Funny how time slips away...

Well, its funny how time slips away…and no I am not just referring to a great Willie Nelson song. I have now been in Ecuador for two full months and just as I have become very comfortable with my life here in Tumbaco, I am only two and a half weeks away from moving to my future two year home in Bahia de Caraquez on the Pacific coast.

Yes, a lot has happened since my last blog post about a month ago, including an amazing technical trip to the Amazonian province of Morona Santiago in early March, a meeting with the US Ambassador to Ecuador, a week long trip to my assigned site of Bahia de Caraquez, and a quick weekend trip to visit the farm of my host mother’s parents in El Chaco in another Amazonian province called Napo.

In summary, my first agricultural tech trip took a group of ten of us to Morona Santiago to the towns of El Tesoro, Sucua, and Macas. We visited the site of one of our Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders and learned a wealth of knowledge about pruning cacao trees, producing liquid organic fertilizers, creating compost, farming tilapia, operating municipal vermiculture projects, making relations in county governments, giving lectures in high schools, building school gardens, managing cattle pastures, and raising pigs and guinea pigs. It was a ten hour bus trip from Tumbaco to Sucua, but I had the fantastic opportunity to view a good stretch of the central Sierra including impressive views of the volcanoes of Cotopaxi, Chimborazo, Tungarahua, and Illiniza. Entering into the lush jungle region of Ecuador made me realize how deforested and dry the Sierra appears in relation.

Shortly after returning from the tech trip we had the honor of receiving a visit from the US Ambassador to Ecuador to our Peace Corps training facility. I found myself playing the role of MC during an entertainment program that our group performed for the Ambassador, including a couple dances and songs. For one of the songs,’ Mi Lindo Ecuador’ I made my public guitar playing debut along with a few other players and a chorus of several volunteers. It was a slightly

rusty performance, but quite fun nonetheless.

A couple days later, in a frenzy of emotions and anxiety our omnibus of volunteers found out our site locations for the next two years.

As it turns out, I have been assigned to a city of about 20,000 people called Bahia de Caraquez, which rests on a peninsula jutting out into the Pacific Ocean on one side and the River Chone on the other. Along the coast, rolling hills and cliffs meet abruptly with stretches of sandy brown beaches. From Tumbaco, it took about 9.5 hours to arrive to Bahia by bus, descending down through breathtaking transition cloud forest and passing through undulating coastal countryside seeded with plantain farms and cattle ranches.

It is certainly a paradise in many respects, but it is still rusty around the edges as it bears the scars of poverty, economic busts, and environmental damages. Most challenging for the region though, is that it is extremely dry and receives rain only from January to April. While some parts of the county have irrigation from rivers, good sections of agricultural lands are entirely dependent on the ephemeral rainy season. Most farmers seem to concentrate on maize (corn), beans, plantain, and passion fruit.

My counterpart organization is the Agricultural Center of Sucre County, and I will spend the first several months in my site visiting with farmers around the county, working with and learning from them in their fields, and investigating what opportunities for projects might exist. At this point, I imagine I will be focusing on researching a variety of ways to improve the organization and increase the services provided by the Agricultural Center to the regions farmers. A couple examples might include trying to organize farmer-to-farmer best-practices sharing workshops or setting up a direct farmer-to-consumer market.

During my site visit to Bahia, I met my amazing host family, with whom I will live with for the first three months, and organized meetings with several members of the board of the Agricultural Center. I visited the farm of the president one day and learned how to milk a cow, teach a new-born male calf how to take milk from its mother, and make fresh cheese. I also visited the farm property of my host father which is nestled in a beautiful valley a few kilometers walk from their house in the town and was entertained at the site of him killing an Equis Cruzado, which is a small highly venomous snake. For this reason, I have taken note to always wear my knee high rubber boots in the campo. I also learned that my host father is extremely knowledgeable about agricultural, is highly connected in the town, and has a pet project of trying to introduce some Indian species of leguminous forage for cattle that grows well in dry regions.

I also participated in reforestation project another day which took place near a beach accessible only at low tide. There, I met an interesting farmer who invited me for lunch at his coastal hut as we watched the waves, discussed his farming operation and techniques, and I began to chuckle at the reality that this region would be my home for the coming two years. I spent that evening with the other gringos who participated in the project and played ultimate on the beach, picked the guitar, and admired the sunset while I waited for the low tide to return so I could get a ride back to town.

This most recent weekend I went with my host mother to visit her parents’ farm in the bucolic town of El Chaco located in a mountainous zone of the Amazon. At their farm I learned how to vaccinate cattle and had practice on about 60 bulls which were crammed in a line in a narrow wooden chute so as to prevent their movement. While as interesting as that was, I found more fascinating our visit to the bewildering San Rafael waterfall which I estimated to be about 600-800 feet tall.

The diversity and mind-blowing beauty of this country has not yet ceased to amaze me…and tomorrow I leave on my second technical trip to the coastal provinces of Guayas and Santo Domingo.