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.