Carnicero

Warning: This entry contains graphic descriptions of animal dismemberment and inappropriate alcohol consumption, and is not appropriate for anyone, really.

Saturday is a day when I always go looking for something to do, because there is no school to fill up the day. I definitely wanted to go shopping in Chunchi, but I also wanted to meet up with Nick, the Peace Corps volunteer there, and he was going to be in Alausi for the day. The football campeonato semifinal was scheduled for Saturday morning, but had been postponed to Sunday afternoon. So the day was not off to a promising start.

On the other hand, the wee hours of Saturday morning saw the return of Don Ramon, owner of the house I live in. He and his family live in Spain, but he came back to Tolte on his own. And since about a quarter of Tolte is related to Ramon, it was only reasonable that he receive a big welcome home fiesta. So when I got back from finding out that the football semifinal was postponed, I found a group of five or six women surrounding a medium-sized pig. Being curious, but not knowing anything about pig slaughter except what I had witnessed in Costa Rica over twenty years ago, I kept a respectful distance, but didn’t leave the scene. After some discussion about who should do what, the women pinned the pig to the ground on its left side, and the grandmother of about half a dozen of my students stuck one of our dull, dull kitchen knives between its ribs. I think the idea was to pierce the pig’s heart, but my personal post mortem suggested that this did not occur. It definitely took the poor animal a fair stretch of time to die, but it did so in a quiet, dignified way not typical of pigs. Once they had it pinned down, it sort of gave up.

But wait, there’s more. Once the pig was dead, they brought in a sheep. This animal was slaughtered with the traditional cutting of its throat, which seemed to work a lot better. This, in fact, is what I had seen used for pig slaughter in Costa Rica, and I’m not sure why it wasn’t used for the pig here. I was invited to help carry the pig to the grill where its hair would be singed off, and, in classic gringo fashion, I got blood all over my pants. No one else got even slightly dirty. Of course, I was holding the leg closest to the death wound.

At about this time, Jose and Narcisa came home from an all-night brick firing at the kiln along the highway. This was handy, because, as Jose explained to me, his father had taught him to skin sheep starting from about the age of 10. We hung the sheep up by its hind legs from a carport rafter, and Jose made a series of cuts (incisions would quite describe the process, because the knife was too dull) that allowed us to peel the sheepskin off in one piece. This is not effortless; you have to keep pulling quite hard, and occasionally making additional cuts in the underlying tissue to maintain momentum. Also, the wool was absolutely filthy with mud and shit (again, excrement is not the right word), so we had to work in a way that kept the skin from touching the meat. Jose finished the process by cutting through the spine to remove the sheep’s head with the skin, and then cut the head off the skin. The head and forelegs were then put on the grill to have their hair singed off. Good for soup. After that, Mirian brought out a washtub and we disemboweled the sheep, a process that involved a long cut down the abdomen and then tapping the knife through the ribs by hitting it with a rock. The important thing is that all the guts slide out into the washtub without any rip or cut in the intestines, which would make a big mess. Narcisa and I had to hold everything in until Jose could finish cutting through the ribs. The science teacher in me rapidly identified heart, lungs, liver and intestines. I can’t say I ever say the kidneys bladder, or reproductive system. I probably touched them, though.

Most of the next several hours involved singing the pig’s bristly hair off and scraping the skin clean. The goal was to produce a skin with an even, yellow color. Straw and eucalyptus leaves were brined to produce a high flame, though not a very hot one, and we rotated the pig and scraped at the skin until it was more or less clean and yellow all over. Then it was time to skin the pig, though the goal here was not to get a single piece as it had been with the sheep. This surprised me a little, as I thought that the skin might be sold for leather, but that is probably a different process. Anyway, you get the skin of by making an initial cut at the location of your choosing, and sticking your fingers between the dermis and the underlying layer of fat and lifting the skin off. Everyone came out of the kitchen and we ate “cuero con mote,” leather with kernels of corn. I think most of my neighbors chewed and swallowed the leather, though I only managed to chew it and spit it out for a nearby dog to finish off.

Then it was back to work. Around this time, Damasio came in and was given the job of disemboweling the pig. Because I had been a good assistant on the sheep, and because my pants were already filthy, I got to help with this, too. The process was slightly different from the sheep, in that Damasio made two cuts from the pig’s chin to its anus, so that a larger piece of flesh would be peeled off and more of the inner cavity exposed. He used the same rock to drive the knife through the ribs. We stopped for a moment so that Mirian could ladle out the blood from the cavity. The blood was cooked; some of it was stuffed into sausages and some of it was served out on a plate. But more of that later. E opened the pig’s ribcage and Mirian came back with a bit pots, and we slid all the guts out into that.

