Village Life Part 5: Details

So, this is the final planned installment of the Village Life series, for which some of you may be grateful. These are the last few things that occupy my mind, and make a huge impact on us living here comfortably.

Laundry

One of our friends comes to the house once a week, generally on the weekend, and hand washes our clothes at the utility sink outside. When we were living in the old house we took our wash to a lady down the road, but it was a pain having to wait up to a week for it to dry and for us to get it back. One time we tried taking it to the laundry mat in Manglaralto, but it's just not that convenient. Now, with our current set-up, since it hangs in the back yard we can bring it in as it dries, and not wait for the whole batch.

When we first came here BG was wearing cloth diapers. We quickly discovered, however, that it was virtually impossible to get them clean by hand washing. There was always a lingering urine smell, and sometimes I think detergent residue got left behind. She had so many diaper rashes that we ended up switching to disposables. When we get back to the States I’m planning on stripping all the cloth, getting them nice and clean, and starting to use them again. And trying to potty train her so that we don’t have to deal with too many more poopy cloth diapers in the future.

Daycare

BG attends daycare in the village five days a week from 8am to 2pm. The building is a cinder block box with concrete floors, and is located almost on the other end of the village from our house. There are between 30 and 50 children on any given day, and seven teachers and two cooks. The kids range in age from infants to 5 (until they start school). They feed her breakfast, lunch, and two snacks, and bathe her each day. She absolutely loves going to school and playing with “los niños” and gets really sad on the days when we find out that school is closed only after we’ve gotten there. We bring her home at 2 so that she can get her nap – the echoing noise in the school, all the activity, and the lack of a set nap/quiet time means she doesn’t sleep there at all.

BG's daycare building. There's a cleared front paved area, blocked by the surge of growth in the photo, but the kids don't actually play outside at all, for which I am thankful.

Daycare costs $0.50 a week and is partially subsidized by the government. We had to give them proof of her immunizations, just like in the States. It’s a great deal for us, because we get time to work, and it’s great for her because she gets to socialize and gets a lot of exposure to Spanish.  The only downside is that the teachers have to attend fairly frequent seminars to keep their license, and on those days the daycare is closed. To me this kind of defeats the purpose. Also, they often don’t have advanced warning of these seminars, or at least don’t give the parents any warning. The worst example was just this Monday, when I showed up with BG in tow, only to find the doors locked and no sign or anything. I tracked down one of the teachers, and it turns out they are going to be closed for the next two weeks for “vacation”. Nice of them to let us know so we could make alternative arrangements!

Medicine

We have two basic options locally for medical care. About 3km from our place, on the road between Dos Mangas and Manglaralto, is a compound of Santa Maria del Fiat, also referred to as the Finca. It is a charity organization, with ties in Europe, and they have undertaken water purification projects locally and have a school and sanctuary in Olon. At the Finca they raise livestock and sell various goods, and also operate a medical clinic during weekdays. You show up around 8 to stand in line and buy your consultation ticket ($2.50). Then you wait in that order to have your vitals taken and then see the doctor. The Finca also has a laboratory and pharmacy on-site, so you can get everything taken care of there. CBC and urinalysis costs around $2, and the prescriptions are at a reduced cost. This is where we go for most of our medical care, and on a typical visit we are there from 8-11 am. I’m not sure why they can’t schedule appointments, but there you go.

Our second option is in the town of Manglaralto itself, and is the local Ministry of Public Health Hospital. This is where we go if we need to be seen on the weekend or if (heaven forbid) we have a more major injury. The hospital has normal doctors that you can see, and that operates pretty much like the Finca, though you have to show up more like 6am for the good spots, and can end up sitting around until 2pm. There is also an emergency room where they take you pretty quickly, with the limitation being that you can’t have had symptoms for more than 48 hours. We’ve gone there when my cousin Taylor woke up with a full-body rash and swelling, when BG stopped eating or drinking, and when she’s had a fever over 39 C (102.2 F) that wouldn’t come down. At the hospital everything is free. All services, medicines, tests, everything. The only time you have to pay is if you need a medicine that they don’t stock, and then you have to run out to one of the private pharmacies. Pretty incredible that Ecuador can manage to provide free basic and urgent care to its citizens, and even to the international tourists who flock to the region. Just sayin'.

