Top 10ish Memories from Neverland

Kena and I are spending our second day together in Loja. Yesterday we left Neverland, grabbed a taxi with Michael and Emma to Vilcabamba and then grabbed another taxi to Loja, which was only $1.50 and 30 minutes (compared to the 2 hour bus ride!). We went back to our favorite hostal, Hostal Londres ($5/night) and got some food. Today I read some of the Anna Karenina I have downloaded on my Kindle, then we sent our clothes to the laundromat (YIPPEE for clean, actually clean and good smelling, clothes!), got money to pay the school in Peru, changed a few of my US dollars for Peruvian Sols (3 Sols for $1) and had lunch. (Oh a note on Ecuadorian restaurants: they often serve almuerzos, which are a lunch including soup, a full plate of food and a tea or juice for only like $1.50 or $2. They are by far my favorite way of filling up around town.) I also bought my bus ticket for tomorrow. I am going on a bus from Loja to Piura, a northern city in Peru. The bus will take 9 hours and cost me $10. I just switched books in the hostal so I will have a new paperback to read on the bus. Tonight I am going to get some snacks and fruit to eat on the bus. I chose to take the 7AM bus because I want to travel in day light and cross the border during the day time as well (note on border crossings: several people have shared their experiences with me in regards to using this border crossing and therefore feel very comfortable about the whole arrangement). I will then spend the night in Piura before getting a 6 hour bus to Trujillo on Thursday. Of course I hope to have internet access in between there to update you all.

A sidenote on how I´m feeling: I think 3 weeks at a farm was just a bit much. Even though last weekend I went on that hike and then on Sunday went to Vilcabamba for internet, the change of pace and scenary in the city is really helping me cheer up a bit. There were only 2 lights on the whole area of the farm which meant having to use a headlamp all night, which wouldn´t be so bad if it weren´t for the fact that the lights attract moths and since the light is on my head moths were always flying around my head. Also, the bugs were a problem. I feel SO liberated walking around town today in shorts not having to worry about my legs getting eaten. Someone told me Trujillo is too warm for bugs and I sincerely hope they are right!

OK on to the Top 10ish memories from Neverland. I really want to list them now while I have Kena sitting right next to me to help remind me of some crazy and fun times:

NOTE: these are in no special order other than the fact that this is what I remember 1st, 2nd and so on:

1. The outdoor bathroom is a really beautiful structure and somedays there was a collection of little butterflies, mostly green and yellow, that would sit on the steps together. It was a magical experience to walk to the bathroom and disturb this "kaliedescope of butterlies" (Kena´s new term) and have them fly all around your head as you made your way to the bathroom. Privacy wise it was great except for the difficult time you could have deciding if the bathroom was occupied or not. Luckily we started a system of shouting "Is anyone in the bathroom?" as you made your way to the toilet. I only walked in on one person one time (Sorry Emma!) on accident. I really did yell and ask if anyone was there but that afternoon it was raining so hard on the tin roof you couldn´t hear someone yell. Thank goodness I was never walked in on!

2. Last Monday, the first day the girls from the university in Loja were at NF, we made humitas. This was an all day task that involved pounds and pounds of corn. You start by cutting off the one hard end and shucking the leaves and little hair. The full large leaves were saved to wrap and cook the humitas in. The hair of the corn was saved to supposedly make tea with, which I never experienced. Then you take your finger and pop a row, length wise, of corn off the ear into a bowl. From there it is much easier to grab the rest of the kernels off around the whole ear. It took me a LONG time to get the hang of that, but with the help of the girls I soon figured it out. After all the kernels are ready we ground them through a coffee grinder (one of the hand-grinders) with some chopped onions too. Honestly after that I don´t know what they did because I went on to my own project of working on a bamboo wind chime (it was one of Emma´s ideas that I grabbed on to and was having a great time working on--unfortunately I didn´t get a chance to finish it but it was fun work nonetheless to work with a hand saw and such tools). The finished product of the humita was a steamed cheesy corn mixture that looked like a tamale, wrapped in the corn husk. I can´t even guess how many humitas I ate between Tuesday and Thursday, when they got moldy and we had to throw them out. Even though they were tasty fresh, I prefered them sauteed on the stove so they got a little crunchy and toasty. By the way, one morning in MP, the morning of the baptism, I went over to Aurora´s house to return a dish and ended up eating a breakfast of humitas at her house because her and her son had made a ton the night before to sell out of her car at the party that afternoon.

