Blogging, part Deux

Well...after a two-and-a-half year hiatus, I’ve decided I ought to start blogging again. I hold Facebook largely responsible for the decline of my blog. Why spend an hour or two of my day drafting a rant about what’s happening in my life, when I can update everybody with a witty two-line status update?

Now, however, I have entirely too much time on my hands, and going back to read my old blog posts, I realize that it’s nice having some kind of written record of what was going on in my life. So, I figure I’ll go back down the self-absorbed road of advising the world (or at least my parents and the few other folks who follow me) about how I spend my afternoons.

“And how is that?” you might ask. Pretty much exclusively chasing after the almost 18-month old ball of energy that is Sebastian, and cooking. Being a mostly stay-at-home dad in Zimbabwe has done wonders for my enthusiasm in the kitchen. Because it’s hard to find the stuff I love to eat but pretty easy to find the basic ingredients, I spend a lot of time over a ball of dough or stock pot full of raw milk, making yogurt, bagels, pita bread, pizza, or whatever else strikes my fancy.

So, I think the theme of this blog will be cooking adventures in Zimbabwe...a country where food is inexorably intertwined with politics. Four years ago, hyperinflation and a disastrous land-reform policy led to empty supermarket shelves and a population largely dependent on international food aid. Now the country uses the U.S. dollar, a “unity” government has brought some measure of stability, and optimistic Zimbabweans are opening (or re-opening) restaurants, butcheries, and shops. All this despite the sense that the political situation could explode at any minute.

And Monique, Sebastian and I are in the middle of it all...shopping at the outdoor market where ZANU-PF thugs assault vendors who are members of the opposition; staying at lodges on land that has been invaded by so-called “war veterans”; buying our chicken from a farm owned by Gideon Gono--the chairman of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, who authorized the printing of the 100 billion dollar banknote in 2008. And doing our best to stay happy, healthy and well-fed in the midst of it all. So...that’s my spiel. Follow me if you feel like it, and hear about what I’m cooking and what’s going on around me while I cook it.

Since this was a spontaneous entry, I didn’t really think much about what kind of food I should talk about for my first post. So I’ll just snap a few pictures of the old fashioned chicken soup I’m cooking to help Sebby get over his cold. Nothing at all fancy, just good, hearty comfort food:

Recipe:

Take a whole chicken, chop it into pieces, and season it liberally with salt and pepper. Chop up an onion or two (I used one red onion and two big spring onions), a bunch of celery (about a half a cup of thin celery stalks from our garden), and crush some garlic cloves. Cook the celery and onion in olive oil in a big pot for 10 minutes, and throw in the garlic for the last 5 minutes. Lay the chicken pieces in skin-side down, and brown them for 10 minutes. Then cover everything with water, add 3 or 4 carrots, peeled and sliced, and simmer for a couple of hours. Don’t forget to throw in the chicken feet and necks if you’ve got them--really ties the soup together.

After a couple hours take the chicken out, discard the skin and bones, and chop up the meat. Skim out most of the old veggies and the gunk on the top, but don’t worry about getting every last piece of celery. Then throw the meat back into the soup with some new veggies and herbs (I used thyme, parsley and dill, but use whatever you have fresh). Throw some rice or noodles in too, if you like. I used Japanese buckwheat noodles, which worked great. Adjust the flavor with salt and pepper. Serve to babies and grown-ups alike to cure whatever ails ya.

politics...work...blah blah blah

After a summer filled with travel (DC, Pittsburgh, and Greece) I’m back to a normal routine in Quito. This week rounded out my fourth as a full time fellow at Asylum Access Ecuador, and because of an unexpected vacancy at the office, I’ve already been promoted to legal services director. I’m very excited about the job. It should be a good mix of supervising our legal staff, planning strategic litigation and policy advocacy, and tons of direct legal services. Because of the lack of services in general in Ecuador, my job requires a lot of patience and creativity. Things that should be simple, like filing a police report after having one’s refugee ID document stolen are often a bureaucratic nightmare.

