Que bonito is Carnaval

I have decided to try to keep a running log of the events of Carnaval, which seems to be an exciting time in the world of Tolte. Carnaval includes the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. An important difference is that here in Tolte, we don’t have enough people for a parade. It appears that in most of Ecuador, Carnaval is celebrated by splashing your friends and neighbors with water and/or flour, and sometimes foam or paint. Since the weather is usually pretty misty and cold, I have some trouble grasping the desire to experience this, or why it’s considered fun, but there you go. Time to tune up my cultural sensitivity.

Thursday, February 16: The school day ended early in a massive water fight, leading into the school vacation which runs from Friday to Wednesday. I did take most of one water balloon, but it didn’t seem enough to change my clothes over. Well, mostly—I did go and get a different sweater.

More exciting events occurred during the evening, because Carnaval is also trago season, and some pretty serious drinking was going on last night. This led to a fight which half of Tolte ran up to watch. One of the young guys cut another with a bottle, although the cut was (fortunately) not too deep. The fight was stopped, but the drinking continued. This was fortunate for me, as I needed to recover from a sad and stressful skype call. As soon as I emerged from the call, I was offered a few rounds of trago. I can’t say it helped, and it left more sort of queasy, but I did appreciate the fact that I wasn’t alone. I helped to carry one of the revelers home (people seem to love it when I do this), and was still in bed by 10:30.

Friday, February 17: School is closed, which is always tough for me because I don’t have a lot else to do here, and I’m still recovering from my skyping. But the sun is shining, and the first thing I did was wash my clothes, which were actually dry by the afternoon, something that hasn’t happened in a couple of months. Then I put on my rubber boots and went looking for work. Once again, I ran into Diego, on his way once again to try and rescue his little truck, which couldn’t make it up the muddy, slippery hill yesterday. We still couldn’t get it moving, but he did invite me to pick up an azadon and go weed the cornfield with him. His mother, one of the best local herbal medicine practitioners, gave me some running commentary on the uses of various herbs and weeds as we hacked them up (though she did save quite a few). She recommended ortiga, stinging nettle, as a tea for my chronically irritated digestive system. I’m tempted to try it. Later, I did use ortiga on my lower back, which always takes the worst of the azadon. It certainly didn’t make anything worse, but it did prevent the continued work from leaving me pretty sore in that area. The weather continued bright and sunny, but not uncomfortable, as we worked along—again, the nicest day in almost three months. I even got lunch out of the deal, which is always a plus, and was nicely distracted until after 2, when I went home to get ready to open the computer room for the Friday afternoon moviefest. No, it’s not educational, but it’s a helpful prize for the kids’ reading time in the library.

Saturday, February 18: This is my big chance. An organization that promotes community based tourism, Maquita Cushunchac, better (and more conveniently) known as MCCH, has started a program of granjas integrales, or holistic farms, with the goal of making them points of interest for tourists. They were hoping for 20 participants; I think we have 11.  I have attached myself to this project as much as I could with the hope of doing some farm planning and soil conservation work, as in the old Peace Corps days. But I’m also armed with new Permaculture knowledge and thousands of stored pages of organic gardening information that I hope will be helpful. My main ideas are to encourage the farmers to plant on the contour, maybe even build bench terraces, and rotate their crops and farming activities. Fruit trees are popular and profitable here, so those won’t be rotating, but maybe I can either use them as contour lines or integrate them in some other way into the total farm plan. If I can get a couple of farmers to try my ideas, I think it could be very helpful in terms of whatever my next job will be, and that’s not as far into the future as it once was.

I got to see two of the pieces of land I planned to see, and one I didn’t, so I think that went pretty well. I walked down with Joaquin to the piece of land that he already has planted in fruit trees. His major problem is a fungus that has attacked just about all of his trees, probably aided by the fact that they are planted too close together. I’m not sure how much I can do for him, given that fruit trees are pretty permanent and can be easily moved. I encouraged him to try organic methods of fungus control, but I think the situation is probably too much in need of an immediate remedy to be solved that way without a significant economic loss. Organic farming works best when you start from the ground up, and this piece of land is already sort of locked in.

I went on to see Juan’s piece of land nearby—at least I hope I did, because he wasn’t there, and I was working off neighbors’ directions. This is more interesting, because it isn’t totally set. Part of the land is in fruit trees, and part in row crops. About three quarters of the space is very steep, and should all be in trees, but the remaining quarter is fairly level, and could be laid out nicely on contour. When I see him, I’ll let him know.

The last piece of land belonged to Jose Manuel, secret guitarist and owner of the nearly tropical piece of land I saw during the Fiesta de Tolte. This land, too, was already plants in fruit trees, and is pretty well set, though he has similar plant disease problems to Joaquin’s. But I suggested that we could lay out irrigation canals on the contour, and he thought that sounded pretty good. We’ll have to see how that goes.

So today produced nothing tangible, but I think there’s a little interest, and some level of taking me seriously in this role. I think people have it pretty clearly in mind that I’m the English teacher, and can’t quite grasp that I’m actually trained to be something else. But this is the best I’ve done in the agriculture world since Costa Rica, I think, and there’s a chance something good will happen.

