Big changes! I’ve moved! Its bitter sweet because now we’re down one gringo here in town however I also now have my own place. Its about half way organized right now. I moved down the 31st of August and still have some painting left to do. It feels really weird to be here without Ryan around. Cuca seems to be adjusting alright. Now not only does she have a bed to loaf on, she also had a futon thing. And a patio all to herself free of other cats and dogs. Tomorrow I’m gonna paint the tables and the bathroom. I think it will be a great opportunity to introduce Cuca to my duck, Muco. Right now he’s still super tiny and living with Beva and German’s other little duckling. Muco and Pinky have become fast friends but I want to get him off the duck wavelength and onto the gringa and Cuca wavelength. I’ve decided that tomorrow while I’m painting I’m going to bring him over and keep him in whatever room I happen to be in. Let him see the house, the cat; listen to my music. We shall see how it goes.
Last weekend us gringos went to Otavalo, the big market with German and his family. It was Andy’s first time. He was so cute. I really hate Otavalo Saturdays though. There are just WAY too many people. And they’re from all parts of the world, and they all walk super slow. I think I’m just really paranoid about getting pick pocketed in an area like that. Everyone’s walking around with pockets full of money and completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. I did get Muco though so that was a bonus. I also bought a really tiny kitten. I had plans to just have this one cat but these kittens looked awful. They were all squished in a tiny cage, all piled in together, with a little bowl of cabbage soup. There was one smaller than the rest so I pulled him out to have a look at him. Poor little guy. His fur was all matted down, he smelled terrible, and was really thin. I lectured the woman about how you can’t give soup to little kittens like this and then bought him for $1.00. The duck went for $1.50. So anyways, the woman told me that he is 3 weeks old. Who knows where momma cat is. Oh and the best (worst) part is how she hands him to me in a paper bag. Like something you’d put your kid’s lunch in. just shows how they really value their animals down here. I made it my priority to get little Mugre (means grime, or gunk, and I now feel terrible for calling him this) some milk to drink. All I can find is strawberry milk in boxes to I’m feeding him with the straw of the carton. One of the other volunteers is holding Muco so that I can manage the kitten in the paper bag and carton of strawberry milk. I must have looked like a lunatic. Later we went to get pie and they gave me a bigger cardboard box to put both of them in. I was giving Muco some of the pie crust and Mugre some of the melted ice cream. Everyone wanted to know what I had in that box. I sent my new kids home with Beva because she had brought Pinky (a duck for Andy) as well. I wanted to have a little more time with Edu in the city before he left for England. I come back to the ‘ski about 9ish to see the ducks snuggling and Mugre still in the box. The fam told me that they gave him milk, yogurt, and some meat. I picked him up and have him the once over. He seemed alright and then started vomiting. He vomited so much for such a tiny cat! I decided he needed a bath so I took him up to the hostel. I put him in the warm water and he just sat there. That’s when I knew something was very wrong. Didn’t fight me at all. In fact, he was only calm in the warm water. When I changed the water he’d cry and cry and cry. He must have been so chilly. I wrapped him up in a towel and snuggled him for a bit. I decided to test his stomach out and feed him. We went back down to the kitchen and I heated up some milk in a saucer for him. I put him down on the ground and he fell into the saucer and couldn’t get up. So now he can’t walk. I thought I’d just let him rest a big. We did some more snuggling finally it was bed time. I kept him wrapped up in a bathrobe and under the sheets next to my body to keep him warm. Around 3am I feel his whiskers scratching me. We went back down to the kitchen to try and feel him a little more. Brought some warm milk upstairs with a tablespoon, the only instrument I could find to feed him. He was swallowing a little bit at a time but a lot was just coming out of the sides of his mouth. I decided it was a better idea to give him some rehydration salts. He kept stretching his head back; I figured that might be a nervous system effect of the dehydration. He was drinking those just as poorly as he was drinking the milk. At this point I felt super distraught and I had no idea what to do. He was just peeing on himself in the bathrobe, still wet, doing that weird neck flexion thing. I really thought he was going to die. I left him in the bathroom around 4am to get some sleep without worrying that I was going to roll over and squish him. My eyes banged open at 7am and I can’t explain how terrified I was to go in the bathroom and find a dead kitten. I finally got the nerve to open the door and I see him, in the robe, maybe dead but when I open up the robe to get a better look he starts wailing. What a fighter. At