Independent Lady on the Streets of Quito

Written Monday but its not like much has happened since then.

Today wasn't that an exciting day, nothing really to write home about. But write home about it I will.

I woke up early because I went to sleep early, before ten. Jimmy was grouchily eating breakfast and his wound still hasn't healed. I didn't really have to be awake just yet, so I flapped around my room frantically trying to pack with two weeks still to go and no clear plans. I managed to put five books in a box and make a pile of some things under my bed.

Got to school with my laptop safely in my bag all the way. I worked for a long while on my monografia. My topic is...well maybe I'll just give you my thesis. "Voy a explorar la situacion y organizacion de salud publico en Ecuador con focus (palabra?) de la region de la sierra rural, programas de anticonceptivos y la poblacion de mujeres indigenas. " I'm going to examine the situation and organization of public health in Ecuador with focus on the sierra region, birth control programs and the indigenous female population. There's lots of information about this topic from different angles, as well as articles that are really interesting but not really related ( Imagining the Unborn in the Ecuadoran Andes

Author(s): Lynn M. Morgan Feminist Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, Feminists and Fetuses (Summer, 1997), pp. 322-350

Poor Adolescent Girls and Social Transformations in Cuenca, Ecuador

Author(s): Ann Miles

Source: Ethos, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 54-74

Using Home Gardens to Decipher Health and Healing in the Andes

Author(s): Ruthbeth Finerman and Ross Sackett

Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 459-482 to name a few)

Bri and I met up at noon and ate lunch. Salad and frozen yoghurt, I'm a yuppie even here. I worked for like four million hours on trying to pick out my classes for next quarter, that perfect balance of easy and interesting. Not that there are any really easy classes, CIP staff members who are reading this, but I'm leaning towards Basic Nutrition over The American Jury Trial.

At 230, I had a meeting with my sociology professor who is helping me get my SIP in line. We are gettin that SIP in line, gosh darn! hopefully I'll visit Tingo Pucará some time next week so that I can discuss project details with them. And Lester could come along! (I'll tell you more about this soon, Lester).

I went home after that, or to the laundramat for my lovely clean clothes and then home. It was raining and kind of nasty but I had ganas so I took my usual walk. I take this same route almost without fail, I'm surprised no one has noticed and mugged me. I'm slowly realizing that things will not be as miraculously cheap in the EEUU and am trying to take advantage of this while I can. Of course, no one is going to be spray painting a hot dog stand while customers eat at the counter and no one will be eating french fries out of plastic bags, and umbrellas may be actually water-proof but still! I've just got to get these shoes! They are only 4 35!

I made my usual stops and something at each place. The technical bookstore by the bridge where I usually read my sociology: A 2011 Planner with the theme of "Ecuador is a megadiverse country." 7$. The stand in the artisan market with the really nice ladies: A new nose ring because the other ones always break. 5$. So, cheap isn't always awesome. The woman selling them had a two year old baby drinking morocho who was so cute, I felt horrible asking her to help me put it in. A candy-and-junk stand, looking for my very specific snack goals: Cloretes Masticables (gum), Amor Limon (wafer cookies) and granadinas (delicious fruit you crack against your head). I found them in different stands, at 50, 75 and 25 cents, respectively. The DVD store where the Pirotecha knows me. Gave him a piece of the gum, bought an only-English, special-features-included, excellent-quality-te-juro copy of Burlesque which I totally loved in theatres. 1.50$.

Home, damp, to an empty house. In my planner, I wrote "calientica," which I just learned means "cozy."

Sunday Slow Sleepy Saliteration

I will definitely miss the little routines of the house. Sundays in particular, even though when there's school tomorrow you sort of feel like making it to the nearest bridge with a hard landing. Alone, they are horrible, dark, frozen slow moving stones. Even with family members or friends its not like they move quick or anything. Naps cut things down, the hours in the afternoon when it invariably rains hard. I always think meals will take a long time to prepare and eat but I'm always done in under fifteen minutes and even washing the dishes takes five. TV shows, though, those take forever. Each commercial break stretches it's five segments over and over, the disputes and drama between characters could be resolved in seconds. The lies every episode of Seinfeld is based around (it's true, isn't it? The characters always lie) are so frustrating; Kramer should just go to therapy and get it over with. Of course, there's nothing as wonderful as Seinfeld on on a Sunday. It's mostly Drop Dead Diva re-runs and ancient movies about horse racing.

