Fiesta!

I don’t know why I haven’t felt much like blogging lately, but I haven’t. I don’t really feel like blogging now. What I really want to do is take a shower. But, as occasionally happens in Tolte, there is no water today, only trago, and I can’t bathe in that, because my skin would dissolve, so I figured it was high time for me to blog.

Very high time, because once again, I have survived the fiesta de Tolte. In some ways, this is even more difficult than surviving Mardi Gras and New Year’s at the same time, because not only is the trago handed out free, but people are quite insistent that you take it. Or beer, if they happen to be offering that. Or Pajaro Azul de Guaranda (“Blue Bird of Guaranda”). Or Canelazo (sweet cinnamon tea spiked with trago). Let’s just say I wasn’t really sober from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon, and leave it at that.

In that interval, I was probably clearest when I was playing with my poorly regarded garage band, ESTASIS. We were going on at 8 PM on Saturday night, so we arranged to practice starting at 5. Our band now includes a vocalist from Sibambe who works as a guard in the train station. You might think that this would put him in convenient reach of the rest of the band, but no, to get from Sibambe to Tolte by car, you have to go through Alausi, which means that it is a nuisance. So Javier never arrived in time to practice with the rest of the band. Our bassist is on permanent leave due to the fact that he managed to break two strings on his bass. The fact that he actually doesn’t know how to play the bass is probably secondary, considering the overall level of the band. So Mario, Fredy and I practiced as well as we could. I had just figured out how to get a fairly convincing rock sound out of Mario’s guitar, our new sound equipment, a wah wah pedal, and the tube screamer that Al told me to buy instead of the fuzz pedal I foolishly thought I needed. Fredy had heard it, but Mario hadn’t, so all in all it was a pretty revealing practice session that Javier missed out on.

Javier arrived about 15 minutes before our 8 PM show time, but it turned out that we needn’t have worried, because before they let us go on, they decided to do Saturday’s fireworks. I described these “castillos” last year. The most remarkable thing about them is how close the crowd is to things that are exploding and shooting out sparks. Naturally, none of the things we are always warned will happen if you do this actually did happen, and the sense that you are inside the fireworks display really is kind of a thrill.

But we did finally go on. The look on the sound technician’s face when I first stepped on the tube screamer pedal was probably worth the price of admission, and I’m sorry it cannot be reproduced here. It seems that ESTASIS is in the process of inventing a new musical genre called “electronacional,” where we play musica nacional, a sort of lively, minor key dance music, with hard rock sounds effects and solos. Since you all know that I am not really a rock guitar god, this has its ups and downs. When I hit, it’s pretty cool, but when I miss, earplugs and powerful anti-nausea drugs are required. We also play a certain amount of pop and rock en espanol, with the same risks as the electronacional. Overall, I was hitting more than missing Saturday night, and Javier is a big improvement over our previous vocalist, although his crowd-pleasing skills still have a long way to go. But there I was, playing rock guitar solos to a crowd of about 500, so I guess I’m finding a new way to live out my fantasies. The funniest thing is that we got three performance offers as a result of this, including one that we turned down because they wanted us to play musica nacional in the normal way. Since we only know about four nacional tunes, and we can’t play them normally, I can’t imagine what the inviters for that fiesta were thinking. But we’ll be rocking the colegio tecnico next Friday, and the fiesta de Dalin (I’m not sure where this is, but everyone says it’s really high up) in early December.

