five months later... a reflection

unfortunately, my summer plans for a return to ecuador fell through, but i do hope to return at some point (sooner than later!). in the meantime, i wrote an article about my experience to submit to the ut institute of latin american studies magazine for possible publication. i have pasted it below:

Reflexiones de la mitad del mundo (Reflections from the Middle of the World: Studying Serving, and Sharing in Quito, Ecuador)

Whether it trickles mildly down the windowpane in tiny rivers or comes “cayendo chuzos de punto” out of nowhere when the Forty Acres bus has already stopped running, I am reminded. Each time it’s rained since I’ve returned from studying abroad in Quito in Fall 2006, I’ve been thankful for the rain, and no rainstorm passes without thoughts of the rural community of Turuku, Ecuador.

Turuku is a small, mostly indigenous community two hours north of Quito, where I had the privilege of doing service learning and field research for an anthropology class. While there, I was profesora for two days a week for six weeks, teaching English, art, music, and physical education classes in a public, bilingual Spanish/Quichua elementary school and studying the effects of migration on the community. Weekends were spent participating in community life: in the shared work of the mingas, in baking guaguas de pan for the Day of the Dead, or in discussing the kichwa cosmovision while sipping chicha (corn beer) from cracked mugs around the fireplace of our generous host and guide in the community, Raúl.

Raúl was a fountain of wisdom during my weekends in Turuku, and it is he who taught me to think differently about the rain. One early Saturday morning, as the clouds were still rising over Mama Cotacachi, the volcano that is believed to care for the indigenous people that live under her watchful gaze, Raúl took my research partner and me for a walk. As during all of our walks together, interesting conversation topics abounded: women and microenterprise, the controversial presidential candidates in the upcoming election, and the discrimination faced by indigenous schoolchildren. As we walked, the sky began to darken and thunder rumbled ever so quietly. Without thinking, I groaned, not wanting to be caught miles from Raúl’s house without umbrella or poncho. Noticing my groan but not saying a word, Raúl redirected our path to show us the spring from which the people of the neighboring community got their water. It was a small spring, with a pool half a foot deep, but was the water source for over 100 people, some who had to walk a couple of miles each morning to fill buckets before livestock came to drink from the pool in the afternoon. I believe this side trip in our walk was Raúl’s subtle way of telling me, “be thankful for the rain, it comes as a gift!” and I left the spring with tears in my eyes, humbled by my narrow and selfish thoughts about the rain.

My experience that Saturday is just one small example of many that taught me the most important lesson I learned while abroad, that I am no “dueña de la verdad,” that I cannot make presumptions about the way people will act, what they will say or expect, or even the way they see the world. “Traveling makes one modest,” said Flaubert. “You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” So many experiences I had humbled me and made me feel small in the world, but also made me so excited to travel further and see what this world has to offer to those who choose to explore.

My travels around Ecuador led me to some amazing places, filled with beauty and excitement, realities and complexities. I danced salsa in the sand and sipped piña coladas in a hammock on the Ecuadorian coast, but was also able to meet politically active afro-Ecuadorians working to improve the school system in an area ignored by the government. In the Galapagos Islands, I saw a fascinating abundance of wildlife, sat with a multitude sea lions on the beach, saw so many gigantic tortoises that they became almost commonplace, and snorkeled with sharks, but I also spoke with fishermen on the islands, several who had lost relatives in a recent storm. I traveled six hours deep into the Amazon rainforest and spent the most amazing four days of my life there: watching gorgeous sunrises over the canopy, swimming with river dolphins, eating lemon-flavored ants, and even being defecated on by a howler monkey! But only an hour away, oil drilling was destroying rare species and upsetting the traditional lifestyle of the indigenous people who had lived there for hundreds of years. And even in Quito, where I studied and spent the majority of my time, I would take the crowded bus to the historic district at least once a week, to appreciate the richness of the history and the magnificence of the architecture there. It made me feel more alive to walk through those streets, even while I knew that orphan shoeshine boys slept in them at night.

