Ecuador #2
Ecuador, Life in
Well, from October to Christmas I did not in fact fall off the face of the earth, rather I was living the third-world life for a little while (maybe not too far from the same thing), or more accurately the Peace-Corps life. I have to say that while I may be a trooper, third-world living did get to me in the end.
In terms of setting and natural beauty, I really didn’t have anything to complain about. I was living with my friend (Justin, Peace Corps volunteer, see earlier Ecuador post) in his little house in the Imbaburan highlands on a foothill of the volcano Cotacachi. Andes all around us. Vistas overlooking the towns down in the valleys. Very striking.
I certainly couldn’t complain about the company either! Justin and I had a wonderful few months playing games, reading LOTS of books, cooking great food, playing with and reprimanding his energetic pup (Buckley) and doing some hiking in the surrounding mountains (more on that later). Justin had already been in Ecuador for about a year and a half by then, so was accustomed to the life and already had in place all those systems one needs to have in place to live in a house without water, to eat in a house without refrigeration, to cook in a house without a stove, to clean in a house with a cement floor, to function in a house with unpredictable electricity, etc. In the grand scheme of things, I had it easy.
The community in which Justin was living did present some challenges for me though. It is called El Morlan and is comprised of about 20 indigenous families. They all speak Quichua (a derivative, sort of, of the Peruvian/Incan Kechua — not sure if I have those spellings right), and most speak basic Spanish as well. There is an overpowering, prevailing sense in the community that gringos in Ecuador are wealthy (which is true, relative to them, in all cases EXCEPT Peace Corps volunteers who receive a stipend for living and no more) and that any gringo in their community can only help by giving them money. A difficult situation to navigate through for a gringo who is in the community to help via education and man power. In the end Justin was mostly ostracized from the community and, by association, I was too. So, it wasn’t one of those idyllic cultural-exchange experiences, the first barrier really being language (only learning basic Spanish at the time) and the second being these stereotypes; so I didn’t find the community particularly welcoming. But that wasn’t too bad by me because, hey, I am in fact an outsider and I shouldn’t be too surprised to be treated like one!
Beyond that, though, there were some other interesting “challenges.” Life in this community, and others similar, is largely subsistence-based and they grow/raise a lot of the food they eat (namely, corn, cabbage, eggs, chicken and pork) and life is very poor; your financial status is revealed by the number of animals you have in your yard. And yet just about every home will have a big-screen TV in it and a high-tech stereo of some sort. Of course the stereo has a specific purpose — for BLASTING out the window to the people working in the fields. Of course, who can really have a beef with that? Fine, that’s the way it goes; maybe it’s a little strange to me to walk up to this rustic mountain village by way of the cobblestone road and hear resonating between the hills the huge bass thump from some euro-techno or the twang-twang of Ecuadorian cumbia, but I guess that’s just the way it goes. The main difficult part about it was that it would start at 4:00 in the morning — before anyone was even out of the house! (Not surprisingly, many people appear to have quite a bit of hearing loss.) And, if the music didn’t start at 4 in the morning, then the town loudspeaker would turn on, turned up loud enough to reach both the highest and lowest houses in the community (a good 30 minute walk apart). First the radio music turns on, then the announcements are made (about what I have no idea, all announcements were in Quichua), then the music again and then more announcements, then more music, then more announcements…sometimes for more than 20 minutes. Fine, fine, suppose I’m just a little testy because it’s 4:00 in the morning, and it’s just not my way, that’s all; isn’t that what living in a different society is all about? When I say I was living in the mountains in this tiny, remote community, I think the one mistake will be to picture a quiet place. Morlan could sometimes rival Times Square for decibel levels; between the stereos, the loudspeaker, the pigs, the roosters, the donkeys, the kids and the trucks rumbling along, Morlan was usually not a quiet place. Although there were the odd exceptions. A morning of sleeping until 7 without a sound around us; an evening of pure silence watching the sunset behind Cotacachi and listening to the wind blow by; a dinner without the din of outside life surrounding you; all complete, surprising, enjoyable mysteries for which I was always grateful.
There’s also a real problem with alcohol in Morlan, and from what I understand it’s a real problem in many indigenous communities. Most of the men go off on Sunday or Monday to work Quito or in some other city and then return to their families for the weekend. The weekend is then spent drinking and that’s pretty much it. The town council will have a meeting at 3:00 in the morning on a Sunday just because they’re all there anyway drinking together. It was a common sight to see a wife and a daughter collecting their husband/father who had passed out in the street or in a field, and waving hello to their neighbors along the way; there was nothing out of the ordinary, to say the least of shameful, about it for them.
For quite some time I tried to remain objective, observant, respectful of this life as simply a different culture than mine and one that I could/should remain impartial about. I had tried very hard to remember that I was the one invading on their territory, so to speak, and that I had no right to judge their way of life — it was in fact my choice to remain there. But, through my own weakness, I eventually lost that perspective and got fed up with the noise and the drunkenness and everything. It wasn’t the accumulation of it all that made me lose perspective, but rather three series of events.
The bathroom
It all started with the bathroom. Justin’s house had no water, and so obviously had no bathroom. Across the street was an elementary school with bathroom stalls. When Justin first arrived he arranged to have one of the school’s stalls as his own and paid them however much money to use it for 2 years. So, he cleaned it put and put a toilet in it and it was his. As it turned out, the school had more students than before the next school year and they wanted the stall back. Only problem was that this stall was the only option for a bathroom and the only water source nearby. Finally, after a surprise town meeting (surprise to us anyway), much heated debating and more money, Justin got to keep his bathroom — phew!