I suppose I should admit that while the ESTASIS performance was my fiesta high point, it probably was just a blip on everyone’s inebriated radar. For example, there was the coronation of the Reina de Fiesta on Friday night. My “oficio,” or gift request (everyone gets one, including most of the Toltenos living abroad) was a gift for the Reina. So, with a good will, I went to Chunchi the previous Sunday and bought an appropriate piece of costume jewelry for $45, which I lost on the way home. So the Reina got a pair of earrings I had bought for other reasons at a much lower price, but happened to have available without going back to Chunchi. Poor Reina. She really deserved better. I feel compelled to mention that the Reina is a beautiful young woman named Rosita who represents the typical appearance of Toltenas in a lovely way. I also feel compelled to mention that no one actually calls her Rosita, but rather “Caperucita,” or “Little Red Riding Hood.” This has gone on for so long that no one can remember how it started, and even this nickname has been replaced by the short form “Capy.” But she made a fine Reina, no matter what you call her. Her parents, whom I know pretty well, invited me to their house more than once during the fiesta. This was good, as real food was helpful in calming my system, but it was also bad, because the Reina’s father, “El Loco,” (I kid you not) is a little fellow but a very heavy drinker. Friday night’s dinner, in particular, concluded with much more trago than I can actually handle. But it’s hard to reject things offered with such a cheerful good will.

Also on Friday, the Tolte “indoor futbol” club, 15 de Noviembre, won its second local championship by defeating San Luis de Rompe in dramatic fashion. After a scoreless first half, Rompe went up 2-0. But Wiliam scored a goal, and that seemed to rescue Tolte from its hopeless state. Pancho scored the tying goal in the last thirty seconds of regulation, and the game went into overtime, two more ten minute periods. Tolte seemed to wake up then, going up 4-2 before finishing 4-3. It was tense to the last second, as Rompe looked good for a tying goal, sending the game to penalty kicks. But Tolte squeaked by, and we are the champions again.

The early part of Saturday, before the ESTASIS barrage, included a visit from Carolina and three members of the AVANTI staff. They brought along some great stuff for the day care center, as they had promised earlier this month, with more to come when they return in December. But the highlight of the day may have come when we reached the new mirador restaurant, with its spectacular view of Nariz del Diablo. Let me make distinction here: the restaurant has an incredible view. But restaurant patrons have no view, because the only wall of the building with no windows is the one that faces Nariz del Diablo, an architectural error of such staggering inanity that I laugh every time I think about it. Carolina was horrified. She may put up the necessary money to punch a couple of holes in that wall and install some windows, but I’m not sure if she can. We’ll have to see. I was also treated to the sight of the AVANTI staff confronting cuy for lunch. I had been eating stuff that was far more horrifying than cuy (chicken parts I didn’t know that the chicken had, cooked sheep’s blood with mote (corn), cuero (fried pigskin), tripe), and generally risking acute gastric distress, so I dug into my cuy with gusto. After a slow start, they did okay with theirs, except for Carolina’s new project manager, Carla, who, in spite of being an Ecuadorean gal from Quito, had once had a cuy as a pet, and couldn’t eat hers. I also want to point out that although several of my Tolte friends suffered serious stomach upset during the fiesta, I was fine. I assume the trago killed any germs.

I would also like to point out that although I have had a great deal of trouble finding dancing partners in the past, I did somewhat better this time around. Some of them kept to a safe distance, but others did kick up their heels with gusto, as did I. I have no idea what kind of dancing this music actually calls for, but I don’t think I did much worse than most of my pals. My social life here doesn’t involve anything like dating, so these dance events felt a lot like high school mixers, with all the attendant discomfort. But at least I was among the dancers and not the wall flowers, which was a relief, if nothing else.

Monday saw all of Tolte soothing its aching head. I did get out and install the television that Carolina brought onto its wall mount in the day care center, but that was about it for me. There was a certain amount of cleaning up, and aimless wandering around, which seemed to set the tone for the week. I have hit a slow patch where the hopes of a month or two ago are fading fast. The granjas integrales group has not been meeting with me every Thursday as promised, or any Thursday. No one is coming to English classes at night. I have had another good idea for a business, and we’ll have to see if that moves forward. This involves Hilda making soaps and personal products using the medicinal plants that grow all over Tolte, with Mario, who is studying business administration, as the “entrepreneur.” It is convenient that they live next door to each other. The idea is to show products to Carolina and her guests (she says she is bringing 30) when they come on December 15. And I have heard that Don Vicente is getting a loan for the guitar factory. Let’s see what I can do to promote that…