It doesn’t help that many of our clients have debilitating psychological problems stemming from past persecution. A few days ago I was helping a severely traumatized refugee file a police report after a robbery. While we were sitting in a tiny concrete room in the police station, another man filing a report asked to go to the bathroom. The secretary told him the door was stuck and handed him an 8 inch butcher knife they keep in the office to pry open the door. The sight of a strange man brandishing a large knife scared my client so badly that we had to physically restrain her to keep her from running out of the room screaming. The fact that you need a deadly weapon to use the bathroom in the office where you seek help after being assaulted would be funny, if it weren’t such a serious oversight in the way things should work.

It’s not surprising that low level bureaucratic tasks are exceedingly complicated, given the way the top levels of the government deal with crises. The two biggest controversies of the past few weeks both involve high-level corruption. Several weeks ago a secret tape came out implicating President Correa and several of his confidants in a secret alteration of the text of the proposed constitution before it was presented for public referendum. Since the Constitution is 218 pages long, nobody noticed the alleged changes and now they are part of the supreme law of the land. (The changes were mostly pragmatic—“the government will promote” rather than “guarantee” food security—but still should have been approved by the Constitutional Assembly, rather than dictated by the President). The other big controversy was that after 19 years of legal battles and a potential $28 billon damage award for dumping toxic waste into the Amazon, another secret video recording came out implicating the judge in the Chevron-Texaco case of bribery and corruption.

So how does the Ecuadorian government respond to these serious accusations? By prosecuting the people who made and published the recordings, and proposing a new communications law that imposes heavy penalties for reporting on facts obtained from clandestine recordings. Teleamazonas, the station that first broadcast the recording of President Correa, will now likely be shut down for at least 90 days and possible permanently. By refocusing the debate on whether the evidence of the wrongdoing was improperly obtained, almost all of the news surrounding these two controversies has revolved around the act of making the recordings, rather than their content.

This has added fuel to fire in the battle between the media and the President, who they view as launching an attack on public information. Today El Comercio published a poll asking Ecuadorians why they don’t like Correa. Number one answer… “because of the way he is” coming in at 20.5%.

Nonetheless, as far as Latin American leaders go, Correa seems to be very smart, generally well intentioned, not too terribly corrupt, and still pretty well liked in a country with a notoriously short patience for its leaders. And his progressive policies regarding human rights, migration and refugee law all make my job a lot easier than my experience working on immigrant rights in the U.S., which often feels like banging one’s head against the concrete walls of an immigration detention center.

OK, enough ranting…it’s a beautiful day and Monique will be back from a trip to DC soon, so I’m going to head to the market. Hopefully I can avoid the indigenous uprising planned to shut down the country this weekend. Hasta pronto,

D&M

The past few months

My failure to post lately is no indication that life has become less interesting on the equator, but rather that I've been withdrawn from it. I've spent most of the summer locked in our study listening to terrible lectures about secured transactions and property, with my nose buried in a bar-review outline. Then Monique and I were in DC with her attending some USAID trainings and me taking the bar exam and MPRE.

Nonetheless, the Citizens' Revolution marches on in Quito, and this past Monday the country celebrated its bicentennial with the inauguration of the new government. I was still in DC, but Monique and my cousin Robin got to greet all of the big Latin American personalities, including Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. Robin is living in our old digs at the Swiss Hotel while she and her husband look for embassy housing, and all of the heads of state stayed there for the festivities. Check out Robin's facebook page for photos in the lobby of all the big-wigs. With the inauguration, President Correa now has 4 more years to push forward his ambitious agenda of battling (or cancelling) Ecuador's foreign debt, strengthening minority rights, equalizing the distribution of wealth in Ecuador, and establishing Ecuador as a leader in the new Latin American left. I'm sure all this will make for an interesting and exciting couple of years for us.