Now Damasio got into the main butchering. I held the pig still while he cut off the four legs at the joints, and separated the ribsand head from the spine. We also broke the jaw off of the head. It was at this point that the fact that we had no running water since the night before presented itself as a real problem. There was some kind of cleaning up that Damasio wanted to do, and we needed water for the process. Fortunately, Pablo and his wife Martina arrived then. Pablo is the town carpenter and handyman, and I know Martina as the president of the local equivalent of the PTA. Pablo went right to work fixing the broken water supply, while Martina used a bucket of water that we did have to wash out the sheep intestines. But Damasio left because the pipes needed an hour to set.

On the other hand, Jose didn’t seem to need water for the next step in the butchering process as Damasio felt he did, so I went back to work with Jose cutting the meat from the bones. A pig has a lot of meat, and this was a long process. But we weren’t cutting the meat into cuts of pork the way a butche would do in the States. We were just chopping off portion-sized chunks to be turned into fritada. We started with the surface pieces that had the most fat, which were tossed into a pot to render the lard that would be needed to cook the fritada. Then we got into the deeper layers, cutting off random pieces about half the size of my fist. The funniest moment during this process was when Jose innocently commented that the meat he was cutting off the pig’s hnd leg looked just like ham. He seemed genuinely surprised to learn that what he was cutting really was ham.

Once we got down to the bone, we passed the bones over to Pablo, who busted them up with an axe. We took the bony mass back and cut it into more fist sized pieces, until we had a big pot full representing about half the pig. The lard was ready, but it wasn’t enough, so we added another couple of pounds of vegetable shortening and a couple of pots of salty water, garlic, and cumin seeds to the cooking pot, and then tossed in the content of our meat pot. Mirian and Laura, under the direction of Elena, stirred the mass with a stick every now and again to prevent it form burning.

Jose and I went back to work on the rest of the pig, which had a lot more bone than the first half. We would cut, and Pablo would chop, and then we’d cut some more. I was somewhat surprised that the ribs, which are such a delicacy back in the States, were given the same treatment. Before long, we had another pot of raw meat waiting for the first round of fritada to finish cooking. I expected that we would deal with the sheep the same way we had the pig, but I was wrong. Pablo just battered it with the axe for a while until everyone was satisfied that it could be cooked, and that was that. Elena called Jose and me for lunch.

Lunch was an Ecuadorian dish called Yaguarloca. I have to say that this was the most challenging thing I’ve tried to eat in Ecuador. I thought it was a soup with potatoes and macaroni, but the tubular objects resembling macaroni were actually tripe, or sheep intestines. Jose chewed and swallowed his, but I couldn’t quite accomplish this feat. I chewed all right, but never seemed able to break the intestines into smaller pieces. I thought the soup tasted like something between sweat and urine, but Jose said it was one of his favorite foods. I have a long way to go before I’m and Andean.

By the time lunch was over, it was time to top the first batch of fritada off with a big bottle of beer, which is said to produce a desirable golden color. And the fritada did look pretty good, especially compared to the Yaguarloca. We all had a little, and then got to work preparing the next pot of fritada. Weirdly, I was sort of put in charge of this pot, I think because it was believed that I could follow instructions. Segundo turned up, sort of just in time, because I definitely would have made a mistake or two. I think that the first mistake was that too much water was added, and we had to wait for a long time for it to boil off so we could add the lard. This meant the meat cooked more by boiling than by frying. But, in the end, it looked pretty similar to the first batch. Stirring this batch was more exciting, because chunks or identifiable bones would come to the surface, giving the whole thing sort of a Halloween feeling.

It was now about six o’clock, and I headed over to the computer room to skype Maya. We chatted for a while, and then one of the university boys came in and asked for help with an English assignment. After that, the folk dancers were meeting in the plaza to go over a dance for the upcoming Fiesta de Tolte, which starts this Thursday and will last until next Monday. If I survive that much partying, it should make for a nice entry.

And I say that advisedly, because when I got back to the house, the actual welcome home fiesta was already underway. I was treated to some soup that was not Yaguarloca, and a big plate of fritada. But I had hardly gotten through the door when Segundo poured me a shot of trago. And then  the beer drinking started as well. I knew that the evening was likely to end badly for me, but it was a great party anyway. After we ate, the drinking continued fast a furious, with more and more beer and trago appearing every few minutes. Then the dancing started. I had been concerned that my dancing skills were in no way adequate to Tolte, because my friends in Costa Rica had all been skilled salsa dancers. How wrong I was. The dancing here is much simpler, sort of marching back and forth as a couple in time to the music. And we did this until people were so drunk that they had to go home. Unfortunately, the party was in my home, so I danced around until I had to go outside and throw up. I am “chuchaqui,” (hung over, in Kichua), and I never did get to Chunchi to buy fruits and vegetables. I think there is another market day Wednesday or Thursday, and maybe I’ll go then. I hope it’s Wednesday, because the Fiesta starts Thursday morning, and I can’t miss that. But I was sorry to miss the first semifinal game of the football campenato, even though I did manage to pull myself together enough by four in the afternoon to attend the second one. Tolte teams lost both games, and will have to play each other for third, while Chunchi and Iltus face off for the championship on Thursday. 

