Beans, Corn, and Moscos

This week I was lucky enough to spend a large amount of time in Lumbisi, the rural community about 20 minutes from where I live. For a photography project I decided to try and spend some time working and taking photos in the fields of Lumbisi. Our program director was nice enough to introduce me to a wonderful women, Nelly, who has lived in Lumbisi for all her life and was more than happy to take me around to some of her fields and show me how agriculture is done, Lumbisi style.

Nelly allowed me to accompany her to her various plots of land. In her fields we picked plenty of beans and corn and fought of plenty of Moscos, the Ecuadorian equivalent of mosquitoes.

(No they're not Jelly Bellys, just really cool beans)

I really can’t describe how beautiful these fields are, or the walk to the fields, but there is something very calming about going to a plot of land that has been passed down for hundreds of years and getting so see a master of agriculture at work. Over the last few generations, Nelly and her family have obviously perfected their growing system because everything I have learned about in terms of sustainable agriculture at U of I is done in Lumbisi. For instance, to avoid erosion each stalk of corn gets its own mound of dirt so that the ground is not level and Nelly also uses Multi Cropping, in which she grows a bean plant around a corn stalk.

To say I was humbled by all this is quite the understatement. How fast and hard Nelly works for a women with grandkids is unbelievable. Our walk back home can sum up her wonder woman like level of fitness. My bookbag was filled to the brim with about fifteen ears of corn and a bag or three of beans. Her bag was filled with about thirty ears of corns and ten or so bags of beans, so give or take she had roughly three times the amount of weight on her back that I had on mine. As we started our hour walk home, Nelly, roughly four feet tall, machete in hand, dominated the mountain paths with ease, while I the relatively fit, or at least I thought so, six foot tall American was ready to fall down and die. As we reached her house Nelly let out a little laugh as she threw down her hundred pound bag of vegetables and I fell down on the grass gasping for air.

It was an amazing week and I really feel privileged that I had the opportunity to experience a taste of rural life in Ecuador.

Oh yeah and my family is arriving in Ecuador tomorrow night for a week long spring break! I’m sure Peter, Annette, and Isaac will have some great adventures to share with you when they get back.

MoneyMoneyMoney

Sorry for missing last week, I was on a comic book rough draft deadline.

When I was deciding where to study abroad one of the first things mentioned about a program was the cost. Obviously, programs in Europe were much more expensive, due to the exchange rate and higher cost of living, than programs in Latin America or Africa. Money was not the deciding factor in my decision to come to Ecuador; however, the fact that USFQ is cheaper than U of I was definitely a plus.

Not only is the tuition cheaper, but the cost of living is also dramatically cheaper than the United States. Prices, mainly on food, have really played a big role in my experience here, as capitalistic as that may sound. I just can’t get over the fact that I can get 5 ice cream bars for a dollar or a pint of beer .75 cents. Yeah, I drink a lot of beer here, but come on its .75 cents. So I figured I’d do some price comparisons of things here and in the US.

It seems that as a general rule of thumb, food is a third of the price it is in the US.
Ride on the bus- .25 cents. Eat your hearts out Chicagoans.
Movie- 3.00 to 5.00 dollars.
Eggs- .10 cents apiece, we rarely buy a carton of a dozen.
Bannanas- .5 cents apiece.
A bottle of water- .30 cents
Fresh baked roll- .10 to 15 cents
Fresh baked deserts- .20 to .50 cents. I pretty much try to eat something deserty from one of the various bakeries on my walk home every day.
Heres the best one- A regular chocolate and vanilla ice cream bar- .25 cents, the amount of ice cream I eat here is really kind of gross.

Since pretty much everything I buy is food or beer I make out like a bandit in Ecuador, but for a family that has to buy clothes and appliances, both of which are equal to or more expensive than US prices, I think cost of living gets a little closer to that of the US.

As a well off American I can rave about these low prices, but the reason the prices are so low is that if they were any higher many people would not be able to eat. I don’t have an official source, but a few people have told me that the monthly minimum wage in Ecuador is 250.00, not weekely, 250.00 dollars a month. I make about 250.00 a month in the US from working 12 hours a week, and most of the people making minimum wage in Ecuador work 12 hours a day, just to put it in perspective. So as my host mom told me for a family with 250.00 dollars of monthly income a dollar of bread a day is an important purchase. So while I may be gloating about my ice cream and beer consumption, I realize that I am very lucky to be in the situation I am here.

Cuenca

Wow. Late Again. My group went to Cuenca for the weekend so I figured I’d wait.

Before going to Cuenca my host family excitedly told me that Cuenca was a magical city where people sing when they talk and love to dance at all times of the day. While Cuenca didn’t turn out to be a real life musical, I can easily see how anyone who has been to Cuenca remembers it like living in Singing In the Rain for a few days. Cuenca is completely filled with perfectly preserved colonial buildings in one of the biggest historical centers in the world. And while Cuenca is a very modern city it has a feel more similar to a beach town than a large city—everyone and everything seemed very at ease.

The group and I were lucky enough to fly to Cuenca, a thirty minute flight instead of a ten hour bus ride, on Saturday morning. For the rest of Saturday we walked around and just enjoyed the beautiful historic section of Cuenca. It’s really impossible to describe how beautiful building after building was so I’ll just put up a bunch of photos.

An interesting Cuenca hat fact- The Panama Hat is not from Panama, it's from Cuenca. The world famous hat was exported through Panama and used heavily by the workers who constructed the canal, thereby giving it the association with Panama and the decieving name.

Cuenca also had the largest and most awe inspiring church I've ever seen. It was about a block long, half a block wide, and the inside was completely made out of marble.

Sunday we headed to some Incan ruins, which were quite fun.

Cuenca looked and felt like no where I had ever been in before and I am counting the days till I return to this beautiful city.