Where's Leslie Arney

2 good things

2009-09-29T12:15:00.001-07:00

1. This past weekend, the PrevenSud Foundation from Quito came to Estero de Plátano to give sexual and repoductive education workshops to a group of adults and youth group. I had met the president of the foundation in Quito a few months ago and we eventually organized a date-plan from them to come out to Estero to give their chats. I had given a few sex ed chats to my youth group in Estero, but I am far from a professional at giving chats about that specific topic. I spent most of the last week going house to house inviting people in the community to come to the workshop and trying to explain to each one of them the importance of reproductive education for both adults AND kids.

For example...
- Girls as young as 14 are having babies
- Girls/women here are still having far more children than they can afford to take care of... or to educate
- Many of the young men take part in extremely risky sexual behavior without protecting themselves or their partners

The hardest part about working in Estero is actually getting the people involved. It´s not unusual for 10-15 people to show up to a meeting to which the entire community was invited. BUT I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout in both the adult workshop and the youth workshop. The young woman fom PrevenSud who came to give the workshop explained both the male and female repoductive system, how babies are actually formed, different contraceptive methods available and about HIV-AIDS. I´m am certain that a vast majority of the adults present in that classroom had never recieved any kind of chat or lesson about those specific topics. They giggled and made jokes like kids... while also asking legitmate questions that neither the doctor nor the nurse had ever taken time to answer. The youth workshop was composed of about 30 small people from the age of 11 to 25 who were all extremely attentive and entertained by the chat. It was a good day.

2. In an effort to improve the quality of water used by the people of Estero, and therefore the general health of all of everyone, myself and my co-worker, Kyle have been in contact with a foundation called Agua Muisne. SEE HERE http://www.waterecuador.org/
This foundation, created and run by a brilliant Yale under-grad, builds water-purfication systems in various communities in Ecuador that are without access to safe drinking water. Estero already has a tubed water system, although the water is not treated and is unsafe to drink. And as mentioned before, the river water is extremely contaminated and used to bathe, wash clothes, wash dishes, cook and drink. It is very likely that this system will be built in Estero during them month of October... although at this point we (being Estero) still lack much of the organizational structure necessary. For example, the community has to find a location to put the system, someone to be in charge of the construction, someone to actual run the system and sell the water AND a lot of advertisement and education about the importance of such a water system in the community. THAT is the hard part. THAT is what will be occupying my time during the next few weeks. I would like to be in Estero for the planning, construction and the start-up of this system. Yanapuma will be in charge of the advertisement/education part of the deal as another volunteer will hopefully be coming to continue the sanitation-hygiene classes and workshops that I have already given to a few groups in Estero.

Right now, a 20-liter container of purified drinking water costs $1.50 in the stores in and around Estero... which the majority of the families cannot afford. With this purification system from Agua Muisne, 20-liters of absolutely safe drinking water only costs $0.25. WHAT A DEAL.

2009-08-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

cacao.

On the Daily

2009-08-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

In an email from my sister a few days ago, she mentioned that she really had NO IDEA what my life was like down here. I imagine this is true for almost everyone who might think about me on occasion and wonder where I am or what on earth I´m still doing here. SO, I will take this opportunity to give you a little insight into my little world, on a less exciting, more comfortable regular basis.

I´m living in the only hostel in Estero... run by the family of Carmen and Lucho Moreno. When I first arrrived in Estero (almost a YEAR ago) I lived in the hostel until I found a family with which to live. After living with this family for 5 months, Carmen invited me to return to her house and help take care of the hostel and the store they own during the week while she and the kids were living in Atacames. (The kids are going to school in Atacames and come back to Estero on the weekends.) So, I now inhabit a very small corner room with a window on the 3rd floor of the hostel. Stephanie´s duffle bag and Joseph´s back pack are on the floor next to my single bed and are still holding my little wardrobe. I share a bathroom (which is on the 2nd floor) with other inhabitants of the hostel... which at the moment consist of loud, early-rising men who are working on paving only road that passes through Estero.

