A Tale of Two Weddings

I’m not going to get into the usual chat about my work and how its going, or whether teaching little children to sing “The Eensy Weensy Spider” is a responsible use of my time on earth. This is going to be about Grupo Winari (there’s a tilde over that n, and it means “growth” in Kichwa), and how it is taking me around the Ecuadorean Sierra playing the guitar, something I never could have imagined when I decided to come down here.

The group has been growing steadily, from its original lineup of Vicente, the band leader and major musical talent, and his brother Pablo, Tolte’s carpenter, and a rotating group of percussionists who couldn’t keep a beat. I think I signed on about a year ago (an American Jew in an Evangelical/Ecuadorean folkloric band, that’s novel), and not too long after that some of the church kids joined in, most notably Solomon, who is learning to play various sizes of pan pipes, and Rocio, who solved our percussionist problem because she can sing and keep a beat at the same time, maybe the only person in Tolte with this talent, apart from Don Vicente, of course. When I returned to Tolte in August, the group had found a new charango player, Wiliam, from Alausi. On Friday, as we got ready to rehearse for weddings in Palmira and Canar, we also had Rocio’s cute little sister Diana trying to figure out how to play the guiro, a wooden tube with a notched surface that you rub with a pointed stick, and Jose, displaced percussionist and my former housemate, as an additional singer.

Practice with this extended group took three hours, during which time we covered, I think, three songs. Getting everyone to start and stop at the same time, while the various percussionists kept a beat, was sort of brutal, though things improved when Rocio showed up. There was also a “nerves” element, as we were learning one completely new and another almost completely new song to perform the next day. But I caught on quickly to a song I couldn’t figure out in the previous practice session, and, although there was a lot of repetition and a few broken finger nails, I figured I could do what needed to be done in the next two days. But as we were leaving, Wiliam said that he couldn’t come on Saturday, and the kids also seemed to have work to do at home, so Vicente and Pablo invited me to go with them to the Palmira wedding, and all of us would go to the Canar thing.

The Palmira wedding was a family event for Pablo and Vicente. Their mother came from there originally, but her family moved to Tolte about 50 years ago for reasons that their father could not make clear to me. The family was not really from Palmira, either, but from a tiny village smaller than Tolte up in the mountains above Palmira, in the heart of the Ecuadorean Sierra. We were supposed to leave at 8, but by the time we got organized in the back of their brother-in-law Francisco’s truck, it was closer to 9:30, and I think we reached the little village of Chausan around 11:30.

Pablo used the words “National Geographic” to describe what I saw when I entered the ceremonies already underway in Chausan, and his accuracy made me laugh. There was a brief moment, I have to admit, when all eyes turned toward me with but a single thought: “Gringo!” and I looked back thinking, “Indians!” Chausan is much, much more traditional than Tolte. Everyone was dressed in their finest wedding party best, brilliantly colored blanket-weight shawls and long narrow skirts for the women, ponchos and dark pants for the men, fedora-like hats for everybody. People were speaking primarily Kichwa among themselves, and this was also the language of the religious service. Because this is an Evangelical family, there was no trago, but there was food, which seemed to be used as a kind of trago substitute.
They brought us into a little house built in the traditional fashion of the area, which doesn’t include adobe because the soil hardly contains any clay. At a guess, I’d say it was some kind of lake shore or river bed soil, very silty and soft, unlike the soil of Tolte, and in spite of being about 3000 meters up in the Andes. I think the word that they used for this kind of mud wall construction is “tapia,” but I’m not completely sure. In any case, the smooth earthen walls run up to a roof of straw supported with wooden poles. There were no windows, but there were a sheep carcass and a pig’s head hanging from the rafters. And that’s where the food started. First, chicken and rice, then sheep soup, then pork fritada and rice. I think Pablo, Vicente, and I played three songs between the sheep soup and the fritada. By the time the fritada came out, almost everything was going into the thoughtfully provided plastic bags so that we could take it home.