Over four months, I fell in love with this land of complexities, a land of political turmoil and peaceful mountaintops, beauty in pain. I left my heart there, with my adorable and affectionate students in Turuku and with Raul’s generous family, at the base of Mama Cotacachi, where I felt most at home. I left my heart in the energetic rhythms of the afro-Ecuadorians on the beach, with the indigenous guides in the Amazon whose families were organizing to speak against the oil companies’ actions. Part of me will remain in all the fascinating places I visited, but I have taken so much wisdom with me back to the U.S. as well. I learned to live simply in the present, as I did when my host mom would make her grandson and me sit quietly and name all the sounds that we could hear. I learned to become more aware of injustices and educate myself in how I can best work toward change both at home and abroad. I learned to experience every situation with new eyes and to see all things as gift, especially the rain.

so this is chau…for now?

i decided to switch my flight to thurs morn, (less than 24 horas!), so that i’ll have a bit more time to spend with the family before heading back to atx on 1/4. i feel as if things have been happening so quickly lately that i have had little time to digest this experience, so as for reflections, i have few.

academically speaking, i’ve learned a ton...politics, economics, anthropology…and i’ve made connections to come back and do research some more. and this experience has only made me more hungry to see other parts of the world. i can’t wait til the next opportunity finds its way to me and i can see india, russia, the middle east, africa...wherever life wants to take me.
but i think perhaps more importantly, i’ve learned a bit more about myself and about human nature. i’ve learned that i’m certainly not a “dueña de la verdad”, that there is more than one way to see the world, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be as rational. i’ve been saturated with beautiful scenery and generous people. i’ve learned a bit more about being patient when things don’t go as planned, about the importance of community, about being still, and about enjoying simple things...like the nights after dinner, when my ecua-mamá would make us sit with the grandson quietly and name all the sounds we could hear.

and in this season of advent, the time of hopeful waiting, of preparation, and also of action, its an appropriate time for a return to the u.s. although i’ve often had to sit back quietly while watching injustice here, which has been so frustrating, i can take all that i’ve learned here as a guide to be a more effective advocate in a place where i feel its more appropriate for me to act.

and now, as i sit in the university computer lab, traditional quito songs played by the university band stream through the windows accompanied by the mountain breeze. these songs and their joy, these mountains and their majesty i will carry close to me until i return here again.

hasta junio, el ecuador mío...

my tour of south ecuador

i ended my tour of the south EC today, a few days earlier than originally planned, but it was great. thurs after my test, i left quito and at 9 pm got to portoviejo, a town with nothing of interest but is a portal to the coast. i figured that since it was already dark it would be best to get a hostal near the bus terminal, but i ended up a really creepy place...$5, a pillow that looked like it had never been washed, what appeared to be blood on the wall, a barely locking door, really noisy and creepy neighborhood, two creepy guys working there...need i go on? i barely slept. when i got up at 5 am, i thought that maybe i wasn’t as cut out for this traveling by myself thing as i thought. there was a bus leaving for guayaquil in front of my hostal at that moment, so i thought maybe it was a sign to skip the beach part of my trip and go straight to guayaquil.

when i got to guayaquil, i decided to get some good pancakes in a nice hotel since i hadn’t eaten dinner the night before. i went to the grand hotel guayaquil and ended up being seated next to the owners of the hotel. i asked if they knew of a cheap, safe hostal in the area, and told them a little about my previous night’s experience. they said they didn’t know about hostals but that i could stay at their hotel for free, and paid for both my breakfasts there too! this is a place that costs $100 a night...i had my first consistently hot shower in four months, swam in a pool with a waterfall, and watched cnn en español on cable. it was such an amazing surprise! on friday i did touristy guayaquil, the malecón 2000 which is an urban renewal project along the bay with statues, botanical gardens, markets, museums, etc. at night i went to a symphonic concert on the bay and had a drink in a bar in las peñas, an restored cute old neighborhood. although all the quiteños say that guayaquil is dangerous, its definitely possible to walk around the malecón and las peñas alone at night, which is not really the case for quito’s mariscal...

the plaza in front of guayaquil's cathedral is filled with iguanas!

