Missing Memories

So much for my new resolve to record my adventures daily and blog weekly. I haven’t done either for almost two weeks, and I can’t say that I have a clear impression of what has happened during this time, although certain moments do stand out. On the bright side, I was concerned about being under-occupied until school starts on Monday, and that hasn’t happened at all. I’ve found things to do every day—I can’t recall exactly what they were, but they happened.

One notable change since I arrived is my internet connection. I bought a wireless modem from the Claro mobile telephone people, and now I have internet access whenever I want it. On the downside, it doesn’t seem to be able to connect to skype, which may be more a function of my location amid the mountains than any technological limitation. I may try hiking up to the highway to see if I can improve my reception. Of course, since my computer’s battery life is down to about 10 minutes, it may not be much of an advantage. But I can still skype from Chunchi if I need to, so I’m not entirely cut off. And I wonder if Facebook chat or Google chat will work, even though skype doesn’t. I’ll have to test this out.

One of the more memorable experiences occurred directly after my last blog. I went to Chunchi as usual that Sunday, with the barber shears I had promised to bring to my friend and barber, Don Lucho. This wasn’t even a gift, exactly, I just brought the particular brand and model that he asked for. The look of delight on his face, though, was absolutely on the order of “child on Christmas morning” joy. Whatever effort it cost me to bring it was very, very well spent. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere about joining gratitude with joy, but don’t look to this blog to try and draw it.

The next Sunday, Don Lucho regaled me with a tale from his time as community president of Llarucun, a little place between Chunchi and Tolte that make Tolte look like a booming metropolis. At its peak, Llarucun only had 24 families—it is now down to 8. But back in its peak days, there were enough children that they wanted their own school, because the walk to the school in Yuquillay was a long one. Lucho took a scientific approach to this problem, applying trago in sufficient quantities to gain cooperation and manpower from the surrounding communities. Twelve dump truck loads of material were brought to build the school, but Llarucun is quite a ways up the mountain where the trucks could not go. But 300 men, 180 horses, and 50 liters of trago got the material to where it was needed in about 48 hours. I think this is a story worth keeping in mind, although for the moment we will say that it reflects Ecuador’s past more than its present.

I have been more dedicated to attending community meetings since I got back, because I think it is a real responsibility of my new and improved Avanti job to participate in these things. Community meetings are difficult. They start at 8 PM and rarely last less than three hours, which is sort of hard on a community that wakes up between 5 and 6 AM. Much of the content of recent meetings has had to do with tourism, which is seen as critical to Tolte’s future.

Let me digress for a moment about why people are looking to tourism for salvation. Although there are about 350 people living in Tolte, as many as 500 Toltenos are scattered across the globe in pursuit of employment. In the two months I was away, Bolivar, Alberto, Narcisa, and Laura and Cristian and their little boy Ariel all moved to Quito. One of my students went to Cuenca and another to Naranjito (both of these children were older than usual for seventh grade—graduation was the sign that it was time to get a job). I might be aware that a couple of people went to the US illegally, or at least tried to go. Jose Manuel Guaylla, also known as Carabali, died when he crashed his motorcycle head-on into a truck on his way back from Chunchi one Sunday. He left a wife and five little children, and there is no life insurance in Ecuador. Jorge’s wife went home to her mother. It is not clear if this situation is permanent. Graciela has simply disappeared, but was clearly suffering from overwhelming financial problems. She may be in Cuenca. The bright spot is that Mariana’s husband, Jacinto, came home from Spain after ten years away. The trend towards emigration and loss from Tolte is overwhelming. Those without land to farm cannot get enough work to stay, and everyone is hoping that tourism can change that.

One of the biggest elements to this tourism is construction of a mirador/restaurant with a great view of Nariz del Diablo and the train station a quarter-mile below. There have been a certain number of tourists coming through Tolte in cars during these months of school vacation. The hope is that they will decide to stop and spend a little time and money in Tolte itself. I confess to doubts about this. Restaurants are tough businesses, and while the location is good, there is certainly more choice a short drive away in Alausi or Chunchi. But Nariz del Diablo is a big tourist attraction, and the train ride is very expensive, so there may actually be a niche for a family restaurant serving those who would access Nariz del Diablo by other means.

All is not well and peaceful in the world of Tolte tourism, though. After going through months of tests and other delays, Tolte was finally allowed to start taking tourists from the station on a short horseback ride to a nice vista point above the station. In a cruel twist, however, the railroad company decided to give the people of Sibamabe, on the other side of the river and considerably more affluent, the right to do the same. Not only that, but they gave Tolte Tuesday through Thursday, and Sibambe Friday through Sunday. It is not hard to understand that the value of these days is very different. What is hard to understand is why the railroad people did this. Other aspects of the station, such as folk dancing, are shared equally between Tolte and Nizag. One might say there is something rotten in Denmark, or, more likely, in the railroad headquarters. I find the dependent relationship of Tolte with the railroad a bad one, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to make it more equal in the short-term.