Theirs is kind of a third option, and that is to self-diagnose and go to a pharmacy and buy whatever it is that you need. Prescriptions are not regulated like they are in the States. The only exception is that in the last year, because of the Swine Flu, they won’t sell medicines for sinus or flu symptoms without a doctor’s order because they want people to actually see a doctor to contain the disease, rather than just treating the symptoms. But it’s nice for us to be able to shortcut the horrible wait and just get medicine, especially if it’s for something we’ve been through before, like sinus infection or allergies. We will also be stocking up on our daily meds and a few rounds of antibiotics before we come back to get us through the summer when we don’t really have access to medical care, due to the fun university system (for those of you who are concerned, we will all have health insurance, but only BG will have easy access to a doctor).

Village Life Part 4: In and Out

The main reaction we get from people back home, upon learning that we’re living in Ecuador, is wonder at how we manage (and gasps at the fact that we’re doing it all with a toddler). In the next two post I’ll be talking about some of the minutia of our lives here, and the practical things, which we often take for granted back home, but which easily serve to make or break our day (or week).

Food

I love food, but if I could get by without cooking, I would be a happy camper (good thing I have my husband, who is a wonderful cook!). But having food on hand and preparing it is a good deal more involved than at home.

For our first three months here it was somewhat easy. We didn’t have a fridge, so we didn’t cook. Breakfast was jam on bread, or cereal prepared with powdered milk (which, like so many things in this country, had extra sugar added). For lunch and dinners we ate at Olga’s “restaurant”. Lunch is the biggest meal, and consists of a bowl of soup, a plate with meat, rice, and veggies, and a glass of fresh juice or cola. Price: $1.50. Dinner is basically the same as lunch, minus the soup. Price: $1.25. Most of the time we’d eat at Olga’s, but since dinner wasn’t generally ready until 7pm, which is Baby Girl’s bedtime, often one of us would walk down with an empty pot, some bowls, and a pitcher, and get “carry-out”.

Olga's restaurant and store

Olga’s also has a mini tienda attached, where you can buy staples like rice, flour, oil, cans of tuna, butter, laundry detergent, TP, fresh chicken, eggs, some produce, and drinks. Even though Olga doesn’t get to see us as much as she would like since we cook for ourselves these days, we still make extensive use of her store when we run out of staples, and several times a week for fresh chicken.

We eat a lot of chicken. I mean A LOT. Like nearly every day of the week. It’s what’s most easily available. You can buy it by the pound ($1.50) from most of the little tiendas in the village, and even from some people’s houses. There is a butcher in town who slaughters a cow in the wee hours every Sunday, but we’re never up quite early enough to buy from him (a 5am wake-up call for a weird cut of beef, no thank you). There are also people who come through the village selling seafood, but I really don’t want to try de-scaling and gutting fish in our kitchen with a toddler running around. So chicken it is.

The sacrificial cow, awaiting her fate. Should it worry me that on some weeks there is a horse tethered to the second post to the left of the cow?

Most of our produce we buy off the back of pickup trucks that come through the village. The offerings are fairly monotonous, but get us through. We typically buy onions, potatoes, avocados, limes, green peppers, and tomatoes. Sometimes we’ll get lucky and a fruit truck will make it down to our end of the village, and depending on the season we can get mandarins, oranges, mangos, pineapple, or watermelon, all for pretty cheap. We avoid things like lettuce and strawberries, or anything that doesn’t peel and you’d eat raw, which would necessitate being washed in a mild bleach solution before consumption.

The majority of our food we get from Mi Comisariato (kind of an Ecuadorian Walmart) that’s located two hours away, by bus, in Libertad. There we buy boxes of milk (whole and semi-skim, ultra-pasteurized and shelf stable so that they don’t have to be refrigerated until opened) by the dozen, boxes of juice and wine, cereal, cheese, yogurt, non-chicken meat (and some chicken to have on reserve for when the stores around here don’t have any), diapers, and a lot of dry goods. When I’m lucky the bag boys have boxes that they can pack everything in, and we have an insulated backpack (courtesy of my in-laws) that I use to bring back the perishables. Unlucky days I get saddled with dozens and dozens of plastic bags. The bag boys wheel our boxes of groceries out to the taxi stand, we get driven to the bus terminal (really, it’s not as fancy as it sounds), the bus attendants load the boxes under the bus, and then two hours unload them at the crossroads to our village. Our local taxi service guys load up the boxes into their trucks, drive me up to my door, and even help me unload. The local taxi costs $0.35 per person, each trip, the bus costs between $1 and $1.25, and each taxi ride (two each trip) costs $1.

