Building a solar drier with the members of my coffee association.
Planting coffee for seedlings with a local family.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Work Pictures
Building a solar drier with the members of my coffee association.Planting coffee for seedlings with a local family.
Monday, July 14, 2008
A Few More
Baby tilapia.
Crawfish for dinner.
Dispulping coffee. Is that a word in English?
Cooking vegetable soup with the kids in the elementary school.
Coffee drying in Fundochamba.
Coffee drying in Fundochamba.
The coffee team.
Gerry and Ursula, my nearest neighbors.
Coffee for processing and export.
Dispulping, washing and fermenting.Recent and Not So Recent Photos
Papayas are everywhere!
Our weekly household plantain and banana supply.
La Victoria Elementary School.
Learning how to identify defects that affect flavor in coffee beans.
Vilcabamba hike.
Cacao
A Zaruma hillside with afternoon fog drifting in.
Light roast, dark roast.
Café Lajense. Our coffee.
The processing plant.
Roasting coffee.
Team Supreme saving the planet from erosion.
Cacao fermenting.
La Victoria from a distance.
One of many roadside shrines to the Virgin.
Talking about trafficking.
The main road in Dos Quebradas, a nearby town.
Riding in Trucks with Kids
These days, a good ride in the back of a camioneta never fails to lift my spirits. Not since I was little, when my Dad let us ride buckled into the big seat he installed in the bed of his blue pick-up truck, have I gotten such a thrill out of so basic a mode of transportation. As a child, such simple things always excited me, but I believe that my renewed enthusiasm as an adult is mainly on account of it being a refreshing break from the miserable bus transit system we have in Las Lajas. Every day, from 5 AM to 7 PM, the ancient fleet of county buses lumbers slowly along the pothole-ridden road that runs between La Victoria and Arenillas, our nearest town. They struggle up hills like Thomas the Tank Engine, choking on their own fumes, and creep slowly around every bend in the road as if they are afraid of what lies ahead. No more than a half hour´s drive in a decent car, the trip by bus takes double the time--that is, if you don´t break down en route. The buses´ interiors aren´t exactly the paragon of stylish travel either. The filth from years of carrying passengers and their various cargo items (chickens and pigs tied up in sacks, dogs, buckets of fresh milk, coffee, live crabs, and dripping pots of food) is enough to put the most phlegmatic of travelers on the edge of their seat, counting down the kilometers to their destination. I have found that the most unfortunate circumstance that one can find oneself in on a trip to town is to be sitting next to a particularly smelly piece of cargo (or its particularly smelly owner) on a hot day, in a row with a dust-covered window that is jammed shut from grime and age. Unfortunately, this is not at all an unusual situation. I am accustomed to these bus rides now, but I live for the fortuitous passing of a camioneta going my direction, regardless of its passengers and their goods.
On a recent afternoon Elizabeth, a fellow volunteer, and I went out to a small nearby community for our first presentation in a series on trafficking of persons we are going to be working on with groups in the area. This year´s unusually bad rainy season had washed out the road to the town, so we had to make our way in on foot. Under the scorching afternoon sun, we trekked our way up to the tiny cluster of houses in the hills. When we finished, we made our way back down again, slipping and sliding in the red mud all the way to the main road. Exhausted and sweaty, we took a seat on the steps of a roadside shrine for our local Virgin and began our wait for the bus. After the first twenty minutes, the only vehicles that had passed were a car bursting with passengers, a motorcycle with a family of four piled onto it, and a truck full of cows whose odor reminded me of the raw milk I was served that morning at breakfast. Then there was a long period of silence. Sitting on the edge of that road, in the middle of nowhere, we strained our ears for the rumble of a bus beyond the tropical afternoon hum of birds and insects. There was nothing. I was really thirsty and actually looking forward to the icy shower that awaited me at home. When would the next bus come? In five minutes? An hour? Four hours? At 9 PM? Then, suddenly, there was a sound. We stopped our conversation and listened harder. It wasn´t the slow approach of a bus, or the Pilsner truck, audible for a good few minutes before coming into sight. We heard it and then it was there; barreling around the curve came a camioneta! We grabbed our bags and stepped to the curb. As our potential ride came closer, Elizabeth let out a groan. I looked closely and saw that the truck´s driver and copilot were two boys from her youth group, ages 12 and 14 respectively. They recognized us and began to slow down. It was one of those moments that I experience more or less on a daily basis in Ecuador, where I am faced with a decision between discomfort, inconvenience, or offending someone, and bending my personal rules a bit to fit the way of life here. In the words of my friend and former Peace Corps volunteer, Grace, sometimes it is easier to just "go native". And I must agree with her that at times it can be wickedly satisfying. If we didn´t get in this truck, how long would it be until the next one came? He seemed like a decent driver, even if he did have to sit on the edge of the seat to reach the pedals. Furthermore, in his Six Pillars of Badness our Country Director, Cisco, says ABSOLUTELY NO motorcycles, and ABSOLUTELY NO 12 year-old boys. But he didn´t say he´d kick us out for camioneta rides with 12 year-olds as chauffeurs. So, we hopped in and as the youngster let the clutch pop, lurching us back onto the road, my mood brightened and all of my worries melted away.
