Thoughts on NOISE

Before I sat down to write the daily report, the quote from Ueli Maurer came to my mind: 'No mood!' one of the most meaningful of Ueli Maurer, I think.

The fact is simply that the working days are the same and today I would have to report from the Fundacion in a way that sounds repetitive to you. So: Thoughts on noise.

I am a very sensitive person when it comes to noise. I don't like it when children scream. I don't like standing in the Troika tent at the Rhema and getting close to the speaker by 30 cm just to understand him 80%. I don't like it when guys show up with their boombox and blast everyone around with Eminem at 110 decibels. But here, in Ecuador, I have developed a great deal of indifference to noise in a matter of days. If not, life here would have been unbearable. In the first place, in the house of Paulina and Martha, it was the dogs. Every evening and every morning the stupid dogs (sorry, dog lovers. You surely do well and go for a walk every day and pick up their poop and dispose of it in the Robydog...) started barking. It reminded me of the movie 101 Dalmatians, the twilight barking of the dogs in London. That's exactly how it was and still is here in Quito. Firstly, every house has its 1-5 dogs, and secondly, these dogs wander around aimlessly and leave their mess behind... never mind, it's not about the mess now. So, there was the twilight barking. In addition, in that neighborhood, presumably every car had a nice alarm system. The best ones are highlighted in the morning. And they can be heard in the morning. If all those alarms at that time meant that a car was going away, Quito would be car-free.

Furthermore, after a short time, I noticed that people let their feelings run free. If they feel like screaming, they just do it. Don't bother or shout an answer back. If they feel like singing, sing along or not. It doesn't matter. That was also the case in the selva. They shouted a lot and shouted back through the jungle, which is also a form of communication among them. Jungle sounds at night: even if you feel like someone is messing with the house or the loud mouths, this time animals, are about to come into your room, you can't sleep. At some point, you have to let go of the sounds and you can do it. Or if the sound of pouring rain bothers you, you may not be able to close your eyes all night.
Think again! When you're tired, the lids eventually close on their own and you dream sweetly and integrate the sound into your visual sequences. At four in the morning at the latest, the cocks (roosters) in the area start to outdo each other with their 'cock-a-doodle-doo' calls. Instead of getting upset about it, you just ignore those calls. Or, if you are dozing in the waking phase, you can say to yourself after each crow: 'Yippee! a few more hours of dozing!' and maybe lie down on the other side. This is incredibly calming and helps you find sleep once again. Because in the selva, no one demanded that you be ready at exactly eight, for example. No rush, no stress.

And now, in this place, in the neighborhood of Rancho Los Pinos, it's utterly crazy. Not worse, but the dogs do much more than just twilight barking. It's an open gang war here, among dogs. Unbelievable, but true! I live in the second house on a street. The cross street is, so to speak, the main street and... the border between the dog gangs. The dogs above bark together with the dogs below, and the ones below yelp against the ones above. And woe betide them if they come too close to each other or trespass on the territory. Then it's no longer barking but growling, baring teeth, and whimpering. Of course, still accompanied by the barking of their four-legged colleagues. And then there are the dogs on the rooftops, the ones locked up. They can't go out and bite, so they have to bark and howl even louder.

Several times, I thought that one or two of the dogs would lie in the street, bleeding from their throats and crying out their lives. But unfortunately...

As I said, the noise no longer bothers me. But I will probably never get used to the piles on the streets. Even though I rarely step into them, the smell alone is annoying.

As soon as I wrote these lines, I hear the dogs from above outside. But it seems that they're just barking at a pedestrian. They barked at me on my way home today too. Stupid yappers!

Once we finish with dogs as a topic: being loud is part of life here. It's part of it, and no one bothers about it. I wonder if I can take a portion of this attitude with me back home. I hope so because it's actually practical not to get upset about every noise.
Maybe it's a result of stress at home? Well, then I would have to start there, right?