While these trips take a lot of time (minimally five hours), I only have to make the trip once every other week. The grocery store also has pretty much everything that we’re used to preparing at home, plus some goodies like Nutella, Doritos, and brownie mix, so we feel pretty comfortable and as close to being at home as we can. Being able to cook like we normally do has been really important in getting us settled in. But I’m really looking forward to partaking in a huge leafy salad when we get back, and a big bleeding steak.

Water

The village has its own water supply and water tower, so we have access to treated water. It’s considered potable, and people in the village drink it, but it would still do a number on us who are not used to the local flora. Because of the water tower most houses have running water, though we need to help ours a bit by pumping it up into a reservoir on the roof, and from there it drains into the house. Doing dishes and bathing is a snap, but draining the reservoir during a power outage can be a bit problematic. The village charges $2 a month for normal usage.

For drinking water we get those big 25 liter water cooler jugs of purified water. They cost $1.70 a jug, but a friend of ours delivers them to our door for $2 a jug. We go through about two a week. It was a bit difficult at first to adjust to things like not filling your glass from the faucet, and only rinsing your toothbrush with the purified water, but we eventually got the hang of it.

Trash

Trucks come through the village twice a week for trash pick-up – on Wednesday and Saturday. This is fairly reliable, though we went for nearly a month without any trash service after Christmas, and that was definitely a problem. Our trash is divided into five categories: general “dry” trash, empty cartons and bottles (which would normally be recycled at home), food scraps, diapers, and bathroom trash. The bathroom trash includes used toilet paper, because the septic systems here aren’t capable of handling flushed paper.

Since we divide this stuff up, it’s interesting to see how little garbage we’re actually producing. At home we won’t be throwing away toilet paper, we’ll be recycling a lot, using cloth diapers, and hopefully starting a composting system. The only trash we’ll still be producing is a small amount of “dry” trash, less than a full trashcan a week, I’d imagine.

This garbage pick-up system is pretty cushy, which is why I just can’t understand why people (our next door neighbors in particular) still insist on burning their trash, especially plastics! We are downwind of their place, so whenever they burn we get absolutely lovely fumes wafting into the house. For some of the more ecologically minded out there, I’m curious: in the absence of a recycling program, which actually has the lower impact on the environment, burying plastic in a landfill or burning it in your back yard?

Village Life Part 3: A Tale of Two Houses

We’ve lived in two different houses during our stay in the village, and to say that they were the best of times and the worst of times is certainly true, though I’m not sure that one house or another has a monopoly over the good or bad times.

Our first house was arranged before we arrived. I had seen it in 2006 while the owner was putting the finishing touches on it, and it was certainly a step up from my accommodations during that trip (a bed in the story above a shop, with a non-flushing toilet downstairs and outside, and bathing done in a basin). It was a nice open floor plan, with plenty of room for a simple kitchen, a dining area, living room, and study/artifact space. Two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom and with running water (albeit only a cold shower), and to me it was heaven, at least for Ecuador.

Our first place

The house was located on a hill at the back of the village, so fairly private. But literally right off the frame to the left of the picture was another little house, more tradition, where the caretakers of our house, and the owner’s chickens, lived. It was a family of two adults and seven kids, and six dogs. It was never quiet…either the kids were screaming or blaring music during the day (when Baby Girl needed a nap), or the dogs were barking at night (when all of us were trying to sleep). To add to that, one of those seven kids was the one that stole my phone. So yeah, they didn’t really instill any confidence in us as caretakers.

The kitchen and dining area when we first moved in

But the deal breaker, and why we had to find a different house in the end, was the fact that about two days into our stay the refrigerator broke. Two and a half months of asking the owner to get it taken care of (and eating at the restaurant in town because we had no food storage options), with absolutely no attempt to get it fixed, and Baby Girl losing several pounds simply because we couldn’t keep food on hand for her, and we were out of there.

Shortly before we returned to the States for my cousin’s wedding we moved into a new house. This one took a little bit of negotiating, and explaining the realities of being on a grant to people who sometimes just imagine Americans to have endless supplies of money. In some respects it’s smaller than the first house, but it’s oh so much nicer. It’s the vacation home of the brother of the last comuna president, and he lives in the house right next door.

The new place. Love it!

The first floor is split in half, with a living room (our office area), dining room, and kitchen on one side, and the bedroom and bathroom on the other. There’s also a loft which gives us some more storage space and room for people to bunk down for a few days when we have visitors.