I finished the afternoon/early evening off watching Mario teach folk dancing to the school kids. This has been my most successful idea for something for an AVANTI grant winner to do, probably because Mario is a good teacher, folk dance expert, and just generally responsible. It’s certainly none of my doing, but I’m glad I suggested that this is what he do. The kids are surprisingly into the dances—it’s not like square dancing in gym class when I was a child. One of them has the potential to be a real tourist attraction—he’s a fifth grader who’s about the size of a second grader, very cute, and is probably the best of the kid dancers. During the school vacation in July and August, I have the feeling that he could be stealing the show down at the train station. In a selfish way, I was relieved to see that Mario also felt compelled to call a meeting with the kids about their behavior. I’m not the only one they misbehave for—though I’m surprised they misbehave for Mario, who is the same sort of cool young man as the classroom teachers they do behave for. I’ve been here almost six months, and I’m still not sure how to get the moving in the same direction. This might be more of a problem in dance than it is in English.

Saturday, Feb. 18: The day started with a good, though somewhat slippery, run through the muddy streets of Tolte. I had hoped that yesterday’s bright sunshine would dry the roads out a bit, but it rained overnight, and things were sort of sloppy. But my running has improved, and I’m glad I decided to break social convention and start doing it. Although people find it unusual, they seem to feel that it’s a good thing to do.

A pause now for news of something gross. Sensitive persons should skip the following paragraph.

As I’ve mentioned, the rainy season weather here is cool and damp. I have noticed mold growing on all sorts of things inside my room, including things I have not touched or soiled in any way. The air is just that soggy. The topper was this morning, when I noticed some mold on my pillow case. I took the pillow case off to wash it, and found that the pillow itself was loaded with block mold. I sure hope ‘ve been sleeping on the other side of the pillow, which was not as bad. I think I’ll try to buy a new pillow in Chunchi today.

Chunchi promises to be exciting today. The Tolte team is playing a soccer game, and there will be Carnaval water fights all over town. I’m going to try to stay dry, because the weather is cloudy and chilly. But I’m going to take my chances and find out how things go.

And now that I’m back from Chunchi, I can say that I took a fair amount of water, shaving-cream like foam, and some colored powder smeared on my face, because I wandered up and down the streets of Chunchi with the futbolistas. The game never happened because the other team failed to show up, which was a shame, because it was going to be on a real field with grass instead of the “indoor” games on the small cement plazas. So off we went, armed (wel,, not me, I just can’t quite be that way) with these big cans that spray foam, up and down the streets of Chunchi. Just as Halloween in the US, girls take the worst of this sort of thing, but I saw some girls dishing it out pretty well. As I said, I took a certain amount of everything, but it wasn’t too bad, because I didn’t get soaking wet and the sun did break through mid-day. I never did get lunch, but I did get a new pillow, which might be more important. I also drank a few shots of trago with Augustin, always a dangerous game, but I managed to avoid total inebriation. Of course, people are drinking beer and playing with water up the road. I don’t think I’ll tell you whether I attended or not.

Monday, February 20: So I’m not going to say whether I attended, but I will say that I felt a bit queasy this morning. And this was not great because I had more appointments to visit farms for conservation planning today. The first one was with my friend Mesias at 8 o’clock. At 7:49, I headed up to the road to his store, but Don Juan, in a highly festive state, was going the other way. He grabbed me and insisted on taking me to his house, which is in the opposite direction. Along the way, he bought some trago. I have to say that the smell alone as it was being poured out was almost too much for me. He wanted me to drink some, but I just had to refuse. I felt like the bank examiner in WC Fields’ “The Bank Dick.”

At Don Juan’s house, he insisted on giving me mote con cuero (corn with fried pigskin) for breakfast. I can’t say I ate much, but I did the best I could. Several of his children live in Cuenca, but they were home for Carnaval, and the atmosphere was certainly festive. Many people here live apart from one  or more family members, and it seems to be very hard on them. More on that later.

Anyway, by the time I headed up to Mesias’ place again, it was 9, and he wasn’t there. In a scene out of my Peace Corps experience, he had forgotten and gone to Gonzol, a town on the way to Alausi, and wouldn’t be back until late. This was not a critical problem for me, as I had other farms to see, but I had been sort of counting on him to direct me to Josefina, who is someone I know less well. But I decided to go ahead down to the “hacienda” anyway. This may have been a test of whether the universe is still taking care of me as it did on the day I had to deliver the bottle of trago to Joaquin. And, of course, it is.

In a fit of bravery, I decided to take the trail described in the episode title “Acrophobia.” I have now gone up and down that path a couple of more times, and I figured it was time I handled it alone. Everything was going fine until I came to a small landslide that more or less blocked the trail. I hesitated to cross it, because I wasn’t sure if the rocks would start rolling or not. But going back up and around seemed out of the question, so I sort of crawled around the rock pile until I was back on the path again, and then things were fine. I had been told that Josefina was in a particular spot that is along the road, after the trail ends. So imagine my astonishment when I looked up and saw her and her sons hoeing weeds out of a pea patch on a piece of very steep land above my head. If I hadn’t taken that trail, I never would have found her. And she, too, had forgotten that I was coming. But she gave me her youngest son as a guide to the land she wanted me to look at, and I got to complete the appointment.