Then, a town work party accidentally cut the water line to that line of stalls, which meant no toilet, no water for dishes, no water for cleaning ourselves, except at the other end of the school, which is of course what we did. After about 3 weeks of mis-starts, a few lies and a few failed attempts at fixing the line, we finally got water again — phew! (Anyone who’s traveled in South America likely knows the importance of a nearby bathroom!)
THEN, one day we get back home and some people are putting a gate up at the entrance of the school (the school was set up with a medium-high wall around the whole thing and then an opening right across the street from Justin’s house). We started to wonder if the gate was going to be locked and who would have the key and when would it be locked and all that — being the entrance to the bathroom, it was of certain concern. Of course we consoled ourselves that it wasn’t a big deal unless they also put a fence around the whole wall that was there, because as it was you could just hop over the wall to get to the bathroom (which was a little difficult with a load of dishes, but do-able). So, in the end, we got a key to the gate without the director knowing (the man who rented the bathroom to Justin in the first place), but were grateful that we wouldn’t have to mess with it (in the middle of the night especially) as long as there wasn’t a fence. Of course, we get word that a fence is going up too. At this point, I was scheduled to leave in another week or so and thought I would never have to deal with the whole thing. But, of course, after being away for a couple of days, we get home to find that, yes, the fence is up and the gate is locked.
It was my very last night in Morlan and I thought to myself that I could avoid the whole thing just for that day and could escape without the added difficulty. And, of course, my worst scenario happens — middle of the night, last night in Morlan (already quite sad), not feeling well — I have to get to the bathroom, which means getting the headlamp and the key, fumbling around to figure out which is the right key, trying and trying, almost taking a dump in the street and finally making it in, blah, blah, blah. Just one of those things that you inevitably have to deal with in that kind of situation, but I had reached the end of my rope.
The dead dog
Then, there was the dead dog. One day in December a dog was hit by a car and it was lying in the ditch by the side of the road. It was obviously still alive and aware and functioning, but its back two legs were crushed. First I should say that there are lots and lots of dogs running around Morlan (and all of Ecuador for that matter). They belong to families, but aren’t cared for in the way we care for pets. They’re mainly just around and they get whatever scraps of food they find. Wherever their home base is they protect with a vengeance; they are all very bravo and will scream bloody murder if you get too close to their yard. In Ecuadorians minds, they’re objects, something that’s around, nothing of real consequence. So, this dog surely belonged to someone at some point, but now that it was in the ditch dying it didn’t belong to anyone anymore.
The neighbor kids thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. The dog would bark and moan, distressed (obliviously), and that would send them roaring with laughter. I wasn’t quite sure why (and am still not), but at the time chalked it up to kids being I-don’t-know-what in the face of something as dreadful as a being dying in front of you. It took about 5 days for the dog to die (presumably of starvation). Those 5 days created a dilemma for Justin and me having nothing to do with the community: should we kill it or should we let it die? Of course, we knew the answer was that we had to kill it; we had to kill it; it was the only humane thing for us to do. But, we couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to do the humane thing, because the only option we had was to drop a rock on its head or something gruesome like that. I think my own reluctance to kill that dog made watching the kids laugh at him even more difficult for me.
After the dog finally died, we were waiting for the bus one morning on the side of the street where the dog’s body was; a woman with a baby on her back came up, also waiting for the bus, and noticed the dog. First, she pointed at it and looked at me, and I kind of nodded and grimaced as if to say “I know, I saw him, he’s dead now, isn’t it sad” and she laughed. Then I realized that it wasn’t a kid thing, it was a cultural thing and I was so saddened by that. Here in particular I could not stop myself from imposing my own value structure and judging people based on what I believed. I almost felt personally hurt by the…I don’t know, cold-ness of it, under-valuing of a life. I know I should have just accepted it as culture shock and moved on, but to this day I feel that pang in my heart seeing that woman with her baby on her back pointing and laughing at the dog who starved to death in the ditch.
Christmas
And then, it was Christmas-time. The thing about Christmas parties at home is that it’s cold and we have big houses, so all those Christmas parties are inside — not so in Ecuador. A week or so before Christmas Justin’s landlady’s husband came home (I’d never seen him before), and then other people started showing up (all family, I think), and then came the horrible pig sound (I’d never heard a pig being slaughtered before, there’s no forgetting it), and then came the party. (Justin’s house is in the front yard of his landlady’s house.) Not just a party, we’re talking about a 4-day binge-drinking fest with music that never stops and that never goes lower than it needs to be for people in the fields to hear it. Men stumbling around everywhere, peeing everywhere, and passing out everywhere — for 4 days straight, never a break. The worst part was seeing the 7-year-old son stumbling around and his 8-year-old sister holding him up. After that was done we breathed a sigh of relief — we’d made it through. But, it was too good to be true; we should’ve recognized that this might be a trend and just gotten out of there. A day later, the neighbors down the street had an even bigger blow-out; this time with an actual DJ, which meant actual speakers. This one did only last an even 24 hours and there weren’t people crawling all over the house, but it was one more sleepless night. That’s when we decided to take off for a couple of days…it had been too loud to read, to loud to watch a movie, too loud to sleep…the cramped, bumpy, smelly bus was a welcome experience for once — even though it too was noisy, at least it meant we were on our way to some place quiet!
Even now I have to remind myself that I had one experience in Ecuador, well I had lots of experiences but one type of life. There have been many other people who have visited Ecuador, even lived in Ecuador, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. And for the most part I did enjoy myself; for the majority of the time, inconveniences were no more than inconveniences to me; invasions of privacy and the lack of peace/quiet were just cultural mismatches and nothing more. But, it clearly got to me and I was ready to head out when the time came.
January 14, 2004 in South America
