¡Dale Quito!

All is well here. Highlights from the last couple of weeks include:

1) Trip to Latacunga to see Deportivo Quito win its first league championship since 1968
2) Graciela, our maid, left for a new job (host-mother Ana’s response to this: we’re going to die)
3) Celebrating Fiestas de Quito
4) Still 60s and sunny
5) Discovering that the kids I tutor enjoy playing “airplane”
6) I still haven’t been robbed

Fernando is a fan of one of Deportivo Quito’s rivals–Barcelona (from Guayaquil)–so I haven’t gone with him to see any soccer games here in Quito. But when Jonathan and I saw in the paper that Deportivo Quito was on the verge of winning it’s first league title since Bobby Kennedy ran for president, we decided that we had to go. We left Quito by bus around 3pm, got to Latacunga a little after 5pm, then caught a cab to the stadium. The view from the stadium–which was small and looked more like a high school football stadium than any sort of professional stadium I’ve seen before–was absolutely incredible. We could see a long row of mountains along one edge of the stadium and on the other side Mt. Cotopaxi towered over us. And then there was the game, of course. Quito scored early and held a 1-0 lead through most of the game until Macará scored with about 10 minutes to go in the second half. Their fans went crazy even though Quito only needed a tie to win the league. Quito scored again and everyone went nuts. Post-game excitement included lots of cheap beer, fried food, confetti, roman candles, fireworks, and rushing the field. In-game and pre-game excitement included all of these things as well, minus rushing the field. Several times throughout the game fans decided to climb the REALLY high (close to 10m?) fence topped with barbed wire that surrounded the actual playing field. It was one of those things that you don’t see much and can’t really get away with in the U.S. because of liability issues, but the riot police here didn’t seem to mind. Neither the fence nor the police stopped fans from rushing the field after the game.

Fiestas de Quito, which ended December 6th, also involved people going absolutely crazy and, like a lot of the things that happened at the soccer game, probably wouldn’t be legal in the United States. Everyone–including me–rides around the city in open-air buses called chivas. If anyone was wondering what happens when you put at least 50 people, a brass band, a large supply of liquor, noisemakers, and (sometimes) fireworks onto the back of one truck, this is it. The band goes on the roof. The passengers ride wherever they can find space. The chiva cruises through the historic section of Quito and several street celebrations. Great way to see the city.

The job is also going well. The kids are really fun. Today I helped a lot of them with math and science. Recently I’ve started picking them up and swinging them around over my head as we leave the building for the day. They really like this for some reason and they all crowd around me wanting to be picked up. Several repetitions count as my exercise for the day.

Generally, things are pretty relaxed here right now (except for the fiestas and soccer game). I have a lot of time to read and listen to music. And I’m enjoying the warmth and sunshine. I’m starting to miss snow and Christmas and everything, but in the end I think I’ll take 60s and sunny over a Michigan winter.

I couldn’t take any pictures of the things I described above, but here are some representative pictures that I stole from Google (the first is Mt. Cotopaxi from Latacunga, the second is a crazy guy on a chiva, the third is a street scene from Fiestas de Quito):

Back from Nepal

Not me. My dad. He was there for a bit doing translating stuff. With the security situation in other parts of Asia (see India and Thailand) looking pretty awful right now, I’m very glad he’s safely back in Michigan.

CORRECTION: My dad wasn’t translating. He was “working on a collaborative Buddhist philosophy book.”

Here are a couple of his pictures:

#23

Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. It was definitely a good one. Ana brought home a cake, which was very tasty. Then Fernando, Jonathan, and I went to place called Zócalo where we did a little bit more celebrating. Because it was a Monday night there was an open bar, which means that if you buy five dollars worth of food you get all the beer you want and that if you buy eight dollars worth of food you get all the whiskey you want. I went with the whiskey. Eight dollars bought so much food, though, that my problem by the end of the night wasn’t the whiskey. It was a huge stomach ache. Six mozzarella sticks. Big stack of mushroom crepes. Pancakes covered with four scoops of ice cream, a fruit salad, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. And all of this on top of the dinner and two slices of cake I ate back at the apartment.

Yesterday Fernando and I went to see Iñaki Sandoval, a Spanish pianist, play with his combo at Teatro Bolivar. It was a really great concert and the venue had lots of character. It was a really old theater in the historic section of Quito that partially burned down some years ago. The seating in the front was good, but towards the back and in the balcony everything was charred. There wasn’t much of a crowd, so we found a good spot where we could see the keys.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Clinton+Power

Even David Brooks wants Samantha Power at State.

Hillary Clinton´s…foreign policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic. It would be great to see her set of interests complemented by Samantha Power´s set of interests at the U.N.

