and my little baby Boobies that lead down to the turquoise intervals. See the humans minding our own Booby ocean (perfect for the Gringo wearing sandals that have so business. Traveler to pose in a photo for). many straps and buckles they See the rare tree, the rare flower, might as well be shoes. See the With their little golden eyes and the rare lizard. But mostly: see human with not just a ten-inch long pointy beaks, this is what the Boobies. lens but also binoculars. See the I actually imagine they are say- human with pockets on his vest, ing when they squawk in their pockets on his shirt and pockets Booby language. It’s not long before I’m wonder- on his pants (pants which, by ing who, actually, are the wild Even I begin to think this the way, zip off and morph into beasts. is weird and I’m not really sure shorts). If we get stranded and why I continue to do it. The Boobies are quite die out here, it will not be for literally minding their own lack of pockets. business. And we have come And, by the way, if we were The Poor Man’s Galápagos has a to… stare at them. surreal feel to it. It’s a combina- to collapse and wither away and And worst of all: We can tion of landing on another plan- come to slow, parched deaths on barely subsist in this clime. et and stepping into a nature this island, the Boobies would documentary. It’s Will Rogers See the humans with bath look at us like we’re nothing but State Park meets Mars. towels draped over their heads. a bunch of freaks. See the humans chugging See the desert island that’s bottled water—but not all at so arid a dropped match would It’s not long before I’m thinking once because we’re in a group of raze all 12 square kilometers in about all of this existentially. less than 20 on this island and

10 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

I’m reaching Vonnegut- giggles. I am rarely the type of esque conclusions about who person who says ‘Too soon’ in “Others are giggling. we are and what this gawking reference to anything, but in I am not. I am apropos the Boobies says my opinion, her laughing has about us as human beings. come entirely… too soon. scared this is going We pass by more Boobies and There are more violent to be an incident.” their young and before long it squawks and Booby thrashings all just starts to give me the and feathers aflutter. Every of schooling and certification creeps. other Booby in a 50-meter he’s gone through to get to the radius has joined in on the point he’s at today. Being a riot of squawks. The hat just guide on Isla de la Plata isn’t And then it happens. This is sits there, looking out of place. bad, but to Luis it’s like being the nightmare. This is the gro- That flower print hat belongs in the Minor Leagues. It’s tesqueness that results from nowhere on this island, like he and Humberto are hot our invasion. nowhere in the universe of Minor League prospects and if Luis is standing the Boobies. That hat belongs they keep plugging away and explaining to us how we are in this habitat like an iPhone improving, maybe one day very lucky because on that tree belongs in a Dickens novel. they’ll get their shot at the Big off yonder we can see a very Leagues: The Galápagos. But Luis (still the rare Red-Footed Booby and… consummate professional) SQUAWK! SCREECH! puts up his hand as if to say, We climb back in the boat and Wings flutter. Feathers fly. Settle the fuck down Gringo have tuna sandwiches and pine- Boobies are perturbed. The Travelers, I have this situation apple and watermelon slices giant flower print hat from a Under Control. for lunch. Humberto asks us if female human being has been we’re ready to see some Teen- Luis calmly walks over lifted off her human head by age Mutant Ninja Turtles (?) to the Boobies and removes the a gust of wind and landed and that’s when a pair of glori- hat. Unfortunately, instead of directly on top of a family of ous sea turtles approaches our burning the hat and pissing on Boobies that were just minding boat and glides around in slow the ashes, he hands it back to their own business. arcs near the water’s surface. the offender. I yell, Holy shit! The Gringo Travelers lurch in Before the incident, I unison to starboard and can Others are giggling. I am had wanted to zoom in really barely unsheathe their cameras not. I am scared this is going close and take a picture of just fast enough. I imagine what it to be an incident. I am scared the Booby’s brilliant blue feet. would be like to jump in with the we’ve created a violation But now that would just feel sea turtles and grab onto their that will affect the future of pornographic. shells and have them guide me the human-watching-Booby through the water. world. I am scared we’re going That is the dream of every Ec- to be on CNN. But then I see Humberto uadorian ecotourism guide, tossing watermelon chunks The girl who owns says Luis, to one day work in into the water where the sea the instrument of violation the Galápagos. turtles breach and open their spends about two seconds On the last leg of the big sea turtle mouths and eat looking scared but she has hike, I’m talking to Luis and the watermelon. I’m fairly already converted her fear into he tells me about the process certain this is a gross violation

11 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 of the most standard national park bylaws and it strikes me as the exact type of thing that could keep Humberto in the minor leagues.

We dive in the water with our snorkeling gear. We see schools of fish in brilliant colors pass by. We practice swimming down 15 or 20 feet and trying to touch the coral at the sea floor. PCV#3 is particularly adept at this. Two Gringo Travelers test the limits of technology Once, on the way back up from touching the bottom, alone. I’m suspended in the I know what can happen I feel my Timex Expedition water looking down at the cor- next. I’ve instigated it before. watch (water resistant up al and the passing fish when One person pukes first and to 100 meters) slip away. far below me, the strangest everyone else follows. In a The Velcro strap has come species of all comes into view: chain reaction, all others within undone. Homo sapiens (phylum: Grin- sight or smell—no matter how go; genus: White European). ironclad their equilibria—go I don’t panic. I come It wears a bikini. It observes down in succession, eyes back to the surface and take its surroundings with care. Its bulging, foreheads sweating, a deep breath before diving sunscreen is waterproof. stomachs hurling. back down again. My goggles are filling with water. Silt It breast strokes into my To prevent the Monty has been kicked up and the view and continues on its way Python-style mass vomiting, I water is murky. The goggles as I stay suspended above, turn to the girl who just blew are throwing off my depth looking down, transfixed. chunks and offer her my final perception. I’m blind down ginger candy. She takes it and here! just holds it. I say, You need to We’re halfway back to shore chew it. She just looks at me. But I persevere. I reach now; we can see mainland I yell above the noise of the out with both hands. I squeeze South America in the distance. motor, Chew it! them together and… success. I am doing fine, biliously She unwraps it, puts it speaking. My eyes are locked I reach the surface in her mouth and… spits it out on the mainland. PCV#1 is gasping and coughing up salt into the ocean! water. I yell to PCVs#1-3 that standing. PCV#3 is reading. She has spewed my final they won’t believe what just And then a human ginger candy into the sea in happened. I swim to the boat Gringo Traveler stumbles to disgust when anyone who’s and tell them my heroic story the back of the boat, no more ever gotten motion sickness in and they are… unimpressed. than two feet to my left, and their life knows that ginger is launches a stream of vomit It’s almost time to get back in the one surefire way to settle off into the foamy wake of our Island Tours and return to the the stomach during an episode mainland. I’m still out there vessel.

12 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 of nausea and vomiting. Brother gringo—it is the job The next day, emails are of the Gringo Traveler to checked and… Yes, there’s an I hope she keeps question the masculinity and/ explanation. It involves a US vomiting. or heterosexual bona fides of bank and an Ecuadorian bank She doesn’t. anyone who drinks less alcohol and feel free to guess which is But others do. than he. responsible for the delay. Another girl sitting port ~ ~ walks/crawls to the aft/port Nearly a week into our vaca- New Year’s Eve. corner and barfs a fountain tion and our next month’s vomitus overboard as her living allowance still hasn’t Drinks by the beach. Beer. Te- friend looks on. shown up in our Peace Corps quila. We’re rocking. We’re A grown man simply bank accounts. This is a threat rolling. Everything is ON. turns around in his abaft seat to the existence of the Gringo Lady Gaga. Pyrotechnics. Tiki and hurls watermelon and Traveler that sets off a wave of torches. tuna sandwich into the deep panic and scorn. I see a girl across the green sea. Up until now I have been way. I want to get with her A young man sitting surviving on the $200 I stuffed so bad I can taste it. We lock starboard next to his girlfriend in my shoes at the beginning eyes. We talk. I know it’s on. stands up and ralphs a of the trip, because if I were She knows it’s on. Everyone symmetrical arc out into the in the bar knows it’s on. We Pacific. “The world of the know that they know that we know it’s on. Luis and Humberto are Gringo Traveler is a reading the newspaper. Three hours later, small one.” whether or not it is in fact ‘on’ PCV#2 and I are trying is a matter for interpretation. not to catch a glimpse of the getting robbed and assaulted upchuck party, in fear that and dragged naked out into Things I learn in the waning we’ll be the next ones, but it’s the jungle to get clubbed to seconds of 2010: basically impossible. death, the thief would NEVER According to PCV#1, My second dose of think to look under my shoe Will Smith and his wife are Dramamine has kicked in and insoles in hopes of finding a swingers. He says it’s an open I’m in a drowsy haze with my wad of crisp $20s! secret in Hollywood. He knows eyes focused on the mainland. They chose the worst someone who knows someone I make it. month possible to screw with who can confirm it. ~ our living allowance, says one According to PCV#3, of us. That night we’re at the bar on Dennis Rodman has ‘broken the beach and I leave to go to Yeah, I’d like to see these his dick several times.’ bed early because it has been a guys from the office live on $11 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… long day for this Gringo Trav- [sic] a day, says another. 2… eler. I’m checking my email We’ve done this before, PCV#1 calls me a pussy tomorrow, and if there’s not haven’t we. because—like other varieties of some sort of explanation, gringo, such as the Fraternity they’ll hear from me, says ~ someone else.

13 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

On New Year’s Day we walk to the sea floor. Water so fresh “We never want through the ghost town try- I never want to get out. PCV#3 to leave here. ing to find a restaurant that’s is trying to teach PCV#4 how We never want open early. First we try to go to swim all the way down and to the gringo hotspot owned touch the bottom. PCV#4 says vacation to end. We by a gringo, which we’ve gone he can’t do it, his ears start to talk about staying to every day since arriving. It’s hurt. PCV#3 tells him he needs forever.” closed so we stagger back onto to equalize. I have no idea how López I wake up sick but not the empty boardwalk and find to equalize. sick from drinking, because I a place that looks much less We try to swim out didn’t drink last night. This is appetizing. We sit down and farther and all we see are just my body saying, Vacation’s a man who we thought was a waves coming at us from the over, time to go home. drifter takes our orders. Back horizon. I say, Guys, let’s just This—being sick on in the kitchen, a giant man is keep going out farther and vacation—is not new to me. I passed out face down on the farther away from shore, I’m have been seasick in the San concrete floor. pretty sure that’s what dying Juans. I’ve eaten bad surf ‘n’ ~ feels like. turf in the Caymans. I’ve had Los Frailes: The most pristine None of us, including issues with lack of SPF in Costa beach in all of Ecuador. The me, is sure if I’m serious. Rica. I’ve gone two weeks without a bowel movement in Gringo Traveler squeezes the ~ final drops from his bottle of China. I’ve been lovesick in Banana Boat SPF 50 and feels We never want to leave here. Holland. a tinge of nostalgia when it’s We never want vacation to end. Here in Puerto López I all gone. We talk about staying forever. believe my soul is sick. PCV#1 says, Eh, my counter- parts would get suspicious and PCV#1 says I’m being a start calling after a couple days. wimp because I want to stay I think that at my site I could behind at the hotel alone bleed to death on my morning while they go hiking. Later jog and not have anyone notice today when we’re sitting in for weeks. the sand and I turn to my left and vomit apples and bananas, ~ PCV#1 says, I guess he wasn’t On the inside of the doors in exaggerating, maybe I was a our hotel, there is a sign that little tough on him. In the way says in English and Spanish, In that people do around sick or Puerto López , water is primor- drunk or loathsome people, dial. the five others around me start to talk as if I’m not even Primordial (prī’môrdēəl) ad- there.

