26 April 2008

SO WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

My favorite question to ask undergraduates when they return from study abroad is “What did you learn about the United States from your study abroad?”  The obvious question involves what they learned about the country where they studied.  But we learn about ourselves by looking in the mirror of another culture.  So last night I was invited to a little gathering of Ecuadorian intellectuals and professionals, including an anthropologist, and one of those topics of discussion was litter.  I guess we really became aware of litter when Lady Bird Johnson accomplished so much to beautify American Highways. 

Ecuadorians litter.  It´s part of their culture.  Few people have a second thought about throwing whatever they don´t want into the street.  Candy wrappers, kleenex, any sort of opened package that no longer serves a purpose.  It doesn´t make any difference what it is.  If it´s not wanted, it´s discarded.  In the cities, it´s less of a problem because there is an army of public workers whose job it is to sweep the streets by hand.  I suppose that the good news is that it provides employment.  But I´ve seen too many instances of people littering right next to someone sweeping trash into a container.   The problem isn´t so bad in the cities where the armies of sweepers work all day long to keep up with the trash.  The real problem is in rural areas where there isn´t any one.  I know someone who picked up 3 tons of trash on his property when he bought it.  He now charges people a private fine of a dollar if they litter.

      Ecuador has a fledgling ecotourism industry.  So what.  Nature preserves aren´t immune to litter.  They can be just as bad.  It just doesn´t occur to most Ecuadorians that there is anything wrong with littering.  As my friends pointed out, this includes people who drive Mercedes Benzes.  There is a threatened area on the north coast of Ecuador where there are incredible mangrove swamps.  Because rivers empty into them from the interior of the country, the swamps are loaded with plastic bottles and other kinds of inorganic litter that won´t decompose.

Fear not, this is becoming to change.  But when looks at Ecuador, it´s impossible not to think about littering in our country, and how different our cultures are.  Not that we´re perfect, as everyone knows.

22 April 2008

GENTLEMEN: START YOUR ENGINES

    No Fear!  No Fear!!!!!  The rules for driving here are very different than the rules to which most of us are accustomed.  There are lots of small cars with not a lot of power, lots of buses, and lots of heavily loaded trucks.  We´re now talking about driving in the Andes.  There are basically three kinds of roads: paved roads like the Pan American Highway (the “Pana”), cobbled roads (a piedra), and dirt roads (de tierra).  The Pana is the road that theoretically runs from Alaska to the tip of South America.  Don´t expect an autopista (four lane, divided highway).  It´s a twisting two-lane asphalted road with four-foot wide shoulders.  It´s an endless series of serious ups and downs, twists andturns.  Imagine an amusement park thrill ride for motor vehicles and people who are serious about thrill seeking.  Oh, I forgot the lines.  Of course there are lines.  There are yellow lines separting the driving lanes from the shoulders.  Double lines mean that it´s possible to see a little ahead, and that it´s safe for up to two cars to pass a bus or truck and each other at the same time.  Two lanes – three abreast.  No problema!  Two solid lines mean that you can´t see ahead and that passing could be really exciting.  There might be a bus coming around the turn, or maybe even a bus and a passing car.  Why wait for the straightaways?!!!!  I´ve never seen three lines, but if there were, it would be like the triple dog dare to pass!  Anyone can play the game that I´m describing.  Real men play this at night in the rain and fog.  You must be thinking that the papers are full of horrible, mutilating crashes, but they aren´t.  These people can really drive.  Everybody knows exactly what to do, and 99% of the time everybody gets back where they should be when vehicles pass. 

     Horn serve lots or purposes.  Buses use them to pass, to get people to move over, or to signal people along the side of the road  that they will stop to pick them up if given the appropriate hand signal.  Taxis also use their horns to signal that they are empty and will pick someone up if flagged.  They also use them quite a bit to signal their approval of a woman they deem to be attractive.  As far as safety is concerned, many taxi drivers hit their horn when approaching a four-way intersection.  Most vehicles roll through stop sign intersections, so it´s nice to know for sure that a vehicle is coming and has the right of way.  Pedestrians have about the same rights as people in New York City.  Discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to ambulating around the city.

