Una Semana Chevere en Intag

I returned a few days ago from the Intag Cloud Forest in Northwestern Ecuador and I am now settling in with my host family in Quito and getting back into class mode. The week in Intag was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, my laptop and Picasa conspired against me to erase all of the 100+ photos I had taken while I was there, including tons of upclose shots of beautiful tropical birds and photos of my rural homestay family. I wish I could have shared those pictures with you all to show you how incredible beautiful Intag was!

There are entirely too many stories from my week in Intag to explain here, so instead I made up a list of things I did while I was there that I had never done before:
1. Drank fresh cow milk
2. Shared a hammock with a chicken
3. Cut worms out of potatoes and then proceeded to use them
4. Fetched the cows from pasture (there´s a great story behind this one)
5. Played soccer with true ¨futbol¨players
6. Ate something that still had a tail when it was on my plate
7. Hitchiked (a lot!)
8. Bathed in a waterfall
9. Took care of a sick, crying baby
10. Protected healthy cows from a rabies cow
11. Caught and held tropical birds

I know there´s tons more but I can´t think of them right now. For the first four days in Intag, I stayed with half of the group on a forest reserve and studied botany and ornithology. We woke up at 6am every morning to set up mist nets to catch birds so we could measure and record them. We learned botany hands-on by hiking through the cloud forest and identifying every plant we saw. We got to meet the women of a cooperative in Intag who weave bags and hats out of fibers from the native Cabuya plant. We also met a lot of local activists who have been integral in the Intag fight against the mining companies and learned the whole history of their struggle. On the last day in Intag we worked on a ¨minga,¨which is a community service activity that everyone in Ecuador is required to participate in at least once a year. We planted trees on a forest reserve and helped begin building a bridge across a river.

The second half of the week in Intag I spent with a rural homestay family in the town of Santa Rosa, about an hour´s hike from the reserve. The family consisted of a single mother, two daughters about my age, one younger daughter, and one of the older daughters´ 6 month old baby. I spent most of my time in the kitchen helping them cook, all day long. There was a week-long minga going on in Santa Rosa, and since my host family didn´t have a man to participate in it, the women in my house cooked lunch and dinner for all of the men working, which was probably about 15. Sometimes before dinner I played soccer with the men working on the minga. It really is true how better Latin Americans are at that sport than Americans!

I also helped out with taking the cows to and from pasture, herding and tying up the pigs, and taking care of children at a daycare in the town of Pucara. I also danced - a lot. One of my host sisters asked me the first night I was there if I liked to dance, and I said yes. So we danced, every day, in a little room with a radio. Sometimes they would turn on the radio, sit down, and tell me to dance for them. I thought it was one of the most awkward things ever at first, but by the end of my stay it was really fun.

I was very struck during my rural homestay at how little these people had and yet how willing they were to give or share anything they could. I was also really taken aback by the extent to which I experienced the machismo society I had been warned about. It isn´t chauvenistic, per say, because it´s accepted as normal. The women stay at home, cooking and cleaning and caring for the children, while the men go out to do manual labor. When the men come back for lunch or dinner, any women not directly involved in serving them food leave the room, and wait. An hour later once the men finish eating and leave, the women come back and then eat with each other. No one seems to be offended by this custom; it´s just the way it works here. What´s even stranger is how incredibly quickly I was desensitized and became used to that little ritual.

One day during my rural homestay, I saw five tanks filled with soldiers holding machine guns drive by the house, up the mountain towards the town of Apuela. When I asked what they were doing there, one of my host sisters told me they worked for the mining company. They were hired as private militants to secure a mine site in Junin and to quell community resistance. She talked about it like it was nothing special-a commonplace sight to witness in Intag.

For the entire second half of the week in Intag, it rained. My host family told me that the past year had brought more rain than they had ever seen. The potato, rice, and coffee crops in the area were all but completely destroyed. It also had a huge impact on all the roads connecting these tiny rural towns to the larger cities in the Sierra. The roads had gotten so bad by the day we left Intag that our bus never showed up to take us back. We ended up hitching a ride - all 25 of us, with luggage - in the back of someone´s wooden truck. It was definitely quite a bonding experience for all of us!

I met my Quiteño host family early Sunday morning and they are wonderful. There´s a single mom and two daughters about my age, and they live right downtown in Quito. For my birthday on Monday, even though I had just met them, they gave me flowers and a cake - it was adorable! This weekend is Carnaval, a huge Latin American holiday, and they are taking me down to the city of Riobamba.

I´ve been taking Spanish and Ecuadorian history classes all week, and tomorrow we have an excursion to several Ecuadorian flower plantations - some traditional and some modern. Classes are long (two hours or more each) but good. I think my Spanish is improving exponentially! I also just found out the other day that I am a finalist for the Truman Scholarship and will be flying back to the States around March 6th for my interview. Let me know if you´ll be in the DC area around that time!