A Booby, suave and pensive, monitors his jective: existing at or from the surroundings beginning of time; primeval. Later in the day, PCV#1 is limp- ing for some reason. PCV#2 is PCVs#3&4 and I swim out ~ moping but I’m not sure why. as far as we can go. Water so On our last full day in Puerto PCV#4 is already gone either clear we can see down 20 feet because he got sick of us or

14 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 because he wanted to see his him now. One more time for with a squirrel’s tail of hair girlfriend in Quito. PCV#3 is good measure, I yelp: SHE stretching longitudinally. See oblivious. We are no longer SAID YES! the legs, skinny and hairy. See the dramatic jump between humans. We are machines that ~ apply sunscreen, eat and take red and pasty white, making showers. It’s coming to an end. I leave to it look like I’m still wearing buy my bus ticket for the fol- underwear. See the hazel eyes. We have vacationed lowing morning. On my way See the tired shoulders. See ourselves into submission. out, the housekeeper goes into scars on the forehead and Earlier in the day I stay our room. When I get back, the arm and the leg and the back at the hotel alone. I lie in the room is wide open but the shoulder blade. the hammock peeling baseball housekeeper is gone. I’m pret- Think about the sea lion: card-sized flakes of skin off ty sure this is a case of gross He has no woman, he has no my upper thighs and reading. housekeeping negligence, es- family, he is all alone. I’m reading Frank McCourt’s pecially since the room of the memoir Angela’s Ashes, which Gringo Traveler is nothing -Crawford, a Natural Re- is basically like soft-core porn short of a stockpile of tech- source Conservation Volun- for anyone who’s ever taken a teer from Omnibus 101, lives in college creative writing class. “We have vacationed ourselves into Zamora Chinchipe. This is his As I lie there reading, final issue as Editor-in-Chief I put down the book, peel off submission.” of El Clima; he will complete another flake of skin the size of a his service in April 2011. Post-it and think. I’m thinking nology. I check to see that the about all the experiences and mountain of cell phones and choices you’ve ever made and The Adventures of MacGyver, iPods on the dresser is intact. how they all amount to what Part II I lay down and eventually the you are today and how there’s MacGyver in the Bathroom housekeeper comes back to a possibility that when you do By Alex Pellett collect her things. all the addition it might add up to failure. The failure means Q: What does MacGyver do No one else is in the room. I you might not be as good of a in the bathroom? leave the bathroom after an- person as you think you are. other bowel movement. I won’t A: Whatever it takes. This sense of doom say how many separate bow- paralyzes me as I lie with the el movements I’ve had this Ever find yourself in a bind book on my lap and the flakes morning because that would while partially nude in a com- of burnt upper thigh flapping be crass; let me just say there promising position with no in the breeze. The doom is were seven flushes total. heavy; and just when my lungs one to help? Don’t despair. By I stand naked in front of feel like they’re filling up with following the example of Mac- the mirror. lead and I can hardly breathe, Gyver, these problems can be my brother calls. And… See the hair standing resolved without foul language, on end from the body oils the use of guns or minimal vio- SHE SAID YES!? and sea salt. See the beard, lence. Yes! She said yes! unshaven for 12 days. See MacGyver 1 is a perfect She’s on the phone with the chest, orange and crispy model for the Peace Corps Vol-

15 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 unteer: resourceful, patient, So, how to lower the flexible and skilled in all output of the showerhead? kinds of explosives. Your Your correspondent’s first correspondent has taken solution was duct tape. Just up the task of disseminat- strap some over a quar- ing MacGyver Skills among ter to a half of the holes on the Peace Corps Ecuador the showerhead. Obviously, populace. Here we will ex- there are more elegant solu- amine ways in which Mac- tions: Later we removed the Gyver might manage several showerhead and sealed the problems commonly faced holes with a heated nail. in Host Country Bathrooms, Or you can ditch the Restrooms and Outhouses electric water heater alto- (HCBORs). gether and heat your water The context here is with a flamethrower fueled the Sierra region, at home by aluminum shavings filed and in urban settings. If off a bicycle (Season 1, Epi- you have problems heeding Don´t try this at home, unless you´re MacGyver sode 12, “Deathlock”). nature’s call while in na- ***IMPORTANT POST contact with the heating ele- ture, you should probably call SCRIPT*** ments. Your neighbor flushing the medical office. If you have About six months after the toilet, washing clothes, or some other kind of problem I “fixed” my showerhead by even the accumulation of de- and you think MacGyver Skills sealing some of the holes with bris upstream from the intake might be in order, feel free to a heated nail, it stopped work- could all be culprits, but un- e-mail MacGyverRulzzz1985@ ing. I took it down and disman- fortunately MacGyver can’t do gmail.com tled it to find that the heat- much about those factors. ing coil had disconnected and One thing that MacGyver melted into the plastic hous- could do (and so can you!) is “Shortly thereafter ing. The parts that had melted reduce the output of the show- gobs of molten into the plastic were brittle; it erhead. This will better ensure plastic began to rain broke; and I connected it sig- that enough water fills the in- nificantly shorter than it was down on my scalp..” ner chamber of the water heat- originally designed. Several er to maintain contact with the showers later, I smelled smoke. heating elements, even if the Problem 1: My electric hot Fortunately I am indifferent by incoming water current is low. water heater often turns off nature and didn’t look up, be- While everyone understands when I’m in the middle of my cause shortly thereafter gobs that turning the water current shower. of molten plastic began to rain down turns off the heater, by down on my scalp. There are many pos- lowering the water output, you Clearly, I should have sible causes for this problem. can turn on the heater. The waited and bought a new heat- One, which will be addressed key factor is the level of water ing coil. I’m not sure if this was here, is that your water cur- within the heater, not neces- related to my original Mac- rent is fluctuating, which cuts sarily the out- or inflow. Gyver shenanigans, but I fig-

1 Your author is referring to the character, the ideal, not the actor, Richard Dean Anderson. He’s probably off somewhere filming Stargate SG-9 or something. While he may very well be a stand up citizen, following his example (starring in a semi- successful television series, followed by a long hiatus, followed by a less successful television series) is unlikely to help you in your travails in the bathroom, or anywhere else.

16 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 ured you—the reader— Swiss army knife and duct might want to know of tape—are ill advised in this this development. Also, situation. Reaching for remember, MacGyver any scrap of paper nearby blew shit up a lot more is worse. That’s not natu- than he fixed things. ral resource management; that’s disgusting. Problem 2: I’m a guy, The correct answer is to I try to urinate with the use cash money, preferably seat up, but the darn a $20 bill (it’s of little use thing keeps falling down here anyway). Also, it’s a mid-stream. MacGyver in the shower known fact that 17% of $20 bills have trace amounts of It’s a fact: Due to im- gasoline to propel the missile cocaine on them, so you might proper installation, 87% of (Season 2, Episode 32, “Three get a quick pick-me-up, mula toilet seats in Ecuador can- for the Road”). It is similar to style.2 not maintain an unsupported a potato launcher. Evo Morales would ap- up position. Everyone else prove of the novel and poten- pees all over them, but we, as Problem 3: Toilet paper. tially marketable use of his sa- cred cash crop. Peace Corps Volunteers, know So the primary objec- Also, you can also use that this is a community ac- tive is accomplished, you just a hockey ticket (Season 2, tion problem and it is our re- gotta clean up and debrief. Episode 33, “Phoenix Under sponsibility not to contribute. But where’s the rub? The sta- Siege”). Trying to relieve oneself with ples of the MacGyver diet—a one hand holding up the seat may lead to undesirable ward- robe malfunctions. It is more responsible to drive with both hands on the wheel. While it may be tempt- ing to try some MacGyver gad- getry to hold up the toilet seat, this could also be problemat- ic. What has worked for your correspondent, and what may work for you if you piss stand- ing up, is the side stance. You can also try shoot- ing the toilet seat with a pro- jectile launched from a muffler with one end bent shut. Use the padding from a car seat as wadding and wick, and use Macgyver’s toiled seat suspended by a cell phone

2 It is illegal to damage or vandalize U.S. currency. So if you try this, you better take it to the rock, throw on some Deja, and wash that baby out so she can get back in circulation. Also, cocaine is a schedule VI drug, possession of which is a federal crime both here and back home, even for medical reasons. Research permits are rarely given out, and I’d bet you don’t have one. While the traces found on some bills are below dosage levels, if you have any reason to believe that a bill in your posses- sion has been contaminated with illegal substances, better throw some Lava Todo in along with the aforementioned precau- tions. 17 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Do? MacGyver dropped out of The Adventures of MacGyver, “That’s not a successful academic career Part III natural resource in physics because he had bet- MacGyver Goes to School management; that’s ter things to do, like become disgusting..” the most awesome secret agent Q: Where does MacGyver the jacket from under the bel- ever. So Tune In, Turn On, and go to school? ligerent’s feet. He or she will Drop Out. Leave that school, stumble and become confused. and never look back. Unless, of A: MacGyver doesn’t go to You take it from there. (This is course, you’re drawn back by school. Trick question, suck- another proven strategy from the mysterious death of your ers. Season 2, Episode 32, “Three favorite professor and a dis- for the Road.”) tress call from that singularly As Peace Corps Volun- unforgettable co-ed (Season 1, teers, many of us work in or Problem 2: No one is ever Episode 8, “Hellfire”). around schools. Sometimes doing anything at the local there are problems. Here’s high school. I’ve been going at Problem 3: The door fell off what MacGyver might do. least once a week for several its hinges. months now, and there are If you’re talking about Problem 1: This one kid keeps always three times as many an iron door and iron hinges, causing problems, and I want students and teachers hang- MacGyver can totally fix this to hit him. ing around outside the school problem. What does MacGyver than there are participating need? Four horseshoes, several Start by giving the kids in classes. One class I saw on yards of insulated copper wire, brownies. They will think you genetics was just straight up pliers, six inches of rubber are cool. If one of them keeps incorrect. What should I do? hose, a bucket of water, some giving you problems, save him scraps of wood, a couple of WWMD. It doesn’t stand or her from a deadly snake, nails, a t-shirt, a long sleeved for Weird/Wacky Weapon of mountain lion, or both. These shirt, sunglasses, gloves, lem- Mass Destruction; it’s a code to are proven strategies from ons, salt, and a welding fila- live by. What Would MacGyver “Bushmaster” (Season 2, Epi- ment. sode 41). If for some reason you can’t hack it with the above, step into a confrontation with the belligerent. Take off your jacket. Say, “This is my favor- ite jacket, and if we’re gonna fight, I don’t want to get it messed up.” Put the jacket on the ground in front of the bel- ligerent. The belligerent will definitely proceed to step all over your favorite jacket and swing a sloppy roundhouse. This is all part of your plan. Duck the roundhouse, and pull MacGyver welding