A FEW WORDS ON THE WEATHER

     Most of us who live in the northern hemisphere think of weather in terms of latitude.  The higher the latitude the cooler it is.  Miami and Phoenix are generally hotter than Pittsburgh, New York and Cleveland, which in turn are hotter than places like Calgary and Edmonton.  It doesn´t work that way in the tropics.  Temperature is a function of elevation.  It´s a matter of how high you are (not like in the 60s!!!!).  All you have to do is look at a snow-capped volcano like Mt. Cayambe (5,790 meters).  Obviously it´s cold on top, but as you descend to the valley below, you pass through many micro-environments with different flora and fauna.  These micro-environments enable people in a single location to have a wide variety of foods that can be produced locally. 

     I´m almost right on the Equator (remember this is Ecuador – see our word?).  Most people think that it´s hot as hell here.  No way.  Down on the coast it is.  Sweat City.  Over to the east, on the other side of the Andes, it is.  But not UP here!  I´ve got weather most people in PA, OH and NY would die for right now.  Lots of clear days now.  Dry and sunny with daytime temperatures around 65 – 70.  Nighttime temperature around55, I think.  So when you think of Latin America, think elevation.

HARD TIME GETTING UP IN THE MORNING?

     This is the place for you!  Remember now: this is the city!!  The city alarm clocks start going off around 3:45 AM.  Those that signal the early bird specials are roosters.  Sometimes it´s a  rooster all by his lonesome.  More frequently two are engaged in a frenetic, Deliverance-type duel.  Remember the banjos?  Try listening to the no one-is-going-to-win duel at 4 AM.  These duels continue until 6:30 or 7:00 AM.

     Not to be outdone, every Catholic Church in the city (everybody is Catholic – there´s a church every few blocks) reasserts its dominion over the forces of evil and darkness.  Imagine a city-wide snooze alarm replete with bells and blaring songs to insure that no one will (or could) sleep past 7AM,  Let there be no slothful behavior here, my children.

 

15 April 2005

MURALS

     I´ve decided to do a side study on murals.  They´re everywhere:  Sometimes on a corner; many times times they come in a series on a long wall.  Some are really expertly done and are huge.  Others are done by school children.  It´s a lot more pleasant to see a 300 foot wall featuring a series of murals than graffiti.  I don´t much about them, except that they are especially popular in Mexico (Diego Rivera et al.).  The ones here often have historical, political, social, religious and cultural themes.  The ones on the walls of grade schools and high schools emphasis the importance of education.  There´s also this theme of blanquemiento (whitening).  It´s the idea of many Ecuadorians that progress equals a whitening of its people and culture.  There is a lot of prejudice here against indigenous people.  The whitening process applies mostly to them and excludes Afro-Ecuadorians.  Anyway, I´ll be shooting lots of pictures of murals, and then doing a content analysis of them when I get back to Bradford.  I´ll also be doing some sort of lit review for obvious reasons.

COMMUNICATIONS

     So what are communications like?  You might be surprised.  ´Right now I´m staying at an inexpensive hotel that has t.v.  I get 68 stations.  How´s that.  CNN, ESPN, Fox, History Channel, Discovery.  I watch soocer games from all over the World – Europe (UEFA Cup), Latin America (the Copa de Liberatores), and the U.S. (MSL).  The men´s and women´s NCAA basketball finals, NBA games and MLB (they like the Yankees, the Mets, and the Red Sox the most)  Several staions emanating from Mexico, and a couple of more from Colombia.  A couple of stations  in Chinese.  Impressed yet?!!! Cartoons, cooking shows, do it yourself shows and lots of beauty/fashion shows.  Lots of movies in Spanish (Mexico especially), English (guess where?), German and French.  Some dubbed, many with subtitles.

