Fiesta in Rumiloma!

This past Saturday bore witness to the second annual Manna Community Celebration in Rumiloma!  Jack spearheaded the planning and execution of a festival on the Plaza Rumiloma, where the central church of Rumiloma is located just a few blocks down from our Centro.  For the week prior, we talked up the celebration to everyone we met who it seemed likely might come: in our library, our classes, even on our beloved Capelo bus route between Sangolquí and Rumiloma.  Following Ecuadorian cues of advertising, Jack and I both on multiple occasions stood up and made announcements and handed out fliers for the festival.  Nerve racking at first, it ended up being a huge rush. 

And must have been successful!  Between 150 and 200 people turned up for the celebration that Saturday, children and adults alike.  With Jack emceeing on the DJ’s microphone, we led activities all afternoon, from a water balloon toss to tug of war to an organized game of fútbol.  Folks also bought raffle tickets throughout the afternoon, the prizes for which were a brand new chess set just donated over Christmas, coloring books and new crayons, Manna t-shirts, and Manna water bottles. 

Brock leads a game of Tug-of-War, or Juego de Cabo.

Hannah and Damian, who requested his face be painted like KISS.

Luke is the goose in Duck Duck Goose!

Becky and Ashley lead a Tae Bo class with kids on the lawn.

Aiming to catch the water balloon before it breaks on the concrete!

In addition to the activities we’d planned, several of our partner organizations actively participated in the afternoon’s events.  Christian and Laura from our agriculture partner, Fundación Añamisi, ran a very successful booth giving out information and selling items from their recently opened small business selling quinoa products.  The Red Cross of Sangolquí sent more than a dozen volunteers to man an information booth and carry out first aid demonstrations in their ambulance, as well as to run face painting.  (As it turned out, the ambulance was put to practical use as well when a girl fell and got a nose bleed and Ashley rolled her ankle when she skipped into a divot.)  Juan Carlos, the sixth grade teacher with whom we work in the nutrition program at Fundación Aliñambi, even brought and managed a bounce house shaped like a whale.  

Face painting with the Cruz Roja.

Jack with two of his fellow face paintees.

A whale of a moon bounce

The afternoon was overall a huge success.  Not only did we have regular library attendees present but also a great many new faces interested in learning about Manna and participating as a community in this celebration.  ¡Viva Rumiloma!

One Step Closer to Airing on the Food Network

It's official - the 3rd floor kitchen has finally been installed! After months of fundraising, budgeting, purchasing, and installing, the far side of the third floor finally looks like a kitchen (instead of a haphazard storage space - see below). Big shout outs to Sonia, who took the reins on this project from the first budget draft, and to Krysta who spent the better part of last week cleaning out the space and getting everything put in its place. Our task now is to spend the next month promoting and planning classes to be ready to begin in early April.

A gigantic thank you to all of our unbelievable donors:

• The Peterson Family
• The Booe Family
• Dana Conway
  
• The Zhou Family

Literally none of this picturesque spread below would be possible without you. We'll think of you every time we flip an egg or sauté fresh vegetables!

the sink/painted window/slight storage area before...


... and after! hey look, there are mountains back there!

beautiful spankin' new cookware

expertly matched cutlery (I bet you can guess who picked those out)

a spread of utensils, stove, knives, pots and pans, and so much more

Culinary-ly yours,
Jackie

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Happy new year from everyone here at MPI Ecuador!

Our first morning in the house and subsequent afternoon in the library was a conglomeration of familiar faces, fresh ideas, and new technology. We started our day with a 3-hour long Monday morning meeting (formally referred to as the MMM), enjoying each other's company after almost a month apart while discussing topics from class schedules (which start up on the 18th) our next retreat, and most importantly, our celebracion event to ring in the new year this coming Saturday! MPIE, in collaboration with local organizations, Coopertiva Esperanza y Progresso del Valle, Añamisi (an environmental education org.), and the Ministry of Health of Conocoto, will be hosting a celebration in the cancha across from our library. The afternoon will be filled with live music, carnival games (including face paint and bingo), mini soccer tournaments, food from local restaurants, and a wealth of information about sustainable agriculture, nutrition and health.

In order to spread the word more efficiently, fellow PD Mike Gabrys went on a scavenger hunt to find us a portable perefoneo (translation: loud speaker). After traveling to many stores in Quito and the valley, we finally got our hands on it. To no one's surprise, Bibi was the most excited person to use our new toy (Erik being a close second).. as soon as she arrived at the library she ran to the roof to test it out, resulting in a booming "LA BIBLIOTECA ESTA ABIERTOOOO" shaking the bookshelves and amusing the kids in the reading ring.