One of the most challenging and occasionally frustrating aspects of my daily is helping in the little store on the first floor of the hostel. My mental math and random food item vocabulary has drastically improved since the beginning of my stay there. I can also tell you the price of almost every item in our store... which becomes a fun game for me whenever I step into an actual grocery store and start comparing prices. (I get that from my mother.) However, I never realized how much I appreciated the presence of common courtesy that I have always been more or less surrounded by in the States. Of course, there are still occasional rude people polluting the North American environment. BUt, for the most part, we were always taught to be courteous... to wait in line, to say please and thank you, to not yell, to not say ´´give me´´, etc.
Common courtesy is not a part of the culture of Estero de Plátano. As a result, for the first month or so I was personally offended by how rude all of the customers were who showed up at the store, cutting in line and yelling ´´GIVE ME´´. I´ve since learned to accept this part of the people that I´ve grown so attached to... but I still force them to say please and thank you and scold them like children when they yell or cut in line. This isn´t Vietnam, this is a TIENDA, THERE ARE RULES.

I still teach in the school every day and wash my clothes in the river less often than all of the other women in the community. (They wash almost 4 times a week.) Like many of you all, my friends (and family) here make sure I´m taking my vitamins and make me clean my room and brush my hair more often that I would like to. My afternoons are usually spent helping high-school kids with their homework, having meetings with the youth group, selling in the store, cleaning the hostel, eating fruit, going to harvest something in a farm, or laying in a hammock reading.

A few weeks ago I led a health-sanitation workshop with a fellow Yanapuma volunteer for a small group of people that live up the hill from the pueblo of Estero. We had previously sent a sample of their river water to a laboratory in Esmeraldas for analysis and wanted to use the results as kind of a basis for the workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to explain the cycle of disease.... what causes disease, what is contaminating the rivers, how this contamination leads to disease, and how they can prevent so many diseases. They were really interested in what we had to say and were extremely grateful for our willingness to teach them. It was awesome. Gratifying moments such as these in which I feel useful have been relatively rare during my time here in Ecuador. It was a good day. I think we really got through to them. I´ll be teaching this same workshop to the kids in the school, Viña del Mar, in addition to a few other groups of people in the pueblo (hopefully).

I spent most of last week helping a volunteer group from England work on a few various projects in the school. Only two of the 12 of them could speak Spanish... thus I spent most of my time translating for them and the men from Estero with whom they were working. This, in itself, was not only gratifying but extremely entertaining as I have ALWAYS found the british accent to be extremely entertaining. On occasion I was unable to translate for the volunteers because I had no idea what they were saying. For example...¨Could you tell him that I was going to buy a LOLLY-ICE?¨ (Stephanie, say that in your best british-man accent.) I burst out laughing and told him that I had never heard the word lolly-ice in my life. Anywho, the volunteers painted a beautiful mural on the dining hall of the school and left 2 weeks later. I´ll try to get a picture for all you beautiful people real soon.

Confession: I, along with almost all of Ecuador, am addicted to nightly television shows-soap operas. This is what I do every night during the week in the company of about 7 grown man friends... from about 8:30 to 11:00. I wash the dishes from dinner and clean the kitchen during the commercial breaks. I´m sure this is way more than you ever wanted to know about my daily.

I´m still here and chocolate and policia

2009-07-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

Stop worrying, as I´m still alive and well here in Estero. I´m sorry I haven´t blogged in a while. I have a few legitimate excuses... although none of which I wish to relay to you all at the present time. My time on the computer is precious (and expensive) so I´ll skip to something more interesting.