18 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Use the wood the pliers. Hold the pli- scraps and the nails to ers with your gloved set the horseshoes in hand. pairs. Each horseshoe Now, put the posi- in a pair should be fac- tive wire in the positive ing the other, about a hole, the other wire in half inch apart, but not the negative hole, flip touching. The two pairs the switch if you have shouldn’t be particu- one, and (cautiously) larly close. Wrap a wire move the welding fila- around each horseshoe, ment closer to the con- but make sure the wires nection being welded don’t touch either. Drop (the intersection of the all that in the bucket of door and the hinge, in water with the wires coming MacGyver´s pre-welding preparations (holy shit) this case). If you get too out, and add salt and lemons If the socket has three holes, aim close, it will stick, in which to taste—add a bunch, actually. for one of the slotted ones, not case you should let go of it with the For each pair of horse- the round one. Now, touch the pliers immediately, or you might shoes, pick a wire. These two wire and touch the ground at the blow a fuse. If you stay about a wires are going to go to the near- same time. If you feel a little jolt, half to a quarter of an inch away, est power outlet. (It is important you’ve got the positive; if you feel you will get an arc of electricity which one goes to which hole nothing, you’ve got the negative. flowing from the tip of your fila- but we’ll get to that later.) Of the It’s best to put an on/off ment. From this arc, drops of liq- other two wires, wrap the end of switch somewhere around the uid metal will fly off the filament. one around the object to be weld- circuit that you’re about to com- Move the filament slowly around ed, but not real close to the spot plete, for just the barest shred the connection being welded. you’re going to weld. The other is of safety. And oh yeah, put on Through sheer chance, some of going to wrap around one handle the gloves, the long sleeved shirt these liquid drops of metal will of the pliers. Slip the wire through hit the seam and solidify there. the length of hose, wrap it several That is what you want. times around the handle of the “Stick a bit of wire in Weld in short 15- to pliers, and shimmy the hose up one of the holes (NOT 30-second spurts, so as not to to cover the handle. Make sure BOTH AT THE SAME melt the door or the hinge. Be- the hose doesn’t prevent the pli- TIME!)” tween spurts, tap the area being ers from closing fully. welded to knock off excess ash. Okay, so the wire coming Don’t use your hand; it’s gonna from the pliers goes to a horse- and the sunglasses. Wrap the t- be really hot. shoe in the salty lemonade, and shirt around your head, leaving MacGyver never did this in that horseshoe is real close to— your sunglasses peeping out. The any of the episodes that your cor- but not touching—another horse- clothing is to protect you when the respondent has seen. But if—no, shoe, which has a wire wrapped sparks fly. The sunglasses won’t when—they start filming again, on it, and the wire is going to a really do much at all to protect we can mail this one in and get power outlet. That wire is going your retinas, but at least you look our names on the credits. in the positive hole. Don’t know cool trying. The welding filament which one is positive? Stick a bit looks kinda like a real skinny -Pellett, an Agriculture Volun- of wire in one of the holes (NOT corndog. Hold the stick end with teer from Omnibus 101, lives in BOTH AT THE SAME TIME!). Imbabura.

19 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Chia pet. tions,” Ezra Pound’s “Cantos,” Interviews and many more. Better Know a Staff Member Burn to death or drown? No thank you. Coffee or tea? Coffee and Tea. Favorite place in the world. With (wife) Belen and (son) Wolverine or Magneto? Matteo. Wolverine.

Least favorite place in the Back to the Future I, II, or III? world. The one with the train in the The toilet at the Abeche air- Wild West. It was so awful. [Editor’s Note: Although Mr. strip in Chad. Cuscaden was interviewed in the Grossest thing you’ve ever previous issue of El Clima, the Time it takes you to get ready eaten? response was a resounding call in the morning? Poop Soup – a Hmong deli- for “More Josh.” So in this issue About seven seconds. cacy. we’re testing the theory that you can’t have too much of a good Song you know all the words World without music or world thing. Plus, after the December/ to. without books? January living allowance de- “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! bacle, Mr. Cuscaden deserves a Butterfly. chance to get his groove back. – Personal goal while in Ecua- So you have a Master’s in Po- dor? JGC] etry, who’s your favorite poet, To spend money. 50 Cent or Kanye West? Name Joshua Cuscaden Public Enemy. Professional goal while in Ec- Date of Birth: June 22, uador? 1977 Just kidding, for real, Dr. To save money. Hometown: Red Bank, NJ Seuss or Shel Silverstein? Silverstein. Book you’re currently reading? Colonize This!: Young Women Would you rather be cov- Okay, okay, but really, if Em- of Color on Today’s Feminism ered in feathers or covered in ily Dickinson and Edgar Allan (various authors). scales? Poe threw it down, who would I’d rather be covered in Velcro. win? Costa, Sierra or Oriente? Poe would clean up. Sierra. You inherit $5 million on the same day that aliens land on Alright, favorite poem. Pilsener, Club or Conquer? Earth. They say they are going Too many to list, but to start, Yes, please. to blow up the planet in two Han Shan’s Cold Mountain po- days. What do you do? ems, Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs Idea of a perfect date? Calligraphy. du Mal,” Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Matteo asleep. Mayakovsky’s “A Slap in the Chifa or American Chinese Face of Public Taste,” Pablo Favorite sport? food? Neruda’s “The Book of Ques- I like the Olympics.

20 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Lots of choices. Good, clean -Photo courtesy of Mr. Cus- bad, you go to heaven or hell, fun. caden (seriously). or maybe limbo for a while.

Steven Seagal or Sylvester Stal- What are your favorite hob- lone? Interviews bies? Chuck Norris Better Know a Volunteer Hiking up here in the páramo by my house. Reading. Has anyone ever told you, you look like Steven Seagal? Strangest/worst injury? Chuck Norris did and then I I was skiing and got clothes- kicked him in the mouth. lined by a rope. It was at night and we’d probably had too Enough beating around the much to drink. … I didn’t see bush, what’s with the ponytail? the rope and it knocked me I go through phases. This is the back and gave me a concus- ponytail, overweight Steven sion. It also messed up my ribs. Seagal phase. My sternum still pops when I move my arm around. Proudest moment of your life? Pride cometh before the fall. What is the strangest thing that’s happened to you during Favorite story from [serving in your time here? Peace Corps] Kazakhstan? Maybe when I was an ayun- The records of this story can- Name: Mike Armenta dante on the bus and I got in not be released until 50 years Age: 29 a fight with an old lady who after my death. was trying to say her son was a Province: Pichincha medio. But he wasn’t; he was a Favorite Quote? Omnibus: 101 full-grown kid; he was like 16. “The Dude abides.” Do you have a nickname? What scares you most about Favorite Band? At my site it’s Gringo Loco. the world? Pink Floyd. Pandemic viruses that could Which words would you use to wipe out everybody. Favorite Disney character? describe yourself? The brooms in Fantasia and Calm, tranquilo, curious. What do you miss the most Steamboat Willie. about home? What were you doing before The menu selection at restau- What did you think of this in- you came here? rants. terview? I was working full-time at a Tasty and refreshingly sweet. hospital in Colorado Springs. I What is your favorite Spanish worked with medical records. phrase? -Interview by Clint Armistead, No importa and Siga no mas. a Youth & Families Volunteer What do you think happens from Omnibus 104 living in after you die? What is your dream job? Azuay. I think, depending on the I don’t know. I’m still thinking. person, if you’re either good or I’m lost. I don’t know what I

21 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 want to do yet. found out you’d be coming to What is your personal motto? Peace Corps Ecuador? Go big or go home. Favorite musician or type of I was in my Pathfinder driving music? to work in Colorado Springs -Interview by J. Grigsby America, the band from the when I got the call. Crawford. ‘70s. They’ve got that classic rock sound. What is the most intriguing place you’ve visited or lived in? Favorite writer? I thought Guatemala was cool; Great Expectations is my I had a blast there. It would be favorite book so I guess that or Colorado, since that’s Dickens. where I want to return to after this. Favorite airport? Colorado Springs. It’s small How would you describe your and there are no lines. political views? I would say I’m a conservative Where would you like to be in Democrat. 25 years? I’ll be almost retirement age, Who are your idols or people so I’d like to be in a cabin on a you look up to? small ranch somewhere in the My grandpa Leo. mountains of Colorado. Of the seven deadly sins (pride, If you could change one thing envy, gluttony, lust, anger, about yourself, which would it greed, sloth), which are you be? most guilty? I guess I would be a little bit Gluttony. taller. What, briefly, has been your What is your go-to comfort lowest point during service? food at site? Last year right before I stock up on ham and cheese Christmas when I didn’t have sandwiches. I love a good any counterpart and nothing sandwich. was going on. I was just like, Shit I may as well go home. I What’s the weirdest thing was pretty sad at that point. you’ve done to deal with bore- dom? What has been your highest Fight with the neighborhood point? kids and stake them out and Probably just here in my site shoot ‘em with my slingshot— making the friendships with not with anything hard, just a all the people in town and popcorn kernel or something. being accepted as part of the community. Where were you when you

22 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Volunteer Life Two Years in Facebook Statuses (aka: The Recollections of a Soon-to-Be RPCV Via Online Social Medium) By Sarah Evans facebook profile Sarah Evans Volunteer at Peace Corps Studied Writing at University of Pittsburgh Lives in Tungurahua From New Tripoli, Pennsylvania Born on June 7, 1986 Status February 18, 2009: Five days until Baltimore, six days until DC, and I STILL haven’t packed.

February 23, 2009: I am joining the Peace Corps tomorrow. Goodbye America.

February 26, 2009: I am in Ecuador! It’s beautiful and I’m having a great time. The night I arrive in Quito it is lightly raining, warm and lush. On the bus ride to the hostel I sit with my head half out the open window in the rain, listening to the chatter of people around me, hardly able to believe that I am in Ecuador. When we arrive at Hostal San Javier a horde of volunteers shake the bus, whooping and singing. They hand us roses; mine has a strip of paper tied with bright ribbon, and says Don’t Worry, Be Happy. After our very first merienda we sit in the open-air veranda, playing cards and drinking boxed wine. The rain has stopped, and despite the cool city night the sky is sprinkled with stars. This is the start of something; I just don’t know what yet.

April 3, 2009: I’m a little scared shitless of my site! The site visit is a disaster. The cluster of houses is perched on the side of a mountain, dirty, without clean water or proper sanitation. The people stare when I pass by. Already, in the middle of the afternoon, the town’s elderly are passed out drunk in the streets. A toothless woman hollers some unintelligible words at me. My future house is unfinished and lonely, accessed by a thin dirt path through frijole fields. My landlord’s wife confesses to me in a hushed voice that he beats her. Her very young son is crying; his leg hurts, and when his baggy sweatpants are pulled up from his bare feet they reveal a purple leg, thick and infected from a festering cut,

23 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Don’t cry, she instructs her son. Boys don’t cry. She rinses it with dirty water and wraps it in dry leaves and an old handkerchief. I beg her to let me take him to a doctor. Gathered in my arms, he is light and smells like a lifetime of dirt and smoke. At the clinic, the doctor’s young son watches from the corner of the room as the doctor disinfects the leg and gives the boy shots of antibiotics. The difference between the two is startlingly visible: the doctor’s son is clean and bright, shoulders straight, interested and unafraid. The campo boy hunches his shoulders perpetually, like a dog expecting to be beaten. His skin is much darker, his clothing a mess of filth. My arms and shirt from where I carried him are smudged dark brown. You saved his leg, the doctor tells me. You probably saved his life. Two years in this town. I return from my site visit composed but break “I wonder, for the down hysterically two nights later, alone in my host first time, why the family’s house. I wonder, for the first time, why the hell hell I am here...” I am here.

May 3, 2009: Of course “your house is completely finished, I swear it’s definitely finished” in Ecuadorian means “you have no door and no lights and it’s filled with trash!” Just as well, means I get to rest in awesome P----- for a few more days. A clean and safe town a twenty-minute drive from my site, becomes my refuge. I stay with a family while my house is being completed; they become my pseudo-host family, and their house smells like jasmine and the surprisingly pleasant scent of Raid. Even when I move into my site I take refuge here, staying for days at a time. My community isn’t interested in work. They aren’t interested in anything but drinking and harassing me. I find jobs in the new town, retreating there two days out of the week like a dog licking its wounds. At my site, I do yoga, I read, I wander the streets in expensive hiking boots and try to build some semblance of a life. It doesn’t work. In the middle of the night, a drunk pounds on my door, demanding to be let in. He yells curses at me, telling me that my landlord said he could use the extra room in my house when he has nowhere else to go. He tells me that my landlord has a key and can let him in at any time. He asks me if I am afraid. I leave the community shortly after that.

