Tech Trip

Jungle Soccer in Puerto Quito, Nutrition Charla con Mothers in Santo Domingo

Limbo among PCTs, Leaf parasol

SANTA DOMINGO

Recently we took a week long tech trip that lasted through the week of 6/27/2011. On our trip we practiced giving health charlas in various locations and practiced doing encuestas as well. We travelled to Santo Domingo, which I wasn’t a huge fan of since it was extremely humid, and it was the first time I had ever seen an entire city covered in moss and mold. The air was thick with black suet. It reminded me of many places I had visited in the past in Central America since it was an explosion of sensory information. Hundreds of people in the streets, tons of tiendas selling the same things, and each had their own boombox playing some reggaeton/salsa mix. It was a lot to take in. However, it was extremely interesting. We ate in a local market which was awesome, although I was a bit worried about eating the fish…I gave it a shot. It was delicious even though I had no idea what it was/or if the water was clean to make it. I didn’t get diarrhea so I guess it was. There was a great avena/ naranjilla bebida that was delicious, I didn’t know that it was avena/naranjilla until I asked, and in great fashion the lady serving us asked if I liked it and wanted another cup free of charge. I gladly accepted.

Puerto Quito Maldonado

This was our next stop on our tech trip to give some more charlas, and meet up with a volunteer who was finishing up her two years there. It was a pretty amazing site. It was gorgeous and had all the basic amenities. Through our time there the town had a festival. We met the mayor in the town as well as checked out an aerobics class that one of the volunteers was hosting every night 5 days a week. It was awesome to see that was one of her secondary projects. The experience really stuck home the variability among sites here in Ecuador.

Puerto Quito

The end of the week we spent in a finca outside of the small town of Puerto Quito. It was a beautiful set of land, where they had pigs, cows, bunnies, ginni pigs and just about every fruit and vegetable you could think out. There we learned how to harvest Bananas, milk cows, and majority of the processes that go into maintaining a finca. We also learned of the many the issues that fincas face in Ecuador. However, the finca were we staying at did a good job of not becoming a part of the monocrop craze, which apparently is a huge problem here. Many fincas mono crop and if a plague comes that targets that specific crop they lose their main, if not only, source of income.