The agrotourism group is experimenting with a fruit stand at the point where the horseback ride ends, and I spent the first day of this experiment with them. Of course, in placing the stand at this point, they see only a tiny minority of the tourists, but that don’t have permission to sell in the train station and there seems to be some problem with getting it. The train people seem obsessed with the idea that tourists will get sick if they eat anything other than the “lunch,” a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread. My thought is that the fruit stand might do better up on the Pan American highway, which is closer to Tolte than the horse trail. I’ll have to try to get them to test this theory one day. Alicia and Elena spent the whole day at the fruit stand and sold less than $20 worth of fruit, mostly cherimoyas (“custard apples”) which are going out of season. The group had decided to emphasize avocadoes, but these really didn’t sell at all. I suppose the riders wanted something more refreshing after their trip.

The last meeting I attended was the one where the junta directive reports on how the budget money was spent during the past year. Most of it went to paving some of the main street of Tolte, and putting up a couple of cement retaining walls. I’m proud to have participated, at least a bit, in these projects, as you will know from reading previous entries. I had wondered about the emphasis on these things, but it turns out that each level of government is assigned certain “competencies” in the Ecuadorean system, and planning and maintaining roads is a major responsibility of the parroquia. An especially notable part of the meeting was that when the vocals spoke about their “portfolio” area, including roads, education, environment, and health, all of them mentioned litter as a focal point. Tolte has some litter baskets, but apparently not enough. We are in an evolving mode of trash disposal, where we now bring our trash to the plaza to be hauled away by the Chunchi garbage truck every Tuesday, as opposed to the old method of throwing it into the ravine. Maybe our consciousness has not quite caught up to that fact.

I have been practicing with the Evangelical Christian Folkloric band, Winari, and the garage band, Estasis, on a regular basis. Needless to say, Winari sounds a heck of a lot better, and I am learning a few things about Ecuadorean folk music. Estasis, as usual, sounds awful, especially since I brought overdrive and wah-wah pedals from the States. But we are practicing with renewed enthusiasm, and maybe something good will result from that. We’re still looking for a kind of music that our vocalist can actually sing. Finding such music, if it exists, will be critical to our success.

I also have survived a sick day of the sort one should expect when one lives in rural Ecuador. I have to say that the Cipro I was prescribed for this condition worked like magic. When I think back to the kind of long term suffering I have experienced in the past, sometimes takes a week or more to fully recover, having a medicine that worked within an hour and restored me to full health by the second dose seems miraculous. Hats off to the inventors of Cipro.

And I got a day of farm work in yesterday. Joaquin and his wife were picking beans that had been nterplanted with corn on one of these near-vertical fields that I find so disturbing in Tolte agriculture. Bean picking isn’t as demanding as potato picking because you can do it standing upright, if you can stand upright on a field with a 70% slope. It was a long, hot, windy day, and I was glad when we finished. I was also glad to find that I could handle the heights and steep slopes about as well as I could when I left in June, and far better than when I arrived last year.

In other agricultural news, one of the Ministerio de Agricultura technicians is going to be assigned to work full time, Monday through Friday, in Tolte. I am hopeful that this will help my work in sustainable and organic agriculture. If I can convince Gonzalo to work more in that direction, these ideas will seem more reasonable coming from him than coming from me. Sometimes when I propose stuff like mulching, I feel like my farmer friends are looking at me as if I had just grown a third eye, or something. It may seem less alien coming from an Ecuadorean.  And that might mean I could get something good done

Now it is Friday, August 31, and I’m not sure how I will fill today. I suppose I could use it to prepare for the English classes that will start on Monday. There seems to be more interest in English for tourism this time around, so I may finally have the adult class or classes that I wasn’t able to put together last year. We’ll see if my new TEFL certification helps at all. I imagine it will, because the course reminded me that preparation is not optional, just because you have a curriculum. We’ll see how that goes. As far as regular school teaching, the same cast of characters will once again be present, somewhat to my surprise. This year, Sonia wants me to try to give some kind of English lessons to the children in her class (grades 1,2,3) as well. Last year, I didn’t think I could manage them. This year, I’m willing to see what happens. If it’s really awful, I can always tell her that I’ll be happy to do it once she gets them under control. Since that didn’t happen last year, it should keep me safe this year as well.