this point it’s time to turn to a vet. I can’t feed him with a tablespoon. I go to a man in the community who I know was a vet before. He told me that I’m really out of luck, he doesn’t have medicine but I should go to Urcuqui, there’s a vet there. So I get in the bus to go the 1.5 hours to Urcuqui. David’s son sits next to me. Thank goodness he was there for me to talk to and get my mind of the kitten. He was doing all he could to cheer me up, such a good 12 year old, telling me jokes, talking about his karate classes. David is lucky to have such a good kid. While on the bus Mugre started to have diarrhea. So he started to smell even worse. I kept opening up the towel to hear him cry, so I’d know that he was still vocal at least. Xavier was funny, he said, man that cat really does kind of stink. Even though he stunk Xavier still sat next to me, trying to cheer me up. Finally we got to Urcuqui and to the vets office to find out that the vet isn’t in the office today. He’s gone to Ibarra and I should go there. So I get back on the bus and go the next ½ hour to Ibarra. Get in a cab and go to the office where the vet gives him a shot to stop the diarrhea and then tells me that I need to keep giving him the rehydration salts every 3 hours. But he doesn’t even give him any fluids there in the office. It was super weird. He told me that the Mugre had parasites. Basically all of his diarrhea was parasites. Just more and more parasites; it was disgusting. So I left the office with pobre Mugre in a carton, wrapped in the bathrobe, to go to Edu’s house. I wanted to see him one more time before he left the country. I made it through the door and just had a total cry fest. It was awful. I just felt so guilty and helpless. I took this kitten away from his family and not even 24 hours later, in my hands, he can’t even walk. I’m talking to Edu, explaining my morning/night, crying, breaking down when I decide to show him the cat. I open up the box and unwrap the robe to reveal a dead kitten. But not dead, I picked him up and he gave this terrible gasp. I didn’t know what to do at that point. Edu suggested giving him some water with the syringe so I did and he would swallow a tiny bit and then gasp probably every 30 seconds. And that was it. No breathing. I got a light to check his pupils and they still got smaller in the light but really slowly. It was just a terrible, terrible day. I put him back in the box, all wrapped up and just lost it. This incident was probably the lowest point of my entire Peace Corps service. I haven’t cried that hard since I’ve been here. I got back into site later in the afternoon, just feeling cold all over and disgusted with myself. I took a shower and spent the afternoon in my room alone.
The night got a little better. We did Ryan’s despedida (goodbye party) up with the family. We ate a lot of meat- cow, chicken, pig, hot dog. Drank some beer, played some cards, and little by little I managed to temporarily forget about Mugre. The guilt started to subside. After dinner I felt a lot better and the family wanted to dance so I came to my senses and got my groove on. And of course we had to go to karaoke. Ryan’s big last night at karaoke…all English songs. After we sang all the regulars Jeff just went nuts and started putting on whatever song he could find in English. We had to keep telling him to skip songs because we had no idea how they went. It was quite the crowd. Started out with the family from up top but then they went home leaving the 2 owners of karaoke, Ryan, Ben, Jesus, and me. Jesus knows every song in English somehow so he had a blast. We stayed there singing and drinking copious amounts of beer until a little past midnight. There was a party going on in the Galapagos (the family looks like turtles I guess, or that’s what they say) so we were gonna head over there but Jesus thought it would be a better idea to get a java (12 big ol beers) to just drink at Ryan’s house. So that’s what we did. Between the 4 of us we drank 12 much-larger-than-normal beers. It only took us until 4am. I haven’t partied like that since that night in NYC with Burgos and Jason. Needless to say it got my mind off of the kitty. And then the hangover the next day also helped.
That took us to Monday. Ryan’s last full day in site. I decided to make the cake for him because I dropped the ball and forgot to buy one in Ibarra. I made a sick apple upside down cake. Then I had to make a frosting to put on it. Don’t come here for your birthday Megan, they always put the birthday girl/boy’s face in the cake. I really wanted to put Ryan’s face in a cake because he was going and frosting is so much better than apples to put a face in. We did a nice despedida with German and his family. Just the gringos and the Benavides’, and David. Beva killed 2 chickens for the occasion and a guinea pig all for Ryan. He said it was the best he’s had in site the entire 2 years he’s been here. Beva does cook some mean carne. It came cake time and Klever actually was the one to put his face in it. Surprise! And the cake came out alright. We all hung out after dinner, drank some rum and coke but after the previous night’s activities, no one really had ganas de chumarse all over again.
