The Ecuador Diaries: Part 4

The week went by like this, we get up, shower, dressed and out the door, and bum a ride to San Telmo. We finished moving the dirt and have been moving irrigation hoses around the fields which have a wide variety of veggies and fruit including bananas, coffee, squash, beans, aloe, pineapple, limes, tangerines, oranges, green peppers and these little fruits I forget the name of that are good for hangovers. There are also three MASSIVE pigs, a doberman-X called Negro (of all the things you could call your dog, it had to be "black"), and rooster which I have a vendetta against. The farm has very little shade and its been kinda brutal working out here, but we have short hours, so its all good. The fruit all seems to taste better right after picking it off the tree/bush. After work we'd go chill at the ice cream stall where Hannah works. After lunch we gather up and go work at the school for about two hours. We then go the beach with Fernando and David. After dinner we go up to the field on the west side of Las Tunas and watch soccer. On Wednesday the game was disrupted because a snake was too close to one of the goals and they never finished the game. By this point about half a dozen of us are sick, me included, with what we have determined to be because we are getting used the climate On Friday we said goodbye to Felix and at three we got on the truck and gathered everyone from Las Tunas and Puerto Rico to meet at the main hostel, but, on our way after Puerto Rico, Chloe fainted, causing her mom to break down, and the rest of the day seemed much more stressful because of it, already so many of us were sick and Choe showed just how much it was taking out of us to e here. Didn't sleep well that night.

At this point I am beginning to fully comprehend how everyone is getting something different out of this experience. Most people, while being happy to be here, at the same time, they couldn't do this for long, in sharp contrast to my chosen career path of doing this for a living. Last night there was also a group of people our own age who I recognized as either surfer crowd or city kids, they had a fire going and some of us were actually offered drugs and Tequila (ummm... yeah). I am also beginning to understand the impact of globalization, here in the Global South, seeing the young people here readily taking up my own homogenous Western lifestyle and casting aside their own culture and the strength of their community to pave the war for "sex, drugs and rock n'roll" and accompanying corporate control. Being able to find Coke everywhere is another sign and the kids with designer clothing. It makes me feel, so sad. Not just because they're losing their own cultural identity, but also because I really never have had my own unique culture to belong to myself, seeing as I belong to the wave of the Western world. I've known it all my life and nothing else.