3. When I arrived at the farm Tina not only had the 2 kittens, she also had 2 puppies! One was already given to Andres and his family and was named Sonia. The other, named Tonga, was given to a family in Vilcabamba but Tina was babysitting it for the week. In California, babysitting a dog isn´t too much work. On a farm, however, it can be a bit tricky as you try and watch out so the dog won´t eat one of the roaming chickens. Why is that such a bad thing you may wonder? Well because if a dog eats a chicken, the family will kill the dog. The day before I got there Tonga had killed a chicken. Andres and Norman wanted to spank the puppy silly to teach it a lesson and eventually save its life. The other volunteers said "no way Jose you can´t spank a puppy" --which Tina was frustrated about because she knows what will happen to Tonga if he doesn´t learn. So his punishment was being tied to the dog run all day, after which we hoped he wouldn´t do it again. This was still in our first week there when Kena and I were sharing a room. He loves to get up early and as he did that one morning he found Tonga with another chicken in his mouth. As he went over to the dog to stop him, the adorable little puppy gave a huge growl that stopped Kena in his tracks. Kena let the dog finish his meal, after which Tonga was so happy wagging his tail and settling down for a half a day´s nap. Luckily, a few days later Tonga was delivered to his family who has several kids...good news for Tonga because the owners won´t kill him but rather spend a lot of time training him not to kill chickens. Even Stewbie, the grown male dog of Tina´s, knows better than to eat the chickens, even though he does enjoy a game of chase with the hugest rooster ever!

4. The chickens that never go home: (and the only egg that was laid in the 3 weeks we were there. It is sitting in a bowl in the kitchen and Kena named it Esperanza--"hope" in Spanish.) Each morning the chickens are let out of their cage after a nice big helping of chicken food. They are free to wonder around the area as they eat, fight and sleep. They are a bit annoying because they like to walk on the kitchen table, even though they are dirty and that is very gross. We have to constantly be on guard to push them off or else they may poop on it, which I saw a few times while being there. Also, like like to wander into the kitchen, another no-no, and eat the dog food, which has bits of chicken in it and that is just wrong to let a chicken eat a chicken. Then after a long day of walking around doing nothing, they need to go back into their cage. It wouldn´t be so bad if they were used to going into their cage for a majority of the time, but since they are newish chickens, they aren´t used to this. We finally learned to wait until later in the afternoon/evening to gather them inside, but even then it could be a pain. The trick is to bring a bunch of food and hope they are hungry enough to run into the cage with you to eat it. However, usually it is not this easy. Even though maybe around 90% happily return, that darn 10% can be a headache, as Kena and Michael can attest to. They ran around the farm, around the kitchen, the shower, the gardens, the little creek, everywhere they could possibly think a chicken would go, chasing them with long pieces of bamboo or other wood (because they were too skittish to pick a chicken up, as I was as well, but Emma wouldn´t mind). It was hilarious to watch as the chicken got frightened and ran around in a hap-hazard way of course in every direction except for the coup. In the end the guys would give up and whatdoyaknow, there are still about 6 chickens scattered around: a few sitting on the top of the coup while another few wander around. Those stupid ones would just have to go without food because we were done gathering the chickens and had called it a night. A single good thing I can mention about the chickens: the rooster was huge but luckily didn´t make too much noise, thank you mr. rooster!

5. Stewbie is an idiot (or "El Jefe de Tumianuma", the chief of the town): chasing horses, fighting with some dogs two times, banished from Tumianuma, this is the story of the beautiful and oh so annoying dog of Tina´s. Starting with chasing horses: this dog I guess is supposed to make sure the horses stay in their proper areas. Sometimes however the horses would wander around, the humans knowing this, and would be constantly horassed by Stewbie the constantly vigilent perro. He would bark non-stop at the horses as if all of a sudden Tina would realize, "Oh yeah, there are the horses that aren´t supposed to be right there", which of course she never did. So we had to put up with this continuous barking for as long as the horses were in Stewbie´s territory. Fighting with some dogs: two distinct times I had the unfortunate experience of watching Stewbie get into hideous fights with these two little dogs that would come onto the farm. The first time I was cooking with Sylvia and as I was washing some dishes, Stewbie started to attack this one little brown dog, I think was male, and then go after the little white female. Sylvia finally ended the fight by splashing water on the dogs. The second time we were all on our way to kill the bull, I was happily singing ¨Vamos a matar un torro¨("We are going to kill a bull!) and then all of a sudden Andres gets knocked down as Stewbie charges him to get to the little brown dog once again. White teeth are shining, low growl is going, slobber is flying and the little dog is whimpering. Finally Andres throws a rock at Stewbie which stops the fight and Stewbie is yelled at by all of us. Lastly, Stewbie, the capitan of the town Tumianuma, is forever banished from the pueblo even though he tries to visit so much. I haven´t seen it with my own eyes, but Kena describes it as a classic western film as Stewbie enters the town and all the dogs in the square get up off their front porches to bark at Stewbie as he enters. Being the largest dog in town, he wants to fight them all and is therefore banished by Tina from visiting. Whenever someone leaves the farm Stewbie must be tied up or else he tries to follow. One time Kena stopped holding onto Stewbie for the required time after someone left, and Stewbie ended up following Tina into town. Michael had to walk ALL THE WAY to town to grab the frickin´dog who wouldn´t stop when being yelled at. Yup, this is why I love dogs so much.