I recently ventured reeeally deep into the woods to harvest cacao with a friend on mine, who we shall call Julio, as cacao season is in full swing on the coast of ecuador. Men, women and children head into the woods every morning wearing boots, carrying huge empty sacks and weilding machetes. Many carry another small tool-blade which they attach to the end of an extremely long piece of wood (´palanca´) and use to knock down the cacao from the treetops. His farm is located at the end of a 30 minute walk into the forest along the river and then about a 25 minute climb up the steepest hill I´ve ever even seen in my life. I had been to the farm a month ago to help harvest hundreds of avocados which were then sold to a vender from Guayaquil who had come to Estero solely to purchase all the avocados people could harvest. (I personally carried about 100 aguacuates in a sack with a rope hooked around my forehead from the finca, down the hill, and into the the pueblo... a feat of which I am still proud.)
My job in harvesting cacao was to collect as many ripe cacao as I could reach from the ground and then wait a safe distance away as cacao began to rain down from above. Palanca in hand, Julio climbed each of the huge cacao trees and knocked down (tumbar´ed) all of the ripe cacao. When he finished, I scurried around like a little squirrel collecting all of the cacao into large sacks. After collecting a few sacks full of cacao, we found a flat spot in the forest and made a huge pile of the beautiful, warm-colored cacao. (Ripe cacao ranges from a burnt red color to a light yellow-green). So there we sat, on top of a hill in the middle of dense forest in front of a huge pile of cacao. Julio chopped open the shells of the cacao and passed them to me so that I could then take out all of the cacao seeds, (which are processed to make the chocolate), and put them in a big sack to carry to the pueblo. Six hours later, we climbed down the hill with huge sacks of cacao on our backs, hiked back through the woods and arrived at the pueblo. The cacao was sold to a cacao collection center in Tonchigue the next day. I can´t remember the exact price, but I´ll find out. This is how one harvests cacao. This is where the chocolate you´re eating comes from. I´ll also try and find some pictures. Like this one.

UM ALSO.....

I will preface this next story by saying that I am just fine. So, the biggest, most ridiculous news I have to share is that last week I was arrested twice in ONE DAY. I realize that I will never be able to do this story justice via el internet, so most of you will have to wait until we´re face to face one fine day. But I will say that I was informed that Ecuador is in a state of ´´EMERGENCY´´ and the police are cracking down on delicuencia and personas illegales. I always carry a copy of my passport... although I had forgotten to make a copy of my new visa when I recieved it in April. Long story short... I was carried away to immigration in one police car, released after informing them I had been very ill, stopped by a different posse of policia in my route home and carried away AGAIN in a different police car. There´s more to this story which I would love to tell all of you when we next meet. There was a time in my life where I believed that I was plagued with really bad luck.

Guest Post from Stephanie

2009-06-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

This is from a G-chat with Leslie on Tuesday 6-16, at about 2pm

Leslie: hey i meant to tell you something

i wrote a report for yanapuma on a friends laptop (another peace corps volunteer) and it didn´t have the ñ key

so i forgot to change a few of the n´s to ñ´s

which means the word ANO is written all over the document instead of AÑO

and i´m pretty sure ano means anus.

Where we women wash our clothes:

2009-06-01T09:53:00.001-07:00

Becas (Scholarships)

2009-06-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

In doing away with the matriculation fee that students used to have to pay to go to school, the President of Ecuador has made education ´´free´´ for everyone. In reality, education is a cost that many families in rural areas in Ecuador cannot afford. The government does provide the 4 basic books to every student in Ecuador, in addition to a supply of food for breakfast and lunch for the kids. However, the students who attend Viña del Mar still have to buy 2 uniforms and a list of school materials that they will need throughout the year. This ´´lista´´ presents the greatest cost of attending school in Estero. Many families with multiple students in school or high-school have an extremely difficult time finding the money to pay for all of these materials.

The story changes when the kids in Estero graduate from 7th grade and head to Colegio (high school). MANY students do not continue their education in high school because they cannot afford to pay ´´pasaje´´ which is the daily cost of traveling to and from school. So, in addition to the school uniforms and multiple lists for the different classes in high school, the families now have to find at least $1 a day for pasaje. For the kids in families whose only monthly income IS $30 given to them by the government, Colegio becomes unattainable.

This year, Yanapuma was able to give $250 scholarships to 7 students in Estero who were headed to, or were already in, Colegio. One of my biggest responsibilies in Estero is monitoring the scholarship money, the progress, and the overall well being of these 7 students. Yanapuma wants to be really involved in their entire educational experience, and for this reason, we will be working with the Director and many of their professoras in the high school as well. The general idea is that Yanapuma can continue renewing these scholarships for these 7 students, in addition to awarding more scholarships to other students in the following years.

Here are 5 of the 7 scholarship students. From left to right, Vladimir, Jira, Wendy, Eulalia and Jean Carlos.
These kids are pretty great.

More on trash...

