Hot and steamy...

Wow, I can't remember the last time I've been this overcome with emotion! I'm in the last of my days here, trying to take everything in. This trip has turned into one of the most incredible life experiences I've had - and who would've thought after all my frustrations, complaints, rantings?!

This Saturday is the company Christmas dinner and we all have secret santas. Now, someone has definitely gone way out of their way to make this more than your average gift exchange. Mini gifts have been transported between offices all week long. Just packs of cookies or sweets, to entice you I suppose, or just a much needed dose of sugar and carbs to keep you going throughout the work day.

Well, on Tuesday I was walking home when the handle on my one and only bag snapped (gotta love le TARGET). Normally this wouldn't phase me because I'd just get another one or reach into the depths of my closet and find a whole lot of bags to choose from. BUT, this is Ecuador remember??? and nothing is easy. So I've been carting around a plastic shopping bag and stupidly stressing out over how I'm going to get a new bag and why the old bag couldn't have just held out for one more week (my toothbrush handle literally snapped in half this week as well). Well this evening Esther handed me a black plastic bag and delivered guess what to me from my secret santa? A beautiful typical wool woven Ecuadorian bag! I still have no idea who it is but how incredibly sweet and generous is that? And just to appreciate that someone is looking out for me even in this big bad scary place (haha)!

Buses here are as ubiquitous as cars in the States. Everyone gets around on these critters. This morning on my daily ride to the Garzota office I was being amused as we were bouncing along the mad streets of guayaquil to the tune and frenzied pace of reggaeton. somehow it brought to mind the crickety old grey van from scooby-doo. imagine the driver who is driving the bus, talking to people, and trying to make change for the 25cent ride from a $5 bill.....so much for safety! the same lack of federal regulation or legal structure that allows the bus driver to blast the music of his liking allows you to board and get off the bus wherever and whenever; just yell "PARE" at the driver and he screeches to a pseudo-halt and shoos you off the bus saying "SIGA SIGA SIGA" while you try to not break your ankle jumping off a still moving vehicle. and this is the same lack of order and protection a bank has from their lendees.
The past few days we and the loan officers have been making countless visits to delinquent lendees. these people have decided for whatever reason not to pay back their loans. On the MFI side this is a process full of frustration as imagine there really isn't legal recourse you can take against these people. All day we trek on the dirt roads escaping near-miss catastrophes between you and a truck, bus, moto to track down the delinquents. The tactics we use are: harrassment (showing up everyday to bug you), threats, and humiliation (we paste lots of paper signs on your house saying you haven't paid and we're going to tell everyone about it). In return we get matching threats, people yelling at you telling you how cruel you are, and insults all the while standing under the blazing sun drenched in sweat, trying to keep the dust out of your eyes.
Whether any of our tactics are successful is doubtful. But what else can you do? In the States we live in fear of having bad credit and that's what motivates us to pay our bills on time. But without collection agencies, would you really care? This here is the other face of microfinance.

One of the frequent questions I'm asked here is: so, what do you think of ecuador? to be polite i usually side-step this by smiling and saying i like it and then i start talking about how nice it was when i went to cuenca or cajas, a national park. the truth is, guayaquil is not a place i could ever picture myself living - it's dirty, polluted, dangerous, and lacks any charm or anything that would call your attention.
last friday i was out doing client visits when that question came up. i was with one of my favorite loan officers so my guard was down and when he asked me for my opinion a smile spread across my face, a smirk, and then full out laughter. how do you begin to even compare the u.s. to a developing country? we were walking up and down these dirt roads in lomas de la florida, one of the poorest marginalized sectors of guayaquil. piles of trash strewn all over, raw exposed sewage, mangy flea-infested dogs, begging children who haven't seen a bath in you can't imagine how long, cane shacks without roofs, people preparing food on the ground and chickens walking alongside dropping their feces right there. while it's hard to provide an accurate picture of how deplorable the living conditions are here, it's just as hard to get your head around living like millions of people do.
i remember almost 10 years ago when i was volunteering as a nurse in belize amongst sugar cane farmers. having to do the scary outdoor outhouse thing (teeming with nasty big crawly creatures waiting to get you as soon as you expose), no running water or electricity. that time i had to live in those conditions - imagine washing dishes without running water and having to fetch your own water from a well not anywhere near your shack. (that's real water conservation for you)
so even though i've experienced some of this i still cannot get my head around how people live like this. and when someone who has never been to the states or seen anything like our luxury asks what you think, how do you explain the radical difference? they are always curious about our monthly salary, how much we pay for this or that but i don't think it crosses their mind that we might go to a coffee shop, pay $3 for a coffee, drink it and toss all the trash when they have to bring their own pots to a restaurant if they want to take the food home.
the medical director at the clinic where i was doing some work has been begging me for anything we might be able to send him from the states. i went into their laboratory to take a look and had to control myself - you feel like you've just stepped into a 1920's laboratory. sterility? forget it!
i realize how obsessed we are in the states with cleanliness. it's not a bad thing but it is so wasteful. in the office here there's always a pitcher of water available for drinking and one cup. it took me awhile to realize that everyone drinks from the same cup all day long. disposable cups are unthinkable.

