Site visit!

Disclaimer: I havent slept in 2 days (one sleepless night due to roosters and clucking chickens and cockroaches falling on my face, and another night spent on an overnight bus back to the Sierra), am on chocolate and fried plantain overload, haven´t spoken english in 5 days...Open with caution :)

Hello! I just back into town from my site in the coastal province of Manabi, where I will be living for the next 2 years! It was a great visit. I met the key people (president, volunteers, a few doctors and teachers) of the 6 communities I will be working with and also a bunch of locals. For the first 3 months I will be living upstairs in the house of Cecilia, one of the presidents. She rocks. A single mother, female president, and a very progressive, out-of-the-box type thinker. She is well respected by all genders and ages, and seems to know everyone and all the inside scoop. I feel really lucky to be living with her and her son (Juan, age 10-a bit timid, I didn’t really get to know him very well). She is my parent´s age, and kept saying that if she did have a daughter, she would be my age (I am the daughter she never had, type thing). She really makes me feel wanted there. The house is quite nice, in better shape the majority around the area. We are required to live with host families for the first 3 months in our site, and then are free to find our own place. The first floor of Cecilia´s place is empty and already has a few pieces of furniture. It’s safe and in a good location. I think I will slowly fix it up and move in when my 3 months are up.
The physical beauty of my county of Santa Ana is astounding. It’s really gorgeous. We are located on the river. The land is really fertile, and I have orange, avocado, plantain, and lime trees in my backyard, as well as coffee bushes and other unknown plants. It is super tropical and the weather is awesome. Skirts during the day with an occasional sweatshirt at night.
The people are much more outgoing than here in the Sierra. Although I think that randomly forming a youth group or women´s group may be a difficult or awkward task, the culture here may be much more accepting of this type of thing than I anticipated.
The country and province already have a lot of health systems in place. For example, the Ley de Maternidad Gratuita states that all mothers get free health care throughout their pregnancy, and that their children receive free health care including vaccines until age 5. This is an awesome law, but if the health clinics are not stocked with appropriate resources or do not employ a doctor for more than 3 days a week, the mothers will not have access to the rights they are entitled to by the government. I will be working on these sorts of things.
If you all have questions, please ask!!!! I don’t want to bore you with a long laundry list of what I did each day on my site visit, so I will just tell some stories. But if you are curious about something specific, I would love to tell you about it!
Motorcycle accidents are a huge cause of death in Ecuador. The first night I was there I had to attend the funeral of an 18 year old boy, and family member of 95% of the town. It was an interesting way to be introduced to the town, at such a personal event. It was culturally very interesting, as the women and children sat inside the house reciting psalms and prayers and the men sat outside the house staring into space, sitting in silence. After the service everyone was staring at me. They obviously had no idea who I was. Awkward! Then a couple people wanted to know who I was…I gave a brief explanation, which was followed by a question of my age. I told them I would be 23 in March. They became quite animated and told Cecilia (my host mom) that they should give me 3 chickens for my birthday! I have no idea why. It was a topic of conversation for the rest of the trip.
Another common conversation topic and question was my love life. Introductions usually went something like this:
Cecilia or one of the other people I was with (health volunteer, neighbor, etc) would often introduce me, and I would follow with a brief description of my work and reasons for being here.
Ecuadorian: Welcome, Are you single?
Me: No, I have a boyfriend in the States.
Ecuadorian: Oh, well do you have an Ecuadorian boyfriend?
Me: No, my boyfriend lives in the States.
Ecuadorian male (single, married, with children, 13 yrs old, 60 years old, etc): Oh, well I am single, you should take me back to the States. You need an Ecuadorian boyfriend.
or Ecuadorian female (mother, daughter, my host mom, neighbor, etc): Oh, well my brother/friend/son, etc. is single. You need an Ecuadorian boyfriend. You need many Ecuadorian boyfriends.
Me: No, I have a boyfriend and I am faithful (it sounds less awkward in Spanish, promise : )).
Ecuadorian: Well, the saying goes that a pair apart makes 4 happy people. We will find you many Ecuadorian boyfriends. And anyways, no one is faithful. Your boyfriend will not be faithful. He will have many women.
I would try to laugh it off, but really, this happened every single time I met ANYONE above the age of 12.
When Cecilia and I were walking to the neighboring town (all my 6 communities are located on the same main road. So to walk from one town to the other I continue walking straight. There are 40-70 families in each town. Usually multiple families live together in 1 house), I heard a voice. I follow her up to the window of this small wooden house, and see a teeny tiny shriveled old women. Absolutely precious. She grabs my hand, touches my face, says welcome, and asks Cecilia why I am here. Then another women, even smaller than the first, peeks her head out the window. I didn’t even notice she had been sitting there…These women must have been at least 90 years old. Cecilia responds to the question with: This is Sarah, she is here to live and work with us for 2 years. She is from the United States. The two older women look a bit confused. Cecilia follows her response with: She has come from a different country. Oh! They exclaim, Welcome! It was crazy that they didnt know what the United States was. Then the 2nd woman begins to recite a poem, which I later found out was used years ago to court young women. This was quite the experience. I felt so loved, and so strange at the same time. I cannot wait to go back and visit with these women. You could tell they were so full of love and life and just wanted people to hang out with.
When I would walk down the street people would shout whatever English they knew…this meant using the ¨greetings¨: thank you, sweater, good evening (at 10am), what is your name (I responded with ¨what is your name¨-the man was speechless and left me alone haha).

(Oh! I almost forgot! For my CH beauties, Rach, and Adam: I HEARD TAKE ON ME AGAIN! This time it was in a bar in Santo Domingo, the site of a volunteer we stayed with on our way to Manabi. Amarylis´(the volunteer) Ecuadorian boyfriend owns a bar downtown, called Dark Zone..haha...So 3 of us volunteers are hanging out with Amarylis, her boyfriend, a few Ecuadorian friends in this weird bar with black lights in the middle of the city....all of a sudden, Take On Me starts playing! Kris loves the song too, so we get up and start dancing...you know, the crazy, Take On Me, style dancing. Totally fitting in with the Ecuadorian culture, right? haha....well....it was enough for the bar owner to start the strobe light and disco ball for us..hahaha, it was so funny. And made me think of yall. Ill be gone, in a day or 2222222222222222222222222! )

The week was an adventure. I think it was quite productive in that I got a good idea of some themes I will be working with, and the culture of my town. Trying to acclimate and culturally assimilate to another family, another 6 towns, and gain legitimacy will be a challenge, but this is why I am here, to work. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that, haha. This is a voluntary job. I have wanted to do Peace Corps for many years, and I am finally here! So awesome. But I miss yall. And with moving locations again, I will have even more opportunities to share stories and pictures of friends and family from home…at times this is awesome and exciting, but at times it makes it even harder. A bunch of stuff is happening at ¨home¨(I don´t even know what or where to call home now), and its hard to be away. Ryan (brother) turned 7 on Aug. 2, and he just lost his first tooth! Such a big deal! A bunch of friends are moving and getting adult jobs. Stuff like this makes me sad to be gone. But I am blessed because my site is awesome, and I think I am going to make some good friends and have support from at least some key people in the community. One of my closest friends here, Kris, lives about 1.5 hours from me, which is awesome. It´s comforting to know that I will have another volunteer dealing with similar things in a similar environment.

I havent heard from some of you in a while! I know you are busy, but when you get the chance let me know what you are up to and how your lives are going!
All mine,
Sarah, or that weird looking, acting, and speaking gringa (white girl)