Safety Issues

This blog entry, at least in my mind, is overshadowed by the murders in Newtown, Connecticut. I can’t get the image of someone shooting little kids out of my mind. I don’t care if the NRA thinks this is a necessary price we have to pay for their version of freedom, or whether or not the answer is a society where everyone capable of picking up a weapon is packing heat—although I can’t say that I think that would be a society worth living in. There’s little question in my mind that we adults allowed this to happen to little kids, and we’re all going to hell for it. And I’m not sure that’s adequate punishment.

And so it was difficult to come to terms this week that, more than anything else, I am an elementary school teacher here in Ecuador. There were only two days of classes following the Newtown shootings, but there was the AVANTI Christmas party on Saturday, Dec. 15, and the school Christmas party on Thursday the 20th. Fortunately, life here in Tolte is far removed from the violence prevalent in other parts of Ecuador and the world, and kids here much as children did in the US about 50 years ago, playing wild tag games in the cancha and growing up in an atmosphere of safety and security. But it was hard for me to look at the little kids I teach and separate them from the distant horrors of life in the U.S.

Coincidentally, we did have a sort of village-wide panic over the issue of child safety, induced by AVANTI’s gift of playground equipment to the school and day care center. For reasons known only to the junta directive, and in site of Carolina’s explicit request that they not do this, the entire area under the school’s playground equipment was covered in paving blocks the day that the playground arrived. Explanations that this was a bad idea did no good; apparently this had been contracted as part of some renovation of the center of town. But that wasn’t enough. The playground purchased for the day care center, which was described as appropriate for 3 year olds, was just as high and risky as the one for the school, Prompting one of my friends who has recently been given certain responsibilities for the day care program to wonder if he should denounce the thing as unsafe to his superiors. All of this led Carolina to demand that everything be made safe in time for her visit with her guests on Saturday. Francisco and I passed a bad day together wondering what, if anything, we could do about this mess. Needless to say, we did nothing, apart from worry about what Carolina would say to us when she got here. Well, we did come up with plans to improve the situation at both playgrounds, but nothing was actually done.

Just when we were thinking that things looked dim, Pablo showed up with an L-shaped crib setup Carolina had hired him to build and install in the day care center. Because of the way he measured the space, and then built the two pieces outside of the day care center, there was no way to put the pieces inside the crib room. What we thought looked dim before now looked like merely the start of total humiliation. But Pablo managed to cut one of the pieces in half, and somehow wedge the now three pieces into what turned out to be a not square space by 8:00 Friday night, sparing all of Tolte further embarrassment.

Carolina turned up early Saturday morning with Carla and Terance, and started distributing and organizing various giveaway events of the day. I slipped away to join the pig-killing crew and helped to make the fritada for lunch, but had a moment’s glory involving one of the giveaway items. Carolina had purchased 80 first aid kits, or at least what she thought were kits. Instead, what she got was only kit contents, not individual packages. Terance and I were left to sort the stiff into 80 plastic bags. Fortunately, the Tolte kids are incredibly curious, so, Tom Sawyer style, I invited them in to help us pack the bags. We were done in less than 15 minutes, and Terance was completely astonished.

But that was only the prelude to my great victory. I have always been hesitant to teach any of my students anything just for show, but the opportunity to teach Christmas and other songs in English had sort of presented itself a couple of weeks before Carolina’s visit. I think I gave the song list in the previous blog. While Carolina and her guests were eating their lunch, I brought the grades in one at a time and we sang their prepared songs. The reaction could hardly have been better: “What a great teacher you are!” “Oh, you have a wonderful way with the children!” “I cried, it was so sweet!” I may not have guaranteed myself another year in Tolte, but I sure earned myself a good reference.

And, in spite of the unsafe conditions, the sight of the children playing merrily in their risky new playground was also so heartwarming that no one could stay upset for long. I have mentioned before that Toltenos perceive safety very differently than I do, and the new playground is part of that picture. I have actually seen children walking around on top of the highest beams of the monkey bars.  I’d just like to add that these beams are round. And no one seems at all nervous about this—except me.

I’d also like to mention that one of my micro-enterprise projects actually presented itself in public the day of Carolina’s visit. On Wednesday, some of my friends and I made a shampoo based on medicinal plants, and had it ready to sell on Saturday. I really think this could become something important for Tolte, if we can get the whole thing together. It would provide a solid market for the medicinal plants everyone grows, it is very much a value-added product, and it could provide employment to quite a few people if our marketing is good.  I have never tried to do anything like this even in the US, and navigating the legalities of this project is going to be tricky, but it appears that we can operate in a kind of “gray market” way until we get everything in place. I have high hopes.