As we ate, the fellow who was padrino to the new couple started talking to us about “chopa,” a doughy mixture of machica (barley powder), sugar, and chicha. This was something that I think even my friends from Tolte had never heard of. It wasn’t long before we saw the Chopa in all its glory, though. Four huge bowls of the stuff were set out on a table, along with the usual assortment of Andean comestibles, chickens, guinea pigs, favas and corn, rice and peas. The abundance was, according to the pastor officiating, to represent the idea that the new couple, with the support of the community, would never go hungry. The funny part was that the coupe and padrinos were supposed to eat everything on the table, something I doubt they could do even if they were anacondas. But they dug in with a will (remember, we had been eating al morning), but soon began sharing out all the food to the assembled village. As a visiting gringo, I was among the first served, along with my Tolte friends, also considered visitors. It seemed sort of imposible, but eventually all of the chopa and other food was eaten, and the rest of the afternoon was spent identifying long lost cousins and other family connections between the Toltenos and the residents of Chausan. And, before we hit the road, we were given a container of chicken and rice, three liters of soda, and another 3 liters of chicha for good measure. Amazingly, we made it home without anyone exploding.

The next day was Sunday, and we had a wedding to play in Canar, a little over an hour to the south. We weren’t going into the heart of Canar, only as far as Zhud, which for some reason some of my neighbors call Gun. The wedding was at 4, so we decided to gather at 3. I think the idea was that we would take Pablo’s little mini truck, the Boogie Woogie, although with eight band members, additional family members, and all of our instruments I didn’t see how that was possible. Of course, it wasn’t possible, and when I got to Vicente’s house at 3 we talked about looking for someone with a bigger truck. But we didn’t rush, because no one else was there yet, and we didn’t know where Pablo and the Boogie were.

At 4, we had identified someone who could give the whole band a ride, but the whole band was still not there. Pablo was just bringing his family up from the hacienda in the Boogie, Rocio and Diana were in their house, although they were close, since they live next door to the church. I was waiting on the church porch with a couple of the other kids who play with us. I think it was about 4:30 or 4:45 when we all finally got into Antonio’s truck and headed for Chunchi to pick up the charango player and his family. By now it was densely foggy and raining, and I was relieved that we were in a covered car and not all hanging on to some part of the Boogie. But with one thing and another, it took almost half an hour to find the charango player, and it was about 5:15 when we headed for Zhud.

When we got to Zhud, there was a roadside stand selling fritada. Apparently this is a fritada of a very high quality, because everyone considered it essential that we stop and eat some. It was good, although I think there were bad consequences later from having eaten it. But it was all very festive, and we got to the wedding at 6:40. Apparently, this violated some unwritten lateness limit that none of us had ever run into before, because they would not let us play. The charango player and I would up playing some of the popular music that I play with ESTASIS while we sat in the back of the truck, but that was about it. So we never did make it to the wedding in Canar, and I can’t tell you anything about how it compared to the wedding in Chausan. But I guess I can say that getting a band of Toltenos anywhere does require more time than one might expect.

Safety Issues

This blog entry, at least in my mind, is overshadowed by the murders in Newtown, Connecticut. I can’t get the image of someone shooting little kids out of my mind. I don’t care if the NRA thinks this is a necessary price we have to pay for their version of freedom, or whether or not the answer is a society where everyone capable of picking up a weapon is packing heat—although I can’t say that I think that would be a society worth living in. There’s little question in my mind that we adults allowed this to happen to little kids, and we’re all going to hell for it. And I’m not sure that’s adequate punishment.

And so it was difficult to come to terms this week that, more than anything else, I am an elementary school teacher here in Ecuador. There were only two days of classes following the Newtown shootings, but there was the AVANTI Christmas party on Saturday, Dec. 15, and the school Christmas party on Thursday the 20th. Fortunately, life here in Tolte is far removed from the violence prevalent in other parts of Ecuador and the world, and kids here much as children did in the US about 50 years ago, playing wild tag games in the cancha and growing up in an atmosphere of safety and security. But it was hard for me to look at the little kids I teach and separate them from the distant horrors of life in the U.S.

