Fiesta de Tolte

I know that you all have been awaiting a report on the Fiestas de Tolte as eagerly as I have been looking forward to participating in them. With a five-day fiesta, it’s hard to capture all the action, so I’m going to try and organize this by activities—at least my personal activities.

Day 1, Thursday, Nov. 17: Much to my surprise, there was school today. Even more surprising, I actually had a lesson plan to use, and I taught the kids how to respond to questions about physical feelings (hot, cold, hungry, etc.). Keep in mind that no one has been teaching the fourth and fifth grade class this week because there was another problem with the teacher’s paperwork. There was an early dismissal so that the children involved in the folk dance performance could practice their routine, which is darn cute, and pretty sophisticated for something thrown together in a few days. Needless to say, the boys here are much better folk dancers than my friends and I were at their age.

The actual fiesta kicked off with a performance of traditional music by a good size semi-local band. This isn’t the traditional music that Americans normally associate with the Andes, which involves guitars, cherengos, and pan pipes. This music is made on brass and woodwind instruments. Naturally, there are some drummers, too. I’m not sure how to describe the sound. It’s definitely in a minor key, and has sort of a military band quality. It’s a bit like the music they play in movies when someone is facing a firing squad in Mexico. A fairly short theme is played repeatedly for up to ten minutes, first to a sort of resolve ending, and then later to a kind of rising fanfare kind of ending. It isn’t hard to imagine bullfighters or gladiators entering the arena to music like this. And, in fact, the band does play during the bullfighting.

The afternoon was filled, at least for me, with more pig and sheep butchery. I have to say that Segundo made a neater job of this than Damasio did, but I still got blood on my pants. At least I didn’t have to eat any innards afterwards.

Meanwhile, the football championship was winding up, with a losers match for third place featuring two teams from Tolte. Fredi, who was playing goalie, actually pulled off a “loco” charge and scored a goal, but his team lost to a team that included both of my brawling futbolista friends. The championship game was played between Chunchi and Iltus. The most interesting thing about this game was that it was interrupted for mass. The padre seemed to find it offensive that people were watching football instead of attending the service to honor the patron saint of Tolte, San Marcial. He was almost certainly right, given that the fiestas are supposed to honor San Marcial, a saint best known, according to the padre, for solitude, prayer, and penitence, which does make for an ironic contrast with the Fiesta de Tolte. I actually wound up attending, because Augustin, who was already “bien chumado,” as people here say when someone has been drinking all day, asked me to come in with him. I thought he probably needed some kind of support. The football team from Iltus attended mass, too. Naturally, the team from Chunchi won.

By this time, preparations were being made for the first night of dancing. I hung around for a while, but nothing seemed to be happening. Since I have been struggling with a cold all week, I gave up and went home. The dancing started about an hour after that, I think, and went on until four in the morning. The most notable event seems to have been another fight, started by the same guy who started the fight a couple of weeks ago. Alcohol does not affect everyone the same way, I suppose.

Day, 2, Friday, Nov. 18: The morning was dominated by the quest for mote. I believe I have described mote before. It’s a dish of boiled corn kernels, but not of the sweet kind that Americans prefer. These are big kernels of something that looks a lot more like food than some kind of treat. Anyway, Joaquin, fairly chumado in the early morning, was somehow responsible for getting a community sized pot going. As usual, he recruited me for the job. We took a couple of trips up and down the hill behind the school to bring firewood, but then realized we didn’t have a pot or a stand to do the cooking in. We did some half-hearted looking around, and then just sat down on the bench in front of the office and waited. About an hour later, Luis, who has a community position both within and slightly outside the junta directiva, arrived with pot and stand loaded into a wheelbarrow. He had hauled it a pretty long way, so it’s probably no wonder that he left it for us to navigate the crowded area behind the school to the cooking location. Joaquin was comfortable with telling me where to push the wheelbarrow. I came close to dumping everything on the ground more than once, but didn’t, almost certainly exceeding Joaquin’s expectations. Of course, in loading the soot-blackened pot onto the stand, I did manage to cover my pants in black carbon, but since it washes out pretty easily, I thought it was a small thing. We got the fire going, and I carried enough water to fill the pot, which made me feel sort of like the sorcerer’s apprentice. By the eighth or ninth bucketful, I was looking around for a broom to do the work. But if you’re going to cook up about 50 pounds of mote, you need a lot of water. The actual cooking was done by Augustin’s wife—I apologize for not knowing her name, but women here seem to be reluctant to say what their names are, a cultural artifact I haven’t quite figured out yet. I’m glad she did the cooking. I don’t think Joaquin, Augustin, or I was up to the task.