August 5, 2009: Watching ¨The Mummy¨ in Spanish, going to the weekly market, recuperating from Puyo and planning more fun for this weekend, house hunting, and generally shirking my responsibilities. Just another day in Ecuador! …and yes, I said house hunting. :-) I find an apartment in this new town. It’s nuns that help me move, old ladies in their black habits carting boxes and chairs up rocky dirt paths and into the back of a camioneta. They are joined by the one family I have become friends with here: young Estrella with her baby on her back, barefoot children, the cross-eyed grandmother

24 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 and the mentally disabled brother who can’t speak but who helps carry my heavy dresser with enthusiasm. We ride one last time down the mountain, the last time I will ever ride that road. I am squeezed in the front seat next to a nun, a fat-cheeked baby on my lap, the sky dusky with the dim oranges and purples of twilight. The lights from far-off cities are already on, the moon bright in a still-blue sky. I feel God in the road, in the moon, the chubby baby, the fading sky. I feel life.

September 13, 2009: Craziest. Week. Ever. As in, ever. As in, my life. I meet him in a café in Quito. He is from Canada, a world traveler, scruffy with messy dark hair and perpetual stubble, a silly wide-brimmed Indiana Jones hat and a frayed rucksack. We talk for hours, until breakfast turns into lunch and lunch turns into dinner and dinner turns into an invitation for him to take me back to my site. He stays, for a long time. He plays the guitar at night, strumming the same songs with careless ease, playing me “Sister Golden Hair.” We wander through town during festivals with two of the free boxes of vino that are being passed out from huge trucks in the parade. We go to communities and hike winding cloud forest trails; he helps with my charlas and I help him speak with campo doctors to see if there is any need for volunteers with EMT training. We make sushi on the floor of my new apartment, barefoot and cross-legged. We roll avocado and hot rice and prawns and crab in paper-thin seaweed, then eat it with our hands. He makes me crepes for breakfast. We take day and weekend trips to different towns and cities, just for the journey itself. We rent hostel rooms. I ask myself, What are you doing? He leaves, eventually. I miss his presence, the displaced air of someone else in this small apartment, but my heart is not broken.

October 26, 2009: What is up with so many people from my high school graduating class being engaged, married, pregnant, with infants, or divorced? My God, we’re 23! I feel like I’m in a Jane Austen novel. Soon a well-meaning but interfering aunt will start to try setting me up with kindly neighbor boys or lecturing me on how to best snag a husband and bake the perfect apple pie. Sheesh. My best friend gets married without me there. I write her a note, long and teary-eyed, about how far we’ve come. I write it because I can’t be there, because I can’t come up to her face and tell her that we are breathlessly young and she especially is still a sixteen-year-old inside and that I disapprove of this elaborate white wedding that conceals a sad, passionless marriage. I can’t tell her these things because I am half a world away, and Skype just won’t do. I feel like I barely know her anymore. Later she posts Sears snapshots on Facebook, her hair cut and coiffed like a soccer mom, him in an ill-fitting jacket, and it hits me like a hammer that she is completely gone. In Ecuador, life goes on.

25 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

October 31, 2009: The continuing adventures of Sarah and her ridiculous stomach! See Sarah take the utmost precautions in food and beverage and still vomit all night, forcing her to miss the whitewater rafting trip she has been waiting months for! And as an added bonus, see her then have to ride 8.5 hrs on winding, bumpy Ecuadorian roads to get back to her site!

November 29, 2009: I have amoebas. Now that’s sexy. I get sick during the big Halloween trip to El Chaco. I spend the night huddled over the toilet, no doubt keeping up my poor roommates, and the next day I bail, crawling onto a bus and desperately praying to get back to my site without blowing chunks all over the bus driver. Sick and sleepless as I am, the road from Tena to Quito is astounding, and I am sitting in the “death seat” at the very front, and like a movie rolling the credits, a string of Thank You’s wells up in my throat. Thank you for allowing me to be in Ecuador. Thank you for green jungle trees and hot blue sky. Thank you for mountains and winding roads, bridges so narrow and old that you feel thrillingly like you might fall in at any moment. Thank you for yawning gorges. Thank you for water tumbling over rocks and mud, clear, cool. Thank you for letting me be alive, for the blessing that is the sheer act of living. I don’t know who I am thanking, but it helps. My breathing calms, my nausea subsides. I thank the universe for that, too.

December 31, 2009: Going to cold, cold Guaranda for New Years. Ah well, there’s always next year for the beach.

January 4, 2010: Julie and I saw a man give a drowned pigeon mouth-to- mouth. It didn’t work. I watch the pigeon drown while waiting for Julie to show up for our lunch. I’m in a park in Ambato, and I see the pigeon flapping its wings in the water. At first I think it is bathing, but then it starts to sink, and its movements become thrashing and panicked. I wonder what to do. I could climb in the fountain and rescue it, wrap my hands around its disease-ridden little body and lift it out of the water. But I would get my sneakers wet and then have to walk around in wet sneakers all day. As I’m contemplating, the pigeon drowns. A man sees it in its final moments and leaps into “Julie and I saw a the water, sloshing to its side. It’s clearly not breathing. man give a drowned Back on dry land, he pries open its little beak and pushes pigeon mouth-to- on its fragile chest while breathing into its mouth. It mouth. It didn’t would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad. He keeps trying, and work...” trying, even after it is obvious the bird is dead. He won’t give up. Julie can’t hide her disgust. How gross! she says, then looks over at me. I am crying. I don’t really know why.

26 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

February 8, 2010: Attempted to fight off an attacker who had a knife. 12 stitches in my hand. Stuck in Quito at the doctor’s, all my clothing and my shoes covered in my own blood. Can barely type this. So...

February 11, 2010: Finally back in P-----, and determined to let nothing interrupt my well-deserved laziness. Also: functioning without a right hand is difficult. Can’t write, or do dishes. Shower with a bag over it. Lighting matches for my gas cooker is abysmal. Wish I had someone who wasn’t a fictional character here to cheer me up. The night of the attack, after my hand is stitched up and “Later I discover swathed in gauze and pounding like, well, like someone that I will never just sliced it open with a kitchen knife, Julie and I go to regain sensation a Happy Pollo, because it is the only fast-food restaurant in that part of my still open. It is eleven o’clock at night when we walk in. I hand...” am covered in blood, my jeans dyed a deep rust red, my sneakers saturated, splashes still on my face. My hair is wild and unbrushed, my hand a huge bandaged mitten. I can’t feel a huge chunk of my thumb. It is numb, dead, like it is made of wood instead of flesh; later I discover that I will never regain sensation in that part of my hand. We get a meal and I try to eat it with one hand, but I am not left-handed and most of the rice slips from my fork before I can get it to my mouth. My toes are sticky with the semi-dry blood that has soaked through my socks. When I finally return to my site the town festivals are going on, loud and raucous. Music pounds through the walls, the beat shaking the very cement and rattling the windows. I drag my mattress into the kitchen and make a blanket fort with my plastic chairs, the lights burning all night, a knife under my pillow. The locks on my door seem suddenly very flimsy and ineffective. My right hand is still tender and useless, and I try very hard not to be afraid. This is my lowest point in Ecuador, and it is very, very low. Things get better, but it takes time. Even in Ecuador, life falls into routine.

March 6, 2010: found a biblical amount of huge, maggot-like worms in her apartment. This is how sexy my life is in Ecuador.

March 20, 2010: For mysterious reasons, no power on my block until “at least Monday.” Looks like I’ll be spending my time at the internet cafe...

March 22, 2010: has electricity! Woohoo! I feel like I’m livin’ large.

March 28, 2010: More worms in my goddamn house! FML.

27 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

April 8, 2010: I feel like 95% of my Peace Corps life is sitting on my hands and wondering what I am going to do that day. It is seriously depressing to not have enough work.

April 29, 2010: One year of being a PCV. One to go!

May 1, 2010: The shop next door has been blasting the same 30 second commercial on a loop for the past two hours. Fuck you, Ecuador.

May 4, 2010: Apparently we are now entering monsoon season. I have two options to get the store: swim or canoe. Or a gondola.

May 28, 2010: Volcano Tungurahua just erupted. Roads are blocks because of ash fall. Airports closed. In Quito now, so I might not be able to go back to my site, being that I am the closest volunteer to the volcano. Peace Corps Ecuador: Causing me to type words I never thought I would type.

May 28, 2010: Just confirmed: Am stuck in Quito “until further notice.” I am the closest volunteer to a very active volcano. I have a clear view of it from my room, smoke billowing black out the top during the day. At night, low rumbles like far-off thunder disturb my sleep, and when it is clear I can see red shooting out the top, sparks flying, magma snaking down the sides. I am in Quito when the big eruption happens. While roads from Ambato to Guayaquil are being cleared of ash I go to Cotacachi and Otavalo with friends, reveling in the unexpected vacation. At the end of a long day we pile onto the hard bench behind the bus driver, crammed in side-by-side. I am pressed against the window, staring directly over the driver’s mostly bald head. It is raining, but the moon is hanging low, full and fat and yellow, the mountains shadowed like heaped blankets. New friends are packed beside me like they are old friends; I tell them secrets, and I feel like I fit into my own skin for the first time in a long time. The bus rumbles through a dark night in Ecuador, headlights cutting through the night like beacons, and I am content.

June 5, 2010: Annndddd gearing up for midservice conference. Can’t believe it’s already here. Ten months to go!

June 30, 2010: Sign I’ve been in Ecuador too long: When, after finding a used condom on the floor of the bus, my first thought is: “Oh great, they’re using condoms! Progress!”

28 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

July 15, 2010: I am moderately afraid of small children, never know what to say to them, and find the constant necessary peppiness draining. So of course, I decide to start working with disabled Ecuadorian kids. Comfort zone, I am now leaving it. I learn to appreciate small blessings: Finding (after 16 months!) sour cream at the grocery store. One of the ladies at the weekly market saving me the last bag of fresh basil, its scent sharp and poignant. Hot, sunny skies. Running for the first time in a long time, legs sore and feeling like jelly. I find work at Fundación Manos Unidas, helping disabled children and the beleaguered women who teach them. It’s a far cry from Agriculture, but my main projects never really panned out—lack of interest is my greatest enemy in Ecuador. At first, it’s overwhelming. The children are nervous of this strange, yellow- and-pink newcomer. The teachers don’t know what to make of me. I hover in the background, anxious. After two months, I have small bodies hanging from my hips whenever I try to walk, clinging to my legs and screaming when I try to leave. They fling themselves at me when I walk in, faces breaking into huge smiles, and I smile too, because it just feels so damn good to be wanted. One little girl is filthy, as are her six siblings. Unlike the other students they have no physical disabilities, but instead have been so abused and neglected they can’t function in normal schools. They are violent, smacking each other and other children, speaking only in cries and grunts and shying away from normal human contact. This little girl, she sees me hugging another child. She is pretty, delicate, but dirt and snot are caked so thickly on her face that it is hard to see past it. Her hair a wild mess of filth, her clothing torn; she looks like a parody of poverty, a Dickensian archetype with huge, liquid-brown eyes. I smile at her, tentatively, and then she steps closer and wraps her arms around my waist for the first time. I hug her back, and make a mental note to shower when I get home.

July 31, 2010: Dear God they’ve started to remix indigenous music. Oh. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

August 12, 2010: Woken up by a 6.9 earthquake this morning and didn’t even get out of bed. It’s amazing what you get used to.

August 28 2010: Ah, the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. Running around to give charlas that inevitably no one will show up to. Sigh.