2009-06-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

I was informed a few days ago that the men who volunteer to collect the trash in the community (with use of the wagon and mule) have stopped carrying the trash to the large bins that used to be on a hill above the community. These bins, along with many other things in and around the community, have been destroyed by the company that is currently building-paving the road that carries people to and from Estero. Instead, the men have decided to dump all of the trash in a specific location in the forest which is located right beside one of the two rivers that supply water to the town. SEE ABOVE.

Viña del Mar

2009-04-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

So, I´m currently the 4th grade teacher at Viña del Mar, the elementary school in Estero de Plátano. In an attempt to improve the overall quality of education provided throughout the country, the government of Ecuador has started reviewing the cualifications of all of the teachers in every school and high school throughout the country. Both the 4th and the 5th grade teachers of Viña del Mar are still being reviewed, and therefore Katy and I have stepped in as their replacements... as if we (being non-teachers and non-native spanish speakers) are more qualified than those same teachers under review. However, I find it encouraging that the government has taken such an interest in the quality of education given. At least they´re doing something.

Viña del Mar is located on a small cliff overlooking the ocean on the north side of Estero de Plátano. There are 5 classrooms, 7 grades, a Director-Professor, 3 teachers, 2 volunteers, and almost 100 students. The students arrive at 8AM, get into formation, and spend the first 30 minutes of the day eating a small breakfast (provided by the government). After an hour and a half of class, they leave for a 30 minute recess which usually includes eating more snacks and playing soccer or hopscotch in the school yard. Class resumes at 10:30 and lasts until around noon, when the students are served lunch and then released to their houses for the day. On a GOOD day, the kids are actually IN the classrooms for about 3 hours.

I probably spend about an hour each day yelling at the rowdy gang of boys wrestling, screaming or intimdating frogs in the back of the classroom. I realize that the students behave differently with me than they do with other professors, and I often have to bring in another professor or the director into my classroom just to SCARE a few of them into behaving. Many of them have very little respect for me as an authority figure because I first became their playmate outside of school. That being said, I still feel like the overall quality of education could be further improved if the students were actually in the classroom for more than 3 hours a day. Which brings me to my NEXT slide.

The first day I taught class in Viña del Mar this year, I taught both the 4th and 5th grade together, as the Director was unable to teach and Katy had to cover his class of 6th and 7th graders. In this classroom, of about 50 8-12 year olds, I quickly realized that more than a few of the students could not read or write. At first I thought they were just being difficult and were choosing not to write the assignment until a few of their classmates informed me that ´´el no puede´´ (he can´t). These kids have been in school for almost 4 years and still haven´t learned how to read or write. Their previous teachers have sent them onto the next grade, for multiple years, knowing that they were behind... knowing that they were not ready. Why. And, how do I, as a professor, teach Language and Social Studies and Science to a classroom full of 4th graders when a few of them can´t even write their own names?

Katy and I have decided to start an after-school literacy program. With the help of the professors and the Director of the school, we´re going to identify all of the students in 3rd-5th grade who are extremely behind in reading and writing. I also want to inform and try to involve each of their parents (some of whom are illiterate) in the process or to at least gain their support and encouragment for their children. Katy and I are going to sit down with each of the students for at least an hour after school a few days a week and give them the time and attention they need and deserve.

I honestly have no idea how long it takes, or exactly HOW, to teach a small human how to read or write. I may be naive in thinking that a few hours a week can actually make a difference. Who taught us how to read? And how?? I specifically remember reading little yellow books with my mom or my grandma in our living room every day after school... but I can´t remember how old I was or what I was busy doing in school at the time.

On the second day of school, the 4th graders of Viña del Mar spent the day reviewing (or learning) the Alphabet.

My Estero de Plátano Limpio

2009-03-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

The Municipio de Muisne is the local governing body of all of the communities in this area, including Estero de Plátano. I would rather not rant about the blatant corruption that IS the Municipio or the severe deficiencies in basic services and rights that should be granted to all of the people in every community by their government. Instead, aside from an incomplete and short-lived trash management program that stopped working as soon as it began, the Municipio has taken an entirely hands-off approach to the problems faced by Estero de Platanians.