Needless to say, it's very good to be back.

Chet reads leisurely in his new UT snuggie (thanks, Santa!) before the MMM


Bibi having a little too much fun on the roof

We came home to a bloomed tomate de arbol in our garden...

...and more living things in the compost bin! hello potatoes!

Cheers,
Jackie

Minga de Limpieza Comunitaria

This past Saturday marked our first Minga of the year.  (Minga |meen-gah|noun: an Ecuadorian word for people coming together to do a community service project)  

Nine PDs awoke at 6:45 a.m. to the smell of brewing coffee and a scramble to collect brooms, gloves, and as many trash bags as we could find.  Though we sleepily commuted into Rumiloma, we perked right up as we stepped off of the bus to find a dozen kids and parents already gathered in front of the library, ready to clean up their community.  As we split into groups to tackle the various neighborhood streets and sidewalks, we found many residents cleaning streets and sidewalks by their homes as well, asking us to borrow supplies.

Our neighbors, brushing up garbage from the drain pipes 

We spent the better part of 3 hours cleaning up around Rumiloma; my main job was to run around making sure everyone had enough trash bags, haul full bags back to the library, label them with kids' names and then weigh them to keep track of which kid collected the most, by volume.  By 11a.m. we had run out of bags (something I never thought would happen given the amount we stole from the house and wiped out of the library stash) and rounded up all of the kids in the library to tally the weight results, which are the following:

Total Combined Kids' Weight: 376.5 lbs 

Total Combined Profe's Weight: 70 lbs (plus Sarah's 2 tires)

------------------------------

Total Weight: 446.5 lbs 

Team Iori proudly showing off their loot 

A few notes about the weights: the profes had significantly less weight because we mostly helped the kids (we're not lazy, don't worry) and there was an estimate of 60-70 lbs not weighed that were left on street corners, where other residents were instructed to put their trash for pick up.  Though there were only 4 kids who got our grande sopresa, we dolled out lollipops to the other kids who answered our environmental quiz questions correctly and provided other refreshments for the families.  

Mike and Dana haul kids (and trash) from the plaza to the library

Lucia, Shawn, Erik and Bibi weighing the trash

The whole group in front of 450lbs. of collected trash!

Everyone helps throw trash bags into the truck

Some people question the sustainability of such an event, wondering if the streets will simply become riddled with garbage again a week later.  While that reality is more likely than not, clean-ups are a powerful tool for a number of reasons: they bring people together, engage them in a service dedicated to the area where they live, and quite frankly, after participating in something like picking up trash for house, you tend to think twice about dropping a candy wrapper onto the street.  

The event also opens the door for bigger projects.  There are two major trash issues in Rumiloma: burning household trash, mostly out of habit since there are reliable waste haulers now, and water contamination as a result of excessive litter and agricultural/livestock practices.  It is a priority of our environmental program here in Ecuador to tackle both issues in collaboration with USAID, FONAG (El Fondo de protección del agua), and most importantly, local leaders and organizations.   But I'm getting ahead of myself.. you'll have to wait to hear more about that in future posts!

Litter-less and feeling free (not really because quarterly reports are due next week!), 

Jackie

Advertising Antics

When you're starting up a handful of new programs, excessive advertising comes with the territory.  Planning for classes, charlas, mingas, and health clinics takes a ton of time and we certainly want to make sure we have successful event turn outs.  In order to make this happen, we are on our way to mastering various types of advertising strategies.  Some are pretty straightforward: making posters, handing out flyers to community members and library kids, and attending as many community-based meetings as possible (churches, town councils, futbol leagues etc.).  

There are also some more non-traditional methods.  One of them involves hopping on buses and having one person give a presentation while the other puts up flyers at the front of the bus; so far Erik and Mike have mastered the art of bus advertising while the rest of us stick to less intimidating methods.  However, starting next week I will be participating in three days of advertising via riding around on a Camioneta shouting into a megaphone about the details of our very first Minga, set for the third of October.  

Erik and I have collaborated to co-lead a community clean up in Rumiloma.  It's a perfect combination as he is in charge of organizing Mingas (an Ecuadorian word for people coming together to do community service projects) and I am running the environmental programs.  Litter is a huge problem in our community as people are accustomed to simply throwing trash, from water bottles to candy wrappers, all over the streets.  Many community members approached us both in the library and at one of the town meetings last week about this issue and wanting public trash cans.  We've also created a friendly competition between library kids to give them incentives to come to the clean up.  Hopefully we'll be able to use this time to talk with interested people about improving waste management and mitigation for our community. 

