Thursday, December 13, 2007

Some Serious Change of Plans

This blog will be suspended for at least a week

Word reached us yesterday morning in Puyo that my mother passed away in the early morning hours of Wednesday December 12. She broke her hip in a fall on Saturday. She survived surgery on Tuesday, but a long time heart problem took her Wednesday morning. We immediately made plans to travel to Quito and then on to Iowa. The blog posting today is from Quito.

We had tickets to leave Ecuador for Christmas on this coming Sunday. Avianca Airlines has done all they can do to get us out this afternoon (Thursday). We will fly to Bogata, Columbia and then on to Miami arriving at 1:45 AM Friday morning.

Phil and Joan Long have been taking care of our house in North Port. Once again they are going way above the call of duty to pick us up in Miami at that terrible hour of the night. We hope to arrive in North Port by around 6 AM

We are purchasing tickets to fly from Tampa to Moline, IL. and arrive there by 5:00 PM Friday. The North Port stop is necessary because we are living in the tropics and word has it that there is some serious winter in Iowa. A different set of clothing seems in order.

Some time around the first of January we plan to return to North Port for possibly up to a week. The health condition of my father remains serious. We are not sure how the passing of my mother will affect him and his marginal condition.

The funeral of my mother has been set for Monday December 17.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Frustrations Latino Style

This is one of those days you can not photograph. It is not only if something can go wrong it will, it is if anything can go wrong Latino style it will.
We have not had water at school for two days. Last Friday the plastic water line was cut just outside the school campus. Now it is time to stand in a big circle and point fingers and no one will take responsibility for the repairs. Repairs means two small plastic couplers and two small clamps. The water tube is above ground (that's how it got cut) and so there is no digging. I think total repair time should take 15 minutes at the most. We have toilets that have been used for two days (sat over the weekend) which reeks in the 78 degree temps. We have dishes from the cafeteria which were not washed today. They are short of staff by one. Everyone hopes the $2.50 repairs will be made this afternoon and at least that problem can be resolved.
Problem number 2 has to do with the copy machine. This is an every day problem. Paper is purchased one and maybe two reams at a time. Re-order time is when we are actually out of paper. A taxi is called and the paper appears after an hour or so. Ink is another matter. It has about the same routine as the paper. Maintenance on the copier is off the chart. Someone comes out and guesses at the problem and "fixes" it. The moral of the copier story is to stay well ahead of the use of your copies.
We have two laser printers on campus. We just brought the second one back with us in November. Within a week the main office was using my printer because the ink had run out of theirs. Cartridges are ordered from Quito. So, for three days they made several trips a day from the office to the English work room to do all their printing. I suggested they order six replacement cartridges and they answered they were farsighted and ordered two. In all of this I did resist the request that they take my printer to the office. I still wouldn't have it back.

In most of these matters (and the list of matters is long), the most important factor first of all is to go through the blame game with each person denying any responsibility. After we have wasted a bunch of time and increased everyone's frustration to the breaking point, the problem will finally get solved but probably not before another one is on the table.
There! I feel better! Complaining is good for the soul. It just doesn't fix the problem

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Esperanza Eterna Church


The church from the outside. Some readers have been at this church before and will remember when the newly cemented upper portion on the right was open.




A view from one front corner looking back to the sanctuary seating and the balcony seating.




The front "stage" or altar is nothing but poured cement with two sets of poured cement rounded steps.


A view of the altar area from the balcony. The sign is a part of mission statement of the church which will finally be placed so all can read it each Sunday. Imagine a church being reminded of their mission statement each week!!!!



This picture was taken from an area which will be an office in the future. The office is accessed by the balcony. The church does have its main office in a building down town.


The church that sponsors us has been involved in a remodeling project. This is a major financial project as the total cost is about $50,000. Considering the wealth of the people, the project might be 5 to 10 times as large in the USA as a comparable project. Moreover, this is not a matter of an estate gift or some other "gift from heaven". By the standards of churches in the US, the building is very rustic to say the least. Hard wooden benches are used and the overflow sits on plastic lawn chairs. My butt prefers the lawn chairs. The service is two hours in length. The sermon takes half of that time. That is a lot of Spanish we don't understand!!
We continue to be impressed with the large number of people who show up every Sunday (400 in the first service). People are "tuned in" to the service.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Christmas Shopping In Puyo

With a little more than two weeks until Christmas, it is obvious that the retail sales ¨big deal¨ that is so common in the USA is not a big deal here. It seems that at least three economic factors come together to help explain this.

First there are very few large retail establisment. ¨Large¨ here would be considered a mom and pop type store in the US. Only recently did Puyo gain a department store that sells both food and an asortment of other items. It is the largest store in a town of 30,000. The little shops mostly have their specialties and only a few carry items that would be considered hot Christmas items.

