Huequeando

Huequeando
Huequeando means digging holes, and that’s been an exciting part of my life in Tolte during the past couple of weeks. Really, the digging was confined to a couple of days so far, but they were stand out satisfying ones, so I think they bear some description.

The participants in the integrated farms project have been expecting a delivery of fruit trees for a couple of weeks. At a recent meeting, I offered to go into some detail about soil preparation and permaculture/organic methods of regulating the orchard ecosystem for sustainable results. I was waved off at the time because all of this was going to be revealed at the next meeting a week later. For reasons that are obscure, but I think had to do with the MAGAP technician’s schedule, that meeting never happened. The fruit trees arrived anyway, producing what I have been telling people quite bluntly is reverse order. I have explained that you prepare the terrain first, a process that can take a year, or possibly more, and then you plant the fruit trees. There should be windbreaks, leguminous ground covers, and water-storing swales or canals on the contour. But the trees were here, and now I’ll have to try to get everybody to install these things afterwards. We’ll have to see how that goes. If my credibility is much stronger than I think it is, people will do the best practices because they believe me. If not, I’m going to really regret not having the fruit trees to use as an incentive.

So off I went last Thursday afternoon to Senora Carmen’s plot of land within Tolte to plant avocadoes and apples trees. Unless I have failed “Tolte Family relationships, Phase 3,” Carmen is Damasio’s daughter, which would account for her sunny personality and optimistic outlook. We laid the trees out 6 meters apart on the contour, which didn’t seem to produce as much surprise as my insistence that we dig really large holes to plant the trees in. It seems that people have simply been opening holes the same size as the little earth ball that surrounds the seedling’s roots, which is not the recommended practice even in conventional farming. We opened holes about 0.5 meter wide, and a little deeper than the earth ball. Fortunately, Carmen has some nice worm compost to put in the bottom of each hole. Again, due to a lack of foresight in the farms project, she is one of only two or three people who have a compost bin, something which should have been built on every farm as a first step.  As usual, I had trouble keeping up with Carmen in the hole digging process, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I finished the day “plumb tuckered out,” as they say in story books about farming, and we got our sixteen trees planted and watered.

On Friday, I headed over to Senora Belena’s house. She had to go to a meeting of wheat farmers in Alausi, but she assigned her daughter Marta, who is about 20, and her son David, one of last year’s seventh grade students, to help me. Or, perhaps I should say, I helped then. We again laid out holes on the contour, but the soil was hard and dry like concrete. Again, I was probably outworked, but we got 32 good-sized holes dug in about six and a half hours. The good part about this piece of land is that it is actually big enough to accommodate all the trees at 5-6 meters apart. Many people are trying to cram too many trees into too small a space, simply because they received a certain number of seedlings.

Just when I thought I could take no more, and would simply crawl into bed at 6, Vicente told me that Winari, the Evangelical Christian Folk band that I play guitar for, had a gig at a prayer meeting in Chunchi. So we practiced for a couple of hours, and headed over to the municipal multi-purpose room in Chunchi to save our souls—well, theirs are probably already saved, and mine may have checked out some time ago, but you get the idea. I was told that these are big events, with maybe two or three hundred people, but something must have gone wrong because there were only 14 people, of whom the band was half. This didn’t stop the woman who was doing the preaching from using a PA, which quite loud. The echo in the nearly empty room made it difficult for me to understand much. We eventually got up and played (now, of course, the listeners could be counted on one or two hands), and I did pretty well, except for forgetting the funky break in one of the songs. After it was all over, around 1 AM, we drank tea and ate bread and my presence was investigated. The great moment was when the minister asked me if I was comfortable, or settled in (the word in Spanish is “Ensenado,” with a tilde over the second n). I looked at my neighbors and said, “Ask them,” and they all started to laugh. Nobody is ensenado like David,” they said. Another interesting moment was revealing that I am Jewish, a fact they seemed to absorb with considerable enthusiasm. “Jewish, you mean, like Jesucristo?” Well, maybe not much like, but sure, like.

On Saturday, Carmen invited me back to improve her compost bin. She already had a big bin near her one-pig sty. The problem was that the single bin didn’t provide any way to separate finished compost from newly dumped organic matter. We arranged three good sized bins out of hardware cloth. In one we applied a layer of stones for drainage and in the other two we raised the piles on little wooden platforms. Probably the biggest job of the day was to shovel out the old bin and sieve the contents to separate finished compost from still chunky materials. We also had to go on a worm hunt, as the pile had become very dry in the windy summer weather. But we did find plenty of wriggling worms (“like noodles,” Carmen said) once we got down to a moist soil layer. We sifted out the humus and shoveled the unfinished material into the new bins, along with a few shovelfuls of worms.  Then I soaked the dry, dry compost until I thought the worms would be happy living in it. We’ll see how it works out in a few months. I headed home. On the way, Reccion invited me in to shell peas and have a few shots of trago. Watching the sun set over my waning consciousness, I felt that things in this little part of the world were a heck of a lot better, at least for me, than most places.