the next day i went to cuenca and met two environmentalists from colorado who were planning on seeing every national park and other nature parts of ecuador in three weeks...pretty sweet. cuenca is a quaint little city, with a cute river running through it, cobblestone streets, and tons of gorgeous architecture and parks. cuenca is also famous for panama hats (they’re not from panama!). i stayed in a hip little backpackers hostal with lots of europeans. saturday night began the novena of the baby Jesus, so the churches in cuenca were having mass with a procession afterwards with all the kids in the church dressed up as part of the nativity scene. they really went all out on the costumes, even matching shoes and painted faces. besides the usual shepherds and angels, there were every kind of animal imaginable, including rabbits and elephants, and i’m almost certain i saw a pirate!

one of cuencas many beautiful churches

sunday i missed the direct bus to ingapirca, the biggest incan ruins in ecuador. the bus left 10 mins early! who has ever heard of that happening in latin america? but it actually ended up being cool because a group of siblings my age from the ecuadorian coast were in the same situation, so we took the two-bus route to ingapirca together. ingapirca was beautiful and makes me even more excited to see machu picchu someday in the near future.



hanging out with ecuadorians is always an interesting experience, and this one was no exception. carol, the only sister, was constantly asking me funny questions like “have you met hilary duff? do they sell colgate toothpaste in the u.s.? how many pairs of shoes do you own?”
the ecuadorians weren’t that impressed by ingapirca, and when we got back to cuenca, they insisted upon going to a shopping mall. they invited me, so im ashamed to say that i ate kfc for dinner...then they played video games til their bus left. haha. carlos, the oldest of the group, consistently switched from ‘usted,’ ‘tu,’ and ‘vos’ while talking to me. that’s one thing i still haven’t figured out here yet. but i really do like the use of ‘vos’ here, as well as the use of the intimate ‘usted,’ like raul’s family all uses with each other. other talking observation: i had a more difficult time understanding my new mono friends (mono means monkey, but its what the people from the mountains call the people from the coast) because monos mush all their words together, but i really love the way they talk. sometimes i wish that i would’ve studied in guayaquil rather than quito, so i’d leave with a tiny bit of that accent...

other cool thing about cuenca: the cañari, an indigenous group in this area, have such beautiful clothing. the women’s skirts are shorter (to the knee) and they wear really tall colorful socks, and all their clothing (shawls, belts, hair wraps, etc) is different colors...bright pinks and blues, lime greens and orange! it totally clashes but somehow looks wonderful. and all their clothes is embroidered with tie-die thread. they also wear flat hats with tie-die feathers and fuzzy balls on them. its awesome!

by sunday night, though i’d had a great time seeing the south, decided i’d been traveling long enough, and took a night bus back to quito. this way i’ll have more time this week to say bye to everyone and pack my stuff. home in 5 days, craziness!

p.s. all my latest photos are here.

goodbyes, babies, bribes, and guinea pig

its been awhile! a long catchup entry...
two weekends ago was my last weekend teaching in cotacachi, they threw us a cute little going away party with gifts, i will never cease to be humbled by the generosity of these people! it was really sad to leave, but its so awesome to think ill coming back to do research there.
that sat i traveled all around northern ecuador near colombia. we went to the valle de chota, one of the areas with a lot of afroecuadorians.

interesting grain harvesting tecnique

we roamed some towns and lakes and hiked the “the angel’s paramo” which was filled with one of the most interesting plants ive ever seen.
the guy i went with later tried to take me to a hostal without telling me his plans (unless he was talking to me in secret ecuadorian sex code...) but thankfully i made it clear i wasn't interested. yet another example of the absolute ridiculousness of the guys here...machismo and everything associated with it is something i’ll never get used to.

the next week was the fiestas of quito, but i was more interested in getting all my final papers written (40 pages en español!) than celebrating the conquering of indigenous people with bullfights and too much alcohol. 12/6, the founder’s day, my fam took me to a typical foods festival, where there was no room to sit or even walk around, tons of greasy, smoky but delish typical foods, including my beloved llapingachos and buñuelos!


there have been lots of protests recently at the university down the street from my house (its public, bigger than u.t., and the most politically active) in which traffic has been diverted due to violence. the interesting (and sad) thing is that no one ever seems to know what they’re protesting until after the fact, and even then it gets little news coverage.