Secondly, there is little discrectionary income. Most families work for the basic necessities of life and there is little money left for anything else. We really don´t know what a ¨large¨Christmas expenditure might be, but it is safe to say that $100 would be huge.

The third factor that limits Christmas buying is that there is no credit card use here. The concept of using plastic to pay for things is only something people hear about. They find it difficult to believe.

Credit card use and purchasing on the internet are now closely related in the US. Purchasing on the internet is unheard of here. When we explain how this works, people see it as some sort of magic purchasing. It seems to them that purchases must be sort of ¨free¨if they can be made this way.

So how commercial is Christmas here? We really are not sure, but it is certainly a different kind of ¨commercial¨than we know in the US.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Changing Tradition

On Wednesday and Thursday late afternoons we used our usual teacher English class time to discuss student grading and grading systems with small groups of teachers. Both of our co-teachers were present and explained the technical stuff in Spanish. We just forget what information and experience we have about how systems operate.

Explaining what appears to be fairly simple grading systems is a total revelation to teachers here. I had a summary of all grades given for the second grading period on a spreadsheet. One of the teachers inquired as to why I would make up such an example. She was in total shock to find out that nothing was made up and it was a picture of what the staff had collectively just done.

Change in a fast moving society is a challenge. Change in a very traditional society is a shock. There is immediate fear of what the reaction of the "powers that be" will be. A control of the tradition by this fear is a huge factor to deal with. Again, we might be learning more than we are teaching.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

No Mail Service

Sometimes you have to live in a culture a while before some things become obvious and you wonder why you didn´t see it before. Such was the case in a recent 8th grade class.

Students were required to read a passage where a character needed to fill out a form with his name and address on it. 8th Grade students then were required to fill out the same form for themselves in English. The name went ok, but the address was a real problem.

Only about half of the class had any idea of what their address was. Others knew the name of the street on which they lived, but nothing more. The it hit me that there is no mail service here. All mail is picked up at the central post office. This begs the question of when to go to the post office because how would you know if you had mail or not?

The non-existence of mail delivery creates an entire chain reaction of other problems just in the school setting alone. How do you communicate with parents in writing? In a culture where there are a lot of things floating around in the first place, it is good to have school communication in writing. When I explained that in the USA, a teacher could mail a note to parents or they could email them immediately about the child´s performance, they were in shock.

Getting mail, even junk mail, is something we take for granted. Imagine absolutely no mail service!! Or, maybe you can´t.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Volcano!


In the land of ¨what can be next¨we had a ¨next¨today. We had been watching a distant volcano spit out a plumb of steam for about two days. MJ took the two pictures below. The pictures are taken from the second story of the school just outside the English offices & work room.


This morning we had a fairly strong wind coming from the volcano. Sure enough, the black, sandy ash was coming down on everything. The top picture shows a little pile of this collected from two normal size sheets of paper. The tile floor in the English room was glazed so that I could skate around the room on this stuff. The problem is that this fine little ash gets into everything leaving a gritty feel. I call it an ash, but it is more like a very fine black sand.

All of this is happening about an hour away by bus. I have no idea how many miles as the crow flies. It is the same volcano that has really dumped the ash down on the highway out of here on the way to Quito in the past year. They just keep building the highway higher over the top of the ash flow. Hope this thing doesn´t cause a problem with our travel plans out of here a week from this Friday.
As the winds decreased today, the ash deposit also seemed to decrease.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Arajuno, The Last Posting


This is the last of a three part series about Arajuno. The tree above is a chonta which belongs to the palm family. The wood is extremely hard and dense. The shaft of the blowguns made by the Huorani are made of this wood. A close-up of this picture will show thousands of berry like blooms near the trunk.



It is small, so take two. Actually, I made a download error and I ended up with two Protestant churches (the same one). Those of you in to church renovation need to take a lesson from these people. Don´t spend the money on a fancy place.



Every town needs a ¨cock-of-the-walk¨. This guy is about as nice a bird as I have seen anywhere. Not sure the size of his kingdom.

The Catholics always have to have the grandest structure in town. And so it is here in Arajuno! Two colors on the sides and old and new tin on the roof. Again, don´t spend the money on the building.

When I first saw this horse and saddle, I thought ¨man this equipment could have you singing soprano in a minute¨. The saddle is not for humans but for hauling lumber from the mill. You need to click this picture once to get a close-up of the saddle.



A typical Saturday afternoon in Arajuno. A careful look at the picture will indicate the street lights. A kid or two and a dog or two is the heaviest traffice they have. The bus we rode back made a loop around town honking to let people know it was departing. A couple people got on. Front door service!!!


And finally, the butterflies. Don´t know what kind of plant they are on, but they really attract the butterflies. Click on this picture to see about five of them on the same plant.






