I glanced out the window as we drove through my site, dismally eyeing the place that was to be my home for the next two years.
“And here is where the women work,” my guide said as we idled through the town, pointing my attention to a house with people sitting outside. One person, appearing seemingly un-Ecuadorian in a long skirt, tank top, dreaded hair, looked up as we slowed down to pass.
“Who is that?” I asked innocently, even as I could feel the tension rise in my body.
“Oh, she’s a volunteer.”
Calm down Jeanette, you’re not the only person here in Ecuador. “A volunteer?” I was curious. I was afraid. Panic began to seep through my veins. I visualized this dreaded hippy grabbing my hopes at being the only gringa in my site and ripping them into a million different little pieces. I told myself to stop being irrational. I didn’t know what I was feeling. “How long is she here for?”
“Oh, maybe a year or two,” replied my guide. “I don’t know exactly, but she’s been here a long time.”
Let me preface this by saying that on the first day of my site visit, I first was to go to my counterpart organization’s office in Quito, where I would have a tour, meet the office, and then, as I had been told, someone would personally drive me out to Marianitas. When I arrived in the office that day, I was told to sit down and wait with these other gringos. Then, we were all given a very quick tour and I was piled into a car with 4 other different ‘volunteers’ for my ‘personal’ trip out to my site. When it dawned on me that I would be sharing by site with a regular influx of volunteers from three different organizations, I just wanted to scream, “I AM A PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER!!! I AM DIFFERENT!!! I AM SPECIAL!!! PLEASE RECOGNIZE THAT!!!”
As it was later revealed, the girl sitting outside the workshop was not a permanent volunteer. The women’s group in my village has a volunteer program - part of the new volun-tourism movement. It’s eco-tourism, in the full sense of the word - people pay to live with a family and work in the workshop or organic garden for anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. It’s actually a really cool program.
In my first three months in my site, there was always at least one other gringa in Santa Marianitas. At the height of that first summer, there were 9 at the same time. Let me just say right now I can be very competitive, extremely jealous, and I am not very good at sharing. A fault of mine is that I had never really considered these faults. So the thought of sharing my site, my village, populated by 167 people, was completely incomprehensible to me. I didn’t want to share. The reason I joined Peace Corps was to escape from western civilization. I wanted to be doing something different, not the same thing as a bunch of other people. That’s where your perspective gets skewed - compared to everyone in the states, joining the Peace Corps or leaving for a few months to volunteer is rare. Let’s say we each have about 5% of our friends who would or have done something similar to Peace Corps. Proportionally, in Marianitas, literally every other foreigner I met was doing something extremely similar to me - that’s 99% of my new people I met, making me just another one of the crowd. And to my Ecuadorian friends, I was afraid of being thrown into the same category as everyone else who came to the village to ‘volunteer.’ “Oh, she’s just another volunteer.” I didn’t want to be just another volunteer. I wanted to be their volunteer.
At first it became a competition. A cold war of sorts, the volunteers verses me. Who is more integrated? Who knows more about the people? I was invited to make empanadas in Rocio’s house. More kids go to her house after school. I was invited to play volí, for money. She tells me when someone asks, “¿Estás ensenada?” they don’t want to know if I’m going to be teaching. I tell her the guy she’s been taking long walks alone with has a pregnant girlfriend living in Quito. She comes back by informing me Nely is really Cecilia’s aunt, a surprising fact that shouldn’t have surprised me, since there only are 167 people here and through blood or marriage, everyone is related. After awhile, the kids all know my name while they are still running after her calling, “Gringa, Gringa.” Set and match.