While I was studying for the bar, Monique and I did manage to sneak out of Quito a few times for fun in the mountains. Here are some photos from our jaunt to Quilotoa, a beautiful volcanic lake 3 & 1/2 hours south of Quito:

The trip out here was an amazing drive. We passed about 6 snow-capped volcanoes on one of the clearest days we've had in Ecuador. We hiked around the rim of the volcano surrounding Quilotoa lake for a few hours, then drove another hour on a crazy dirt road to get to the Black Sheep Inn, a very comfortable eco-lodge in a small indigenous community. The next morning we rode horses down into the canyon below our hotel, picnicked on a sketchy bridge across a river, and still made it back to Quito in time for dinner.

A couple weeks later, still struck with volcano fever, we drove to Parque Nacional Cotopaxi, a huge protected area surrounded by three volcanoes. Unfortunately, this time we weren't so lucky with the weather and had to face a lot of fog and wind. It was still beautiful, and after we abandoned our plans to hike up to the Refugio which sits at 4800 meters, we had a great time driving and hiking around the high grasslands, checking out the wild horses, and playing on an ancient Incan fortress where we were the only people within in a few acres.

Well...I hope these photos are enticing enough to bring some of you down here. We feel really blessed to be so close to so much natural beauty (and for those of you frightened by the gloves and hats, we're also just a few hours from the beaches or jungles, where temperatures will make you pine for that cool Andean air). Tomorrow we head off to Greece for my brother-in-law's wedding, but soon we'll be back to the excitement of Ecuador. In September I'll start working full time as the Georgetown Asylum Access Fellow, and I'm really looking forward to continuing my work advocating for legal rights of refugees in Ecuador. We'll keep you posted.

Abrazos,

D&M

Born to love volcanoes

If my blogging has been lax of late, it's because life here has become fairly routine...my days are spent arguing with BarBri or the post office about where my ipod containing everything I need to know about being a lawyer might be (somewhere between Jamaica, NY and Quito, apparently), and learing the rules regarding res ipsa loquitor for tort liability. As I suspected, you aren't that interested.

We did manage to pull off an amazing barbeque/housewarming party last weekend. I found the perfect grill on our way back from Mitad del Mundo, the super kitschy and scientifically inaccurate monument to the center of the Earth in Ecuador, which is actually about 200 meters away from the real equator. As you can see, this 50 gallon drum can comfortably hold 3 spooning beer-can-chickens and leave plenty of space for barbequed tofu. We had about 50 people over on our patio for barbequed ribs and chicken estilo americano, and everyone seemed pretty happy with the results.

Mom, stop reading here....

Today my buddy Nick and I decided we would climb Volcano Pichincha, which taunts me daily from the window in our living room. It's supposed to be a fairly simple climb from the end of the Teleferiqo, which drops you off at a little below 14,000 feet to begin the hike to the 15,700 ft. summit. Nick and I happily embarked on our trek towards the summit around 10:30 this morning. It was a bit cloudy, but conditions looked pretty good for most of the hike. When we got close to the summit, the clouds were in pretty thickly, but we decided we might as well push to the top. The trail had ended, however, so we just took off up a scramble of loose rocks with a bit of hand over hand climbing.

As soon as we reached the highest point we could get to (we call it the summit, although the actual path may have led to a higher spot on the volcano), the clouds opened up and we were surrounded by hail and lightening and thunder. I'm not a boyscout, but I seem to remember a few things from my youth about not wanting to be at the highest point in the city in the middle of a thunder storm.