Monday, December 3, 2007

Gardening In Arajuno

The people of Arajuno have a great place to raise all their food. People along the way in the mountains had to carve out enough space for a vegetable garden. the river flood plain is a great gardening area. This picture shows the footbridge across the river.

The river is wide and shallow. I am not sure how much rain it would take to get this thing to flood, but it appears as though it seldom floods judging from the permanent "truck gardens".

the entire family does the gardening. As is the case here, older children often take care of the younger ones and even the babies


The picture below shows a well managed footpath for the beginning of the huge gardening area. The picture above shows how the path narrows and is just dirt as you get a greater distance from the river.


The crops include bananas, and a lot of manioc (tapioca). The locals dig the large tubulars out of the ground and mash them. The leaves are poison and need to be boiled for some time to take the toxins out. Some type of pole bean was also growing in some patches.


The plants are all huge because of the rich flood plain soil and because of the frequent rains. We are not sure if all the food is eaten or if some is used as a cash crop. In any case, all is carried out on the backs of people. The river bank path was a five minute walk for two people not in good shape. It appeared that it was a five minute walk for people carrying full baskets of produce on their backs who were in shape.




Sunday, December 2, 2007

Arajuno; Out In The Jungle


This will be the first in a series of several postings of pictures and comments about Arajuno, the Arajuno River and the jungle around it.

Saturday December 1, was a good day to take a break from school problems and teaching. We decided to take a bus ride northeast of Puyo as far as the road would take us. The road ends in the rainforest village of Arajuno (ara hOOn o). The two and a half hour ride was as close to riding a jackhammer as I hope to experience. The road was graveled with large round river rock for the most part. The final 10 miles was a single lane road cut into the mountain side and yes there was two-way traffic. Because Arajuno is located on a major river, the last five miles was a fairly steep decent into the valley.

One of the major reason we wanted to travel to Arajuno is because it is one of the few roads one can take into Huorani territory. We had heard and read of the very dense rainforest and the very rugged mountains in which they live. None of the descriptions were exaggerated. The Huorani were called “savages” or Aucas by the neighboring Indian tribes and then also by the Spanish and other white people. They came to the attention of the world in general when they speared five American missionaries to death some 50 years ago in the general region in which we traveled today. They not only had a history of spearing outsiders, but they also got caught up in revenge spearing among their own clans. As late as the 1960’s, 60% of Huorani deaths were due to murder within the general tribe. Those of you readers who have seen the movie or read the book End Of The Spear will know all about this.

We saw no older Huorani today. The young generation has tended to melt into local society. The older men have grossly wide feet at the back of the toes and a huge space between the big toe and the next one. This is due to climbing trees barefoot. Also, the older generation of men and women had ear lobes larger than a quarter because of implanted balsa wood flat plates.

The pictures today show the airport at Arajuno. This is a major airport with transfer of supplies here from larger planes to smaller ones which can land on very short village landing strip.


We walked out on the runway just in time to see a plane coming at us. A careful look at the picture shows the nose wheel not on the ground yet.

In the space of about four hours, five planes came in and took off again. The airport was originally built in the 1940's by the Shell Oil Co. to act as one of the bases for oil exploration. It was abandoned in the 1950's and was frequently used by missionaries and government officials.


We enjoyed watching the children act as "cargo hands" in loading the planes. The plane is fueled out of plastic drums. An electric pump is used. The dropcord is run from across the nearby road.



It appeared as though the Ministry of Education was getting supplies into remote villages by air. These supplies include food for the school food programs which may mean two or three meals a day for the kids.





The very first picture shows a solution to MJ's problem when we first arrived in the village. Men are often seen standing partly hidden doing their thing. MJ just used a local resident's outhouse. No harm, no foul.



Friday, November 30, 2007

Pre-Kinder & First Grade


This is the Pre-Kinder class of 11. Debra, my co-teacher is sitting at the table helping them paint a bears head brown. We have just finished a unit on Our Body and the words were head, arms and legs. The regular teacher is sitting at her desk and a Mother is here to talk. I often see Mother's here to complain about something. I would like to start a volunteer Mother's morning out to help the teachers after the first of the year. They might realize that the teacher has her hands full and maybe "Johnny" isn't the perfect little boy at school or maybe he is.



First grade students.



The last 4 pictures are of the 19 First graders. There unit was on My Home. We learned such words as bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. We drew all kinds of pictures of each room of their house. We were ready for construction and learned howto build a house. We made doors, windows and many designs of flowers and sun on the outside of our houses. To get the roof put on they had to be able to name the 4 parts of the house we had studied. They got to pick out the roof color and take the house home. Omer was with one of the first grade boys family and grandma was having him tell Omer the parts of the house he knew. So for this week they know the house rooms but what about next week?