September 4, 2010: Three weeks, bitches, until airplane rides and English- speakers and big family dinners and paved roads and dog/chicken/goat/ pig-less cities and clean water and fall leaves and the sweet sweet joy of throwing toilet paper in the toilet. Y’all know what I’m talking about.

29 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

While I am home for my sister’s wedding, there is a police strike in Ecuador. All airports are closed, and “This is the start the president is claiming that subversives are trying to overthrow him. “If you want to kill the President, here of something; I just he is,” Correa proclaims. “Kill him, if you want to. Kill don’t know what him if you are brave enough!” yet.” We follow the news on the internet in between setting up the house for the wedding. While white square plates and delicate glass goblets are being carted to the backyard and garlands of fresh flowers are being set around the huge rented tent, Ecuador is rioting, the streets of Quito thick with the smell of smoke and the sound of gunfire. I fold cloth napkins and wrap huge silver bows around flower pots while Correa makes his impassioned speech to the world. My family hopes that the country will fall into disarray, simply so that I won’t have to go back.

December 29, 2010: First bus company I went to was sold out. Second one I tried: Tonight and tomorrow are totally booked, except for one last seat left on a bus tonight, which I snagged. Lucky? I think so. Looks like I’ll be celebrating the New Year on the beach! Could my life be any more of an emotional rollercoaster?

January 1, 2011: Best New Year’s of my life. Well, I’ll be damned. I end the year in Puerto López, sand between my toes, blue sky above, new and old friends showing up when least expected. I have only three months left of my Peace Corps service. When midnight comes we count down, howling at the moon, fireworks lighting up the sky with red and gold. We dance in the street, gringos mixing with Ecuadorians, feet bare and hair unbound. The muñecas burn to ashes, burning the past, leaving the future a clean slate. I dance. This is the start of something; I just don’t know what yet.

January 1, 2010: I have to say, 2011 is going to be fabulous.

- Evans, an Agriculture Volunteer from Omnibus 101, lives in Tungurahua and is a Volunteer Life Section Editor for El Clima.

30 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Life in Site The Gold Ole Times By Ben Palmer

I lay down between a barbed wire fence and a soft place. Above “I’ve submitted me the leaves were still and the sky was blue. There was no breeze; just a wisp of air was present, like someone had blown to things I can’t it in. control and it’s I had hurled four times. That was when I decided to lie been surprisingly down in the side yard on the soft earth. To the east, the distant liberating.” thud of bass pumped from speakers saddled on the wrecked concrete court where last night’s debauchery took place. It was the 30-year anniversary of our small Kichwa town.

Mery was crowned queen of the Naranjilla. A good friend of mine, a respected teacher, toppled over on the concrete while offering me a beer. Mercedes, Victor and I danced holding hands in a circle with other friends while we bumped against a nearby couple. It was a game we invented— spontaneous fun and the makings of a mosh. After we drained our drinks, buried our sorrows and shuffled the Kichwa two-step, it was close to five o’clock in the morning and past my bedtime. Earlier that night the four candidates for reina had presented themselves in dancing, rhetoric and attire. “Miss candidate number three. What is your message about the environment?” She began in monotone. “Don’t cut the trees down, don’t contaminate the river. Take care of our environment. And viva [town]!” she belted out. Some of crowd clapped but no one really cheered. A few were apathetic, just following procedure, clapping only when the emcee demanded it, sitting as long as someone talked into the mic, then dispersing like a flash flood when the performance was finally over and they were free. The sad story from our anniversary party is that few people from the community show up. But this story goes untold because the anniversary is a very happy moment, a celebration.

Lying in the side yard, I see a bus pass by two young brothers and their luggage. They wave their hands knowing that sometimes it will just keep on going by because you are young and can’t do anything about it. As I lie there peering up at the sky, I miss home and everything that allows us to avoid frustration and get things done. While frustration is unavoidable here, my attitude towards it has changed. I’ve submitted to things I can’t control and it’s been surprisingly liberating. Feeling nostalgic and dizzy from last night, I have three random thoughts: (1) I will miss this undying celebratory attitude. (2) I am thankful to the men and women of shampoo scent R&D. (3) I might recall these times as the good ole times that were truly good.

-Palmer, a Natural Resource Conservation Volunteer from Omnibus 101, lives in Napo. He will complete his service in April.

31 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011

Volunteer Advice Ask Rob! By Rob Gunther

Rob, it’s my turn to buy the next jaba, but I just can’t decide what to buy. Which beer is best? - Pidiendo en Puyo Here in Ecuador, the selection of beer can say a lot about the person asking. Pilsener is definitely the way to go. It shows that you’re a man or woman of the people. Club, on the other hand, is a dead giveaway that you’re trying to overcompensate for something, that you’re victim to some sort of inferiority complex. If you find yourself ordering Conquer or Brahma, chances are you’re stuck in one of those Egyptian hookah places in the Mariscal, and even though you keep trying to ask for the check and leave, those guys just keep serving you cold ones three at a time. Let me be a little more specific: Club sucks. It’s just terrible. It tastes like someone peed in a case of skunked Rolling Rock, then relabeled it Club and sent it south of the border. Yet for whatever reason Club is seen as the “premium” beer for Ecuadorians. Just look at their advertising: Oswaldo Guayasamín will be painting another masterpiece while at the same time talking about the choice ingredients and artisanal craftsmanship involved in brewing Club. Seriously? It’s a testament both to the advertising industry and to people everywhere who simply like their products a little bit fancier than everyone else’s. I mean come on: it’s got a foil wrapper and comes in a green bottle, big deal. But people just love it. Even when they’re ordering, they give away their insatiable lust for all things exquisite. “Give me a Club verde.” They’re literally saying, “Give me one of those fancy green beers.” Listening to someone ask for a Club verde is almost as sickening as actually drinking one. Just order the Pilsener. It screams “I love Ecuador” and everybody will notice. Take a look at the label; it’s decked out like an Ecuadorian flag. It even says “Ecuadorianly Refreshing” right there on the bottle. If anything, Club is trying to make you feel like you’re ordering a foreign beer, like there is something inherently wrong with drinking and enjoying Pilsener. They only sell Pilsener where I live, so usually I don’t have any problems. But every time I leave site and see someone drinking a Club, I immediately grab their bottle and throw it as far as I can. While that person stares in disbelief at the green shards and liquid shame tainting the spot where it landed, I get right in that person’s face and tell them exactly how I feel about Club. They’re usually pretty pissed off at first, but after they’ve heard me out they always see my point of view and wind up buying me a Pilsener as a thank you. It amazes me that the Ecuadorian government hasn’t outright banned the making and distribution of Club. I guess it serves the purpose of identifying all of the country’s assholes. If you’re reading this and saying to yourself, “Hey wait a minute, I like Club and I’m not an asshole!” please never ever talk to me. If you see me around, just assume that we’re not friends and keep walking. Because I’ll start something, I swear to God. One time I ordered a jaba and there was a beer called Dorado tucked away amongst the Pilseners. It must have been like a hundred years old because I don’t even think they make this stuff anymore. Needless to say, it tasted awful and I spent the rest of the night unable to get its putrid taste out of my mouth. Given the choice I’d still choose Dorado over Club. I think I’ve made myself pretty clear.

Rob, my counterpart organization is great and I feel like I’m accomplishing a lot, but I want

32 Volunteer Life • El Clima • February 2011 to expand my experience and get involved with some secondary projects. Any suggestions? - Motivada en Machala When I’m not working … hell, even when I am working, I like to keep busy with a secondary project that I call, “Telling Everybody That I Run Into How Much Club Sucks and Why You Shouldn’t Drink It Ever Again.” I invite you to try it; so far I’ve found this activity to be very rewarding. You might think that at this point, I’m being a little excessive in my dislike of Club beer. But you’re wrong. When you point out all the negative qualities of Club, when you convince people—really get through to people—that ordering a Club is a huge mistake in judgment, you’re not just making a difference in the lives of your community; you’re showing people that it’s not OK to do something just because a clever advertisement or a top-notch PR firm says it is. You’re teaching people how to think for themselves, how to make their own choices. Call it a self-esteem workshop or something. You could start a youth group. Your youth group could meet up three or four times a week. You guys could scour the town for any Club bottles and destroy them all. That way the tienda owners will lose their deposits. After a few weeks they’ll eventually give up and stop ordering Club altogether. Kids listen. Explain to them that when they’re old enough to drink, it’s absolutely unacceptable to drink Club. Call it an alcohol responsibility workshop. Get creative.

I’ve gained so much weight since I’ve joined Peace Corps! With all of the rice and potatoes, do you have any tips on how to eat healthier and stay in shape? - Gordo en Guayaquil Did you know that Pilsener is not just a delicious, refreshing beer, but also a great way to supplement daily servings of key nutrients like vitamin D, carbohydrates, and hops? In moderation, a few bottles of Pilsener are a great substitute for lunch every few days or so. You’ll feel great and even if you are stuck with just rice and potatoes, Pilsener acts as a digestive lubricant. Those pesky starches won’t have enough time in your stomach to be converted into fat. Just watch out. It’s a proven fact that Club has exactly the opposite effects. In addition to morbid obesity, Club drinking has been linked with all sorts of chronic illnesses, like diabetes, high blood pressure, and mad cow disease. Also, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nearly one hundred percent of those who choose Club over Pilsener are raging alcoholics. I’m sure you’ve noticed all of those guys passed out in the streets. There is always, always an empty green bottle in their hands. It only takes one.

Rob, I’m interested in getting some grant money for a community project. The problem is, ever since the PL-480 money ran out there are a lot fewer options in securing additional funding. Besides the Peace Corps Partnership Program, do you know of any other resources in obtaining a grant? - Sin Dinero en Santa Elena Do you remember a while back when the Cervezeria Nacional was forced to shut down? Remember for how a few months there existed the threat that we wouldn’t have any beer at all? The “media” “claimed” it was something to do with underpaid workers or failure to pay taxes. I’m sorry, but am I the only one who’s calling bullshit? I haven’t finished collecting all the evidence, but I’m pretty positive that this was a direct result of Club trying to muscle out Pilsener, to usurp its loyal following and somehow take its place as Ecuador’s favorite beer. Nice try Club, but it’ll take a hell of a lot more than an attempted coup to knock Pilsener from the top.

-Gunther, a Community Health Volunteer from Omnibus 102, lives in Cotopaxi and is a Volunteer Life Section Editor for El Clima.

33 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ¡Ave Maria!

"SPECIAL THANKS TO Think you know your Marias? See if you can match PCVL SONIA VASQUEZ FOR PHOTO" the Maria in the picture with her full name and job title.

Maria Dolores Jarrin (Loli) - Language and Cross Cultural Coordinator Maria Jose Mejia - Programming Assistant Maria Cristina Andrade (Mari C) - Executive Assistant Maria Fernanda Bolaños - Master Trainer Maria Dolores Chacon - Programming Manager TEFL

actual order: From left to right is 1) Maria Jose Mejia - Programming Assistant 2) Maria Cristina Andrade (Mari C) - Executive Assistant 3) Maria Fernanda Bolaños - Master Trainer 4) Maria Dolores Jarrin (Loli) - Language and Cross Cultural Coordinator 5) Maria Dolores Chacon -Programming Manager TEFL

34 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

Volunteer Blogging Finding Adventure in the Mundane By Marion Cory

I recently had a conversation with a friend about the purpose of a blog. Why do some keep them and others don’t? Why do we start them and maintain them only during specific periods of our lives? And whom are we writ- ing them for?

