A rose by another name

Two other volunteers and I spent today working in a rose plantation. Rose production is one of the biggest industries here because of the ideal, regular climate but its kinda rocking the culture in a lot of ways. Heres the three main complaints:

1) Chemicals. To get huge roses, they use huge doses of fertilizer and pesticides which some apply at night and others just rotate greenhouses while folks are doing the fumigation thing. Its especially nasty because of the long hours folks work, theres no way to avoid a huge exposure to these toxins. Small anecdote - a flower plantation opened just up the hill from my host familys farm. Not a problem, except for they recommended feeding the animals plants that had been treated with all of these chemicals because it would make the animals larger (more meat) and produce more milk. This was true, but it was also true that after eating this stuff for a while, the milk and meat from these animals tasted like the toxins from the plantation. Not just funny, but tasted exactly like the chemicals. High dose. Creepy.

2) Water. These plantations use huge amounts of water. The U.S. and a lot of Western countries are strangely lucky to have as great of access to water as we have but the rest of the world isnt. So when you have a gravity-based irrigation system when water flows down the hill from farm to farm, with the flower plantations at the top of the hill, theyre in charge as to who gets water, how much and when. We couldnt water our tree saplings for a couple of days because even with a resevoir, the flow to refill the resevoir had been stopped. Also, these guys pay the same amount as community members for water access - something like a couple of dollars every three months. Kinda crappy when considering what theyre costing the communites.

3) Community breakdown. All communities in the campo (the country) require mingas or community work every so often (usually once every couple of weeks) for communal farming, irrigation maintenance etc. They also require weekly meetings to cover important issues. If a community member cant make it and cant find a replacement, they have to pay a fine. So what happens is all of these folks with flower jobs would much rather work in the plantations for those hours and pay a fine than miss work. So now lots of community stuff gets left by the wayside, and some councils have completely fallen apart because of lack of attendance.

Anyway, we worked in one of these places for a day and that was plenty. We got free lunch and a polite explanation of how every thing works and the benefits the workers get on top of hourly wage (which is crappy by the way). But during lunch we talked to some of the folks working there and everyone seemed slightly ashamed of working there, none of their families wanted them there. Just had a creepy vibe.

Anyway, this is where lots of flowers come from so maybe a homemade card or potted plant is a better gift for next time?

Chicha!

So theyve got this traditional drink here called chicha. And for those of you who havent heard of it, its fermented corn juice and in different places they add some other ingredients for variety. Its actually yellow, but the picture at the right is of a woman from peru who has added strawberries.

I know what youre thinking - fermented corn juice, how bad could that be? We drink fermented malted barley all the time. Oh no, they start the fermentation process by chewing the corn kernels and then spit into big buckets.

Everybody has this stuff and they keep it in all sorts of containers, from huge 10 gallon gas cans to fmall sand pails for distribution. It doesnt seem to ever run out and theyve been drinking it all day straight for the last 3 days.

For me its kinda fun like gambling to have a sip. Theyre so pushy, they know that I probably shouldnt drink it and once they find that out they always back off but someone new always wanders in that doesnt know the rules and insists on my having some.

Great stuff.

A few cultural notes

So I was trying to think on the bus ride in to Cayambe this morning what would be the best way to incorporate some of the smaller things that make this place different and fun, but there seemed to be enough to stand on their own. Here goes -

For some reason whining never becomes unpopular here. All the women use this strange whiney voice whenever they have the groups attention and something is slightly wrong or they need a favor. Its kinda cute, but also pretty ridiculous. Last night I sat at my host grandmothers house and a bunch of the sisters just sat around whining for something like 4 hours. Remarkable!

Drinking is frequent but in small doeses during the fiesta season. Its hard to explain. Everyone here has a pretty low tolerance, but its custom to drink loads of this stuff called chicha (see entry on chicha) - but only sips at a time. And in the middle of these fiestas, theres tons of folks walking around with bottles of liquor that they pour in those little cups they have at the dentists office for rinsing out your mouth. No where near full shots. The funny thing is that its the job of the person giving out the drinks to be unbelievably pushy - and ive seen pushy. Its customary to have a bit of a discussion back and forth about why you should or shouldnt drink and then at the end you can at least make the person giving the drink suffer a bit by insisting that they drink first. What fun.

Everythings smaller. Okay, Im big. Ill admit that. But its become difficult a couple of times. Ive hit my head on the cielings of stores, buses, bathrooms, guinea pig stables and random overhanging poles. Legroom is a problem with legroom too. There was one bathroom in Quito that I couldnt figure out how anyone could have sat the correct way on these things. Honestly, there couldnt have been more than 4 inches between the edge of the seat and the wall. So, when in ecuador...

Everyone loves the 80s. I didnt bring an iPod because i thought it might be a bit more immersive to listen to their music. But mostly theyve just managed to pick the worst of our dark past and broadcast it 24/7 across the nation.

Every Friday theres a huge line outside every bank of all the workers from the flower plantations. Its an interesting cross section of all the folks that work in these horrible places. Will write more about these things.