Even better, as the boy and I were walking along, I ran into Baltazar and Philomena, whose land I was supposed to look at on Tuesday, which I was afraid might be complicated by Carnaval. They seemed very interested in my suggestions for farm planning, and I have an appointment to see them Thursday evening to come up with a design. That level of commitment is a real thrill, just one step removed from putting pick and shovel into the ground.

We continued along the road and I got a look at Josefina’s land, which also has a pretty strong slope. She is already using a kind of contour ditching for irrigation, but I told her son that I’d like to use a level to lay it out in a more refined way, with a known grade. My friends in Costa Rica really liked using terraces because it made irrigation a lot easier and more certain, so I’m hoping I can sell that aspect to everyone here as well. And I do mean everyone, because I also took a look at Belena’s farm, which I have seen several times before, and the idea of terracing also seemed the obvious solution there.

I had heard that Jose Manuel’s land was downhill from Belena’s, so I walked to the bottom of her farm to see if I could figure out where it was. Don Lucho was down there spraying something from a backpack pump—I suspect it was herbicide. I was considering asking him where to look when Jose Manuel himself came walking by, and took me directly to the spot I needed to see. (Was the universe taking care of me, or what?) The lower half of the land is planted in fruit trees, but the upper half is row crops and a very small fish pond that he wants to expand. Again, I explained how terraces could help, and suggested that he expand the fish pond along the contour, instead of downslope, so that it would hold more water with less digging. He seems very eager to do work of this kind, but he is always saying that he doesn’t have enough time to do everything he wants to do. I did explain that I only have a few months left here. We’ll see if this work gets done during that time.

I had promised myself that I would take the main road back home, but Jose was carrying a big load of corn back to his house, and I sort of felt like I had to go back the way I had come. He had hoped to get a ride, but there were no cars, probably because of Carnaval. So he hoisted what had to be at least 50 bulky pounds on his shoulder, and walked the trail that still scares me with it. The resulting display of physical endurance was little short of amazing to me, perhaps outdoing the remarkable feats of strength performed by Mr. M.I. of Colliersville, NY. When he got to the landslide, he simply walked over it. I sort of crawled in his footsteps. Later, one of his daughters carried her four-year-old over the same spot, perfectly upright. All I can say is that I just do the best I can.

I got home and changed for a Carnaval party at the home of Don Sauce, also known as Luis, Fredi’s father. This was a big family event, because (if I understand the family relations correctly, and I’m not sure I do), his brother-in-law Alfredo, who appears to be the baby of a family with maybe half a dozen sisters, came home this week from England. He had been there eleven years, and his mother and one of his sisters had mentioned to me how difficult this was for them and for him. As I mentioned before, this business of having a family member far away is especially difficult in a place where such a premium is placed on family ties. Anyway, Alfredo’s mother was just about glowing. It was nice to be there.

As you might imagine from the story of Ramon’s homecoming in November, there was fritada to be eaten and vast amounts of alcohol to be consumed. I was given a pass on trago, but I still had to deal with a fair amount of beer. Also, in another Carnaval tradition, we all had our faces smeared with cornstarch, so we looked a bit like clowns (me probably a bit more than most). I kept waiting for the Carnaval singing to start. I had brought my guitar along and had a pretty clear idea of how to do the Carnaval music. Some time playing along with the Carnaval music playing on the stereo helped. But I didn’t really get to play until a couple of groups of Carnavaleros came by. This is a sort of trick-or-treat tradition, where groups of kids or adults come to your door and sing Carnaval songs, and receive food (and liquor, if they’re adults) for their pains. I had been showing some of the kids, and Alfredo’s sister, how to play Carnaval music on the guitar, when Luis finally broke out a little electronic keyboard and we got down to business—sort of, because everyone was pretty inebriated by then. Luis and I have played together before, but haven’t done so recently. I picked up what he was doing right away, and then we had some classic Carnaval singing, with lyrics ranging from the religious to the ribald. Unfortunately, we didn’t last too long—food and drink soon knocked almost everyone unconscious, but not before Luis’ compadre told me a detailed story of how he travelled illegally to work in the United States. It was pretty frightful, and indicates the level of desperation involved for the people who make the trip. It doesn’t give me a clear idea of what to do about the immigration problem, but it does make one wonder about a country that is so much richer than its neighbors and shares so little with them.

As I wandered home, a came across Mario and the other Fredi, and Fredi’s brother Guido, (in from Cuenca because Fredi and Guido are sons of Don Juan), who were drinking trago and playing the guitar. I played with them for a while, including a few songs in English, just to top the evening off. The air was pretty chilly, but it was nice to sing in the dark. I talked with Guido a bit about life in Cuenca, and he invited me to visit him there. Maybe I will—as we know, Cuenca’s pretty cool, even for a stranger.  It might be cooler with someone who knows his way around.

Carnaval, February 21: The day got off to a quiet start. I guess everyone is recovering from yesterday and preparing for today. I got up and did some laundry, because although it’s still quite cold, the sky is bright and my clothes might actually dry. I ate breakfast with Narcisa and Jose, and Narcisa invited me to Belena’s house for lunch. That should be cheerful, and should still leave me plenty of time to get wet and go singing tonight, if I can find a crew to sing with. I also need to find a rope to hold my guitar up.