By Sunday, I was feeling pretty good. I got to Chunchi later than usual, and did some slightly unusual shopping. I had promised my seventh grade class that we would have a birthday party in English for one of the girls on Tuesday. I had promised the class a birthday cake from Chunchi, and I actually got one for the princely sum of $7. Considering my usual estimate of things in Ecuador being one-tenth the price of the United States, this is sort of like buying a birthday cake in the US for $70. But the price was not the issue. Getting back to Tolte was. I had missed a late afternoon window of transit opportunity, and now found myself trapped in the Mercado in Tolte. But Don Miguel and his wife, senora Luz Maria, invited me to sit with them in their market booth, and gave me fruit while I shelled peas with them. After sunset, Reccion and his wife Carmen were ready to close down their booth and go home in their truck. I seized the opportunity and helped them load up. Senora Carmen kept asking me if I were able to carry the sacks. I may be a wimp, but couldn’t wimp out. “Sure,” I said, only throwing my back out slightly carrying the big sacks of vegetables.

On Monday, Wilson invited me to help him plant fruit trees, so I ducked out of school and headed down to the hacienda with my level to plant trees on the contour. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel so well by now. Also unfortunately, Wilson didn’t really have enough land to plant the trees, and some of the land he had was really, really steep, if not frighteningly high up. We also arrived without fertilizer of any kind. Fortunately, Wilson had been grazing his horse in this area, so every tree hole got a helping of dried horse dung. I can’t say it looked very rich, but I figure it was better than nothing.  We didn’t stick to the contours very well, but we did get a bunch of tress tucked away around the property, even as it became clear to me that I was developing a nasty sinus infection.

I’ve said this before, but anyone who travels from the US to the tropics is sure to be grateful for over the counter antibiotics. My immune system just cannot match the fierce resistance of my neighbors’ antibodies. I suppose that the dripping green mucus of the little children, often called “mocosos,” or “runny noses,” is a sign of a hearty ability to crush future sinus infections. Or it may just be a sign of where I picked up my own nasty infection. Still, people here seem to be able to drink water from any local source, work like demons, drink frightful quantities of gut-burning alcohol, and never be sick. I wonder if I’ll ever get to that point.

The birthday party on Tuesday went well. I was teaching “May I have” and “Would you like” last week, so the timing was perfect. We ate popcorn, drank soda, and ate birthday cake—not healthful, exactly, but festive. We also played “Bizz Buzz” and “Simon Says,“ games I taught them last year.  Yes, soda was spilled on the floor of the library, where I generally prohibit food of any kind, but I knew it was coming. It was fun to give my best class something special, despite the expected resentment of the sixth graders, with whom they share a classroom. There turn will come, someday—maybe.

Tuesday also saw me visiting the forestry teacher at the technical high school again, this time with Jorge of MCCH. Ingeniero Auki was the force behind April’s windbreak planting project. I had mentioned him to Jorge, and we went to ask him whether he could plant a windbreak next to the new mirador/restaurant that MCCH is building in Tolte. We found him in the greenhouse, tending to his enormous organic, drip-irrigated tomato plants. As usual, he was all enthusiasm. Aside from the windbreak, I hope to involve him in the retro-fitting of good practices, like interplanting leguminous trees, in the new orchards. He sounded enthusiastic about that, too. I guess that’s what makes him such an admirable teacher.

Thursday brought a visit from the director of MCCH, whom I had never met before.  Maria Jesus is a pale, thin, elderly woman who genuinely radiates a kind of religious generosity, without the religion part. I got to say my piece, as all the leading Toltenos did (Not that I’m a leading Tolteno, just a noticeable one) in gratitude for all of MCCH’s and Jorge’s good work in Tolte, and stuck in my own bit about promoting the granjas project. Chicken soup and guinea pig with potatoes were served, which is how we roll out the red carpet in the Andes.

Friday afternoon saw three of the five member of the band Estasis, world’s most lamentable rock band, in Riobamba shopping for a PA system with inputs for three electric instruments and a microphone. We found one that delivers 450 gruesome watts for $450. A dollar a watt in Ecuador is a pretty fine price. Now more neighbors than ever can resent the band’s existence, although everyone is too affable to complain. The best part was that, on the way back, Dani the sort of bassist treated me to an in person description of last week’s exorcism of the 17-year-old girl (his cousin) who lives across the street from me. This included the girl speaking in a man’s voice while her eyes were fixed on some undefined object across the room, powerful reactions to the exorcism that took eight strong people to control, a sudden chill that passed from one member of the exorcism party to the other, and a wind that rose from indoors to almost blow the roof off the curandero’s house in Zunag, two towns up along the Inter-American highway from Tolte. Results seem to have been positive. Dani went on to tell me how, 50 years ago, Tolte was a nest of witchcraft, with witch and anti-witch activity lasting into the period of time when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. Imagine if fate had brought me to Tolte then, instead of now. I wonder what that would have been like.

Meanwhile, ever since planting on Monday, we have had a weeklong visit of rainy season weather two months early. I confess that I am not ready, and had been counting on no rain until December. But it certainly looks like our planting efforts have met with the approval of Mother Nature.