About this time, Elvia, the junta secretary, came out of the office to tell me that Carolina, of AVANTI, needed the Chirstmas cards I had had the kids work on this week right away. I would have to pick the four “best,” and take them to Chunchi to have them scanned and e-mailed. As I’ve mentioned, it’s hard to make a quick trip to Chunchi, but I didn’t do badly. A bus came by only a few minutes after I reached the highway, and  the computer place is right at the bus stop. Unfortunately, no scanner in Chunchi was big enough to handle the A4 size paper that Carolina had asked me to use. We would have been much better off with 8 ½ x 11. But we scanned as well as we could, the fellow in the store was very helpful in compressing the file, and we sent it to Carolina by e-mail. Of course, when I got into my e-mail I found that someone had used Facebook to launch a character assassination plot against me, which again, is sort of ironic; in order for such a plot to work, one actually has to have a character, which is very different from being a character. So I knew I was safe. Amazingly, I didn’t wait more than 10 minutes for a bus when I got back up to the bus stop, and I was back in Tolte by about 1:30.

My timing was good. A few people were waiting in the plaza for the bullfighting to start at 2:30, and passing the time by drinking trago. Naturally, I had to drink some, too (it goes down a lot harder since the events of last Saturday), but I did get to hear Segundo make a fairly long declamation in Kichua, which was definitely worth the price of admission. I don’t have the slightest idea what he said, but it certainly had a noble sound. And then it was time for the bullfighting, certainly the most eagerly anticipated part of the Fiesta.

Bullfighting here is nothing like bullfighting in Spain, as I think I explained in a previous blog. Here, a truckload of bulls is backed up to the corral, and bulls are released one at a time into a crowd of amateurs, mostly young men, who wave things at the bull to attract its attention, and then jump over the fence if the bull turns in their direction. It is the rare individual who actually lets the bull rush by him. There is serious risk of injury, though, because if an older man is sufficiently chumado, he will get into the ring with the young guys to show them how it’s done. People do get killed in that situation. A bull is about the size of an NFL offensive lineman, but runs about twice as fast and has sharp points on one end. A fellow named Juan was hurt, and I guess he should have been warned that there’s nothing a bull likes better than making a hole in Juan. I know, one shouldn’t joke about these things. If the injury had been more serious, I wouldn’t dare.

And yet, the performance of the day was turned in by Damasio, who definitely could be described as an older guy showing the young guys how it’s done. He wasn’t totally chumado, but there’s no doubt that he was warming up to it. In any case, he strolled into the ring, where the young guys were busy leaping over the fence, picked up a cape, and stood like a tree trunk as the bull passed close by several times. There was really something admirable about it, even if you question the morality of teasing animals in this way. Still, it does seem better than simply cutting them up and eating them. And Ecuadorean bullfighting does not end with the bull being killed. The bull is simply returned to the truck.

I ran into Damasio in the plaza as the sun was setting, and told him that he really enjoyed seeing him “dance with the bull.” His always happy face broke into an even bigger smile. I wish I could recall word for word what he said then, because it seemed so worthwhile. But it went something like this: “This is what life is all about! To try things like bullfighting and do your best without being afraid, to eat well, to enjoy some trago, and of bitterness, nothing—nothing at all.” Is it any wonder that he is one of my favorite people in Tolte? He reminds me of the Hassidic proverb, “Only Fools Are Sad.”

Because I was feeling better, I went home, put on some clean pants, and went back for the dance. Everyone must have been worn out from Thursday’s events, or saving themselves for the big dance on Saturday. I drank some more trago with Juan, warm, mixed with some kind of tea, and simply horrible. We also ate some chicken and rice. But things were very quiet, and by about 9:30, I went home.