During the morning, I tried to scout a crew to sing with. Diego likes to sing, so I stopped by his house to see what his plans were. He wasn’t there when I got there, but his sisters and sister-in-law chatted me up while everyone got ready for hog slaughter and butchery, one of my favorite pastimes in Tolte. Because I had an invitation to lunch, I didn’t stay for the butchery, but I did lend a hand in the slaughter, which, as usual, was not as quick as one might hope. I stayed long enough to see the hair blowtorched off the poor beast, and then headed towards Belena’s house. Along the way, I had some trago pressed upon me by a guy I once met from Iltus, who was riding with a bunch of friends to Nariz del Diablo. Their arrival in the plaza produced a hilarious water fight—the women of Tolte, particularly those from near my house (which is near the plaza) really gave them a bath. Right after that, Francisco drove up with about twenty teen-aged (and would be teen-aged) boys in his truck, and a case of beer on the front seat. While I was drinking the beer he thrust upon me, I took my own shower, which was enough to mean that I had to change my shirt and sweater, but I toughed out the wet pants.

In case you think that all this drinking and the rural lifestyle has no consequences, I’ll report the following disturbing incident in vague terms. Remember that there is no police force here, and domestic problems are generally perceived as personal, not social. A very drunk woman came down the hill toward the truck, where she found her husband, a man old enough to know better and one of the famous drinkers of Tolte. She seemed to be complaining that he hadn’t taken care of the animals, and trying to catch his arm to drag him home, when he simply slapped her to the ground. People seemed to feel badly, and helped her to her feet and so on, but no one (including me) actually did anything. I do feel guilty about this, but I don’t have the stature to be the conscience of Tolte, because as a gringo most of my ideas are suspect—or the strength to confront the offending husband, a man who truly resembles Popeye: smallish, but extremely tough and strong. I report this so that you can understand that Tolte is not Shangri-La, or some place I have invented, but a real rural community with the attendant problems produced by alcoholism, limited education, isolated poverty, and a traditional culture. Of course, any suggestions as to what I might do in the aftermath would certainly be appreciated.

I went home and hung up my wet clothing, and headed for Belena’s house where I was expected for lunch. Don Juan was there, in even worse condition than he had been yesterday morning, along with his wife, and Narcisa and some of her sisters. Don Juan is apparently their uncle, a relationship I had kind of suspected but wasn’t clear on. Massive amount of food were served, starting with chicken soup loaded with a big piece of chicken, and followed by cuy and chicken with potatoes and rice. Chicha and trago were also being offered. I really didn’t have enough appetite for the situation, but I was certainly impressed with the way Narcisa and her sisters put away their food. I’ll say this: I’ve never seen a woman in Tolte turn down food or complain that too much was served. They tuck in with a will. In some cases this is because farming certainly gives one an appetite, but not all of these women are farmers. I suppose it goes without saying that women here tend to look somewhat more maternal than they do in New York. Don’t forget that they’re also tremendously strong.

Not too long after lunch, I heard music from the little adobe building where Luis plays with the pick-up band of which I am a some-time member. Figuring that this would be a good chance to get my musical evening started, I picked up my guitar and headed over. I guess that six months of hearing local music has made it easier for me to understand what is happening when they play. For example, I realized that Luis generally only plays in the key of F minor, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. It is also rare for a song to have more than two or three chords—four is probably a maximum. I also found that after listening to Luis run through the melodies on the keyboard a few times, I could pick them out (more or less) on the guitar. Juan Carlos loaned me a neck strap to play the guitar standing up, which turned out to be a great help later in the evening. I guess we did about two hours before Luis went home and Juan Carlos and  I went up to Mesias’ store to find a singing group.

The singing group wound up being five or six people, all young men except for one old gringo. The weather was a misty drizzle, and made me think a bit of “A Christmas Carol.” The first place we stopped was at Narcisa’s house, where I eat lunch. I was a little unsure how she would take the sudden appearance of half a dozen drunken revelers at her door, but it turned out that she was tremendously amused by the sight of me playing guitar with this group. She was a generous Carnaval host, too, handing out Zhumir (trago manufactured under actual distillery conditions, quite a bit milder than the real thing) and cuy con mote. We also passed by Diego’s family’s house, where I had helped to kill the pig in morning, and were treated to some of the animal (cooked now, of course). The big party, though turned out to be right near my house, in a little adobe house below the level of the street that belongs to the grandmother of two families’ worth of my students. I had passed it every day, but never been inside. All I can say was that it sure looked like a fiesta, twenty or thirty people packed into a tiny space drinking and singing bawdy Carnaval verses back and forth between men and women. Belena turned out to be especially good at this—she definitely had an edge in experience over the members of my group. I played the guitar for this activity until my fingers got numb, and then played some more. I’m certainly glad that I managed to pick up the Carnaval music before Carnaval was over. I really felt mixed into the middle of a Tolte house party.

Again, I feel compelled to mention that all was not entirely festive in this fiesta. Late at night, when almost everyone else had left, the mother of two of my students talked to me about her concern for her cousin, offering more evidence of domestic violence in Tolte. She also talked about how her husband had been in Spain for the past seven years, but in contrast to most of the situations I have heard of like this, he has abandoned his family in Tolte and has left her alone to support four children ranging in age from 9 to 13. I can’t really imagine how she gets by. I know she worked as a cook in Cuenca for a couple of months, but seems to be back to farming in Tolte since about a month ago. As always, this is an adventure for me, but a real hard life for many of the people who live here.

