A Week In

When I visited Amaguaña for a week back in March I saw an encouraging sign that confirmed this place as the perfect post for my two years of service: a rainbow. I hadn´t seen one since I left Glen Brook last Fall, so the sight of this one made me feel a little more at home. Last Wednesday, when I arrived in Amaguaña for good - after swearing in as a volunteer - another one of nature´s phenomena greeted me as I hopped off the bus with my duffel bag and guitar: a giant crack of lightning (followed, of course, by torrential rain). I´m not sure what biblical significance the lightning may have regarding my service here, but it seems to compliment the softness of the rainbow, for sure.

Amaguaña sits about an hour south of Quito in Los Chillos Valley, and its slightly high elevation gives you some great views of the rest of the valley on clear days. The volcano Pasachoa sits right outside our town and rises 13,766 ft. above see level. My house is somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 ft. and the volcano really towers over our town.

I live with my counterpart, Rafael. Counterparts are basically community contacts for PCVs who´ve requested the PCV´s service from PC/Ecuador. Rafael´s a young ecologist who runs an environmental education foundation in Amaguaña called JASDUC. He´s already taught me alot about native plants, but more importantly he´s taught me the ecuadorian way to make soup (possible topic of a future blog post). He´s been great about showing me around town and such. So we´re getting along fine. Rafael´s house is simple, which I like. But I´ve been noticing some things seem to be missing, like a table to eat at, chairs, and a sink in the bathroom. But as they say here in Ecuador, ¨No pasa nada,¨or ¨Fuhgeddaboutit¨ if you´re in Brooklyn. We have no hot water, a leaky roof, and a cement floor that holds alot of moisture, but like I said, no pasa nada.

Each PC site gets a maximum of three volunteers (six years of service, total). I´m replacing another volunteer in Amaguaña who had served for the last two years up until a couple weeks ago. Following her has made things alot easier for me. For example, during my site visit in March, she showed me around town - where to get good deals on avocados, how the buses work, etc. I also appreciate all the things she passed on to me, including a bed, a refrigerator, cookware, books, dvds, a shower head heater, and best of all a French press (with a bag of real coffee!). This has been tremendously helpful in making me feel at home in Amaguaña. I like the sense of continuity that following another volunteer brings, and it will be nice in two years to welcome the third volunteer to serve here (and pass on the invaluable French coffee press).

In terms of work, I´ve made some good progress the past couple days. My counterpart and I have decided to start out by working with two communities that live on the slopes of Pasachoa, about an hour hike from my town. Because the slope are steep and folks only grow corn, there is a fair amount of soil erosion and poor soil quality. We´d like to work on these two issues and hopefully introduce some simple organic fertilizer sprays that can easily be made with home materials. I have a meeting with the presidents of the communities on Friday, so hopefully we can get the ball rolling. In the meantime I´m going to see about starting a smaller project. Rafael´s foundation has an educational park called Cachaco. It´s a beautiful spot next to the San Pedro River with alot of native vegetation and bird activity (pictures to come). We have a tree nursery there where we raise seedlings for various reforestation projects in the valley. So, we´re going to use a portion of this space to experiment with various types of homemade organic fertilizer sprays, which I´m really excited about. The soil there is fairly poor, so it´s a good baseline from which to measure progress.