And the emails continue...

July 20
Well, I have another good story for you all.
It starts with Paquiestancia having a super huge five day long festival celebrating the founding of the town. There were parades, fireworks, booze (the Ecuadorian favorite, Pilsner), and, of course, bull fights. The people of Paquiestancia got together to build a bull fighting ring on the lush and beautiful soccer field in the middle of town. The only store in Paquiestancia that sells beer and has tables to sit at installed a post where all the drunk men could tie up their horses. On Saturday, there was an amphitheater set up in the gigantic patio of the elementary school. All of the big folk singers from Cayambe came to sing. But it was more like they were doing high tech karaoke. There were colorful lights wildly flashing from side to side on the stage. Also, on one side of the patio, there was a stand selling the box wine that came with the obligatory tiny plastic shot glass. In Ecuador, when you have alcohol, you share it with anyone and everyone. And you all drink from the same cup. The box wine comes in two flavors: peach and apple. Trust me, peach is less gross. As well as this, there was homemade alcohol. It was somehow made from the sugar that is made locally from sugarcane. And if we know anything about homemade alcohol, it is strong! It was not even sweet. And the weirdest part was that it was hot.

But anyway, the next day i went to the bull fights. It was pretty awesome. Four people and a couple of dogs got rammed. There was even one guy who got his pants torn from hip to knee. And everyone could see that he wears thongs. It was pretty hilarious. I was sitting next to an Ecuadorian woman who saw that I was with all of the gringos (Peace Corps peeps). She and I talked to each other. And then when I got up to leave, I was missing my phone. I went looking for the kids who had sat on my lap to confront them. But neither of them had odd rectangular bulges on them. Then i remembered that the lady I was sitting with had asked me two now peculiar questions. Back to back she had asked me if I have a phone and if I have insurance. I had thought that she had meant life insurance. But looking back I understand that she meant insurance on my phone. So I was pissed and wanted to knock her out and search her pockets. But she had family there and if I was wrong I would have felt dumb.

So I told Peace Corps head people what happened and they told me to file a report. I had to go to the Ecuadorian police station in Cayambe to do it. Because we had classes from 8am to 5 pm on Monday I couldn´t go then. So on Tuesday I got one of the official Peace Corps drivers who happened to be my friend to drive me to Cayambe in the morning during class. He was going into Cayambe anyway to buy snacks for the day. So he dropped me off where he was buying bread. I went to the Municipio and asked the man at the counter where to go and he told me to go upstairs. The lady upstairs told me to go out of the building and take a left and that is where I would find the Comisario de Policia. The uniformed dude around the corner told me to go down the street more and go to the thrid floor. There was no third floor where he said I needed to go. So I went into some place that looked like a doctors office and the lady in the waiting room told me to go around a couple more corners on the same block. So I did, and came upon a very decorated uniformed man who i assumed would know something. He ask me my life story and then told me to go to the blue door where a lot of uniformed men were loitering. So i told my story for the millionth time that day and the man I was telling told me that i didn´t need to file a report if I didn´t know who did the crime. So I had to explain being a US citizen and Peace Corps volunteer before he would let me in to the building that did not say anything about Comisaria de Policia to fill out a report. When I told the dude filling out the form that I needed three copies of the report, he gave me the original and told me to go to the store across the street to make the copies. Then, when I finally came back and had him sign them and wen to meet my driver friend, I saw the driver disappear around the corner. So I chilled there for 20 minutes waiting for him to come back, moving away from people who were invading my bubble in the Ecuadorian way, until another car with diplomatic tags happened to come by with another Peace Corps person in it. So I made it back to class.
But somehow, Peace Corps head honcho, Susanna, twisted my story into me being negligent and now I´m going to have to pay for a new phone. The thing that makes me angry is that another person simply lost her phone and is lying, saying that someone stole it, and she isn´t going to have to pay. Oh well. I know to lie my pants off to Peace Corps from now on.
Next week I will find out where my site is! Yay!

Let me know what is going on with you, whenever you get a chance!