Coincidentally, we did have a sort of village-wide panic over the issue of child safety, induced by AVANTI’s gift of playground equipment to the school and day care center. For reasons known only to the junta directive, and in site of Carolina’s explicit request that they not do this, the entire area under the school’s playground equipment was covered in paving blocks the day that the playground arrived. Explanations that this was a bad idea did no good; apparently this had been contracted as part of some renovation of the center of town. But that wasn’t enough. The playground purchased for the day care center, which was described as appropriate for 3 year olds, was just as high and risky as the one for the school, Prompting one of my friends who has recently been given certain responsibilities for the day care program to wonder if he should denounce the thing as unsafe to his superiors. All of this led Carolina to demand that everything be made safe in time for her visit with her guests on Saturday. Francisco and I passed a bad day together wondering what, if anything, we could do about this mess. Needless to say, we did nothing, apart from worry about what Carolina would say to us when she got here. Well, we did come up with plans to improve the situation at both playgrounds, but nothing was actually done.

Just when we were thinking that things looked dim, Pablo showed up with an L-shaped crib setup Carolina had hired him to build and install in the day care center. Because of the way he measured the space, and then built the two pieces outside of the day care center, there was no way to put the pieces inside the crib room. What we thought looked dim before now looked like merely the start of total humiliation. But Pablo managed to cut one of the pieces in half, and somehow wedge the now three pieces into what turned out to be a not square space by 8:00 Friday night, sparing all of Tolte further embarrassment.

Carolina turned up early Saturday morning with Carla and Terance, and started distributing and organizing various giveaway events of the day. I slipped away to join the pig-killing crew and helped to make the fritada for lunch, but had a moment’s glory involving one of the giveaway items. Carolina had purchased 80 first aid kits, or at least what she thought were kits. Instead, what she got was only kit contents, not individual packages. Terance and I were left to sort the stiff into 80 plastic bags. Fortunately, the Tolte kids are incredibly curious, so, Tom Sawyer style, I invited them in to help us pack the bags. We were done in less than 15 minutes, and Terance was completely astonished.

But that was only the prelude to my great victory. I have always been hesitant to teach any of my students anything just for show, but the opportunity to teach Christmas and other songs in English had sort of presented itself a couple of weeks before Carolina’s visit. I think I gave the song list in the previous blog. While Carolina and her guests were eating their lunch, I brought the grades in one at a time and we sang their prepared songs. The reaction could hardly have been better: “What a great teacher you are!” “Oh, you have a wonderful way with the children!” “I cried, it was so sweet!” I may not have guaranteed myself another year in Tolte, but I sure earned myself a good reference.

And, in spite of the unsafe conditions, the sight of the children playing merrily in their risky new playground was also so heartwarming that no one could stay upset for long. I have mentioned before that Toltenos perceive safety very differently than I do, and the new playground is part of that picture. I have actually seen children walking around on top of the highest beams of the monkey bars.  I’d just like to add that these beams are round. And no one seems at all nervous about this—except me.

I’d also like to mention that one of my micro-enterprise projects actually presented itself in public the day of Carolina’s visit. On Wednesday, some of my friends and I made a shampoo based on medicinal plants, and had it ready to sell on Saturday. I really think this could become something important for Tolte, if we can get the whole thing together. It would provide a solid market for the medicinal plants everyone grows, it is very much a value-added product, and it could provide employment to quite a few people if our marketing is good.  I have never tried to do anything like this even in the US, and navigating the legalities of this project is going to be tricky, but it appears that we can operate in a kind of “gray market” way until we get everything in place. I have high hopes.

The following week did include something new for me. I started going down to the train station to give English classes to the adults who work there, both those from Tolte and those from Nizag. It’s kind of a long way to go, but they give me lunch, and it beats waiting around in the cancha every night for adults who never show up for English class. I’m also giving this information to the people who need it most and can use it every day. I’m happy that at least a couple of afternoons a week will involve something other than hanging around in the library, waiting for kids to take an interest in reading. But I do have plans for initiating a pro-reading campaign in January, and I hope that will change the reading picture.

Of course, going down to the train station and back seemed awfully pleasant last week, with the rainy season still refusing to arrive, weeks after it should have. There has been some foggy rainy weather the last two days, and the trip up and back could get awfully slippery and muddy. Time will tell—I hear the rainy season is different in the station than it is in Tolte, and I’ll have to see.