Minga

Yesterday (it occurs to me that I ought to date these entries, since I don’t write every day and I can’t always post them the day I write them, so “yesterday” means Wednesday, November 9, 2011) I participated in a “minga,” or community work detail. I had finished teaching early, because the fourth and fifth grades had the day off. Their teacher was taking a training course in Chunchi. I’m glad they don’t try to have me substitute for him anymore; it doesn’t seem to be worth the trouble. So I taught the sixth and seventh grades, and was finished by about 9:30. I noticed that lots of people were gathering in the plaza, all armed with azedones, picks, or shovels. This implied a minga, and I went to join the crowd.

A minga seems to be a tradition with indigenous roots. It is a way of accomplishing some task for the community without having to depend on outside aid or spend tax money. Very often, mingas in Tolte have to do with roads or the drainage and irrigation system, which is related to the roads in many spots. As I stood in the plaza without any tools, I really wasn’t sure how or whether I could contribute anything to the minga beyond my silly gringo presence, but I decided to wait and see. After a while, we hit the trail that drops down behind the school, reached the new road, and kept walking. Sooon we were on the road down to the train station. This made me nervous; the downhill side is dreadfully steep in some places, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to participate in any useful way.

We finally reached the work location, a culvert under the road with steep mountainsides at the entrance and outlet. It was plugged with debris from a minor landslide that ust have occurred Monday, the day it rained all day while I was traveling in from Portoviejo. That must have been a heavy rain, because I also saw small slides along the highway from Alausi to Tolte. In any case, I got immediate relief from my worries. I could work standing on the road (though some people did go over the edge to work on the outlet side), and I didn’t need any tools, because we were passing rocks, bucket brigade style from where the slide had clogged the inlet to an out of the way spot along the side of the road. A few people did work to pull the rocks away from the inlet, but most of us were passing rocks from hand to hand.

The effect was similar to the days I spent working with bricks. The first hundred rocks or so don’t seem like a big deal. I did pick up a couple of real big ones so as not to seem like a total loser, and carried them to the other side of the road. But mostly, it was fairly light work for the first hour. Then things start to change. The weak area between my shoulder blades definitely started to tighten up, and continued to do so for the next three hours. I didn’t fail to hold up my part of the rock chain, but I suspect that the local people didn’t feel like they were having as hard a time as I was. One young woman was working with her toddler slung on her back, and didn’t seem to mind much. I need hardly add that the women here are very strong. To say that they work like men would be an insult—they work much harder than almost any man I know, and harder than many of the men here. If a man picks up a big rock, a woman is likely to pick up a bigger one to show him who’s boss.

And the mood throughout was cheerful. People laughed and joked as they worked, though I can’t say I understood much. I got the impression that these were long-standing jokes based on the known characters and relationships of the townspeople, which are still largely a mystery to me. But I was glad to be there, working along with everyone else, because it was the sort of civic obligation that it just doesn’t pay to dodge if you want people to treat you like a real friend.

We were near the end of the work by about 12:30. More debris is likely to slide into the culvert in the future, but at the speed the water moves, some of it will wash out. Segundo, a stocky fellow about my age, and Petrona, a very big, tall woman, were clearing the opening of the inlet, which had finally open up now that we had taken away so many rocks. Suddenly, Petrona disappeared. The rock pile had given way, and she fell to the bottom of the culvert. The mood shifted just as suddenly, as everyone wondered if she were all right, and how we would get her out. But a couple of minutes later, she climbed up the outlet side to the road again, looking no worse (although a bit embarrassed) for the experience. And so the whole event finished in the cheerful mood that had dominated all day.

Victor, who has spent time in Spain, pointed out that in the US, this would all be done with machines, and of course he’s right. And maybe it’s better that way—there’s much less risk of anyone getting hurt. And there were plenty of ways to get hurt yesterday, including the possibility of another rock slide. You can’t just romanticize this sort of work. But the community spirit is a good thing to experience and be part of. So I wish the people of Tolte a future full of safe mingas.

My Vacation

You will all have to pardon the lengthy interruption in my blogging. I have been on the move, first to Quito and then on to Portoviejo to visit my cousin Amy (and to do some vacationing, not that I’ve really earned it yet). One of the positive results of all this traveling around is that I now feel that the bus system in Ecuador is not as out of reach as it was, and that six or seven hours in a bus is no big deal. This may or may not make me more mobile—we’ll have to see.

The trip to Quito was necessary because my tourist visa was running out (hard to believe, but I’ve been here over two months). The tourist visa was only good until December 5. But because I work for a stipend, and not a salary, I am eligible for a volunteer visa. Volunteers are lumped in with clergy and missionaries, which makes me feel a bit strange (the gospel of English is the World’s Second Language?), but the visa lasts a year, which will easily carry me through the next seven months. And this is a good thing, because the visa costs almost $200, requires 8 different documents to confirm my volunteer status, and required me to wait four hours in the Ministerio del Exterior to get it. Once again, the Peace Corps sheltered me from all this in Costa Rica. We had a special visa, and never had to deal with the details of where it came from. But, because Angus has become very good at preparing the paperwork, all went smoothly and the visa was I believe) ready yesterday.