     Telephones?  Land lines are scarce and expensive to install.  So a lot of people do not have land lines.  No problem.  If you can´t afford to own a phone, you simply go to a public phone store.  There are several providers, and it seemslike ther´s a place on every block.  And it´s cheap. I can call the U.S. for ten minutes for about $3.  Incidentally, U.S. dollars are the currency here, so everything is super easy, including ATM machines.  But a ton of people, including lots of teenagers have their own cell phones.  Those towers are less expensive to build than land lines, so Ecuador will probably be skipping that whole land line thing that we did for over a 100 years.  Text messaging appears to be equally of interest here as in Bradford.

    Internet?  No problem.  There´s an internet place or two on every block of every town.  These places are commercial computer labs, and they are filled with people surfing the web (one place has a sign that says porn will break the machines), emailing people, writing papers, and videocalling people all over the world.

LIKE TO DANCE?

     We don´t really dance too much in the U.S.  Ibarra is full of discoteques (spelling?).  Not too busy on school nights, but they are packed on Friday and Saturday nights.  Some places cater to teens.  The drinking age here is 18, and I don´t know if they card anyone.  You can by individual drinks, but most groups of people (small or large) buy setups and a bottle, and serve themselves.  And they dance.  Ni, I mean they dance!  The music booms, the lights flash, the mirrors provide multiple images of all the dancers as song after song transitions unnoticeably from one to the next.  Out-of-shape people need not apply.  What´s interesting is that these places are packed with people of all ages, not just the young.

MY HOTEL

     I´m staying at the Hotel Royal Ruiz.  Mr. Ruiz owns the place.  It´s a modern, four story place, with a dining room on the second floor.  You have to picture everything scaled down from what you know in the U.S.  My room is about 12 X 12, and is modestly furnished with a bed, desk, and two end tables.  It has a great view of a 1000´ high ridge ridge to the east  of the city.  I already told you about the t.v.  I have a private bath  with 24-hour hot water (In Ecuador neither is to be taken for granted). A nice breakfast comes with the room. I looked at another place that was in an old home with a BEAUTIFUL indoor, covered patio.  But it had a shared bath, no t.v., and no breakfast.  They wanted $6 a night.  I´m splurging, and paying $16 for what I have.

     I´ll check in again with you soon.  Hasta la vista….

 

Back in Ecuador

Well, it´s taken a while, but I´m finally back in Ecuador.  Had a great travel day going from Buffalo to Newark to Houston to Quito.  I was trying to escape most of a glorious winter in Bradford, but that never quite happened.  When I arrived, the temperature here on the Equator was actually cooller than in Bradford!

Ecuador has been locked in a serious winter this year.  That means rain.  For at least a couple of months, with deaths and landslides all over the country.  Lots of towns have been isolated because landslides have destroyed their only connection to the rest of the country.  A couple of days ago a huge sink hole appeared (or should it be disappeared?) in a major highway interchange south of Quito.  Even bigger than a Pennsylvania pothole.  That´s it for transportation down south.  And it keep raining.  The weather is coming from the east (the Amazon) which is really rare and moisture laden.  It´s just like lake effect but going in the opposite direction.  Let´s call it rain forest effect.  Nobody knows why it is happening, but I´ve heard peope attribute the effect to either global warming or President Bush.

 Speaking of which, there is still a lot of tension down here over the Colombian attack on Colombian guerillas IN Ecuador.  Sovereignty?  What sovereignty?  Now the buzz is that the attack started with a bomb or missile that could only have been fired from a U.S. weapons platform like an Apache helicopter.  The thinking is that it must have been us because we have the smartest weapons.  If a U.S. aircraft did fire something, who would have to have known?  Hmmm.  And we have a Navy base here in Ecuador.

 Everybody is following our presidential election.  The younger people I´ve talked to (young is relative – I´m talking about 30 -40 year olds!) are pulling for Obama, but wonder if an African-American is electable.

I´m in Ibarra right now.  About two hours north of Quito on the Pan American Highway.  Rainy and foggy the whole way up.  Today is a settling in day.  Visit with friends an colleagues at the local university, refamiliarize myself with the city after two years absence, etc.

I´m completely new at this blog stuff, so bear with me.  Hope this is interesting to someone, or maybe a cure for insomnia.

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