Why Birth Control Matters

Reading: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Washinton and his mother, Magaly

I have never read the Feminine Mystique. Nor did I think of myself as a feminist. Coming to age in the “otts,” my life experience has been limited to a post-60/70s first world – where equality between men and women has shifted into normality. My generation is accustomed to women in the work place, family planning, and careers before marriage. We, or at least I, saw the fervent feminism of our mothers as a thing of the past. The bra burning sexually liberated “hippies” felt as a lost age, a time that no longer applies to my present day life.

Then I came to Ecuador.

Beyond Sustainability

Reading: Días y Noches de Amor y de Guerra by Eduardo Galeano

One of the hardest situations for many of us Peace Corps volunteers to find ourselves in is explaining that we are not and cannot be the savior with an unending supply of money. The modern day White Man's Burden is not just one of fostering development but combating past missteps of handout aide. It is a situation, for those of use on the ground, that so often involves crushing some one's dreams and hope right before our eyes. More so, it is something that we have become hardened and accustomed to. In fact, many of us interested in development see it as a necessary evil that is simply part of the line of work. And we justify it in the name of sustainability.

But this is not a story of that.

This is a story that beings at site visit with a scared and intimidated volunteer and a child unaware of the harsh realities life had thrown her way.

Food Security

Reading: Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Upon arriving at pre-service training, the 21 sustainable ag volunteers that made up omnibus 105 were informed that we were the last group of ag vols in Ecuador, as the program was ending at the end of the year. The remaining ag vols would be dissolved into the health program under the veil of food security. (This would not be that much of an issue in the life of a volunteer, except for the fact that the communities requesting volunteers were rarely informed of this bureaucratic change of objectives.)

Regardless of the politics or effectiveness of this change, the 17 of us sust. ag vols plus the newest group of health volunteers spent this last week back in the Tumbaco training center for a debriefing on what exactly is food security and the newest objectives that we're now suppose to be meeting.