View of the kitchen and dining area (with Dennis) from the loft

Arrrrg, walk the plank, matey!

The kitchen is small and kind of basic, and we don’t have our own fridge, but we share one with the former president next door. One of Steve’s favorite things about the house is the catwalk/gangplank that connects the two houses. MY favorite thing about the house, however, is definitely the bathroom. We have a bathtub!!! And hot water from a tank and not one of those wimpy electrical things!!!! It has made bathtime fun for Baby Girl (and us) again, instead of a freakout fest when we have to heat water to the right temp and try to get BG to stay put in a plastic basin while we clean her off.

Pests

Both houses had their fare share of pests. At the first place, the owner had a chicken farm on the property (and right next to the house), and Steve suspects that at least some of his incessant illnesses were caused by them. We also had mice in the kitchen, who would try to get into the few dry goods that we kept around. But for me, the worst pest we had were ants. They would appear out of nowhere and swarm all over things. And it didn’t matter if you kept the place spotless because when it rained they would stream down the walls and into the house, thousands of them. And they bite! We used up several cans of our bug spray killing ants while trying not to get bit by them. <> While we were in that house I had recurrent dreams that somehow swarms of ants were spilling out of the bed despite the mosquito netting (it probably didn’t help that one did manage to get in the bed, and bit me several times on the leg, even after I killed it).

The new house came with bats. My clever husband, however, figured out where the holes in the eaves were, blocked them up, and now we are bat free (no longer the bat cave). We also had mice, but Steve waged a pretty effective campaign against them (aided by some poison) and once again we are vermin free. I think the final body count was 15. Our current battle, and we have the rainy season working against us on this one, is with cockroaches. We got lax in doing dishes, and the house has been continuously occupied for more than a few weeks for the first time ever, and so the cockroaches moved in. I’ve gotten pretty good at smacking them with a shoe, but we’ve also turned to poison to get rid of them. They’re just so wriggly and can get into so many places (excuse me while I shriek like a little girl). They seem to be retreating, and I’ll be glad when they’re gone, though I do get a thrill out of saying “Survive THIS” right before I smack them.

Perspective

We’re pretty much living in the lap of luxury for this area. There are screens in our windows, and even panes of glass. We have interior walls and doors, and even more importantly, an indoor bathroom (with hot water, did I mention we have hot water?). A lot of the houses in the area are basically cinder block squares, with gaps between the outer walls and the roof, and sometimes even missing parts of the walls. People use plastic in gaps and at windows to keep the rain coming in. There is very little privacy, with several beds in a single room, and several people sharing each bed. A lot of kitchens don’t even have plumbing, so doing dishes is a whole other chore.

That said, I can’t wait to get home, where bugs and mice aren’t invading the house, where I have a dishwasher, and an oven, and a microwave. And properly fitted windows that don’t gap. And air conditioning. And a vacuum cleaner. And cable and fast internet. As always, though, I’ll take the memory of this time back with, and be all the more grateful of what I do have for going without.

And Thoughts Turn to Home...

So I know this is still three months off (OMG, only three months left, excuse me while I have a panic attack) and I still have TONS of stuff to get done here, including essentially all the artifact analysis, but with the New Year, and my parent’s visit I’ve been thinking more and more about when we get home – where we’re going to live, what we’re going to need to get life up and running, the horrible crushing experience of moving all of our stuff from storage into an apartment yet again. It also hasn’t helped that life here has been somewhat complicated – we had nearly a month with no garbage pick-up, it’s gotten quite hot and sunny so we’re worried about frying every time we leave the house, daycare was shut down for a month so getting work done was impossible, and our roof is leaking horribly every time it rains. I know that this too shall pass, but any “stay focused and finish your work” vibes that you guys can send my way would be much appreciated!

You Give Me Fever

As Baby Girl succumbs to yet another illness – this time fever, green snot, and the runs – it’s interesting (and frustrating) to reflect on the way that viruses and sickness is perceived here.

Apparently, the concept of a virus that spreads from person to person through contact doesn’t exist to these people. Instead, one falls sick because of cambio de clima (weather change) or mal de ojo (sort of an imbalance of the humors, which can be caused intentionally or unintentionally by really negative or positive energy directed at a person; a.k.a. the evil eye. A reasonable description of the phenomenon can be found here).