And that was Carnaval in Tolte, 2012 edition. In some ways, it really was even more festive than the Fiesta de Tolte, maybe because it was for Tolte alone, instead of all of the surrounding communities. There is a kind of wild joy in all of the soaking with water in the cold weather, the smearing of everyone’s faces with cornstarch and colored powder, and the massive consumption of food and drink. There's a verse in the Carnaval song that says, "If Carnaval were to die, the world would end." It’s Mardi Gras without the upholstery, combined with Halloween and Thanksgiving. And Easter is only 40 days away. 

Coming of the Llamingo

When I said that I was going to Tolte back in August, Jeff immediately started making llama jokes. After all, since I was heading for the Andes, it seemed to him that llamas would likely outnumber people in Tolte, and that I would be spending much of my time hanging out with llamas, and perhaps eating one, occasionally. But the truth is that here in Tolte, people consider llamas to be animals of the high paramo, requiring a cold climate to do their best.

I think that what has actually happened is that the llama has been replaced by burros and sheep. Burros are about the same size as llamas (though not so tall), but can carry at least twice as much weight. And sheep have a finer wool than llamas do, but more important than that, they are tastier. So the European influenced farm economy of the mid-level Andes prefers burros and sheep to llamas. I have heard that llamas are less environmentally damaging in their grazing than sheep are, but I’m not sure exactly what the causes and effects are. Given that llamas evolved in the Andes, and sheep did not, it does seem like a reasonable possibility.

And so, it was with great excitement that llamas came to Tolte last week. I gather that the motivation for this I that llamas are touristic; when people arrive at the touristic Nariz del Diablo train station, they will now be greeted not only by folk dancers from either Tolte or Nizag, but by the llamas as well. The tourists can pay to be photographed with the llamas (including BABY llamas, as you can see from the pictures), and perhaps small children can ride them. This seems to be somewhat in advance of an enormous investment in tourism near the station that is going to involve the rehabilitation of part of the abandoned town of Pistishi, which is next to the station. I don’t have a good handle on how this is supposed to work financially, but plans seem to be moving ahead. The overall plan seems to involve outdoor activities such as biking, horseback riding, and maybe canoeing or rafting from a base in the former town of Pistishi.

Whether or not the llamas are tourist magnets, everyone in Tolte is delighted with them, at least for now. Some people call them “llamingos,” which might be their original Kichwa name. When school was over last Thursday, the children went running all over town looking for them. And when we rode by one on our way to Chunchi on Sunday, and saw it sticking its nose over a hill, everyone burst out laughing. They are certainly treated more like pets than the guinea pigs are.

Speaking of what things are called in Kichwa, I suppose I’ll be finding out a lot more about that. I’ve started attending the children’s Kichwa classes offered on Thursday. A young many comes in from Nizag and gives them an hour or two starting at 2. Nizag and Tolte have an uneasy relationship, even though they share the train station. Nizag is much larger, and much more steeped in traditional indigenous culture. Although I haven’t visited there yet, I hear that it is a place where you can hear Kichwa spoken in the street. There are often laborers who come to Tolte from Nizag—all women, none of them all that physically imposing, who can pick and shovel with the best of them. But people from Tolte and Nizag don’t seem to entirely trust each other. If they did, the relationship that everyone here has with Chunchi would probably be the relationship we would have with Nizag. I can’t say I understand the details.

So here’s an example of what I have learned so far about Kichwa: The world “killka” (pronounced KIZHka) means “letter.” The word “killkana” means “to write.” The word “pataku” means “table.” Therefore, a desk is “killkanapataku,” which is quite a mouthful, but it’s fairly easy to understand where it comes from. Kichwa has 18 letters and 3 vowels, so it’s going to be all I can do not to get tangled in repeated sounds.

Speaking of traditional culture, I ran into a bit more archaeology this week. I spent Saturday with one of my students and his teen-aged brother and sister, and we took a ride up to a piece of land they have near the bend in the road at the entrance to Tolte. I’m sure some will be offended by the notion (and maybe I am at a certain level, myself), but the main product of this land is fighting cocks. A good one can fetch a price ranging from fifty to several hundred dollars. In a place where you can buy a hundred pounds of potatoes for less money, it isn’t hard to understand the motivation for keeping gallos finos. If it makes anyone feel any better, they live free range and are too small and stringy to eat, so their situation is not all bad.

But that’s a digression. I wanted to mention that in the little shack on this piece of land, hanging from a string, was a very fine example of a stone axe head, or possibly hoe head, polished surprisingly smooth. I’m not sure if the finish results from use or intentional polishing, but it was certainly an impressive object. The kids’ father found it on the surface of the ground one day when he was working on a different piece of land. On Sunday, I wound up spending the afternoon with the rest of this family and they told me about other objects found underground in Tolte, from clay pots to gigantic human skeletons. Who knows—maybe a museum of archaeological finds would add to Tolte’s tourist attractions.