6. The 80 year old who looks like he´s 60: from Chile and been 40 years with the same woman. We mistook his generosity of offering us a chair and thought he was just being nice when really he was being friendly and wanted to chat with us for the entire 45 minutes before the bus to Vilcabamba last Sunday. (The alternative title to this story is "Why people live long in Vilcabamba" because that town is known for long living citizens). There are many theories as to the longevity, Gloria (the owner of the only shop in Tumianuma) thinks it is because of the beauty of the scenary. Another person theorizes that it is the water. The old man had his own view on it that was very philosophical and had to do with living a simple life, like that in the garden of Eden, or something like that (although he spoke slowly in Spanish, some words I couldn´t catch but didn´t care enough to ask again). He was an interesting character who definitely entertained Kena and I as we waited for the bus...oh the people you meet while traveling! :)

7. The final miracle on the farm: horses carrying our bags back to Tumianuma. After the long journey of trekking our bags to the farm from town, the first day we got to NF, I had been dredding the day when I´d have to carry my bags back to town from NF. Fortunately, yesterday morning, Tina told us that the horses were getting ready to go into town and we could have them bring our bags with them so we wouldn´t have to drag them ourselves! HALLELUJAH! It was a little miracle, which Kena said was actually a HUGE miracle! Once we got into town, we got some water and waited for the bus. And waited, and waited, and waited for a bus that never came; we ended up taking a taxi into town. It was a pick-up truck filled with cases of empty bottles of beer. Kena asked if they were free with our journey and the taxi driver happily said yes. Michael sat in the back to watch out for my luggage since I didn´t want it falling off along the way. Thanks Michael!

8. The poor possum that was killed on fiesta night: after dancing our night away on Saturday, Kena, Emma, Turtle, Malia (2 new volunteers from Santa Cruz, California) and I made our way back to NF. We had to stop by Andres and Sylvia´s house again before we went back to the farm though because some people left stuff there. We got to have the ever faithful and wonderful Nova as our guide. Nova is the best dog on the farm, a long white dog of Tina´s that is the mother of Tonga and Sonia and another wolf-looking dog that is owned by Gloria now. She lead the way as we walked behind her. As we were walking along the darkened dirt road to Andres´house I saw some little eyes blink in the bush. Then I saw Nova walk over to those eyes, pick something up in her mouth and walk on. I mentioned it to my fellow walkers and we started pondering over what it could be. It didn´t seem to have put up much of a fight and Nova didn´t seem too worked up over it. At one point in the walk she set it down and then picked it back up again. Once we were under a street light Nova dropped the object and moved on. We quickly walked up to it and realized it was a possum! How had this happened? It was dead and I couldn´t figure out if it had already been dead when Nova got it or if she had just very quickly killed it right as she picked it up. A mystery I will never find out the truth about...

9. The hunt for the lost horses: the following morning of the party, Sunday, Tina needed 2 of her horses brought into town because she was bringing a bunch of groceries (like 300-400 pounds of food including large sacks of potatoes, tomatoes, rice, veggies, toilet paper, etc) and needed us volunteers to gather them up. I had bravely told Malia that I would ride one of the horses into town with her to get the food with Tina on Sunday. Malia, a very experienced horse worker, asked me if I knew what I was getting myself into, which I said "Oh yeah no prob. I used to be afraid of horses, but not anymore!" Well by the morning I had changed my mind, I mean yeah I can feed a horse some panella, but do I really want to ride one on the steep rocky path back to town? No thank you. But I ended up joining her in the hunt for the horses. Tina has 3 horses: a gentle, tranquil white mare who was already in town, a young dude named Zeus and a very large powerful horse named "the proud one" in Spanish. Well we couldn´t find either of the male horses on Sunday. Earlier in the day Kena had spotted 2 horses way up high on a mountain, which he took a picture of and thought "hmmm, I wonder if anyone will have to go chase for those horses sometime", soon to find out that it was us that would have to hunt those horses. After hours of looking between Kena, Turtle and Malia (I only helped at the very end to look in some of the frequently visited places of the horses, which of course they weren´t there), they gave up. Malia radioed Norman in town to tell him they couldn´t figure it out. On Monday Carlos helped get one of them and the other horse is in a place I never found out. Those darn horses!!

