In Bua

Well, Friday, after many days of waiting and setbacks, we finally left the civilization that is Quito to take our posts in Bua.

We left from the Yanapuma office as part of a cavalcade of Gringos once again and were finally on the Santo Domingo bound bus, that had people sitting on stools in the aisles and standing in the aisles. When we finally got to Santo Domingo de los Colorados, I was kind of taken aback by the fact that it is the shithole that Andy said it was. To my eyes, it very much resembles the final outpost of humanity in a post apocolyptic world. All I saw was half abandoned, half constructed urban desolation and a road that was supposed to be worked on but was just in the stage between destruction and reconstruction.

A cab ride down a single road littered with potholes the size of bomb craters later, we reached the home of la familia Wilson, where we will be staying during our time in Bua.

They let us stay in their little Casita, and, with our own stove, they are letting us cook for ourselves at a discounted rate, because the last volunteers they had were vegans who refused to eat anything that was prepared. Score one for Monkey and Noodle.

Our stay in Bua so far has been pretty good for the most part, except for the torrents of mosquitos. On Saturday, we went to Santo Domingo to buy some supplies like pots, a pan, a mosquito net and pillows. Alas, the only mosquito net available is hot pink with flowers and smiling bees on it. I have concluded that this is from the Third World Barbie collection. Not too sure how well it works...

Saturday night was fun, we played some pool and talked with some of the locals. Things certainly are different here. People get married REALLY young, and it´s totally normal to have at least one kid by the age of 20. Craziness....

Anyway, Sunday, Michelle and I spent most of the day looking for and hanging out at the cultural center at Shinopi. We must have asked 7 different people where Shinopi was, and the second to last time that we did so, we found out that we had overshot our destination by a 20-30 minute walk, and our destination is an hour´s walk from our house. We gave up on trying to find it after being led to the 2nd river where everyone said it was- there was nothing that let us know WHERE the center was. So, we decided to find a place in the river to bathe.

As we were walking through the river, someone saw us and our pale skin and concluded correctly that we were looking for the cultural center. We followed him up the river bank to the cultural center and sat down to hang out.

After a while a truck load full of new volunteers, all English except for one from California, unloaded at the center, and we had a nice introduction and whathave you. In addition, we ate the best bananas and oranges I´ve ever had, mainly because they were picked fresh from the trees. After a while we walked back to the house.

Monday, we woke up and Michelle concluded that she was either getting a cold or allergies, and we decided that this would be a great day to visit the Shaman, after meeting with Guillermo, the director of the school.

After our meeting, we found a Tsa´chila man and he said that we could get a ride to the Shaman with someone. After 20 minutes of the men trying to decide how to write something on a poster or what pen to use, we were shown into a truck, and the truck dropped us off at a house. We asked what we were supposed to do at this point, and he just left. Great. Fortunately we caught the bus and took it to the cultural center where we found out that we WERE at the Shaman´s house (and turns out the Shaman is more of a Sham), but then someone said he would take us to a lady in the next town over who knows about medicine and herbs and could help her. We went there on the back of a truck, and she gave us some pills and a recipe to make a type of lemonade that would help.

We went back to the center and finally washed up in the river. It is very nice to be clean. also hung out a little bit with the other volunteers, and took the bus back to our house. We made the tea, and in addition to being really tasty, actually helped Michelle´s breathing a little bit.

Tuesday we went to the school for a round meeting with the director, and I learned the true depth of my project. I, along with a British flautist whose only here for 2 weeks and speaks like no Spanish, are building the music program from basically nothing, with the help of the few people who know how to play the instruments. It´s a little daunting.

Also, I really have no experience in teaching outside of my few months with HAP. So, I´m going to be talking with Hugh, a British teacher, about classroom organization, and researching stuff on line. It´s a little scary, but it´s basically what I signed up for. Don´t know how I feel about that yet, hahahaha.

We´re in Santo Domingo right now, researching, and we´re also going to be getting some more fruit and veggies, which aren´t really available (bananas excluded) in Bua. Looks like to buy food we´ll be coming out here 1-2 times per week, so it might be more frequent you read these.

¡TTFN!