I may have the chance to get involved in the tourism process, too, but as an organic agriculture extensionist, still my dream job. People are coming from MAGAP, the agriculture ministry, to train local farmers who are interested in organic agriculture (assuming there are any). The idea is to have organic produce to sell to tourists, who are believed to appreciate this sort of thing. I have wangled myself an invitation, pointing out that the MAGAP person comes once a week, but I’m here all the time. The training is supposed to start tomorrow, February 15, which is probably auspicious because it is my llama-obsessed brother’s birthday. I may get to build some bench terraces yet.

I have to mention one more milestone. I have an official nickname. First it was the children, but now the young people and some adults are starting to refer to me as “Naichu Michu.” Much as it resembles Machu Pichu, or some other words in Kichwa, it is a mispronunciation of one of the first phrases I taught the children in English. See if you can guess which one.

Archaeology

This past weekend was my designated weekend to leave Tolte and get out and learn a little about Ecuador. It’s probably very revealing that I don’t look forward to doing this. It means going to an unfamiliar place alone, and I’m not a person who usually chats up strangers or mixes into groups of tourists. But I have been planning to go to Cuenca for months, and this was the weekend. And I absolutely had a good and interesting time. I think I should have gotten to Cuenca sooner. In fact, I think I was going to go to Cuenca the weekend I was persuaded to go to Riobamba instead. Maybe that was a mistake.

The weekend was aided by yet another unexpected day off from school. I’m not sure whether the teachers had training or contract talks on Friday, but either way, I hit the road at 8 o’clock instead of some time after 1 in the afternoon. In a particular stroke of luck, a cab was going back to Chunchi and took two of the high school kids and me right there for the same price as the bus. And a bus to Cuenca was waiting for me when I got there. Cuenca is farther away than Riobamba, but not much. I think the trip took about three hours.

Cuenca is higher than Tolte, at about 8,100 feet compared to Tolte’s 7000 or so. And it seems that this is enough to get you above the load line. People say that Cuenca is colder than Tolte, and maybe it is, but the equatorial sun is a lot more likely to shine there. The air temperature may not be high, but the sun sure is strong. I was definitely warmer and drier in Cuenca than I’ve been for a month, which immediately made a god impression.

I caught a city bus from the bus station to the center of town, where I knew of a hotel I could stay in for $6 a night, about half of what I’ve paid anywhere else. The building was pretty impressive, and may once have been elegant, although the bathrooms have probably always been down the hall. There were hardwood floors and embossed plaster ceilings. Between floor and ceiling, though, conditions were fairly Spartan—a bed, a bit of hard and uncomfortable looking furniture, and a sink. But I’m a budget traveler on my volunteer stipend, so I didn’t mind. The bed was definitely comfortable enough to sleep in, and the building was pretty quiet, and that’s what counts.

My first big splurge was to take some laundry to be washed, dried, and folded in a nearby laundromat. Laundromats in Ecuador do your wash for you. Five T-shirts, four underwear, and a pair of socks cost me $1, and I didn’t have to worry about when it would dry. A pair of socks takes about a week to dry in Tolte these days, if you manage its location carefully so that it gets some sun, and breeze if there is any, and keep it out of the rain. Believe me, hat was a dollar well spent.

I had found a walking tour of Cuenca on the Internet, and my hotel was a block from its start, so off I went. The first stops were some big churches, but I’m a bit burnt out on churches after my visits to Quito. The architecture was impressively Spanish colonial looking, though, massive with bricks and towers. There are many churches in Cuenca, with a variety of styles, and they do a lot for the city’s overall look.

Cuenca also has several famous markets, and the first ones I saw were the flower market and the artesania, or arts and crafts, market. Cuenca is the home of the Panama hat, which was never made in Panama. I think the story is that these hats were popular with Americans building the Panama canal, and because they were purchased there, people assumed they were from there. But the hats are actually made in Ecuador, especially Cuenca, which doesn’t really have the tropical climate the hats are associated with in the States. Some of them look pretty sharp, too, but I can’t quite picture myself in one. Maybe I’ll get one for Allie. It might be a suitable accessory for a jazz guitarist of his caliber.

I didn’t stay long in the markets, though, because I had hear that there were a number of interesting museums along the Calle Larga, a street that follows the edge of El Barranco, the small river canyon that divides old Cuenca from the newer part. And this is where the word Archaeology comes in. The first museum I went to was the Museum of Indigenous Cultures, which has thousands of artifacts from cultures from different times and places all over Ecuador. I think I actually enjoyed the first room, with the most ancient objects, the most. There were axe heads and arrow points going back as far as 13,000 years ago. This sort of thing always gets me, somehow, that sense of the deep past of human existence. Somehow, people used these stone objects to survive, thrive, and pass the land to their children. It couldn’t have been easy.

By the second or third room, I was starting to be overwhelmed. The collection includes thousands of objects, and by the time you’ve seen a certain number of zoomorphic bowls, it’s hard to tell them apart. But there were some interesting human figures in ceramic, which might give some idea of what the people who made them actually looked like. And then there were metal objects, and the arrival of the Incas (only about 80 years before the Spaniards), and a sense of changes in skill and technique. It was all a bit overwhelming, but I definitely felt as though I had seen some of ancient Ecuador.