What this means for us, in a practical sense, is that no one sees any reason to keep their sick kids home from daycare, because illness can’t be passed on. Instead they send them on in so that they can infect all the (temporarily) healthy children that are there. Every day that I drop BG off I cringe at the multitude of green snot faces that greet us at the door.

So it seems that BG gets a week of good health, followed by a week of not-so-good health. Mostly we’ve been lucky and the bad weeks are just the sniffles. Sometimes it’s worse. Being that she is La Gringita, everyone constantly wants to touch her. And if you say “don’t touch, she’s sick” (which I’ve started doing with increasing frequency and diminishing tact, to avoid them passing something on to her and actually making her sick) they stroke her and murmur “poor thing” while suggesting that she’s afflicted by one of the ailments. BUT YOU’RE STILL TOUCHING HER AND MAKING HER SICK!!!!

I just hope that all this sickness means that once we get back home she’ll have an immunity level somewhere in the stratosphere and stay relatively healthy even while those around her succumb to the seasonal ailments that go around every year. Here’s hoping.

Big Girl Bed!

Yes, folks, that's right. Shortly after the 2 year mark, BG has made the transition to a real bed! And not because we're having another and need to free up the crib for that one :P

These six months that we've been in Ecuador (SIX months, can you believe it?!?!) she's been sleeping in a PeaPod Plus. It's worked great for us because it's compact enough to travel with. Like, actually compact. Not compact like they say a Pack-and-Play is but then it still takes up half the boot of your car. We can fold it up and strap it to a backpack and off we go! Also, since it's basically just a personal tent for a baby, it has screening, and thus mosquito netting, built right in. However, since she's been using it continuously for six months, it's begun to develop a bit of a funk. And since it's a whole integrated thing, it's a little hard to clean properly.

With BG getting sick frequently, and coughing often in her sleep, Steve thought maybe the tent wasn't the best sleeping environment for her anymore. Since there's an unused twin bed laying around the house, we decided to move that down next to ours and give the whole "big girl bed" thing a whirl. And let me tell you, I am so lucky to have such a flexible and easy going daughter (this year here would probably not be possible if she wasn't). She moaned a little the first night, but since then has slept as well as she did in her tent. The fact that the mosquito netting is wrapped under the mattress probably helps keep her from getting up for a wander in the middle of the night, which I am definitely cool with! It's so sweet to see her asleep in it, though, since at most she takes up a quarter of the whole space.

Just another sign that our little girl is growing up!

Home Sweet Home!

Home at last, even if it is just for two weeks!

It's the little things, like being able to rinse your toothbrush in the water from the tap, or flush toilet paper instead of having to throw it in the bin. And having TV and fast internet.

My parents are having a blast playing with Baby Girl, and I'm enjoying just a short break from the toil of fieldwork.

And today my husband and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary with a low-key day and some quality ice cream.

Steve's lost 20 lbs since we went to Ecuador, and I've lost 10. We're going to try not to gain it all back while we're home and partaking of all the yummy yummyness that there is here.

Saturday my cousin Andrea gets married. Monday we fly to North Dakota to visit Steve's grandma. The following Monday we try to catch up with old friends and advisors at school. It's a break from the toil, but by no means a vacation.

I just hope that I'm still willing to return to Ecuador when it's time to head back. So tempting to return to the easy life....

Family Feud!

So, I think I am officially feuding with one of the families here in Dos Mangas. The mother totally ripped us of to prepare food for us, the daughter stole my cell phone, and the grandfather tried to forcibly yank a skull out of the ground where we are excavating (all he managed to do was break it into a zillion pieces, which he left, and then grabbed some teeth).

Seriously, what is it with these people?!?!?! I would be so happy if I never had to deal with any of them again, but in a village of 1000 people related in all kinds of ways, that's not too likely. But if anyone else from this same family tries to pull any more stuff like this I'm going to completely flip out on them!

The Mound, a flood, and the Levantamiento (not necessarily in that order)

So, I’m realizing to my horror that it’s been nearly a month since I’ve updated the blog. A lot has been happening, not the least of which was Baby Girl baptizing my computer with a cup of tea. Between taking it apart to mop up the tea and let everything dry, and then waiting until I could get to Libertad to buy a new keyboard (the one casualty of the whole affair) I lost nearly two weeks of computer usage. But, we’re up and running again, so all is well in the world.