I started to really wonder why I am writing one now and didn’t even consider sharing random day stuff seems dull, but really it makes on my roof and almost bits of my life during my senior is often in those down moments allowing myself to drift off to a year of college. Both are pretty when the universe seems to calm quasi-sleep until I remembered momentous life occasions. Peace and we can take in the realities that I left my clothes hanging on Corps, one the one hand, is this we are living. the line. Damn odd and sensationalized experi- In other words, “It is the quiet it. My only pair of clean pants ence in a faraway exotic land that the spectacular more than the thrusts volunteers into a whole is often nestled is on that line.” web of unique situations. Similar inside the mun- noise that gives me You get the to the Peace Corps, college was dane. I’m realiz- space to grow.” idea. the rollercoaster of a lifetime. ing now how our Thinking exclusively of my senior lives change through the careful So maybe this would make for year, I can muster up some pret- accumulation of these ostensi- a pretty strange blog, but I also ty life-changing bly common mo- know that it is these moments memories, and “It is often in those ments. that are slowly working to trans- I can certainly down moments form me and my relationship to imagine how when the universe Naturally I started the world. It is the quiet more amusing a blog seems to calm and to wonder what a than the noise that gives me space blog about the or- to grow. That’s not to say that the about that year we can take in the would be. So, dinary would look noise (i.e. all the “big/blog-wor- why the sudden realities we are like. “Today I made thy” events) doesn’t mean squat. urge to jump on living.” some real good I think I am just starting to (try the “blog train”? food, sat down to to) understand that life’s adven- a candlelight dinner with my- tures don’t always need to be so Something I’ve realized each time self as a date, and struck up an grandiose. I write my blog entries (all seven- internal conversation about my ish of them) is that I try to dig up choice of spices and veggies. It Getting taken to an indigenous the “big” news—the things that started storming and I glanced community’s baptismal party seem blog-worthy. The day to out my windows, letting my mind and ceremoniously accepting be calmed by the sound the rain

35 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011 the half-of-a-cow-soup before a good friend of mine. Music dancing around in circles with Rocking Out: Life in an 95-year-old women until 3 a.m.— When did you form your band? Ecuadorian Band now that is some typical Peace What inspired you to make Story & Interview by Caitlin Corps adventure right there. And Leach music together? that experience still rings in my The group was formed about three years ago, but has been off and on memory bank as something that Ben Alfred is a rock star. When the whole time. set the tone for my time here in he’s not busy being a Youth &

Ecuador. On the other hand, Families Volunteer at his site Where have you performed? Do looking back at my two months in Imbubura, he’s using his you have any upcoming shows? in La Chimba during training, I guitar skills to make sweet jams We have performed once in the know that it was the small things with a local group. Recently, he past months. We usually play and little moments that, accru- answered questions about his during fiestas of the surrounding ing day after day, snowballed into musical experience for El Clima. something that somehow became pueblos in coliseos. a part of me. What is the name and makeup Who writes your songs? What of your band? are the main themes or topics I think what I’m trying to articu- The name of the band is Rascos for most of your songs? late here has something to do Andinos. It band consists of seven We do all covers of tradition with this difference between ex- people with ages ranging from 23 Bolivian and Ecuadorian ternally influential experiences to 40 playing instruments such foklorica music. Favorite songs and internal—sometimes sub- as guitar, bass, cañas and other of the group include “La Fiesta conscious—experiences. The big stringed instruments. de San Benito,” “Ojos Azules” y things seem to always keep some distance from us; they manage to What genre of music do you shock us, surprise us, teach us— consider your work to be? Who but they never integrate into us. are your major influences? Meanwhile, the mundane and We only play foklorica music. Our quiet moments slowly creep into main influence is Los Kjarkas. us and work from inside out.

From my perspective, blogs are se- “I love playing riously misleading little buggers. I music and it will continue to write about these helps me with big events, as expected in any blog, the stresses of but with the disclaimer that it is only everyday life as a minor speck of the story. This is a PCV.” also a challenge and a commitment to myself: to dig a little deeper in How long have you all my reflections of my time here, to known each other? How reconceive my notion of adventure, did you meet? and to understand life’s day-to-day The group is made up in a little different light. primarily of friends who grew up together in -Cory, a Public Health Volunteer Cahuasqui. I was introduced from Omnibus 104, lives (and to the group by one of the blogs) in Pichincha. founding members who is

36 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011 and witty charm? “Lloro.” Our ultimate aim is to play a No groupies, but it has lot of music to a lot of people certainly made it easier with Could you briefly describe the and have a great time at the the ladies. music-making process? fiestas. The process is rather simple. What is the best thing Someone comes to the group What advice do you have for about being in a band with with a song people who want Ecuadorians? they want to “The music is to form their own Great people. We have a lot play. We listen directly from the bands? of fun playing music together. to it on CD a Just do it and soul.” The culture here is so relaxed couple of times always have fun and easy-going. All can be and then the with it. seen during our rehearsals person who brought the song which include a lot of dancing in teaches it to the rest of How can fans-to-be gain and yelling us. Then we play it a couple access to your out in joy. times and it is added to our music? Do you “No groupies, but list of songs. have a website [being in a band] has Any cultural with sample certainly made it differences What are your rehearsals songs or a easier with the ladies.” you have generally like? Do you have a demo CD? witnessed due set time each week in which Wish I could to this unique experience? you practice or is it more say we did, but again we have I studied a lot of music in the spontaneous? little to no resources. A PCPP states, which obviously has Rehearsals are very relaxed maybe? made me a better musician. and, for me, therapeutic. I The musicians in my group love playing music and it Are you the only gringo in the are all self-taught. It just helps me with the stresses of band? makes you wonder how much everyday life as a PCV. We Yes I am the only gringo in better they would be with a practice every Tuesday and the band. music education. Thursday from 7 p.m. until we want to go to bed around 9 What’s it like being the lone Sure to become a hot or 10 p.m. ranger? sensation with PCV Alfred It’s not a big deal. I definitely joining the group, start What has been your biggest started out behind everyone booking Rascos Andinos challenge as a band? Have you in terms of knowledge of this early for the festivals. Ben is been able to overcome that genre of music, but as time currently taking offers for a challenge? If so, how? goes by I learn more. The band hair stylist. The biggest challenge is music is directly from the getting gigs. Being a small soul and just makes me want ­-Leach, an HIV/AIDS foklorica group out in the to dance! Volunteer from Omnibus 104, campo with little resources lives in Guayas. She is El for publicity is hard. Do you guys have a following? Clima’s Arts & Entertainment Ha! No. Section Editor. What’s the ultimate direction for the band? Are you seeking What about groupies? Have fame and fortune? Road trips things been easier with the around South America? ladies due to your musical gift

37 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

The rugby players in Ecuador in Cuenca to passing a first Sports are not playing to become su- place trophy around in Manta, From Coconuts to Rugby per stars. If they wanted to be the Aguilas Rugby Club is just Balls famous, we know Ecuador has beginning their story. I’ve en- By Tristan Schreck other avenues, like soccer or joyed working with the team so surfing. This group of young far and I look forward to more While rugby has been grow- men is playing because they seasons with them—and to the ing in popularity in the United love the game; it’s as simple future of rugby in Ecuador. States for quite some time, in as that. Ecuador it is just taking off. -Schreck, a Youth & Families Right now there are only nine As the weeks have progressed, Volunteer from Omnibus 104, teams in the entire country, so have the team’s skill and lives in Azuay. and I am on one of them. fitness. I was impressed with how hard they worked and the I have had the pleasure of enthusiasm they brought to working with the Aguilas Rug- the rugby pitch. Their drive by Club in Cuenca for a few and determination were re- months now. When the team cently put to the test when was first formed, they were they entered the Manta Beach using coconuts as balls. When Rugby Tournament, where the I heard this I thought, “Wow, team came out on top. here we have a group of guys who really want to learn this From practicing with coconuts sport.”

38 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

but loveable team of misfits Looking Back Things I miss the least: makes it all the way to the A Returned Volunteer Little League World Series, 1. Blaring Bachata music on the Reflects on Life in Ecuador learning along the way a thing bus. By Kristin Mallory or two about the importance 2. Being stared at. of teamwork and the dangers After returning to the US 3. Five-hour community of “casual” drug use. Moving several months ago to earn meetings that never really performances from a young a Master’s degree in Public accomplished anything. and upcoming cast. Health at the Ohio State University, RPCV Kristin 4. Scary dogs running at you 2. Tracks Mallory shares some of with a vengeance while you Freddy Prinze, Jr. makes an the pluses and minuses to hope the fake rock-throw trick unexpected comeback as Vin Ecuador living. works. Bates, a homeless runaway 5. Never getting jokes—even battling inner demons and a Things I miss the most: after the hilarious punch line is long-standing addiction to explained to me. crack cocaine. Definite Oscar 1. Food prices! Live it up while bait. Never having saldo, and you can because in the US $1.50 6. people timbraring. Although it will not even cover the tip for 3. Honogurai Mizu 2 (The is nice to only have to pay when your lunch. And don’t get me Disappearances 2) you make the call. started on the fruit up here. Acclaimed director Takashi Extraño mangos! Shimizu’s sequel to 2008’s -Mallory was a Public Health thrilling Honogurai Mizu 2. Cat calls. I know: weird, Volunteer and PCVL from right? Just wait to you get back picks up right where the Omnibus 98. She lived in last film left off. Now, to the US ladies. American men Manabí. don’t let you know you’re hot after four months adrift and the “Reina de su mundo” in the South China Sea, as blatantly as our lovely schoolmates on the dinghy Flick Picks Ecuadorian caballeros. are still disappearing. As the New Releases to Look for at group’s numbers dwindle, 3. The innate desire in everyone Your Local Pirated Movie the remaining teens must to dance (if you “rock your Store solve the only question that hair back and forth” you are By George Beane matters: Who is the killer in considered ahead of the game their midst? here) . By the way: Will Smith’s [Editor’s Note: Even though kids = out of control. For those the US and Western Europe are 4. Bad Decision 2 who have been unable to access the only places on Earth where When terrorists kidnap his current music hits in the US, people pay full price for digital family a second time, ex-Navy “I Whip My Hair” by Willow media, the buying, selling SEAL Ron Parnas (Steven Smith is raging. and use of pirated materials Seagal) decides to teach the 4. Speaking Spanish and remains illegal. So, you know… bad guys a lesson. Again. meeting random people siempre, -JGC] wherever you go. 5. Truth 1. The Most Important Lesson A thrill-a-minute murder 5. All of my fabulous fellow With a little good fortune, and mystery set in small-town PCVs! a lot of pluck, a dysfunctional America. Philip Seymour

39 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

Hoffman makes a run at this funny than The Santa Clause year’s Best Actor award with a 3. As Peace Corps Volunteers we daring three-role performance can have the best of times and can as Sheriff Rod Sherman, his 10. Cool Coal also hit rock bottom. It is totally wife Cindy, and young Jimmy Life as a coal worker in healthy to indulge in a funky Jenkins, the number one Victorian Manchester may Friday every now and then, but suspect. have been tough, but that watch out! When you’re barely doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun! spinning your wheels, dreading 6. The King An ensemble cast delivers a every move forward, you get A comic adaptation of rowdy performance full of locked in place. Once you’ve Shakespeare’s “Henry VII” laughs. The feel-good movie of been coasting in low gear long starring Vince Vaughn in the the year. enough, your overall health… title role and Miley Cyrus well, cuidado! Let’s kick Señor as the young, impetuous -Beane, a Public Health Funk to the curb and begin this Mary Queen of Scots. Bawdy, Volunteer from Omnibus 104, New Year the healthy way—both irreverent, and chock-full of lives in Cotopaxi. mentally and physically. Do belly laughs, this version isn’t yourself, site mates, and that for the purists. Your Health mangy mutt living on your porch Feeling Funky? a favor. Seek out some healthy 7. Precious 2 By Caitlin Leach outlets to squelch feelings of Precious gets better. Very funk and depression and make 2011 your most productive year moving. With the Holiday season over, yet! some may be feeling refreshed 8. Hear No Evil, See No Evil after visits from family and 1. Go for a walk. To foil a terrorist plot to friends, or trips back home to We’re not talking a marathon assassinate the president of enjoy snow and true holiday here, just a simple strut around the United States, ex-Ranger cheer. For others, however, the block. Take Donnie Savage (Steven feelings of the some deep Seagal) teams up with former funk may be “Let’s kick Señor breaths of this arch-rival Dawson Makenzie creeping in. Funk to the curb fine Ecuadorian (Timothy Dalton) to teach I r r i t a b i l i t y , and begin this air (for those the bad guys a lesson. Only disengaging from New Year the in Guayaquil, there’s a twist: Parnas is life, and feeling maybe bring out blind, Dawson deaf. Together, lethargic just healthy way.” an oxygen mask). they’re each other’s eyes and aren’t fun when Keep that cuerpo moving!! ears…and fists. living thousands of miles from home, family and friends, sports 2. Que clutter! 9. The Santa Clause 4 bars, and Ben & Jerry’s. The funk Clean out your room, office and In the wreckage of a usually creeps in, unobtrusively, bathroom. It will not only help disastrous third marriage, like the crickets and cockroaches you out mentally, but hygiene Santa finds himself battling in your sneakers and dresser also plays an important role in crippling depression and drawers. Then BAM! WAZAM! overall health. Changing sheets, a drinking problem that Motivation goes out the window; or buying new ones is also a are quickly spiraling out of energy is too low to lift a spoon; way to lighten up your mood. control. Tim Allen reprises smiles and laughs—hasta la We’re Peace Corps Volunteers: his role as jolly St. Nick for vista. It’s a pity party for one. We thrive on change. a fourth time. Slightly less Sound familiar?