And now, I’m going to go  to New York. I will travel to Quito tomorrow, and fly to New York Wednesday. I’ll have four days in New York to celebrate my Mother’s 80th birthday, and then two more days of travel to get back. The idea of being able to do this astonishes my neighbors. We Americans enjoy such freedom of movement compared to Ecuadoreans. But I’m glad that my circumstances allow me to spend a couple of days rendering homage to the one who brought me here. Thanks, Mom!

Slow Times

Somehow, it’s December already and I have little to show for my time here since August. I suppose I take my English teaching for granted. There has been nice progress in the second, third and seventh grades, acceptable progress in the sixth grade, some have learned much and most have learned little in the fourth and fifth grades, and the first grade simply keeps me awake at night, without it doing any good. I am preparing the second through seventh grades to sing songs for Carolina and her AVANTI entourage when they visit next Saturday. The second grade will sing, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” The third grade will sing five verses of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” (How many of my blog readers can pull off that many verses? I thought so…) The fourth and fifth graders will sing “Jingle Bells,” including the “Dashing through the snow” verse. I have had serious trouble teaching that song because the idea of these kids singing about a ride through the snow in a horse-drawn sleigh gives me cultural fits, which I express by bursting into laughter as I try to sing. But they already seem to have had a start on the tune, due either to movies or some long-lost instructor.  The sixth grade will sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” chosen mostly because it doesn’t have too many words. Apart from the first grade, the sixth is the hardest to teach anything to. And finally, we have the seventh grade, singing, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” chosen in part because of my fondness for the Bruce Springsteen version and in part because it has plenty of words they actually know. (“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…”) They can also sing, which helps a lot. Astute readers will notice that I did not teach “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” to any grade. I have my reasons.

Meanwhile, my work with adults is at a standstill. No one comes to adult English classes, probably because they are simply too tired at the end of the day to focus on learning anything. The adult English classes had always focused mainly on high school and college age students, but it seems that when the high school workload got into full gear, the high schoolers couldn’t make it any more. I’m less sure what happened to the young adults, but one family that had provided the bulk of my students moved from the center of Tolte to the edge of town about a month back, and I think that sort of killed my program. But hope lives (as we will see with regard to several projects). Last night at the PTA meeting, one of my friends who speaks English quite well told me that a consultant from Quito has been working in the train station, and hearing of my existence, asked if I could come down to the train station to teach relevant tourist English to the various groups that work there, such as the cafeteria workers, the dance troupe, the people who sell craft items, the horseback riding group, and the llama wranglers. I told her I’d be happy to do it. Now we’ll have to see if they actually remember to contact me the next time the consultant comes, so we can get this underway. You may ask why I don’t just go down there and start teaching English, and I suppose I could. But when it comes to the train station, there are so many rules and regulations that I’m hesitant to get involved. And it’s a long enough walk that I don’t want to go down there for nothing, although the exercise would do me good.

The “granjas integrales” group is also in suspended animation, as are my agricultural ambitions. Almost every week, a meeting is promised with a chance for me to pitch alternative agriculture ideas, but, in the end, nothing happens. I’ve done a few little projects since last year, but nothing hat will really have a lasting effect on how people treat their soil and manage their crops here in Tolte. But yesterday and today saw me drawn back to this area in weird new ways.

Yesterday saw the start of a new project started with parroquia funding which is aimed at helping Tolte’s “most vulnerable,” the elderly, the disabled, and single mothers, to develop some income. Each identified member of this group, or their families, in the case of the disabled, received 10 laying hens to develop an egg business, which will be handled on a community basis. The hens are still too young to lay, and will need another 4 or 5 months of growth, but they were of a good size, vaccinated, and seem likely to survive to adulthood given everyone’s experience with chickens. What’s funny is that this is where the junta directiva brought me in. I’m supposed to provide the follow-through, to make sure that everyone is doing what he or she is supposed to do to make sure that these chickens do their thing in a profitable way. I, of course, have never raised chickens, nor do I have any technical training in the matter. But I can drop by everyone’s house every week and make sure things are going along all right. This is especially interesting because I have had little contact with Tolte’s elderly, who seem to do their own thing largely out of sight of the rest of the community. A few months ago, I commented to some of my friends that I now knew almost everyone in Tolte. “Do you know Don Shaiko?” one of them asked. Well, I had to admit that I didn’t, but I do now. And soon I’ll know just about all the rest, as well. I did a little online research today about starting an egg business, and found it hilarious that in the US, an extension pamphlet suggested starting with a flock of 1000 as being manageable and possibly profitable without too big an initial investment. The agricultural scale is so different in Ecuador. But I’m afraid that the emphasis on income in this project also means an emphasis on production, which probably rules out the free-range system of chicken rearing normally used here. This is too bad, as it produces an egg of incredible quality, with a brilliant orange yolk. I wonder if we could get a higher price for such an item.