I also got to know the touristic area of Quito a bit better. I took the trole (an electric bus with dedicated lanes) to the historic center of Quito, which is really quite nice. I spent some time in the Catedral, which is richly decorated inside and has the tombs of the presidents of Ecuador arranged all around one wing. It was sort of eerie to be in a room that contained the mortal remains of Mariscal Sucre, Ecuador’s counterpart to George Washington. I was kind of glad to get back out into the open air.

I did the visa paperwork before noon on Tuesday, and should have just headed to Portoviejo then. I didn’t because I understood it to be a ten hour trip, and didn’t want to arrive late. How foolish I was. Wednesday was the start of the national holiday, and when I got to the bus station at 6:30 AM, the whole country was there—and trying to go to Portoviejo, or at least the province of Manabi, because that’s where the beaches are. So at 6:30 AM I bought a ticket for a bus to Portoviejo at 4 PM that was supposed to get me there at midnight.

The thought of spending the day in the bus station didn’t appeal to me, though, so I soon bought another ticket to Guayaquil. This would be a longer trip, but I figured that leaving at 10:30 AM would be less boring than standing around the bus station, and would be enough time to get me to Portoviejo earlier than midnight. How wrong I was. The police stopped the bus because its tires were bald, and we didn’t leave until 11:30. And I still got to Portoviejo at midnight. But I didn’t sit around the bus station, and I did get a good look at the countryside between Quito and Guayaquil. Once you get ut of the Andes, of course, Ecuador is tropical, with big oil palm and banana plantations, and denser vegetation than I am used to in Tolte. On the other hand, the coastal zone seems more impoverished than the Andes. People live in houses made of cane and bamboo, and there isn’t the same sense of a society of independent farmers that I have in Tolte. Other than that, I can’t say I know much about exactly what is happening in the lowlands.

But when I got to Portoviejo, I was entirely vaulted out of my rural development mindset. My cousin Amy is a high school exchange student in Portoviejo, where she lives with a host family whose own son is on exchange in Switzerland. Her papa, Jose Luis, very kindly picked me up from the bus station in Portoviejo at midnight, which I felt sorry to have to ask, but couldn’t do otherwise. Jose Luis is the Gerente General of a bank in Puerto Lopez, and his wife, Nancy, sells imported clothing, so their lifestyle is outside of my Latin American experiences. They have two cars, a lovely modern home in a gated community, and a beach house in San Jacinto. My visit was spent almost entirely in the beach house, and each day we visited different beaches from San Jacinto up to Canoa.

You all know I’m not a beach guy, but these beaches are something special. They are on the Pacific ocean, but the water is Caribbean turquoise. The water is also temperate, cool enough to refresh but not at all cold. I particularly liked the beach in San Clemente, which was framed by a high cliff at one end. The walk I took along that beach was truly the sort of relaxing experience that people escape to tropical beaches for.

Our days at the beach were fairly similar one to another, so I won’t go into great detail. We had gorgeous weather, surprisingly mild for a tropical coast, and excellent food. The cuisine of Manabi is popular all over Ecuador, with many Quito restaurants offering “comida Manabita.” The food is based on plantains at various stages of ripeness, maduro (fully yellow) or verde (still green), which are used sort of the way we use potatoes in the US. The platanos are mashed, fried, toasted and served at almost every meal. They seem to be delicious in any form. I think Amy and I have a particular weakness for chifle, which is like thin platano chips, and easily as addictive as potato chips.

I suppose a highlight was that Amy and I cooked dinner when we went back to Portoviejo on Sunday evening. This involved a trip to SuperMaxi, an American style grocery store, to buy the ingredients to chicken cacciatore. I think Amy and I did a pretty good job, but the food seemed a bit bland to our hosts, although they did praise it. I don’t know when I’ll eat anything like it again.

And then it was Monday morning, and I was overdue to return to Tolte. This trip went more smoothly, though: Portoviejo to Guayaquil, a 15 minute wait to catch a bus to Riobamba, Riobamba to Alausi, and then lucky enough to catch a ride from Alausi to Tolte after les sthan an hour’s wait. Door to door, I made the trip in 12 hours, which is not at all bad. I also arrived before it was completely dark. I seem to have missed the opening shot of the rainy season, as it rained all day in Tolte, but it had stopped by the time I arrived. This is a good thing, because I desperately need to do laundry today.

This week will involve me moving from the house I live in to the other Narcisa’s house, where I often eat lunch. We’ll see how that goes.