I definitely felt even more that way when I got to Pumapungo, an archaeological site down the street that is maintained by the Banco Central. Archaeologists believe that Pumapungo was a combination temple, palace, and barracks for Incas living in what is now Cuenca. Although it took me a while to figure out how to get to the trail, once I found it there were signs that explained what I was looking at. It was a bit hard to tell, since all that remains is foundation stones no more than one or two feet high, although the building patterns are easy enough to make out. The explanation is that Pumapungo was destroyed during the Spanish Conquest, and then used as a quarry to build all sorts of things around Cuenca. There were a couple of interesting intact places, though. I enjoyed seeing the terraces, of the sort I used to build in Costa Rica, but here reinforced with stone and about 500 years old, which shows that these earthworks can last, even in an earthquake zone, if they are well-made. It gave me hope that I could persuade someone here to terrace part of a farm. The other interesting spot was a tunnel under the complex, which may have been used to store mummies or for ritual purposes, but it was closed off. Well, sort of closed off—the gate had been torn off its hinges. I kind of wanted to sneak in, but I couldn’t quite gat past the idea that no one wanted me to do that, and that it would be too dark to see anything anyway. But I wish they would consider opening it to the public. It definitely was intriguing. Below the terraces was a garden made with the Incan planting system in mind, including staple crops, tree crops, and medicinal plants. It was nice to recognize some of the medicinal plants that my neighbors sell in the market in Chunchi, but there were others I’ve never seen before.

On the way back up the Calle Larga, I saw one more archaeological site, a place where the three cultures of Cuenca were sort of stacked one on top of the other. Once I signed in, I was given what started out as a private tour of Spanish grain mills built on a slope terraced first by the Canari and later by the Inca. Cuenca, as its name (which means “basin”) suggests is surrounded by mountains and rivers, and the Spaniards routed some of the water down sluices to drive the mills. The differences in stone construction were easy to pick out, at least once they had been pointed out. The Canari used stones that seemed to have been shaped and fit them together with mortar. The Incas used carefully cut and fitted stones without mortar. The Spaniards used raw stone and lots of mortar. All three techniques have stood the test of time. The grain mills were in use well into the last century, and the indigenous structures are even older. Think about it: how many structures in New York are 500 or more years old?

After this I had a few unstructured hours until I could do anything one could consider “night life.” I have wanted to get to a dentist and have my teeth cleaned since before I left the US, but whenever I have been in a city big enough to go looking for dentists, my timing has been off, and all the offices I have passed were closed. But here it was, late on Friday afternoon, and I seized the opportunity. I saw a dental office, walked in, asked to have my teeth cleaned, waited less than ten minutes, and was attended by the dentist himself. I paid $25, and didn’t have to hassle with insurance. Of course, $25 is about a day and a half’s pay in Tolte, but it sure seemed cheap and convenient compared to the same service with insurance in the US. I think a dentist in Cuenca probably lives pretty nicely, and I know that my neighbors don’t see dentists too often, but I also understand why Cuenca might be a retiree’s paradise.

Wandering back to the Calle Larga, I stumbled across the La Compania Microbrewery. As previous posts have shown, it’s tough to get a good glass of beer in Ecuador, so I went right in. Pedro Molina, the brewmaster and proprietor, was there, and we had a really interesting conversation about operating a brew pub in Cuenca. Pedro has a degree in industrial design, and has designed all the microbrew equipment that is available in Ecuador, so the pubs in Quito and Banos are his clients. Needless to say, his beer is better than theirs. The atmosphere was better, too. Usually when I travel around Ecuador, I have trouble finding people to talk to. That wasn’t the case in La Compania, where aside from talking to Pedro, I met Craig from Colorado, who is taking a five month breather from the States to learn Spanish in Cuenca and then travel to Central America, and another Craig, a vacationing Irish bartender who works in Costa Rica. The second Craig tells me that Nicaragua, especially the island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, is the place to be right now. I’ll have to put it on my list.

Having seen so many museums on Friday, I wasn’t sure what to do with my Saturday. After picking up my washed, dried, and folded laundry (a bigger thrill than you might imagine) and getting breakfast, I decided to try to walk to the Feria Libre, the big open market on the west side of Cuenca. I made it most of the way, but got caught up in all sorts of weird detours due to road construction, and was advised to take the bus the rest of the way. The market is sort of a combination of the open market in Chunchi and the indoor market in Alausi, at about ten times the size. That sheer size did keep me wandering about for a while, but I can’t say that I saw anything that I wouldn’t have seen in Chunchi, so it didn’t hold my interest for too long, and I caught the bus back to the historic district and the Calle Larga.

I had seen most of the museums that I wanted to see, but I did stop in at the smaller of the two hat museums in Cuenca, where people are actually making Panama hats. They weren’t actually weaving the straw by hand, but there was a big machine that seemed to be doing that part of the job. The people seemed to be doing more shaping and sewing of ribbons and so on. I also walked over to the Prohibido Centro Cultural de Arte Extremo at Craig from Colorado’s recommendation, but didn’t really feel drawn in—maybe I’m just too old. The art looked like good rock album cover art, but I wasn’t sure how much of that I really wanted to see. I was more in an ancient Andean frame of mind.

