Every day we're standing in a time capsule
Racing down a river from the past
Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast
Last week, I attended the Close of Service (COS) Conference in the town of Canoa, Manabi. The purpose of the COS conference is to prepare Peace Corps volunteers for their journey back to the U.S. Peace Corps staff gave us workshops on job searching, cultural readjustment, asked us for suggestions on how to improve Peace Corps Ecuador, etc.
It was weird going to this conference, because I remember two years ago there were 54 volunteers in our group when we all met up in Miami. Now there are only 37 left, so there were a lot of faces missing at this event.
In order to get to the conference, I had to undertake an extremely long journey. In fact, it was a 22-hour trek on four buses, a boat, a taxi, and a bicycle (I kid you not! It was a bicycle taxi). I crossed through the jungle (where I had to fight off indigenous peoples with spears and blowguns), over the Andes mountains (where a massive landslide delayed the journey by several hours), and then through the Western coast of Ecuador (where a hailstorm of coconuts barraged the bus I was in). My ass really hurt by the time it was over.
And the thing about Ecuadorian buses is that even though they have bathrooms on board, the driver only lets women use them, so all the men either have to hold it, or pee into a bottle or out the window. I wouldn´t want to have diarrea while traveling for such a long time.
The hotel where we stayed was nice enough. I saw only one cockroach in the bathroom. Plus the food was a nice change from the usual rice they always serve in the Amazon. During our free time, a friend and I surfed in the warm Ecuatorial Ocean. At night the ocean glowed green with the sea plankton.
I had to make the ridiculous journey back home, but it was somewhat easier this time because I was accompanied most of the way back by two other volunteers who were traveling in the same direction.
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