2013-01-15
It begins before the rise of the sun, before the first cry of the rooster. They leave their clay hut compounds and begin a steady trickle onto la route nationale. Their destination- jurato- Tomboronkoto’s gold mine. The diverse crowd steps together- an old man who parts with nostalgia for the days when this very hour...
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2013-01-15
People call me by many different names here. I originally introduced myself as “Joshua” to everyone I met, but I soon learned that the “ua” part was difficult to pronounce for some locals. Eventually I started telling people to call me “Josh”, but ending on the “sh” sound was hard for a lot of people...
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2013-01-14
When it comes to hygiene, many of us Fellows find it difficult to feel and stay clean throughout the day. I don’t mean to call Ecuador a “dirty” country, but it’s easy get dirty here. Especially for me, staying clean is quite a difficult task. That’s because my apprenticeship at Fundación UTOPIA exemplifies dirtiness. Every two weeks we hold...
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2013-01-14
Although I left the charming town of Capão over three months ago, I never uploaded the video I made of the time I spent there and the people that I met. I don’t take many pictures where I’m living now, so here is something to fill the void in my blog posts, and an update...
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2013-01-09
I remember the buzz about cities. In Ted Talks and magazine articles, people were raving about the efficiency of cities because, according to some grandiose regressions, the larger a city gets the more productive it becomes per capita. Megacities were claimed the future of mankind. I was not impressed. I lived in a mid-sized city...
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2013-01-09
Bugs. Of shapes and sizes I didn’t couldn’t have imagined to be biologically possible. This is my first memory of my village. It was reaching dusk as I sat down on a mat in this unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers, when the hordes appeared. Cockroaches scurried from cracks in cement; beetles dug themselves out of the sand, and oddly...
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7 am wake up! Take a nice cold shower to get the heart pumping. (Side note I have not had a hot shower since I left the states) Make some breakfast “caffe de amanha” which usually consist of a fruit salad, cheese sandwich and one scramble egg. Sometimes in the morning, if there is time my host mother and...
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