The following week did include something new for me. I started going down to the train station to give English classes to the adults who work there, both those from Tolte and those from Nizag. It’s kind of a long way to go, but they give me lunch, and it beats waiting around in the cancha every night for adults who never show up for English class. I’m also giving this information to the people who need it most and can use it every day. I’m happy that at least a couple of afternoons a week will involve something other than hanging around in the library, waiting for kids to take an interest in reading. But I do have plans for initiating a pro-reading campaign in January, and I hope that will change the reading picture.

Of course, going down to the train station and back seemed awfully pleasant last week, with the rainy season still refusing to arrive, weeks after it should have. There has been some foggy rainy weather the last two days, and the trip up and back could get awfully slippery and muddy. Time will tell—I hear the rainy season is different in the station than it is in Tolte, and I’ll have to see.

And now, I’m going to go  to New York. I will travel to Quito tomorrow, and fly to New York Wednesday. I’ll have four days in New York to celebrate my Mother’s 80th birthday, and then two more days of travel to get back. The idea of being able to do this astonishes my neighbors. We Americans enjoy such freedom of movement compared to Ecuadoreans. But I’m glad that my circumstances allow me to spend a couple of days rendering homage to the one who brought me here. Thanks, Mom!

Slow Times

Somehow, it’s December already and I have little to show for my time here since August. I suppose I take my English teaching for granted. There has been nice progress in the second, third and seventh grades, acceptable progress in the sixth grade, some have learned much and most have learned little in the fourth and fifth grades, and the first grade simply keeps me awake at night, without it doing any good. I am preparing the second through seventh grades to sing songs for Carolina and her AVANTI entourage when they visit next Saturday. The second grade will sing, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” The third grade will sing five verses of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” (How many of my blog readers can pull off that many verses? I thought so…) The fourth and fifth graders will sing “Jingle Bells,” including the “Dashing through the snow” verse. I have had serious trouble teaching that song because the idea of these kids singing about a ride through the snow in a horse-drawn sleigh gives me cultural fits, which I express by bursting into laughter as I try to sing. But they already seem to have had a start on the tune, due either to movies or some long-lost instructor.  The sixth grade will sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” chosen mostly because it doesn’t have too many words. Apart from the first grade, the sixth is the hardest to teach anything to. And finally, we have the seventh grade, singing, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” chosen in part because of my fondness for the Bruce Springsteen version and in part because it has plenty of words they actually know. (“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…”) They can also sing, which helps a lot. Astute readers will notice that I did not teach “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” to any grade. I have my reasons.

Meanwhile, my work with adults is at a standstill. No one comes to adult English classes, probably because they are simply too tired at the end of the day to focus on learning anything. The adult English classes had always focused mainly on high school and college age students, but it seems that when the high school workload got into full gear, the high schoolers couldn’t make it any more. I’m less sure what happened to the young adults, but one family that had provided the bulk of my students moved from the center of Tolte to the edge of town about a month back, and I think that sort of killed my program. But hope lives (as we will see with regard to several projects). Last night at the PTA meeting, one of my friends who speaks English quite well told me that a consultant from Quito has been working in the train station, and hearing of my existence, asked if I could come down to the train station to teach relevant tourist English to the various groups that work there, such as the cafeteria workers, the dance troupe, the people who sell craft items, the horseback riding group, and the llama wranglers. I told her I’d be happy to do it. Now we’ll have to see if they actually remember to contact me the next time the consultant comes, so we can get this underway. You may ask why I don’t just go down there and start teaching English, and I suppose I could. But when it comes to the train station, there are so many rules and regulations that I’m hesitant to get involved. And it’s a long enough walk that I don’t want to go down there for nothing, although the exercise would do me good.

The “granjas integrales” group is also in suspended animation, as are my agricultural ambitions. Almost every week, a meeting is promised with a chance for me to pitch alternative agriculture ideas, but, in the end, nothing happens. I’ve done a few little projects since last year, but nothing hat will really have a lasting effect on how people treat their soil and manage their crops here in Tolte. But yesterday and today saw me drawn back to this area in weird new ways.