Saturday, Nov. 19: I got up early to do some work over the internet in relation to the AVANTI scholarship students and their hours and pay. There are some glitches here that have not been worked out yet, and I probably need to offer more supervision, but I think these are problems resulting from the fact that the program is entirely new. The students have been having trouble paying their term bills, and two students had their program pulled out from under them by their university. Anyway, I sent some e-mail to Angus, and decided to go jogging, which went pretty well. If I get consistent about jogging here, it would be very good for me. At over a mile of altitude and with steep, long hills to climb, it’s more about going the distance than speed. So far, I’ve liked it. I only hesitate to do it because it is so weird in relation to the way people live here. But, as Maya pointed out, people here expect me to do weird things because I’m a gringo. I might as well enjoy it.

As I was out, I ran into Jose Manuel, someone I’ve wanted to work with for a while. He’s a little fellow, sixty-two years old, but whenever I see him he’s banging away mightily with pick and shovel. So I told him I would come back in a little while, and he said he would still be there. The little while got to be a bit longer than I expected, because after I finished running and changed into my soot-covered pants, I headed back along the same road again. Juan lives there, and he saw me and invited me in for breakfast. So I did that for a while, and met his son who lives in Cuenca, whom I have seen before but didn’t connect to Juan. But I did get to Jose Manuel before he left his spot along the road. He warned me that he was going “muy adentro,” way into the farmlands, but I told him that was fine with me and off we went.

And muy adentro it was. I would never have reached Jose Manuel’s farm by chance on my own. It was way into the lower part of Achaisi, the mostly uninhabited part of Pistishi where many people have farmland. And this piece of land was entirely different from anything I have seen so far. It was in sort of a chasm between two hills, and most of the land was frighteningly steep. But a natural spring-fed stream runs through it, and it was probably about 300 meters lower than Tolte, so the impression was much more tropical than anything I have seen here before. Jose Manuel used water from the stream to irrigate his chard and lettuce, while gathering cilantro, parsley, and chard for market. He also used a sprinkler to water beans that were growing on an incredibly steep slope. Although I like to be involved, I had to mostly sit around and watch. He did show me a pest that is eating his Cherimoya trees—maybe my work will come later, when I try to figure out if there’s anything specific to do about that.

The time came to go back up to Tolte. Jose Manuel intended to carry his greens and some lemons up to the road and wait for a car to go by. But there were no cars; everyone was at the fiesta. We sat for a while, and then I offered to carry the bag of greens while he carried the lemons, and we started walking. Naturally, the route we took back to Tolte was the one described in my blog about acrophobia—and now I was carrying a big sack over my shoulder. It wasn’t very heavy, probably less than 20 pounds, but it was a nice little spike in my insecurity vein. Still, we made it back to Tolte without me pissing myself, and I was pleased to have made myself useful. I also learned how to say “Good morning,” “Good evening,” and  “How are you?” in Kichua. Jose Manuel awarded me a very nice avocado for my trouble, and did seem sort of surprised and grateful that I had been there, which was all very nice.

It was again time for bullfighting, so I went home, showered and changed, and headed over to the corral. Frankly, I was sort of bored with bullfighting, but it was the best entertainment available, and it was where the people were, so off I went. I ran into some people from Lluquiyai, a neighboring village, and we had a couple of beers together. These weren’t the young football players I had met before, but some much tougher young men. Still, they were friendly enough, and invited me to the Fiesta de LLuquiyai next week. I’ll have to try and figure out how to get there.

So, the bullfighting was proceeding in its usual fashion, with a lot of jumping over the fence, when one of the bulls got out of the corral. It seems to have slipped through a space between the truck and the fence. What was sort of dull now became entirely too exciting. The bull attacked a food vendor, overturning his stove, which caused a fireball of grease that fortunately did not catch the awning over the stall. Then the bull ran into town, pursued by men on horseback who almost ran me down because I didn’t hear them coming. Someone I had been speaking to earlier pulled me out of the way (stupid gringo, no sense). The bull was actually captured back near the corral, and the situation was restored to normal, but the bullfighting ended soon after that.

