Welcome La Navidad

I realize that it's been over a week since my last entry--perhaps things are reaching a level of routine that doesn't seem to merit daily commentary. But interesting things are always happening, if only I can remember clearly what they are.

Monday brought some disappointment. I didn't feel that the antibiotics had completely killed off the infection in my foot. But I wrote to Dr. Shanley at Stony Brook, as he had invited me to do. I did feel a bit guilty about asking for free medical advice, though. Anyway, he recommended that I extend my 10 day course to 15, so I kept plugging away. By Friday morning, I decided that I had to be cured because my gastrointestinal tract couldn't take any more antibiotic. And everything seems better now. Anyone who doubts the value of science and modern medicine should try and get through a year in the tropics without antibiotics.

Teaching continued to go well, because we were covering numbers, which is something nice and concrete. Also, the larger numbers borrow sounds and vocabulary from the smaller numbers, so things shape up nicely. I made a nice display board out of poster paper, with four rings running from 0 to 9 that allowed me to display the numbers from 0 to 9999. I'm not sure my students know all of these numbers in Spanish, though I know it's something they're learning in the 4/5 classroom. But it all went pretty well.

The evening English classes didn't happen this week. Maybe cold, rainy weather kept people at home, or maybe they don't like the way I teach. I'll never know; people are too polite. In any case, English class is not enough of an attraction to lure people out of their houses, at least not yet. Maybe if I slaughtered a sheep once in a while...

So, without an English class to teach on Wednesday and Friday, I went up to rehearse with the band from the Evangelical church. Jose invited me, with the idea that we would perform a number or two at the AVANTI Christmas fiesta on Saturday. We practiced and practiced, and did improve, but perfection seemed just beyond our grasp. And we put in about 5 hours on Friday night. This is a new experience for me, because I have almost always played alone. It turns out that I have a pretty good idea of what to do with this music, which isn't all that tricky. But for the guy playing the pan pipe, things are more difficult, and he's the most noticeable performer. We also had trouble finding a drummer with the right sense of timing. After we had put in about five hours, it occurred to us that we would probably need some kind of amplification down in the plaza, because we were practicing with amplification in the church. We took a shot at playing outside without amplification, and it didn't carry too well. I suppose it's just as well that we left the situation unresolved. The power was out Saturday afternoon, and we didn't perform anyway.

The AVANTI Christmas Fiesta Saturday was an interesting event, almost as anticipated as the Fiesta de Tolte last month. The AVANTI Christmas fiesta is a big giveaway of all kinds of stuff to the community. The junta directiva got a new refrigerator and two new stoves in the municipal office, the kids all got bags of candy and most got some additional present, and I got books for the library. There were also clothes, which are still being given out today. I was especially excited about the books, because the adult fiction section went from one shelf to two, and the children's chapter book section also doubled in size, or maybe one and a half-ed. We didn't get as many beginning readers as I hoped, but we did get some, and it's a lot more than I had. I also got a big pile of books to read and color, which I'll give away today and tomorrow along with some duplicate books. It's funny, with such a small collection, you wouldn't expect to receive anything you already had, but it did happen. Maybe some of the books were assigned in schools in Quito.

I did hear that not all was joy at the fiesta. This may have been occasioned by competing attempts to figure out how to distribute the gifts among the children, given that there weren't enough to go around. Tempers may have grown short, particularly among the givers. I'm more than a bit skeptical of stuff that looks too much like charity, but the AVANTI gifts are certainly well-loved by the people of Tolte. So three cheers for AVANTI and Carolina, who cooked it up in the first place, because AVANTI has made my presence in Tolte, and the happiness it produces in me, if not my students, possible.

And let me not forget my two trips into Chunchi in relation to my "invitation" to the school Christmas fiesta, coming Wednesday to a pueblo near me. You may recall that I was invited to buy a sash for one of the retinue of the Princesita de la Navidad, specifically la Nina Confraternidad. By chance Belena, Narcisa's mother, said she was going into Chunnchi on thursday. She had to buy a sash for her son, who was elected to the student government, for the various installation ceremonies. She had mentioned that she had found a place that did it much less expensively than the others, and I followed her deep into Chunchi to find it. They knew just what to do, and it was ready fro me by Sunday, when I went and got it, a mere $15 (more than a day's pay) later. Being invited to a party here can be a bit costly, but I have no complaints.

It occurs to me that I've forgotten to mention the really good news. Belena is the guardian of her granddaughter, both of whose parents are somewhere in the States. Gisela is a very unusual little girl. She seems pretty bright, as far as I can tell, but cannot handle being in groups of other children. On the other hand, she is very attached to me. I have been trying to help Belena figure out what sort of help Gisela needs so she can attend school, which she should have started at least a year ago. Fortunately, through David at the Eastern Farm Workers Association, I was connected to Zully Alvarado, who runs Causes for Change here in Ecuador, an organization focused on helping children with all sorts of disabilities. She and I have been exchanging e-mail about Gisela, and on Saturday, she said that a woman who works part of the time in Alausi would call Belena to talk about what can be done for Gisela. This is the first good news that Belena has had on this topic for a while. Personally, I am interested in the improbable chain of connections that have brought us to this point, from the Farm Workers on Long Island to Gisela in Tolte. And it will be even more interesting to see what comes of the contact between Zully's connections and Belena. I think this will be an ongoing story throughout the rest of this blog--at least, I hope so.