40 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

6. Spend time with some Volunteer Love 3. Hug a Tree. children. The ‘Marrieds’ Spend some time with the They always add some positivity By Laurel Howard elements. We are living in a and humor to situations. Pato, country with some of the most Pato, Ganzo anyone? The most common question I beautiful landscapes and nature. receive from gringos, PCV and What are you waiting for? Get 7. Go ahead and buy non-PCV alike, is “What’s it like lost for a few hours on a hike, yourself a new pair of shoes. being a married volunteer?” It lay down and Do whatever it “We are living in a isn’t that I don’t like answering look up at the is that brings the same question over and over clouds, soak country with some you joy. If that’s again (for instance, the daily up the rays or of the most beautiful buying four new ritual of taxi drivers asking if rain (but have landscapes and black t-shirts, my husband is Ecuadorian, if Dr. Carmen nature. What are a new pair of we have kids yet, etc. still hasn’t or Francisco’s wedges, a man you waiting for?” gotten old) but there are a few of numbers purse, Ecua jeans, you out there that I haven’t met close at hand manicure or hair yet, and may never meet at this if choosing to do either for dye, just do it. point. This is for your benefit, extended periods of time). anonymous volunteer who I 8. Bubble baths haven’t met yet! Because I know 4. Try a new food recipe. are always great and can be you are dying to find out. Included in this issue we’ve adjusted for the oh-so-popular got quite the recipes for buena bucket bath. Blast some new Generally, being a married comida. Sometimes when we tunes that make you want to volunteer is pretty awesome. It stick to the same routine—foods, dance all over your furniture comes with all kinds of perks preparations, etc.—we bury in nothing but your ropas and benefits that make life here ourselves further in the hole. interiores. Saucy solo dance in Ecuador that much sweeter. Its good to keep parties are Number one? No dry spells! things alive, always fun. Then “Bubble baths are That’s right, kids: No waiting fresh, and new. venture out to the always great and until Halloween in Cuenca/ Eat a cricket! community fiesta. can be adjusted for Thanksgiving in Macas/New Years in Puerto López to get 5. Watch a the oh-so-popular Your productivity some tail; no venturing into the funny movie. bucket bath.” and your tricky exchange of intercultural We literally experience in relationships, no need for visiting have any movie Ecuador depends the dubious section of the we could ever ask for at our on your sanity. No chiste. Just DVD stores; no pestering from fingertips for less than a buck. keep it funky on the dance floor. community members to make Take advantage. Find some true a trip to that sketchy building diamonds in the rough next time -Leach, an HIV/AIDS Volunteer outside of town. you pass that store with the man from Omnibus 104, lives in throwing Titanic and Twilight Guayas. She is El Clima’s Arts & As a woman, already being in your face, and pronouncing Entertainment Section Editor. married has had several perks “Leonardo DiCaprio” in a here in Ecuador. Of course there way that you never knew was is the nifty benefit of giving me possible. a simple and easily understood reason for turning

41 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011 away potential suitors without commiserate at the end of a (much) harassment. (It helps in bad day or week. Or month. So This leads to the other major this instance to have—as I do—a helpful, in fact, that I occasionally drawback of being a married particularly large husband who wonder to myself if I would couple in Peace Corps: stunted can look menacing if need be.) have even made it a whole two Spanish-speaking prowess. But it also provides me an years here without his support. While you are out there learning excellent talking point with I have infinite respect for you, slang with the jovenes or the men and women U n m a r r i e d language of amor with your alike. Since the “It helps to have a PCV, for your cross-cultural love interest, we’re third question particularly large perseverance and slipping behind, stagnant in all I’m always asked husband who can ability to cope. but work-related vocabulary. is “Do you have look menacing if No joke. I feel comfortable with my kids?” I am able ability to discuss Geographic to either (a) give need be.” It isn’t always Information Systems and an impromptu all it is cracked national park management at charla on reproductive health up to be, however. There are a length, but throw me a ¡que and how it is OK to wait on few drawbacks that I’ve found, huevada! or a text message that having children and plan your reasons why it is (occasionally) looks like a monkey got a hold family, or (b) garner pity/ more difficult to be a married of the cell phone, and I’m left sympathy when I respond with PCV. Primarily, integration is scratching my head. an Un día, Sí Dios quiere. more challenging. Since I have a husband to go home to, no In the could-go-either-way More importantly, though, kindly older woman is offering column, being a married PCV serving with my husband has to cook me dinner or invite means I see a whole lot more the added benefit of saving me me over to chat, of my husband on saldo. When I hit the bottom just because. It “But throw me a than I ever of the U-curve and lose patience is assumed that ¡que huevada! or a did in the US. with my co-workers or just I go home and text message that While working have an overwhelming bout of make my man a looks like a monkey 40-60 hour-a- homesickness, I don’t need to nice hearty meal got a hold of the week jobs and and clean our commuting an spend my monthly allowance cell phone, and I’m on Porta recargas—I can just home. (For the hour (in opposite left scratching my head home and vent, unfettered most part, that directions) to and by the concern of running out of is what happens, head.” from our offices minutes and being cut off mid- except I don’t do every day, we gripe. (Full disclosure: I’m just that much of the didn’t get a whole kidding about the saldo thing. cleaning.) The time I would lot of time to see one another. Serving with a spouse is far spend at the end of the day Throw in a two- to three-day more elaborate and meaningful with community members or business trip every month and than just having someone to co-workers (if I were single) is I’m spending more time with complain to at the end of the instead spent in my apartment, my co-workers than with my day. Plus, I’m an ECC and never perusing Buen Provecho, significant other. By contrast, we use up all my saldo.) discussing our future (in now work in the same office and English), watching movies (in our daily commute is shared. I In all seriousness, it has been English), or gossiping about our actually worked out the math on immeasurably helpful to have neighbors/officemates/fellow this, and by calculating hours of someone there to listen and PCVs (in English). face time here versus hours of

42 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011 face time back in the US, I found down as many memories as I To those of you with that each year of being in Peace should have because he was complexly developed pallets, Corps is the face already there to or who are closeted super-star time equivalent “Your partner is discuss; maybe chef’s, or just the regular PCV of 3.1 years an unwavering I could have that likes to play around in the back home. So formed closer kitchen: I will always be looking instead of feeling witness to your friendships with for submissions. Submissions like we’ve been life.” my co-workers can be sent to: elclima@gmail. married for 3.5 and neighbors. com. years at the end of our service, it But being one of the married Note: When baking, I will actually feel more like eight PCVs is great for the same reason prefer to work in grams; it is years—face time-wise. that being married is great: your more exact and much easier. partner is an unwavering witness I realize that the rest of you The reason that this is in the to your life. And I wouldn’t have probably did not bring your could-go-either-way column done it any other way. digital kitchen scales with you is because on the one hand it from back home, so my practice means that I actually get to -Howard, a Natural Resource will be to provide both metric see my husband. It has been Conservation Volunteer from and conventional measurements, incredible to be able to share Omnibus 101, lives (with her whenever possible or applicable. our experience and strengthen husband!) in Napo. our relationship. And in a way, I feel that couples who never do Food something as intense as Peace This Issue’s Recipes Corps may never get to some of By Sarah Zelcer the emotional levels that we have achieved being here (in the same After considerable deliberation, way that people who have never I have been unable to come up been PCVs will not understand with a theme for this edition’s our individual plights). On the recipes. I apologize. To ease other hand, I miss missing him. that pain, I can offer you what I I had really gotten to enjoy his humbly refer to as the World’s monthly business trips and the Best Brownies. It’s a recipe I subsequent solitude, followed worked on for over a year to get by the joyful anticipation of his just right back at home when I return. Ultimately I suppose worked as a pastry cook. I have we’ll have plenty of opportunities now adapted the recipe to make for business trips again in the it work here in Ecuador. El Clima future, so I embrace the few has had brownie recipes in the months of 24/7 togetherness that past, but I promise this to the we have left. volunteer population at large: You will love them. The bottom line for me is that Second we have Aaron serving as a married PCV, I got DiMartino’s mother’s delicious to bring my best friend along sugar cookies. with me, to share in all the ups Finally I offer a mouth- and downs that come with our watering steak taco with mango lives here. Maybe I didn’t write salsa.

43 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

World’s Best Brownies Needed:1 large (13” x 9”) pyrex

Chocolate discs (100% 1 ¾ discs 175 grams cocoa mass) Chocolate bar (55-64% 1 bar 100 grams cocoa mass) Sugar ¾ Cup 160 grams Panela – ground ¾ Cup 100 grams Eggs 3 each 3 each Prepared breakfast ¼ cup 30 grams cocoa Vanilla 1 tsp 1 tsp Salt ½ tsp 2 grams Baking powder 1 tsp 4 grams Vegetable oil 1 Cup 200 grams Flour ¾ Cup 110 grams

Method: If using a whole panela, you will first have to grate it with a cheese grater. Beat the panela and sugar with the eggs until frothy. Add the baking powder, salt and vanilla, mix well. Over a double boiler (a metal or glass bowl over a pot of simmering water) melt the two types of chocolate. Once the chocolate is melted, mix with the oil. Add this mixture to the egg mixture. Add the vanilla and salt. Finally, add the powered cocoa and the flour. Mix until everything is well incorporated. Bake in an oiled or buttered pan on medium low heat. Around 325 F. Brownies are done when a toothpick or knife can be inserted and comes out relatively clean.

44 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

Mrs. DiMartino’s Cream Cheese Cookies Note from Aaron DiMartino: This is my mom’s recipe that she has made every Christmas, or other holiday, for as long as I can remember. She always uses different cookie cutters to represent the holiday: Santa Claus-shaped, heart-shaped, apple-shaped, etc. Enjoy!

