I am currently in the town of Pedernales, it's about a 50 minute drive from my hut in camarones. To get here, I hop in the bed of a truck and hold on tight.
Ok, now I can give you the low down on my last week:
After leaving our orientation site in Tumbaco we went to the pahuma orchid reserve for a nature hike. When I heard orchid reserve, I imagined a forest of beautiful tall purple flowers, but apparently there are a million types of orchids that don't at all look like the orchids we normally see in the US. So on our nature walk we saw hummingbirds, a waterfall and a lot of orchids! We then had lunch with everyone, which was delicious- rice and chicken and plantains!
Next stop- Lalo loor.. Which still wasn't our final destination. We took a 5 hour drive to get to the coast, and stopped for some ice cream along the way. We arrived to the Lalo Loor dry forest past dark and had a 10 minute hike in the dark with all of our luggage to get to the hut (good thing I had a head lamp- thanks Jack Foreman!).
Upon arriving to the hut I met a few people that were also staying there, and saw the candles lighting the dining room area.
Had to wash dishes with my headlamp on.
This is what the hut looks like in the day time.
We ate a candlelit dinner, because there is no electricity in the forest, and a mosquito flew into my soup. So many bugs. There were an army of ants in my room, saw a huge tarantula outside by the bathroom (which is a dry composting toilet- you go in the hole and then toss some wood chips in).
After dinner, we played bananagrams at the candle lit table and then went to sleep in our mosquito net covered beds. In the AM we had breakfast and then left for our final destination in Camarones, which was right down the road from the lalo loor reserve we spent the night at.
After arriving in camarones, we met our supervisor, Betsy. Betsy is the woman in charge of the soap project and she is also kind of like our host mom. She lives across the street from where we are staying. We are basically staying in a "glorified hut" and the only reason I say glorified is because there are a few light bulbs/ electricity in the hut. We live upstairs and the soap project happens downstairs.
When you open the wood gate to our hut, this is the view. Walk straight ahead and that's where we work, go up the stairs and that's where we sleep.
I feel like I'm sleeping/ living in a fort with these mosquito nets covering me at night
My shelves of bug sprays and sun screen
You already saw a photo of my bathroom so I won't gross you out with another one of those. I'm still not sure how the dry compost toilets work. But there are 2 toilets and one has a plank of wood over it that says not to use it.
During my first day there we got to know the family and learned the process of making soap- you have you peel these seeds called "piñon" and the grind them in a machine to make oil- it's a terribly long process. We had to let the oil sit overnight and then we mixed the oil with Lejía and jaboncillo, then we added an aroma of vanilla and poured it in the molds.
Betsy (left) and Rosa (right) as we sat for 2 hours and peeled seeds. First you hit them with a rock and then peel.
This is the grinding process
This is what they do during the day- I am going to work on calculating the time each step of the process takes to figure out how much they can make per week and month. They currently have a demand for 550 little soaps per month, but with their current processes that is not possible. I also talked with Betsy about doing microfinancing- when we went into town to use the Internet to do some research, she said a past studen that came here set up an indiegogo account for crowdfunding the soap project- but there was no info on her profile. We are going to work together to fill in all the info, develop a mission, and I am going to try to create a video that promotes their campaign to raise money for their project. They need money to buy a machine that peels the seeds, and they need a better drying machine that will take less time for the soaps to dry and won't allow bugs to get in, because currently I saw some fly wings in the soap and that's not going to fly...
This is the project that happens during the day. Around 8pm at night a group of high school students ages 14-24 come to the house and make shampoo. The government donated all of the ingredients to make the shampoo so that the students could learn about business and form their own microenterprise- pretty cool if you ask me! Betsy is their supervisor.
The first evening with the students, they taught me how to make the shampoo and we made 12 bottles. The next time I met with the students, Betsy told me I could lead a discussion with them. They all wanted to know how they could sell their shampoo and upon realizing that they didn't have a name for their shampoo, I talked about the importance of brand name. I also discussed the idea of a competitive advantage and created a discussion with them about what makes their product unique. One of the students, Jefferson (17), is super motivated and was very involved in the discussion. We talked about how since they are students making the shampoo during the night and attending school and studying during the day, this is something unique about their brand. I also talked about microfinancing with them and how if they develop a story to share with the online community, people may be willing to find them. Once they run out of ingredients, they have to use their own money to buy more ingredients. They want to save the money they make from selling the shampoo, to buy more ingredients and grow their business- so so inspirational! I am so excited to continue working with this group. I gave them homework to each come in on Monday with a list of 5 ideas for names for their shampoo, so I'm excited to see what they come up with!