Wildcat Day Off

Much to my surprise, there is no school today. Apparently, there was some need for the teachers to do something at their headquarters in Riobamba, and I guess they didn't feel it necessary to let me know. Or maybe I put out the wrong kind of vibe. Anyway, I have spent the morning huddled by my internet connection, taking care of some odds and ends that require long wait times at the speeds available to me.

As I was sitting here, I thought I'd respond to the question posed to me yesterday evening regarding whether the universe pays you back for doing the right thing, or being on the right path. Here's an experience from Tuesday, which ties in pretty well with the last blog.

As you will recall, Joaquin entrusted me with a bottle of brutal homemade trago that wound up being consumed, in its entirety, by the futbol players. Consequences were unattractive. But Monday evening, Joaquin found me in the plaza to tell me that he needed the booze to offer to the crew of people working with him to dig holes for light poles. I can understand this, since the holes had to be five feet deep in soil that has enough rock in it to be a pain to dig through. But, of course, I no longer had the alcohol he had donated to the futbolistas. Since he couldn't go, I guess he felt that I should be the one to make the trip to Chunchi to get more.

Going to Chunchi, as going to Alausi, is no big deal. getting back is always a drag. In addition, Joaquin was not working near his home in Tolte, but in another sub-village of Pitishi called Achaisi, about halfway down to the train station, maybe 45 minutes walk. he was also not working near the main road down, but in some unknown location above the road. But, feeling that I should deal with things one at a time and wanting to maintain his excellent good will (although risking the possibility that he would think i was a doormat), I went on to Chunchi, found the store that had sold us the rotgut, was told they were all out, bought a bottle of Zhumir, which is the commercial version of moonshine, and actually managed to catch a bus back to Tolte, all in the space of about two and a half hours. That is near record time, but keep in mind that Chunchi is less than 10 miles away.

So now I was back on the Tolte road heading down to Achaisi, a community that may or may not have 7 full time residents, but where several residents of Tolte have property. As I walked along, I noticed a young woman ahead of me carrying her baby on her back, as women do here. They wrap a shawl around their shoulders and under the baby's bottom, tie tightly, and march along. The baby never slips out, which is sort of amazing. But in this case, I did find a little white bonnet on the road in front of me. I picked it up, caught up with the woman whom I have seen before, but whose name I don't know), and handed it over, for which I was rewarded with "Dios le pague," (May God reward you), the Ecuadorian phrase for "Thank you."

I continued along my way, wondering how I would find Joaquin when I got to Achaisi. A truck came up behind me, and at the wheel was Pablo, the carpenter, who was meeting his wife Martina for lunch in Achasi. She was working with her mother and a child at a field task that i was too distracted to identify, but looked awfully demanding. Pablo not only brought me to Achasi, but also told me what route I should take to find Joaquin, how to avoid the fierce dogs that guard one of the houses. Finding the route took some additional shouting and hand-waving on Pablo's part, because the entrance involved some climbing of the sort that I find frightening. But, armed with my bottle of booze, I made it up and onto the main path of Achasi and started looking for Joaquin. After 15 or 20 minutes of walking, and with the help of the hole diggers, I found his wife in a little house that must have been a family residence in the past. I handed the bottle over, and she told me where Joaquin and Augustin were working. As I walked in the direction, I realized I was in a mountain meadow of pure rural beauty. Naturally, I never would have seen it had I not gone on this fool's errand. Joaquin directed me back to the path, and I made it down without being bitten by the dogs, who decided to attack this time. They did seem crazy, but stuck to a certain distance from the house, and did not chase em down the road. I was in time to catch a ride back to Tolte with Pablo.

So there you have it. A trip that would have been impossible without guidance, and difficult without a ride, became fairly easy. Was it because I retrieved the baby bonnet, or because I was delivering booze? The world will never know.

A few unrelated notes follow, so if you want narrative coherence, stop reading now. If you really care about teaching English in Tolte, you can take your chances.

This week, I have been teaching the children words for clothing. They are particularly fascinated by teh word "sunglasses," I think because the sight of someone in sunglasses seems so exotic. No one here uses them, in spite of all the dust and UV light, which is probably why so many people have vision problems as they get older. But this is information for some other time.

The kids have done a pretty god job learning the words, and yesterday I got into the phrases "Take off" and "Put on" as a way of forming sentences. I had brought some of my stuff, and they put on my cap, sunglasses, sweater, and jacket. It finally occurred to me that what they needed was some physical connection, so I put the jacket and sunglasses on one line, and the sweater and cap on the other. I split the class into two relay race teams. The first person had to put on the jacket and glasses (or the sweater and cap), run back to the next person, who had to get the clothes on, and run to deliver them to their original places. Repeat as necessary until everyone has had a turn. All I can say is that i wish I had video. I don't know if it will help them learn English, but it sure brightened my day.