my ecuadorian sister had her second baby! he’s so adorable, and its funny how we visit and not really spend much time actually looking at/holding the baby, but somehow its just peaceful being in his presence. he still doesn’t have a name, after five days, which is interesting. also interesting...as relatives came to visit the baby, every single one kept saying “¡que blanco! ¡que hermoso!” (how white he is! how beautiful!) and to me, the baby didn’t look particularly white, mostly reddish and pruney like newborns often look. but how sad that white = beautiful! (another manifestation of the self-hatred demonstrated by mestizos, along with their anti-indigenous racism, etc).

i finally went to the mitad del mundo, the tourist trap outside quito where you can stand with a foot in each hemisphere.
i also finally ate guinea pig! (a favorite food of the indigenous people). it was...interesting. on the way there, i saw a pretty high concentration of fascinating street people, including flame eaters and a man selling live chickens in his arms in the streets. he later came on our bus and i was entertained by clucking the whole way home.


speaking of chickens, the other day my mom bought some wild chickens to eat, and asked me to help her prepare them. we sat around de-feathering, cutting off heads and fingernails, and pulling out hearts and livers (i felt like i was in 9th grade biology again!)

classes are ending, final presentations are being given and tests being taken. i’m pretty sure my absolutely awful human rights professor tried to bribe us yesterday by giving us pretty bookmarks just before handing out the class evaluations. i’m not so easily wooed, and circled “malo” (bad) on several questions, which she promptly looked at as i handed her back this “anonymous” eval. oh, ecuador.

yesterday i went to the guayasamín museum, a world-famous ½ indigenous quiteño artist, who almost always painted in social protest. he was friends with tons of famous people, especially radicals like fidel and a famous latin american social protest singer whose name escapes me. his most famous paintings have hands as the focus, because he believed that hands are very powerful and could express any emotion.
my favorite painting of his was of a church building. the whole atmosphere of the painting was very gray, except for the light in the doorway of the church (which was not escaping to the outside). outside the church were laying the marginalized…sick, old, unemployed. so powerful and well done. and such a good slap in the face and challenge for the church of today.

ill leave you with a cool quote in the video about guayasamín’s life, and try to do my best at remembering and translating: “some things pass from the skin in, and some things pass from the skin out. when these things coincide, painting happens.” i love it.

p.s. tomo when class is over, i’m headed to the hippie beach, guayaquil, cuenca, (two big cities in the south of ecuador), incan ruins at ingapirca, riobamba (town with highest concentration of poor indigenous people and the center for the theology of liberation movement in ecuador) and a scary roller-coaster-like train ride called “the devil’s nose”. ill get back two days before i go back to the states (the morn of 12/23), and i hope that ill write again, but if not, its been a pleasure! thanks for reading!

algunas novedades.

last tuesday was the feast day of the virgin of quinche, so with my popular andean religions practices class, we took the bus to el quinche, a town 1.5 hrs from quito, to observe. it was so interesting! the people have such faith in the healing powers of this virgin statue, they were frantic to touch her or rub her with a cloth so that they can rub the cloth on themselves when they are sick. and there was a fountain of healing waters, a wall full of plaques where people make promises to the virgin, and over 300,000 people at the mass outside of the church. and like all ecuadorian festivals, there was music, fireworks, and tons of street vendors. i am absolutely fascinated with the intersection in between the sacred and the secular, especially in this country. there seems to very rarely be a division.





my brother came to visit for thanksgiving! it was great to have him here. we did all the touristy quito stuff, and his enthusiasm and constant picture taking really helped me to see the city with new eyes, since it has become rather ordinary to me on some days. we spent the weekend in cotacachi teaching english and having good political convo with raul around his fireplace, drinking champagne. we went to a real-time, non-touristy shaman (friend of raul’s) for a cleaning ceremony, where we were rubbed down with candles, sticks, and rocks, and had alcohol spit all over our bodies and smoke blown all over us. as uncomfortable as that sounds, it was actually so refreshing. i felt like i was being confirmed again. and the intersection between traditional indigenous practices and catholicism was fascinating here too. the shaman’s “office” was full of pictures of saints and Jesus, and we were instructed to offer our candle to the virgin mary (on an altar in another room in his house) after the cleansing. i could study that kind of mezcla for years i think!