The community has been embroiled in a fairly interesting and lengthy political demonstration for the last few weeks to assert their control of community lands and access to different resources on community property. This has mainly consisted of blocking the main road going in and out of town, and setting up a 24 hour guard to monitor the traffic going in and out of town. It all started when someone who leases community lands decided that they’d go and fence off the road that the community uses to take tourists to some very pretty cascading pools of water, effectively declaring both that portion of the road and the pools to be private property. These same leasees also waved guns at community members as they went along this road, for trespassing on their “property”. The community set up the blockade to prevent these people from moving freely to and from the land that they are leasing.

As you might imagine, the police and local and provincial governments got involved in this dispute, which still does not have a resolution. The leasees claim that the community is trying to kick them off the land (and there is some claim on their part that they bought this land, though that is impossible because the whole territory belongs to the community), while the community contends that the leasees are trying to develop tourism privately and thus deprive the community of an important source of revenue. You might be able to guess where my sympathies lie. I got invited along by community members on one of the inspections by the provincial government because I could record video with my camera. The rhetoric each side was using was really interesting – “cultural patrimony” versus “my property” – and it was also pretty clear that the Inspector (the third one to check out the situation) was fairly well in the pocket of the leasees. There is certainly a lot at stake in the outcome of this dispute; not only the livelihood of community members but their physical safety as well. In the course of the dispute it was revealed that one of the leasees was released from jail just a few years ago after serving 13 years for robbery and double homicide. And most of the problems started after he arrived on the scene.

Last weekend Steve and I became godparents to a newly married couple in the village. It’s not the same as becoming godparents to an infant – more like a cross between being godparents and the best man/matron of honor – which made it all the odder that we didn’t really know these people that well. It was one of those things, though, where I felt like I couldn’t say no, like the act of asking obligated us. Steve was still sick, so put in a brief appearance with Baby Girl and then took her home to sleep. I on the other hand had to stay and drink until the wee hours of the morning, and even then I chickened out and headed home around 3. I just don’t have the stamina for it like I used to.

On Thursday we closed up excavations at the mound. I was actually quite disappointed in how things turned out. The mound appears to be a natural hill that was modified to have a platform on top. The surface is covered in artifacts, but we found virtually no sub-surface features. I was particularly keen to find a structure on the top of the mound, but alas, no joy. There was also very little evidence for use of the flat space around the mound. We did test pits every 5m to recover evidence of different use areas or house floors, but got very little for our efforts. It’s definitely made me question my interpretation a bit more, but I don’t have any new answers.

I feel like the community might be getting a bit disappointed, because they want me to find things that they can use to start a museum, but so far it’s just been the usual ceramic fragments (though my friend Alex reminded me that the spindle whorls, copper bell, and copper tweezers that we found up at the cistern are pretty good by coastal Ecuador standards). Hopefully they have patience with me, and all of our hard work will turn up something interesting and also let us tell the story of life at Dos Mangas back in the day.

The house situation is still at a standstill. We found another place in the community that is REALLY nice, even by general North American standards (hot water and a bathtub – HEAVEN!) but we just can’t afford what the owner wants for monthly rent (like, twice as much(. Right now it’s a bit of a poker game…do we come up a bit, spending money out of savings, and hope that he realizes that he can either rent to us at a lower price and make some money or have an empty house and make no money. We’ll keep you all up to date as thing progress.

Beyond Frustruating!

So let me start by saying that we are on week five without a fridge. That basically sums up where everything comes from. This has gone from annoying and inconvenient to dangerous to my daughter's health. She's lost a kilo (for you non-metric people out there, about 2 pounds) since we came here, and I attribute it directly to not being able to store any food in the house because we don't have a fridge. No milk, yogurt, or cheese. No fruits or vegetables that you can't eat in a day or two because if you don't the flys or ants will get at it. No making food and keeping the left overs, lots of waste, etc. And to this date our landlord has only made a half hearted attempt to get it fixed despite my constant nagging, but then was surprised when he asked me for the rent today and I asked him for the fridge. And now he's gone and left for Puerto Rico for a month, which leaves us where exactly?

Then comes along Porta (the telecommunications company) and their lousy website and even lousier customer service. We got a pre-pay internet thing for the house, which costs dearly, but we decided that for our research and our sanity, we need it. Well, the website messes up and ends up eating $17 of our dollars, but the online Porta people refuse to acknowledge any fault or refund our money, and our only recourse is to travel 2 hours each way to the nearest customer service center to file a complaint and try to get our money back, which seems like it wouldn't happen anyway. Thanks so much!