Nick and I snapped a quick photo and started our descent, but we were surprised to learn that the hail that fell over 10 minutes was enough to cover our entire trail with slick ice. It made coming down the way we had climbed up almost impossible, and we ended up sliding down a few hundred feet over steep, sharp rock on our completely unprepared, blue-jean-clad behinds. At one point I suggested waiting out the storm in a cave, but when I started sizing up the choicest pieces of Nick should one of us have to eat the other, we decided we might as well continue down the mountain and take our chances with the lightening. After about 40 minutes of harrowing alpine slip 'n' slide, we made it back to the trail, and found a few other wayward hikers who were equally concerned in not being hit by lightening. By the time we made it down to this horse, I knew we had the same thing on our minds (“Why the hell am I up on this rainy mountain when it’s sunny in Quito?!?!) An hour later we were back in line for the ride back down the Teleferiqo (a LONG line, as the municipality was offering 1/2 price tickets for dad for Father's day), and we got to laugh at the sissies who were concerned about being hit by lightening just because there was a thunder storm all around the cable cars.

Thankfully, we soon made it back to home sweet home, where I lit a fire, Monique prepared an amazing lasagna, and we sipped duty free whiskey and chilean wine till Nick's girlfriend called him home. Next time I'll bring a better raincoat and some gloves, but otherwise it was quite the adventure.

Till soon,

D&M

"Stupid Face"

Just in case you thought the rhetoric surrounding the U.S. elections was exceedingly juvenile, I thought I should share this recent exchange between the two leading candidates in Ecuador's presidential election:

President Correa: [Lucio] beats his wife; he has a stupid face; he's unqualified and incompetent morally and intellectually; he's a puppet; and he's a vain marionette descended from a hairy Guayaquileña. (I'm not sure about the translation of that last one: "fantoche de la peluconería guayaquileña" -- any help from you native Spanish speakers would be welcome).

Former President and 2009 runner-up candidate Lucio Gutierrez: "I've never beaten my wife or any women. You, Rafael Correa, I accuse in front of the whole country of having beaten you father, don Rafael Correa Icazas, God rest his soul, when he returned from the U.S. where he was detained for 5 years for drug trafficking [true story, at least concerning the detention]. You, as is your custom, taking advantage of your youthfulness, beat your father."

These two men have each served as President of Ecuador, and together captured more than 75% of the votes in last week’s election. Gotta love politics.

La revolución está en marcha

I know…I start of every blog apologizing for the lack of recent posts. This time I blame TVCable, the local internet provider. We signed a contract with them a month ago and they are just now getting around to installing our system. Apparently they provided fairly good service until last year when the government nationalized the company because its owners weren’t paying taxes, and now their offices are as bad as any other Latin America (or D.C.) bureaucracy. I guess you take the good with the bad in Ecuadorian “21st Century Socialism.”

Speaking of 21st Century Socialism, we had general elections here in Ecuador this past weekend. It was a lot more tranquilo than the ones held in Guatemala while we were in the Peace Corps, when the U.S. Embassy was concerned that one of the candidates, an ex-president/notorious war criminal would take the office by force should he not be elected. (Peace Corps made us stay in our sites in groups on “lock down”…we had a 3-day home-made hot-tub party. No coup ensued. But I digress.)

Here the voting is mandatory (you get a fine if you don’t vote), and for the first time ever, 16-year old kids, prisoners who have yet to be sentenced, non-citizens with 5 years of residence, Ecuadorians living abroad, and active duty military were able to vote. Although President Correa was basically a shoe-in for the highest office, this was still a big election because the Constitution made almost the entire government provisional, so most offices in the country were up for grabs. Nonetheless, other than a few burnt ballot boxes, some angry rhetoric, and tons of fireworks, everything went pretty smoothly during election day.

Counting the ballots is another story. Monique has explained the system they use to count votes at least three times to me, and I still don’t understand it. It’s some complex formula by which they count votes for individual candidates and then count votes for entire tickets, discounting the weight for tickets with more candidates. I don’t feel so bad though, because the people in charge of counting the ballots also didn’t understand the system, and it looks like 30% of the votes will have to be recounted. Oh well. It’s clear we’ve got at least four more years of Correa, which I’m sure will make things exciting for us as he continues his populist “Citizenship Revolution.” And it was enough of a draw to bring Jimmy Carter down to check out the situation. Monique got to sit really close to him at a talk on Wednesday.