Abuela and abuelo and Romario were over today as well. I still don't really understand how Romario is related to the family. I think he is a godson which seems to fall between biological child, recipient of scholarship and servant. He lives with Carlos, the suspiciously unmarried Cordova brother and has his own room and stuff. He's over at abuela's every day after school on facebook. And then he came over to help abuelo move around and is always cleaning things with Javier the guard who definitely falls somewhere on the child-empleada spectrum. But it's good that he came because Abuelo really needs help. He is just so old and frail. He has to live in the lowlands of the coast because he has lung problems and there's not enough oxygen up here. He came to Quito for Christmas and either cannot (physically? logistically?) or does not (consciously? actually?) want to return. There have been many attempts and plans and strategies but in Quito he stays.

When I entered the house he was asleep on the floor. His head and shoulders were on the bump of the futon but the rest of him was on the floor, slip on sneakers with skulls and music notes, ripped cardigan, pants far too large. Pilar and Abuela were asleep too, watching said horse-racing movie. Romario was watching it too, seated on the floor. Is that because he's a 16 year old boy and doesn't want to be too close to anybody or because he is a servant and must sit on the floor? the mysteries of another culture! But anyway, abuelo woke up after a while and Pilar and I hoisted him up by the armpits and helped him walk to the bed.

"Mi amor," he croaks to the half-asleep abuela.
"Hola mi marido, ven aca, hay una pelicula de caballos" says abuela. She is very into the word "marido."

I found him a while later with his cane still in his hand but his body slumped over the kitchen table. He hadn't fallen, just resting bent at an 80 degree angle with his face smushed into the wood. It was a napping kind of day, he fell asleep on the bed again, I took a bone-crushing nap, and even Romario drifted off.

Last Day In Puembo!

Today was my final day, for real. I didn't have to come in until 12 so I slept late which was really really nice. I love this job, but I do not love waking up at 6 am and the two-hour commute. If I work in rural health, if I work in health care, if I work at all, I will need to not commute so aggressively. I will also need to have a lifestyle that doesn't drive me to stay up late. Here, its pretty good if I don't go out or do anything social or am sick. If I just get home, watch some TV, eat some food, chat with Pilar and write a little, then I can get to sleep by 10 which makes life bearable the next day. The problem is that I like to watch movies with friends, go out to dinner, call my mom, read another chapter. I am also sick a lot and that seems to make me stay up writhing around hugging an ice pack. Going to sleep at eleven is completely rational but it guarantees me falling asleep on two of three buses the next day.

The solution to this is to alter one part that’s putting pressure on the system. I could either find a job/lifestyle where I don't have to wake up very early or find one where it's cool to go to sleep early. I feel like after I have kids it will be much easier and socially acceptable for me to go to sleep early. So I'll just wait that one out till I reproduce and keep falling asleep on the bus.

Enough about my circadian rhythms, what actually happened today? We had a long meeting with the principal of one of the high schools, Ciudad de Puembo. The Leci and the Duk had gone to a program about adolescent health in the morning about staring programs in schools, basically health classes. They presented her the syllabus with specific classes about nutrition, hygiene, exercise, sexual health (I don't know what that contained, but I'd like to). The principal seemed keen on the idea but kept stressing that her students had psychological problems and needed counseling. L and D said that that was part of the program, self esteem, but they weren't really trained to address psychological issues. The principal showed us a notebook that she had created where every page addressed a class or a child with problems or a family or something. It was all very disorganized and also completely illegible. The office was also very large and in one half was a conference-like room where a family was talking to a school worker. Apparently this family had a lot of problems. The principal told us all about the problems in a whisper while the family was in the room. To me, this is about as rude as you can get, and it was clearly making the Leci and Duk uncomfortable. After the principal had shown us the entire notebook and explained the home lives of several problem students, we reiterated the plans and left.

Back at the center, things were pretty slow. They didn't give out appointments because of the training, so there were only a few people waiting. Three babies got vaccinated, a woman reviewed her Pap smear results, and I took many people's blood pressures. I'd been having splitting facial headaches for three days so the Duk checked me out and told me I had sinusitis. The benefits of working at a doctor's office: free antibiotics!