Margarine 1 Cup 225 grams Cream Cheese 3 Oz. Package 85 grams Sugar 1 Cup 190 grams Egg Yolk 1 20 grams Vanilla 1 tsp. 5 grams Orange zest 1 tsp. 2 grams Salt ½ tsp. 2 grams Cinnamon ¼ tsp. 1 gram Flour – sifted 2 ½ Cups 350 grams

Cream together: margarine, cream cheese and sugar. Beat In: egg yolk, vanilla, orange rind, salt and cinnamon. Blend in flour. Make a ball and wrap dough in waxed paper. Refrigerate overnight. Roll for cookies on a floured pastry cloth to desired thickness. Cut out with cookie cutters. Put on greased cookie sheet and sprinkle with colored sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

-DiMartino, a Natural Resource Conservation Volunteer from Omnibus 103, lives in Pastaza.

-Zelcer, a Natural Resource Conservation Volunteer from Omnibus 102, lives in pichincha. She is the Foods Editor for El Clima.

45 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

Carne Asada Tacos with Mango Salsa, Quinoa and Beans (Serves 3 to 4)

Beef – “carne suave” 1 pound Wash and soak the beans (preferably overnight). Put on stove with the smashed Aliño – prepared 2 Tb. garlic. Beans will need to cook for almost Oil 3 Tb. two hours if they have not been soaked. Prepare the meat by “opening it,” as Achiote 1 Tb. our Ecuadorian friends would say. Rub with Dried Red Beans 2 Cups aliño and rest in the refrigerator for an hour Water 4 Cups or more. Make salsa by dicing and combining Garlic 2 Cloves – smashed above ingredients, stir gently. Set aside. Salt Pinch Rinse and start quinoa in a covered pot on the stove. Quinoa 1 Cup Make tortillas by mixing the flour Water 2 Cups and salt. Slowly pour in the oil and mix until the consistency of wet sand. Add the Salt Pinch hot water a little at a time, mix well. Roll Mango 1 – diced into 8 or so balls and let rest 10 minutes. Begin to cook the meat in a frying Avocado 1 – diced pan or (preferably) on a grill. Warm the oil Red Onion 2 Tbs. – finely diced and achiote and pan-fry the steak, taste is better if you let it blacken a little. Garlic 1 Clove – finely diced Meanwhile, roll tortillas, and cook Aji ¼ - finely diced tortillas in an un-greased pan. Salt the beans and quinoa. Cilantro 1 Tb. – finely diced Finally assemble and enjoy! Salt Pinch Flour 1 ½ Cups Salt ½ tsp. Oil 3 Tbs. Hot water ½ Cup

46 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

Literature Twenty-Four Books Reviews in Three Sentences or Less By John G. Mannion

I must have been busy these last few months: I only managed to read a scant 15 books since we last con- vened. No matter, with the list up to 155 I have plenty of titles backlogged to conjure up and deliver to the masses. Without further ado, here are 24 book reviews for better navigating the cluttered landscape they call literature.

More Than The Great The Rising A Game Gatsby Sun: The Decline and By Brian By F. Scott Fall of the Billick Fitzgerald Japanese Empire

By John Toland

When people get together in a bar and dis- This is the second time I have read this Have you ever wondered what cuss the National Football League 93% of American classic and it was immensely caused the rise of militarism and them are making up bullshit and spouting more enjoyable this time without an ar- it in a matter-of-fact tone. If you want to rogant high school teacher standing over expansionism in pre-1939 Japan? be the one smartass of the group who re- my shoulder explaining the symbolism Or what happened during Pearl ally does know everything about the NFL, of a green light (AMAZING!) or a pair Harbor, the Battle of Midway, or of giant eyes (I WOULD HAVE NEVER from how many hours a head coach puts the firebombing of Japan by the in during the week (90), to what percent- THOUGHT OF THAT!). I minored in age of first-round drafted quarterbacks literature and do enjoy exploring nov- Allies? If so, read this brilliantly els, but something about not having my go on to have a decent career (50%), this written and well researched Pulit- eighth grade teacher lecturing me on book is for you. Just remember, if you care the book made it much more enjoyable zer Prize winning book by history enough about the NFL to read it there is this time around. Highly recommended legend John Toland (only 1000 an 87% you will die alone in your parent’s to those of you not currently enrolled in pages!). basement having just won your Fantasy a literature course or book club. Football League.

Foundation The World A People’s According History of By Isaac to Garp the United Asimov States By John Irving By Howard Zinn

This book is about the colonization John Irving writes about de- The Government of the United States and the of a faraway planet to save all knowl- pressing subjects set in the privately powerful people of the US have not edge created by an inter-galactic civi- always done the right thing at home or abroad, Northeast; he just cannot help and these transgressions are brought to light lization during its collapse. Written by himself. But even after reading by the world famous political scientist Howard one of the most popular science fiction Zinn in this award-winning book. After be- writers of all time, it is a fantastic book four of his unsettling novels over ing released three decades ago it has sold over and even better series. It is kind of like the past two years I would still two million copies, has accumulated numerous that big vault in Norway with all the recommend this book to any- awards, and even has the ultimate distinction seeds, but set in space, in the future, of being quoted by Matt Damon’s character in one. Oh, except for people cur- Good Will Hunting. This is the most informa- with knowledge rather than plants, rently taking antidepressants. tive book I have ever read about the history of and… eh, never mind, scrap the vault the United States (I’m looking at you AP text- analogy. book, The American Pageant: A History of the USA), and recommend it to everyone.

47 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

Reading The Portable The Tender Lolita in Atheist: Bar Tehran Essential Readings By J.R. By Azar for the Moehringer Nonbeliever Nafisi By Christopher Hitchens I have never read Lolita so I tried to There are a million things I could say I have always wondered how compensate by reading a different about this book, but the most impor- my future kids would turn out if book about a bunch of girls reading tant is that every person should read I raised them primarily in a bar it in Iran, success! I am pretty sure I it. It does not matter what religion on Long Island. The answers are you follow, what deity you believe in, they will go to Yale, appreciate got the gist of both books, and while if you are agnostic, atheist, or a Spa- I would recommend Lolita (the la- ghetti Monster worshipper, because after school jobs, and know how dies say good things about it), I can this is just a collection of works by to handle their alcohol—every- only reluctantly recommend Read- famous philosophers, scientists, and thing I was hoping for from my thinkers which will make you reflect future 1.86 kids. I know all of ing Lolita in Tehran because of its on a variety of topics. For the record, this from reading the memoir slow pace and awkward flash backs. I am a card carrying Catholic sug- listed above which is well writ- gesting everyone to read this book (I’m just joking, we don’t really get ten and chock-full of laughs; go cards). buy it.

A Three Cups A Prayer Heartbreaking of Tea For Owen Work of Meany Staggering By Greg Genius Mortenson By John Irving By Dave Eggers

Some authors write memoirs with This book documents the author Wow, John Irving proved me such distressing personal circum- through his failure as a moun- wrong in this novel by writing stances that no matter what sort tain climber to his rise as an in- about a little person who proph- of narcissism they display you still ternational aid superstar building esizes his own death and setting have to think nice things about schools for children, especially it in New Hampshire… oh wait. them. As you may figure from the young girls, throughout Afghani- Even though John Irving does title of this book, the author is one stan and Pakistan. The author of not stray far from his normal of these people. I am no staggering this book touches the hearts and settings and tones this is still a genius (more of an astounding mas- is an inspiration to any person great book, just beware watch- termind actually), but I found this who reads it. I highly recommend ing the movie version of it, Si- book accessible to even the most ca- it to everyone. mon Birch. sual of readers.

48 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

The Cold Six After Jihad: The Prince Thousand America and the Struggle By Niccolò By James for Islamic Machiavelli Ellroy Democracy By Noah Feldman

Take the Kennedys, the mob and With the authoritarian President Machiavelli is a man you might Howard Hughes and put them in of Tunisia fleeing his country want to write you poetry, but a blender with extreme violence, for Saudi Arabia after 25 years the exact opposite of a man you drugs, and sex and that is The Cold in power due to civil unrest, this political science book becomes would want influencing your Six Thousand, which is the second of all the more relevant for those in- political leaders. His political a three-part series by Ellroy follow- terested in the burgeoning calls treatise reads like Saddam Hus- ing American Tabloid. As insane as for democracy all over the Mus- sein’s daily planner: 1) Kill polit- this book is I highly recommend it, lim world. While the book is not ical rival. 2) Kill political rival’s though if you believe in conspiracy as in-depth as it could be, it does family. 3) Eat cake. If you have theories you may want to hold off. lay out a solid foundation on the subject matter. I recommend this a couple hours and can find a book for anyone with an interest copy I would recommend this in Middle Eastern affairs or inter- book, but do not take any of it to national relations. heart; you are not a 15th century Italian Prince.

For Whom The The Prince The Bell Tolls and the Cherokee Pauper Trail By Ernest Hemingway By Mark By Louis Twain L’Amour

This Hemingway novel is set dur- This book is a wonderful tale by Mark I keep trying to recapture the ing the Spanish Civil War and tells Twain about two little boys of different enjoyment I had while reading the story of a young American male social and financial statuses switching Lonesome Dove, but instead I falling in love during his mission places and their ultimate realization that they enjoyed their original life more in keep ending up with spaghetti to blow up a bridge with commu- a classic example of “the grass is always westerns that read like a bad ep- nist guerillas. I know it may sound greener.” While the writing is crisp and isode of “Rawhide” rather than dull since we have all been there the entire story is a quick read, the end- a Pulitzer Prize winning west- and done that, but there really is so ing is less believable than Jennifer An- ern. On that note, I recommend much more to it. This is my favorite iston getting back together with Gerard Butler in The Bounty Hunter! Had the this book to anyone who enjoys book by Hemingway even though it pauper had his doppelganger beheaded any episodes of “Rawhide.” is missing some of his more cheer- I would recommend this book to every- ful components such as bull fighting one; instead I can only recommend it to and copious amounts of alcohol. optimists.

49 Arts & Entertainment • El Clima • February 2011

The Audacity The History Everything of Hope of the Kelly Is Gang Illuminated By Barack Obama By Peter By Jonathan Carey Safran Foer

Alright Obama, I read your book 20 Ned Kelly is to Australia what People speaking broken English months ago and am still waiting for Jesse James is to the US: folk are always good for comical re- you to implement your ideas. Yes hero and outlaw. This work of his- lief, and nowhere is that more we….? torical fiction follows Kelly on his true than when embarking on journey from persecuted farmer a cross country mission to find to armed bank robber. If you ever a lady who saved your dying wondered what would happen if grandfather’s life from Nazis you built solid steel body armor fifty years before. This book is and had people shoot at you, read a quick read and full of off kil- this book (and study more phys- ter humor that will keep most ics). readers enjoying themselves through the entire 250 pages. Not a great book, but definitely worth a look.

Water For A Walk In Hot Flat Elephants the Woods and Crowded By Sara By Bill Gruen Bryson By Thomas Friedman

Very similar to the HBO show “Car- Have you ever wondered what If we do not get the green rev- nival,” this book tells the story of might go through a 46-year-old olution in full swing before a young veterinarian travelling man’s head as he hikes 2,200 2050 our Earth is screwed. The around the US in the circus. When I miles? If not, you should, espe- United States can solve its la- used to think of circuses I thought of cially when the man is the hilari- bor, energy and transportation acrobats, candy and small cars filled ous Bill Bryson. I highly recom- problems while instantaneously with hilarious amounts of people in mend this book to anyone who helping the rest of the world by makeup. After reading this medio- enjoys travel books, hiking or focusing our economy on re- cre book I associate circuses with pooping in the woods. newable environmental tech- animal abuse, spousal abuse and nologies. There, I just saved you clowns who drink as if they were in ten hours of reading, even if it is a 1930 Disney film. from a great book.

-Mannion, a Sustainable Agriculture Volunteer from Omnibus 101, lives (and exercises his questionable tastes in literature) in Napo. 50