I'll keep you updated about how the telefoneo incident goes (and of course about the clean up itself);  I think I'll be spending the next week taking notes on the Camionetas drive down our streets yelling things like "el gas el gas el gas" and "escobas escobas... escobas."  

- Jackie 

Fundraisers, Infomercials and Futbol

It might sound like these three topics don't mesh well together, but that, in chronological order, is exactly how we spent our weekend.  Mid-afternoon on Saturday we headed to a fundraiser for the church of Rumiloma.  The building had been knocked down sometime last year and the community has been slowly renovating it, but unable to get very far due to lack of funds.  As we walked into the courtyard and found a half dozen tents, a full band on a covered stage, and some of our favorite library kids running up to greet us.  We wandered through the crowd, some of us ordering Cuy while others watched a clown sporting over-sized plastic American flag shoes sing to a woman for her 100th birthday  (and shamelessly point out the ten gringos lingering in the background). 

Being greeted by some kids in the community

Watching the impressive (and well dressed!) band

Mike and Chet enjoy their cuy (a.k.a. guinea pig, an Ecuadorian delicacy) 

After stuffing ourselves with cuy and chochos we caught a bus into Quito to scalp some futbol tickets.  Although we're accustomed to people hopping on buses and sell everything from Bon Ice to historical dvds (guilty of buying both), the man that hopped on our bus had a talent that most lack.  I'm not sure if it was his thought-provoking riddles or straight up charm, but he somehow convinced at least half of the people on our bus, including Krysta, to buy a family indestructible tiny Snoopy keychains.  How do we know they were destructible, you might ask?  The salesman threw it on the bus floor (lick any of those lately to avoid going to Jersey, Seth?) and stomped all over it to demonstrate.  

A clan of snoopies... enough said.

The rest of us were happy to spend our allowance on futbol tickets, avoiding the ploys of a Billy Mays in the making.  La Liga Deportiva, the club team we've become partial to, played against el Deportivo de Quito.  Though our team lost 3-0, we thoroughly enjoyed waving around Liga flags and jumping around with the rest of the fans and chanting "esta noche tenemos que ganar!" (at least that's the only part of the cheer I remember). 

Liga fans loyally chanting for their team 

The girls attempt to chime in with the fight songs

Until next time, 

Jackie 

A Final Farewell

13 months later, and it's time. Time to pass on the cameras, give up administrator status in the google group, and hand over the Daily Life Blog to my two replacements, Sarah Scott and Jackie Weidman.

Thank you all for tuning in this past year; it has been an awfully great privilege to be the online voice of the Manna Ecuador site. After 180 posts, it sure has been a prolific journey. I've loved your comments (yes, even yours Aravon), your emails, your encouragements and your suggestions. Thank you for checking up with us every once in a while and for playing a part in what MPIE has become.

There is more to say about what we've learned this year, but I'll save all of that for the monthly (or more aptly tri-monthly at this point) update sent sometime later this week. All I can really say is an exhaustive thank you. I'll be sure to pop in every now and then as a guest blogger, too :)

Signing out,
Holly

Upon his return

(Eliah and Dunc have been gone for about a week, so imagine my surprise when I opened my email to find something from Eliah titled "Last Guest Blog". Turns out he just can't seem to get enough :) So here it is, Eliah's last hurrah.)

"Here I am in my first week back after thirteen months with Manna and it's clear things have changed.
Take my brother's yappy beagle, with whom I cohabit when in the States. While I've been gone, she has matured, like a fine wine, into a less-annoyingly yappy state of being. Unlike this time last year, I now have an irresistible urge to put used toilet paper in bathroom trash cans. Of course there was never anything abnormal about spending the afternoon hunting for mushrooms in the woods, but when I got home today I cooked them. That wouldn't have happened a year ago. Meanwhile, no one anywhere in the house has screamed in the last hour. Strange.
But that's not all. Things in my own head, too, are not the same as before. Maybe I can't get past the fact that I just spent a year volunteering in a country with a higher rate of nose jobs than southern California. Or that I paid about as much to work for that year as Ecuadorians earn in the same amount of time ($7150 vs. $7500 according to the CIA World Factbook). Then again, maybe it's something else. Something about a unique time and a way of living gained and then lost. People, places, and experiences I know I won't forget. Something that can't be captured in a single blog entry. Or maybe that's just the parasites talking.
Whatever it is, after a year with Manna things have changed, and in a way I can't—and wouldn't—undo. Still, it's comforting to know that some things are exactly as I left them thirteen months ago.

