In the betrayal of his love he awakened
To face a world of cold reality
And a look in the eyes of the hungry
Awakened him to what he could do
If you want to know what it's like to be poor, join the Peace Corps. For the first time in my life, I'm feeling somewhat like a pauper.
Living on $7.00 a day is not easy, but it's the reality of the vast majority of rural Ecuadorians.
Little by little, I've been learning how to cope with such minimal economic resources. For example, there are now a number of luxuries which I have agreed to forego -- beer, a refrigerator, a T.V., nice clothes, haircuts, and restaurants. And everyday, I log exactly the amount of money I've spent, down to the last cent. At the end of each month, I see if I'm in the red or in the black. So far, I've been in the black by about $10.00 a month. There are good days, when I'll only spend maybe $0.50, but when I travel 2.5 hours to do internet, I usually end up blowing two day's salary.
My clothes are quickly becoming a beat up mess. They're stained and worn from so much work in the farms and in the rainforest. I still haven't learned how to wash my clothes very well on my wooden washing machine. My underwear have all these black spots on them. The neighbors say it's a kind of fungus.
Oh, occasionally I'll splurge and treat myself to a $1.50 lunch at the Chinese restaurant. Or I might buy an expensive $0.65 ice-cream. But most of the time, it's very tight living. As a result, I've become quite adept at receiving free food from the neighbors.
In fact, just last weekend, the village mayor and I traveled to another village to do an inspection on a tree planting project. The participants in the project own quite a large farm with many different crops. As the village mayor and I were crossing an Amazon tributary in a canoe, to get to the farm, she whispered to me,"Let's see if we can sweet talk this guy into giving us some corn."
After conducting the inspection and confirming that the farm owner had indeed planted all 150 Samique trees that we had delivered to him, the village mayor asked if we could see the rest of the farm.
She commented how beautiful the papaya trees were; promptly, the farm owner told us to fill up our sack with papayas. Next, the village mayor told the owner how lovely his medicinal plants looked; without blinking the farm owner told her to start cutting some plants to take home with her.
I learned quick. When the farm owner showed us his yucca trees, I quickly told him how much I like the taste of yucca and how want to grow yucca trees in my back yard. Before you know it, the village mayor and I were hauling a 75 lb sack of yuccas and yucca cuttings, a 75 lb pound sack of bananas and papayas and another sack full of medicinal plants.
Sure we had to hike a mile with these sacks piled on our heads, cross a river in a canoe, and then ride in the back of a pick-up truck to get back to our village. But I tell you one thing: I sure enjoyed eating that fresh yucca for lunch, and I think the yucca cuttings that I planted have already started to grow.
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