A lot of the work that my compañeros from Yanapuma and I have been doing these past few months could be generally considered as community organizing. We are here to be ´facilitators´. We´re here to help the people of Estero organize themselves and fight for their basic rights. One of which includes a government-run system of trash pick-up and removal from the community. As of right now, people in the community are forced to either burn their trash or dump it into the river, onto the beach or in ´campo abierto´ (open land).

Almost a year ago, the Municipio created a trash program to deal with the issue and educate the pueblo about the differences between organic and inorganic waste. Trash bins were sold (for 10$ a piece) to the individual families that could afford them and a DONKEY+WAGON were purchased to collect the trash around the community and carry it up a hill to a large box. SERIOUSLY. This system of trash pick-up rarely takes place, the donkey is used for other purposes and the large box has been full for months. What this innovative trash program lacked was continued education/follow-up in addition to an actual TRUCK to pick up the trash from the large box and remove it from the community.

The entire community is polluted. Not only because it is an accepted cultural habit to throw out wrappers, bottles and other pieces of trash into the community and out of windows, but because there is no legitimate trash recollection system. Yanapuma has written a formal letter/solicitud to the Municipio, which is governed by the self proclaimed ¨The Man¨ (a.k.a Mayor), explaining the issue and asking for a regular trash pick-up system complete with an trash truck. We´re also treating it as a petition, and myself, along with many people from Estero, will be going to all of the other communities in the area to speak to them about the lettter and to collect both support and signatures. (This is the way things work here. People write solicitudes for EVERYthing.) We´re also trying to get the media involved in the issue, as the general election for mayor is coming up in mid-April.

Puras Mujeres

2009-03-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I lack the words (and the time) to adequately describe the prevalent gender inequalities and machismo that greatly affect many, if not all, aspects of the culture in which I have become immersed. The gender roles are clearly defined from birth and the children accept and fill these roles as soon as they are physically able. Women wash clothes, cook, have babies, and care for their children. Men work in the farms, fish, construct buildings and usually, drink. Girls as young as 7 years old are washing clothes for their entire families and 12-year old boys are carrying machetes and wearing boots out into the forest to harvest platano or to help cut down trees for a local business. They’re all forced to grow up fast and take on the same daily tasks and fill the same gender roles shared by their parents and grandparents and great grandparents. I’m always surprised to discover the real ages of both the males and the females in the community because they all seem and act much older than they really are. For many kids, the teenage years are entirely lost to parenthood. I was informed by my 10 year old host-brother a while ago that I was still considered a ¨niña¨ (girl) because I haven’t had kids yet. Females are only considered ¨mujeres¨ (women) once they have had children.

I realize that all of this is a well known aspect of Latin American culture, but I’m here now. Everyday I look into the faces of seemingly hopeless, uninspired and exhausted women and I don’t know how to help. I had an especially frustrating day last week that left me generally (and hopefully temporarily) disheartened and personally quiet.

1. I was woken up a few times during the night by a little commotion and light coming from the room adjacent to mine. When I woke up the next morning, I was informed by my host-mom that Katy, the girlfriend of my host brother, was going to have her baby. The mid-wife of the community stayed with Katy until she had to be taken away in an ambulance, due to complications with the birth and the poor health of the mother. Katy is 15 years old. The father of the baby, my host-brother, chose not to accompany his fragile girlfriend to the hospital. Men don’t do that. He is 25 years old.

2. I spent the rest of that morning trekking around Estero de Platano with Katy, my Peace Corps volunteer compañera and Señora Elisa, a strong female leader in the community, inviting all women to the first Women´s Group meeting in the community. We chatted with more than 50 women about the importance of uniting all the women and of finally establishing a women’s group to DO something together… other than washing clothes and cooking. A few of the women seemed interested, said they would attend, and even signed their names on a list we were creating to appear more official. The majority, however, stared at us with blank faces or amused us with an apathetic, disinterested ´´yeah´´. A few of husbands pretended as if we were addressing them and answered on behalf of their women. Another woman was just completely honest with us and explained that her husband would be angry if she attended a women’s meeting.

* Of the plus 50+ women we personally invited to the meeting, 3 showed up.

