Nearing the End

Someone asked me to write a little bit about what it has been like being a gringa in South America, as well as to describe how my interviews went. This was my first experience living in a country as a racial minority, and it’s been much harder than I originally anticipated it would be. Especially being female in a machismo society. In Peru, I found that most of the attention I received was in the form of blatant staring or cat calls, but in Puerto López, I’ve noticed that white girls get publically shouted out to a lot in addition to the staring and whistles. For instance, when my friend and I would walk from our home-stays to a café in the center of town to work on our projects, over three-quarters of the men we passed would say hello to us in either English or Spanish and make comments out-loud about our appearances. It’s very uncomfortable, and has started to bother me more and more as time goes on. I wish I could blend in with the locals, but its impossible when the entire male population of Puerto López is pointing out that we’re different. It’s also difficult because when someone says hi to me, I automatically feel like I should be friendly and say hello in return to them. But apparently a positive response is like a green light, and invites more unwanted conversation and comments.

       It’s interesting that in South America, it isn’t considered rude to comment on people’s physical appearance or physical differences. In the states, it would be very inconsiderate to call someone “Fatty” as a nickname if they were overweight, but here, the nickname “Gorda” or “Fatty” is very common. The 6-year-old cousin of my host sisters has this nickname, and everyone in town calls her by it even though she’s only slightly chubby. It’s not meant to be rude, and on the contrary, shows affection from those who use it. When I first arrived, my little sisters called me “Gringita”, or white girl, and the ending “ita” is meant to show affection. So even though my new nickname points out my physical differences, it is based on affection.

       During my interviews, I mostly talked to women. When I wandered about the different neighborhoods trying to find people to interview, it was usually easiest to ask the women outside washing clothes. One thing that was shocking to me during the interviews was the education level of the townspeople. One of my demographic questions was about their education, and I found out that 21 of the 50 people I interviewed had only finished part or all of elementary school, no more. And only 8 had gone onto school past high school. One older women I talked to hadn’t gone to a single day of school.

       I noticed many differences between my city and Puerto López in terms of the role of women and age at marriage/having children, and asked my host mom a lot of questions about this. In Puerto López, girls start having kids as young as 13 years old, and it’s common for 16 yr olds and up to get married (not a technical marriage, since that rarely happens here. The term ‘marriage’ more implies that the girl begins living in her boyfriend’s house with his family). The cousin of my host sisters is 16 and already has a one-yr-old baby. My host parents told me that up in the mountains close to Puerto López, the kids start getting married around 12. I was mostly surprised by how the adults considered this behavior normal. There was no talk of it being an issue that needed to be changed; it is simply a fact of life for them.

       To change the subject a little, I finished my final paper for my project today! We’ll be enjoying our last few days here on the coast, and then leaving for Quito on Friday night. On Sunday, my half of the program group is going back up to the cloud forest for the final 4 days of the program. There, we’ll be giving our independent study presentations and going over re-entry to the US.

       This will probably be my last blog post for this trip – I’m leaving for the states in less than two weeks, and won’t have internet in the cloud forest. However, I would like to thank everyone who has supported me in my travels. It's meant a lot to me hearing from you through emails and comments. I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog these past six months!

McKenzie

Our ISP period is halfway done! It's hard to believe that I'll have to leave this beautiful town in two short weeks. My research is continuing to go well, and I've finished my 52 interviews for the project. I can't say that analyzing all that data was the most enjoyable part of my time in Ecuador so far, but now that it's done, all I have to do is finish up the last few sections of my paper. After that, we'll have a week of hanging out on the beach and drinking coconut smoothies!

I'm sad that I won't be celebrating Thanksgiving with my family this year, but the other students and I are planning on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner together this week. My friend Abby and I are going to make blackberry pies to thank our home-stay families for all that they have done for us - and 4 cups of blackberries only costs $1 here!