Our house is slowly shaping up, although our stuff is still not here (supposedly coming next week). But I’ve got a hammock, a terrace, a little grill, and a newly purchased hand-crank meat grinder for making burgers and (guinea pig??) sausages, so I’m pretty much satisfied with life. For anyone near the D.C. area, Monique and I will be back in town for my law school graduation the weekend of May 17. Hope to see you all there or here.

-D&M

Current Events

Sorry for not posting anything lately…I’ve had midterms over the past week, and although not quite as demanding as my work at Georgetown, it’s been keeping me busy.

Our star-studded stay at the Swiss Hotel is quickly drawing to an end, but rumor has it that along with Iron Maiden we have been neighbors with Santana and Richard Gere. We went to go see Santana at the stadium down the street and he actually put on a great show, even if he wouldn’t hang out with us at the hotel bar. Just about everything is now in order with our house, and we should be moving in next weekend, although our stuff is still somewhere on the high-seas between here and Miami.

It’s election season in Ecuador, and the air is rife with controversy. My favorite commercial got pulled off the air for violating election laws—it was a 2-minute long homage to Ecuador, set to the tune of Hey Jude, with “na-na-na” changed to “cuidadania” (citizenship) and “patria” (patriotism). The electoral commission said it was illegal publicly funded propaganda for the ruling party, but is sure was catchy.

The biggest election scandal has been the coming to light of a variety of connections between the current administration and the FARC, the largest guerrilla movement in Colombia. A former undersecretary and minister in President Correa’s cabinet are both currently under investigation for a wide range of personal and business ties to some of the more infamous military and narco-trafficking personalities of the Colombian conflict. The story has created quite a stir in Ecuador, although it’s probably not going to be damaging enough to hurt Correa’s reelection chances in April.

As long as we’re talking about the destabilizing effects of international involvement in Colombia, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the more astounding articles I’ve read lately, documenting the financing of paramilitary death squads by Chiquita Banana. This is just one more chapter in the ongoing saga of the banana industry being directly responsible for torture and murder in Latin America (Chiquita is the rebranded United Fruit Company, who helped the CIA spark the 35 year Guatemalan civil war). The article doesn’t mention it, but Attorney General Eric Holder (of whom I’m actually a big fan) was previously a defense lawyer for Chiquita in a case regarding these payments.

On a lighter note, Monique and I got to see some world class soccer yesterday at the Ecuador - Brazil World Cup qualifying match. We packed in with about 40,000 screaming fans (in Spanish the same word is used for fan and fanatic, and this match made abundantly clear why there is no distinction). The tickets were all general admission, and although we got there 2 hours early we still weren’t able to find a seat and had to stand for the entire game. But we did manage to corral a spot about 50 yards from the field, close enough to see Ronaldinho’s goofy smile whenever he came near the corner.

Despite being considered a less-skilled team, Ecuador outplayed Brazil for most of the game (probably because of the altitude), although Ecuador gave up a stupid goal with about 10 minutes left in the second half. We thought all was lost until Ecuador tied the game with about 2 minutes left, leading to the entire crowd to get soaked in beer, soft drinks, and home made confetti. I’ve never seen a crowd so excited about a tie, although considering that the Brazilians are some of the best players in the world I suppose it was quite an accomplishment for a small country like Ecuador.

Having learned Spanish in a little community in Guatemala where everyone is extremely formal in their mannerisms, I’ve always felt my vocabulary of vulgarities has been lacking. Fortunately, 90 minutes of Ecuadorian soccer filled in what 2 years in the Guatemalan campo could not. Seeing 14 year-old kids screaming chants that would make a sailor blush was a bit disarming, but I suppose it’s all part of the fun.

Well that’s all for now. Keep in touch and look for cheap tickets to come visit!

-Dan and Monique.