Also, the supposed caretakers of this house when the landlord is gone (the same ones that were ripping me off to cook for us) stole my telephone and also the landlord's camera and cash. There's no proof, but they're the only ones who had access. And so the question remains, why the hell is he allowing them to keep living in the house (for free) on his property instead of kicking them and their six bark-all-night dogs to the curb?

I'm so ready to go postal on people that it's not even funny.

Overdue Update

Things have been pretty crazy down here lately, and we've spent a lot more time getting to know the staff at the hospital at Manglaralto than I'm really happy with.

Last week I went in because of a high fever and body aches, and people in the village were concerned about Dengue. The doctor who did the exam on Thursday gave an initial diagnosis of Dengue, but wanted me to come back on Friday when the lab was open. Taylor was with me and spoke with the doctor about the stomach problems she was having and was given some rehydration drink mix and sent home. We came back on Friday morning for my blood draw (I will say, that was one of the best blood draws I've ever had), but had to wait until the afternoon for the results, so since Baby Girl had been suffering from a cough and an on-and-off fever for about a week, we brought her in to be seen too. Generally good news all around, I don't have Dengue (just a virus) and Baby Girl's lungs were clear. They gave us an antibiotic for her since her throat was irritated and swollen, and some paracetemol for the fever.

On Wednesday Taylor went back to the hospital by herself because of continuing stomach issues. The doctor that time wanted to do an HIV test, because of course a young, single gringa staying anywhere near Montanita must be doing drugs and having unprotected sex. Didn't even want a fecal culture done.

On Thursday Taylor started getting a rash around her hairline, and by Friday morning it was covering her entire body. We went in to the hospital, saw yet a different doctor, who gave her a cortisone injection and told her to start taking her Cipro for the stomach problems and keep taking Benadryl for the rash. She's doing much better overall, but yesterday her lip started to swell randomly, which makes us wonder if she's having a reaction to the Cipro.

Around this time Baby Girl's illness really started going into high gear. Her fever was basically constant and she became really lethargic and didn't want to eat or drink anything, so we started giving her the antibiotic and the parecetemol. Basically she was just sleeping all day and definitely not being herself. Last night this came to a head when we realized she only had one wet diaper the entire day and that even with the paracetemol her underarm temperature was 38.7 (101.7). So we wandered the village looking for someone with a car who wasn't at the epic 5 hour comuna meeting and could take us to the Emergency room at the hospital.

Just before we left I gave her a dose of Motrin, so by the time we got there her fever was starting to come down and she was a little more alert (as alert as she could be at 11 at night). There was a different doctor there that time, who said Baby Girl didn't need an antibiotic, as the red throat was just from the nasal drainage. And as far as the fever goes, we learned two things: 1) the last doctor we saw gave us the incorrect dosage for the Tylenol they gave us, so she was only getting a quarter of the dose she should have been, so no wonder it wasn't working, and 2) never give anyone anything other than Tylenol when they have a fever because of the incidence of Dengue Fever in the area. Other medicines can cause complications like internal bleeding and nasty things.

The doctor was concerned about her lack of eating and drinking, but not concerned enough to want to do an IV just then. She sent us home with some rehydration stuff and told us to make her drink for 4 hours, and if at the end of that she didn't pee, then to bring her back. Well, we tried, but there's only so much you can stick down a baby's throat when she's already upset and sad and tired. So we did our best but then everyone passed out.

Today she's doing much better. The correct dose of Tylenol is actually keeping the fever down and she's been eating and drinking an ok amount today. We've had several wet diapers, so I'm feeling much happier today than yesterday, even if Baby Girl isn't back to her old self yet.

In other news, we have internet! We went to Libertad yesterday to the Porta store to buy the equipment, and are doing a pay-as-you-go thing, so that we can have internet access in the house when we need it. I'm sure the grandparents will appreciate being able to do video Skype with Baby Girl too!

Baby Girl playing with the broom on the porch, one of her favorite pasttimes.

Baby Girl got pig tails for the first time last week! Her hair is finally getting long enough to do stuff with, but Taylor says she looks like she has a mullet because it's still so short in the front. She also started at Ecuadorian day care last week, which solves one of our concerns. It seems like it will be a good situation once she's healthy enough to go back (and to those who are concerned, she was sick first).