so how do i reconcile these things? what do i do with these newly imprinted images on my mind? there are the pat cliche responses, the snap-back response of swearing off consumerism and materialism but those don't fit the bill for me.

I love exclamation marks! Such a easy way to make something seem bright and bring in a little enthusiasm....this morning I am scrambling to find any kind of cheer I can. There have been many days here where I thought I would start crying and wanted to but not til this morning did it happen; feeling horrible, getting choked up and then hitting the point where the emotional gates open and the flood lets.

Thanksgiving came and went. To be fair, they don't celebrate it here so I thought I would have my own mini-feast by baking my favorite Silver Palate sour cream apple pie. We work in the mornings in one of the offices in the field and then go back to the home office between 1-2pm, have lunch and then work from there. So my plan was to take the afternoon off to bake this fabulous pie, heap vanilla ice cream on top, and take out all my celebrations, woes, and sorrows of not being home on this poor pie.

Well, the pie never happened. Planning here is just about impossible. I should know that by now - if I've planned to be at the office at some particular time it never fails that the car engine will overheat or just stop working entirely, or the bus never shows, or any other imaginable mishap. I just never thought that it would happen on Thanksgiving. We've carried out this general work routine pretty much everyday for the past two months - except the one day I plan to be back at home. That day we stayed at the office til after 6pm. My Thanksgiving dessert ended up being red jello in a cup covered with a layer of artificial caramel flan and topped with a squeeze of condensed milk out of a plastic bottle. I wasn't sure whether to laugh and see the comedy in all this or just cry. Being the food snob I am, what could I say?

I think I am at the point where I'm totally fed up with not being able to go out for a walk, breathe fresh air, take in a pleasant landscape. I feel totally pent up, unexercised (because how do you go jogging or even go for a walk when you're worried about being mugged) and all I want to do is go lie in a park in the grass. I get this way where I need to get out. And of course at home I can just get up, go out and do it. Here I simply can't and people don't seem to share that same need. They can be at home all weekend without leaving, just sitting around and be fine. arghhhhh!
I don't know how many times I've suggested going out but alas, I'm still sitting here on my bed feeling really sorry for myself. I did come here to be challenged and the challenges of living abroad in a developing country abound. But the deeper challenge comes in reshaping your response and reactions. When none of your usual defenses work, you've got to invent some new ones fast and adapt. I guess I have some work cut out for me this weekend!

It's already nearing the end of November; Christmas decorations are out in full force in the streets. They Guayaquilenos take it pretty serious all right - it's not yet even Thanksgiving and I can see fake trees and blinking strings of lights in nearly all houses. Time has been steadily ticking away. It's hard to believe I'll be leaving in less than a month.

I did make the decision to stay for the duration of my fellowship. At the time of my last blog I was seriously considering coming back early; safety concerns plus the useless factor. I have to say it was more the latter. But since then I opted to stay and to find the hidden gem in all of this. I think I already know what it is ** (and no, it's not what you're thinking!).

Today I'm absolutely exhausted. I thought staying up til 4am dancing was a record. Well, we beat that again - 7AM I went to sleep on Sunday morning. Dancing has got to be the national exercise/pasttime here. They never seem to tire and the music never gets old either - salsa, merengue, reggaeton, other Latin dances. Stuff I would not listen to at home, but it's grown on me here! So I'm still recuperating from that. I felt young and carefree Saturday night but now I'm paying for it dearly.
Time is not my own here - I'm basically surrounded by work from 8AM sometimes until 10PM. It's not that I'm actively working all those hours because we stop for meals and "5 minutes" (joke for a 5 minute nap that turns into something much longer) but being around work makes the day long. In some way it's good since there's not much else I do here, especially once it's dark and the thieving goblins come out, but I realize how it does your head in, not getting away from the thought of work.
I've also been reminding by more than a few people to journal, blog, write about my experiences here, lest I forget, or so I can look back to this someday. That is priceless, but so tiring!