Life and Death at Carnaval

I’m sure that this blog entry will continue the usual dose of silliness. After all, t does discuss Carnaval, a gloriously silly time of year here in Tolte. But this entry also deals with the passing of one of my friends, Venancio Dobla, the day after Carnaval. I doubt that this blog has the capacity to do him justice, but I do want to pay my respects to him in whatever way I can.

Carnaval in Tolte is a playful, merry time. There are two great customs: splash everyone you can with water, and get soaked yourself in the process, and go from house to house singing the ribald Carnaval song, every verse of which ends “Que bonito es Carnaval!” I suppose that second tradition wouldn’t mean much without a third tradition, hosting the Carnavaleros when they come to your house. Hosting involves offering up generous quantities of food and alcohol, fueling the Carnavaleros for the next lego of their journey.

This year, Carnaval seemed to get off to a slow start.  I was in the middle of a two week school vacation that capped off the first “quimestre,” or five-month stretch of school. I had never really thought about the fact that “semester” means a six month period, which of course is far longer than any half school year in which I have ever participated. Here in Ecuador, we’re more specific about these things. Last year, the school year was broken up into three “trimesters,” so the quimestre system is new. Personally, I worry that it doesn’t provide enough feedback to parents, especially of elementary school kids, because they only get two report cards a year. Parents do occasionally stop by the school as they go from one field or errand to another to ask how their kids are doing, but there’s nothing like a report card to capture a parent’s attention. Report cards were not handed out on the last day of the quimestre, though, so the kids got to experience their holiday without the cloud of doom that hangs over vacations preceded by report card day.

In any case, during the first week of the vacation I carried out a number of farm visits in support of the local agrotourism project, going from one farm to another to see what each had that might interest a tourist, or what could be incorporated that might make for more functional organic farming. Few, if any, of the farmers here are committed to organic farming as a concept, although some are suspicious of agrochemicals. Still, agrochemicals give fast, if unsustainable, short-term results, and almost everyone likes a quick cure. I have focused on trying to get people to develop and use organic fertilizer, since few of my neighbors use any fertilizer at all, and yields tend to reflect this. So I went from farm to farm encouraging people to establish worm bins, an idea that already seems to have some acceptance. I’m looking for the “gimmes” in this process. I doubt I’ll be here long enough to promote a full-on organic farming/permaculture revolution.

By the Monday before Carnaval, though, my farm visits were done, and things were a bit slow. Estasis, my notoriously unmusical rock band, had talked about doing something together, but by 8 or 9 in the evening, we still hadn’t gotten started. I went out one last time before going to bed, and there, finally, was a group of Carnavaleros. I grabbed my guitar, and off we went in the drizzly weather typical of invierno in Tolte. I didn’t have any real singing responsibilities, but everyone counted on me for the guitar parts. The fact that I can actually do this seems to amuse everyone no end. It’s not that the music is difficult to play, I think it’s just a surprise to find that the gringo can do something so typically Ecuadorean. We didn’t go at it too long on Monday, because it finally got so rainy that we had to call it quits.

On Tuesday, Don Juan was quite insistent that I come to his house to play old songs that he knows and I don’t. I could sort of figure them out, but then he would get frustrated and kind of strum the guitar himself, which is kind of amusing because he doesn’t actually know anything about how to play the guitar. The old songs he sings are cool, though, and he and his family and I did this for a couple of hours until another group of Carnavaleros picked me up at about 2 in the afternoon. This led to about 8 hours of Carnaval guitar playing, which started to be too much even for me. One of the guys proved very clever at inventing Carnaval song verses for the presidential election of February 17, then less than a week away. These verses praised President Correa over his opposition, previewing the eventual outcome of the campaign. The President garnered 60% of the vote, while none of this crew of opponents could gain as much as 20%.

The party went on and on into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, though I had to give up before midnight on Tuesday, not having the iron constitution of my neighbors. I was relieved to finish Carnaval in a nearly euphoric state, without having to suffer any important health consequences. Wednesday got off to a weary start, although there were still a few hard core revelers delaying the entry of the Lentan season. Venancio was not really among these, he was on his way to work, but he ran into a group of these holdouts, who had been invited to eat something at the home of one of their children. And, in a moment, Venancio was gone, choking on a piece of meat before anyone could do anything. The Heimlich Maneuver had not yet reached Tolte. The crushing irony is that it would in the following week, when we received an Avanti-sponsored first-aid training from the Red Cross of Quito. But Venancio was already gone by then.

I’ve mentioned that Venancio was my friend. He wasn’t someone I spent lots of time with, I never did any agricultural work with him, his kids are adults and even his grandchildren have graduated from elementary school. He was a typically sturdy fellow in his mid-60’s, who could easily have lived another 10 or 15 years if not for his sudden accident. But I can say that he always seemed happy to see me, always gave me a warm greeting, and always invited me to a drink if he was drinking. He lived his whole life in Tolte, although some of his children migrated to the United States. And thinking of him makes me appreciate the importance of living a positive, ordinary life, being a good and cheerful family and community member, and brightening someone’s day with a hearty “Buenos Dias.” My exotic life here in Tolte is entirely dependent on my neighbors’ embrace of these ordinary virtues, which contribute so much to the sum of happiness in the world. And I deeply regret that Venancio cannot enjoy these things any more.

This was Wednesday, Feb. 13, and by Monday, 25 of us were studying first aid with Noe Zuniga, a trainer from the Red Cross. Noe is a fascinating character. He grew up poor in a rural area near Riobamba, and left home when he graduated from elementary school. He found work as a ticket taker on a bus, an excellent entry level job when he was a kid. The bus driver sort of adopted him, and helped him finish high school. Noe eventually finished college degrees in both nursing and paramedicine, and has gone to the United States to participate in training at the invitation of the Red Cross. He speaks Kichwa, Spanish, and English, and is completely happy with where life has taken him. He is also an excellent trainer, and spending 8 afternoons with him was a great experience for me. I re-learned many of the things I learned in an EMT course 25 years ago, and did some things I didn’t think I could do, including intramuscular and intravenous injections, things they don’t even teach you in EMT school. But out here in the rural zone, we might have to do these things to save someone’s life. We will actually be receiving equipment from Avanti, thanks to a grant from the British Embassy, that will provide us with all sorts of life-saving equipment that we never had before, but now actually know how to use. Since the nearest hospital is in Chunchi, 15 to 20 minutes away by car, these skills and equipment really could save someone’s life. The graduates of the program are going to meet once a week to review what we have learned, and I think this will be an important way to create a really unified community organization.

Now we have been back in school for a couple of weeks, and I am probably in my last quimestre as Tolte’s English teacher. It does not appear that Avanti will have the funds to keep me going. Perhaps this is just as well. I think it would be hard to face the school day without the present seventh grade, who will graduate in July and go on to Colegio.  I may investigate the possibility of teaching English in Chunchi, which could keep me in contact with them next year. I have also asked for work with the Ministry of Agriculture, and am looking into other volunteer possibilities similar to what I do now. Everything that I have needed in Ecuador has always turned up, and I imagine my next job is hiding just around the corner. We’ll have to see what happens.