As I left the ring, the school teachers, who are not normally in their residence on the weekends, waved me into their place behind the school. I was surprised and very happy to see the fourth and fifth grade teacher. I guess his paperwork is on the march again. We drank quite a lot of beer, and listened to music, and talked about things educational and personal for well over an hour. These guys are very young—the sixth seventh grade teacher, an unusually tall Ecuadorean, is only 26, and I think the fourth fifth grade teacher is a year or two younger. They seem to have been friends in university. It was interesting to hear their perspectives on some of the kids, and to share mine, but we also talked about sports, college drinking bouts, and other manly whatnot until the fiesta got going again.

We went out to the plaza just in time for the fireworks. The plaza was packed with people, many from villages other than Tolte. Without doubt, this was one of the most dangerous fireworks displays I have ever seen—which probably also made it, in some ways, one of the best. Sure, the Fourth of July displays over the beach in Port Jeff are far more sophisticated and dazzling, but they just can’t compare to a deer on wheels spewing sparks into the surrounding crowd, or the “vaca loca,” a cow-shaped item the fireworks guy wears over his head, doing the same. There were rockets, and Catherine wheels, and two big fireworks towers that were like small volcanoes right there among us. It takes some faith to stand still and watch something like this, let me tell you.

It was surprisingly cold out, so I went home to get another sweater. I couldn’t find the teachers when I got back, so I went and mixed with the dance crowd. This dance featured live performers, mostly, I think, from Riobamba, and all quite good. The atmosphere was a lot like a college mixer, with way too many guys trying to find a girl to dance with. I did not prove to be any better at that now than I was when I was 18, although I think I was worried about violating some kind of social norm here. Maybe I was then, too. But there was plenty of warm trago to be consumed, and I did my share of that with both old and young. Well, maybe not my share. Friends of mine who rarely drink were way ahead of me. And all to honor San Marcial.

Day 4, Sunday, Nov. 20: This morning seems pretty quiet. I tried to wash some clothing, but we don’t seem to have much in the way of water. There are a few people scattered about the plaza, and I spent a while watching a group of men trying to get their truck started, which they did after some heavy effort. A think there’s a minga this morning to clean up the plaza, which definitely needs it. And don’t forget, the fiesta continues into tomorrow.

I headed back to the plaza about 10:30, and Segundo, Mario, Joaquin, and Augustin were there. It appeared that they had been drinking all night, or, in Augustin’s case, since Thursday. Segundo and I did some chatting, and the band did some playing, and all was pretty relaxed. Joaquin fell asleep on the spot, and Segundo spoke some more Kichua. Segundo does not look as markedly indigenous as many other residents of Tolte, but he is more apt to speak Kichua in my presence than just about anyone else.

After a while, the tough guys from Lluquiyai showed up. As we were chatting, I managed to make the potentially offensive remark that people from Tolte and Lluquiyai seemed more easy-going than people from Chunchi, who seemed more tough. That was when the tough guys from Lluquiyai turned out to be from Chunchi, both confirming my remark and requiring me to find a way out of it. But there were no hard feelings, because we were drinking beer together, and all was convivial. If all goes well, I’ll post a picture of the group with this blog entry.

The leader of the pack was a guy named Ivan (second from the left), who is certainly a tough dude. He’s a professional motorcycle racer, but has been out of the game for a while due to an injury. He broke his leg quite seriously in a motorcycle jumping competition that must have been something like ski jumping. He claims that he achieve an altitude of 200 meters, but couldn’t control his bike when he landed, which cost him 5 months in physical therapy. He now runs a dairy and cockfighting farm in Chunchi. His wife has been living in Spain for 5 years, but comes home for about a month every year. I gather that he spends the rest of the year doing the things that tough young men do when there is no female supervision.

I also spent quite a bit of time talking to Mario, who works as a security guard in Chunchi. His wife and son live in Cuenca, about three hours away. He works in Chunchi 11 days out of every 14, and spends the other three days in Cuenca. This seems like a lot of sacrifice given that his wife earns about three times as much money as he does. Family life in Ecuador is certainly not easy. Many families are divided across the country or across the world as they try to earn a decent living. Mario was especially interested in the bullfighting, and it seems the group was in Tolte specifically to watch him do it.

And, as it turns out, he was really good at it. Agile and fearless, he flagged down bull after bull, even touching their horns as they passed. He did go through the fence once, when a bull actually managed to scrape his body and tear his pants. I don’t think I got a decent picture of him, unfortunately, but I there are bullfighting pictures from this afternoon that I will try to post with this entry.

