Cow parades and a visit

Well, the photos are going to come first I guess, since the computer won't let me move them to logical spots.

Corpus Christi parade with cows, horses, band, etc.

Lots of cows

Where one side of the canal ended up after the derrumbe (landslide?)

The whole landslide. For scale, if I was standing on the road, I'd come about 2/3 of the way to the green patch in the middle. It's a really big landslide. The canal is where the Eucalyptus trees are on one side, generally between the two patches of cornfield.

Well, it's been an interesting week. Sunday was the "Gran Octavo de Corpus Christi" which means "Parade of cows and people on horses and people in funny costumes" apparently. All the communities around San Lorenzo paraded into the central square with their cows and went around giving out milk. Then after that, they paraded around town, stopping at peoples houses and milking the cows into buckets. Now this was all quite amusing and entertaining, but drinking raw milk is not so much my thing. And it was also an excuse for sending up firecrackers all day (yes, day) starting at 5 AM. If I don't find some earplugs soon, all these fiestas are going to make me deaf.

So that was my interesting Sunday. Monday I went up to Sauce to plant the green manures in their garden space. Turns out it was bigger than I thought, so I'll be going back with more seed. Also this provided further evidence that I should not consider a career as an elementary school teacher. The teachers in Sauce get there kind of late and I wanted to get there and get back so I could do other stuff that morning, so at 8 I ended up going with all the kids to get stuff planted. I am incapable of controlling a herd of kids, and they make me crazy. But oh well.

Tuesday was the canal minga, and we got to a landslide in Amapolas that I had heard about, but not seen before. I figured it'd be like the one in Sauce--a pain to dig the canal out of, but doable. Unfortunately this one is much worse. The canal has actually been washed down the hill. The theory about why it happened is that because of the heavy rain we've had this year, there was a lot of watter running into the canal, both from natural springs and because a couple people were diverting water into the canal to get it out of the fields. Well, that's all fine, except all the gates of the canal which are supposed to allow water to drain into little streams and ditches, were closed. By order of the president. So water started overflowing the canal, running under the canal...and eventually the whole side of the hill ave way. It's about a 30 m section, and at one end the canal itself is about 6m off the new ground level. So, assuming it ever stops raining, we're going to have to build a sort of bridge to get water across, at least until the slow-moving Ecuadorian beaurocracy allows us to get the money to do something more permanent then wood pillars and pipes, which is the only thing we have money o do (maybe we have money...).

It was looking like we really were going to have a summer, with sunny days and no rain, for maybe 5 days. Then on Thursday in rained all day, and yesterday it rained in the afternoon. Today's looking nice so far, but who knows.

Thursday my APCD, Nelson, came to visit. Yup, the day it rained all day. Not so fantastic for looking at gardens that are up slippery trails through cornfields, but we managed to go look at a couple places in Marcopamba, since that's where I usually go on Thursdays anyway. Next week I need to do some follow up visits to gardens we planted and some transplanting in the seguro campesino. But anyway, Nelson seemed pleased with what we'd gotten done in the time we've had, so that felt good. And we had a meeting with a few people where he did a very good job motivating people and giving us all some good ideas. So it was a good day, even despite the rain.

Yesterday we went to San Miguel and Guaranda trying to get someone to loan us a tractor to clean up the platform of the canal and help out with the landslides. We got no specific promises, but we seem to be making some progress along the "ya mismo" trails.

Ya mismo deserves a definition: It's literally "right now" but means anything from that, to in 5 minutes, to maybe in a couple hours, to next month, to whenever I get around to it. If the bus is coming "ya mismo" it's maybe in the next half hour. If we're going to get a tractor "ya mismo" it may be in a month and it may be never. One of those phrases that can make you crazy if you let it.

OK, that's more or less the news.