One of the things I love most about South America is the abundance of fresh food. My host moms in Quito and in Puerto López make freshly blended juice at least once a day with meals. There are the normal juices that we have in the states, like orange juice (but no apple juice for some reason), but the majority are juices made from watermelons, papaya, strawberries, blackberries, bananas, and tomates de árbol (tree tomatoes - a kind of sweet fruit). They also blend these fruits with milk to make drinks called 'batidos' - fruit smoothies.
When you walk into the grocery store, you rarely see prepackaged/prepared foods like spaghetti sauces or ravioli. If you want to eat chicken cordon bleu or pizza or even things like tortillas and tomato sauce, you have to make them from scratch. Which really isn't a huge problem, because the people here have an abundance of time to do things like that, as a generalization. The pace of life is much slower than in the US, where we often don't have time to cook elaborate 3 course meals for lunch and squeeze 10 oranges by hand to make juice (yes, I once had to do that in Quito while I was helping my mom make lunch).
One thing that I find slightly frustrating though is the lack of variety of basic food items, such as cheese. Since cheese is a staple food item for me in the states, it would be nice to be able to eat more than two types of cheese - mozzarella and queso fresco (a cheese that is terrible, frankly, and has no taste whatsoever).

This lack of choice that is evident in markets seems to be a common theme in other aspects of life in Ecuador as well. It's striking to me that families seem so similar here in terms of how they raise their children, what food they make, moral values, choice of clothes, and what they value as important. It must be interesting growing up as a child here, because your role models act in a similar fashion.
In the states, I've had many diverse examples to look up to, and the ability to choose what I want to adopt into my life and what I don't. I'm definitely realizing how thankful I am for things I have taken for granted my entire life.

Last week, I didn't have time to post photos from Puerto López, so I'll post some now.

The street going into the center from my house

The beach!

 Abby, her host mom and aunt and sister, and I

My host-sisters and I in my bed - they LOVE to wake me up in the morning and have 'cuddle-time'.

At the hot-springs in Agua Blanca

Sulfuric mud!

Swimming time!

My 4-year old sister, Mia. 

I've realized that in my blog posts about Ecuador, I haven't written as much about the culture as I would like. But my blogs would be pages and pages long if I wrote about everything I wanted to. If you would like me to write about anything in particular or have a question you want me to answer, just leave a comment on my post and I'll make sure to answer it the next time!

First week in Puerto Lopez!

After a 10-hour overnight bus ride from Quito, we arrived in Puerto Lopez at 5 in the morning. Our project advisor helped us reach our home-stays, where we were able to sleep for 3 hours before meeting as group to go over the plan for the next month. The three other students and I have different project focuses (lizards, tsunamis, tide-pools, and dengue fever) but we share the same project advisor, a British woman named Deirde who has been living in Puerto Lopez for the past twenty years.

I have fallen in love with Puerto Lopez - comical little moto-taxis cruise around the beach town charging 50 cents for transportation, the beach front is lined with small restaurant/bars where you can drink sweet coconut smoothies at any hour of the day, it's easy to strike up conversations with practically anyone, the town is much safer than Quito, and I can run every morning on the beach! As the local people would say, this place is very 'tranquilo', or chill.

Currently, I'm living in a home-stay that's located 5-10 minutes from the beach by foot. I have two adorable little sisters, Alejandra and Mia, who are 6 and 4 years old. My parents Felita and Alex are around 36 years old, and have been incredibly hospitable. And an added bonus - my mom is an incredible cook! My second day here, we ate shrimp, fish, and calamari all in one day!

My research has been going really well! I've spent the past four days interviewing the townspeople in various neighborhoods, in order to get an idea what the level of knowledge is in regards to dengue fever and its prevention. It's exhausting going door-to-door (especially since I've been run down with a cold the past few days) but the majority of the people I talk to are very open and friendly and willing to chat. I've learned so much about what others know, as well as common misconceptions about what dengue is and how it is spread. Overall, I'm enjoying my work here and am taking advantage of what this beautiful town has to offer!

Off to Puerto Lopez!