10. Carmen opening the church in Tumianuma: there´s only service once a month in the small church in Tumianuma, the first Sunday of the month, because there is a traveling priest from Nigeria--with an accent in Spanish that Kena can understand (maybe because his family is from Kenya). There are paintings in the church that were done by the same artist who painted all the paintings in the room I stayed in in NF. He was a volunteer there at the farm for 6 months on his honeymoon with his new wife. The paintings in the church were done based on Sylvia for Mary the mother with a little baby Jesus in her arms. The other painting is of Jesus, with Ecuadorian characteristics. As Kena and I waited for a bus one weekend, Carmen (a townsmember who holds the keys to the church) graciously opened the church up for us so we could take a peep at the murals. They were very pretty and even though I couldn´t see Sylvia in the Mary, I appreciated the Ecuadorian looks of the characters.

11. Marlon and Michael hog the computers: when we opened the computer cafe in Tumianuma for the kids, Marlon (Gloria´s son who therefore automatically knew the cafe was open because he gave us the key) came to play on the computer. He was happy to play on his own but I asked him to share the news with others that it is open. He goes away and after about 20 minutes returns with Michael--1 friend. He didn´t take any time going to ask his friends on the other side of town if they wanted to play but decided 1 friend was enough so just the 2 of them could play on the computers together for the next 2 hours. While playing, Marlon had the computer only with paint, not Encarta. I watched as he painted a sign that said: "Feliz dia mama"--Happy day mom. It was so cute and a little sad becaue there was no way for him to print it out and show her so he just erased it and continued painting. This leads to the story of Kena´s dream in Tumianuma: as we were hanging out waiting for the boys to finish their games on the computer, Kena decided he wanted to move to Tumianuma. He wants to buy the computer cafe from Tina and move in there. The empty lot next to the cafe, which is up for sale for $5000 and is currently covered in weeds, is also a great lot. Tina wants to eventually purchase that land and put a community center of sorts there. She says that it is a great piece of land, very affordable for the area, and Kena believes would be a great place to settle down. All these daydreams are a weird joke of his, but he did get into details of how he could give tours of the town, horseback rides into NF and open an English restaurant to serve meat-heavy traditional English breakfasts to the volunteers who could use a little bit of comfort food so far from home.

12. The new bridge and a balancing act: as you make your way through the NF property to the kitchen, you have to cross a river by a little wooden bridge. It was a nice bridge when we first got there but over the weeks it became more dilapidated and Tina last Monday declared it no longer fit for people. So the guys decided to cut down a tree and build a new bridge. I wasn´t part of this activity as I was busy making humitas, but it took the majority of the day and I heard later that it was quite sketchy. They said they would make it more safe and stable the next day, but as is typically seen around NF, the next day is filled with other responsibilities that make it difficult to finish all in one day (meaning that we did a different task on Tuesday and the bridge was still in the same condition as it was built on Monday when I left the following Monday). The only source of stability is a little string tied between two trees on either side of the bank which you can hold as you slowly make your way across. The first bridge got so comfortable for me I didn´t even need the string, but this new bridge requires a life-grip on that string at times with both hands. It would be nice if they shaved off the top of the log to make it flatter and easier to use, but as of now it is definitely a balancing act. The most questionable day was when I was holding the liver in my hand after killing the bull, which was going to be our dinner, and I didn´t have a free hand. As I stumbled on the bridge, I clasped the string with my hand, splurting a bit of bull juice on my pants, and safely made it across. Luckily I never fell into the river, nor did anyone else as I was there, but I do still have some bull blood on those pants, even after I took them to the laundromat today...again, sorry Robyn!

Well that is it for now. I´m sure there are more stories that will come to mind as time passes, and I know there will be more pictures to share since Kena took like 1000 pictures! But as for my blog I think I will be moving on now, literally since tomorrow´s bus will take me to Peru. I am feeling much more revitalized and energized and ready for something new. I just emailed the school to tell them that the 30th, this Sunday, is an OK day to pick me up from the bus terminal to take me to the school. This gives me a few more days to relax and vacation a bit before setting down once again. I am starting to really see how variation is the spice of life and how much is plays into my own feelings and experiences. I think also having the clutch of communication via internet is a great dose of medicine and I am now ready for new adventures and more stories. Hasta Peru (Until Peru)!! XO