Yesterday saw the start of a new project started with parroquia funding which is aimed at helping Tolte’s “most vulnerable,” the elderly, the disabled, and single mothers, to develop some income. Each identified member of this group, or their families, in the case of the disabled, received 10 laying hens to develop an egg business, which will be handled on a community basis. The hens are still too young to lay, and will need another 4 or 5 months of growth, but they were of a good size, vaccinated, and seem likely to survive to adulthood given everyone’s experience with chickens. What’s funny is that this is where the junta directiva brought me in. I’m supposed to provide the follow-through, to make sure that everyone is doing what he or she is supposed to do to make sure that these chickens do their thing in a profitable way. I, of course, have never raised chickens, nor do I have any technical training in the matter. But I can drop by everyone’s house every week and make sure things are going along all right. This is especially interesting because I have had little contact with Tolte’s elderly, who seem to do their own thing largely out of sight of the rest of the community. A few months ago, I commented to some of my friends that I now knew almost everyone in Tolte. “Do you know Don Shaiko?” one of them asked. Well, I had to admit that I didn’t, but I do now. And soon I’ll know just about all the rest, as well. I did a little online research today about starting an egg business, and found it hilarious that in the US, an extension pamphlet suggested starting with a flock of 1000 as being manageable and possibly profitable without too big an initial investment. The agricultural scale is so different in Ecuador. But I’m afraid that the emphasis on income in this project also means an emphasis on production, which probably rules out the free-range system of chicken rearing normally used here. This is too bad, as it produces an egg of incredible quality, with a brilliant orange yolk. I wonder if we could get a higher price for such an item.

Another ray of agricultural hope came today in the form of one of the high school students, who has a small piece of land at his disposal. He invited me to see what he has as part of a micro-enterprise project he has to do for school, which involves a fruit and vegetable stand by the side of the Inter-American highway where it passes Tolte. But he went on to ask me if I had any bright ideas for the little piece of land where he and his cousin have been growing carrots. Since I have been discussing Masanoba Fukuoka’s “Natural Farming” system with Diana, the polytech student who is doing here undergrad thesis research in Tolte, I pitched that. Juan Carlos says he’s interested in trying it. It would be great to start right away, but, weirdly, my next three Saturdays are committed to other things, so it looks like we’ll get going upon my return to weekend action when I get back from my lightning trip to New York at the end of the month. This really could be something exciting, because the Fukuoka method greatly reduces daily labor to produce its yield. We’ll have to see if I can make it work in Tolte.

Other rays of hope have to do with the business ideas I’ve tried to encourage in Tolte. One of these involves producing soaps, shampoos, and whatnot using Tolte’s ample supply of medicinal plants. The method for doing this is something known primarily to one family that I’ve been quite close to during my time here, but they would like to develop the enterprise as a project for the Evangelical Church, which would include about a quarter of Tolte’s families. Our goal is to present a product line to Carolina’s entourage when they get here next Saturday. Naturally, the first samples of these things that I will see will be produced Wednesday or Thursday, so I hope they come out looking good. A Quito market for these things could be one heck of an outlet.

I have also heard that Vicente, the guitar maker, is taking a loan to equip his workshop to make guitars. Now I have to figure out how to help him market them. I have consulted my cousin Edward Summer about this, and I’m eager to see what he suggests. (It’s great to have knowledgeable family members in easy reach of the internet.) My idea is that we will try to reach consumers through the ‘net, where they will be able to order custom-made nylon string guitars at an affordable price. Thanks to Terance in The AVANTI office, I think we have solved the shipping cost problem. So with a direct-to-customer approach, I think we can offer a pretty impressive product at an amazing price. Now we’ll see if I can put all the pieces together.

The final project, is, as usual, the band ESTASIS, one of the world’s truly comical rock bands. I have been working on a song for a while, one that sounds wildly different from the rest of our repertoire, if it can be said that we have a repertoire. Mario finally insisted that I write the lyrics already, and, somewhat to my astonishment, they popped out about as fast as I could write them down. It is a somewhat maudlin number about a fellow who waits all his life for the girl, and later woman, he loves to come out of her house, which she doesn’t do until the day she dies. I also had to arrange the rhythm guitar and bass parts behind my own lead playing, and, because the vocalist shows up to rarely, I have had to sing the damn thing, too. Fortunately, our drummer is getting much better at keeping a beat. My band mates believe that this song is a sure-fire hit, and will make guitar heroes of us all. Even the vocalist, when he finally heard it, was afraid to try to sing it, fearing he might not give it what I do (although his accent would certainly be better). At the same time, we are now covering a song called “No Me Arrepiento de Este Amor,” by the band Ataque 77, which sounds a lot like The Clash at their most furious. Practicing my song, “Juliana al Fin del Mundo” and “No Me Arrepiento de Este Amor” one after the other and back again is enough to produce whiplash. But this is what ESTASIS is all about, wild rock abandon and depraved sentimentality, all at once, like the adolescents we are. And while we may not have much in the way of talent, we do have a facebook page with 100 followers, so go ahead and like us if you dare.