Hasta Luego!
Manisha

July 26
As the governement enjoys doing, they dragged out the process of letting us Trainees know where we were going until the last possible moment. All last week we met all of the community contacts from all of our potential sites. Then on Friday afternoon we had interviews with the Trainers to let them know where we wanted to go. Yesterday we found out where we are going.

I am going to Mercedes Cadena. It is a small town in the privince of Chimborazo near Riobamba. It is in the Central Sierra at 2900 meters above sea level. Really, the nearest town is Guamote, 10 miles away. And to get to that town, I have to walk for a half hour from my site to the Pan American Highway and then catch the bus that comes only a precious six times per day. Riobamba, the real city that I will probably visit more often, is an hour bus ride once I get to the PanA (anyone who knows the Pan American Highway in South America calls it the PanA).

This Sunday we are all going to the sites we have been assigned for our site visit. I will be staying with the volunteer who is already there, Kristy Romeo, for a few nights. And then I will stay with a family across town to get to know different people around town. Altogether, I will be in Mercedes Cadena for a week. My primary activities there as a Volunteer will be:
Giving nutrition and cooking classes
Family Gardens
Educate community members in family planning methods
Teaching in the local school and kindergarten
Working with traditional medicine and medicinal plants
Conducting AIEPI activities (AIEPI-atención intergral de enfermedades prevalentes de la infancia= Integral Attention to the Preventable Diseases of Infancy)
General hygiene and health education
Mercedes Cadena is an indigenous town of about 800 people, of which about 70% are Catholic and 30% are Evangelical. Today I learned that here the main difference between Catholic and Evangelical is forgiveness. I find it hard to believe that Evangelical people forgive everyone while Catholics do not. But, as well as this, Catholics drink alcohol, listen to music, and dance while Evangelicals do not. Anyhow, the people of Mercedes Cadena speak primarily Quichua. And while many also speak Spanish, I am getting a crash course on Quichua today through Friday in order to impress and dazzle the people when I meet them. I am really enjoying it so far because I love learning new languages. But as well as that, the sentence structure is very similar to Hindi and there are a few words that are the same in Hindi. I feel like this sort of supports the theory that the Native Americans were actually Indians and Asians who crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago.

And I talked the head honcho into giving me a phone for free, so I will be getting that before I go on my site visit. I think that is everything for now.

Keep in touch!

Hasta luego!

--
Manisha Devasthali
Pictures: http://photos.yahoo.com/msdevast
Websites: http://fannypackrocksmyworld.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/msdevast
http://www.unc.edu/~msdevast/Manisha%20Devasthali.htm
Mailing Address: Cuerpo de Paz, Casilla 17-08-8624, Quito, Ecuador, South America

More entries

June 21, 2006
Hola Family and Friends!
I am super excited! I got to Washington, D.C. on Monday, June 19 for staging. Today, Wednesday, June 21, me and 49 other Ecuador Peace Corps Trainees are getting on the plane to Quito, Ecuador.
The main thing we did in staging is go over the common sense things that people forget when they are excited and in a new country. You know: don't hang out with drug dealers, don't ride on motorcycles, don't go places for a few days without letting someone know, etc. The ones I just mentioned are all frounds from being termintaed from the program early.
Once we get to Quito, we will be getting shots and filling out paperwork until Thursday afternoon. Then we will be traveling the hour and half North to Cayambe to get settled. There we will start our language and technical training while living with families. We will be grouped with about 3 or 4 people at our own current level of Spanish language.
After 3 months of this training, I will be sworn in on Friday, August 21 and then I will be sent to my community.
So far, I love everyone in my training group. Everyone is super nice. I know I'm going to have the most fun time ever!
Hasta luego!
Manisha



