I'm Back!

Maybe you can’t go home again, but at least I have gone to Tolte again, and I’m mighty glad to be here. On the one hand, everything is just as I left it, sort of: same long bus ride from Quito, same difficulty getting the bus to stop at Tolte when we approach from the north (why this doesn’t happen from the south, I’ll never understand), same ring of mountains looming above us, same unpaved road into town, switching over to paving blocks in the center, same boys playing “indoor” in the plaza.  On the other hand, everything looks strikingly different from when I left. The dry season is now in full force, and all the green has faded to a straw-colored yellow everywhere I look.

As usual, when I needed to see someone, he appeared. I got off the bus with all my baggage, including my guitar, computer, handy backpack, and new army surplus duffel bag. Years ago, I swore I would never travel this heavy. Now it seems unavoidable. I did manage to cover the two or three hundred yards that the bus overshot my stop, but I was starting to wonder if I hade the Tolteno load-carrying fortitude to make it all the way to Francisco’s house, where I’m staying for now. At that moment, Dani and Fausto appeared on a motorcycle. I think they were more surprised to see me than I was to see them. They took my duffel first, which made walking down the road a lot easier. But then Dani came back for me. We know from previous episodes that I’m not a person who trusts his coordination too much, but there seemed no choice but to throw my computer over my shoulder with my backpack, and hang on to my guitar as I struggled my way on to the motorbike. I didn’t even fall off before we arrived at our destination.

I had intended to arrive earlier in the day, but Carolina was not able to meet me as early in the morning as I had hoped. When I got to the Avanti office at 11:30, I was astonished to find the place full of bright young men doing smart looking work on computers. They even have specializations, though I’m not clear on exactly how that works. It looks like Terrence and Juan Carlos focus on research and planning while Esteban handles event planning. This is a big change from when Avanti was Carolina alone, and the whole enterprise seems much more vibrant and exciting.

Carolina and I talked for about two hours about our hopes and dreams for Tolte. It appears that this year, my role is going to go far beyond English teacher to include the acme of the new international development model, social entrepreneur. This is going to be hugely challenging for me. I’ve never really been a business person. I don’t know how to write a business plan and carry it out. This is not to say that I’ve never had a business idea, but going over the wall to make it happen never occurred to me. But here is a situation that may melt my opposition to capitalism. I’m not doing this for myself, but so there will be steady employment for the next generation of Toltenos. As always, this blog is meant to be a place where I can solicit the help of my few, or should I say, “hand-picked group,” of readers. Those of you with business experience, I need you desperately.

And I do have some ideas, although they are not entirely my own. Or maybe none of them are my own, but they seem pretty good to me. I was introduced to a woman named Florence in Port Washington, coincidentally married to an Ecuadorean, who told me to stop thinking about exporting farm products and export craft items instead. She emphasized that her customers want items that are “authentic” and “natural.” Maya also emphasized the start-to-finish aspect of what people regard as a true craft product these days. So my first thought was that the existing artesania group, which sells knitted items in the train station, could start spinning their own yarn out of llamingo wool, and knit it in its undyed state for an all-natural, organic product (yes, my mother actually pointed out an ad for extremely expensive organic clothing in the New York Times Magazine.)

The second idea revolves around the ambitions of Tolte’s luthier, Don Vicente, leader of the Evangelical Christian folkloric band, of which I form a small, but weird, part. One day, Al (he who calls himself Pierce) was out visiting his friend Mike in Port Jefferson, so I went out there, too. I got into an interesting discussion with Mike Sr., without question the most entrepreneurial person I have ever met. He asked me what we could export out of Tolte that he could sell. I suggested musical instruments, hand-made in Tolte. He liked this idea, and asked me to pursue it. I like the idea, because if it worked, a guitar factory in Tolte would be both a source of employment and a tourist attraction. And Carolina liked the idea, too. Now I just have to find out if Vicente has any interest in doing something like this at all.