Then, there was the volunteer who came with toothbrushes. Let me premise this by saying I have an entire bag of toothbrushes along with a planned charla about good teeth-brushing habits - I had not given it yet as I was waiting for classes to start. First, I heard the rumor from one of the kids. “This gringa has a bunch of toothbrushes and she’s going to give them to us tomorrow.” Shoot. If I give an impromptu charla this afternoon, I win, but then the kids will be bombarded with toothbrushes. If I wait and give my toothbrushes out later, I’m copying her. But if I wait a really really long time, and am really patient, they may forget and then think me completely original. The one thing I do have on my side is time. I decide to wait. Two months go by and another volunteer shows up with yet another bag chocked full of toothbrushes. Head held high, I conceded gracefully, as I opened up one of my toothbrushes and placed it next to my sink.
Norma, the president of the women’s group, sensed my need to feel special. One day, she asked me to ‘take care of her volunteers by showing them the way to the river and making sure none of them drown.’ Boy did I feel important. It was like child-psych with pre-school children, getting everyone to play nicely by giving one ’special’ responsibilities. Somehow, I think she knew what I was feeling and it was her way of reaching out to me.
For awhile, I took up the method of camouflage, trying to blend in; convinced that I could convince foreigners I was just another Santa Marianitan. Once my Spanish had improved, I tried to pretend I didn’t know English, but that only fooled a few people into thinking I was French. I started leaving the house wearing my yoga pants and t-shirts, until a friend told me I always looked like I was wearing pajamas. I pointed out to her that she had on yoga pants too. She felt my pants and said, yes, but yours are made with a thinner fabric, more like pajamas. After awhile, I realized this was making me look cold, unfriendly, and too lazy to change out of my pajamas, not more Ecuadorian.
Before long, every time a new volunteer would arrive, my Ecuadorian friends would pump me for information. Where was she from? Was she nice? They saw her playing with kids or walking across the futbol field. She had been spotted talking to Jorge, so they wanted to know if she had a crush on him. She was white, I was white, and so I must know something about her, right? I began to realize that in the eyes of my close friends, I had become one of them - they felt comfortable asking me about the newcomers in the village. We could sit and discuss how one gringa said she liked one of my friend’s daughters more than the other. We could laugh at the group of teenagers who were all wearing shorts and tank tops, and how we knew by the afternoon they would be covered in bug bites. Or how one girl went for a walk and was found lost on top of the mountain right before sunset. “Boy she’s tall,” the conversation would go.
Over time, I have come to accept that my Peace Corps experience will be one which is spotted a variety of traveling foreigners. I’m friendly with the volunteers now, inviting them to my house for Scrabble, offering my skills as a guide-book for those who inquire. I have learned to set aside my jealousy and competitiveness. It can still be really irritating when someone wants to always make casual conversation in English, talking about how awesome their trip is/has been/or is going to be. It forces me into the uncomfortable situation of one, listening to them talk about how awesome their trip is/has been/or is going to be and two, speaking English in front of my Ecuadorian friends, making them feel isolated and uncomfortable. But I try because I know they might be feeling lonely or are just reaching out to something familiar in an unfamiliar place. I realized that the people who come to volunteer in Marianitas all have good intentions - and in a way, are just trying to do exactly what I’m doing, only a less extreme version of it. We are all here for similar reasons, to give back, learn a new language, and experience something new. I’ve even managed to make some really good friends that I still keep in touch with - even for me it can be nice to speak English or confide with someone who just gets what I’m talking about. Granted, it’s still sometimes hard to sit still when they talk about their shock of seeing a family of four on a motorcycle or express their amazement that such things as cock fights are a huge source of entertainment. Or not laugh when one volunteer tells me it’s so exciting to see the pet pigs roaming around freely, and when I inform her pigs are, in fact, not pets but food, watch her face drop as if a bully has just stolen her lollipop and her response, “Do they eat their pet chickens too?”
At this point, I have made my lasting friendships in Marianitas. All 167 residents know I’m a different sort of volunteer, and that I’m here for good, or at least another nine months. They will probably remember my name and hopefully will carry on some of the projects I’ve tried to start. Most of the volunteers who come to Marianitas are really good people, it’s the type of program that I may end up doing in the future. One thing is for sure, in the words of Roger Lurie, right now, I am so thankful that I am here in Ecuador as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