we also went to go see some pre-incan pyramids close to quito with my family. it was shocking to see such interesting and historically significant ruins with almost no preservation, no publicity, no research done about them, no books to be sold regarding info about them. its such a shame! but the trip was rather interesting. and apparently, at pyramid 14, the pyramid of fertility, there are still indigenous weddings rather frequently.



the fruit market in otavalo (somewhere else i took my ñaño)

my ecuadorian presidential candidate, correa, won the segunda vuelta! thanks be to God, i was pretty much nervous about the results all of sunday. my brobro and i went to correa’s victory party that night in a quito street, where the popular masses were dancing salsa and drinking boxed wine. incredibly fun. i really wish that i would still be here in jan. when correa gets inaugurated, because i’m really interested to see what will happen here...

annnnd, today, my ecua-mom put up the christmas tree...another confirmation that time is absolutely flying by... take care, friends!

“the flavor of mangos para chupar always makes me think of christmastime and the new year”

--my sis at breakfast this morning, my translation
its funny how mangos, what we might consider a tropical fruit, are only sold in quito this time of year, and make my sis think of christmas. her statement over desayuno also brought with it another realization: time is flying! only one month left... my recent attempts to live it to the fullest:

last weekend we climbed the world’s highest active volcano, cotopaxi. freezing cold, a little scary, very fun. i hadn’t played in snow in over five years, so that was really awesome.

monday i climbed the tower of the basilica and sat outside on the roof. also a bit scary, but peaceful watching all of quito walk and drive by during rush hour. and then i ate in a fair trade restaurant under the san francisco convent! monday was also the opening night of the first-ever ecuadorian-made opera. it told the story of the feminist mistress of simon bolivar, who liberated ecuador from the spanish. very, very good for the first-ever opera in a country, with a very appropriate theme.

thursday brought an organ concert of bach and mozart music in quito’s cathedral, by an italian, which was quite beautiful. friday i got a perm with some other girls from the program. it turned out pretty disastrous. haven’t quite figured out what to do with it yet...

and this weekend we went to baños, a town three hours south of quito that has natural hot springs. the town had been closed for a couple months due to damage by the volcano tunguragua, which feeds the hot springs. and we almost didn’t go this weekend because there was a paro (strike where they close down the roads) made by all the people who had been displaced by volcano damage and had not received any government assistance, but the paro ended the night before we left. (considered a success because promises for assistance had been made, but they rarely are followed through with, unfortunately).
we ate good food (how i’ve missed pesto and hummus!), swam in the warm pools at dawn, drove four-wheelers to the top of a scenic overlook, and climbed down to a beautiful waterfall.


and now its time to prepare presentations, write papers, etc. until my ñaño chris comes to visit on wednesday!


leave with you a little laugh... "parks are not restrooms." only in quito...

latest photos can be viewed here.

“eso es el INEPE, queridas compañeras”

today was maybe one of the coolest experiences of my life. i went to INEPE, a school in south quito, the poorest part of the city. INEPE is a really good private school but everyone pays what they are able, so kids from the barrio go there, along with some middle-class kids too. the kids whose parents can’t pay at all repair things at the school on saturdays or work in the organic greenhouse which raises food for the free breakfasts and lunches at school.

in addition to traditional classes at the school, even the youngest ones take english, and there are dance and art groups. also, a big part of the curriculum is “formacion humana” which is where they learn important values, foster a culture of community and taking care of the school and of themselves (they have showers at the school, so that the kids who don’t have water in their house can bathe before school), learn to criticize and self-criticize, ask questions (why do i live in poverty? what can i do to change it?). and i don’t think ive seen happier children in my life. i seriously cant describe how bursting with joy the whole place is.
there are 580 students at the school and 92 workers. many of the workers are former maids or unemployed parents of the kids at the school, who receive training from the school to become art teachers, cooks, nursery caregivers, etc. many other workers are former students, who received scholarships from the school to go to universities, then come back to be teachers, secretaries, or administrators. in fact, there is a former student administrator for every grade level who do frequent evaluations of the teachers and students. the curriculum is not planned far in advance but is specialized for the needs of individual students and the group as a whole, and is really about empowering students. i don’t know that ive ever seen any sort of organization so well run and so sustainable.

