Things happen, and then they stop

Where last week seemed to hold the promise of frenetic activity for me, this week has seen things slip into their usual slow pace. I confess that it seems to be very difficult for me to make things happen on my own. I can push a certain amount, but I have to back off at the point where I start to feel like I’m behaving more like a gringo than a member of the community.

For example, if the integrated farm group feels like it just can’t meet with me on Thursday, because everyone had to participate in a really difficult community work project on Wednesday, there is little I can say against their choice. They have work to do, and listening to me was a luxury they couldn’t afford this week. So maybe we’ll be a worm compost bin next week, and maybe we won’t. I did get to go out to a piece of land with one of the farmers on Monday, lay out planting locations for apple trees in triangles, dig a few individual terraces, and dig a few planting holes. That, at least, is something. I also had the experience of trying to dig the planting holes in what people here call “concava,” although I have seen the word spelled “congagua” in the Permaculture Bible.  What happens is that you dig down through the plow layer, maybe 8 to 10 inches, and reach a material that looks and feels a lot like adobe. It is a kind of hard-packed clay, a foot or more thick. Hitting it with a pick or shovel doesn’t work. You have to use a breaker bar, a tool I have described before as something I am not very good with. It’s a thirty or so pound steel bar with a chisel point on one end and a trowel tip on the other. In this stuff, the chisel point was the end to use. I confess to not knowing if I penetrated deeply enough to establish a fuit tree. Don Juan told me that his neighbors have planted right on the concava surface and their trees flourished, but I think they’d do better if they could get their roots into the soil below the concava. Fortunately, I am told that the rest of the field doesn’t have this nearly impenetrable layer.

But this only sheds light on the community work project on Wednesday. The project was to dig a ditch for the sewer line from the new restaurant/Mirador.  A certain amount of community labor had been promised for this cooperative project with MCCH, and this turned out to be what was necessary. Part of why it was necessary is that the ditch runs through a concava layer. Previous experience has shown that this layer cannot be broken by machinery, which should give you some idea of what it is like to dig through it. The 240 meters were divided by the 80 Tolte community members into 3 meters per family, more or less. Surprisingly, most people got their 3 meters done by the end of the day, though some were still working on it in short stints into the weekend. It appears there was also some angry disagreement about the route of the ditch, which has resulted in some stretches of the ditch being in the wrong place and needing to be dug a second time. Much as I love Tolte, I do want to make it clear that it is not some sort of utopia, but a place where ordinary human emotions sometimes produce poor results. But they’ll be out correcting their mistake as a community next week, which puts them ahead of most communities I’ve heard of in the U.S.

Another disappointing area has been attendance at my evening adult English classes. Three days a week I give classes to high school and university students, who have some background in English but have never had the chance to really speak it. This is little different from U.S. students who study French or Spanish, spend a number of years grinding out repetitive grammar exercises, and still can’t ask for a glass of water in the foreign language. This class got off to a great start, with about fifteen students, but has rapidly dwindled to perhaps 4 or 5, depending on how many members of the Satian family show up on a particular evening. In general, they are learning the same things that I am teaching to my sixth and seventh graders, with additional emphasis on potential interaction with tourists. I wish I could say that we are down to a committed core, but I think it is more a case of they’ll come as long as they think I’ll entertain them with zany gringo antics.

The beginner class has been one person, Wiliam. You may remember him as the brawling futbol player from one of last year’s blogs. His consistent attendance and good achievement in English have been a source of amazement to the rest of Tolte. He certainly doesn’t come across as studious, but he seems to have a prodigious memory and does very well with new vocabulary, 10 to 15 words at a time, from one class to the next. After weeks of teaching him alone in the beginner class, he was joined by two other young people last night. It would be an interesting development if Wiliam turned out to be the core of a thriving beginner English program.

There has been an interesting side project for me here, though. The technical advising group includes three students from the Polytech in Riobamba. One of them has been assigned to work with me to find out about good environmental practices and sociocultural aspects of life in Tolte. Diana was here from Thursday afternoon until Friday afternoon, interviewing mostly the older people about the past in Tolte, life cycle traditions, games, stories, and other folklore. For me, the most interesting story came from Senora Petrona, who told us that Tolte changed greatly due to the influence of Fundacion ALA, which seemed to greatly enhance the role of women in the community. This resulted in a kind of vigilante women’s group that would hand out rough justice to men who abused their wives. A group of ten women would seize the offender, and lash him with a belt until he repented, on his knees, to his wife. Senora Petrona named a surprising number of my contemporaries as recipients of this correction (although most of the names didn’t surprise me as much as I wish they did.) I have to say that I think it unfortunate that this practice has died out over the years. There still seems to be more need for it than one would wish.  Diana will be back next week to collect more folklore.

It looks like I’ll be taking a trip to Riobamba on Monday to try to recruit a special ed teacher for Tolte. AVANTI has funds to support the teacher, but not with the benefits or salary level typical for this work. I’m going to the university to see if they might send us an intern or recent graduate for the wage we offer. My hopes are not high. I sent the dean an e-mail over a week ago and got no response, but maybe my personal gringo appearance will make more of an impression.

And a final piece of news about ESTASIS, Ecuador’s least talented rock band. Mario recruited a new singer from Sibambe, one of the other towns that participate in working at the train station. Javier can actually sing in tune, something unheard of among previous ESTASIS vocalists. We are now practicing with renewed enthusiasm, and it appears that we are going to play at the high school in Sibambe on Tuesday (or is it the next Tuesday? It’s hard to know anything for certain with ESTASIS.) It appears we will be paid $50, of which at least $15 will go towards getting us there and back. I figure we’ll each get about $1 a song, which compares favorably with playing for loose change in the Subway, I think. The boys think this will be good publicity, and I suppose it will be, if we sound very much better than usual.