Week 11: The Outsider Effect

Tuesday, November 13 – Monday, November 19
Happy Thanksgiving everybody! While I’m jealous of all the feasting I’ll be missing out of, I’m happy to say that the MSIDers will be celebrating Thanksgiving on our own. On Thursday, nearly everybody will return to Quito from their internship sites to give thanks to everything we have been able to learn and experience here in Ecuador! I’ll be sure to send my leftovers back to you. It’s ironic that as one of the most family-orientated and inclusive America Holidays approaches, I have probably never felt so alone in my life. I realize that statement will probably be misinterpreted, so allow me to explain myself…

In my first posting in Yunguilla, I briefly wrote about my feelings of resistance and even rejection by a tight-knit community in a completely different culture. Now I have surpassed that stage of acclamation by building some quality relationships through sharing the work day together, living together, or camping together (see pictures below). So why the loneliness, you ask? Actually, what I speak of is not really loneliness, but more of unfulfillment. Going off the relationships I have built in the past, in this stage of the process I am accustomed to giving and gaining a fair amount of trust and confidence.

Instead, what I’ve encountered is a subtle sense of superiority by my work partners, an unwelcoming of my ideas, a difference of treatment from one-on-one situations to large group situations, and to top everything off, a new family that couldn’t be more unfit for my situation.

Starting with the work situation, things have not gone the way I anticipated them going before I arrived in Yunguilla. Granted, I really had no idea of what I would be doing, but at least I was told that I would be able to design my own work plan. Not really so. Every day, on the other hand, is planned out from start to finish, although the plan usually changes at the beginning of the day. And while weeding and planting gardens, building trails, and clearing out grass with the machete is warmly reminiscent of my childhood on a farm, it is not exactly the academically rich and developing work I was hoping for.

Moreover, at times I have felt slightly humiliated in my work. I really have no experience working with machete or building paths with a hoe. Instead of immediately teaching me the technique by our 20-year old supervisor, I will be allowed to struggle for a while, then quickly taught the style and expected to pick it up perfectly right away. More in a joking sense than in a serious one, but still a bit uncomfortable.

In Yunguilla, like most of the Ecuadorian countryside, they have a certain way of doing things and seem scared or resistant to change. My working partner Emily and I have run into this on different occasions. We really are never asked for our opinion on work related manners, and trying to interject a suggestion is usually met with “but this is the way we’ve always done it.” For example, Emily was helping to make envelopes out of recycled paper one day when she realized the technique was inefficient and was causing the envelopes to be misshaped. When she mentioned a simple modification that would have fixed the problem, she was rejected with the aforementioned response. It is especially frustrating since both of us have experience and knowledge that could be of use to the community- more so in the area of management and coordination that in agriculture- yet we have not even been approached about what skills we might have to offer. However, I still can say that I have enjoyed working outside and taking a break from the grind of an office.

The social phenomenon of Yunguilla is something I have yet to understand. I feel like I have developed some good friendships with members of the community- most of them my age- though working together, playing cards, camping, etc. Yet I will encounter these same people on the weekends down on the soccer field or the volleyball courts, this time in a larger, tight-night group of Yunguillans, and my presence is only acknowledged with a quick hello and maybe a quick joke. I’ll express my interest in playing volleyball but won’t be invited into a game because they don’t think I can play, even though I’ve never been given the chance.

On top of all this, I found myself moving to a new family on Sunday the 18th. It’s not that I didn’t like my old family; in fact I miss them already. The thing is that Yunguilla typically moves their volunteers to a new family every 3 weeks so they can become more familiar with the entire community. I, too, was excited about this opportunity, yet it created a bit of an awkward situation with my old family because I really could have decided to stay with them for the rest of my time.

My new family, from the couple days I have spend with them, is quite friendly yet I find it hard to feel at home. It is an older couple in their 70’s living solo and my mom is short of hearing while my dad is hard to understand due to his absence of teeth. While they seem to try hard to accommodate me, I find it very lonely when the conversation is so hard to come by.

I’m hoping a 4-day weekend away from Yuguilla will give me some renewed energy and perspective in closing out this journey.