The final, and by far most grandiose, idea was courtesy of Tom Hastings, who does development work for the College of Natural resources at UMass Amherst. I had made a little donation to the Student Enterprise Farm, a brilliant student-initiated and run project where the students actually learn what it means to run an organic farm as a business. When I made my donation, I was invited to visit, and I surprised myself by actually doing so. I have to say that Tom treated me like visiting royalty. While we were chatting over the nice lunch he treated me to, I described the tourism situation in Tolte. The problem is that although tens of thousands of tourists a year take the Nariz del Diablo train ride, none of them makes it into Tolte. The train ride is organized so that the tourists have only an hour and a half in the station, and then have to go back on the same train. Tom’s answer? “Build a cable car.” Absolutely brilliant. If Avanti pulls this off, will be on the social entrepreneurship map for sure.  Yesterday I got a look at the likely route from Tolte to the station, and while I’m not 100% sure that such a thing could be built, it would be absolutely spectacular.

But for me, what is truly spectacular about Tolte is its community of people. When I go home to States, there are certainly people who are happy to see me, but they are few and far between. Here in Tolte, everyone has welcomed me back not only with warmth, but a kind of joy. My coming back seems to make them feel loved and appreciated, emotions which they amply return to me. Naturally, this also led to a semi-spontaneous welcome home party of the classic Tolte style, but I managed to substitute a bottle of duty-free Jack Daniels for trago this time. It is possible that Pilsener beer makes a better chaser for trago, though.
So now it’s time to get started. I’m living with Francisco and Elena until I can move back into Ramon’s house. Ramon is home again and has brought his children with him, so I may have to wait until they leave a few weeks from now before I move in. On the other hand, during the heat of the fiesta last night he was quite insistent that I move in now. So that may happen sooner than I expected. I also need to get my keys back from Elvia, but I will no longer have the same kind of computer access that I did. The infocentro that I thought would never open did open on the day I left New York. I had always said that it would never open during my first stretch in Tolte, and it didn’t. I think it’s funny that it did finally open when I returned. Anyway, I’ll have the same Monday to Thursday infocentro access as the rest of Tolte. I also bought a wireless connector for my own computer that I can use anywhere, anytime, as long as I have enough megabytes in my account to support my connection. I hear that this thing works better than the infocentro, but recharging it may be a nuisance. Reaching me may take some planning.

Now it’s Saturday, and enough has happened that I think I ought to write it down before I forget. I am sitting in my room in Ramon’s house, because the move really did occur right away. Somehow, there is a spare room downstairs, which has the distinct advantage of being right next to the bathroom. I always hated having to find my way down the stair in the middle of the night.

I have also had a conversation with Vicente about the guitar business. He needs equipment, and that’s going to take an investment that is sizeable by Tolte standards. But he thinks that he could employ perhaps five helpers if the business gets moving, which is to say making a guitar a week. I’m a little less worried about him making a guitar a week than I am about finding someone to sell a guitar a week, but I’ve got some ideas about how we could get that going. I’ll have to see if I can make that happen. So much depends on my internet connection these days.

I also took a trip with the indoor team up to Iltus, a nearby village that I heard mentioned frequently last year, but never got to. Iltus is close to Tolte in highway terms, but is way up the mountain on the other side of the Inter American Highway. Iltus seems to be running on an economic model similar to Tolte’s, because you can see the large houses of people who have spent time working abroad surrounded by traditional adobe homes. The indoor team played against the Yuquillay team that I met at Tolte’s tournament last year and earned themselves a 4-4 tie. The Toltenos had plenty of chances to win, but the Yuquillenos are a good team and kept coming back. Everyone on the Tolte team managed to earn a yellow card, too. I think the referee called a good game, as far as I could tell. It looked as though the Toltenos were having a rough day to top off their rough night.

This evening I’ll practice again with El Grupo Winari, the folkloric Evangelical Christian musical group run by Vicente. Some readers have seen a picture of this group, but I still haven’t managed to get it in a form I can post here. We’ll see if I actually remember any of the songs he taught me. I sort of suspect that I don’t, so I’ll have to get up to speed quickly. We usually practice for hours and hours, so I’m going to have to find some source of energy to carry me along now that the Jack Daniels has run out.
In other words, all the things I think of when I think of Tolte continue to make me happy. I was saying to someone that living here is a kind of second chance for me to achieve some of the things I didn’t manage to do in my “first life” in the United States. I never really developed much of a social network there, but I do have a great one here. That’s a good start. With the raise that Carolina has promised, I’m going to be more well-to-do than I was in the States. I’ll have Ramon’s big house to myself. And I’m going to have to be a successful entrepreneur, at long last. It would certainly be nice to put this all together, even if it does seem a long distance from agricultural extension.