The church bells had been ringing all day signaling a death in the town. It was an old woman, a friend to everyone. Carla's grandmother, even though I thought Carla was Marci's daughter. Marci and her daughter (so far's I know) Michelle and I stood outside and watched the funeral procession: a clunky banda de pueblo, young girls (Carla included) with florist bouquets, pallbearers of comically different heights, fifty or so towns people dressed in a mixture of black formal and work clothes, crying or laughing or just walking along. Marci cried, Michelle got bored, and storm clouds welled up behind the crowed.

Even though I'll be hopefully coming back at least one day after I get back from the Galapagos, it was hard to say goodbye to the Centro, and the Leci especially. I gave her The World According to Garp in Spanish because its about a badass (read: feminist) nurse and traveling the world and being goofy. I hope she and I will keep in touch, and I really will work at it. She's a good person, an interesting person, a hard working person, and we definitely have the same-place-and-time thing going on. Well, I was in her place on her time. I hope I helped her some. I hope I wasn't a burden after the first ten times or so. Those times, I know I was.

The Duk had her car so she drove us all to Quito. She dropped off the Leci near the Trole to meet her boyfriend. We got the Duk's boyfriend who was blandly handsome and smelled excellent. They dropped me off at the Universidad Catolica in a drizzle. It was a pretty long walk home but the rain didn't bother me even as it got stronger. I felt like I was really outside for the first time in a few days. My head felt clearer. And don't attribute that to the antibiotics, I just took my first dose at 8.

Updates!

Not much has been going on the last few days. After my Cotopaxi Adventure and my Plaza Fosch Adventure I have chilled out a lot at home. Lots of reading, including this book about a doctor my mom gave me, that, you're right ma, is really terribly written. I've gone to abuelas and done the requisite cheek-kissing of everyone in the dynasty, slept on the couch. I walk across the street and swim 1500 meters which is very impressive because it is more than a kilometer. Are you not impressed with my athletic prowess?

After that, I go back to abuelas, drink cold coffee and eat a banana, and take the bus home.

Yesterday, we had ICRP class (surprise!) and no one knew about it so we were actually like 3 hours late. I haven't actually started my IRCP this month yet. I called the nurse on Tuesday and asked when I should come in and she was like "Monday, or Tuesday...whenever you want." So that seems pretty relaxed.

However, I'm getting really pumped up for my SIP and am going to get my ICRP work to work for that. How? The sub centro at Puembo does a great deal of work with birth control distribution and counseling. I could write my ICRP monografia (sort of like a term paper) about access to birth control in Ecuador, especially among indigenous women, and then that could be (or could be close to) my Literature Review for my SIP! Which would be about birth control among indigenous women in Ecuador! I'm not sure if this is cheating or something, but it's what really interests me and your research is supposed to further more research, right?

Not that I've started writing or anything.

The other thing that's happened lately is going out to dinner a lot and eating good food. The Bio/Ecology students went off to Tiputini deep in the jungle on the 6th to do research, so we kept going out to lavish dinners to say goodbye to them.

On the 5th, we went to this lovely asian-fusian restarurant. I had green curry so spicy and creamy it made me tear up. I've missed spicy food so much, jasmine rice, chopsticks. I am going to gorge myself on Thai food when I get back. I also had a sake bomb which I though would be really good because I always read about them. Acutally, it just tasted like rotten beer with some airfreshener in it. Also, trying to get the sake to fall into the glass, it spilled all over me and made a huge mess. This was not worth a drink that tasted like drain cleaner.

The next day we went to this Mexican restaurant that we had always made fun of because there is a guy in a huge sombrero and fake moustache outside waving a menu and yelling "hey you guys! come on in!" over and over. I ordered enchilladas and was hoping to continue my spice dream, but it was mainly a bowl of melted cheese with pieces of chicken and a single corn torilla wripped up on the top. Yum! Not!

Yesterday, I went over to Jamie's and he and Scott and I made a pimpin dinner of Macaroni and Cheese with mushrooms, a giant salad and....water. We even set the table and lit candles. Then we watched Star Wars and everybody fell asleep.

Today, I am going to eat some toast Pilar left for me, go to the store with her, hopefully go paintballing, go to Jimmy's concert, and maybe hear from my mom. You know, the regular.