(one of) my dream future(s) = finding a partner with similar values, living in a community with many needs, identifying one of those needs and developing something awesome to help alleviate the problem without compromising any of our values. and the director of the school and his wife have seriously done all that. in the late 70s, as hippies recently married, they started a youth organization for kids of quito barrios, and it spread all over the country. they began to have kids and decided to start a school for their kids and their neighbors to raise their kids with good values and a good education in an area that had no good public schools. the community lent them a house, and the first school had only 8 kids in it. as time went on, the kids from their youth organization became professionals and began to donate their time to the school and it began to grow. during the late 80s when lots of NGOs began to come here, they looked into getting funding but never felt it was right because they didn’t want to compromise their values for the objectives of an NGO. for 14 years, the school was totally volunteer run, but now a french NGO, which has a similar vision, funds them well. i think i could be absolutely happy working in that school (or starting one like it) for the rest of my life...

trip to the tiputini biodiversity station, amazon rainforest, 3/11-6/11

(notes scribbled down during an 11 hour regreso)

a day’s worth of travel: by car, by plane, by canoe, by ranchero, by boat and by bus.
spanish, spanglish, kichwa and wuar dance through our ears as white river dolphins wriggle by.
“hemos llegado” and we put on boots and pop malaria pills. gotta charge our cameras during the five hours the generator runs...
(my camera doesn’t run on candlelight).

our guide, josé, is perfect. pacha mama has raised him since childhood and she is his first love. he shares her gifts with us: snacks of lemon-flavored ants, bracelets from palm fibers, natural mosquito repellents and toadstools with which to write letters, fruit-dye tattoos and the proper way to attract strapping young kichwa men with nets of grass seeds.
rio tiputini is our sitio of choice for showers (but watch out for the fish that can lay their eggs inside of you if you pee!), and we float down the river lazily as the rain caresses our faces.

walks by moonlight call out those more “dangerous” creatures and snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and crickets the size of my hand come out to say hello. monkeys choose to relieve themselves on trees above our heads and the florescent fungi, which light our pathway with no need for a linterna, laugh along with our guide.

as the sunset nos da un beso cada noche over the laguna, in the same way, the amazonian sunrise greets us from the bird tower and reveals the private lives of toucans, parrots, macaws, spider monkeys and even prehistoric birds who chose to make their home only here.
“los riezgos” of this area don’t see to cross anyone’s minds. although danger shakes his fist during a few of our adventures, he seems to always be ignored, in search of the opportunity to more fully savor every moment.

but quito calls us back, and although i’d prefer to ignore her voice, i return my boots, now muddy, and doy besos to the cooks, guides, and scientists i’ve somehow grown fond of in just three days.

so we drive through the selvain a chiva, feet dangling in the dappling sun
(same vehicle as a week ago halloween, but transformed into algo mas practical and more in touch with reality)
and i’d rather not leave—cuz there’s comfort in the isolation
and liberation from tourism
and somehow i feel that being this far from the world makes it all the more real.

p.s. new photos can be viewed here. many apologies for the low quality of almost all the amazon photos, it was always hard to decide whether or not to use flash and i have shaky hands.

trick-or-treat, ecuadorian style

for halloween, the program group decided to rent a chiva, which is an ecuadorian-style party bus, open without windows, and space on the roof for us all to stand/dance/hang out with the live band. we drove all around the clubby-touristy area as well as the historical downtown, and even had a dance contest in the deserted plaza of the san francisco church. quite fun and unique. during the festivals of quito the first week of dec. apparently everyone gets on chivas every night.
however, the kids digging through trash and watching us, wide-eyed, dancing in the plaza, was a sobering dose of reality...i don’t want to forget...

halloween is not really celebrated here; there were a few people dressed up in the clubs and roaming the streets, but it definitely wasn’t a big presence. the program director told me that a few years ago everyone would get dressed up and close down the streets and dance, but then the president asked them not to, because its not an ecuadorian tradition but rather just u.s. influence, and that they should celebrate the ecuadorian seal instead. (oct. 31 is also ecuadorian seal day…whoohoo!). another interesting effect of globalization...

