Next time you’re
sick with fever try this home remedy, one that is apparently common among
Ecuadorian families here in the sierra:
In a small pot, boil
Coca-Cola with a couple pieces of cinnamon.
Add a shot of rum.
Let the liquid boil
for a few minutes.
Pour into a mug with
a bit of honey.
Add the juice of half
a lemon.
This concoction
saved my life last night (maybe that’s too dramatic, but whatever). I’d been
sick the whole day, and in the evening my counterpart Rafael came by with this
strange assortment of ingredients which he claimed would make me better. By
now, I’ve learned to just laugh and go along with this kind of thing. Still, I
was a little concerned when he poured some rum into the pot. I did not feel
like having a drink at that moment. He called it “Vitamin T,” the T standing
for trago – a shot of hard alcohol.
When the drink was
ready, Rafael poured me a mug and instructed me to drink it all while it was
hot. ¨It doesn’t work otherwise,¨ he said.
It tasted like
Christmas. It was amazing. Sweet, warm, and syrupy, but with a kick. We sat
there in my kitchen and joked around while I sipped on my drink, and I felt
loads better. When I had finished, Rafa told me to get in bed with a towel and
get ready to sweat it out. This guy is like an undercover shaman or something, because this next morning I now feel almost
100% better.
This drink needs a
name. What should it be called?
During my first
three months at site, I lived with Rafael because a host family wasn’t
available. There was another time when I felt like I was on death’s doorstep –
that time it was what we PCVs call vomirhea, aka “the golden rainbow.” He
whipped up a tea of oregano with a bit of salt, sugar, and lime. It worked
well.
I don’t like
reading long blog posts myself, but I feel like an update is in order since
I’ve not written in a long time. And we’ll just tie it into the home-remedy bit
above.
I was disappointed
that I’d caught a fever yesterday because I was meant to go to a Waldorf school
to observe for a day in the classroom. It turns out that the only Waldorf
school in Ecuador is only twenty minutes from my site. I feel like it’s a “the
Lord works in mysterious ways” kind of situation. Having grown up going to The
Waldorf School of Garden City in New York, I’m really interested to see how
they do things here in Ecuador. But my primary purpose in linking up with the
teachers at the school here is to establish a collaborative relationship
between them and the teachers at the school where I now teach – called Santa
María de Rosario.
It’d take a long
time to explain how lacking the conventional education system is here, so we’ll
just leave it at my observation that it’s lacking. At Rosario we serve about
fifty children from the campo (the
countryside; rural area). What I really like about the school is that the
teachers truly want to provide the best education possible for their students.
This is definitely not the norm, and seeing this as a PC Volunteer, it gives
you a lot of hope that positive change can happen. All the teachers need is some
capacity-building, which I hope the Waldorf teachers can help us with.
I’ve been teaching
music and natural sciences at Rosario, but I think my main purpose at the
school is to connect our teachers with those at the Waldorf school so that they
can collaborate. The name of their school is Nina Pacha, which in Kichwa means
“The light for the times.” Not only do they use holistic education methods from
anthroposophy, but the education they provide is place-based. With the emphasis
on place, they teach about and maintain sierran cultural traditions, something
that is important to our teachers at Rosario, too.
I think this
project has a lot of potential for success. And as someone interested in being
a Waldorf teacher it’s been especially exciting.
With only seven
months left of service, I finally find myself very busy. Rafael and I are
starting our composting toilets project in a community that doesn’t have
running water. We received a grant from USAID to fund it all. We’re also
continuing our program at our ecological park called “Guardianes del Agua”
(Guardians of Water). School groups from across the valley and the south of
Quito come to learn about water conservation and reforestation.
That’s all I got at the moment.