Final exams and presentations are done, and now we're about to begin one of the most exciting and terrifying parts of the program: Independent Study Projects! Every SIT study abroad program has an independent study project (ISP) as part of its curriculum, and entails the students traveling to various parts of the country alone to complete a project in the final month. In our program, the students are scattering to many parts of Ecuador - the coast, the Amazon jungle, the sierra, and the cloud forest. We will be working with an on-site advisor on our individual projects and then writing a 20-30 page scientific paper in Spanish about our research.
For my project, I'm heading to the small coastal town of Puerto Lopez which is about an 8 hour bus ride from Quito. During the month of November, I will be doing a medical anthropological study about dengue fever, and how much knowledge the people living in Puerto Lopez have about the spread of the disease. I'm really excited about the project since it has the potential to shed light on measures to reduce the incidence of dengue in this town, but I'm also nervous because interviews are my primary information source and people on the coast speak rapidly and with a different accent than I am used to. There are actually three other SIT students that are doing their ISP projects in Puerto Lopez as well, on different topics.
We had our goodbye pot-luck with all of our host families on Wednesday, and it was a hard realization that I only have a few days left with them. Luckily, I will be spending two days at their house after the program ends, before I fly back to the States. They have been an incredibly caring family and treated me like a daughter throughout my stay - I will miss them immensely when I have to leave.

The land of flamingos, penguins, and blue-footed boobies!

Two days ago, we returned from one of the most incredible places on earth - The Galápagos! We spent seven days there snorkeling, hiking up volcanos, swimming with sea lions, and seeing all sorts of interesting wildlife. Compared to the Amazon where we barely had a free minute to shower, this excursion was much more relaxing.
Our half of the group stayed on a boat for the first 4 days, and then on the island Isabela for the last 3 days. On the boat, we usually snorkeled two times daily in various locations, and then did a sort of caminata (short walk) in the afternoon. The boat traveled during the night, so every morning we woke up to a different island and scenery!

Eden, the boat we stayed on

View of Santa Cruz, the first island we visited

First day of class

 Our guide was incredibly knowledgeable and gave us a fantastic overview of the geology, natural history, and people of the Galápagos. One aspect that I really enjoy about excursions is that everything is in Spanish. Although we occasionally speak English amongst ourselves, nearly 100% of the information is taught to us in Spanish.

Red-footed boobies on the island Santa Cruz

Our guide Lenín showing us the skull of a dolphin

Snorkling!

Every day, we saw animals we had never seen before, including marine iguanas, giant tortoises, and flamingos.  But for me, the strangest part of the Galápagos is the lack of fear the animals have for humans. Because there have never been terrestrial predators, this instinct never developed in them. Even after seven days of observing, I couldn't get over how weird it was for a blue-footed boobie to walk within a foot of me or for a marine iguana to not move an inch as 13 people walked next to it.

A Nazca boobie on the island of Genovesa

You can get VERY close to sea lions

And swim with them

View from the top of Bartolome

 Flamingos!

We saw an incredible number of tortugas while in the Galápagos. Nearly every time we snorkeled, we saw between 3 and 20 of them. 

Swimming with the turtles

On the island Santa Cruz, we visited a giant tortoise reserve! There were 5,000 on the island, and in total, there are 50,000 on the Galápagos. 

During our time on Isabela, we had more free time to hang out on the beach, slackline, and spend time with our host families. My host dad's job is to dive for octopus, fish, and sea cucumbers, so we had fantastic seafood dinners!

Slacklining on the beach

It's hard to believe I get college credit for this :)

Anacondas, Tarantulas, and Bullet Ants, oh my!

The Amazon. Poison dart frogs, bullet ants, bushmasters, monkeys, night hikes, bird-watching, swimming in the Amazon, capybaras, frog-catching, tarantulas, pirana-fishing.

The eight days that we spent in the jungle were unlike any trip I’ve ever been on. Each day, I was amazed and awed by something new, whether it be learning about the caste system of army ants or seeing one of the most poisononous snakes on earth.