In other news, the adult English class has been struggling to maintain its existence. The past three times I gave the class, no one showed up. But last night I had six of the young folks in my computer room, and things were a lot livelier. One left pretty quickly (he looked like he'd rather be out on a motorcycle), but the rest stayed long enough to make a pretty good class. Of  course, I'm going to be away in Quito and Portoviejo next week, so I'll lose momentum again, but I think that over the next seven months, this should get going pretty well. And maybe the universe is paying me for continuing to offer the class every Tuesday and Thursday. If you build it, they will come...

Quito and Portoviejo: Quito to get my visa extended so that I can spend the full school year in Tolte, and Portoviejo so that I can visit my cousin Amy Summer, interchange high school student (although she has already graduated from American high school and accepted to Wellesley College, talented young person that she is). Portoviejo will be my first exposure to the Ecuadorian coast, reputed to be quite different in nature from the Andean highlands where I live. Also far away. I'm not sure how far Portoviejo is from Quito, but it will take me 10-12 hours to get back to Tolte on buses that go from Portoviejo to Guayaquil to Alausi and then to Tolte. Considering the difficulty of getting out of Alausi, I might be better off going back through Quito. We'll see. If you don't here from me for a week or so, it's because I'm on the road.

Futbol nuevamente

I haven't had the chance to mention that Tolte is hosting a futbol championship of teams from Tolte and the neighboring villages. the game they are playing isn't actually futbol, but "indor," which is payed in the village plazas, which are about one-quarter the size of an actual soccer field. Teams include six players per side, and action and scoring are greatly accelerated compared to true futbol. Scores of 10-6 or so are pretty common. The payers are so densely packed that it can be difficult to sort out the action, but some of the players show an incredible ability to move with the ball over the concrete surface, where the ball moves a lot more quickly than it does on grass.

One of the teams, Los Vecinos, is composed of many of the same players as the Tolte travelling team mentioned in previous blogs, though that team is spread out among four or five teams playing in the tournament. In any case, Sunday night turned out to be the night for Los Vecinos to celebrate their victory, along with some players from the other teams. As usual, frightening amounts of beer were consumed, but that wasn't the worst of it. In the course of the afternoon, Joaquin and I went to Chunchi. he had some errands to run, and invited me along for the ride. One of the errands was to find a place selling homemade trago, moonshine made from sugar cane. In the end, he found one, but asked me to carry the bottle (probably for fear of what his wife and family might say). In the end, I not only wound up with the bottle, but the bottle became the group possession of the futbolistas.

How can I describe what this stuff tasted like? I have had other homemade tragos, and they range from pretty bad to pretty good. But if I tell you that this stuff tasted like turpentine, I might not be conveying the full horror of what we were drinking (washed down with beer, of course). Fortunately, they all had a tremendous head start on me, or I might not have survived. Everyone did his best to break out whatever English he knew, and it was all pretty entertaining, until it was time to go home.

because I have helped to carry some of these boys home before, I got roped into doing it again. But this wasn't the one at a time trip of the previous event, but sort of a mass migration uphill to the vecinario the Vecinos come from. And during this migration, one of them decided that what he really needed to do was fight with his cousin.

I don't know if I have described this cousin before, but his name is William (or maybe Alfonso or Patricio, code name Pato). He's short, in the way one expects Ecuadorians to be, but is so powerful that, like the young Arnold Schwarznegger, he "has muscles in his face," to quote someone I knew long ago. He's an incredible athlete, definitely one of the stars of the futbol team, and not someone to start a fight with. Except that he was incredibly drunk and didn't feel like fighting. which his cousin Gonzalo absolutely did.

I'm not a brave man. It's just that simple. But somehow, keeping these two guys apart suddenly became incredibly important to me (maybe because of my own level of inebriation, though I wasn't as far gone as most). Maybe it was the high school teacher in me emerging in an alien environment. And that's how I found myself both trying to hold William back and get him home, which required going forward. This is comparable to trying to stop a HumVee by holding on to the bumper.

Fortunately, another futbolista named Cristian (an easy-going soul, maybe a bit more grown-up than the rest) also got involved in holding Gonzalo back. Otherwise we never would have gotten anywhere. But I wound up in the middle of things more than once, and was lucky to escape with a scraped knee and a scratch under my right eye. Not bad, considering. And Gonzalo and William got home largely uninjured, which was a real miracle. I guess that puts the "peace" in Peace Corps. Of course, all my students noticed the scratch under my eye this morning, because the brawl was the biggest news to hit Tolte since the brawls of last year's fiestas. These fiestas are coming around again in about three weeks, and I guess there will be more of this kind of thing, but worse, so I'm going to try to take my leave earlier. Happy Dia de San Marcial to all.

But I did wonder, as I walked home and went to bed, am I braver than I thought? Was I just heedless, so that I didn't have time to overcome any fears? After all, I didn't stop to consider whether anyone was armed (no one was). Or was I motivated by the idea that William trusted me to get him home? If I knew what to conclude, I suppose there would be the chance to learn something about myself from this, which is why a person takes a job teaching in Ecuador for $360 a month. But I'm sort of mystified, myself.