Another ray of agricultural hope came today in the form of one of the high school students, who has a small piece of land at his disposal. He invited me to see what he has as part of a micro-enterprise project he has to do for school, which involves a fruit and vegetable stand by the side of the Inter-American highway where it passes Tolte. But he went on to ask me if I had any bright ideas for the little piece of land where he and his cousin have been growing carrots. Since I have been discussing Masanoba Fukuoka’s “Natural Farming” system with Diana, the polytech student who is doing here undergrad thesis research in Tolte, I pitched that. Juan Carlos says he’s interested in trying it. It would be great to start right away, but, weirdly, my next three Saturdays are committed to other things, so it looks like we’ll get going upon my return to weekend action when I get back from my lightning trip to New York at the end of the month. This really could be something exciting, because the Fukuoka method greatly reduces daily labor to produce its yield. We’ll have to see if I can make it work in Tolte.

Other rays of hope have to do with the business ideas I’ve tried to encourage in Tolte. One of these involves producing soaps, shampoos, and whatnot using Tolte’s ample supply of medicinal plants. The method for doing this is something known primarily to one family that I’ve been quite close to during my time here, but they would like to develop the enterprise as a project for the Evangelical Church, which would include about a quarter of Tolte’s families. Our goal is to present a product line to Carolina’s entourage when they get here next Saturday. Naturally, the first samples of these things that I will see will be produced Wednesday or Thursday, so I hope they come out looking good. A Quito market for these things could be one heck of an outlet.

I have also heard that Vicente, the guitar maker, is taking a loan to equip his workshop to make guitars. Now I have to figure out how to help him market them. I have consulted my cousin Edward Summer about this, and I’m eager to see what he suggests. (It’s great to have knowledgeable family members in easy reach of the internet.) My idea is that we will try to reach consumers through the ‘net, where they will be able to order custom-made nylon string guitars at an affordable price. Thanks to Terance in The AVANTI office, I think we have solved the shipping cost problem. So with a direct-to-customer approach, I think we can offer a pretty impressive product at an amazing price. Now we’ll see if I can put all the pieces together.

The final project, is, as usual, the band ESTASIS, one of the world’s truly comical rock bands. I have been working on a song for a while, one that sounds wildly different from the rest of our repertoire, if it can be said that we have a repertoire. Mario finally insisted that I write the lyrics already, and, somewhat to my astonishment, they popped out about as fast as I could write them down. It is a somewhat maudlin number about a fellow who waits all his life for the girl, and later woman, he loves to come out of her house, which she doesn’t do until the day she dies. I also had to arrange the rhythm guitar and bass parts behind my own lead playing, and, because the vocalist shows up to rarely, I have had to sing the damn thing, too. Fortunately, our drummer is getting much better at keeping a beat. My band mates believe that this song is a sure-fire hit, and will make guitar heroes of us all. Even the vocalist, when he finally heard it, was afraid to try to sing it, fearing he might not give it what I do (although his accent would certainly be better). At the same time, we are now covering a song called “No Me Arrepiento de Este Amor,” by the band Ataque 77, which sounds a lot like The Clash at their most furious. Practicing my song, “Juliana al Fin del Mundo” and “No Me Arrepiento de Este Amor” one after the other and back again is enough to produce whiplash. But this is what ESTASIS is all about, wild rock abandon and depraved sentimentality, all at once, like the adolescents we are. And while we may not have much in the way of talent, we do have a facebook page with 100 followers, so go ahead and like us if you dare.

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…

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.

