I spent two weeks in Ecuador in July and posted a number of stories on Facebook along with photos. I’m going to reference them here. It was a fantastic trip, commemorating 20 years since I started my service. I saw a number of old friends in my Peace Corps site as well as wider friends from my Peace Corps service days.
One amazing thing was that a number of people from my site didn’t know I was alive. For some strange reason, a rumor got started that I was killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Though I was in touch on and off via email with some folks from my rural site (outside of Ambato up in the mountains), I hadn’t heard that some folks thought I was dead, and they hadn’t heard otherwise. There was one phone in town when I left and no one had Facebook or email addresses. Times have changed. Here is a Facebook post the reflects a little bit on that with a photo from my host family’s house.