Time to move past the monster comment and make good foreign policy. Do it, Barry.

New Job

After nearly a month in Ecuador, I´m finally getting settled. I´m sleeping in my own room in Fernando´s apartment instead of a mattress on the floor. Everything is taken care of with my visa.

I started volunteering as a tutor at La Fundacíon San Martín on Wednesday. It´s basically an after-school tutoring program. About twenty kids, mostly between the ages of five and twelve, come to the center for about four hours each day for help with their homework and occasional lessons in various subjects. Monday I´ll be giving an English lesson on the verb ¨to be.¨ When I arrived on Wednesday the kids were shy. But after about thirty minutes they relaxed. Yesterday we played escondidos (hide and seek) after they finished their homework. It was fun.

The neighborhood of San Martín is incredibly poor. Stray, starving dogs are roaming everywhere. Pigs, cows, and chickens are in the streets. All of the buildings are made of cinder block and scrap metal and many of them aren´t finished so there is little protection from wind and rain. In addition to tutoring, Adriana (the director of the foundation) and I give the kids a vitamin and a snack each day. Most of the kids only eat two meals a day and are undernourished.

I posted pictures from my hikes at the Black Sheep Inn on my facebook page. If you don´t have facebook, you can see the pictures here.

Inspired by Michigan´s win over UCLA Thursday night, Jonathan (who is studying abroad here and living with Fernando) and I tried to find a bar with the Michigan v. Duke game last night. No luck, though. Apparently ESPN2 doesn´t exist here.

Here´s the view from the terrace of Fernando´s apartment. Pichincha Volcano is in the background.

Detentions/Arrests in Lansing

(Written by JumpinFrog/Nikhil)

While Gabe is off in Latin America, many Lansing residents are being unwillingly forced back to that region of the world. Over 60 Latinos living in Lansing have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the domestic subset of that wonderful new government branch, Homeland Security. Many of these ICE raids happened at places of work, such as restaurants, and many at the homes of those victimized. Of course, ICE was not willing to show its face to the public, executing raids on restaurants after closing time, when only the poorly-paid and overworked immigrant workers remained.

Detained immigrants may or may not be legal for all we know, as if that makes a difference with regard to the way they should be treated. One of two things are being done to them: Either they are being sent to prisons in Battle Creek or Monroe, Michigan or are being deported, usually to Mexico. ICE reserves the right to keep detainees until they are satisfied with their legality.

Meanwhile, back in Lansing, families whose husbands, sons, wives, cousins, and daughters, families that have a month-to-month budget planned out to the cent, cannot pay for food and cannot tell you where there loved ones are. ICE refuses to tell families whether their loved ones were sent abroad or are being kept domestically. Families are now having to make decisions between putting money toward food and rent or toward saving up for plane tickets to Mexico, D.F. While this type of thing has (unfortunately) become something of commonplace in Detroit, this is the first those of us in Lansing have heard about it. All of the mainstream media together have printed one tiny article, and the city’s most important publication, the Lansing State Journal, has refused to mention it at all.

The problem has become ubiquitous in the minds of local Latinos even if the rest of the population doesn’t seem to know or care. There is a Latino group that meets every couple of weeks, and its members feel that they are no longer able to safely take the 20 minute walk to the meeting for fear of being called in to ICE. After all, a group of 15 brownish-skinned folk walking together is never something you can trust. Indeed, ICE makes calling in to report “suspicious activity” unconstitutionally easy. The aforementioned group now has to call door-to-door buses to facilitate meetings.

There have been some efforts to respond to this crisis, but they are in their infancy. I am a member of Amplifx, a local alternative media publication that will be printing a write-up about it. Also, the No Human Is Illegal Network (NHIIN) has been formed as a conglomerate of local organizations fighting for the rights of those arrested and those affected.

I will keep this blog updated with information on a crisis that hits closer to home than we might have expected.

Country Mouse, City Mouse

Francisco works eight hours a day, twenty one days a month. For that he earns about two hundred and forty dollars. He is twenty seven years old and has four children. They are ten, seven, four, and three. He has lived in the small farming village of Chugchilán all is life. He has traveled to Latacunga and Quito a couple of times, but he doesn’t like cities. “They’re too loud,” he says. The trip is also very expensive. Bus fare to Quito and back is close to five dollars. Almost everyone he knows lives in poverty.

Fernando studies philosophy at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, one of the best schools in Ecuador. He is twenty one years old and lives with his mother, Ana. Six days a week the maid cooks his food, washes his dishes, cleans his room, makes his bed, and does his laundry. He has a private bathroom, four closets full of clothes, two laptop computers, and exercise equipment in his large bedroom.