The afternoon was also tiring for me because we were drinking beer steadily. The way this is done is that you buy a case of beer and get one plastic cup. Then you pour out about half a cup, and give it to one member of the group, who drinks it, tosses out the dregs, and hands it back. Repeat with the next person, and continue at a steady pace until all your beer is gone. Never slow down or stop. It’s amazing how much beer you can go through at that rate. I wished Mr. M.I. of Colliersville, NY, had been there to help me out. Our drinking was briefly interrupted when another bull got loose, but this was less exciting than yesterday’s bull. No fireball, no horses, but they got the bull back, nonetheless, without any injuries.

By now, it was getting dark, and the guys headed back to Chunchi. I stayed in the square, continuing to drink beer with the father of one of my students, a young guy whose name I have never managed to catch. His wife, who was running one of the food stalls, didn’t seem too happy with either of us, and I can’t say I blame her. As we were bathing in her disapproval, the sound system and fireworks were being set up for the night’s dance.

Although the fireworks weren’t as spectacular as the previous night’s, they still had much of the same manic quality. Spinning, twisting balls of fire shooting out in every direction at ground level are very different from chrysanthemum showers exploding far overhead. And the tall tower spewing out a cascade of sparks really is something to see. It certainly is a heck of a way to kick off a dance.

If Saturday’s dance reminded me of a college mixer, Sunday’s was more of a family event like a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah. There were few outsiders, and this produced a nice familiar and familial feeling. Fredi’s brother (also sometimes known as Fredi, which is funny, because their first names are actually both Luis) was one of the performers. He sings professionally in Riobamba, and he really is very good. He once described himself as having “a voice with a volume that goes up to 13,” but it wasn’t the loudness that impressed me so much as it’s tunefulness and his stage presence. It’s always nice to see someone you know do something really well. I even managed to find a few dance partners, ranging in age from 16 to 60. I feel compelled to mention that the oldest woman (William’s grandmother—you remember William; he’s the really powerful futbolista that I tried to keep out of a fight) is traditional enough to wear the felt hat that is part of the traditional garb of the Andes. It seems a notable cultural achievement, or like crossing into some new level of integrating myself into the community.

Day 5, Monday, November 21: Today is off to another quiet start. I thought there might be school, but the K-3 classroom and cafeteria are crowded with fiesta junk and sort of a mess, so the teachers got the day off. The band that has been playing in the plaza all week has gone home. No one is in the plaza, or visible anywhere else. I think Tolte is just resting its aching head. It seems almost like a ghost town.

There was supposed to be some kind of program in the afternoon: greased pole and greased pig contests, as well as cockfighting, but nothing much was happening. Some of the older guys (that is to say, guys my age) were kicking around a soccer ball. They insisted that I come join them. The first thing that happened was that I went crashing to the ground. A soccer ball on cement doesn’t behave like a soccer ball on grass. This one sort of glued itself in place, and my monmentum (and generally poor balance) threw me down. It got worse. They begged me to play with them when they faced off against some younger guys. I warned them that I was terrible, but they probably already knew that, and that’s why they made me play goalie, until it was obvious that I couldn’t do that. In the end, a good young player, a young guy who was pretty drunk, and a little kid beat about eight of us older folks 10-5. The bottom line was that we couldn’t stop the good player at all, and we had no goalie. Nobody gave me a hard time, but I don’t think they’ll be in a rush to ask me to play again. I’m glad to say I was quick enough to keep up, but with zero soccer skill, it didn’t make much difference where I was.

Although I had been told that the fiesta would end in the late afternoon, there was an evening program. The highlight was a soccer game played by grandmothers, or women over 45. They looked very dignified in their hats, and showed great enthusiasm. And none of them fell down trying to kick the ball, either. The game ended in a tie, and there was a shootout to determine the winner. One of the women on the winning team received a pig as a prize. But no one showed up for the cockfighting, or climbed the greased pole. The weather was cold, and the plaza emptied out early. I was tired too, and was home before 9. The fiesta is over for this year. I don’t think I could take much more, but I will be sorry to see it end. Of course, the Fiesta de Lluquiyai is next weekend…