Catch up

This is Loly Guzman and I on our way through the mountains toward the coast. The road behind us is THE road that goes clear from the north to the city of Guayaquil. The Guzman family (Carlos, Loly, and their daughter Gaby) are a member family that kind of took me in. They let me come with them on several trips, and helped me find my apartment, etc. They just left for Utah, though, to visit one of their sons.

Hello everyone! Sorry for not writing much lately...first of all i´ve had technical issues with the internet both at my house and at the office, and second, things are getting busy. This last week I did all of my focus groups which I have to now finish analyzing so I can write the last 5 questions for my survey (they are on topics that need to be pertinant to the students that are being surveyed, so the answers have to come from them), then it has to be changed to "Ecuadorian" so it has their common terms, etc, then translated to English to make sure they understand the spanish version to mean the same thing that I think it means, then i have to send it to several students to pilot test it so they can give feedback, etc, then it has to be sent to experts in the field, and only then can I start to send it out to medical students. The great part is that all this has to happen relatively quickly, since they leave for summer vacation within the next two weeks, more or less. And the pressure is on!

To kind of explain for those of you who aren't familiar with my project, I'm working with the Pan American Health Organization as an intern for the summer. Part of my responsibilities is conducting personal research, so I'm doing a study among medical students to see if including training in a specific child health care strategy (called IMCI) actually leads to them wanting to apply it or not.

I'm also responsible for getting contact with the LDS Church area authorities because the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health is interested in organizing in a very strategic way the trainings that are being done for neonatal resuscitation. The Church humanitarian organization does these trainings all over the world, but here in Ecuador they've been fairly haphazardly done. Basically no one understands the heirarchy of the Church enough to figure out who to talk to in order to change the way things are currently going down. And as one guy at PAHO said, "out of heaven drops our intern"... who just HAPPENS to be mormon and know how things work. It's pretty tough to find the numbers for those guys, though. I thought I could find them online, but it's impossible. You've got to go through the stake presidents. Even finding the mission office number was next to impossible. It's a good thing I know the way things work!

I get to explore this week, though (good because i get to see more of the country, bad because it takes time away from me being able to do the analysis of the focus group results), because we have two workshops. One is in Cuyambe, and the other in Otavalo. Otavalo is a city made up mostly of indigenous people and they have some really cool markets from what I'm told. It's also considered the "Utah" of Ecuador because a large percentage of the population are LDS. These are traditional dancers from that area. The Guzman family took me to a pueblo one afternoon and it happened to be the day of a special celebration for the community. It was cool because it was real- not something just for tourists.


I did my proposal on Thursday to representatives from 8 universities, the Ministry of Health, and PAHO (the organization I'm working with). I thought it went pretty well, but afterward one of the PAHO reps went off, basically telling me that my study will never mean anything. I was respectful, but was boiling inside. I went and talked to her the next day after cooling off, hoping to be able to better explain myself. She doesn't really listen, so it didn't go over all that well. I thought it was interesting how critical she was when she hadn't even read my proposal. She didn't want the document I'd prepared that had answers to all her questions and criticisms, so that's that. She's supposed to be reviewing my proposal this weekend and we'll talk about it tomorrow, but I think she's already pretty biased against it so she's not really reading with an open mind at this point. Once again, I'm being reminded that it's much more difficult to work in a second language. It is making me more excited to get to present my project to my committee at BYU, though, because I'll be able to express exactly what I'm thinking when they ask questions! It was so much easier as a missionary when the "Spirit carries" the message to their hearts... ;-)

So today I met a lady who brought a group of students down for 6 weeks to learn Spanish...she decided that she's going to check and see if I could accompany them on a few of their Saturday excursions. That would be nice, because I don't have anyone to travel with now. There are hundreds of things that I want to do, but don't dare go alone...

One of the next trips I want to do is going to the Cloud Forest of Mindo, where they have zip lines all through the canopy, amazing hiking, canoeing, mountain biking, etc. Still thinking about who to try to talk into going with me.

Ecuador is a very diverse country. It is part of the Andes, so it has 3 very distinct geographic areas. The side to the east of the Andes is part of the Amazon, so it is jungle with very little development (except the oil companies that are now invading). Pretty much the only inhabitants are various indigenous tribes. Each tribe is very different. The ones from the jungle have very different traditions than those in the other areas of the country. They are generally very short, build huts with thatched roofs, and are very community oriented. The PAHO driver was telling me the other day that he actually got to go with a group years ago to visit a different type of tribe...you have to go by boat, and said that when they arrived they almost weren't admitted to the tribal village because they were wearing clothes. Eventually they worked it out (bribes of chocolate, more than anything else) and he said that when they entered he was amazed. They were ALL HUGE- he said he didn't come close to their shoulders, men and women. that would make them all over 6 feet, and he said they were really strong. Apparently it was easy to tell, since they were all naked... I immediatly thought of the pictures of the sons of Helaman...