3. Because the women of my household had left for the hospital, Katy’s sister came over to our house to cook lunch for the rest of my family. While I was sitting at the table playing UNO with my little host-brother and chatting with Katy’s sister, her older husband walks into the house and begins yelling at her. It’s rare for men to yell at their wives in front of me, but on this day, he didn’t seem to mind my presence. He was yelling at her for cooking lunch in our house, instead of in his house, when she had actually cooked enough for both families. He ordered her to ¨run¨ to the house and cook him more food immediately, after she informed him again that there was plenty of food right in front of him. He kept yelling at her as she sat there calmly holding their 1-year old child. She eventually stood up and walked slowly out of my house. She’s 19 years old.

4. Later that day we had our Thursday afternoon youth group session. Katy, the PC volunteer, and I had coincidentally planned a lesson on gender roles, stereotypes, and discrimination… 3 words that were foreign to the ears of our young friends. After explaining their respective definitions, giving examples, and soliciting questions from the classroom of wide-eyed (primarily female) youths, we began an activity. We split them up into small groups and asked them to complete the following sentences as many times as they could…

- Yo estoy contenta de ser mujer porque…
(- I’m happy to be a woman because…)

- Si fuera un hombre, yo….
(- If I was a man, I ….)

I wish I had interesting, creative answers to relay. No one could answer the first sentence and the answers for the second sentence were few. A few groups quietly said that if they were men they would work in the finca (farm), play futbol, or fish. Katy and I shared our lists with the girls as well, just give them a different perspective and new ideas. (If you know me, you can just imagine what my list of answers consisted of... coming from my childhood of hating dresses, playing sports, and listening to NoDoubt one too many times.)
Every class with the youth group ends with Katy and I trying to explain to the kids why we´re there, why we´re talking to them about themes such as gender roles and stereotypes and why we care so much about their future. ¨Los estereotipos pueden limitar nuestros sueños y expectativas¨. (Stereotypes can limit our dreams and expectations.)
I usually leave frustrated, feeling as though I still didn´t get through to them. I always cling to the hope that we at least made them THINK about something else, or at least think in a different way about themselves or their future.

Conclusion: I blame machismo, the long history of gender inequality, poverty, domestic violence and the lack of sexual education and/or basic education.

This is one reason why I´m still in Ecuador.

2009-03-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

The community seems to gravitate toward the beach in the late afternoon to play soccer, or swim, or go for a walk or just sit and be. Everyday the sunset is spectacular and unique.

On an unrelated note, I ate sauteed pig skin and potatoes for lunch yesterday followed by ´´tripa´´ or cow intestines for dinner.

Trophey Muñecas

2009-03-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

My host brother, Carlos, and I had an extensive chat one night about a week ago about many many things acerca de Estero de Platano... one of which was the ´´muñeca´´ that was to be killed the next morning. At that moment Carlos was making a list of all of the men who were on a specific soccer team a few years ago... and used the list to explain to me why there was going to be a slaughter the next day. WHAT. (Sometimes I have no idea what people are talking about because so much can be lost in translation and because sometimes the stories they tell are just wild.)

It turns out that a few years ago Estero de Plátano had an unbeatable men´s soccer team. They were SO unbeatable that they won the Men´s League Championship in the area, the prize for which was a cow. The cow, however, was just a small calf a few years ago. So, when I walked out of my house the next morning I saw a very large crowd of men standing around a very large, caramel colored cow laying on a few planks of wood. When I arrived, my host-mom´s brother was smiling and holding a hoof that he had just sawed off with his machete. So as to spare all of you the details of the slaughter, I´ll just say that for the rest of the afternoon I passed many soccer players carring huge bags or plates full of meat back to their houses. I, along with many many people in Estero, ate carne frescita (fresh meat) that night for dinner.

Estoy aqui!

2009-03-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

I can´t even begin to think about knowing how to thank all of my wonderful friends for all of their support NOR how to start telling all of you about the crazy adventures I´ve had here in Estero de Platano. BUT, this is me trying!