I decided to walk down to the river that runs along the Calle Larga, and see what was going on down there. This seemed to be the zone of the people that Ecuadorians call “hippies,” with young folks selling hand-made jewelry and practicing circus arts on the grass. I got lunch in a vegetarian restaurant run by a couple of post-college looking folks, and it was really pretty good. Continuing along the river, I came across a big open-air concert in the Parque de la Madre. It was put on by one of the ministries, maybe Ministro de Seguridad, because there were ongoing announcements about being safe and not buying stolen property. I stayed for a couple of acts, including the Rey de Technocumbia and Brito, a guitar-playing pop star. The weather was nice and the whole thing was free, so this was a definite bonus to my visit. After that I wandered up Calle Hermano Miguel to the bookstore Libri Mundi, which had been mentioned on an internet site as worth a visit. It was a nice place to sit down and rest for a while, as my Ecuadorian imitation Nikes were starting to pinch my feet, but I didn’t feel the urge to buy any books. Prices were surprisingly high: $18 for paperback Harry Potter books, which I would like to have in the library in Tolte, and $30 for paperback Lord of the Rings books, of which we only have the first book in Tolte. I didn’t splurge for them, but maybe I’ll start saving.

I did go back to La Compania again, perhaps hoping I’d run into some of the people I had met the night before. The same crew of barmaids was there, and they talked to me a bit, but things were very quiet until Mario and Javier, who have the look of perpetual students, came in. Mario and I had a lively (and not unfriendly) discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian situation (“Palestina Libre, Carajo!”), which is not the sort of discussion I’ve had anywhere else. My conclusion is the fairly obvious one that Israel is losing the support of the thinking population who, a generation ago, were among its biggest supporters. I don’t think Mario opposed Israel’s existence, but he did feel that everything they were doing in relation to the Palestinians is wrong. Ecuador has its own oil supply. It is more resistant than most countries to Arab pressure. If Israel can’t maintain the support of a country like Ecuador, I think it faces some serious problems. But then, it always has.

Sunday turned out to be the real adventure day of my weekend. I had looked into visiting Ingapirca, Ecuador’s largest archaeological site, at a travel agency. I had looked into going on Saturday, but I would have had to pay $130 for a private tour. In my hotel, I found a bus schedule that showed that I could take a bus straight from Cuenca to Ingapirca at 9 AM, and that the site itself provides a tour. So I hustled out Sunday morning and bought a ticket for $2.50, got on the wrong bus, got off, got on the right bus, and was in Ingapirca by 11:15, in time for an 11:30 tour in English.

Ingapirca, which means “Walls of the Incas” in Kichua, was originally built as a kind of palace and ritual city by the Canari people, whose descendants still live nearby. I don’t want to try and offer a guide to Ingapirca, because you can look that up on the web for yourself. But I found the differences in the Canari and Inca approaches to the site interesting, because these differences seem to have been driven by differences in religious belief. The Canari were matriarchal and worshipped the moon. Their structures were round and tracked changes in the moon’s phase. The Incas were patriarchal and worshipped the sun. Their structures are rectangular and elliptical, which suggests that they knew that the earth travels an elliptical path around the sun. I wish I knew how they could figure that out with the observational record they had. I think it has something to do with where the sun’s rays hit at certain parts of the day at different time of the year, but I can’t quite work it out.

As my fellow tourists were taking pictures of a half-moon shaped garden area, I asked my guide, Susana, a question in Spanish about the irrigation canals that led to this spot. She asked why my Spanish was so good, and I told her what I do here, and she came back with the idea that she’s trying to start a school where people could study Spanish, Kichua, and English, and was that something I’d be interested in doing? I have to say that I don’t know what the follow-up will be, but she did take my information. I may find myself teaching English in Ecuador for longer than I originally planned.

I will admit to buying touristy souvenirs that may or may not be archaeological artifacts. If they are genuine, it would be wrong of me to take them out of Ecuador. If they’re not, I’m sure I overpaid. Sucker or despoiler of the national patrimony, which is worse? Let’s say that these things were made recently, and I overpaid. They’re still pretty cool looking, though, and 7 or 8 people will wind up with one. I wonder if I could pay for this trip by selling them on eBay?

I hated to leave Ingapirca, and I guess the universe could tell, because I had to wait in El Tambo over 2 hours for a bus to Chunchi. Several buses heading north refused to pick me up unless I were heading to Quito. The weather closed in, and it was a cold, misty wait for a bus that would tolerate my short-distance presence. I did finally get standing room for the hour and a half ride to Chunchi. It’s nice to think that Ingapirca and Cuenca are so close if I want to go back.

Since coming back to Tolte, at least one new and interesting thing seems to be brewing. A group called MCCH, which is an acronym for words in Kichua that I do not understand, is dedicated to promoting community based tourism. One of their projects, first mentioned to me back in October or so, is to develop a network of organic farms in Pistishi to provide food and agrotourism to the train station. Rumor has it that they will be coming every Wednesday for a while to train and support farmers in this project. Needless to say, I hope to get myself involved in this up to my elbows. Like the language school of Ingapirca, nothing is certain, but I am hopeful. I’d like to make some mark on agricultural practices here before I leave—and terraced farmland is a tradition that goes back to the Canari. That might just be a Stiny Brook Technology and Society question: Why do people abandon an effective technology? How can they be persuaded to take it up again?