Our days could not have been busier – activites began at 5:30am and didn’t end until 10pm at night. Luckily we got one free hour after lunch to sleep or go swimming in the Tiputini River. Our schedules included a variety of activites such as night hikes, a few indoor lectures, time to work on our field projects, primate censusing, and more. The Tiputini Biological Reserve Station has a tower and a bridge that go up to the canopy level, and I particularly enjoyed being able to see the jungle from up high as the sun rose.

View from the top of the tower

 The tower

The bridge

Although we had one main guide who stayed with us throughout the week, the guides who work at the reserve instructed us as well. I was shocked to find out at the end of the week that most of them hadn’t received education beyond 6^th or 7^th grade, but they knew more about the jungle than I could imagine any Ph.D. knowing! For instance, in our bird species activity, we sat up in the tower for two and a half hours listening for different bird-calls. The guides would name the birds for us based on their calls so that we could make a series of 20-species list, and later be able to estimate the number of bird species on the reserve. The reserve has over 540 different species of birds! I was incredibly impressed that the guides could not only identify all of these birds, but also know their calls and behavior patterns. And this was just birds – they could do the same with frogs, plants, insects…

One of the guides showing us the species of ant that lives inside the branches of a tree. They taste like lemons!

One of my favorite activities that we did was a primate census. After a few lectures and hours of field experience identifying the 10 monkey species that live on the reserve, we all walked for 90 minutes along different trails, observing and identifying any groups of monkeys that we encountered.

The unplanned learning experiences in the jungle were just as good, if not better than the scheduled ones. On one afternoon, a friend and I went for a walk to the tower during our free hour, and in this time, ran into a colony of raiding army ants. The day before, we had heard an incredibly interesting lecture about army ants and the way their raids work, but seeing it all happen in real life added a completely new element to the information. 

Swarm of army ants

Other things we saw:

The fungus cordyceps: mind-controls its insect host and then kills it

Banana spider - very venomous

Tarantula

Poison dart frog

Queen leaf-cutter ant

Dwarf caiman

Termites fleeing from their nest

Pirana fishing!

A bushmaster

One of the two overly friendly monkeys in the town of Coca (on the way to Tiputini)

Off to the Amazon!

These first two weeks of classes have flown by, and I can't believe we're already leaving tomorrow for our second excursion - 8 days in the Amazon! We'll be staying at Tiputini Biological Station which is in Yasuní National Park, and doing all sorts of activities such as tapir observing and monkey species counts. I'm pretty stoked.
I've adjusted to living with a new family, and am really enjoying being able to experience Ecuadorian culture as a family member. My host mother and I have bonded over cooking, and take turns sharing recipes with each other. So far, we've made chocolate chip banana bread, chocolate chip cookies and pesto (from my recipes) and llapingachos and viche from her recipes.

Cooking llapingachos together

 Llapingachos - potato/cheese pancakes covered in a peanut sauce, served with sausage, salad, and a fried egg. It's a classic Ecuadorian dish, and is delicious!

Classes have also been keeping me busy. We have classes from 8-1pm Mon-Wed, Fri, with day-long excursions on Thursdays and afternoon museum visits on Tuesdays after class. We visited an organic farm last Thursday, and went to the Páramo (an ecosystem high up in the mountains) this past Thursday. 

Last weekend, a few friends and I did a weekend trip to Baños, a nearby town famous for its extreme sports and hot springs. We spent our time mountain biking to waterfalls, going to the hot springs, white-water rafting, and wandering around the market trying new foods such as banana empanadas. 

Last night, my family and I went to a wedding in the southern part of Quito. It was quite different from any wedding I have ever been to, but my family also told me that it was unlike typical Ecuadorian weddings. There were two dances that took place in the middle of the ceremony, and anyone could stand right up next to the bride and groom during the ceremony to take pictures and watch. At the reception, we had dinner at 11:30pm. Although we were hungry for most of the reception, I enjoyed spending time with my family and learning how to dance merengue. 

My mom, grandma, host brothers, and older brother's girlfriend

At the reception

Unfortunately I'm in a rush with leaving tomorrow for the Amazon (or the Oriente, as they call it in Ecuador), so I'll have to leave more details about Ecuador for next time.