nov. 2 marked “el dia de los difuntos,” celebrated similarly to “el dia de los muertos” en mexico, but with some marked differences, for the different indigenous cultures here. even before the spanish came here and made everyone catholic, the kichwas of the sierra would celebrate their ancestors during this time of the year because they believed that the cooler winds brought their ancestors spirits.
nowadays, they bring traditional foods, like guaguas de pan (bread shaped like kids) and colada morada (a purple fruity drink made with dark corn flour) and eat it while sitting on top of the graves of their relatives. they pour some colada morada over the graves to share with the dead.

for my andean religions class, we went to calderon, (a town half an hour outside of quito famous for their marzipan figurines!) to observe the cemetery, which has a large indigenous population that still eat with their dead on this day. there were so many people there, to the extent that it was hard to walk around. the street outside the cemetery had become a festival, with all kinds of vendors, and even a ferris wheel!
in the u.s., no one wants to walk over graves, out of respect, but here, everyone was walking over everyone else’s graves, leaning on tombstones, and even walking around selling ice cream and lotto tickets! it was shocking, but actually the whole atmosphere was pretty liberating...like how death should be celebrated.

there was mass out in the open air, and during the homily, the priest explained the significance of the symbol that had been constructed on the ground in front of the altar. in the middle was a guagua de pan, which represented each person, recently born. we travel down the spiral of life, growing physically, mentally, and spiritually. the path is filled with the things that strengthen us (the foods of this area, part of the indigenous sierran identity), as well as flowers and thorns (to represent the beautiful and the difficult that we all encounter). and the spiral doesn’t end, in the same way that our life doesn’t. after death, our life just changes and “se pierde el infinito.” (this is beautiful and i feel like it doesn’t quite translate). and the rays that come from the spiral represent the forces of the universe, which keep the planets in orbit and form the earthquakes. the rays are made of corn, and in the same way that it is key to the andean identity and is their primary form of nutrition, the forces of the universe, and God’s love, is our primary form of nutrition. que tan linda!

“en grupo somos fuertes; solitos, no somos nada.”

(in group, we are strong; alone, we are nothing.) these words were spoken to me by alberto androngo, the first indigenous teacher in ecuador and national director of bilingual education, as well as leader of the bilingual education movement and leader/participant in several indigenous activist groups. this weekend, during my service/field research in turoco i had the privilege to interview this man who exudes wisdom, who has the most interesting eyes i’ve ever seen, with a weathered face and a thinning braid characteristic of the indigenous men here. we talked theology of liberation, bilingual education, migration and identity. i could have spent hours with him. but he did ask trudie and i to come back in 2 weeks to give his grandkids an english lesson, so i’m sure i’ll have the opportunity.

this was, by far, the highlight of my very beautiful weekend, but other highlights included:
*making halloween masks with the older kids (sharing a bit of cultura estadounidense) and seeing their amazing creations, hearing them say “trick-or-treat!”

*playing the old arteaga games with the kids during recess, including “a la catonga” and “pata, alita, picito..” and learning some new ones, like “agua de limón”

*making over 100 rolls and other forms of bread with maurita’s family for el día de los difuntos (all soul’s day aka the day of the dead)

*walking all over rural ecuador with raul, trudie, and erin, absorbing the beauty of the volcano tayta imbaburra and raul’s gran cantidad of knowledge…learning about the kichwa women’s lives have been changed by microenterprise, how important mingas (community shared work) is to the social and physical development of the community, about kichwa cosmo vision and care for pacha mama (mother nature) and cultural conflict in schools

*learning important lessons, for example, as we were walking in the countryside with raul, it began to thunder and i began to make a face and say “eek!” thinking “ugh, i don’t want to get soaked!” and shortly after, raul took us to the river and began to tell us about the long walks the community has to make to get water, their stuggles with drought, etc. i believe he was discretely trying to tell me, “don’t dread the rain, it’s a gift!”
*other beautiful story from raul: one of the way people greet here, if one is in their yard and the other is walking down the path, is that the one walking will say “prestame el camino” and the other will respond “sigue, no mas.” (“lend me the path” “of course, continue on!”…and raul told me it in kichwa, which sounded even more beautiful, but ive forgotten it). they say this as a recognition that all paths are formed by community work (the minga). que hermosa!


well, i tried to keep it short. this weekend i go to a research station deep in the amazon jungle! cuidense mucho, amigitos!

p.s. all my latest photo albums can be found here.