June 25, 2006
Buenos Dias Everyone!
I got to Quito just fine. We got the best welcome ever. There were current Peace Corps volunteers who were jumping up and down and screaming at the airport.
Then we stayed the night in a hostel. After that, the next day, we went to Peace Corps Headquarters in Quito to learn some more rules, get our cell phones, and meet everyone who will be helping us during our time in Ecuador.
That afternoon, we went to EL CAAP, a hostel of sorts in Cayambe to get more detailed classes about what is going on. We were there for two days. Then yesterday, we went to our perspective families in satellite pueblos around Cayambe.
My pueblo is Paquiestancia. Guacan Farinango is the last of the family I´m staying with. The parents are Miguel and Carmen and the kids are Marta (13), Angel (11), Flor (8), Rubi (3.5). This morning I woke up at 5 am to go across town to the property behind Miguel´s mother´s house to milk the three cows that Miguel and Carmen own: Luci, Rosa, and Manuela. Then we came back to a breakfast of hot milk and empanadas. Now we are in town to buy eggs, and a few vegetables (chochos, which are a type of bean indigenous to this area).
I will be here for 9 more weeks doing my training. Starting tomorrow, Monday, I am going to have language and culture classes with my teacher, Javier, and the other Trainees here in Paquiestancia: Becca, Jesse, Jeff, and Paul.

My new pictures will be up pretty soon on http://photos.yahoo.com/msdevast

Hasta luego!
Manisha





July 2, 2006
Well my first day with my host family has actually become something of a legend here in Peace Corps. Well, at least in Omnibus 96. I actually did not tell you all about this in my first email. That first day that I milked the cows was the only day. The thing is, we could not milk Manuela because she is pregnant, I could not milk Luci because she is bad tempered, and when I was allowed to milk Rosa, Rosa was not at all cool with me milking her. So, even though her back two legs were tied together, she tried to kick me and ended up kicking the full bucket of milk instead. It was happening all slo= mo, too. But I was not putting my head back in danger to save the two or three dollars worth of milk that was starting to spill into the grass. So then later that day, when we were in Cayambe to go grocery shopping, I decided to help by carrying the plastic bag full of eggs. Thirty eggs to be exact. But, alas, the bag broke because there was way too many eggs in it. And we went home with only 14. And speaking of home, I was carrying all of the vegetables down the path to the house when I tripped and fell and bruised all of our carefully chosen produce. Since then, I haven't really been allowed to do much around the house. But today I did all of the dishes. So I guess they are starting to trust me again.

In other news, we have compentacies that we must complete during training. The first ones we have completed have been (1) teaching school age children about health, (2) get to know the health system of the area, and (3) draw a map of your community. For the first one, we went to the elementary school in Paquiestancia and had a game in which each child was in charge of presenting one vocabulary word to the class, and they essentially taught themselves. For the second one, we went to the dispensary in Paquiestancia and talked to the nurse there and then we talked to the director of the hospital in Cayambe. Basically, the population of about 92, 000 people in this area are covered by 30 doctors and the hospital only has 30 beds. The good thing that is sometimes manipulated is that women get prenatal, natal, and postnatal care and their children up to 5 years old all get free health care anywhere in Ecuador. The only problem is that there are not enough beds and they are charged for everything else: needles, IVs, tubes, food, sheets, etc. And the third was done by using other maps we already had. But we also asked our "parents" about things in the community that we either had not learned about yet, or were not sure about.

Tomorrow a bunch of us are getting together for another competancy: huertos. Huertos are gardens in which only plants for nutritional or economic use are planted. And Trainees from several surrounding communities are coming to Paquiestancia to my house to create a huerto. The day after, July 4, we are all getting together to learn recipies and nutrition, but we are actually going to be having a cook out. But Happy Independence Day to everyone back in the States! Then we will be going on technical trips around Ecuador on Saturday until Wednesday. In my group, Health, there are four different tech trips. They are going to the Jungle, Coast, North, or South. I am going to the South with three other Trainees: Maggie, Elizabeth, and Matt.

Oh, and I almost forgot! Me, Jesse, Paul, and Becca got dressed up in traditional Ecuadorian clothes on Thursday to dance from Paquiestancia to Cayambe to celebrate Cayambe's patron saint, San Pedro. I don't have pictures up yet, but I will sometime!

Please let me know how you are doing back home! And this is my address for the next two years.
Manisha Devasthali
Cuerpo de Paz, Avenida Granda Centeno, OE4-250 y Baron de Carondelet, Quito, Ecuador, South America
And this is where you can find my newest pictures http://photos.yahoo.com/msdevast

love, Manisha