Guayusa.... Officemates... and The Aquarium/Spaceship/Masion

Happy Monday, everyone!

Last week was long, but productive. Work was interesting; we are planning out how we are going to measure the effects that producing guayusa has on farmers, communities and the environment.   We are in the process of choosing indicators for measurement.

Last Sunday we attended a guayusa ceremony on Sunday morning at 5am with the interns, a few members of our board who were visiting us in Napo. The ceremony is a time when traditional stories are told by elders and dreams are interpreted. 

We also visited a new community-run guayusa nursery. Guayusa is grown from cuttings from mother trees in nurseries before in can be planted in the farmer's traditional agroforestry garden plots.

Here is a picture of the “Thursday shirt” which has now been changed to the “Wednesday shirt”… we are still finalizing the schedule ;) 

Here are some important members of our team in the office: 

Jordan is the son of our head field technician, Silverio. He comes to visit us in the office a couple times a week after school. He is a bright and fun 8 year old with fantastic storytelling skills!

Nell, our office dog, having a bath because she smelled terrible (thank you Lindsay, our Peace Corps Volunteer, and Welcome, our Global Citizen Year Volunteer, for washing her).

And Supay, Lindsay’s dog, playing with a giant bug that looked like a leaf.  

The most exciting news of the week was that I moved all of my stuff into my room in my new house, the spaceship/aquarium/mansion! The house has 5 bedrooms, 5 ½ bathrooms, two porches and a roof terrace with hammocks where my little room is located.

Thanks to my darling Xavier and his accomplice, August, my bed frame and mattress were hoisted up to the roof terrace by rope (the bed would not fit up stairs…. unfortunately I didn’t photograph the amazing feat!). 

I live with 4 roommates: Nick, Cass, Juan Jose, and Bonnie and 1 weekender, Caro.  Nick is the regional coordinator of Runatarpuna Exportadora (the guayusa export business) for the Napo region and is from Colorado. Cass is the Program Manager of Fundación Runa and is from England. Juan Jose is our friend from Tena. Bonnie is a Fullbright Scholar from California doing research on deforestation and spends about half of her time in the community of Cocha Campo. Caro is a volunteer teacher in the community of  Palta Cocha and spends her weekends in Tena with us. I'll post some pictures of my roommates this week.

Have a wonderful week everyone!
Love,
A

My first week of work at Runa

Greetings from Ecuador! 

Today is Friday and I have almost completed my first week of work at Fundación Runa (check out my website bio here). For those of you who don't know, Runa is a social enterprise that seeks to improve the livelihoods of indigenous Amazonian farmers through primarily through income generation, but also through community development and environmental conservation. As Fundación Runa's new director of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), I will be in charge of measuring the benefits that Runa provides to the farmers, mostly through periodic surveys of farmers and other community members. 

In the past few weeks, I have been on a mission to learn as much as possible about M&E. I have been reading books, talking to other M&E professionals and I even completed a short online class given by USAID on the subject. The learning curve is steep, but I am slowly but surely understanding M&E better and figuring out how to apply what I have learned to my new position. 

However, I am not only learning about M&E; there are many things that I've had to adjust to while working at a new company in a new country. Runa has two offices, one in the capital city of Quito and the other in the jungle town of Archidona. I normally work in the office in Archidona, although I am able to work in Quito when I want to. In the jungle office the hours are long and they start early. For those of you who know me well, you know that I do not like to wake up early. Here, I am up by 6:30am and in the office between 7:30 and 8:00am (can you believe it??). We usually leave work sometime between 5:30 and 6:00. Also, we have uniform t-shirts, which are relatively common in businesses here in Ecuador. We have three shirts that we wear on Tuesday - Thursday and then we wear what we want on Mondays and Fridays. 

Our Tuesday shirt:

 Our Wednesday shirt:

I'll have to attach a picture of our Thursday shirt (my favorite) next week! 

Next time I'll write about and send pictures of my new house (aka the spaceship, the mansion, the aquarium... you'll understand why!) and I'll tell you about my roommates. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Love, 

A