The side to the west of the Andes is the coastal area which produces the most bananas of any country as I understand it. Ecuador was THE original banana republic. They also have more varieties of banana than I knew existed. They use plantains as we use potatoes- in soups, to make flour, etc. They're actually really good. The overripe plantains get really sweet and are used in a different set of recipes. The plantations are gigantic, and have to each require hundreds of laborers. Closer to the coast you find a lot of areas that flood during the wet season (they don't really have the 4 seasons here- on the coast it's either hot or hot and rainy). That kind of flooding leads to houses like these... they're made up of bamboo, and if you look closely, some have boats tied underneath. Areas that are not quite so poor have cement pillars instead of bamboo. It was actually surprising to see how many houses were built like that, even in areas that were not low-lying. They'd all have a couple of hammocks strung up underneath, and chickens and little kids running around. The cities are mainly made up of cement buildings, which I'm sure is similar to most latin american countries. The poor areas are a combination- lots of tin sheeting and bamboo is used. This is a village in the coastal plain.


Like any coastal area there is also the beach cities...This one is called Salinas. The Guzman family lived there for awhile at the military base (Carlos is one step below an Admiral in the Ecuadorian Navy).


The "sierra" is the andes area that goes splits the country from the north to the south. Quito is smack right in the middle of the andes, thus, the high altitude and cooler temperatures. They call it the city of eternal spring, and that about explains it. I'm finally to the point that climbing the stairs to the 10th floor where our office is (twice a day) doesn't utterly kill me, but I still am breathing hard when I get there. It's amazing how long it takes to adjust.

There are parts of the Sierra that are very arid, but the western part that I have seen thus far looks more like jungle to me than mountains...

This picture is as you begin to descend toward the coast- this is the less inhabited part. I'd still see random houses on hilltops, though, kind of like the Emporer's New Groove type idea, just a little more beat up. It is a beautiful area. After about 1 pm or so the clouds start descending, so if you're headed TO Quito, you've got to leave the south early. We got to this part a little late, and the cloud bank was so bad that we were driving less than 3 or 4 mph for a good part of the climb up through the mountains. You can see the clouds starting to form above the mountain in the middle...
The country has had major political difficulties even up until the last few decades. Because of the lack of a strong central government for so many years, there really isn't any kind of freeway system. I went to Guayaquil on the southern coast a couple of weeks ago and it was an 8 hour trip of two lane highway (a large portion of which is winding through the Andes as you go east before dropping down to the coast), and that is THE main road between the two largest cities in the country. On our way to Guayaquil we drove through this pueblo which is famous for the sugar cane taffy they make...may not really be sanitary the way this kid is pulling the taffy, but it was REALLY good, especially fresh when it was still soft!


This is a statue carved out of the mountainside. Carlos said the artist covered it up while he was working on it, so no one knew what he was carving until he revealed the giant devil's head...

There is another road that goes south from Quito that stays in the mountains, and goes through what is called the Valley of the Volcanoes. The Incans went that way when they attacked Quito coming north from Peru. There are lots of active volcanoes here, but it's been awhile since any had a serious eruption, so don't worry anyone!

My mentor here, Dr. Oscar Suriel, is from the Dominican Republic, and he and his wife, Janete, invited me over on Friday for a drink (yes, they know I'm LDS, so my drink was juice). I got to hear the history of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, though, which was fascinating. I was interested to find out that Pirates of the Carribean is basically the fictional history of those two countries. The isle of Tortuga was real, and is in the bay of what is now Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Pirates from all over the world used it as their base, and rum still continues to be the famous Dominican drink... now you know! Thought you "little boys" would enjoy that bit of info.

Janete is an oral surgeon and said that she actually had a good friend who was in the stake presidency of their city back home. She volunteered to do all the premissionary dental work at cost, which I thought was pretty cool. They've been here just over a year, and she said that she went around looking for a clinic she could work at, but that the maximum she was offered was $300 per MONTH. Gives you an idea of how things are here, huh? Minimum wage is about $200 per month, and most of the poor laborers don't even get that.

I think it's that type of economic situation that leads people to convert a little moped into a family/business vehicle...


I'll include some other pics, too, though most of them are probably on Facebook. Enjoy!

This video is of the old part of Quito- Mom, you may not want to watch all of it because you could get nauseous. Just a warning...



At a zoo just outside of Quito.


These two men in the statue are Simon Bolivar (Venezualan?) and ? (don't remember the Chilean freedom fighters name right now). They were the ones who really got the various Andean countries from Venezuela in the north clear to Chile in the south to fight for and gain their independence. Bolivar was fighting in the north, and the other in the south of the continent, and they met up in Guayaquil (where this statue is found) to agree to work together.


I am told that this is an Incan sacrifice site- it's on top of the hill el Panecillo in Quito. The video you may have just watched shows el Panecillo (it has a huge statue of the virgen on top of it now). What would it have been like to be there when this place was being used?


And finally, this video is of the same area as where the first picture on the post was taken. I just stared out the window in amazement during the whole trip...



Hopefully I'll have more adventures soon to write about!