I need a job.

-Eliah"

Otavalo goodbyes

Yesterday we hugged goodbye two of our numbers, Dunc and Eliah. It should come as no surprise that the two cuarenta partners planned their Ecuadorian evacuation together; yes, they both claimed Graduate School as their individual reasons for leaving on the same day, but I'm not buying it. They just couldn't stand to be down here if the other was not :)

In anticipation of their departure, last weekend all eight of us oldies piled into a bus headed for Otavalo. I have to admit I was a little hesitant to go there; in our trusty Lonely Planet guide book Otavalo is written up as a "must see place for tourists of all kind, due to its enormous weekend market,". The last place I wanted to stay with my seven people was a touristy market town, surrounded by leather key chains and alpaca floor rugs and painted shot glasses...no thank you. So imagine my surprise when our camioneta drove out of the town, up the cobblestone street right into the mountains and just kept going. Up, up, up we drove, jostling around in the back of an old white truck, backpacks and knees and laughs jumbling around with us, until we came to La Luna, our hostel picked by Dunc.

It was perfect. Nestled into the side of a big old hill covered in golden grasses and swaying trees, the place had crisp white walls, fire places, colorful hammocks, homemade guacamole, and a ton of board games. But most importantly it had connecting rooms and one big dinner table for all of us to sit around and reminisce, eat, play and read.

Here's to our last hurrah together! It's been a great year, huh.
-Holly

Serena and Jos goof around while running back down to the hostel.

Serena and Eliah get ready for a serious game of Guess Who?

While Dana and Mark battle it out in Cuarenta.

View on the way to the waterfall.

Love that self timer.

Spot Serena.

Recreating a Quito statue we pass every time we bus into the city.

Trying to squeeze everyone onto a small rock. Why not.

Eliah and I share some rock space.

Rousing game of Clue next to the fireplace.


Mark tries to roast a marshmallow with a piece of burning paper...?

Dunc takes in the view on a Sunday hike.

The steep trek up to the summit begins.

View of Cayambe from the top of Fuya Fuya (my first Ecuadorian summit!)

Danabean and I channel our Colorado mountains.

The climbing crew.

A condor sighting from the summit. Rare and wonderful, as it's estimated there are only 65 in the whole country.

Cooking Delights

This past Friday, the girls held our first (of hopefully many, hint hint next year's PDs) women's cooking class. Advertised as a class focused on natural ingredients, healthy recipes and new cooking techniques, we found willing participants through Serena's women's exercise group.

When Priya and Mari (summer volunteers) were down here, they worked hard with Serena to pull together a cohesive menu of appetizing, inexpensive, and nutritious foods whose ingredients we could actually access down here. All the women agreed that they more than accomplished their goal. Below you'll find the menu of foods we made, along with one of the recipes. If you're interested in any of the other recipes, please feel free to email me! holland.c.ward at gmail dot com.

The Menu
Homemade Soy Milk (from the beans!)
Iced Chi Tea

Tomato-Corn-Avocado Salad
Grilled Vegetables and Pasta Salad
Drunken Beans

Rosemary Honey Roasted Chicken

Banana Nut bread
Zuchinni Muffins

(Preparing the corn-tomato-avocado salad in the dining room for lack of space in the kitchen!)

(Our taste testers, just making sure we got the flavors right.)

(The whole cooking crew with satisfied bellies and zuchinni muffins in hand)

(Of course, I can't currently find the cookbook we used, but here's a delicious variation of one of the salads we made, a house favorite whenever we can find mangos!)

Avocado, Tomato, Mango Salad

INGREDIENTS
* 1 mango - peeled, seeded and diced
* 1 avocado - peeled, pitted, and diced
* 4 medium tomatoes, diced
* 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
* 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
* 1/4 cup chopped red onion
* 3 tablespoons olive oil

DIRECTIONS
1. In a medium bowl, combine the mango, avocado, tomatoes, jalapeno, cilantro, and garlic. Stir in the salt, lime juice, red onion, and olive oil. To blend the flavors, refrigerate for about 30 minutes before serving.

Easy and delicious and summery. Which works basically year round down in these parts.
-Holly