Things are happening

One unusual aspect of my life as a teacher and rural development promoter here in Tolte is that I am not alone. For such a tiny place, Tolte has a lot of friends. I am here with Fundacion AVANTI, but Fundacion Maquita Cushunchic (MCCH)  (“helping hand,” in Kichwa) is even more active here, providing training in all aspects of the things that need to be done to turn Tolte and its view of Nariz del Diablo into an attractive tourist destination. The MCCH coordinator is Jorge, a tremendously capable person who gets more done in his visits here than I do by living here. The junta directive also has a technician, Dani, who has brought three students from the Polytech, who are finishing their studies in community tourism, with him. We also have occasional visits from a Ministry of Agriculture technician, Gonzalo. When we are all present at the same time, we actually represent 2% of Tolte’s population.

So about a week ago, at Jorge’s instigation, we various technicians became the Technical Working Group of Tolte. The idea is that we’ll meet regularly, actually assign ourselves tasks and goals, and get the whole Tolte project moving along in a single, unified direction. Since I know nothing about tourism, except certain aspects of the gringo mentality, having someone tell me what the community tourism here is supposed to look like is tremendously helpful. I’m even being allowed to focus on the integrated farms group, which is the project that most intrigues me. Of course, our first meeting ran a couple of hours, and then was repeated for the benefit of the junta directive, which I found wearing, but I’m glad to be included in this stage of events.

The best part of this, for me, is that my project is to give a series of talks to the farmer group about soil and water conservation, organic farming, and permaculture. I happen to be here at just the right time, because I major aspect of this project is the planting of highly subsidized fruit trees. Of course, the trees arrived long before I was given a chance to say anything about site preparation, but I am hopeful that I can successfully install the various earthworks and plantings in reverse of their proper order. This Thursday, I introduced a kind of permaculture, multi-level planting, vision of what I’m trying to encourage, along with some reasons why. I also mentioned individual terraces for fruit trees planted on sloping land. The original plan had been to make some of these terraces as part of the class, but we weren’t able to organize that ahead of time. Next Thursday, when I do a worm compost bin, we’ll also make some terraces. The surprising part is that I’ve arrived at a point where people are willing to listen to my heavily accented Spanish for an hour or more, in hope of gleaning some useful nugget of information. I’m terrified of disappointing them—even more than of having them reject all my suggestions as insanity.

Speaking of insanity, last Friday saw the band ESTASIS, world’s least talented garage band, in Riobamba buying an amplifier and speakers. This should have been turned into some kind of movie. Here are some highlights: 1) looking for our eternally missing bass player, and finding him far out in a hayfield cutting grass for the cow; 2) our rhythm guitarist and bad leader, Mario, attempting to buy cool sunglasses and having one lens or another fall out of pair after pair, much to the shop owner’s horror. Hey, it wasn’t our fault; 3) our drummer Fredy’s repeated and increasingly desperate attempts to get his bank card to work. It finally did, at another bank; 4) the absence of our vocalist, whom nobody knows how to tell that we want someone who can sing; 5) our arrival at the music store where we had arranged to purchase the system, only to be told that we would have to wait a couple of hours—make that four hours; 6) the band’s urgent need to buy little, individually wrapped, pieces of cake, because the girl selling it was so cute; 7) my impromptu rock ‘n’ roll show in the music store, under the guise of testing out an electric guitar. It couldn’t have been too bad, the store owners asked again what the band’s name was; 8) deciding to go to a bust stop on the edge of town, instead of the main terminal in hopes of catching an earlier bus, only to realize that it was a holiday, and all the buses were full. We and our equipment crammed into a microscopic taxi to get back to the center of town; and 9) the walk from the bus stop down into Tolte carrying the amplifier and two bulky speakers. We have actually practiced a couple of times since then, but we still seem to be suffering from a lack of musical talent or even a sense of what we would like to sound like. It’s hard to be ESTASIADO.

In one more great piece of news, it looks like the Ministry of the Environment is going to give us all the trees we need to plant windbreaks wherever anyone wants them in Tolte. This is good news for me, because it means I can go around finding out who wants these things, and how much land they have to give for them. Nothing like a new project to get the sap running…

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.