I jumped at the opportunity of working in Ecuador, after having done some awfully boring work in NZ and gone trough the always kind of stressful process of buying a house, moving (mostly taken care by Vibeke), enduring Xmas and having my 1st back pain in over 2 years!
I have not yet worked in my present speciality, in Spanish, which is after all my mother language. I knew that the job would be special, and it is....
Ecuador (Equator in Spanish) is kind of mystical country... (there is no country called Tropic, for instance)... Outstanding coastline with fantastic surf on its west, rugged Andean mountains on the middle and Amazonian rainforest on the east... 9 different ethnic groups from is aboriginal population (from pseudo Polynesian looking people in the west, passing by Inca types and full on painted Amazonians, plus the earliest Chinese immigration in Latin America, Lebanese, Mediterranean, Germans... and so on... but the aboriginal component is socially strong...
Quito (the old part) is time travelling to the Spanish colony time, incredible... the place has been preserved pretty much as it was in the 1600-1700 period... absolutely outstanding... Latin-Americans don not have the best urbanity rules in the world and to see this was refreshing...
Still painfully latinamerican in way to many ways... the mess of the country politics in general and the fisheries sector as a consequence, is a sometimes tough reminder of what it was my reality before I emigrated...
Scientists with ½ their heads trying to do their jobs, and the other ½ trying to navigate the pitiful political storms inside their institutions...
I feel like exploding when I see that the power fight in between the people of the National Directorate of Fisheries for the job that is actually done by the Fisheries National Institute... this is putting in jeopardy the market access of the local fisheries into the EU (over 500 million USD a year and the livelihood of over 1.5 million people).... on top of that there is no resource control neither a real fisheries management strategy...
Ecuador is actually a "big fish" in the fisheries world... i really could not believe the state of the sector...
Outside those issues... it is cool... I like to be here... is great to be aware of all that happens around you... to understand the lyrics of all the songs... and latin American music is very funny... and this is full on Cumbia and Reggaeton land.
The team I’m working is cool, full on efficient woman at the driving seats... (seems to be the constant in the projects that do something useful)... the head of this EU programme (ExpoEcuador) is a surfer, so we are off this weekend on a "work trip".
Then I’m off next Monday, back to Chile... then I’m off to see my dad in Argentina for 5 days (I have seen him only 3 times in 11 years, which is not right). Then back to Auckland just in time for playing at Splore... and to be with my family that I seem to miss more by the day.
