Well I’m beginning to integrate into the Chone way of life. Among other things, I’m now used to eating dry baked banana and rice three times a day, I’ve started jumping off the bus while it’s still moving (next step is jumping on), and I’ve even started dropping my s’s when I’m speaking. Life here is certainly different.
I keep regretting not having my camera on me, as it seems every day I see something really strange or really funny. For instance, a bike here is not full until it has 3 people, and an umbrella while riding is standard issue on rainy days. I think a lot of t-shirts here must come from thrift store leftovers – I saw a City Sports Boston shirt and your average macho Ecuadorian man with a Hanson shirt complete with a graphic of the boys on the back. Regularly girls here unknowingly wear t-shirts with very suggestive English messages on them – at some point I’ll start asking them if I can snap a photo. The funniest thing so far was seeing a poor woman riding a horse which proceeded to mount another horse. They strategically threw cold water on the horse to calm him down.
Needless to say I’m avoiding horses. However, I have been hunting down a good bike to buy. They say I can get one for as cheap as $40, but we visited a few shops and they were asking double that for bikes that looked pretty shoddy. Everyone rides mountain bikes in town, and no one raises the seat up, so they stick their knees out to the sides to pedal. I’m hoping to buy a road bike, but it might cost me. A guy in my office suggested that I could buy all the parts separate and he would help me put it together – could be a fun project, though I wouldn’t look forward to negotiating for every part. This is a frustrating thing for gringos here, as there are certain prices everything should cost, and everyone knows them but me. Anyway, having a bike would give me a lot of freedom to roam around.
It rained a lot this week, and once again the river overflowed into the streets. I call it Lago Chone, though the joke here is Venezia Pequeňa. During the rainy season it floods, and during the dry season there isn’t enough water. In the past there was always enough water, though there were even more flooding problems before they build up the riverbanks. My counterpart (Luis) gave me more background on Chone. Before WWII, it thrived economically as a commerical center between the coast and the Andes. In the following decades the economy plummeted as commerce moved to other coast cities, and just this decade Chone is trying to overcome serious problems of political infighting and corruption. Luis likes the current mayor, and he seems solid to me as well. In the new constituion here, after an official is in office for a year, the people can take steps to have a re-election, in order to encourage hard work on the part of public servants. In July, every Ecuadorian official could feel the effects of this, so it should be interesting, especially here where there has been so much division.
I’ve been looking to play soccer (which btw, we need to start calling ‘football’) with people, finally tomorrow I’m going to go play with a guy I met whose parents have an internet cafe. He’s kind of a goofy kid, and my counterpart told me that other kids make fun of him a lot – the perfect buddy for me. He’s really nice, and always tells me that I look like different teen pop stars from the US because my hair is longer. I really need to get it cut, but I’m afraid to!