Certainly, the convenience and superior traveling conditions of a camioneta ride are the main factors behind my being partial to it as a mode of transportation. But there is something else—the wild feeling of freedom I get as we race down the road; the sensation that I am flying, as the wind pounds in my ears and brings tears to my eyes; the close-up view of world as it rushes by, making me feel like an integral part of it, rather than a passive observer on the other side of a dirty window.
The world that was rushing past us that day was so unusually beautiful that I am still feeling the high from it. The dark afternoon rain clouds, characteristic of this time of year, had begun to creep into the valley from the south. The muted light that they created brought out every shade of green in the foliage, and made the terracotta clay exposed by erosion glow like the smoldering coals in the distance. A few tiny breaks in the clouds where the sun shone through illuminated patches of the sky and earth like scenes out of a Turner landscape painting. I looked out the back of the truck as we dipped into and climbed out of small valleys. The road and trees in the foreground shrunk behind us, making it seem as if the distant hills of Peru were growing larger and larger, up out of the earth. I closed my eyes, breathed a deep breath, felt the perfect temperature of the air on my face and smiled. Unable to contain my delight, my smile stretched into a silly grin that stuck to my face until we pulled into the center of La Victoria. As I hopped off the tailgate, with wild hair and tears from the wind dripping down my cheeks, I felt happier than I had all week.
On a recent afternoon Elizabeth, a fellow volunteer, and I went out to a small nearby community for our first presentation in a series on trafficking of persons we are going to be working on with groups in the area. This year´s unusually bad rainy season had washed out the road to the town, so we had to make our way in on foot. Under the scorching afternoon sun, we trekked our way up to the tiny cluster of houses in the hills. When we finished, we made our way back down again, slipping and sliding in the red mud all the way to the main road. Exhausted and sweaty, we took a seat on the steps of a roadside shrine for our local Virgin and began our wait for the bus. After the first twenty minutes, the only vehicles that had passed were a car bursting with passengers, a motorcycle with a family of four piled onto it, and a truck full of cows whose odor reminded me of the raw milk I was served that morning at breakfast. Then there was a long period of silence. Sitting on the edge of that road, in the middle of nowhere, we strained our ears for the rumble of a bus beyond the tropical afternoon hum of birds and insects. There was nothing. I was really thirsty and actually looking forward to the icy shower that awaited me at home. When would the next bus come? In five minutes? An hour? Four hours? At 9 PM? Then, suddenly, there was a sound. We stopped our conversation and listened harder. It wasn´t the slow approach of a bus, or the Pilsner truck, audible for a good few minutes before coming into sight. We heard it and then it was there; barreling around the curve came a camioneta! We grabbed our bags and stepped to the curb. As our potential ride came closer, Elizabeth let out a groan. I looked closely and saw that the truck´s driver and copilot were two boys from her youth group, ages 12 and 14 respectively. They recognized us and began to slow down. It was one of those moments that I experience more or less on a daily basis in Ecuador, where I am faced with a decision between discomfort, inconvenience, or offending someone, and bending my personal rules a bit to fit the way of life here. In the words of my friend and former Peace Corps volunteer, Grace, sometimes it is easier to just "go native". And I must agree with her that at times it can be wickedly satisfying. If we didn´t get in this truck, how long would it be until the next one came? He seemed like a decent driver, even if he did have to sit on the edge of the seat to reach the pedals. Furthermore, in his Six Pillars of Badness our Country Director, Cisco, says ABSOLUTELY NO motorcycles, and ABSOLUTELY NO 12 year-old boys. But he didn´t say he´d kick us out for camioneta rides with 12 year-olds as chauffeurs. So, we hopped in and as the youngster let the clutch pop, lurching us back onto the road, my mood brightened and all of my worries melted away.
Certainly, the convenience and superior traveling conditions of a camioneta ride are the main factors behind my being partial to it as a mode of transportation. But there is something else—the wild feeling of freedom I get as we race down the road; the sensation that I am flying, as the wind pounds in my ears and brings tears to my eyes; the close-up view of world as it rushes by, making me feel like an integral part of it, rather than a passive observer on the other side of a dirty window.
The world that was rushing past us that day was so unusually beautiful that I am still feeling the high from it. The dark afternoon rain clouds, characteristic of this time of year, had begun to creep into the valley from the south. The muted light that they created brought out every shade of green in the foliage, and made the terracotta clay exposed by erosion glow like the smoldering coals in the distance. A few tiny breaks in the clouds where the sun shone through illuminated patches of the sky and earth like scenes out of a Turner landscape painting. I looked out the back of the truck as we dipped into and climbed out of small valleys. The road and trees in the foreground shrunk behind us, making it seem as if the distant hills of Peru were growing larger and larger, up out of the earth. I closed my eyes, breathed a deep breath, felt the perfect temperature of the air on my face and smiled. Unable to contain my delight, my smile stretched into a silly grin that stuck to my face until we pulled into the center of La Victoria. As I hopped off the tailgate, with wild hair and tears from the wind dripping down my cheeks, I felt happier than I had all week.
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