Today I officially quit my job at the Black Sheep Inn and traveled from the world of Francisco to the world of Fernando. Francisco was my friend and co-worker at the Black Sheep. Fernando is my friend and new roommate.

I left my job at Black Sheep for several reasons, First, the owners were not paying their workers fair wages. Two hundred and forty dollars a month is above Ecuador’s minimum wage ($200/month) and the Black Sheep employees are actually much better off than the remaining residents of Chugchilán, who are mostly subsistence farmers. But given the large profits the owners pull in at the Black Sheep, these wages are absurd at best.

Second, the owners were not the altruistic couple interested in promoting environmental causes that I was expecting to meet. They are definitely involved in several positive community projects, but on the ground the projects seem to be more of a marketing ploy than a manifestation of good will. When I told one of the owners that I was planning on buying maps to donate to the local library, he made some snide comment along the lines of “the more you give them, the more they ask for.” Gross. And while they have lots of cool environmentally sound projects–super efficient water system, on-site garden, composting toilets, etc.–they don’t seem very interested in environmental issues on a global scale and they don’t do much environmental education.

Third, I was really lonely. Andres and Michelle were my only permanent social outlet, and they weren’t particularly warm or interested in making me feel like part of the family. The workers were fun to chat with, but they were busy with other things most of the time and the cultural gap I described above made it hard to become close. The guests were also fun to chat with, but they were always coming and going.

Tomorrow I’m going to meet a woman named Adriana to talk with her about beginning work as a tutor at La Fundación San Martín. I’m really excited about this because I’ll get a chance to do something more community service oriented and because it’ll give me a lot more practice speaking Spanish. I’m also really happy to be living in Quito with Fernando’s family because it provides the warm social environment I’ve been lacking and and because it gives me even more practice speaking Spanish. Except for speaking with Andres and Michelle today when I went to Black Sheep to get my suitcases, I haven’t spoken English in more than a week.

Still Waiting

My parents sent the documents I need for my visa stuff on Monday via FedEx and they were guaranteed to arrive by today. But they´re not here. Fernando and I went to the FedEx office in Quito to try to find out what was going on, but they said they couldn´t help us unless we had an ID number for the package. We didn´t have the ID number. So, for now, I´m stuck in Quito and at the mercy of mail carriers.

Fortunately, being stuck in Quito isn´t all that bad. I´d definitely like to get back to the Black Sheep, but Fernando´s mom is very hospitable and Fernando is a fun guy. So things could be worse.

Back to Quito

The situation is much better here now. I’ve completely recovered from my stomach problems and everything seems to have fallen into place for my trip back to Quito. Esteban, a very nice Argentinean oil man who is staying at the Black Sheep, has offered to give me a lift back to Quito (along with his driver and bodyguard). Once I get to Quito, which should be around 9pm tonight, I am going to be staying with Fernando, Nikhil’s host brother from last semester and a cool dude.

Bad news on the picture front; I am still having problems uploading photos and the zoom lens on my camera seems to be broken, which means I can’t take photos. Maybe I will adopt a more vivid writing style.

I see that Michigan beat Minnesota yesterday, which makes me happy. Go Blue.

Change

First of all, hurray for Barack Obama. I am so happy that he won the election. And I’m so proud of my sister for helping him win the election. Unfortunately, most of the people I’m working with at the Black Sheep have never heard of Barack Obama so they couldn’t share in my tears of joy.

Things have started to become a little more stressful here in the last few days, but I am trying to stay positive. I have a stomach bug that has kept me up two nights in a row. I just started taking medication, though, and I think it is helping. I also just found out that I have to go back to Quito to register my visa, which I don’t have all of the necessary forms for. So I am hoping my parents can mail them to me. Getting from here to Quito is not an easy task, and I don’t have a place to stay once I get to Quito, either. So I am trying to get all of this figured out.

Despite the stomach problems, I have continued my hiking, which, for now, is a primary part of my job. Two days ago I hiked down to the bottom of a canyon and along a river. It was quite scenic. Hiking back up the canyon was not fun, though. Yesterday I attempted to hike up a mountain to visit the local cheese factory, but after hiking for more than two hours in the rain and coming within one kilometer of the factory, I was deterred by a trio of fairly aggressive dogs. The dogs here tend to bark a lot and act tough if they think you’re going to invade their territory, but usually if I keep my head down and keep walking, the dogs won’t even leave their yard. But the cheese factory dogs charged right up to me and started biting the walking stick I was carrying. Fortunately, I was carrying the stick. Otherwise they might have been biting my leg. A young boy helped me out by calling off his dogs and throwing rocks at them to keep them from attacking me. After this incident I turned around and started back toward the Black Sheep. I brought a few rocks in my pocket, just in case.