Making shampoo!
I'll tell you a little bit more about the family now. There is Betsy, she lives across the street with her mom (berna) and dad (Colon) and her son (Anthony, age 2), an adopted child (Enrique, age 6), a cousin, (Nicole, age 15), and some of betsys brothers (Uber and Jomar). Berna and colon have 9'kids, I believe 5 live in Camarones and the others live in other parts of ecuador. Camarones is a village of about 40 families and around 200-250 people, everyone knows everyone. The entire village is one dirt road, but it takes about an hour to walk down the entire road because everything is very spread out. Even the elementary school is on the road. There are also a lot of animals in Camarones. Betsy's family has 4 cats, 2 of which live in my hut, and a dog. There are also a lot of chickens and a huge turkey. There are two donkeys that always sit on the soccer court next to my hut, some horses and a bunch of cows.
Some of the cows in the steam, there are 3 streams you have to cross to get to my hut from the entrance of Camarones. Cars and motorcycles drive through the streams.
Me and my donkey friend- there's a baby donkey that sometimes comes out too!
The dog, Buco, and one of the cats. I can never remember the names of the cats!
Anthony (left) is a little adorable monster, he is so cute, but at the age of 2 he is always crying and being annoying while Betsy is trying to work. Enrique (right) is so great- his Spanish is not very clear, he was adopted by berna and colon and I think came from a very underprivileged area, but he is a great kid. He gave me a big hug the first day I met him and we played soccer and basketball together too! One night after dinner Anthony, Enrique and I danced in the living room to ecuadorian music.
This is the night where the electricity went out in the entire town of Camarones. We had a candlelit dinner. That's Colon and this is the dining room we eat in, in betsys home across the street from our hut!
This is the kitchen in betsys home, which is next to the dining room. We come across the street for all of our meals. Berna makes all the meals, I told her about my picky habits and she had been great!! And I have tried new things!!
Here is the court that everyone from the town comes to to play soccer every evening- it's right next to my hut so it's a fun way for me to meet the community. On my first day, I had about 10 beers with angel (he drives people to Pedernales every day) and Betsy- they wanted to welcome me to Camarones. We also play basketball on the court sometimes! Betsy likes to play basketball.
Today, Nicole took Keenan and I with her to Cojimies, it's a town about 2 hours away from Camarones. She has family that lives there. We took a motorcycle to the edge of Camarones where the bus picked us up. And when I say motorcycle, I mean rickety bike with me, Nicole and the driver Richard on it, with no helmets going fast- it was frightening but fun!
That's the bike we rode on- I held on tight!
Nicole and I in the mangroves!
On the boat
Island of love
Lots of birds
After the beach we went back to her uncles house and ate. Her uncle is a professional chicken killer.. As we walk up to the house there are dead chickens hanging and as we go in the back room I see feathers flying and chickens being carried around. My stomach didn't handle this so we so before we ate I said I was a vegetarian and they gave me a bowl of fruit and I was VERY happy with this.
All in all, the first week was great. There is a lot to get used to and it's a very different way of life here. Life is simple. There are no luxuries. They all do similar work. Animals roam the streets. Their day to day schedule is the same. Ecuador time is about 40 minutes past whatever time they say. I'm getting used to waiting around. When Betsy says we start at 9, it's usually 9:45. When the bus will be here in 10 minutes, it's usually a half hour. But hey, it all happens eventually. Siestas are a thing here too.
I really like the people I'm working with and have had no major problems thus far, I brush my teeth on our balcony with my bottled water and spit over the edge. Life is simple. I play with the cats in the morning and toss around the basketball in the afternoons- I taught the Guys how to play horse (but I changed the name to Gato (cat)).
Ok ok I've rambled on long enough, and I'll leave you with a picture of me in my natural habitat- where I feel safe- under the mosquito nets. Although I have woken up with bugs in the nets.. So they aren't perfect, but they usually work. I've also had some spiders and other crawling creatures in my room/ in my food, but I'm trying to get used to it.
My face when I wake up to bugs next to me.
Sending smiles from Camarones (well, technically Pedernales (the only place to get wifi),
Rebecca
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