Lunch in Alausi

What with one thing and another, Avanti hasn’t had a chance to pay me my monthly salary yet. Since I don’t have an Ecuadorian bank account, direct deposit is out of the question . That’s too bad, because I have always been quite dedicated to direct deposit back home. But getting to the bank is sort of an ordeal, and I have asked them to pay me in cash. This requires that Angus bring my salary with him when he comes down from Quio, which isn’t something that happens every week.

This is all leading up to the idea that the money I got when I was in Riobamba was just about gone by today, and my salary won’t be here until at least the middle of next week, so I had to go to Alausi, capital of the canton (sort of the county level of government), where there are two banks with ATM’s, and one of the ATM’s actually works. There is no bank here in Tolte. Most people work at the margins of the cash economy, eating food that they grow and selling other things, without much in the way of savings that would merit a bank account. There’s no post office here, either—in fact, the postal service seems to be almost unused, which may bode ill for the US postal service. I think I’d have to go to Riobamba to mail a letter, although it’s possible that there is a post office in Alausi or even Chunchi. Of course, the letter would take well over a month to arrive, so it’s not clear of mail is even a form of communication. Other fairly typical components of a US town that are not present here include: food market (though the stores do sell a few food items), restaurant, laundry/dry cleaners, movies, lending library, bus stop, auto mechanic, police of any kind…well, really, there isn’t much of anything besides houses, farms, the school, the municipal office, and the two churches. It’s a bit like a typical village on Long Island, if you think about it—except with much more communal life. And, on the plus side, I haven’t seen a McDonald’s or a Starbucks since I got here.

Anyway, going to Alausi is sort of an ordeal—you never know how long it will take for a bus to show up. As it happens, I only had to wait about half an hour to catch a bus to Alausi, which is just about record time. I walked straight down to the bank and got some money, bought some bread in one of the superior panaderias of Alausi, and treated myself to lunch (comida Alausena autentica) at a restaurant called “La Fuente,” which was the name of the landmark store that marked the end of Salitral and the beginning of Matinilla in my Peace Corps neighborhood in Costa Rica. For $1.75, I got a big bowl of soup that included lentils, potatoes, something cabbage-like (maybe a local green called celga, which might be chard or collards) and some mysterious pieces of mammal flesh, which made for some fairly tough chewing. The main dish was a similar piece of meat, but thinner and pan fried, over white rice with a beet salad on the side. That Alausi cuisine probably makes for pretty hardy, uncomplaining folk. And you don’t hear me complaining either. Lunch like that for $1.75? Awesome

Because I had to open the computer room at 3:00, I went right back to the bus stop to wait. I’d say it was about 12:00. No one was at the bus stop, and I think that encouraged me to make a real mistake. I decided to walk up to the highway. When I got there, I realized that I was not really in the right place, and would have to walk some more to get there. While I was doing that I saw a bus pass the bus stop I had left. And so I earned myself a two hour wait for the bus at the bus stop, because, in the end, that seemed like the smartest place to wait for a bus. I knew I was in for a long wait when I started seeing tourists. They must have come down to take the Nariz del Diablo train ride. But I figured the probability of seeing them was so low that a long wait must be required for that eventuality to arise. I certainly was right. There was a great moment when the bus arrived, though, and the driver told the students to wait until the “people” got on. Yes, it warms a teacher’s heart to hear remarks like this. The bus also happened to be new and clean, and it got me back to Tolte in time to open the computer room at 3:00, with a little help from Ascencio, who gave me a ride in the back of his truck instead o my having to walk into town. All I can say is, I hope I don’t have to go back to Alausi any time soon. It’s kind of a nice place, but it’s too hard to get home.