We also solved our other stress issue by firing our cook who was really over charging us. We're back to eating at the restaurant in town for the time being, but we have a few leads for someone who can cook for us. We've also been without a refrigerator since about our third day here, which makes it really hard to fend for ourselves, but it's looking like it should be fixed and back in the house by the end of this week, just in time for Taylor to go back home . Now if we can just get rid of the flies that seem to have invaded the house and fix the voltage problems that are plaguing us, we'll be all set!

Hmmmmm

This post is a little less up beat than the ones in the past have been. The good news is that we made it to Dos Mangas safe and sound. The bad news was that Baby Girl either ate something that didn´t agree with her or got car sick and spewed all over the both of us halfway into the bus ride here. I had no idea her stomach could hold that much! It definitely ranks up there among one of the least pleasant experiences of motherhood, which maybe just means I´ve been very lucky so far.

The house here is really nice, and situated on a large parcel of land planted with tons of fruit trees. There are bunches of different birds that fly from tree to tree, and it´s really nice to sit out in the hammock and watch them all. Inside, the house is probably more spacious than our grad student apartment was, but it´s very empty. I wasn´t anticipating having to buy dishes or pillows or things like that, and I´m finding it a little frustruating that we not only have to put a lot of money into temporary accomodations, but also that I´m having to spend time on it instead of doing archaeology. I really shouldn´t complain though, because the setting is beautiful, we have people cooking dinner for us and keeping the place clean, and even helping to look after Baby Girl. I guess I just had kind of high expectations, and am trying to bring those back down to earth. I´ll post pics soon, both of the house itself and of our nocturnal housemate (....).

This evening I´ll speak with the town council to receive permission from them to do the archaeological project. Apparently one of the reasons why there´s never been any archaeology conducted here is because the town council has always blocked it in the past. It sounds like that´s due to the fact that people wanted to take the artifacts out of the village, and since with my project everything will stay here, hopefully there won´t be any issues. The town also seems very keen on building a site museum, and since my work would generate the objects for it, I´m hoping they will tolerate me (hopefully do more than that, I´d really like the community to be partners in this.

We won´t start excavations until after we´ve received permission from the community, but we´ll start detailed mapping of different areas of the site tomorrow (Monday). It´ll be pretty old school, but it should do the job. I´m really looking forward to getting to work!

Peapod Part 2

I am now a firm believer in the wonders of the Peapod. We went ahead and upgraded to the Peapod Plus, which is longer, taller, and unfortunately heavier (though at 6.5 it's really not too bad for our intented use). Baby Girl loves it! We opened it up and she crawled right in! She's spent the last few naps and nights sleeping in it, and I think it's a huge success. For a toddler, the Peapod Plus is definitely the way to go!

In other news, this time next week we'll be waking up in Guayaquil. We're still frantically packing up the apartment to put our things into storage, and haven't even started to pack what we're actually going to take to Ecuador. Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!

Kiddie Accomodations

Since Baby Girl just turned 18 months and is not yet bed ready, we were confronted with a bit of a problem when it comes to a sleep solution for her in Ecuador. Fitting a pack-and-play in with all our other gear into just four pieces of luggage really didn't seem feasible, and while friends in Ecuador graciously offered to have a crib ready for us, we'd still be without a portable sleep option. We plan to do weekend trips to other sites and to visit friends, and if the three of us had to share a bed then none of us would get any sleep. Finally, with the bug situation mosquito netting is a must, and I'm not certain that Baby Girl would be able to resist thrusting it aside.

The solution? The PeaPod, by Kidco. It's basically a kid tent, so the mosquito netting is integrated into the structure of the "crib". There's a self inflating mattress that zips into the bottom, so Baby Girl will be up off the floor and nicely padded. At 4.5 pounds it's not a super light weight option, but certainly light enough to strap to a backpack for the short bouts of walking that we might need to do to get to villages. It also folds down to a 14" circle that aids in the portablility. All in all it seems like an ideal solution, so we got one and set it up in the living room for Baby Girl's approval.

The verdict? Tepid at best. We have now learned that Baby Girl is not a fan of enclosed spaces. At 47" it's long enough for her to sleep comfortably (I even wedged myself into it), but it's not quite high enough for her to sit easily upright, and I think she really dislikes being scrunched up against the roof of the tent, but who could blame her. We'll leave it set up in the living room, full of toys, so that she can get accustomed to it, and hopefully she'll soon recognize it as her new sleeping space (which may be helped by the fact that we're moving her crib into storage this weekend). I still have hope for the PeaPod, but only time will tell.