A (nearly) perfect day

Yesterday was my idea of a perfect day. Yes, things seemed to go wrong after the sun went down, but it still seems so clear to me that days like this don’t come along often enough.

The first great thing was that I didn’t teach English yesterday. Instead, Angel invited me to pick potatoes with his family. Picking potatoes is a festive occasion, as I suppose most harvests are in most places. That’s not to say it isn’t brutally hard work. We may all be farmers, as my permaculture friends like to say, but few of us really have the stamina to live the life.

We didn’t get the earliest start, which was sort of too bad, because yesterday was hotter than most. Weather here generally follows a basic pattern of hot morning sun, followed by a cooler midday overcast, and fairly chilly nights. Yesterday was bright sunshine al day. The temperature never gets very high, but this is Ecuatorial America, and the intensity of the sunlight can microwave you pretty quickly. But it took a while to pack up the donkeys and retrieve the cattle (a young cow and a younger bull of the beef sort—most of the cattle here are dairy), and then a while more to walk down the mountainside to the potato field. Oh, yes, I did say donkeys, which are the pack animals here. Sure, there is plenty of truck transport, even in Tolte, but once you go off the road, a donkey can be pretty handy. They can carry about 200 pounds for about as long as they need to over any sort of terrain, which beats the heck out of carrying that weight yourself.

Angel and his wife Gladys and I reached the potato field to find Damasio already there. Damasio is one of the most cheerful presences in Tolte, which is saying a lot—most people here have a pretty sunny outlook. Damasio was already at work in the basic potato harvesting process: undercut the potato plants with a pick as if you were digging a shallow irrigation ditch, use the pick to dig out the potato plants, then scratch through the soil with a pick or azedon to find any potatoes you’ve buried. As you might imagine, this can take kind of a toll on the back that isn’t trained for it. Damsio is a pretty roly-poly sort of fellow, but a look at his forearms will tell you that he’s also very, very strong.

Naturally, our arrival was a chance to take a short break, which was celebrated first with a cup of chicha—that’s one cup, filled successively for each of us—followed by a shot of some kind of moonshine mixed with Fanta. That’s quite a way to start the day. Chicha is a fermented beverage, and topping it off with “trago” can really get one’s motor running. But we got right to work, some doing the main picking while others gathered potatoes and scratched through the loose soil looking for more. And every hour or so there was another round of chicha and trago. I can’t say it was exactly refreshing, but it did seem to make the work go a bit easier.

More people started to arrive. Augustin, star of a previous blog entry, is Angel’s uncle. I had understood that he was going to bring a pair of oxen to plow out at least some of the potatoes. This didn’t happen, but he did do some of the heavy picking for a while. Then Angel’s father, Joaquin (Augustin’s brother) arrived and took over the heavy pick work. Meanwhile, I tried not to experience too much shame picking up potatoes and scraping through the loose soil. Augustin and Joaquin are my age, but they generate a lot more force with a pick for far longer than I ever could.

Even so, by noon, my lower back was pretty much shot, and I wasn’t ashamed to say so. The remedy? Damasio picked a big lemon, cut it in half, and told me to rub it up and down my back. I have to admit that it did actually make me feel a little better, and smell a lot better, so it’s not a solution to take lightly.

By the time lunch came around, I was more desperate for a break than for food. But, as promised, the food was abundant and good. There were potatoes that we had just harvested with or without ahi, the local hot sauce. Of course there was cuy, which by now you know is guinea pig. But there were also small, bony fish that I found a lot more appealing than cuy. As with all real Ecuadorian emals, there was mote, big boiled grains of corn. The real taste sensation was a soul made out of roasted, ground up seeds of a squash called sambo.

So there we sat, in the shade of an avocado tree, with a present breeze blowing, sharing this food. And I do mean sharing. There were no plates, and the only utensil was a single spoon in the soup pot. And the one cup for chicha. Eating a meal here is a truly social experience. Everyone puts his or her hand in the potato pot, the mote bowl, the lettuce bin, the fish pot, and shares the soup spoon. So there we were, sharing the food, in the shade, with the breeze blowing, and the huge, lightly vegetated face of a mountain in front of us, and a blue sky over its edge, and I thought, holy smoke, this is one of the best days of my life. I’m so glad I realized it.

Lunch lasted about an hour, and by then it was about 2 o’clock. Back we went to picking and scraping, maybe a bit more slowly than before. A few more people showed up from parts unknown to pitch in, and that was a good thing, because they were all, men and women both, a lot sturdier than I am. And one of them brought more trago, this time flavored with some sort of grapefruit flavored stuff, and Damasio made sure we finished that, too. And just about the time that I thought I couldn’t take any more picking (because by now Joaquin made sure that I had a chance to do some of the real work), the day was over. Potatoes were being distributed among the sacks to make donkey loads. Ivan, one of the boys in fifth grade, led the donkey up and down to the road so we could catch a truck back to the center of Tolte.

