The Precarious Adventures of a Peace Corps Volunteer: We be Tech Trippin´

We departed on Monday morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (what does this allude to in your mind? I picture a squirrel). Anyway, like I was saying, here we are, squirrels in Ibarra, ready for adventure, with a full schedule in hand and hope in our hearts.

First day: we meet a bunch of teachers and co-plan lessons for the next day. This turned out to be my first (of many, likely) run-in’s with a slight difference of opinion in terms of religion. Being an atheist in a predominantly Catholic country, in which I am supposed to integrate, I had already prepared myself for this situation and decided to react when the time comes based on the situation (but 9 times out of 10 I will probably just lie my @$$ off). So, I meet my co-teacher and before we start the work, I receive the usual line of questioning “are you married?” “do you miss your family?” “why did you leave?” “which state are you from?” (in that order) and then I get the ever-feared “are you a Christian?” This time, I figured “what the hay, I’m gonna spend 3 days at this school, this guy seems nice, he keeps calling me ‘my darling’, I’ll just be honest and see what happens”. I respond “well, I don’t have a religion”. Immediate regret. “Impossible!” he says. To which I reply, “so how about that verb, ‘to be’?!” I was later introduced to a class of 45 teenagers in this manner: “This is Chelsea. She’s 26, not married, no babies and left her whole family in the United States. Chelsea, would you like to introduce yourself a little?” Me: “Well. Um. I’m from California. My city is close to Hollywood, which is where they make movies in the US” Later that day, the students were asking for my autograph. Chelsea for the win.

Anywhozer, day two comes along and WHAM! Along with it comes reality! And reality’s name is Montezuma’s Revenge. After I got done with a bunch of classes, I felt a little queasy but thought I just needed to eat so I grabbed a quick sandwich at KFC (which, by the way, is HUGE here) and immediately started getting really sharp pains in the top part of my stomach, to the point that it hurt to take a deep breath. We were sitting around waiting for all of the volunteers to be done with class and it started to get progressively worse. I felt like I might pass out so one of the facilitators walked me back to the hotel. I laid down for about 2 minutes and then ran to the bathroom, I really thought I was going to vomit, but nothing happened. I went back to bed and got the worst fever, chills, and achiness that I’ve had in a long time! I was shivering under the blankets in a cold sweat for hours, unable to sleep because of the nausea. This proceeded through the night and the entire next day. I couldn’t even walk across the room without feeling exhausted. My fellow volunteers came to check on me and brought me water, tea, bread, and crackers throughout Wednesday and Thursday and I missed out on all the fun (apparently they went to an artist’s house and drank pure sugar cane and then went to a museum where they used to sacrifice humans! Ugh). I slept through the couple of days, waking up with an extreme headache and persistent nausea to watch TV (omg they had 3 English channels with Spanish subtitles, including Friends marathons!). Finally, I’m recovering a bit and actually leave the hotel to join the volunteers for dinner Thursday night, though I just drank water, and I’m convinced I’m on the road to recovery. I wake up on Friday morning and my entire upper half is covered in a rash. En serio?! But the nausea is gone and I eat 2 pieces of bread for breakfast!

So Friday, we head to Otavalo and visit a school called “Unidad Educativa del Milenio”, which is a really nice, high tech school that the President commissioned. The kids were SO cute and so smart and motivated, they were trying to ask us questions in English and get us to play games with them during recess. I’m so glad I was well enough to enjoy this field trip. Then we headed to the famous market (that I’ve already visited) to shop a little and have lunch. Then the trek home. Arriving close to 6. I told my host mom all about it and before I could even finish the story, she was squeezing limes and making chamomile tea and chicken soup for me. (Yeah, she made me drink a half glass of pure lime juice, you should have seen the terrible faces I was making.)

I am painstakingly cautious of the foods I eat and the water I drink here and I can NOT for the life of me figure out what caused this bout, which included what I dubbed “the death phase” when I thought I would not recover. I have decided to attribute it to all the times that I said “yeah, I can’t believe I haven’t been sick yet!” I must not have knocked on wood immediately after one of those times. Though, I do find it an interesting coincidence that I had just confessed my lack of faith to an unenthused believer. Whether it was a work of superstition or the scorn of some deity, in the face of that illness, I may now be a God-fearing atheist.

Take care. And don’t drink the water.

<3 Chels

p.s. I have just finished an entire pot of tea and my host mom just came in my room to tell me that she’ll be right back, she needs to give the neighbor an injection. I definitely believe in saints.