Thursday, November 29, 2007

Rain & Area Outside Our Apartment


Looking into the apartment through the front door. (Only door)




The cobblestone walkway and rain water drain




My barrel runeth over

Click once on the picture to enlarge to full screen



We have written before about rain here in the rainforest area of Ecuador. It is very difficult to capture rain by camera. This afternoon we had a 30 minute down pour that dumped at least 3 inches on us.
We live in an apartment at the back of an enclosed courtyard. The center of the courtyard has a covered patio that is about 30 by 15 wide. Inside is the washer and drier and a general work and storage area. We walk through the covered patio and on back through a covered but open sidewalk to our apartment.
The roof of the patio captures some of the rainwater and channels it into a large blue plastic rain barrel. This water is a supply that is pumped through a system of pipes and is used for washing clothes, flushing stools, etc.
Very often this rain barrel overflows. There is never any problem with stagnant water. Actually, this system provides soft, fresh water for household use in a very efficient way. By the way, we buy all drinking water in five gallon containers which are delivered to our door for $1.25.




For those of you who live in the midwest, please note that these pictures were taken today (Nov. 29) It is NOT beginning to look a lot like Christmas here.



Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Refurbished Playground


In this volunteer business there are times when your efforts are never seen and then there are other times when you can see immediate results. The kids went crazy when they found out there merry-go-round worked. You see the results here.



I counted up to 15 kids on this little thing at various times. It was clear that many had to learn how to play on the merry-go-round.

And then there are students that will "mug it up" when they see the camera. Refurbishing the playground renewed student interest in playing there.
We spent two hours in meetings after school today talking about grading systems and using course content to help set standards in grading. For some at the meeting this was totally new information. This story will probably go on for some time.


Monday, November 26, 2007

Rain & More Rain

There is a short supply of gopher wood and Noah has been working overtime! Although it rains a lot here all the time, it has now caused the locals to notice and comment on the rain. We estimate we are getting 3 to 4 inches a day for several days running now. When the sun does come out, we have a new definition of humidity.
There is an off chance we might actually have a complete week of school without interruptions. Our bet is that if it does happen, it will never last for two weeks in a row.
For those of you following the condition of my Dad, last week was a very good week. Then on Saturday there was a sudden turn around. He has been on oxygen and has been in a more weakened condition.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Funny Language Incidents

Language can be a funy thing, especially when vocabulary is limited and you use a word you THINK is close enough. Pronounciation can also be a funny thing. Three examples follw.

Students were giving a 10th grade girl a bad time during the break. I asked what was going on. One student said ¨that girl has a poopy face¨. I was about to let them know that this wasn´t funny when another student said ¨she has a face like a poopy¨. Oh yes, the letter U in Spanish is pronounced as öo¨. That explained the entire thing. ¨Puppy face¨is a little more acceptable.

I was working with a staff member looking at the broken merry-go-round on Friday. Both of us could lift it off the pivot by really straining. He was out of shape even more than I. Right in the middle of lifting it off, he needed a break for just a second. He reached for the only English he had at this moment and said Omer, I need a vacation! I wanted to say¨ok Freddie why don´t you take a week off and I will hold this thing myself¨.

Finally, our landlady told us she has a sister named Funny. About three weeks later it dawned on us that her name was probably Fanny.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

School Clean Up Day

We have posted a lot of pictures yesterday and today. remember to click on the picture once if you want the picture enlarged. Hit the "back" button to go back to normal blog reading.
So what do all good educators, parents and kids do on a Saturday morning. Head off to school to clean up the campus. We started off with two dump trucks of sand.


If everyone brings some hand equipment, things can go quickly. This picture gives you an idea of a group at work.

The idea is to take the sand (very coarse) and fill in the washed out places in the playground. With the amount of rain we get, a playground can get in bad shape in a short period of time.


We are surrounded by forest right up to our fence. We need to trim the mountainside outside our fence. The PE teacher is very effective with his equipment.



A view from the balcony of the school.

The campus is reached by a winding road edged into the hillside. Both sides of the road need to be clipped.

Sometimes the going gets very steep. Not the place for rider mowers!!!

Some of the playground equipment needed repair. This old merry-go-round was not working all year. I insisted we take it to a welding shop and get it repaired. Hauling it was another issue.

Getting the merry-go-round back on the pivot was another issue as well. Several of us managed to grease the pivot and get things back together.

With the ever present rain, things are always rusting. This swing pivot had not worked for some time. We used a hammer to un-freeze it and then gave it a good greasing.

Everyone has an opinion about how to line things up. No chance that one person could give directions and the rest follow them!

After the project was finished, we walked down to the main road to catch a bus back to town (A .20 fee) While waiting for the bus "Willie Nelson" came by. I am guessing it was an "American hippie" and his dog who were out riding the highways and byways of Ecuador. What a unique transportation he used.