While we waited for Ivan to finish his work, Damasio, Segundo and I talked about English and Kichwa. Segundo taught me a new phrase in Kichwa, “hukunyukan,” which mean’s “Let’s go.” Damasio and Segundo were very pleased to be able to speak this much English. And soon they were saying, “Let’s go” for real, and up to the road we went.

Somehow, Damasio found some trago to buy that we hadn’t consumed yet, and here’s where things became more difficult for me. This stuff was brutally string, and uncut with anything else. By the time I got off the truck, I really was feeling that I had gone too far—but I still had a PTA meeting to attend, because AVANTI had sent clothes down from Quito for the children. This meeting, as most meetings here, was brutally long and inefficient, although we did manage to give out the clothes, which was a good thing. Still, there was a point about midway through the meeting when the whole room seemed to be revolving in a most unattractive way. I remember Paul Battaglia telling me,” Stay off the moving sidewalks,” but I couldn’t stay out of the writhing room. I may have dozed off for a while, but I was coherent enough to give out the clothing when the time came.

The meeting started at 7, and didn’t end until about midnight. By now it was really cold, but I had left my sweater at Joaquin’s house. But I live near the meeting room, and I was looking forward to getting into bed. I was cold, tired, and ready for rest. But this was not to be. Jose and Narcisa have the habit of putting the key inside the house at night, especially if they think I’m already inside. And that’s where it was, and I could wake them. After a while of shivering and pounding on the door, I went back to the plaza, where I figured I’d have to hole up in the library if I couldn’t get into the house. But some of the parents were still in the meeting room, and Martina, the president of the group, took charge. First she tried to wake Jose and Narcisa, but had not luck. Then she borrowed a sweater from a neighbor so that I wouldn’t freeze. Unfortunately, this garment was clearly a woman’s clothing, but fortunately, no one was awake in Tolte to see me put it on. And we did walk all over Tolte, because Martina had an idea that Jose and Narcisa might be at the church. The church turned out to be closed, so we went back to Martina’s house. She also had trouble getting into her house, but eventually Pablo, her husband, heard us and let us in. Martina called Jose on the phone, managed to wake him that way, and by the time I got back to the house, the door was open for me.

So was that a rough ending to a perfect day? Well, sure, but consider the effort that Martina went to to get me back in my house. And how well taken care of I am here in so many ways. It has taken me less than two months to have the day I had yesterday, and I expect that there will be several more before this experience runs out.

Post Script: I woke up Saturday with sore muscles not in my lower back, but in my backside, hips, and hamstrings. It's like they told me at the gym--I'm a string guy with a weak core.

Acrophobia

I have always suffered from a terrible fear of heights. It shows up in odd ways, For example, I worked several summers painting houses, and going up ladders, at least to a certain point, never bothered me. I think it was having something to hold on to that made it easier. But I was never able to work on scaffolding, or anywhere else where I had to walk along any height at all without a handrail. I remember when the handrail fell off of the log bridge that crossed the Rio Uruca in Matinilla. The bridge was only about 5 feet above the water, but I could barely get home.

Twenty of the 65 school children are off on adventure provided by AVANTI and LAN airlines. The idea is to give rural children a chance to experience air travel; I can't say 'm clear on why this is considered beneficial, but it is certainly exciting. But this means that about half of the foruth through seventh graders are not here. Yesterday, the teachers of those classes (both named Luis) decided to walk the children down to the train station as a kind of nature walk. I can't say I heard much nature discussed, but it was nice to get out, and it spared me having to teach anything in particular (except for taking the opportunity to teach one of the Luis that the Eucalyptus tree is native to Australia, not Ecuador).

Normally, when I walk down to the train station on my own, I take the dirt road that is wide enough for cars. It's quite the magnificent view, but it is certainly the long way down. Yesterday we took a short cut. Not the shortest cut, but definitely more direct than the road. This is where the acrophobia comes in. I can't recall ever feeling the creeping terror hit me when I was standing on the ground. But on this short cut, if you look out on the "downhill" side, you don't see anything other than empty space. It's like walking along the edge of a cliff. Actually, I think it may be a walk along the edge of a cliff. But there I was, surrounded by little children, and I have to be Dave when I am teaching, which requires a certain level of fearlessness. And so I walked down the shortcut, and later I walked back up again, doing my best to look as fearless as possible. Inside, the adrenalin was surging so hard that I could hardly move. I couldn't decide whether to throw up or just have a heart attack. But I made it in both direction without hesitation. A couple of kids even held my hands as we finished up on the road, because I seemed to be hiking along more strongly than they felt.

I wouldn't make too much of this experience. I don't think it proves you can do anything you set your mind to. There is a shorter cut that I never want to get on to, because I don't think I could handle anything even slightly more provoking than yesterday's trail. But I will say that my mood seemed to pick up quite a bit when we were done. Maybe we all need more adrenalin rush and less prozac.