A little background: So what on earth have I been doing here since October, 2008?
Many of my days have been spent at the elementary school in Estero, que se llama Viña del Mar, which is situated on a small cliff overlooking the ocean. The school is K through 7th grade and I found myself teaching just about every subject (from English to Mathematics to Spanish Language) to almost all of the different grades. Due to the poor attendence rate of a few of the professors, I became the weekly substitute teacher. I also spent a few days a week going to Colegio in Galera (the high school in the neighboring community) to teach Environmental classes to 8th, 9th, and 10th graders. For World AIDS Day-Week, I taught a few basic HIV-AIDS education classes to all of the students in Colegio and the 6th and 7th graders in Estero... which were probably the most rewarding school days I´ve had here in Ecuador.

The school year ended in early February and I was honored to place the caps and gowns on the graduating students (7th graders) who I taught in Viña del Mar and who have become a few of my closest friends in Estero. One of the biggest obstacles the students face in continuing their education is being able to pay for ´´pasaje´´ which is the cost of the bus ride to the high school in the neighboring community of Galera. Yanapuma was able to raise enough money to give 6 scholarships to high school students in the area and I´ve been spending the past few days handing out the applications to the students who really want to continue studying.

We finished a community-wide questionnaire in February which assessed the general health, access to health care, sanitation practices, economic situation and agricultural practices of each household in Estero. In groups of 3 or 4, we spent an entire weekend trekking to every house in Estero to explain who we were, what we were doing, and then proceeded to ask a series of personal questions to the heads of each household. It was an awesome and exhausting experience and it gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of really cool people in the community that I probably wouldn´t have met otherwise. OOH, I have to run. The Ranchera waits for no one. Volveré!

So, where in the world IS Leslie Arney?

2009-01-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

We knew she was elusive, we knew she could go incognito and not be heard from for weeks... but this is getting rediculous.

Truth be told, our loving and beloved little Leslie has embarked on a purpose-finding, community-serving, world-changing adventure.

The purpose of this site is to give you all (you could be a complete stranger for all I know) a glimpse into her adventure, and a chance to help her cause. We hope to inspire and give you those warm fuzzies your grandma warns you about.

Aaron and I had the pleasure of visiting Leslie in Estero de Platano (Esmeraldas, Ecuador), the small village where she has been volunteering since September. She works with an organization called Yanapuma(http://www.yanapuma.org/en/index.phpp), which is a sustainable development non-profit based in Ecuador.

The amazing and encouraging thing about Yanapuma and Leslie's task, is that they take a totally different approach than most development organizations. How many times have we all heard of first world do-gooders, with all good intentions, implement development projects in the developing world, only to have them fail and leave the people and environment of those communities no better and sometimes worse off. Not to mention blow money that could have been used much more efficiently and effectively elsewhere.

BUT! Yanapuma has employed Leslie to become a part of Estero de Platano, to understand the dynamics, desires, and needs of this community, so that they can implement real change that comes from the people. Her mission, which she chose to accept, is (as you may have heard her say) to "hang out." She teaches school, holds the occasional meeting with leadership groups in the village, and most importantly, gets to know the people. This ensures that preconcieved ideas of what we think Estero needs is erased, and then real help can happen.

For all of us that know Leslie, we can expect that everyone in Estero de Platano adores her, and it is quickly becoming her home. While she intended to return to the states in January 2009, she's realized that staying a little bit longer makes Yanapuma's chances of starting long-term grassroots sustainable development in Estero so much better.

As much as Leslie wants that to happen, Aaron and I want to happen even more. There is no better person in the world than Leslie to open her heart and mind to understand the needs of Estero, to gain the trust and love of the people there to motivate them, and then work her ass off to accomplish whatever projects the community decides to move forward with.

Yanapuma is in the process of prioritizing possible projects for Estero, based on Leslie's experiences there. Soon, things are going to be kicking off.

BUT THERES A PROBLEM - Leslie either has to return to the US when her visa runs (April) out or when her money runs out (definitely sooner than April). At a pivotal point in Yanapuma's efforts in Estero, Leslie leaving before a project really gets going would be crippling to the process.

SO - let's do what we can to make sure that Estero has a fighting chance. KEEP LESLIE IN ECUADOR. $8 buys her another day there, and enough days buys one giant step for sustainable development. Click the link to the right and spare some change, sir. It's going to mean a lot to her and to a lot of other people.

Oh, and before you do - browse these pictures.