Ryan decided to go on the bus at 11:30 so that gave him the morning. Ben had taken off to Ibarra for the day so Ryan and I made banana chocolate chip pancakes with David and his son. They came out super good. But it was really sad. We were listening to musica de longos (Ecuadorian music) and just avoiding talking about how Ryan was really leaving later that day. I said my goodbyes earlier than he actually left. I didn’t want to be around everyone saying goodbye. I cried afterwards talking to German and Beva. Part of me was still sad over Mugre and another part of me realized that this is going to be me some day. I had read that its harder to leave the country you’re serving in than the US in the first place. You know that you’ll come back to the US. To the country you’re serving in, maybe not. And everyone here just loves you unconditionally. They’ll give you the shirt off their back if you ask. I feel like if I had to leave tomorrow it would be super difficult. I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be in 2 years. I don’t even want to think about it. I know the time is going to fly and it’s scary! I was saying “it’s only 2 years” before I left and now I’m really feeling that. Already I’ve been here 4 months. Mid September will be 5 months. End of November I’m ¼ of the way done with my service. I feel like I’ve been here a month. It’s incredible.
In the up and coming is a charla on apicultura. The municipio in Urcuqui had money to spend in tourism and we were going to put rooms with private bathrooms in 3 or 4 of the socios houses from the tourism group but the municipio said they can’t built on land that they don’t own. Or they can’t put their money into it. So then there was the idea for the tourism hostel. But where are we going to get the land for that? So now I’m thinking of forming a community group of people that own bees and want to sell the honey. They can raise the bees, clean the honey, put it in containers and sell it to tourists, or even in town. Cahuasqui organic honey, delicious. We’ll see how it goes. With my luck no one will show up to the charla. I want to do it on a Sunday but that is the day that the men tend to drink themselves into comas. But all the other days they’re working in the fields. Better they’re there and drunk or just not there at all? Quite the conundrum. Also coming up is reconnect, the conference for Peace Corps where we go with our counterparts to Quito and present data about our communities. It’s a weeklong conference- so long! It will be super cool to see the kids from my group again but I really feel like I have more in common with the other volunteers that live around me. And the people in my community. I feel like I’d rather go out in Ibarra with the other volunteers around me or the kids from the tourism group instead of the kids in my group. Edu is going to be in Quito some of that week too so hopefully at least one night we can go out to dinner before he takes off again, this time for Argentina. The week after I come back from that conference in Quito I have another one to go to out near Mindo about tourism. It’s only a 3 day deal I think and should be really really helpful. And its only for the volunteers working in tourism. I think there are like 5 of 6 of us so that’s cool. I’d like to hear about what stage of tourism they’re at in their sites. We’re still in that motivation phase. We’re still in that, go-find-the guides-the-morning-of-your-paramo-trip-at-the-party-that-they’re-still-at-from-the-night-before-drunk-off-their-asses phase. They make me feel like I’ve really got my act together. To say the least it is certainly entertaining. So with these 2 conferences that will take me just about into October. This month is going to flyyyyy by. And then in the beginning of October I think I might to go to Guayaquil. It’s a super dangerous city but there’s a climbing competition there for a couple days. Just gotta stay out of the bad barrios. It will be my first time out of the sierras! I’m so excited! I heard some crazy talk about Buenos Aires, the community kind of close to mine but much more cut off, where my host mom grew up. Someone told me that it’s really dangerous there. That the people are really violent. I guess people have been stabbed in bars. When the men get drunk, instead of just talking it out, or even fist fighting it out, they just stab each other. And this is the community that wants a volunteer…I do feel like that probably is a pretty common problem in Ecuador though. Where people are stressed and drinking and they have machetes, bound to be bad news.
That’s really all that’s new here! I’ll be putting up pictures of the house on FB as I take them. We’re getting there bit by bit. To really see the full effect you really should just come visit me. I’m super excited for people to come visit. There’s just so much I want to show everyone from home. I’m really proud of myself for integrating into this community just because it’s so different from anything I ever thought I’d do in my life. I just want to show my new home, my surrogate families off to everyone from home. I want my worlds to collide. Also keep your eyes open for an album of my Ecua kids, Cuca and Muco. Cuca’s kind of the spoiled brat first born right now; I’ll get some more pictures of Muco in the near future. Hope everyone is well at home! I can’t believe that I’ve missed 2 seasons, soon to be 3 already!
